STATE OF BETRAYAL: A Virgil Jones Mystery (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 2) (8 page)

“I’m going inside. Thanks for the
trip down memory lane. What time is it anyway? You sound like you might be
ready for your medicine.” He slammed the door and walked away.

How much damage can one guy do
in a single day?
Virgil thought.

10

__________

S
andy
was already asleep when he got home. Virgil thought about waking her so he
could apologize and explain his feelings in a way that might put them back on track,
but in the end, he simply let her sleep. He went into the kitchen and poured a
glass of ice water, but when he raised it to his lips his hand shook so badly he
had to set the glass back down. He pulled out his pills and set them on the
counter, then reached into the silverware drawer for a straw. And that’s when
it happened. He took a pair of kitchen shears and cut the straw down to half
its original length, then put both of the pain pills between two spoons and
ground them together until they were a fine blue powder. He dumped the powder into
a little pile and used the handle of the spoon to draw out two lines then bent
over and snorted the medication through the straw, one line for each nostril.

The rush hit him at once, the
warmth and lightheadedness something like a surprise meeting of a long lost friend
or lover. When he stood and turned from the counter he saw that Sandy was standing
behind him, her blonde hair askew, sleep lines etched across one side of her
face, her naked body warm and inviting. The look she gave Virgil was one he
would not soon forget, if ever. She covered her breasts and pubic area with her
arms and hands and ran back to the bedroom. When she snapped the lock into
place on the knob, the finality of the noise reminded him of the sound a jail cell
door makes as it clangs shut.

He stood there, a cut down straw in
his hand, the buzzing in his head as loud as a gas-powered leaf blower, blood
pounding through the dark rivers of his heart. But when he picked up the glass
of water, his hand was rock steady.

__________

He knocked on the
bedroom door but Sandy
refused to acknowledge his presence, so he walked outside and sat down in a
lawn chair near the edge of the pond and stared across the black water. The
moon was out and full, the night sky cloudless and when he looked up and cupped
his hands around his eyes and blocked out the ambient light it felt like he could
see halfway across the galaxy. Tree frogs and crickets sang in the darkness and
Virgil thought were it not for his addiction and the people he continued to
abuse with his own selfishness and indignation, the night might have been a
grand one indeed.

A sense of calm floated over him as
he stared upward into the night sky. At some point he fell asleep for a while
and just a few seconds after he woke and without warning, the tree frogs and crickets
stopped their nocturnal calls and the buzzing in his head went quiet. He closed
his eyes again and folded his hands into his lap. A soft breeze blew across the
pond and tickled his face. When he spoke, he thought he sounded like a fool.
“I’m not doing very well, am I?”

“No, Son, I don’t suppose you are.”

Virgil opened his eyes and looked
at his father’s willow tree. Mason stood there, just like before, visible
behind the hanging branches. “Lately I’m having some difficulty distinguishing
reality from fantasy, Dad.”

“I’m not surprised. When you flood
your system with mind-altering chemicals, you’re not foolish enough to believe
that they won’t have any ill effects, are you?”

Virgil didn’t ignore the question,
but he didn’t answer it, either. “I don’t know what to do.”

“The answer is right in front of
you, Virgil. It has been all along. You
do
know what to do, you simply
refuse to do it.”

“You may as well ask me to stop my
own heart from beating. That’s how much control I have over it.”

“That’s a bullshit cop-out, Virg and
you know it.”

“They let you swear in heaven?”

Mason smiled and the lines on his
face looked like a familiar road map one might consult out of ritual rather
than necessity before taking a well-known cross-country journey. “One of the
first things you learn when you come back home is that there isn’t anything you
can do that is ever wrong.”

“So it’s not like it is here, huh?”

Mason laughed. “No, Virg, it sure
isn’t. But you already know that. You just can’t remember it. But you will,
when your time comes.”

Virgil looked away from his father
for a long time…so long in fact, that he thought his dad might be gone when he
looked back. But he was still there, now seated at the base of the tree, his
fingers interlaced behind his head, his legs crossed at the ankles.

