Mysterywriter's Final Spring

"So?" She seemed to know a lot about the interior workings of the local police. They seemed to be about like all the police departments.

"Well, I got a girlfriend who works for the records division. She has gotten me files before, I expect she would again."

"I have a feeling the price is going to be high for this little service?"

"Depends on what you call high. You aren't going to just write a novel based on her statement to the cops are you?"

"No, I am going to do a little checking into it, why?"

"I want to go with you." It was a simple statement. She said it like it wouldn't matter at all to me.

"It would be a total waste of your time. I am not going to have a lot of time to look into it. This is my own version of a book tour."

"I understand that, the articles I send back will be as much about that as the investigation."

"Articles? Nobody is gonna be interested in this crap."

"Oh, you don't know me Deke. I am a hell of a writer, I just need a break. If the first article is a grabber, I can sell the whole series to the group that does our printing. I have sold them things before, I know what they want."

"Okay, I will give you a bunch of honest interviews from the road. You know call you every night. How is that?"

"Yeah, you might call once but that would be about all. No I am going along."

"I expect your boss will have a lot to say about that."

"I doubt it my Dad owns this rag. That is why I am not at a bigger paper."

"Even though I am old enough to be your dad, I'm not. I expect he will not be particularly pleased with you traveling with a man."

"Are you kidding he will be thrilled. He knows I am safest with men." I am pretty dense so it took me a few minutes to figure out what she had meant. I just nodded.

"Tell you what, I am out at the county park. You think about this and if you still want to do it, bring me all the papers you can get on the Silver Rape to either the park tonight or the festival tomorrow. If you do that you can buy yourself a ticket to ride, for a while at least."

"Fair enough, are you staying in campgrounds everywhere you go?"

"I am, but you can stay in motels I expect."

"Oh no Deke, wherever thou goest, I goest to." She gave me a smile meant for a much older woman.

After the newspaper, I spent a couple of hours talking to people in the town. I didn't question them as much as let them talk. In the small town's idea of a supermarket, I met several old men sitting on benches outside. They were talking while the womenfolk shopped. I sat with them a while before I introduced myself.

"You don't look like no writer," The youngest of the old men commented.

"That's what they say every time I send my picture to a publisher."

"Don't get many strangers round here, don't never get no writers," the man continued. "You in town for that festival out at the farmer's market?"

"I sure was, got one more day then it is off to a new place. Anything going on around here worth writing about?"

"Sam over there has a couple of cut up cows I hear tell."

"Gee Whiz man has he ever had one of them mutilated by aliens?" I asked it with a straight face. They were all speechless till I laughed.

"No aliens but we got some pretty strange mexs here. They might have done it then threw the guts around, but nobody has mutilated a cow for years."

"Well, a healthy cow is just not the makings of a novel." I smiled to show it all in good humor. "You guys know anything about that campground rape?" I asked it after a couple of minutes of silence.

"Couldn't have been anybody local. We all pretty much know each other. If it had been June would have knowed him. Had to be somebody from outside." The row of old men nodded their agreement.

"You think so huh?" I asked. I was surprised that the logic in his statement had until that moment alluded me. That simple statement opened up a whole new line of thought. The cops surely came to the same conclusions as the old men.

"Tell me, I cant get the details from the cops and I don't really need the official version. Was it pretty violent, I mean did he harm her?"

"Look writer," He said it with a sneer. "Every woman is hurt in a rape, some get beat and some don't, but they all get hurt." With those words the man stood to go find his wife.

"He is right, but he didn't do well. His kid got raped at the high school couple of years back." He could see the interest in my eye. "Different guy writer, that one was a basketball coach. Some folks say she didn't resist and at the trial they brought in a couple of other students. You know it got real messy before they sent the coach away. Old Amos, he ain't never forgive those that said harsh words agin his Betty."

"I don't reckon I would either." It was the truth and I knew it. It it had been my step brat, there would have been a line of boys waiting to testify. She had outgrown it thank god, but there was a time that even I would have doubted her story.

