These Truths

September 10th, 2016. 10:00AM

  Garthby, Indiana

  Jake had slept long, but not hard -- not without interruption. He passed out almost immediately upon falling into the hotel bed, before it had reached seven o'clock, in fact. He woke several times in the hours that followed, though, and the waking wasn't subtle. Each time it happened, his heart would be racing and he would be sweating profusely. He would smell the perspiration, feel it dripping from him and soaking the sheets he was wrapped up in. Terrified, he would shoot up in the bed. Shaking, panting and frightened of something, having no idea of what, no clue as to why he was so alarmed.

  Most of the episodes subsided quickly, once he'd scanned the room and realized there was nothing out of the ordinary. He would chalk the whole thing up to some forgotten nightmare, some terrible dream that left his mind the moment he opened his eyes, leaving no trace of a memory behind. As the night progressed, the episodes became more intense, his fear more palpable.

  Then, at two thirty in the morning, came the first of the things... the terrible, horrific things that weren't nightmares -- weren't dreams at all. His eyes opened when he heard a rustling in the room, so he resisted the urge to sit up as he had when he'd awakened before. He did nothing at first, stirring only slightly in the bed to convince himself that he was utterly and totally awake. Before he reacted to the noise, he needed to be sure that he wasn't teetering on the realm of a dream, not lingering in the ignis fatuus of some alternate reality.

  When he was positive that the sound was real, he carefully and cautiously peered to his right, in the direction of the rustling. There, as plain as day and as real as real can be, he saw a man crouched on the floor... the intruder was clothed in black from head to toe, and he was rummaging through Jake's duffel bag as though there was something inside he intended to find, something that was important and valuable, something that he was determined to have and take.

  In as fluid and sudden a motion as he could manage, Jake ripped open the drawer of the bedside table and snatched out his Beretta, sending the Giddeon Bible under which he'd hidden it flying. Moving as quickly as a bolt of lightning cracking the sky, he slammed in the clip and pulled back the slide. Releasing the safety, he trained his sights on the spot where the man had been and nearly squeezed off a round before he realized that there was no one there... nothing there... nothing at all. His bag was on the floor, right where he had left it... zipped up and intact. There was no indication that anyone had been tampering with it, no sign that it had been disturbed in any way.

  He wanted to be relieved that there was nothing, but the fact that there was nothing meant that something was wrong. Something was happening to him, something happening to his mind, and this might only be the beginning.

  He locked the safety of his gun again and returned it to the drawer, not bothering to fetch the tossed Bible or to release the clip, nor to eject the bullet that was now ready in the chamber. This incident may have been no more than a night terror, but he wasn't taking any chances. It took him a bit to get back to sleep after all of this, enough time that he had to get up and take a piss before finally settling back in and dozing off once more.

  The second episode came at about a quarter to four, and it led him to leap clear out of the bed. Having felt the mattress rock, as though someone had climbed onto it with him, he threw back the covers and laid eyes on Nikki -- the waitress from Uncle Jim's. She was stark naked, positioned at the foot of the bed on all fours, with her rear pointed towards him -- presenting to him. Her anus was mutilated and gushing like a fountain of blood. It was a deep red blood, and it poured from her like water from a faucet, racing down her leg in a grotesque crimson cascade.

  There was a constant deluge of it, heavy and profuse, and it seemed as though she would fully exsanguinate in seconds based upon the volume she was losing. A deep puddle had pooled on the sheet below her and was dripping to the floor, soiling the carpet as well. Slowly, menacingly, she swiveled her head around to face him -- showing no distress in her countenance, no fear or emotion of any sort. Her mouth hung open and loose, the teeth inside black and brown as though decayed by years of death and decomposition.

  Her eyes weren't gray anymore, they were glowing red... ablaze with torment, hatred and hunger. He could see her longing in them, could see that she was as desperate as Tantalus in the land of Tartarus, desperate for the fruit that was just beyond her grasp. Her hunger was not for any sustenance that was on offer at Uncle Jim's Pancake House, though, she was hungry for him. Hungry for that throbbing erection that she knew damned well she'd coaxed from him. Hungry to have every last inch of him jammed inside her, jammed like a finger in the dyke to stem the flow. Hungry to have him pump and thrust with all the lasciviousness of his lust, hungry to have him grab hold of both her shoulders with his firm hands and pull her into him with all the effort of his might. Hungry for him to fill her, for him to lay claim to her bloody bounty.

  "What's wrong, baby?" she asked in a demonic cackle. "Don't you want to take me? Don't you like it in the ass?"

