WELCOME TO TRINITY’S LAND END . . . Chapter 5: Founder’s Day p.2

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CHAPTER 5: FOUNDER’S DAY (P.2)

(READ Ch5, P.1 here)

Later that evening Detective Litani arrived at the Community Pavilion just as Mama Loas and her group were about to leave. He found the group tearing down the streamers, and packing away the remainder of the the pamphlets detailing the role Indians and blacks played in settling the territories along the Massachusetts Bay, until the next Founder’s Day. He picked up one leaflet that had blown to the ground. It was about the grave site of the first child born to the early colonists in Trinity’s Land End. The author of the leaflet claimed that the first birth was that of a mulatto child named Elsie. Elsie’s parents were purported to be a white blacksmith named Alden and a run-away slave named Mariah.

The centenarian caught him reading the flyer and welcomed him inside. He was met almost immediately with a plate of barbecue ribs and cold slaw. He wondered where he’d put it after his stint at Charlene’s Smack‘N Mack.

Mama Loas thought of herself as the critical voice of the town’s history. In addition to being the only living ex-slave in Trinity’s Land End, she was also the solitary official griot, or African storyteller, in all of New England who often held oral history lessons at her home. At present her family was the only black family in town. There had been others but the years had found them uprooting and moving closer to the city.

“Most people scared of me, how come you ain’t?”

“You don’t seem that scary to me. I’m from Baltimore and I’ve seen my share of really scary people Mama Loas and next to them you look like Snow White.”

“You don’t believe I got the power? The hoodoo? Like Tituba, the black witch of Salem?”

“No, now I’m not questioning your spiritualism or nothing like that but to be honest I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. I’m a man of logic.”

“You think logic alone gonna solve your case for you? I got news for you mister, there’s more in heaven and earth than we mortals dream of. I got that from Shakespeare,” she said, breaking into laughter, marveling at her own wit.

For a woman reported to be long over one hundred years old Mama Loas’ display of verve and rambunctiousness often took her opponents and admirers alike by surprise.

A curvaceous brown skinned woman wearing a Christian Lacroix dress and a pair of three inch heels interrupted and presented Mama Loas with a cup of water and two pills.

“This here’s my grand daughter Rita Mason. She helps me with the spoken word I give here at the Community Pavilion. Child likes to dress up in fine things nobody else in the family can afford but believe it or not, she’s also one of them head doctors.”

“The term is psychologist grandmama. I’m not a medical doctor. Please to meet you.”

He acknowledged the woman before turning his attention back to Mama Loas.

“Now what do you remember about Patty Lowell?”

Mama Loas swallowed her pills and took a long sip of water. She leaned back with one elbow on the picnic table. That’s when he saw the deep scar on her forearm. It went from the base of her arm all the way to her wrist.

“Pat Lowell’s mama was a Gypsy woman you know – part of them carnival shows that come to town. She used to sell potions and such and claim they had magic. I told her one day she won’t no conjure woman and them potions were fake. Still, the woman had to make a livin’. We all gotta make a livin’. Now I don’t grudge nobody that.”

“Mama Loas you seem to know a lot about people in this town, probably some things they wished you didn’t know as well. As I said before I’m not a superstitious person but I do believe in intuition and I’ve got this strange feeling that you know more than you’re telling me.”

“What you talkin’ ’bout? Pat Lowell didn’t have no special connection to me. Nobody knew who her father was or how he got her Gypsy mother to lay down with him. Word came down from the carnival the woman was pregnant. Baby came into the world premature, almost died too. Then one day came and something bad happened. I don’t know what but the rest of the Gypsies got that woman outta town quick. The best thing it was too ‘cause some white folks started harassin’ her pretty bad. Rebecca Jamison’s mama swept the child up and took her to the orphanage.”

“And that’s it? That’s the extent of your knowledge?”

“Ain’t that enough? Maybe if you find the white daddy who father’d her you’d be closer to the truth than I can get you.”

She held her arm out for him to get a better look at the scar.

“This thing here. I got it from a fire some years ago. Lloyd McNally’s fireman’s son Skip rescued me. The McNallys used to run the fire house before Lloyd got tangled up with Childress and made all that money. Sometimes I wonder.”

“About what?”

“Whether people are born bad or they just pick it up from being around other bad eggs. ”

“Nature vs. nurture,” he concluded, “It keeps the analysts guessing, but speaking of Childress, what’s your say on the subject?”

