Fool's Ride (The Jenkins Cycle Book 2) (9 page)

After the news broke about the real Gerald Ross, almost nobody covered the story. What finally brought the story to national attention wasn’t the crime itself, but the sentence. The judge presiding over the case, despite objections from the prosecutor and almost anyone with a conscience, sentenced Gerald to a mere thirty days in jail for his single count of possession of child pornography, going so far as to override the jury’s much harsher, maximum sentence.

The judge explained his verdict: “Almost nothing in the state’s sentencing request was crafted with the goal of rehabilitation. It appears to have been born out of a need for retaliation in a case they couldn’t carry, and I cannot in good conscience allow the establishment of another crime, as if the one will somehow cancel out the other.”

Gerald wouldn’t get off
too
easily, the judge added. As a condition of his release, he’d be forced to seek therapy for his condition.

For the next four days, the judge’s bizarre verdict was all the media would talk about. Then something happened in the Middle East and Gerald’s story got bumped to make room for talking heads, war correspondents, and ancient cities on fire.

Some months later, the story took an unexpected twist. The judge in the case, His Honor, Mark Simmons, had been arrested for possession of child pornography. But that wasn’t the interesting part. The pictures found on his computer were of the same victims in the Gerald Ross case—the very case he had so leniently presided over.

Judge Simmons went to prison, but there was nothing anyone could do about Gerald—the laws against double jeopardy forbade another trial. After release, he quickly disappeared from the scene, and the news moved on to whichever outrage made the most sense to cover next.

Nine years later, the world may have forgotten about the case, but I hadn’t.

Standing on the other side of the jungle gym was a slightly older Gerald Ross, about fifty now, and a little heavier than his showbiz days. He was carrying a teddy bear in one hand and a pink backpack in the other. He stood there with a patient smile on his face, as if waiting for his own child to finish playing so he could take him or her home. He chatted with nearby parents, laughing and getting along—even tussling the hair of the odd kid here or there. I stood out of his direct line of sight for about thirty minutes, waiting to see if a kid burst forth from one of the colored tubes and called him Daddy, but that never happened.

In time, Gerald stopped talking to parents and tussling hairdos. He drifted back from the circle of parents and nannies, turned around, and walked away.

And because I am who I am, I followed him.

G
erald didn’t look around
at the stores, people, and colorful sale signs. He didn’t stare at other people’s big pretzels or soft-serve cones, like I did. He walked with purpose, too quickly, such that Fred’s large, aging body was having trouble keeping up. My heart sank briefly when I lost sight of him. He’d cut through a thickening in the crowd, then slipped around a corner jewelry store. When I finally turned the corner, I found to my annoyance he’d vanished.

He could have gone into one of the nearby shops, or he could have continued to where the corridor bent left about thirty feet down. If I continued on and didn’t see him, I could always double back and check the shops one by one.

Picking up the pace as best I could, I turned the bend and pushed through the glass doors leading outside.

I caught sight of him walking down the sidewalk alongside the building toward a big parking structure. He didn’t look back, and I tailed him into the garage.

Gerald took the stairs to the next level, and despite the possibility of a heart attack before my three weeks concluded, I kept after him—tiredly, doggedly, gasping for breath by the time I got even one flight up. No wonder Fred picked on scarecrows like Sally.

When I crested the third landing, Gerald had vanished again, and this time I knew I couldn’t catch him. Possibly he’d gone left around the numerous columns and parked cars. Or maybe he’d kept going up to the fourth floor. Maybe the fifth. Why not the sixth?

Wherever he went, I knew I was done.

“That’s that,” I said to myself, and stumped back down again.

Pausing at the bottom, leaning heavily against the concrete entrance, I wondered whether I had free will. It was interesting, me coming to the mall today and seeing Gerald Ross. Like I’d been guided here. And if I was guided here, and thus not under my own control, what was the point of the whole free will charade to begin with?

Back in the Great Wherever, if I’d taken the other portal to that innocent man, would I have found my way to the same mall? Perhaps that ride would have been younger with more endurance. And if I’d caught Gerald, killed him, and gotten caught in the process, an innocent man would have gone to jail.