  He gasped in horror, physically grabbed his chest to keep his heart from bursting out of it like the creature in Alien, which it felt as though it was making preparations to do. He felt faint and nauseated, a foul odor of rot and iron cycling through his sinuses and causing him to gag. Just when the horror was coming to a climax -- when it seemed his chest would finally pop, when he felt certain that he would simply go vasovagal -- as mysteriously as she had appeared, she simply vanished into nothingness.

  There was no blood, no warmth on the bed where she had been. The smell was gone, the terror was gone, the succubus was gone.

  It was extremely difficult for him to climb back into the sack, but he needed to sleep. His system needed rest, there was no way he could function effectively if he didn't get more sleep. If he couldn't function, he couldn't be of any use to Chucky -- couldn't be a thorn in the side of Ron Boudreaux.

  Shortly after he finally managed to return to the realm of Hypnos, he opened his eyes once more to see a giant, furry spider, dangling just above his face. Its legs were twitching and rolling around, clinging to a thin strand of silk that held it suspended from the ceiling above him. It wasn't there either, of course, but he would've sworn that it was completely real. It was spooky, it was disgusting -- but it was nothing compared to the other things he'd experienced this night, so he calmly blinked his eyes until the creature was gone.

  His fear of the terrors diminished with his realization that they were only delusions, that there was nothing in the dark that hadn't been conjured up in some dank chamber of his mind. Suppressing the anxiety with the knowledge that this was the case, he had an opportunity to contemplate what he was going through. It didn't take long for him to reach a sensible conclusion, either, once the fear was gone.

  The most logical explanation for the events of the evening, he decided, was that he was experiencing the side effects of alcohol withdrawal. Hallucinations brought on by detox... hallucinations that were terrifying, but had no basis in reality, no substance in the real world. He longed for pink elephants, wished for dancing munchkins or Oompa Loompas spilling out of the closet instead of the horrors he was being subjected to. Anything but what he was seeing... anything at all.

  He hadn't consumed a drop of liquor in over forty eight hours, at this point. That was a good deal longer than he had abstained from hitting the bottle in the months of the recent past. He never would've thought that things could get so bad from staying dry for just two days. Apparently, he was so dependent on it that, now, in its absence, his brain chemistry was thrown totally askew.

  Trying to tough it out, resisting the urge to race to the nearest liquor store and drop five percent or more of his remaining three hundred and fifty bucks, he laid back down after each successive incident. Willing himself to sleep, he managed to make the periods between waking longer -- the visions subsiding in severity with each occurrence.


  He could sleep it off, he figured... could wrestle it into submission, if he could just get over the initial hump... if he could just hold on through the initial detox.

  He woke for good when the courtesy desk rang his phone at eight AM, per his request. Even knowing that he needed to get up, knowing that there was work to be done, he was tempted to hang up the receiver and pass back out until his body decided it was ready to be awake.

  He was still tired, but he had to get moving. He needed to put his shoulder to the wheel and push, no matter how hard that might be. Shaking off the cobwebs, he choked down another cup of complimentary caffeinated shit water, cursing the Best Western brass and their coffee supplier of choice.

  It helped him wake up, but just barely.

  He was functioning, but hardly.

  He was determined, but not really.

  Checking the inbox of the Gigu?re Investigative Services email account, he saw a message from LeTonya Hughes. There was one from Dianna Tripp, too. One that probably said she had renewed suspicions about her husband and wanted to retain his services. This time, those suspicions were almost certainly justified. Mister Tripp seemed to have developed a taste for the chubby country-western women that hang out at a seedy dive called Bottoms Up in downtown Detroit. He probably liked to snort coke off of their tits, too, coke that he purchases from a bitch who drinks martinis and likes to jam her hands up strange men's shirts.

  That was none of his affair, though, not anymore.

  Opening the message from LeTonya, he was greeted by nothing more than the auto-populated signature of Hughes At Law. Underneath it, though, was a PDF attachment... the only thing that really mattered.

  He downloaded it and took a look immediately, trying to zoom and pan around the documents on the small screen of his Galaxy phone. It was futile, there was no way he would be able to soak everything in by fiddling with it in miniature. It didn't help that large swaths of the text looked to be redacted, blacked out as though someone had pressed a broad-tipped Sharpie over the words and covered up entire sentences and then made a photocopy.

  Deciding it was time to checkout, he picked up his duffle bag and gave it a quick once over -- just to be sure that the creeper in the night was truly just a figment of his alcohol-starved imagination. Unzipping it just a bit, he somehow found room to pack what remained of the small bottles of toiletries scattered about the room. Even though they claimed to be complimentary, he was confident that he'd paid triple their value under the umbrella of the exorbitant nightly rate he'd shelled out the morning before. The shitty coffee probably came at a premium of six bucks a cup to boot.