“I feel like my time might be right
around the corner.”

“It’s not hard to understand why
you might feel that way.”

“Are you real?”

“We’re talking aren’t we?”

Virgil nodded at him. “Yeah, we are.
I just don’t think that answers my question. Are you chained to that tree or
can you move around?”

He stood up and dusted off the seat
of his pants with his hands, an act that Virgil found odd. “You’re asking all
the wrong questions, Son.”

“Am I, Dad? Never mind. Don’t answer
that. Answer this instead: Am I doing anything right?”

Virgil wasn’t very surprised that
his father refused to play the part of enabler when it came to his own self-victimization.
“Have you already forgotten what I told you earlier? You’ve got people in your
life who are going to need you.”

“Everyone seems to be doing just
fine.”

“Your thoughts are deluded, Son.
Everyone is not doing fine. Sandy lied to you today. When was the last time
that ever happened?”

“
What?
It’s never happened,”
Virgil said, his voice louder than necessary. “Ever.”

“You’re mistaken, Bud. She lied to
you today, she just doesn’t know it yet.”

“How about we can the mysticism? Will
you please just come out with it, already? It’s almost time for—”

“Almost time for what? To snort
some more Oxy?”

“So you’re not tied to that tree
after all.”

“I never said I was. Do you
remember what I told you that afternoon at the bar, the day my body was killed?
We were talking about Sandy…she’d just gotten there…it was right before Amanda Pate
came in.”

“Yeah, I remember. What about
Amanda, by the way? Is she there?”

Mason smiled in a way Virgil did
not expect. “She sure is. In fact, we’re on something of a journey together.”

“What does that mean?”

“Answer my question, Virgil. What
did I say to you that day?”

“I said I remember, Dad.”

“Then tell me what I said.”

“You said, ‘that’s one you don’t
let get away, Son.’ What about it?”

“The intricacies of free will are
really something. Absolutely amazing. I wish I had the words to describe it to
you. I almost think I could spend the rest of eternity studying nothing else.”

Virgil rubbed the heels of both
hands into his eyes. “You’re losing me, Dad.”

“That might be the most accurate
thing you’ve said all night. Sandy told you she’d never leave you, but she was
wrong. You’re losing her, Son.”

Virgil stood from the chair and
pointed at him. “You’re wrong. Do you hear me, you’re wrong. She’d never leave
me.” Then, as if he had to make his point to an apparition whose existence was
questionable at best, he added, “You’re not even real.”

“Virgil? Who are you talking to?”

The sound of Sandy’s voice made
Virgil jump and he lost his footing in the wet grass and ended up flat on his
back. She walked over and ran her fingers through Virgil’s hair. She wore an
oversized sweatshirt that hung just below her waist and a pair of lime green rubberized
garden boots embellished with images of multi-colored daisies.

“Who’s wrong? And why are you yelling?”

“Will you help me up please?”
Virgil asked.

The night was warm and the sky was
clear and instead of helping him up, Sandy laid down next to him in the grass
and placed her head on his chest. They stayed there like that for a few minutes,
neither of them speaking, then she lifted her head and began to kiss him, her
tongue probing desperately inside his mouth. She swung one of her legs over his
body and sat on top of him before peeling the sweatshirt over her head.

But Virgil was having some
difficulty with the sequence of events as they unfolded around him and he
grabbed her arms and gently pushed her back. “Sandy, I don’t think I can. I
want to, but the medicine—”

Even in the dark of night he could
see the embarrassment of his rejection play across Sandy’s face. She grabbed
the sweatshirt from the ground and then, almost as an afterthought, dropped it
on his chest. She stood over him, her mouth moving as if to speak, but if she
said anything at all Virgil never heard it over the buzzing in his head. He
watched her walk back to the house, her daisy-laden garden boots leaving dew
tracks across the lawn. She looked, Virgil thought, like a little girl.

When he looked back at the willow
tree, his father was gone.

