Chapter 2 - Kent #3
I follow at a distance, headlights off, using the ambient street lighting to track his taillights through the residential streets.
Jenkins drives exactly as I expected—slow, overly careful, taking turns wide and stopping too long at signs.
It's a twelve-minute drive from Murphy's to his house, and he stretches it to nearly twenty with his paranoid pace.
His house sits at the end of Oakwood Street, a modest two-story colonial that was probably middle-class respectable twenty years ago but now shows the wear of deferred maintenance and financial stress.
The paint is fading, the lawn needs work, and several shutters hang slightly askew.
It's the kind of house that says its owner has given up on keeping up appearances.
Jenkins pulls into the driveway and sits in his car for a long moment, probably gathering himself for the walk to his front door. This is my window—the thirty seconds while he's distracted by the effort of appearing sober enough to function.
I'm out of my truck and moving before his car door opens fully. Jenkins is focused on not stumbling as he walks toward his house, keys already in his hand, when I make my approach. He's fumbling through his key ring, trying to identify the right one in the dim porch light, when I strike.
The motion is practiced, professional. A quick bump as I pass behind him, not hard enough to register as an attack, just clumsy enough to seem accidental. In the confusion of steadying himself, Jenkins doesn't notice that his house keys are no longer on his ring.
"Sorry," I mutter, continuing past him toward the street like I'm just another late-night pedestrian. "Didn't see you there."
Jenkins waves me off with the exaggerated politeness of the very drunk. "No problem, buddy. No problem at all."
I keep walking until I reach the corner, then circle back through the alley that runs behind his house. By the time I'm in position to observe, Jenkins has discovered his problem.
He's standing on his front porch, staring at his key ring like it's personally betrayed him. I can see him cycling through the keys again and again, his alcohol-clouded mind struggling to process what should be obvious. The house keys that were there five minutes ago are simply gone.
From my position in the shadows behind his neighbor's fence, I watch him check his pockets with increasing desperation. Jacket pockets, pants pockets, even the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. Nothing. The keys have vanished as if they never existed.
Jenkins pulls out his cell phone with shaking hands and dials a number he clearly knows by heart. Even from thirty yards away, I can hear the phone ringing through the quiet night air. Once, twice, three times before someone answers.
"Delilah? Yeah, it's me." His voice carries across the yard, thick with alcohol and rising anger. "I need you to get your ass home right now. We got a problem."
I can't hear her side of the conversation, but I can track Jenkins's escalating fury through his responses.
"Don't give me that shit about work. This is more important." A pause. "Someone took my house keys. They were right here on my ring, and now they're gone."
Another pause, longer this time.
"How the hell should I know who took them? But you're the only one with access to my stuff. Always going through my things, always thinking you're smarter than everyone else."
The accusation is completely irrational, but that's what makes it perfect. Jenkins is drunk enough to believe his own paranoid logic, angry enough to blame the most convenient target, and cruel enough to enjoy terrorizing his daughter even when she's done nothing wrong.
"I don't want to hear your fucking excuses," he continues, his voice rising. "Get home now and bring the spare key. And when you get here, we're going to have a long talk about respect and boundaries."
He ends the call and immediately dials another number. Pizza place, probably, or some other late-night delivery service that can keep him occupied while he waits for Delilah to rescue him from his own drunken incompetence.
I should walk away. The keys will give me what I need—access to Jenkins's private space, evidence of whatever darkness he's hiding. That was always the plan. Methodical surveillance, careful documentation, building a case that will justify what comes next.
But I can't leave. Because fifteen minutes from now, Delilah Jenkins is going to walk through that front door and face whatever punishment her father has been constructing in his alcohol-poisoned mind.
And it will be my fault. My theft of those keys has given Jenkins exactly the excuse he needs to unleash whatever cruelty he's been holding back.
The girl with the carefully organized books and the "Future FBI" coffee mug is going to pay for my goddamn choices.
I tell myself I'm staying for reconnaissance. To observe Jenkins's patterns, to understand the scope of his cruelty. But the truth sits heavier in my chest than the stolen keys in my pocket: I can't walk away from what I've set in motion.
For the first time in years, I'm going to have to watch someone else's violence instead of planning my own.
What’s the alternative?