"Okay writer, I heard that she was raped in front of her kid. The bastard made her beg for it. Told her he would kill the kid right in front of her. She went along. Didn't have a scratch on her they say. No matter what a woman is her kid shouldn't have to see his mamma do those things. They tell me she had to do it all for the prick."

I got the idea, so I didn't press it. I couldn't for the life of me think of anything to ask that wouldn't look like a stranger trying minimize the woman's ordeal. I stood then walked into the store to see what I could buy that came in cans. I had been searching for things that I wouldn't need to refrigerated, when the sheriffs deputy came into the store.

"Pardon me sir, we need to have a few words." At that moment I realized that I had become a suspect in the rape of the silver woman. When you ask questions in a small town, you are a suspect in everything.

"Do we now?" I smiled at the young cop. "How about you call your supervisor so I don't have to tell this but once."

He was on the hand held radio while I continued to look. "Sir, you need to take this a little more seriously."

"It seems you are taking it seriously enough for both of us. You wouldn't happen to know where they keep the canned chili would you?" He didn't smile and I didn't care. The one good thing about camping out was that I didn't have to buy toilet paper, but I did have to buy paper towels.

"Is that your mini van in the parking lot?" The deputy looked toward the parking lot. Of course all he could see was the stacks of styrofoam coolers which blocked the front windows.

"It is indeed? If you want you can search it, so long as you put everything back just like you found it. I felt the slight nausea then my mind took a vacation for a split second. It was not a good thing to happen in front of a cop, especially when we were talking about my van.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I didn't remember it, but I knew for a split second I had a spaced out look on my face and some real hard twitching. Those things only lasted a second. "Yeah just peachy keen. I have a stress related twitch. You are making me nervous."

"Do you need to sit down?" He seemed concerned. It could be that the twitch had gotten worse they said it would.

"No I'm fine." I leaned on the cart as I continued to collect things. Some of them I was sure I didn't need even as I put them into the cart.. I knew that I would need to reassess the contents of the cart before I checked out.

I saw the older man in the identical uniform approach. I waited while the younger man met him a few yards away to hold a whispered conference. I moved the cart on down the aisle forcing them to walk a little farther to catch up.

"Good afternoon, Mr......." He let it trail off waiting for me to finish it for him. Instead I handed him my retirement Id, and my driver's license.

"Oh a retired cop. I should have guessed. You could have told that to Steve and saved me a trip."

"No it wouldn't. He would never have given up until he called you in to show how on the ball he is. I just cut through a little of the bs."

"Well, we will never know about that will we. Alright so what were you doing running around town asking about a two year old rape?"

"Well Sarg, I am in town for the festival. I heard about it and thought there might be a story in it. That my friend is all there is to it. I am sure a man of my age does not fit the description of the rapist, since our testosterone level is way below that needed for such a crime. Your officer knew that, and if he asked the men outside they told him what I just did about the festival. There was no reason to do it all twice."

"Mind if I look in your van?"

"Not at all, if you wait till I check out, I will go stand by. If not knock yourself out, but put everything back like you found it. I have photographs of the van as it looks now. I will be shooting it again, if you leave it a mess because you don't like my attitude." I smiled at the two cops.

"Do cops where you are from do that?" The young officer asked.

"Yeah sonny, cops everywhere do that."

"How about you just leave that cart and we do it now?" the sargent asked.

"I won't be but a couple of more minutes. You guys can help if you like." They shook their head in a refusal gesture. I should have hurried but I didn't. They decided to wait outside. Actually the sargent sent the younger man back on patrol. When I walked from the building several minutes later he was waiting for me.

"Okay open the door and let me take a look." I did but only because I needed to put the groceries away. With the cargo door open I slipped one of the four identical black plastic trucks from the van. It was the one closest to the door.

"You don't have to do that." the sargent said as I opened the trunk.

"Sure I do," I began putting the groceries from the cart into the box.

"So take it easy on the small town cops and rural area sheriff's department?"

"I always do, no matter how weak or strong the investigation. By the way I expect that you won't solve this one." He looked down on my bent frame. "It is much to random. If it wasn't a local, and I am sure you would have found anybody local, then it was a drifter."

