Tall Oaks by Chris Whitaker

Author:Chris Whitaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2019-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

18

THE SUBURBAN COFFIN

Jim hated Sundays. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but he hated them. It wasn’t the religious connotations, though he was a nonbeliever—the things he had seen making it hard to believe there was any higher power than a crazy person aiming a gun at you— it was just the feel of the day. Maybe that changed if you had kids, or had someone to spend the day in bed with, someone to help you forget the fact that tomorrow was Monday and you’d have to face another week all over again.

He thought he’d be happier, after what had happened with Jess. He thought he’d feel less like every day was a Sunday, like he was biding his time waiting for something to happen. And he had thought that something was Jess. If he couldn’t find Harry then it had to be Jess. He wondered what the future held for them. He guessed that he wanted more than she did, and then felt stupid for thinking she wanted anything more than for him to bring her boy home. It was a conversation for another time, maybe even another life. He took a deep breath. He had fucked her. And he had fucked himself. Fucked himself when he drove to Despair and beat that hick half to death. He already felt the weight of what he had done clouding his mind, taking away his energy and refocusing it somewhere it didn’t need to be. He needed clarity, he needed single-mindedness. He needed to find Harry when no one else could.

The pressure was about to ratchet up again. After the accident, the circus was coming back into town. They’d focus on Max, but they’d run pieces on Harry too. Jim supposed it was a good thing, that it would get people talking about the case again, but he also knew their rabid gaze would shift to him as well. They’d see he’d gotten nowhere, made no progress. The small-town sheriff way out of his depth. They’d be right about that. What they wouldn’t know was that he had managed to fuck the mother of the missing child too. The mother who was anybody’s. And that made him as bad as all the others that had used her grief for their own selfish reasons.

It was quite the accomplishment. He should be given a Service Cross, or a Medal of Valor. Yeah, he liked that, a Medal of Valor for not finding the kid and for fucking his mother. If that wasn’t courageous—that complete disregard for ethics and for the damage he might do to the case—then he didn’t know what was.

He walked along State Street, past the mansions set so far back from the sidewalk that the owners would break a sweat reaching their own mailboxes. Then he turned into Harrison, where the houses were still impressive, just not embarrassingly so.

This was where the bankers and the lawyers lived. Lines of BMWs and Mercedes sat in front of the houses, the odd Prius too.

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