Power in the Blood (32 page)

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” I said, “but I’m feeling felinely and trying not to get killed.”

She thought for a minute, “So, what are you so curious about?”

“Very good. I didn’t think you were going to get that.”

“Scary, isn’t it? So, how can I help with your feline pursuits?”

“You can tell me where you put the videos that were on top of my TV.”

“The Disney tapes?” she asked immediately.

“Yes.”

“I took them to watch. I’ve heard how good
Aladdin
and
The Lion King
are. I wanted to watch them. You don’t mind, do you?”

I laughed. “Those are the tapes from Maddox’s private collection.”

“What? He hid them in Disney cases? That’s sacrilege! You don’t think there could be children on them do you?”

“I hadn’t considered that, but considering what he hid them in, it is a possibility. I need to watch them.”

“I’ll bring them over this afternoon. I want to watch them too. Does that make me a pervert?” she asked sincerely.

“No, a voyeur or very curious.”

“Either one of those sins?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But like most things, they can be. It all has to do with the circumstances and what’s going on in your heart.”

“So what you’re saying is that as long as I don’t lust after Russ Maddox’s fat, hairy ass, I’m probably safe.”

“In which case, you’re very safe,” I said.

“Very,” she said and then hung up the phone.

When Anna arrived, she found me asleep on the couch. When I opened my eyes, she was standing over me saying, “Ricky. Ricky. Wake up.”

“Ricky?” I asked. “Who’s Ricky?”

“Ricky Raccoon,” she said and started laughing.

“Cute,” I said. “Very cute. Did you bring the tapes?”

“You mean the wonderful world of Maddox’s Magic Kingdom?”

“The very same.”

I put the tapes in a stack on top of the television, which was an old, thirteen-inch number on an old-fashioned TV stand with a VCR on the uneven shelf below it.

The first tape was the one I had already seen. It showed Maddox and Johnson together again. We didn’t watch very much of it—I had seen it, and Anna wanted to see as little as possible of it. I couldn’t blame her. We watched roughly two minutes of it. They were the last two minutes though, and when I ejected the tape, I noticed that there was at least three quarters of the tape unused.

I put the tape back in and began to fast forward it. The snow on the screen looked no different in the fast forward mode than it did in the normal play mode, with the exception of the lines at the top and bottom of the screen that looked like wrinkles. After about five minutes or so, I ejected the tape, concluding that there was nothing else on it.

The second tape was of Maddox alone. When the first image flickered on the screen, it was of Maddox’s bare chest. It was roughly the color of cotton and covered with white hair, which added to that comparison. He was obviously leaning over the camera to it on. He then backed up, bent down, and looked right into the lens. His fat, out-of-focus face filled the screen. I could see the reflection of the red recording light flashing on his left cheek. He turned and headed toward the bed, and the light could then be seen flashing on his other left cheek.

Waiting on the bed for him were a remote control and a jar of Vaseline. He pointed the remote in the direction of the camera, and the TV began to play. The sounds of sex began to fill the speakers. They sounded as if they were coming from his TV, and because the video camera was so close to the TV the sound was distorted, but it was still unmistakable. It sounded like the tape we had just watched. Russ was watching himself with Johnson.

He removed the lid from the Vaseline jar, scooped out a heaping amount, and began to masturbate. He thrust hard up and down and moaned with pleasure. It was a sick, contrived moan, like he needed to hear himself make it. It made me feel sick.

I suddenly became very uncomfortable. I looked over at Anna. She seemed fine, but if we were watching a tape of her funeral, she would probably look the same way.

“Are you uncomfortable?” she asked.

“Slightly,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. This just seems so personal, even more personal than watching two people have sex.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Do I what?”

“Do you, you know . . .” she said and nodded toward the TV.

“We are not having this conversation,” I said. I then added with a smile, “It really is the safest form of sex, you know.”

“Just one question,” she said.

“What?”

“Do you ever think about me when you do it?”

I choked and stuttered as I tried to speak, which was admission enough for her. She smiled.