"Thanks, we all felt that way too."

"Felt, so you just gave up on it."

"You know what I mean it is no longer an active case even though we work on them all till they are solved." His look told me the truth, it wasn't on the back burner, it wasn't even on the stove.

"Any chance it was a lover's game?" I asked it pretty sure of the answer.

"If it wasn't for the kid, we would have run that at her a lot harder. They were both absolutely in shock. Had to see a counselor from Princeton." He noted my confusion. "Not the school, it is a town about ten miles away, and twice the size of this one . The woman there doesn't have enough patients so she does the country rape counseling."

"Is the victim still a patient there?"

"Last I heard she was, but that was a few months ago. Either way she has been at it over a year, hardly the act of a pretender."

"True," I said in agreement.

"You done searching?" I asked it as I reached for the cargo door.

"I was done in the store, just had to go through the motions for the kid."

"Aint they just wonderful?"

"Well we was all kids like that once."

"Not me I was born a full growed cop." I laughed along with him.

At the park I signed in for a space, then rearranged the back of the van. I removed the tent first then all the items that made it work. In my case I hated the idea of a ripped floor so I put down a blue tarp, then an old quilt from goodwill. Only after I had the padded floor did I erect the tent. The eight by ten cabin tent went up easily. I had replaced the plastic tent stakes which wouldn't penetrate Carolina clay with the foot long gutter spikes. Even with the improved tie downs a strong wind would topple the cloth house.

I removed the first of the plastic trunks. Each of the four had a symbol painted on top. The one with the star held table cloths and the other items to make the booth. It also held the products for sell at the shows. It went directly into the tent. Whether I chose to sleep in the tent or not, I wanted that box stored in it. Since I had to move it to get to the other things anyway I made absolutely sure I didn't forget and leave it out in the weather. It wouldn't do any of the paper products any good at all.

The two very lightweight tables went in next. They had what surely was almost cardboard tops getting them rained on would be just as disastrous. Then I opened the aluminum web chair where I sat while I smoked smelly cigars and drank bourbon. To do that kind of thing unhindered was probably the real reason I had embarked on the festival circuit in the first place.

I didn't really expect the newspaper girl/woman to show up so I left the rest of the boxes and bed rolls in the van. Since I hadn't decided where to sleep that night, I unpacked only the bare essentials. I pulled the box containing the cooking equipment to the rear. I hadn't used most of it in years. Even during the first show, I hadn't bothered to unpack it.

From that box, I removed the red tabletop grill. I put it on the picnic table by the tent. From the same box I removed a fifty foot extension cord. It got attached to the power supply. Even though I wasn't in a fancy camper, I had packed some electrical appliances in the box. One was a toaster oven with a couple of diminutive pans, also a ceramic furnace that put out a lot of heat on a chilly night. Cooking tools and a bag of plastic cutlery were to be found inside one of the many large zip lock plastic bags. Since I couldn't make up my mind what to cook, I took the whole box to the picnic table. My cardiologist would have had a fit, but it had been my habit for several years to ignore him when it suited me. I especially discarded his advice, not to lift anything heaver than my penis.

I was just a little winded from all the work, so I sat in the chair to take a short break. I would have enjoyed a drink about then, but I still needed to go for ice. I knew that once I started drinking I wouldn't want to go out again. I had promised myself that I would only smoke the cigars when I drank, so I just looked out at the lake. The Lake side space would surely be hard to get in a few more weeks. However, in the early spring the county run campground was more or less empty.

It was well after dark when I decided to hell with the ice. I drank the bourbon only slightly cooler than bodily fluids. The bourbon burned its way into my gut and my soul. While the first swallow still burned in my throat, I lit the small smelly cigar. The cigars were homemade for me by a somewhat less than law abiding citizen.

