3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) (7 page)

Meow.

“
Dude, Twix is a
cookie.”

We argue about this for another minute, then
I open the door to the balcony and he goes to his mound and takes
care of business. The fresh air feels wonderful and I decide I am
going running outside.

Goons be damned. 

There is a brown box on the kitchen table
with an Amazon sticker. It had come two days earlier, but I'd yet
to open it.

A minute later, I'm holding the strongest
Taser on the market.

I shake it at Lassie.
“Next time you go pee-pee on the carpet, zap, 4000 volts
buddy.”



He laughs.

I pull on my beanie, slip on my running
shoes, and open the front door. Lassie sticks his head out, surveys
the hall, then slinks back in. If I'd gotten over my
little scare, Lassie was yet to get over his.

“
I guess we'll have to get
you a Taser too.”

Meow.

“
No, I'm not getting you a
knife.”

Meow.

“
We'll discuss this when I
get back.”

After running on the treadmill for close to
week, I forget how amazing the air tastes. I decide to take a
different route and head north toward Summer Park. I've already
thought of escape routes, should the need arise. The stun gun is in
my right hand, cranked on high.

I sweep the perimeter as I run. No signs of
life. I try to remain on alert, but my mind continually drifts. I
try to move past her, but she keeps popping back into my thoughts.
Not Callie Freig. Not Jessica Renoix. Detective Ray. Her
auburn hair, her crooked smile, how she would stare at me when she
thought I was a murderer. I try to configure what her body is
shaped like beneath those jeans and bulky sweatshirts.  What
sounds she might make. How her nipples would respond to my teasing
tongue.

Bright lights.

Two sets.

Escape Route D.

I dart across the street. There is a ditch
and I jump down into the water, then crawl up the embankment and
enter Summer Park.

I head for the darkened tennis courts to my
left. I crash through the chain-link gate, hurdle the
net, then start on the 18-foot fence enclosing the two
courts. I turn and look over my shoulder. Three guys have entered
the court. They are all wearing black. They have guns. I wonder why
they don't shoot. As I sweep my leg over the top of the chain-link,
all three hit the fence and shake it for all it's worth. Somehow
I'm able to hold on, then hop down the last ten feet.

I look through the fence at them. They could
be Navy Seals for all I know. 

“
Hey guys.”

They don't respond.

They go to work on the fence and I wait
until all three near the top.

“
Sorry about
this.”

I Taser the chain link fence.

Three screams, then three thuds as they fall
to the green court floor.

I turn and run.

“
Don't move.”

I'm staring into the barrel of a
gun. 

“
Drop the
Taser.”

I drop the stun gun.

“
You guys okay?” he calls
to his buddies.

“
That motherfucker
electrocuted us.”

He picks up the stun gun from the ground and
looks at it. Then he pushes it into my chest and I scream.

…

I'm in a car.

“
You okay?”

My vision is blurred. “What time is it?” I
ask.

“
3:35 a.m.”

I squint at the voice.

“
Don't worry, we'll get
you back before your 4 a.m. curfew.”

I recognize the voice, but the face still
swims in front of me.

“
Henry Bins,” he says. It
isn't a question.

My vision is starting to clear. I'm in the
back seat of a car. My chest is burning.

I try to speak, but only a cough comes
out.

He hands me a Perrier and I take a small
sip. A chill courses down my arms. 

“
Mr.
President.”

…

The car light above illuminates Connor
Sullivan's face in roughly the same shadow as the streetlamp had
two weeks earlier. He is wearing jeans and a University of Dayton
sweatshirt. He could be any other guy out for a drive. But he's
not. He's the President of the United States.

“
Sorry about my guys,” he
says. “No harm was supposed to come to you.”

I bring my hand to my chest where I was
shocked and know a ruby red burn is in the making.

I nod.

“
I know time is of the
essence, that for you time is always of the essence, so I will get
right to the point. I knew the moment I saw your face in that
window that you were going to pose a problem.”

We lock eyes, relive that moment in
time. 

I think about his words, that you were
going to pose a problem. Callie Freig had also posed a
problem. And she was dead. So why wasn't I?

“
I didn't kill that girl,”
he says.

I would have been more apt to believe if he
told me he could turn off gravity. That if I dropped the Perrier in
my hand, it would float to the ceiling.

I scoff.

“
I don't blame you,” he
says with a shake of his head. “If I had the information you had, I
would have no doubt that I killed that woman. Let's see, you heard
a scream, you saw me leaving, you found my cell phone, and you made
the connection between me and Jessica Renoix.”

I try not to blink. I wonder if my house is
bugged. Or if they know everything I've searched on the Internet.
Or both.

He takes a breath and says, “I met Jessica
six years ago when she volunteered for my reelection campaign.” He
whistles. “Still remember the day she walked in. Every male from
eighteen to fifty literally stopped and stared. She had that
effect.”

“
How long did it take for
you to start sleeping with her?”

“
Not long. A month into
the campaign, the lot of us were staying at a hotel. She
snuck into my room and well, I didn't turn her down.”

“
I didn't take you for
much of a philanderer.” In fact, he wreaked of the consummate
family man.

“
Nothing I'm proud of,” he
offers with an upward glance. I'm not sure if he was repenting or
checking the roof of the car for tears.

“
And you've kept this up
for six years?”

“
No. It only happened the
one time.”

I am confused and must look it.

“
She videotaped it. Came
to me the next day and demanded a hundred thousand
dollars.”

My eyebrows rise.

“
I paid her. She
disappeared the next day.”

“
You paid her?”