“I don’t care to speak on it, that’s what.”

“But you’re the one who brought him up, and his association with Lloyd McNally. Don’t go soft on me now Mama Loas, it wouldn’t be right.”

“I’m just a poor old woman tryin’ to get by on her last days. People in this town don’t care what I think no way but I’m gonna keep on thinking it.”

It wasn’t exactly an answer to his question, in fact, it could be said that it was more of a general foreshadowing of a question that had yet to be asked.

A dark skinned man with a slim build in either his late twenties or early thirties interrupted, and brought Mama Loas some pills and a glass of water.

“This here’s my grand baby. He’s down from Boston. Smart as a whip, got himself into a fine law school, tell him baby.”

“Granny’s right. However, the only thing she forgot is all the loan payments that are going to haunt me until my death after I get out of that fine law school.”

Detective Litani extended his hand, “I’m Detective Ray Litani and you are?”

“Please to meet you. I’m Byron Tyson.”

“Hello Mr. Tyson, I was just talking to Mama Loas about Patty Lowell. She was murdered a couple of days ago. Did you know her?”

The young man hesitated, looked over at Mama Loas, and then back at Detective Litani in a manner that seemed to indicate the nature of the question he was being asked carried with it an uncomfortable complexity.

“I used to spend summers here when I was a teenager. Pat was a couple of years older than me,” he said.

When the two men shook hands it was pure serendipity. He felt it, and the way Mama Loas’s smile slowly disappeared the longer he held on to her grandson’s hand meant that on some level she knew it too. Byron Tyson had referred to Patty Lowell as “Pat”, a more mature reference that perhaps belied a more mature connection between the two at one time.

If Tina Sycamore was to be believed concerning a missing diary and its contents, he figured he’d just found the mysterious B.T. of the item’s claim to fame.

Detective Litani found Rebecca Jamison waiting on his doorstep when he returned home that night. He was more than glad to see her. Their rather impromptu meeting at Charlene’s Smack n’ Mack had remained with him throughout the day.

Katarina had once told him that marriage had nothing to do with whether two people were supposed to be together or not. She believed that humans craved intimate relations devoid of formal institutions. He wondered if Rebecca Jamison had ever entertained the thought of marriage. In all her years as a provider of care to parentless children could she quite possibly long for the day to come around when someone was there to take care of her as well?

Rebecca smiled and threw her arms around him. Against the small of his back he could feel the mysterious box she held poking at him. They retreated to the kitchen. He offered to make her a sandwich but she assured him she wasn’t hungry or thirsty.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but since the diner, I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.”

“What did I do to deserve that?

“Well, for starters, you’re the one person who actually gives a damn about what happened to Patty and I want to do everything in my power to help you catch her killer. That’s why I brought this gift to you.”

It was a medium-sized red, custom-made ornamental box with fancy

lace embroidery. The beautiful cloth exterior had suffered somewhat from wear and tear through the years, but it still bore a remarkable testament to its original worth. A tear crept down the side of her face and she turned away in embarrassment. He guided her face back in his direction and kissed her gently on the lips from across the kitchen table. She sniffled and cleared her throat.

“I wanted to give it to her the day she reappeared in town but she wouldn’t give me the time of day. I was devastated. Why didn’t she want to confide in me, like when we were growing up? That’s what I kept asking myself?

She paused, waiting for him to jump in but he didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t hate her for it though. I could never hate her. We shared so much together. Out of all the other kids my mother raised here at the orphanage, she was like the sister I never never had.”

“I think Patty may have had demons even you wouldn’t have understood.”

It was his most astute offering.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. One thing I have to ask though, who’s paying for this private autopsy you’ve arranged? I mean, as a member of Patty’s extended family I am in favor of it but you never asked me anything about fees. These things don’t pay for themselves. I’ve saved up some money just for the expense.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it, it’s all covered.”

“But how, where’s the money coming from?”

“It’s coming from the County, a judgment was issued and everything. Special circumstances.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. They sent me down here to work on special cases. So, I figure the bosses can foot the bill for my special case’s special independent autopsy,” he joked.

“’Big city policeman lands job in small town. Big city policeman stumbles on to murder mystery.’” “Yep,” she said, “I can see the headlines now.”

She gave him the box.