Just when I pushed off the wall to resume walking, Gerald Ross pulled up next to me in a blue car, neither high-end nor a clunker. He slowed before turning onto the access road that led out, glanced casually at me, then faced back to the road. Then he calmly pulled away.

I couldn’t stop him, but I did note one distinguishing feature of his otherwise unremarkable car. On the back fender, positioned under the left taillight, was a bumper sticker reading:
I Love Kids
.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

Twenty seconds later, he was gone.

When I got back in the mall, I found the food court, then went to a place with no line and ordered a large soda.

“And a slice of pizza,” I added.

Being in the body of an old heavy guy had become sort of a bummer. Fred was strong, but he tired too easily from walking. And his blood sugar had begun to crash when I’d taken those stairs in the parking garage. Dangerous signs in an older guy.

Now I was shaky and weak, and when I finished my pizza I went back to the counter for another slice. The soda helped replenish the sugar that had been sucked away by too much insulin. Fred didn’t do well with sugar, and I knew I’d have to reduce my intake. Diet sodas going forward, and no more than two pastries next time. No need to go cold turkey, right? I wasn’t trying to save Fred’s life, but I didn’t want to blow my ride through reckless gluttony, either.

The rest of the day was spent watching back-to-back movies at the mall theater and reading my book on a bench just outside a Victoria’s Secret.

On the way back to the house, I picked up some groceries to go with all that ketchup and mustard Fred had. Then I took a nap. After I got up, I didn’t feel like cooking so I ordered Chinese food. For dessert, I had a technically smaller bowl of Chunky Monkey than normal—in light of Fred’s condition—then stayed up watching his surprisingly skimpy television setup. No DVD player, no cable TV, not even satellite, and no computer or Internet access.

Tired from the day and loaded with things to read, I was fine with that.

T
hat night
, just as I was thinking about heading to bed, a phone started ringing from somewhere in the house. I got up and followed the sound to the room with Harriet’s death certificate. I’d been too slow, and whoever it was gave up after eight rings.

A desk stood against the wall stacked with junk mail and boxes of Harriet’s Medicare papers. On it was an old yellow rotary telephone. I didn’t see an answering machine, and because it was a rotary, I assumed Fred didn’t have a service.

A minute later, from the kitchen, Fred’s cell began ringing.

I hurried to the kitchen, picked it up and said, “Hello?”

“Fred, where were you last night?” a man said. He sounded young, with a heavy New England accent. “Lucky for you I needed the hours, but I can’t cover you again. You wanna get fired or what?”

“I’ve been sick,” I said, then coughed for effect.

“Too sick to call Cliff and let him know?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t get you,” he said. “You come in early every day, then every month or so you don’t show up and you don’t call. Something I should know?”

“Probably,” I said.

“What?”

“There’s probably something you should know.”

He laughed. “Like what?”

“I need a favor,” I said. “What’s the mailing address of our … uh, where we work?”

“Why you wanna know the address for?”

I thought for a second and said, “I need to fill out a survey for jury duty.”

He laughed. “Oh yeah? Like they can’t get that from their computer, right? Hold on…” The phone went quiet for several seconds before he picked back up. “You know, Fred, I don’t think they care about the warehouse. They probably just want the office address.”

“Can you give me both?”

Whoever he was mumbled something that rhymed with duck. “One second…”

When he picked up again, he quickly rattled off two addresses, then told me the first one was for headquarters.

“Seriously, Fred, I gotta go home tonight,” he said. “How long you gonna be?”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Good,” he said, and hung up.

Though I was tired, I was also interested in anything Fred was up to, including his job. If I didn’t like whatever it was, I could always leave. Warehouse work sounded difficult. Fred didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d be up for moving heavy boxes, so I was curious about what he did.

It was around midnight when I pulled into an industrial park with big white buildings spanning huge blocks. I drove around slowly, wondering where the heck the front door was to wherever I was supposed to be. When I got to the end of a long road that ended in a chain link fence, I circled back.

In the middle of the street was a man standing and waving a flashlight at me. He’d come out of a tiny trailer I’d driven past. There weren’t any parking spots, just a gravely ramp up to where the trailer was. A big black pickup truck was parked next to it.