11

__________

V
irgil
and Sandy had a quiet Sunday to themselves, both taking a mental break and pretending
that Virgil did not have a drug problem and the events of the previous night
had not happened. They spoke of nothing of consequence, were together yet
separate and when they made love in the evening Virgil felt a sense of urgency
and a longing for normalcy that seemed to exist without boundaries. She fell
asleep in his arms that night and Virgil began to understand what his father
had said, the truth of his words. He
was
losing her. The woman he loved
more than anything else was drifting away, yet he felt powerless to do anything
about it. Ultimately he would have to make a decision, one that would not come
easily. He wanted to talk to Sandy about how he felt with the hope that it was
not too late, that they could put the past few months behind them and look
forward to a future free from the relentless grasp of the pills and the damage
they’d done. Those were the thoughts going through his head as he fell asleep,
but by the time he woke on Monday, Sandy had already left for work.

In truth, he felt a little
relieved.

Virgil killed the morning and most
of the afternoon taking care of household chores. He paid some bills, mowed the
lawn and generally kept himself busy, even though he knew what he was really
doing was nothing more than delaying the inevitable. It was time to go to the
office and collect his belongings, sign the necessary forms for his discharge
and participate in an exit interview, something Virgil thought was absurd. Someone
gets fired from their job and the H.R. people want to interview them? What did
that look like?
‘Tell us, Mr. Jones, would you characterize your time spent
here as a productive part of your professional life and career as a whole?
Would you recommend the State of Indiana as a viable and worthwhile employment
opportunity to someone if they were to ask you? Do you promise not to sue the
everlasting bejesus out of us for firing you after you were nearly killed in
the line of duty?’

He crushed a couple of pills,
snorted them back and made it downtown in record time.

__________

When he got to his
office
—which now belonged to Ron Miles—he walked in only to
discover that somebody had been kind enough, or, depending on one’s generosity
of thought, cruel enough to box up his belongings for him. The cardboard box sat
atop one of the two chairs that fronted his old desk. The box itself was old, had
notched out ovals for handholds and the words, ‘Produce: Handle With Care’
printed on the side. Virgil rifled through the contents to make sure everything
was there and in doing so discovered there wasn’t much in the box that he cared
about anymore. Most of it was old police procedural manuals that he’d picked up
over the years, a certificate of perfect marksmanship from a handgun
competition, a distinguished service award and a few photographs. Virgil put
everything back in the box with the photos on top. He was about to carry it out
to his truck when Ron Miles walked in. The look on his face was an odd mixture
of embarrassment and shame. He walked behind the desk and sat down, let out a
sigh and motioned Virgil into the empty chair next to his box of belongings. Virgil
remained standing.

“I’m not exactly sure what I should
say here, Jonesy.”

Virgil had always liked Ron. He was
a fine investigator, a streetwise cop with one of the best homicide closure
rates in the state and despite his age and time on the job, he was still one of
the most energetic, loyal and uncompromised law enforcement officials Virgil
have ever met. None of that could suppress the feelings he had at that moment,
though, and as irrational as it was, Virgil felt like knocking Ron’s teeth down
his throat. “Then maybe you shouldn’t say anything.”

“I was going to come down to the
bar and talk to you tonight.”

“Were you?”

“Look, I didn’t ask for this, I
didn’t want this, I didn’t know anything about this and I sure as hell didn’t
know what they were going to do to you.”

“You must be relieved as hell then,
Ron,” Virgil said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I can’t imagine the level of
stress my situation must have caused you. I hope you can find it in your heart
to forgive me.”

“Hey, that’s not fair.”

“Fair? You want
fair
? Let me
tell you something, Ron. I haven’t seen fair in so long I’m not sure I’d
recognize it if I did. Fair can kiss my ass. As a matter of fact, so can you.”

Virgil grabbed the cardboard box by
the handles and turned to leave, but his dramatic exit was not to be. The box was
weak and overloaded and when he pulled it from the chair the contents spilled
out the bottom and landed in a pile at his feet. The glass shattered on the
picture frames and the distinguished service award broke into pieces with much
the same sound as Virgil’s cane pole after Pearson cracked it in half.