“Inside you’ll find some of Patty’s trinkets and stuff. It might help you to get to know her better. I used to see her putting things inside. I’ve never even opened it believe it or not. It was all that was left behind when she ran away, and I kept it all those years.”

He moved the ornamental box aside, and got up from the table. He pulled Rebecca up into his arms. She felt good, and he had every intention to keep her there.

“Are you going to finally tell me what Childress said to you at the diner?”

“Ray, I realize I shouldn’t have gotten so angry with him and exploded like that but sometimes–” she stopped, “Anyway, look, I don’t want to discuss that now, okay?”

He couldn’t stop now.

“Listen Rebecca, was Patty ever involved in an intimate relationship with Childress?”

She looked at him with fire in her eyes, “ Teenage girls don’t have intimate relationships with men more than twice their age. They have mistakes with these men. Mistakes in which they are taken advantage of.”

She moved away from him but he pulled her back. And then he grabbed her hand, and kissed it gently. He couldn’t give a name to what was happening between them. The only thing he knew is that he wanted it to happen, and he wished like hell that she did too.

“You looked lovely in that white dress today. Like a goddess.”

“Really?” she asked. “Which Goddess?”

“Take your pick,” he said.

She was silent for a moment. He could tell that she was a little apprehensive about the possibility of events that might follow.

“I heard about poor Victor Salley. Drowned,” she said emphatically and shook her head. “We’re not used to this kind of back to back mayhem in this town.”

“It hasn’t been officially ruled as a drowning. An autopsy is scheduled.”

“Wait? An autopsy? Wasn’t he Jewish?”

“It’s a long story but I”m in the process of arrangements between the medical examiner’s office and Victor’s sister, Mrs. Peabody. A rabbi’s involved, and that’s really all I can say about it. I’m more concerned about his missing wife, Gretchen. A woman stays with a husband who is a drunk her whole life and all of a sudden leaves now, after her problem has been taken care of, so to speak.”

“You find it suspicious? You think maybe she’s the one who took care of the problem?”

“I don’t know,really. Nobody knows anything. It’s been said that small towns like these carry huge burdens.”

He couldn’t tell her about Victor Salley’s last phone call to him and the startling message about “the Hawaiian” that had eventually led him to Infinity City. He definitely couldn’t tell her about the peculiar and ambiguous “killer for hire” establishment masquerading as a Denny’s Restaurant. He absolutely could not tell anyone, not even the Sheriff about these bizarre connections, until he’d figured out what it all meant in relation to Patty Lowell’s murder.

“Small towns? You mean in the way of secrets and lies?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I do mean. Trinity’s Land End spent years and years cultivating its image as a typical American small town with a wholesome appeal. Yet, I have this gut feeling there’s a layer of rot just inching its way towards the surface, and every time someone tries to cover it up, the stench, it just magnifies.”

It was a symbolic speech and partially pompous but he had never been one to shy away from controversy. Yet, In this case, his intended audience seemed a million miles away.

“So, what do you think?”

“Ray, it might surprise you to know but I love this town. The Lizzie Frenches of the world aside, I still love this town. My folks loved it enough to make their home here. That stench you talk about. It scares me. It scares me for so many reasons I can’t even begin to explain,” she said.

This time she was able to break away from his grip. With her back to him, she held her head down. She had no intention of crying, she just needed a moment to herself.

Detective Litani tried not to view the moment as an impasse. He liked Rebecca Jamison, a lot. From the moment he’d met her he knew that he’d felt a spark. Still, deep down he found himself questioning his motives. Did his interest in her have to do with the fact that he was by himself amidst uncomfortable surroundings? Would it be morally wrong for him to pursue a woman who adored the town he secretly despised?

“Did your parents like it here?”

She was putting him on the spot, and she knew it.

“My mother, until the day she died, could never get this place out of her system. That’s what brought me back here in the first place. She’s buried in the cemetery up on Oak Ridge road.”

Rebecca then turned around to face him squarely, jaw to jaw.

“It’s what brought you here but not what’s keeping you.”

“Are you asking me, or telling me”, he said

He didn’t want to say anything else. He simply wanted to feel something. He placed his hands around Rebecca’s waist, and laid a passionate kiss on her that had all the signs of wanting more.

She seemed startled.

“What’s wrong? Am I moving too fast?”

“It’s just that, well, it’s been a long time, Ray. Two years to be exact, since I’ve been, you know, intimate with a man.”