“
If that video got out I
would have been ruined. Paid her a hundred thousand dollars cash
and she took it with a smile and disappeared. Didn't hear a peep
from her for six years. Then I got an email a month ago. She was
back and she wanted more money.”

“
Did you give it to
her?”

“
I did. Two weeks
ago.”

I study his face. I find myself believing
him. But that he was being blackmailed by
Callie/Jessica didn't mean that he didn't kill her. In fact,
it gave him motive.

“
I know what you're
thinking, even a better reason to kill her, and don't think it
didn't cross my mind. But she'd gone away for six years the first
time I paid her, I had little doubt she would disappear for another
six, whereby if she ever came back to the well, I would have served
out my presidency and I could deal with the fallout if the tape
came out.”

“
Okay, so say I believe
you. What happened that night? And start from the beginning, like
how you got out of the White House and into a Ford
Focus.”

“
You know that was the
first time I'd driven in nearly three years. Man it felt good!” He
laughs.

I don't react. I'm still sitting next to a
killer. And I don't give a shit when the last time he drove a car
was.

He straightens.

“
I told my guys I wanted
to go for a drive and that I didn't want any record of it. Red, the
guy that tased you, heads up my detail. He made it
happen, but he insisted he come with me. Snuck me out, got me into
that car and we drove. We went five miles, then I pulled
over and told him to get out. Some SS might not have gotten out of
the car, but Red and I go back to college. We'd played ball
together for two years. Like brothers. He got out. I told
him I'd pick him up in an hour. Drove down to the address that
Jessica – I had no idea she was calling herself Callie now – had
given me, and went inside.

“
I gave her the money, two
hundred grand this time, and she took it. She tried to kiss me and
I pushed her away. That's when she started screaming. I covered her
mouth and told her to shut up, then I ran out.”

“
What about your
phone?”

He shakes his head. “I had this great plan
to record the exchange, so I would have proof she was blackmailing
me, if it ever came to that, but Jessica is smart. She patted me
down, found the phone and said she was keeping it. It was her
insurance if I ever tried to prove she was blackmailing me.”

“
And what, you just left
and then someone came and strangled her?”

“
Yep and they took the two
hundred thousand dollars with them.”

…

The President drops me off five blocks from
my house at 3:50 a.m.

I open the door and ask, “So if you didn't
kill her, then who did?”

He had no idea.

I have no idea if the Clemens moved back. If
they have, I will know in the next thirty seconds.

I pick up a rock from a nearby garden and
weigh it in my hand. It has some heft, maybe three pounds. It will
work.

My plan is to smash the lock on the sliding
glass door and hope it opens. I raise the rock above my head.

Meow.

I look down.

I decided to bring Lassie along for my B
& E encore, hoping he might be able to sniff out something the
cops had missed.

“
I know it’s a stupid
idea, but how else are we going to get in?”

Meow.

“
Really?”

Meow.

“
Well, why didn’t you say
something earlier?”

He shrugs, then leads me to a
flower pot at the back edge of the porch. The flowers are long
dead, having not been watered in two weeks, and the soil is filled
with small crusty leaves. I dig my hand in the soil and feel
around, then hit pay dirt. I pull out a key.

“
Good job
Watson.”

Meow.

“
No, I’m
Sherlock.”

Ten seconds later, we are inside.

It is 3:10 a.m.

The TV remote is in the same place I’d last
seen it and I decide the Clemens are still tanning their hides in
the Florida sun. I wonder what their plans are for the estate. And
I also wonder if they believe in ghosts. Ten to one, the house
would be on the market within the year. Virginia real estate prices
were on the rise, some were even throwing out words like “seller’s
market”, but I’d be surprised if the Clemens got sixty percent of
their asking price.

As for the cops, if they’d moved stuff
around, they’d put it back in relatively the
same fashion as they’d found it.

I head into the kitchen and I grab myself a
couple string cheeses from the fridge.  Lassie springs onto
the counter and begins clawing at one of the cabinets. I open it
and find some little treats. I feed him a couple. He gobbles them
down.

“
Dude, you didn’t even
chew it.”

Meow.

“
You’re gonna spoil your appetite.”

Meow.
 



“
If you find us a clue to
who killed your mom, I’ll give you a couple more.”

Meow.

“
Seven?
How bout three?”

Meow.

“
Four, but no
more.”

Meow.

“
Fine, five.”

He jumps off the counter and zips out of the
kitchen.

After my unlikely chat with the POTUS, I was
far from convinced that Jessica Renoix had not died at
the hands of Connor Sullivan. But he had put a couple chinks in the
armor, enough that I was looking for a connection between Jessica
and a third party. If this was a ménage `a trois, then someone knew
the President was coming over to Jessica’s house with a big bag of
cash. I was hoping to uncover some clue as to who that person could
be.

I spend five minutes in the living room,
looking through a bunch of pictures on the walls. The
Clemens appear to be in their late 60s, but that could
have been exacerbated by UVA and UVB rays. There is a son and a
daughter. Four grandchildren by the looks of the framed school
pictures.

Finding nothing that speaks to the murder of
Jessica Renoix, I make my way into the master bedroom. I hit
the flashlight on my phone, illuminating the many elephant trinkets
scattered about the room. I wonder if Jessica or Mrs. Clemens was
the elephant nut. I guess the latter. In fact, everything in the
room, the entire house, appears to belong to the Clemens. Had they
known Jessica well enough to let her around all their valuables
without a care in the world? Detective Ray had said the Clemens
told her Callie/Jessica had contacted them through Craigslist, so
Jessica wasn’t an old family friend. Ray also mentioned they’d
given her a great deal on the rent. Did she charm them, much like
she’d charmed the President?