I pulled up beside it, parked, and got out.

The man was young with wiry brown hair and tough-looking facial hair trimmed to look like spikes flaring up from his jaw. He had on a security guard’s uniform and carried a big long flashlight, as much weapon as light source. He didn’t look happy to see me.

“You forgot your uniform, too?” he said, shaking his head at all the rules I was breaking.

I tried to say something but he waved me to silence.

“Never mind that,” he said. “I need to go. This happens again, I gotta say something to Cliff, okay? Nothing personal, you know I like you. But you also know I can’t leave until you get here. It’s just not fair, man.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He got in his truck, backed out, tossed me a grudging wave, and then drove off.

I stared around at all the big warehouses, holding however many millions of dollars in merchandise and equipment, then at the trailer.

“I’m actually in charge,” I said, mildly surprised at the absurd notion. It was pretty cool.

Such power…

I climbed the two metal steps and opened the door to the trailer. It was a singlewide with lots of shelves and a few tables, so it was hard to maneuver around. Ten monitors were mounted on one wall over a desk where I assumed Fred and the other guards sat to fight crime. On the desk was a thick three-ring binder opened to a half-filled page. Some sort of status log with entries for every hour and a signature beside each one. The entries were a long string of the same thing written over and over: “Nothing to report.”

A small refrigerator sat in the corner with a stack of magazines on top. After looking in the refrigerator, which was empty, I picked up a magazine:
Deer and Deer Hunters.
The other magazines were different issues of the same periodical. A subscription sticker was affixed to each one with someone’s name and address on it. Brad Ratcliff, of New Haven Connecticut. I checked the others and they were all addressed to the same person.

Using my uncanny detective skills, I noted the last entries in the ledger were by someone whose first name might have been Brad if I squinted, but whose last name was definitely Ratcliff.

“Very interesting, Mr. Ratcliff,” I said, savoring the triumph of my clever observation. It had been so long since I’d had one I’d forgotten how fun they were.

I looked up from the ledger and examined the monitors. The top row showed the insides of different warehouses, and each of the lower monitors covered various outside locations. Each of those was sectioned off into four small windows. There was a row of buttons that, when I pushed them randomly for fun, cycled one of the monitors through all the other views for a closer look.

It was late and I was tired. Fred was feeling his age, so I didn’t go back outside. I tried reading one of the magazines, but then dozed off. Some hours later, I woke up with a full bladder and a dry mouth.

Out of nowhere, a car drove through the corner view of one of the monitors. The view wasn’t great, but I caught a brief image of a smiling young woman in the passenger seat. The car passed through one monitor and then through another. Then another and another. Finally, it pulled into a dark patch way behind one of the buildings and parked.

T
he woman had seemed happy
, not a kidnap victim, which was my chief worry considering how fond the Great Whomever was of coincidence.

I figured out how to angle the camera where I wanted and also how to zoom in. Mainly I hoped to see another smile—to be sure whatever was going on was consensual. I’d seen so much bad in the world. Sometimes it was hard to whistle and look on the bright side of life. To imagine a world where people didn’t cut up other people and paint the walls with bloody satanic symbols.

The camera was zoomed-in as far as it would go, focused on the windshield, but I couldn’t see anything. Then, after a while, the car began rocking.

Which begged the question:
should I go a’knocking?

In high school, taking a date to a hotel was a mythical idea. Hotels cost way too much. Also, they’d ask for an ID, and no guy really believed he’d be allowed to get a hotel room at seventeen. The idea of sex with another human was foreign enough to begin with, never mind where it happened. When I talked about it with my friends, it was a given that any such miracles would happen in a park or somewhere called “lover’s lane,” or possibly with a prostitute way out in a swamp like in the movie
Porky’s
. Just our luck, none of us knew where any swamps were.

I’d been a virgin until I met Sandra, in college, so I’d missed out on whatever was going on in that car out there. Part of me mourned for those missing experiences—to be the good-looking kid with the cheerleader girlfriend, the fast car and the cool friends. Shy as I was back then, I never dated.