“Oh, I see. Well, if it makes you feel any better, nothing’s changed. It’s still done the same way you remember it, even after two long years.”

Just then something happened. He didn’t know how it happened so quickly but before he’d realized it, apparently the formal request had already been issued.

“What did you say?” she asked.

He didn’t actually remember saying anything.

“I’m sorry, what?”
“Well, Mr. Detective Raymond Litani, it sounded like you asked me to stay the night.”

A big golf ball like that hanging out there could either break or make a man. He was hoping like crazy for the latter. He swallowed, and gazed into her eyes. What if she told him to go to hell?

“Hell yes, I was thinking it but I don’t quite remember saying it,” he replied, “ I feel like an idiot but I can’t deny that I want it very much. For you to stay that is.”

Without saying a word she kissed, but just when he was about to unbutton her blouse she pulled away, again.

“What’s the matter, now?”

”I can’t. I have to get back to the kids. I left Mandy in charge and she has some strange ideas about being an authority figure.”

“No, what’s really the matter?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed her again, and kissed her hard. The next thing she knew she was being lifted in his arms, and escorted to the bedroom.

He put her down gently on the bed and got on top of her. Her body was warm and soft, and she smelled good. It was a triple threat.

“They’re trying to take my land and the orphanage.”

“They?”

“The zealots who run this town. Those sanctimonious clowns want to get rid of the kids and me. They’re trying to force the mortgage company to foreclose on the property. Mr. McNally was a business partner of Childress. We named the orphanage after him when he sold the land to my mother but Childress has always wanted that land back in his possession. They’re spreading vicious lies at the town meetings about the orphanage being a haven for child criminals.”

He opened her blouse and ran his tongue along her cleavage. She cooed underneath him.

“That tickles,” she said. “Do you think I should try and get a hold of Lloyd McNally? I need somebody in my corner. Maybe he could plead with Childress to stop the smear campaign?”

“I bet Lizzie French is involved,” he said, and bit her gently on the neck.

“Ooh Ray, that feels so good. So good . . .”

He unzipped her blue jeans and guided them, and her panties off her body. When he bent down to kiss her between her legs she shivered.

“Yes, right there,” she whispered.

He enjoyed this part. It was his specialty. He had known some men, some liars who pretended it was something they had no use for or that somehow it wasted time as a precursor to the penultimate act. He knew this to be bullshit and usually just an excuse for a sloppy lover to get his way. Besides, how could you ask to receive if you refused to give?

“That’s really good,” she said, and pushed his face in deeper.

“You like?” he flirted, briefly coming up for air.

She responded by wrapping her legs firmly around his head and writhing with pleasure. His tongue continued to lash out exploring all of her woman-ness.

“You do have, er . . ., some protection, right?” she asked rather shyly.

“Of course,” he said, “You’re in good hands.”

Later on he took her hand and placed it on the growing bulge in his pants. No doubt about it, his cock was ready.

“Ray, if I lose the orphanage I don’t know what I’ll do. It would be an insult to my mother’s memory.”

“Not going to happen, just relax.”

“But if I do–”

Later, when they were completely naked, he pushed her legs as far back against the bed board as they would go, and bent down to plant her face with kisses.

“I could look into it, find out the details.”

“You’d do that for me?”

He began to lavish her nipples with praise. They soon came to immediate attention under the heat of his hungry mouth. He sucked long and hard on each one while she tried to maintain the spread-eagled, bent upwards position that tested her flexibility to the maximum. Oh what interesting lives gymnasts must have in the sexual department, she thought. At least they’re better prepared, with excellent bodies conditioned for distorting in ways civilians can only dream of.

He saw that she was having some trouble and relaxed the pressure on her legs just enough to make her breath a sigh of relief.

“Too much?” he asked.

“For Nadia Comăneci, no. For me, however . . .”

He smiled. He admired wit in a woman. He reached down below to caress her clitoris. This little joy button, often imbued with a mystique beyond male or female comprehension, began to swell and retract under his constant stimulation.

Rebecca closed her eyes and imagined they were on a beach, like the one in From Here to Eternity, nestled in each other’s arms, blissfully atop one another. She, his Deborah Kerr and he, her Burt Lancaster. Of course the scene unfolding now was the more explicit version of the novel and not the censored film, with all insinuations and frankness in tact.

