Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
ARLOW
The weather has suddenly remembered it’s supposed to be cold this time of year and seems to be trying to make up for it. Even with the heat on, my truck doesn’t get warm until I’ve pulled onto my road. Calli’s pie container sits beside me on the seat. Earl has been waiting for her to get back to return it to her. I’m happy to have an excuse to stop at her place.
Her doorway is a bright rectangle in the darkness when I turn into our driveway. I expect to see her coming in or out, maybe bringing in firewood. When she doesn’t appear by the time I’ve parked alongside her car, my concern spikes. Something is wrong.
The pie container is forgotten on the seat as I hurry to her door. The living room is a disaster. Her couch is flipped, the cushions missing. The coffee table lays on its side, cracked down the middle. Papers, her vinyl albums, books, everything is scattered from hell to breakfast.
“Calli!” I shout, running inside. All the air returns to my lungs when I see her standing in her bedroom, a suitcase open on her dresser.
Her eyes are wide, pupils eating up her irises. “You scared the fuck out of me!”
“What happened? Are you okay?” Stupid question considering the tremble in her hands.
“I don’t know. I just got home and…” She gestures around her bedroom at the destruction. Her mattress hangs off the bed, slashed in multiple places, all her drawers have been pulled out and dumped. “I can’t stay here. I shouldn’t have come back.” Her movements are frantic as she goes back to slamming clothes into a suitcase.
“Hey.” Dodging the mess on the floor, I rush over to her. Her chest rises and falls with quick breaths, but she pauses when I take hold of her shoulders. “Wait. Slow down.”
“I can’t! Look around! This isn’t just a burglary. Someone broke the lock on my door to come in and tear everything up! Why? What the hell is going on? Why can’t I be safe anywhere ?”
The raging despair in her voice shreds my heart, and I pull her into my arms. She holds onto me so tightly, burying her face in my chest. “I was happy here,” she mumbles.
“You don’t need to go anywhere. You’re safe with me.” Pulling her back, I look into watery eyes. “Do you hear me? We’re going to figure this out.”
Doubt lives in her face, but she wraps her arms around me again. “Can you just hold me a second? I’m trying not to have a panic attack.”
I’m going to kill Handleman with my bare fucking hands for doing this to her. She’s right, this isn’t a burglary, it’s personal. With our shared driveway, it wouldn’t be hard for him to think the cabin was mine too. I assumed it was part of the property when I first looked at it.
“I’ve got you.” Her body trembles against mine while I hold her, rubbing her back. “I’ll never let anything happen to you, Calliope. You’re safe.” Deep deliberate breaths slowly turn into more even ones, and she steps back, more composed.
“You should go check your place. Your barn. Your art.”
“I will, but that’s not my concern right now.”
“I’m alright. I’m going to pack some stuff, find a hotel for a few days until I figure out what I want to do.”
If she leaves, I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Whatever I’ve cost Handleman in the past, he isn’t taking her from me. “Have you called the police yet?”
“Because they’re so much help,” she scoffs.
“I know, but this isn’t just a broken window or stolen ATV, Peach. They can at least look for fingerprints or something. I’ll call them if you want.” I understand her reticence considering how that cop dismissed her last time, and she isn’t even aware that he tried to shift the blame to her when he was talking to me. But if this is Handleman, finding his prints would be enough to violate his parole and get him locked back up if they can catch him.
Her gaze sweeps around the room as she considers it. “Okay. Let’s go check your place first. I’m coming with you.” No arguments here. I’m not letting her out of my sight. She pauses on her porch to look at the glider. “At least they didn’t damage that.”
“Let’s move it to my porch for now,” I suggest, and she agrees. We load it into my truck, then park in front of my house with the headlights on to illuminate the porch and barn.
This time, I’m better prepared. Calli shivers as I pull my gun from the glovebox, and I realize she isn’t wearing a jacket. Removing my hoodie, I stop her once we’re out of the truck so I can pull it over her head. She looks like she might burst into tears as she stares up at me. My mind is a churning nightmare of thoughts right now so I can only imagine the range of emotions she’s going through. I just want to get this over with and get her to a place where she can feel safe again. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, let’s go.” We start at my house, which is still locked up. Nothing inside has been touched. The barn is also secured without any signs that anyone tampered with the locks or disturbed anything.
After I call the police, we unload the glider then drive back down to her place to wait for them. She’s silent as we sit in my truck. My hoodie is comically large on her. She has her hands hidden in the sleeves, her knees pulled up and her arms tucked around them.