Having a car was the dream that kept me going, and with permission from Mom and Dad, it could have come true. Such a wonder would have snagged me a shallow girlfriend who only wanted me for my car—thus rounding out my high school experience perfectly and setting me on the path to a suicide-free life.

As it happened, I’d ridden the bus until the very last day of twelfth grade. And whether through laziness or some desire to turn back the clock, I left whoever was in the car alone and minded my own business.

By morning, I’d fallen so soundly asleep I didn’t notice when my relief arrived.

“Fred, wake up, man,” a voice said, laughing.

My eyes snapped open and I wondered where I was. Then I saw an old man wearing a security uniform, like Brad Ratcliff from last night.

“Hi,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“You look half dead,” the man said.

The clock on the wall showed it was seven o’clock in the morning. Brad had called me sometime after eleven last night. So, an eight-hour shift.

Glancing at the monitors, I saw the lovebirds had moved on. Probably hours ago.

“Jesus, Fred,” the guy said, disgusted. “You didn’t fill out your report.”

“It’s not that hard. Everyone just writes in ‘Nothing to report.’ Gimme a second.”

“Sleeping on the job, not doing your report? And where’s your uniform? What if Cliff sees you without your uniform?”

What indeed?

I stopped writing and gazed at him fearlessly, as if
I
were the mighty Cliff. The man held my gaze a moment, mumbled something about coffee, then turned to brew a fresh pot.

A minute later, after writing
Nothing to report
eight times in a row and feeling like a schoolboy in a teensy weensy amount of trouble, I said, “All done.”

Then I got up and left.

Sleeping in a chair all night hadn’t been very comfortable. So when I got to the house, I went back to bed and snagged two more hours. After that, I made a Jenkins-sized breakfast with the food I’d bought the day before.

As a precaution, I also checked on Sally to make sure the motor hadn’t blown out or the breaker hadn’t tripped from cooling an entire human body down to freezing. When I lifted the lid and felt around with my hand, the air in the box seemed cold enough. Also, Sally was frozen solid when I poked her with a spoon.

Day two into my Fred adventures and everything appeared to be going perfectly: working credit cards, a comfortable house with a creepy kidnapping room in the basement, and a job I could actually do. Weird as it seemed, I loved the security guard job. Having to show up and be a productive member of society was a rare experience for me. What a special joy, this strange fear I might get in trouble if I showed up late. There had never been a time in my life when I’d had to fill out a report.

Nice as all that was, there was a sicko running loose named Gerald Ross. There were sickos everywhere, but few of them had been on TV before.

Years ago, Gerald had gotten away from justice, then yesterday from me. I consoled myself with the knowledge that even if I had caught him, there wasn’t much I could have done. He was about twenty years younger and in better shape, and my casual search of Fred’s house hadn’t turned up any weapons.

But the Great Whomever doesn’t care about excuses. And when it comes to kids, I guess I don’t either.

I went back to the mall. More magazines, more books, more food court fun, and the rest of the day spent staking out children’s stores and the big jungle gym where I’d first spotted Gerald.

All for nothing. I’d either missed him or he hadn’t come to the mall that day.

When I showed up to work that night, wearing a uniform I found in Fred’s closet, there was a different guy there—young, like Brad was—and he chuckled when he saw me.

“It’s your day off, man,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Day off?”

“You don’t remember? You better hope Cliff don’t see you here. All that guy needs is an excuse to bitch.”

He pointed at a dry-erase calendar I’d overlooked. There were names in all the little boxes for this month. Fred had the eleven to seven shift, Sunday through Thursday. I saw the problem right away: today was Friday. Brad’s days paced with mine, except he worked three to eleven.

I didn’t see Cliff’s name anywhere. He sounded like a hard-ass. I wondered if he owned the warehouses or if he was just the security supervisor.

“So, Bill,” I said, inferring the man’s name from today’s spot on the calendar, “how’s Cliff doing these days?”

Bill laughed. “Don’t go asking for trouble. That guy has
issues
. He sees you here, he’ll make a big deal about it and show up more often. I don’t want to be rude or anything, but…”

He looked at the door, then back at me, and shrugged apologetically.

