An Absence of Principal (5 page)

Trask worked in such a faraway outpost, where unless you were in the oil business few people relocated to voluntarily. He knew it would be a challenge to find someone who had the right qualities for the position. In fact, he had not taken a single phone call since he had placed the ad three weeks earlier.

Garrison’s casework had increased steadily since he left McClatchy-Court, the famed Midland firm, more than a decade earlier. He lost a lot of sleep over the decision, but it was one that was proving even more fruitful than he could have imagined. As his second pot of coffee brewed he thought about all the years he had spent as a solo practitioner. It had been four years since he had gone out on his own. He was tight with his money but he paid a girl $36,000 a year to run the office. Filing, phones, running to the courthouse, the kind of work most anyone could do. He gave the young woman weekends off. Saturday was his alone day. Garrison knew Lucy Hannah, his wife of almost 20 years, didn’t like him being away six out of every seven days, but such hard work was necessary if he hoped to retain his standing in the local legal community. Plus, Lucy knew the long hours kept her in some of the finery and baubles that wouldn’t have been possible had her husband not worked quite so hard.

As he walked back to his office he heard the tinkling of the bells at the front door. Garrison rarely had Saturday visitors unless it was by appointment, and he had made none this morning. He walked to his outer office. Standing there was a strikingly beautiful woman. Long, red hair, green eyes, impeccably manicured and modestly, professionally dressed.

She took a step toward him and extended her hand.

“May I help you?” Trask said.

“My name is Alex. Alex Wallace. You have an opening listed in the
Law Journal
for an investigator.”

If Garrison had learned anything from his mother and Lucy Hannah, it was to not pre-judge people. That didn’t stop Garrison from thinking this woman looked nothing like a private attorney’s investigator. He decided, wisely, to keep that thought, and many others, to himself.

Garrison invited her into his office and the two chatted for a moment. He took her portfolio and her card and they talked for several minutes, mostly small talk. Trask told her he’d be in touch and she let herself out. He was skeptical. Why would a beautiful woman want such a small town, small potatoes job as a private investigator for a one-man law firm? Garrison was good and he knew it, but there was little prestige in working for a sole practitioner. Just the fact that she came in made him leery and suspicious enough to wonder what her angle was.

He pulled out her resume. Four pages.

Alex Wallace. 38. Born and raised in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Graduated Oklahoma University. Bachelors in Criminal Justice. Masters in social work. Graduated FBI Training Academy.

Not bad, he thought.

Her schooling was followed by three pages of special assignments for lawyers and police departments across the country. Then, in 1999, a break, unexplained in the biographical narrative that accompanied the resume. In ‘02, Alex noted that she had been hired by the Drug Enforcement Administration-International Operations, an assignment that looked like it lasted six months. And since then, nothing.

He was intrigued. But even more, he was impressed. He would call her first thing Monday.

CHAPTER 3
 

I
t was all Ben Doggett could do to keep his composure during the weekend at home with his family. His hands shook, his stomach lurched and turned, and the dryness in his mouth wouldn’t stop.

“Ben, you sure you’re feeling all right?” Angela asked, putting a hand to his forehead. “You look awful. You need a doctor?”

“I’ll be fine, sweetheart. Bad Mexican food, probably. Besides we’ve got a busy day today. How can I miss my kids’ birthday, even if they are seventeen?”

Doggett noticed a definite change in Angela’s tone toward him. She had gone from loving and warm to distant and unfeeling. When she asked how he was feeling, it seemed obligatory, like she didn’t really care. He supposed his recent behavior — leaving the house so often, inattention, failing to pay the phone bill (not to mention the gambling and affair she knew nothing about — yet) brought on the change he noticed.

But back to thinking about himself. Doggett really didn’t have time just now to worry about his wife’s change of attitude. Despite his desperate actions from the night before, he tried to convince himself everything would be OK, just as he had tried to do on all those other occasions when he’d had extramarital relations with his secretary, or when he dropped a boatload of college money at an online casino.

He convinced himself that by taking the action he took the day before and by pocketing all but a thousand dollars that Cootie had given him for the sale of the cocaine instead of paying that worthless low life in Odessa — he would be completely debt free with some serious large to spare. And Doggett felt for sure that once he had the ability to set aside his financial woes, everything else in his life would look up. Even though he felt he had made the right decision, he did not count on the overwhelming feeling of guilt that greeted him with the sunrise that morning.

He looked at his watch.

“I’ve gotta run out,” Doggett told Angela again.

“Oh, dear Jesus,” Angela said, her patience wearing thin again.

“Just a quick errand down to the church. I’ll be back inside of thirty minutes.”

Doggett knew she had heard that line far more times than any wife should.

“When you’re out, stop by and get you some pills or something to make all these trips of yours go away,” she said. Doggett could tell by her comment that she had grown especially tired of him. In the months and years past, Angela would never dream of letting him go out while he was feeling so bad. Today, she just told him to get his own medicine. They had already become distant toward one another and she hadn’t even found out about his really big lies yet. She didn’t even know about Ben’s loss of self-respect and decency and everything that came with it, a character trait that had developed almost entirely in the three months since he had been honored by his peers, which seemed like such a long time ago.

