6. Colton
SIX
COLTON
PRESENT.
The floor creaks as I cross the wood-paneled office. The floor, walls, desk, chair– everything is oak, old and worn. The entire space reeks of age: moth balls and dust. Centering the back of the room is a large desk, the top of it covered in manila folders and stacks of paper. I’m surprised to see a modern-looking laptop open in the center of the chaos, and make my way toward it immediately.
Sliding into the old desk chair, I drag my fingertip along the laptop trackpad and wait for the screen to wake. When it does, I’m prompted to enter a password. Chewing the inside of my mouth, I wonder how I can get into this laptop without a password. My fingers dust the keys, numbers and names a ticker tape in my mind as I work out what it would be.
Kinleigh’s birthday?
Quickly, I key in a six-digit combo followed by an eight-digit combo, but both fail.
I should’ve known that Forrest wouldn’t guard his evils with his daughter’s birthday. She was never important enough to him, not the way a girl should be to her daddy. Rolling my lip through my teeth I try another combination of numbers, all of them failing. My eyes drift to the copious stacks of invoices and bills, vision settling on a new and unpaid medical bill.
With my fingers on the numbers, I quickly key in Forrest’s listed DOB on the paperwork, but still, it doesn’t work. My throat constricts and my armpits grow sweaty. I don’t know how many attempts I have. I don’t know if I’ll be locked out.
I do not have a choice.
I look around the office. A few old western movie posters he bought at a flea market are framed. A pair of red boots, steel-toed, polished and shiny, sitting on display in the corner. A few hats stacked on a shelf. A bottle of whiskey, a quarter gone. Some cigars open, haphazardly situated in the box. The space makes my skin crawl. I can’t get a feel for the password. I look at the boots again. Luccheses. Horrendously, offensively expensive. My hands sweat inside the thick, suede lining of my gloves, but I hold them steady as I type in the expensive brand’s name, wondering what happened to Forrest Conway to turn him into such a monster.
The box disappears and my breath catches–I’ve either entered the right password or–
PASSWORD HINT: Dyin’ ain’t much of a
My nostrils flare. Why do I know that? Why does that sound familiar? Dyin’ ain’t much of a…
“Holy shit,” I murmur, recalling the line from the famous western movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales .
Every cowboy around Buffalo Trails loved it, because they loved thinking of themselves as rough and tumble bad boys like Clint Eastwood. Though none were of the sort.
I bring my fingers to the keyboard and type “living” and hit enter.
The computer opens up, exposing all its secrets to me as icons and folders appear across the entire screen. Holy shit.
I guess I assumed I’d do it, but now that I have, my veins are full of fire, my body brimming with energy. Now I want to take . Take this information, take all of this and take this motherfucker out.
Quickly, I retrieve the USB from my pocket and slip it into the port on the side, copying everything I can as quickly as I can. Urgency coils in my gut like a snake waiting to strike, and as much as I know I need to get out of here, that my time is limited, I can’t help but move the mouse cursor over a file titled SPEC SHEETS.
The screen floods with thumbnails, all of the documents saved with number identifiers. File 665880-2, File 665880-3, File 665881-0, and on and on. I double click on one, waiting for it to open, and when it does, my stomach plummets and my heart stops.
The file contains the image of a woman, her hair chestnut color and messy, maybe long but it’s hard to tell as the photo cuts off an inch below her chin. Her eyes are rimmed with red, bags pooling beneath, the tip of her nose pink. She doesn’t smile like she wants her photo taken, and the more I stare into her vast dark eyes, I realize this photo could be a mugshot.
But it isn’t. Because Forrest Conway has no business owning prison inmate intake forms or medical histories. My gaze wanders over the document, where the woman’s name, social security number, birth date, age and weight, ethnicity, and health background are plainly included. At the very bottom there are two boxes, and just one is checked.
VIRGIN is left unchecked.
CHILD BEARING is checked.
Beneath those two boxes bearing so much incredible weight? A dollar amount along with the word SOLD.
$8,400 SOLD.
I click out of the woman’s file, my mind reeling. Opening another file—this one titled File 665885-3—and when the information loads, heated acid surges up my throat, scorching my tongue.
The image of a young girl stares back at me, shiny black hair and wide brown eyes.
She’s got to be… I look at the block of information next to her, this young girl’s life now whittled down to a singular, information-packed paragraph. She’s just six . Six years old.
Forrest Conway isn’t a bad man.
Forrest Conway is a goddamn monster.
A cold, cruel, heartless trafficker, tearing families apart and ruining human beings. My body flashes hot as cool sweat trickles down my spine, my fight-or-flight response fully engaged as awareness prickles through me. I close the file in an effort to stay focused, and as I’m getting to my feet, about to close the laptop, one more thing on the screen catches my eye.
A folder titled BECKETT.
Like the other folders on the computer, this one isn’t password protected, and I click into it with ease. A moment later, I have the first document open and like the files in the SPEC SHEETS folder, these documents are almost as alarming.
The first one is a transfer statement, but Forrest Conway’s name is clearly at the top as the primary account holder, so why this is a Beckett document, I’m not sure. There are numbers, and every creak or noise to sound off around me ignites a sense of urgency in me, making my heart race. My eyes fly, desperate to take in and understand the information so I can return to Carsyn and Nash with more than a USB stick.
Then I see it.
My father’s name. On a deed transfer. For the land. For the house. For everything.
In a split second, the things my sister told me last night come rushing back. The terrible, awful things she uttered as the fire crackled ominously nearby, tossing warmth at my already heated back. She told me so many things that tore me apart.
Dad often had black eyes.
He developed a healthy drinking problem.
His gambling was- Carsyn learned after the fact- out of hand. Out of control. Entirely.
Conway was his… bookie? I scroll through, document after document, liens on property, various car titles and bank loans… none of them in my father’s name. The awful pain of it is that everything is paid up and paid off. But they’re all belonging to a name redacted on these digital files, but from the size of it, it’s not us. That much is clear. There is no Beckett under that long, dark strip of ink. Another name resides there, both lucky and cursed.
Conway was definitely his source of funds for his gambling. It’s likely how all of these things were stripped from him–in debt. And now my father’s dead, and if there’s a truth I’m not privy to, finding it now will be hard.
I attempt a swallow, but my throat is drier than ever, and it’s strange but, for a second, I get a little woozy.
Then the world loses color.