When he entered her she opened her eyes to see the look on his face. It was his expression that interested her. For a moment he dropped his head to her chest, and she cuddled him as he pushed ferociously into her.

His breathing came in short gasps of delight and escalated as he penetrated her deeper, stretching her tight caverns further, opening her up with each measured down stroke.

Two years without so much as a kiss, and now Rebecca Jamison was receiving, quite possibly the screwing that broke the camel’s back. What would he think of her when she told him about her and Childress? Would he call her the same awful name Patty had when she’d found out? She didn’t want to think about that now. For the first time in a long time she felt worthy of receiving another man’s touch.

He continued to fondle her clitoris while his rhythmic thrusts grew faster. She felt herself coming into orgasm, and reached below to join the patrol of his more than competent fingers.

When she came it was like the weight of the world being lifted from her shoulders, allowing her to feel pure satisfaction, if only for a brief moment in time.

His hot lips lay gently on her hers before parting halfway as if to consume the energy she’d just released from within. She thrust her tongue down his throat but he captured it in his teeth and held it there, meticulously slowing down her motions. When he was ready his tongue playfully slurped away at the sides of her mouth, and then pushed softly inside. This one single action drove her wild, and made her wetter than she’d even been before they’d made love. But it wasn’t over yet, thankfully, he’d held off reaching his plateau and had concentrated on bringing her on.

Just then he withdrew himself from her and knelt backwards. She watched with undivided attention as he stroked himself. She waited with anticipation of the next venture.

He placed her right leg down and sandwiched himself in the middle. He then anchored her left leg against his chest, grabbed her ankle, and arched himself into position. This time when he entered her she felt his penis against her cervix, and let out a scream.

“Ray, it was me and Childress”, she confessed, “I was seventeen when it happened,” she murmured, and flung her head to the side.

Outside Tina Sycamore watched with a burgeoning animosity as the lights went out in the Litani bedroom, and then quickly rode off on her ten-speed.

As the town of Trinity’s Land End settled in to relieve itself of the day’s exhaustion, it did so with a sense of pride and accomplishment of having extended the life of one of its most cherished rituals: Founder’s Day. With the last of the fireworks display having just wrapped over at the Junction, most of the crowds had, by now, slowly dissipated. There were those who had plans for private after hour celebrations, and then there were those who simply wanted to power down and fade away nestled comfortably in their beds. In any event, the Town’s Square, among other venues, soon returned to its original pre-festivities tabula rasa slate.

Barring any major celebrations like the one just passed, most nights in Trinity’s Land End were met with a loud yawn and an even fiercer sigh. In reality, the town had failed to live up to its would-be notion of a boomtown that had been fostered by some long ago. Still, no one could have foretold the events that were about to come; events that had been originally developed in the basement of a bank teller’s home, just five days ago in New York City.

It happened around 3:00 am, and as one of the old timer’s from the swap meet was fond of saying, “Nothing good ever happens at 3:00 a.m.” A helicopter landed in the fields near old man Naylor’s grounds – surprisingly near the yellow-taped off area where Patty Lowell’s body had been discovered at the beginning of the week. Immediately afterwards, four armed men dressed in all-black ninja styled attire, with backpacks, catapulted out and nodded an “affirmative action” to the pilot left behind.

Soon after, a military style Humvee approached like clockwork, barreling through the cornfields en route to its landed party . One of the men, a much bulkier character steered two of his team members towards the approaching vehicle, while the other remained closest to the helicopter.

The commando team was then ushered stealth-like, through the barren town streets until they reached the medical examiner’s building. Using a set of pick tools the group successfully broke through the fifteen year old lock with ease. Once inside, with little chaos among the squad, two of the men made their way to the morgue on the bottom floor, and went about quickly extracting the body of Patty Lowell and Victor Salley, while the other two remained in the hallway on lookout.

Not a word was spoken by either of the morgue “rescue team”, as the bodies were lifted from the cooler trays of the morgue’s, and hauled into the lobby where they were fitted for two burlap sacks. Retreating back into the morgue, they quickly grabbed a couple of containers in the refrigerators that were filled with specimen samples. Amongst them, was Patty Lowell’s severed finger in an iodine solution, and a test tube of liquid blue-green algae excrement deposits.