Doggett made his way to Our Lady of Hope, the Catholic Church he and Angela had been a part of for over twenty years, since first moving to Midland.

It was eleven o’clock. Ben Doggett had never actually been to confession unless it was during Lent or Advent, but he had memorized the church’s confession times when he sat in Mass staring at his bulletin while pretending to listen to one of father’s boring homilies. Ben found them all to be drab, even though most everyone else was crazy about Father Marcus and the lessons he imparted. He was unfailingly polite and attentive to the needs of his parishioners at Our Lady of Hope. Some Sundays Ben memorized multiple bulletin pages when there was time, when father’s longer and more boring sermons permitted. As a result of his repeated study, he knew confessions were at eleven on Saturday mornings.

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” Ben began as he stepped into the confessional.

“How long since your last confession, my friend?” Fr. Marcus asked.

There was a long pause. Nothing from Ben.

“Has it been awhile?” Father Marcus asked.

“Three or four years, I guess. Back when I used to believe it all meant something,” Ben said.

“What do you mean?”

“I just … I don’t know, father. I’ve lost faith. Not just lost the faith, lost
my
faith, I guess. My faith in God, in mankind, in myself. In most anything and everything that matters. Too many bad choices on my part.”

“Such as?” Fr. Marcus asked.

“I’ve cheated on my wife with my secretary. I’ve gambled away a lot of my family’s savings. I’m an inattentive father and husband. And last night I think I hurt — .”

“Go on …” Fr. Marcus asked.

He remained silent.

Ben remembered he hadn’t intended on spilling it all at this particular confession. In fact, he had hoped to keep his sins largely hidden, but soon enough, just like when he was a boy, he started singing like a mockingbird. His tongue flapped in the wind, and his mouth was uncontrollable when his conscience was involved. He could thank his mother and her unfailing honesty for that. After almost revealing too much, Ben caught himself. He stammered for a moment trying to find the right words to reclaim his control.

“I hurt my mother. Snapped at her on the phone. She was … she was getting onto me for one of those things mothers get onto you about, y’know, and I got tired of her bickering, and I told her to stop, that I was a man and I could take care of myself. She started crying. Made me feel horrible. Still feel horrible. It’s what brought me here today. Only time I ever made my mama cry.”

So it had come to this: Ben lying to a priest in confession. On top of everything else he had done wrong in the last few days and weeks, Doggett had become, almost overnight, an expert liar. And he was highly believable even when he was lying through his teeth.

“I’m sorry, too, father, for not listening in Mass as well as I should sometimes.”

“No worries, my son. I get that one a lot. Just do your best and I’ll do mine,” Fr. Marcus said.

The priest doled out Doggett’s penance, made the sign of the cross through the screen that divided them and absolved him of all that he had done wrong. Doggett slithered out of the confessional wondering why the Catholic Church bothered with partitioning in confessionals.
There’s no way he doesn’t know who I am
, Doggett thought to himself.

Father shook his head as Doggett exited the church. He unfurled the morning newspaper: “Man found shot execution style in Odessa; drug deal gone bad apparent motive,” the headline read.

At almost precisely the same time that Fr. Marcus was opening his
Reporter-Telegram
, Tony Nail was across town reading the same story. Unlike Fr. Marcus, Tony found himself scouring over the facts. He picked up the phone and called Ben.

“Mr. Doggett? There’s a problem down here at the school. Got a little water leak I need your input on. Can you drop by for a few minutes?” Nail asked.

“On the way,” Doggett said. He picked up the phone and explained to Angela the problem at the school and said he would be home a little later than he had thought. Five minutes later he pulled up and met Nail in the parking lot at Stephen F. Austin.

“What’s the problem, Tony?” Doggett asked.

“You tell me,” Nail said.

“Excuse me?” Doggett said.

“You seen today’s paper, man?” Nail asked, tossing it down on the hood of Doggett’s car.

The headline jumped off the page at Doggett, who had, in fact, not seen the morning paper. He studied it for several moments before saying anything.

“Tragic. They’ve had a bunch of killings in Odessa lately, all drug-related they say. What’s the world comin’ to?” Doggett said. He looked up at Tony. “What’s this got to do with me, Toe?”

“Suppose you tell me?” Nail challenged his boss.

“What’s that supposed to mean, man?”

Nail held out his hand and showed Doggett a picture of a silver Honda parked at the gas station where the shooting occurred. He had taken it on his smart phone the night before. It could have been taken on any night, so the photo could never be admitted into evidence, but Doggett’s reaction did nothing to ease Nail’s mind of his boss’s involvement.

“Son of a —” Doggett said, holding himself back.

“So, what’s the story Mr. Doggett? You kill this man, Junior Walker? I saw a car that looked a heckuva lot like yours drive up to that abandoned gas station. Next thing I know, I hear a shot, see a flash. Then I see somebody get back in the car and speed off. I followed whoever it was for awhile but they were driving too fast. I lost ’em real quick.

“You crazy, man.” It was all Doggett could think of to say. “Why would I wanna go and kill some low-life dope dealer?”

“Cuz you’re dealing, too, maybe?”

“That’s some crazy talk there, boy,” Doggett said.

Doggett quickly got into his car and sped off. It reminded Nail of the same way he had pulled off the last time he had seen his boss angry and in a hurry.