“I’m sorry this is happening.” She nods when I squeeze her arm.
“I’m not going to tell Silver anything right now. I can get the lock replaced. Her mom is in the hospital after a bad fall. She has enough to deal with.” That explains why she’s planning to go to a hotel instead of staying with her friend.
“Calli.” She tilts her head to look at me. “Stay with me. At least until we get our internet service back and our cameras working. You’ve been in hotels for weeks.”
Her tongue peeks out from between her lips as she considers it. The flashing lights of two squad cars light up her cabin and race across the dark forest, interrupting us.
I’m glad to see it’s a different set of officers, a man and a woman. Both listen and take the time to look around her cabin, inside and out. They dust some areas that the intruder would have likely touched for prints.
After Calli tells them this is the third incident on our properties, they ask if we have any enemies, anyone we think might be targeting us. Calli shakes her head, but I’m torn on my response. I have zero evidence that this is Handleman. Only the suspicion because he was recently released from prison. I destroyed this man’s life. The last thing I want to do is sic cops on him and do more damage if it isn’t him. Then who would be terrorizing who? Let them run the prints first.
One of the officers informs us, “We recently discovered a meth lab set up in the woods about two miles down the road. They had a tent back there and the homeowner had no idea. It’s cleaned up, but we haven’t located the perpetrators. You never know what they’ll do when they’re strung out. They trash things, take stuff with no value. It may have been the same people. We’ll have patrol keep a closer eye on your road.” She hands Calli a business card. “If you think of anything else or have any further trouble, call us back.”
Once they leave, Calli leads the way back into her cabin, takes another look at the mess and rubs her forehead with a weary sigh. When she starts to clean things up, I catch her wrist. “You’re exhausted. Come and get some rest and I’ll help you clean up tomorrow. We’ll get the lock fixed and everything, okay? You’ll be able to think clearer and decide what to do.”
Her hesitation is brief. “Alright, yeah. Let me grab a few things for tonight.”
We secure her front door as best as possible from the inside and leave through the back. “Locking the barn door after the horse is gone,” she mumbles.
“You don’t want to lose anything else. Most of your records and things are okay. Although, it does look like a horse stomped through there.”
She glances up at me, snorting out a laugh. “A horse would’ve been preferable.”
“I don’t know. Horse shit isn’t exactly an air freshener.”
I’m glad to see her faint smile as we climb back into my truck and head to my house. “I need to use your shower first thing. After the gym and visiting the hospital, I’m not exactly smelling like a scented candle myself.”
She heads upstairs with her bag to get cleaned up while I put the beef stew I made yesterday on the stove to reheat for dinner. While I’m waiting for it to cook, I consider what needs to be done.
I didn’t tell the cops it may be Handleman, but if they get nothing on the prints, my next move is finding him. Staking out his mother’s house was fruitless. He isn’t there. Internet and social media searches turned up nothing. I suppose being a felon on parole isn’t something you post about.
While I’m considering what to do next, Calli bursts into the kitchen with an obvious answer. Her eyes are filled with joy—not something I expected to see in them tonight—as she announces, “I got an email from the private investigator about my dad!”
“Did he locate him?”
“Not yet, not exactly, but we know for sure the name he was using so it won’t be long. It’s just a matter of finding the hotel or short term rental he’s arranged under the alias. He was using his brother’s name. One of the night clerks at the hotel was kind enough to go back through footage of when he checked in and the investigator sent me a screenshot. It’s from two years ago, but it’s him!”
She holds up her phone to show me a black and white picture of a much older version of the man in the photo that sits on her mantel. I’m sure it doesn’t totally alleviate her fear about him. Since the picture is old, it doesn’t prove he’s still alive now, but it’s good to see the hope glowing on her face as she continues.
“He didn’t disappear off the face of the planet. He started using another name because the hotels banned him. He doesn’t have my phone number. He usually calls me, but this time, I’m going to find him.”
“That’s fantastic. I’m so happy you got some good news.” The timing was great too. It seems an obvious solution to finding Handleman—hiring a private investigator. A way to find him that isn’t sending cops to his door to accuse him if he’s innocent, but will determine where he is and if he’s our problem.
“I definitely needed it,” she agrees, peeking over my shoulder. “What are you cooking? It smells amazing in here.”
“Beef stew, and there’s bread in the oven.”
Her eyebrows raise. “You baked?”
“If this is baking.” She laughs when I hold up the tube the refrigerated dough came in.