I smiled.

“I think that’s enough of that one,” I said and stopped the tape. I pushed the fast forward button. This time it fast forwarded the tape without previewing what was on the screen. I pushed play again. There was nothing, just snow.

“You know, you are a very attractive guy; single, smart, sensitive, and to top it all off, you are very spiritual. I know you find me attractive, and we are alone in your trailer. Why don’t you seize the opportunity?”

“Besides the fact that you’re married and I look like Ricky Raccoon?”

“Yeah, besides that,” she said.

“I would never . . .”

“That’s precisely my point. You’re different from Maddox. In fact, you’re different from any man I know. I would never do this with any other man. I would never talk this way with any other man, but you, I can trust.”

“Don’t trust me too much. It might get you in trouble.”

“I’m not saying you don’t have a healthy libido. It’s just that you are to be trusted.”

“Don’t believe that,” I said.

“I do. I’m not saying you don’t have your struggles like everyone else, but I can tell things about people, especially men. I know you. I trust you.”

“Do you trust Merrill like that?”

“I trust Merrill, but for different reasons.”

We turned our attention back to the tapes. The third tape was Maddox and Johnson again. It was shot in black and white, which, because of the contrast between the two men, took on an artistic look.

The last tape, or what I thought was the last tape, was the kicker. It was Maddox in the starring role again, but this time his co-star was Anthony Thomas. Thomas was not as willing a participant as Johnson and seemed to be drugged.

When we finished watching the tapes, I felt like I needed a shower. The world looked like an ugly, dirty place, and I didn’t like seeing it that way.

“What do you think?” Anna asked when I had stopped the last tape.

“I think what you think, that everybody on these tapes is now dead. I thought there were five cases?”

“There were, but one of them had a smaller tape. Audio-tape, I guess.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in my purse. Let me get it,” she said.

“Anna,” I said chastisingly, “it could be very important.”

“I know. I brought it with me. I just forgot to get it out of my purse. But it might just be music or at best just sounds. How is that going to help?”

“I need to hear it to know.”

She retrieved the tape and brought it over to me. It was not an audiotape, but an eight millimeter videotape.

“Anna, this is a videotape.”

“But, it’s so small.”

“It’s eight millimeter.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it’s from a different camera than the one in Maddox’s bedroom. It’s not standard VHS, like these other tapes. It means that it was shot by somebody else.”

“Let’s watch it and see,” she said.

“You girls are so untechnical. We can’t watch it. I don’t have an eight-millimeter VCR.”

“Well, who does?”

“Susan still has ours.”

“Great, let’s drive up to Atlanta and see if she’ll loan it to us.”

Just then the phone rang, and I knew it was bad news again. I was almost to the point of not answering my phone anymore.

It was Dad.

Molly Thomas was dead.

Under shade of massive live oak trees dispersed among the bald cypresses that lined the banks, a small hill—the highest point in Pottersville—sloped down into the muddy waters of the Apalachicola River. The crooked cypresses, both in and out of the water, were silhouettes against the neon orange and pink of the setting sun. The natural slope down to where the swirling water patted the red clay of the bank was most often used as a boat launch. It was in this picturesque spot, where I had learned to water-ski and later had been baptized, that the car of Molly Thomas was being pulled from the devouring mouth of the powerful watery snake.

Apparently, Molly Thomas’s car had raced down the hill at high speed and crashed into the river below. When I arrived, two deputy sheriffs’ cars, one city police car, one highway patrol car, one game warden’s Bronco, an ambulance, and a tow truck, and Dad’s Explorer, which had the windows rolled down because Wallace was inside of it, were all parked at odd angles around the scene.

The yellow crime-scene tape, stretched between two cypress trees near the water, rippled in the small breeze coming off of the water, making a small and lonely whipping sound.

Molly’s car could just be seen breaking the surface of the water. A cable attached to her back bumper was spinning around the winch of the tow truck pulling the two vehicles ever closer to one another. At certain points along the way, the steady hum of the winch was interrupted by the grinding of metal on metal as the river begrudgingly released the car.