His tobacco was not grown as part of any subsidy program, and the filler was only about sixty percent tobacco. The remainder of the filler was a very low grade marijuana also grown by the man. He had a very select clientele all of whom were on the government's approved list of medicinal users. What was it gonna do lead us to stronger drugs, hell most of us had prescription drugs that dwarfed pot. In my case used to have, I gave up all the drugs when I left on the festival trip. That is a lie I thought, I still take my aspirin and the blue pill for pain.

I could imagine my doctor cringing at the thought of me dumping all those other drugs, with all those years of research, down the toilet. I had staggered across the house to give them a watery grave in the toilet bowl. I could just have easily tossed them down the sink where I stood while making the decision..

I hadn't felt any worse since doing it. I am one of the amazing few people who feel very little pain. At least that is how the doc explains my lack of pain from the heart damage. It was that damage which retired me from the cops. According to him I am a total basket case and should have died the week after the heart attack. The last time I saw him and he looked at my cardiogram then said, "You have to be living on spider webs."

For some reason, known only to God, I seemed to have grown lots of tiny veins to compensate for all the blockages. My heart clicks along pretty much as always and I feel no pain, so I am lucky in that way I guess. Why didn't I have the bypass you ask? I chose the quick death at forty-five to leave that beautiful corpse people talk about at the viewing. The problem was that the body didn't get the message.

Then the bad got awful. I woke up one morning with double vision. When I stood up I bounced off the wall beside my bed. The Ex, who wasn't an ex at that time, tried to call me an ambulance. She seemed to think I had been blessed with a stroke. The sawbones's warning rang in my ear, heart attacks and strokes go hand in hand.

I let her drive me to the emergency room where we were met by the quack. He quickly turned us over to a neurologist, who just as quickly hooked me up to an ex ray machine. When he shot dye into my arm, I saw the oh my God look on his face. If I had my pistol, I would have shot myself and missed my present the trip altogether.

Somebody hit me with more drugs in the IV and I went to sleep. My soon to be Ex-wife was teary eyed, and even the step brat was absent her usual smirk when I awoke. I figured that alone meant I was about to die. I simply chose to go back to sleep.

It was a strange, and slightly attractive woman who awoke me. She did it by running something pointed but not shape over my feet. "If that is some kind of kinky foreplay, count me out." I said it deadpan.

She was taken aback for only a half second. "Gee, I had so hoped to get laid by a total stranger, before I went home to my family." She smiled first so I joined in.

She was wearing a lab coat. I wasn't real sure but suspected that she was some kind of doctor. She looked to old to be a resident and the long lab coat was a kind of symbol. Short coats were technicians, no coats were nurses, but long coats were doctors. At least that was my opinion at the time

"So can you tell me the news that has me flat on my ass, and shot up worse than any street junkie."

"Shot up hell, you just needed the nap." She grinned to make sure I knew it was a joke. I smiled but didn't let her off the hook by breaking the eye contact.

"How long have you had the double vision?" she asked to ease into it I expect.

"I didn't know I had it till today."

"Come on, don't do this I am trying to help you."

"I had a flare up with it a few years ago. Before the heart attack I think, but then it went away."

"You don't ever have trouble with your vision?" She looked incredulous.

"Sure sometimes I have to move my head to get a better angle on things. But they always settle down."

"And your hearing? You wife tells me you don't hear very well."

"I hear just fine when I want to."

"Is your hearing better on one side than the other?"

"I don't think so," I replied.

After that exchange she ran a few simple test by holding up fingers and making snapping sounds. When she finished, I knew that I had double vision when looking down, and much worse hearing in my right ear.

Alright Dr. Aimes, so what does it mean." I wasn't clairvoyant I had read her name tag. She hadn't bothered to introduce herself.

"So Deacon, your wife tells me you like it up front and straight, is that right?"

"With most things yeah, I can sneak up on some things, but this I think I want all at once."

"You are an idiot," She smiled to show she didn't think it was such an awful thing.

"Well that is pretty up front, but what idiotic thing have I done now."

You have a brain tumor that has probably been with you since birth. Over the years it has gotten bigger of course and you have had multiply symptoms which you ignored. So now it has invaded not one, but two parts of the brain. Do you want the fine print?"