“Oh,” I said. “Should I go?”

I’d hoped to stick around and give it my all, be part of the solution, take a licking and keep on ticking, rise to the occasion, burn the midnight oil, push the envelope, hit the ground running—

Bill said, “It’s just he’ll wonder why you’re here, you know?”

It was nice having something to do. I liked walking around the big warehouses at night and looking at the constellations. I knew them by heart, and they were fun to find. Also, if I were being honest, staying in the house at night with Sally’s corpse creeped me out a little bit.

“What if I took your place tonight?” I said. “Tomorrow too?”

Bill eyed me warily. “What the hell you talking about?”

“You gotta get sick sometimes, don’t you?”

Nodding slowly, Bill said, “Yeah, so?”

“Well, what do you do when you get sick?”

He shrugged. “Cliff calls around and gets it covered. But I’m not sick. And I need the money.”

“Of course you need the money,” I said. “What if I worked for you and you still got paid?”

Bill’s eyes narrowed. “What, like for free?”

I nodded.

“Why the hell would anyone do that?”

For a second I wasn’t sure who he meant.

“Me or you?” I said.

“
You
—what’s this about, man?”

Sighing like I was about to admit something embarrassing, I said, “You’re a young guy, Bill. You live alone?”

Bill shook his head.

“Well I do,” I said. “And I’m going to be up all night, alone at home on a Friday night. If I have to be alone, I sort of like there being a reason for it, know what I mean?”

“So you don’t care about being paid?”

“Nope,” I said. “I’ll sign your name for you like you were here, and you can do something better than waste your best years sitting in this crummy trailer.”

I could see him thinking about it, trying to convince himself it made sense.

“What if Cliff comes by and sees you here?”

“Then I’ll tell him you’re sick and I’m covering for you.”

He smirked like he’d found me out. “So then I
don’t
get paid.”

“If that happens,” I said, “I’ll pay you myself. I don’t need the money.”

Bill laughed nervously. “So then why do you … oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry…”

I smiled sadly.

“All right,” Bill said. “But … you know … with Cliff, if you see him, you gotta tell him I’m
really
sick, okay? Not just a cold. Got it?”

I nodded. “Typhoid, yeah, totally got it.”

Bill’s eyes grew wide. “Not typhoid, man. Jesus! Just like the flu, see?”

“Swine flu,” I said. “Got it.”

Bill shook his head. Then he shrugged, picked up a small blue canvas lunch cooler off the desk, and left.

I stood in the door and followed Bill’s slow, hesitant progress to his car. When he looked back, I smiled encouragingly. Thumbs-up. He didn’t smile back, he didn’t thumbs-up back—but he did get in his car and leave.

I went out to Fred’s minivan and brought in my books, magazines, and a six-pack of diet soda for the empty refrigerator. Then I leaned back in my chair and caught up on my reading.

That night, the lovebirds stayed away, and I fell asleep around 3 a.m. Later that morning, when my relief showed up—someone named Steve—I told him Bill and I were switching spots and not to tell Cliff.

Steve shook his head like I was crazy.

“I don’t want to know about it,” he said.

For the next two days and nights, I kept a steady schedule: the mall during the day and work at night. On the second night, a different group of people showed up with entirely different intentions. For the next half hour, I watched them spray-paint an incredible graffiti mural on one of the pristine-white warehouses, visible from the main road. All kinds of colors and shadings and big cartoon bubbles for words. I couldn’t make out the letters, let alone the words, but it was pretty cool. I did recognize a question mark in there, which made me think it was something socially relevant. It was an election year, so maybe that was it. I wondered who the candidates were.

Technically, I should have done something about the vandalism, but I’d wanted to see how it came out. Now that they were done and it looked so cool, I didn’t have the heart to call the cops. Also, I hated talking to cops. They were pushy, and I never did well with pushy.

When my relief arrived, he asked me about the graffiti.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” I said.

The guy laughed and said, “Make sure you put that in
your
report. I don’t want Cliff thinking it happened on my watch.”

After adding my first reportable incident to the logbook, I decided I really had to meet this Cliff character.