We have dinner at the kitchen table, and she talks about her dad a little when I ask about him.
“He isn’t a terrible person like you’re probably thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
“I’d understand if you did. Most addicts have screwed over everyone in their lives. I’ve seen how they steal, rob people, or turn violent. He was never like that. At least when I was young and around him enough to know.
“Don’t get me wrong, he’s hardly a role model. He’d spend his last dollar on a pill, but he worked to fund his habit. Other than the child support that the court took from his check, he didn’t do anything to take care of us growing up, but we spent every weekend with him until I was thirteen or so. Even when the drugs really had ahold of him, he was…kind. Compassionate toward other people.
“I never could understand why he wanted to live that way, especially as he got older. This constant cycle of staying high until the money ran out, suffering through withdrawal, then right back at it when he got paid again. Even once he retired, his monthly check would go to whatever hotel had the cheapest rate, and drugs. At some point I had to accept there was nothing I could do. The man is in his late fifties and still…” She rolls her hand.
“Is it heroin?” I ask softly, passing her another slice of bread.
“No, mostly it’s speed and pills. He did some crazy stuff with us when we were kids. We were too young to realize how dangerous or illegal some of it was at the time, especially since he must’ve been high out of his mind. The time he took us out in the middle of the night to spray paint our names all over town is still one of my best memories though,” she says with a laugh.
She’s lived such a different life than me. Harsher in a lot of ways. “You were a little vandalizing graffiti artist?” I tease. “How old were you?”
“Just that once.” A fond smile grows on her face. “I was seven. My brother was eight. I’m surprised Dad didn’t get arrested or anything because it was the stupidest crime ever. But I was popular on the school bus when I got to point out my name on a bridge and the dam.” She glances up at me. “He did regular dad stuff with us too. Taught us to play baseball, took us to the children’s museum and the zoo. That’s the stuff I like to remember. He drowned himself in drugs, but he still wanted us, enjoyed spending time with us, you know?”
I reach across the table to squeeze her hand. “Of course he did. He loves you. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled when you find him again.”
The conversation switches to lighter topics until we move to the living room after dinner. Comfortable silence settles between us as we sit on opposite sides of the couch. Both of us are largely ignoring the movie and staring at our phones. I’ve found a couple of possible options for private investigators in the area when I glance over to see her looking at hotels in nearby towns.
“You don’t need to leave. Stay here. Give the cops time to run the prints. Once the internet is back, we can put cameras up, install burglar alarms, whatever we have to do.”
“I appreciate the offer. I really do, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please, Calli, let me help. This could be my fault and?—”
Her eyes snap from her phone to look at me. “Your fault? Why? Do you know who’s doing this?”
“I don’t know . I have an idea.” Her scrutinizing gaze is long and silent, making me shift in my seat as I struggle to find the words to explain.
“You hesitated before you told the cop you had no enemies. I thought maybe I was imagining it,” she mutters, more to herself than to me. It’s followed by a firm demand. “Tell me, Arlow. Who is it? Do you have a jealous ex-girlfriend or something?” Nothing prepares me for the next question right on the heels of the last. “Is this because of Melody?”
My stomach is on the floor along with my jaw. “How do you know…what do you know about Melody?”
Guilt flickers on her face. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you before, but I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I overheard you on the phone to her once. Just for a few seconds. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop or anything. It was an accident. Is it her? Do you think she’s targeting me because of you?”
Christ, what did she overhear? My face burns with the likelihood it was a sobbing apology, especially if I was drinking. “No, it’s not her, but her brother is a possibility.”
“Why would her brother have anything against me?”
“He wouldn’t. It isn’t about you.”
“I beg to fucking differ considering the state of my cabin, Arlow. Tell me what the hell is going on.” Anger swells in her tone.
“Your cabin looks like it could be part of my property. I think it’s collateral damage because he wants revenge against me. But I don’t know for sure. I’m going to find out. I swear that to you. I’m sorry you got caught in this.”
“Why would her brother want revenge on you? What did you do?” The pause I take trying to find the words doesn’t exactly set her at ease. “Did you cheat on her?” Her voice falls to a hush as she adds, “Hit her?”
This moment was always going to come, and I’ve dreaded the hell out of it. I don’t want her to know about my condition. She’ll see me differently, view me with pity, or as a weaker man. The way she looks at me sometimes makes me see myself through her eyes, as someone good and strong. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want her to know I’ve taken a life and destroyed two others. Now my past is screwing up her life. She deserves to know the truth.
The words stumble out. “I killed her.”