Overall, it seemed that everything was on schedule, and that the mission would be accomplished with little to no effort. That was until one of Dr. Westminster’s attendants, Roddy Sandpipe, having just ejaculated all over Luanne Reeve’s breasts, following their shared secret fuck for the umpteenth time in the janitor’s closet, descended the stairs and was given the shock of his twenty-three year old life.

When the two armed men on lookout noticed the lanky, freckle-faced, red-haired former track star staring back at them immobilized, they knew they’d won half the battle already.

“Shit, oh shit,” said Roddy. He could feel his nerves weakening “Look, I don’t know what’s happening here, but – look, I promise not to get in your way,” alright?”

He held up his hands in surrender; his mind’s thoughts reflecting on Luanne back in the janitor’s closet, post-fellatio. He hoped liked hell she wouldn’t find his disappearance in search of beer too long a wait, and venture out to find him. Being married to a man who constantly used her as a punching bag was bad enough, but walking into the middle of an armed robbery was surely the last thing on earth anyone ever imagined experiencing.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” said Roddy softly. Don’t let them find Luanne, said the voice in his head.

The other two armed men exited the morgue stuffing the refrigerated samples in a small cooler container retrieved from one of the backpacks. They took one look at Roddy under armed detention by their colleagues, and began to laugh uproariously under their ninja masks. Thus, abandoning their previous code of silence.

Make them be quiet, reiterated the voice in Roddy Sandpipes’s head. Don’t let them discover Luanne!

No doubt bout it, Roddy Sandpipe was scared to death of the mere thought that at any moment, he could be wallowing in his own blood, and that something worse could be waiting for Luanne if either of these men were to get their hands on her.

As the laughter subsided, one of the men approached him. Before he knew it, the hard barrel of the assault weapon had caught him across the face and side of the head. The mere magnitude of the force sent Roddy’s very nubile and athletic body hurling to the floor. One thing for sure, he could be no help now as a buffer between his mistress upstairs, and the assailants should they decided to pursue a full sweep of the place.

Sure enough, one of them motioned for the other to go upstairs and check things out. As Roddy slid in and out of consciousness from the attack, he could feel the motion of the remaining three men parading around him in steel toe combat boots. Ninjas with combat boots, he thought. He wanted so much to laugh but the shards of pain ripping through his head and neck, and the left side of his body where the weapon had lain into him, were incongruent with anything light-hearted.

Upstairs Luanne Reeves went about the task of using some of the industrial cleaning agents used by the janitor to mask the smell of death in the morgue, to cleanse the semen stains from her bare chest. She harbored no concern about the idea of these skin irritants coming into contact with her body. Quite frankly, she needed something strong to wash away any trace of her tryst with Roddy by the time she got home. Her husband had been prone to smelling her in the past, and the last thing she needed was to get on his bad side. It was quite the task to de-spunk herself, especially since Roddy Sandpipe’s deposits had been growing thicker and in more abundance, with each episode. She hadn’t let him fuck her tonight because she hadn’t the time to spare.

She’d left that so-called man of hers passed out in a drunken stupor, face down on the couch. He’d been throwing whiskey shots back all day at the Founder’s Day celebration, and by the time he had arrived home, he could barely stand up straight or tie his boot laces. She’d crushed about seven or ten sleeping pills into a thin powder,cut it with Nyquil capsules, and had mixed the resulting paste in the bottle of Jack Daniels he always kept under the kitchen sink, for special occasions. It had occurred to her many times that one day she might accidentally kill the bastard this way, instead of on purpose like she should. But, he always woke up from each random dosing meaner than ever.

The janitor’s closet might have been the least likely spot to convene for a romantic get-away, but it was just right for a late night booty call.

The six foot tall man armed with an AK-47 assault rifle peered through the locked room door’s half-window into Dr. Westminster’s office. Luanne had just finished putting her blouse on and had pushed the janitor’s door open to enter the hallway. That’s when she saw him. He’d moved on to the toxicology lab to canvas the area further. Rattling the doorknobs at each post, he pressed his face against the window pane, trying to get the best look into the room from the outside. Not completely satisfied, he took out a small black square case that resembled the “works” a heroin addict might use. By this time Luanne had recoiled in dread at the sighting of the mysterious ninja-clad criminal, and pulled the janitor’s door shut as silently as she could. However, on second thought, she figured it might be helpful to observe him as best as she could for identification purposes later. So, with great fear but a need to know, she cracked the janitor’s door slightly ajar to witness the armed man use some kind of mechanical pick to open up the toxicology lab.