“Is this the girl you were dickin’?” my charming brother asked when I walked up to where he, Dad, and two other officers stood. Jake and the two officers laughed. I was amazed we were from the same family. I suspected we were not. There had to have been some sort of terrible mix-up at the hospital. Jake felt the same way.

“Does it look like suicide?” I asked Dad, ignoring Jake completely.

“Yes, Son, it does. There are no signs that she tried to brake or that another vehicle was involved.”

“You were such a bad lay that she offed herself,” Jake said to even more laughter than the first time. He now had them primed. “She left a note addressed to ‘Dear Pencil Dick.’ We saved it for you.”

More laughter.

“Is it okay to walk down there?” I asked Dad.

“Sure, Son. Go ahead,” Dad said in a voice that told me he was sorry for what Jake was doing, but that he wasn’t able to stop him.

As I walked away, I heard Jake say something about having sex with a raccoon. There was more laughter, but this time it was forced, like men wanting something to be funnier than it was. As I walked down to the river’s edge, I felt awkward and self-conscious.

I knelt down on one knee by the river and quietly began to cry. I was crying for Molly, a good woman who had loved her husband. I was crying for Anthony, who went to prison on a marijuana possession and came out a crack addict prostitute in a body bag. I also cried for me. I was a total stranger in a place I once called home. I had never fit in like Jake—my neck had never been that red—but now I was totally alienated.

The isolation was painful.

When I finished crying, I got up and walked over to where the car now sat on dry land. Molly’s wet auburn hair was matted, and it hung forward with the rest of her slumping body that only the seat belt held vertical. The officers and ME had opened her door maybe ten minutes ago. Water was still draining onto the ground. The hair covered her face, and for that I was glad.

There was a strong odor coming from the car, but it wasn’t Molly, not yet anyway. It was the mix of the river water, including the things that are in it, and the interior of the car. I smelled fish and mildew.

I walked around to the back of the car and studied the bumper. It was bent slightly, but there was no way to know when it had happened. There were a few dents and some white paint from another vehicle on the back right quarter panel. The paint could have been on the car for six months or six hours; there was absolutely no way to know. But I knew. This was the work of Matt Skipper. Molly had lost the love of her life. Having nothing else to lose, with the exception of her own life, she was very dangerous to Skipper. He no longer had power over her, because he no longer had total power over her husband.

I walked back up the hill, picturing in my mind how the deed was done. This time I didn’t stop where the officers stood, but continued to where I thought Skipper would have tried to stop. I found tire marks on the road, not acceleration marks, but the skid marks of Molly’s car as she tried to stop. I pictured Skipper hitting her one last time knocking her unconscious, sending her car down the hill and into the river. A second tire track was visible on the edge of the road in the dirt.

The tire track could just be seen beneath the highway patrol car that was parked on top of it, whose front tires had already ridden over it. It came as no surprise to me that the highway patrolman was one of Skipper’s biggest hunting buddies. I didn’t see any point in mentioning what I had discovered . . .

Or in any longer seeking justice in the manner I had been.

The Quarters, the name given to the black section of town by a certain segment of the white population, was roughly two hundred acres on the south side of Pottersville, only part of which was inside the city limits. A single row of small, red-brick duplexes provided by the government for low-income housing was the only part of black Pottersville actually located within Pottersville.

The low-income housing, known as the black projects, was a mirror image of the government housing on the east side of town, known as the white projects. The only difference in the two projects was color. Thus, it was more of a negative than a mirror—the negative of a hateful and ugly picture of humanity.

I drove past the row of identical duplexes and found myself again surprised by how widely the yards varied. In front of most of the dwellings, the yards were barren, a mixture of dirt, weeds, and trash. Others, however, had neatly trimmed lawns and a shrub or two. Most of the houses did not have vehicles in front of them. Of those that did, many were tireless heaps up on blocks and covered with plastic tarps. Two of the units had late-model Cadillacs that gleamed even under the late evening sun.