KAREN
“No news,” said Steve when he stopped at my house late that night, after we closed the bars.
It was past two in the morning. Three of us, Steve, Donna, and I, sat at my kitchen table.
Alysha was asleep, and I didn’t wake her up to ask what happened after I’d come home and seen the smashed pictures of her and Victoria in the garbage can.
“Not the first time,” said Donna. “Victoria was asleep when I came home, but I’ll ask her.”
Steve drummed his fingers on the kitchen table.
“Derek Sickler wasn’t home. We sent a patrol twice.
That dead woman, Sarah Holes? Her father is a sheriff back in Ohio.
He drove in today, gave us the scoop on that Derek guy.
Back home, he went by Jimmy. The sheriff said that Jimmy and his daughter weren’t married.
Lived together for three years, though.”
“That’s the first charge—fake documentation,” I said. “Lock him up for that, then we’ll see what else he faked.”
Steve cleared his throat. “That’s the trouble, K. No one has seen that ID but you.”
I huffed in frustration. “What are you saying? That I made it up?”
“No,” he corrected me softly. “That’s not what I’m saying.
Derek is his middle name. Maybe he already changed his address to New Jersey.
Plus, it’s not against the law to use a different name outside legal establishment.
The driver’s license? Unless we see it and confirm that it’s fraudulent, we can’t do anything.
Without proof of the crime, it’s hearsay. ”
“I saw the license, Steve.”
“I’m sure you did, K. But unless we have it…” He spread his arms, showing that we have nothing.
“Goddammit,” Donna murmured. “Then send someone to his house again. Get him, bring him to the precinct, question him, get him on something. Any charge!”
Steve shook his head. “The girl’s father, the sheriff, said there was trouble in paradise. His daughter and that fella weren’t doing well. In fact, they did break up, and Jimmy left. So, there’s that.”
“There’s that what?”
“They weren’t together. We can’t force him to show up for questioning.”
I looked from him to Donna, then back to him.
“That’s his partner, ex or not, who was found dead.
Where was he that evening? He did it, Steve.
” I tapped the table with my forefinger.
“You know he did. He did something awful to her and made it look like an accident. She was looking for him, and who knows what she threatened him with. Is he paying child support? Did the sheriff say anything about that?”
Steve put his palms up. “No child support, but other than that, there’s no legal trouble with that boy, the sheriff said. He is clean, K. He has no record.”
“Not that the sheriff would know if that Derek Sickler used other driver’s licenses.”
“True. But the sheriff is no average Joe, said he’d checked all the threads thoroughly. The boy is clean.” Steve studied his hands, sucking in his cheeks—bad sign.
“But?” I encouraged him. “There’s a ‘but.’ I can feel it coming. What is it, Steve?”
“The sheriff said the boy is a bad kind.”
“I knew it. What does it mean legally?”
“Nothing legally, just speaking from experience. His daughter was crazy about the boy, had a kid with him, but he wouldn’t marry her. Things were happening around him, accidents of all kinds to anyone who crossed his path.”
“That’s it, Steve! That’s it. That’s what he was doing to me! The glass in my drink—you know it’s him.” I seethed.
“But no way to prove it, K. There’s no clear evidence we can use,” he said impatiently, tapping the side of his palm on the table. “All we have are random things that don’t prove he’s responsible.”
I banged my palms on the table, angry. “We gotta do something, Steve! No way this scum is gonna get away with everything.”
No evidence, no proof, but sometimes, there are people in your life who spin webs of lies and play nasty games, and you just know, in your gut, they are rotten to the core.
Donna took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, raising her eyes to Steve. “What would you do if your children’s lives depended on it? This is our town, Chief, and we need to do whatever we need to protect it.”
That was it. That was how we always thought of it—this is our town, we ran it, we protected it.
Steve tongued his cheek, staring at the table, the wheels in his head turning. This wasn’t and wouldn’t be the last time he took matters into his own hands. Donna and I sat in silence, waiting.
“I need some time to arrange things,” Steve said finally. “But this is what we are going to do. Tomorrow is going to work the best. It’s the last night of the fair. A lot of noise. A lot of traffic. The police department will have their hands full. Perfect for what I have in mind.”
His plan was to stake out Derek’s house late tomorrow night, wait for him to show up, then knock on the door.
When Derek opened, the three of us would barge in, Steve ahead of us, without a proper warrant but plenty of reasons to ask questions.
That is, if the police failed to locate him during the day.
“I’ll say that we need to talk,” Steve said. “You two talk, intimidate him, get him all feisty. Meanwhile, I’ll do what I need to do, find some evidence of this or that.”
I knew this or that well. Plenty of scum flew under the radar in small towns.
Too few resources to investigate or deal with them through the official channels.
We had to do whatever it took to clean up after others.
Even if it meant planting the evidence. Were we proud of things like this happening?
No. But if there was no other way to keep our kids safe, we had to get creative.
Even if it meant bypassing the law. Law and justice are not always the same. In small towns, we prefer justice.
All of us agreed to meet after two in the morning two blocks away from Derek’s house. The story would be that Donna and I had a dispute with Derek, called the chief, he came in, found drugs, and Derek would be locked up until the official investigation.
The whole next day, I was on edge, waiting, calling Donna every hour, talking about the bar business, our girls who were at the fair. The time passed slower than molasses in January despite the bar being crowded.
I should’ve known that nothing would be smooth with a guy like Derek. No way to predict how things would unfold, but I couldn’t wait to close the bar and announce last call at 1:30, to the drunken boos from the patrons.
At two, I let my workers go, locked up the bar, and drove straight to the other side of town. Donna was already waiting, standing beside her car.
“Ready for tonight?” I asked.
“You bet,” she said and pulled up her shirt, showing me a handgun tucked under her belt.
“Pray to god we won’t need it tonight,” I said.
“You never know. He has one. I brought one for protection.”
Steve pulled up beside us in his truck. “I drove past his house. No one seems to be home. So we have to wait.”
I had plenty of time to spare. The busiest weeks at the bar were behind us, and it was time to clean up the streets.
Donna and I got into Steve’s truck, and we drove to the next block and parked under a tree several houses away from Derek’s.
Not even half an hour went by before Derek’s car pulled up to his house. My hands balled into fists as we watched his shadowy figure get out of the car and walk to the house. In a moment, the lights inside came on. The curtains closed. There was no way to see what he was doing.
“Ready?” Steve asked.
My mobile rang. Alysha’s name lit up the screen. It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and she was calling. Not a good sign. She never called my mobile.
I showed the screen to Donna.
“Let me get this real quick,” I said and answered the call.
For years afterward, I wondered if things would’ve worked out differently if we’d done this the night before. Or hadn’t gathered outside Derek’s house at all. Or gone straight home.
Because when I picked up the mobile, Alysha was crying hysterically.
“M-Mom, s-something t-terrible happened,” she sobbed.
I closed my eyes, knowing deep down that we were too late.