“Oh my God, Roddy,” she whispered under her breath. Was he dead? Had he been killed by this man? Or could there be more? Unfortunately, she couldn’t hear any traces of movement downstairs.

Her heart skipped several beats. She pulled the door in tight this time and turned the door latch to secure the lock. The janitor’s closet was the only room in the building that didn’t have a see-through half-shell window pane.

The armed man continued to move steadily down the hallway until he’d reached the janitor’s closet door. Inside, Luanne had taken up a crouching position in the back corner of the room.

The rattle of the doorknob nearly sent her leaping forward into hysteria but she was able to remain calm.

Her mind began to wander. “This kind of thing is not supposed to happen in this kind of town. Trinity’s Land End isn’t some crime-ridden big city where masked gunmen broke into medical labs dressed in ninja costumes, leaving a trail of bodies and tears behind. This isn’t Boston, for Christ sakes, or New York City, or anyone of those kinds of places.”

To say that her life flashed before her is both a cliché and a reality, that captured the terrifying moment perfectly. She hoped Roddy wasn’t the next corpse to fill the morgue he tended. What would people say?

All she knew was it was not her time to die. She firmly believed this. She’d taken some of the worst beatings in her life at the hands of her brutish caveman of a husband and had managed to survive them all. She refused to give either of the bastards – crazy spouse or nutjob with an assault weapon – the satisfaction of parading over her cold, dead body in glee.

On that note, she grabbed a container of liquid in a spray bottle on the bottom shelf nearby and turned out the lights. The smell was immediately identifiable as ammonia. As weapons go, she would have to wager her bottle of this cleaning agent against the tall man on the other side of the door carrying a really big gun, should it come to that.

She sprung up in fighting position, waiting for the inevitable moment in which the armed ninja picked the lock to the janitor’s closet, and let himself inside. Suddenly, she heard a whistle from down the hall, just as her would-be attacker slipped the tools of his trade into the door lock and began the prying process.

And then the motion of the lock picking stopped, and the closet door opened slightly. She could see the black gloves on the handle. The whistle came again, this time much louder. And this time its beckoning got the attention of the tall man, and he released the door just as Luanne was about to pounce forward with ammonia spray bottle a-blazing.

After waiting a good twenty minutes or so, she sprinted from the janitor’s closet down the stairs to find her lover spread haplessly across the floor.

“Damn!”, she screamed. And when that wasn’t enough, let out a choral secession of extra expletives to release the anger and devastation growing inside her.

As she bent down to cradle Roddy Sandpipe’s head in her arms, a slight murmur pursed his lips, and his arms flailed upwards towards her.

“Roddy, baby, you alright?” she asked, not wanting to concentrate on the pool of blood emanating from a wound at the back of his head.

“F-F-F-,” he sputtered.

“I’ll go get help, honey, Just hold on. Hold on baby.”

“Phone,” he said clearly. “ . . . back pocket.”

On his orders she pulled out the little silver flip phone in his back pants pocket.

I’ll tell them all what happened. “Listen,” I’ll say, “it was at least two of them, and the one I saw was dressed in a ninja suit like some cartoon character.” That’s what I’ll say, me, Luanne Reeves, said the alternate voice of her subconscious self.

“Send somebody, quick! A man’s been hurt! At the ME building, 666 Congressional Ave in Trinity’s Land End. Please, HURRY!”

She held Roddy’s hand in hers as she waited for the 911 operator to provide further instructions.

“What, huh?” she asked, “My name?”

Tell them! The voice in her under-mind kept nudging away at her. Tell them, you coward! Forget that meatball husband of yours, and tell them what you know for the sake of the man you love.

“My name?” she repeated the question, stalling for time, “Uhm, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not say”, she faltered, “Just come quick before he dies!”

She hung up the phone and kissed Roddy gently on the lips. For the first time in her life, Luanne Reeves felt truly ashamed.

. . .THIS CONCLUDES CHAPTER 5, P. 2  OF WELCOME TO TRINITY’S LAND END: TOWN OF MURDER & DECEIT. STAY TUNED FOR MORE CHAPTERS COMING YOUR WAY . . .

Welcome to Trinity’s Land End:Town of Murder & Deceit by
La-Tonia Denise Willis is licensed under a
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