  He'd be damned if he was going to leave them behind... if he wasn't going to get every dime of his money's worth. He was going to ask the courtesy desk for the promised shaving supplies and toothpaste as well, he'd paid for them. He considered borrowing a towel or two -- perhaps a washcloth to make it a set -- but decided that his bag would likely burst if he tried. Strapping on his piece and getting dressed, he prepared to make his departure.

  He checked out at nine thirty, requesting and receiving his razor and shave cream. They claimed to be out of toothpaste, but that was probably bullshit. He suspected they would find some in the back if he plunked down another hundred bucks for a second night... fucking leeches.

  As he was preparing to walk out of the lobby, a bit irritated about the toothpaste, he heard a pattern of clicks and clacks that he immediately recognized as the sounds of a copying machine at work. Stopping mid-stride, he turned and asked if they offered printing services. They did -- and he could print as much as he wanted, for the low-low price of fifty cents per page.

  Deciding it was worth it, that it had to be done anyway, he beamed the PDF via Bluetooth to their laser printer and waited for the twenty pages of reports to print. Ten bucks later, he had a manila envelope containing the hard copies in hand.

  When he climbed into his Malibu and pitched his bag onto the passenger seat, the thud it made on the leather transported him back in time to the night on Atlas Avenue East. He remembered the screaming fight, remembered Tracy's tearful rage... remembered the squealing of tires, remembered his desperate retreat from the train wreck that his life had become.

  He didn't dwell on it -- couldn't afford the time or emotional energy to dwell on it -- so he simply closed his door, started the car and pulled the papers from their envelope. Not taking time to organize them or pick and choose which ones to read first, he simply began thumbing through the pages of reports and making quick scans of each of them.

  On the crisp white pages, he saw diagrams of body parts and crude sketches of crime scenes. He saw words, both typed and written by hand, and he saw lots and lots of blacked out redactions.

  Trying to decipher what little print wasn't covered up, he wondered what he might be able to see... what he might deduce. He tried hard, as hard as he figured he possibly could with the current chemical imbalance of his brain, but he slowly started to realize that he couldn't see anything in the reports that would be of use to him.

  It was all Latin to him, and some of it was literally Latin. Descriptions of the human anatomy postmortem, descriptions of defects and wounds, measurements, weights and remarks about the condition of tissues and organs. They could have been described as perfectly normal, or their condition might be entirely suspicious and some sort of smoking gun that had been overlooked, he didn't know.

  Was a liver supposed to be smooth, reddish-brown and weigh 1.44 kilograms, or was that an anomaly? Was the thymus gland supposed to be pinkish-gray, soft and lobulated with a weight of 38 grams, or was that a sign that something had been done to it? Without the prerequisite knowledge of how dead, decaying organs and tissues should appear, he could make no assumptions as to what was relevant and what was not in these clinical descriptions.

  The only thing that jumped out at him immediately, the only thing that was plainly obvious, was the fact that the entirety of the sections labeled Toxicology and Trace Evidence had been redacted from every report he had. Every one except for that of Billy Marsh, that is, which simply declared results pending. It was a small wonder that even that statement wasn't redacted, considering how heavy handed the censor seemed to be. It was just as useless being printed there as it would've been if they had blotted it out with a marker, though, because no results means nothing to go on.

  Since the information had been concealed in the findings of all the other reports, it seemed likely that the facts contained in those sections must be of some significance. Even if they weren't of consequence, the administrators who had chosen to redact them had certainly done so with the feeling that it was in the best interests of their investigation to keep the results a secret. That made the facts curious, if not pertinent... if not crucial.

  In all of the other sections, the ones referring to the individual organs and limbs, the redactions were more sporadic, more hit and miss. There would be a word crossed out here, a sentence blacked out there, a diagram off in the margins of the page covered up. Just bits and pieces missing, but it seemed as though they were the corner pieces... those segments of the puzzle that make up the border and the edges. The ones that any wise and experienced dissectologist lays out and assembles first, to set a foundation around which to fill in the center and complete the picture.

  The drawings of the scenes at which the victims had been discovered -- all of which looked like they'd been sketched by his autistic son -- had similarly blocked out segments near what he assumed were supposed to be body parts. It was hard to tell, since the artist who had created them was certainly no Da Vinci. Pablo Picasso himself would've likely struggled to discern anything that resembled a human form in these drawings. He could be looking at arms, legs and heads -- or they could be abstract depictions of trees, twigs, fallen branches or patches of grass -- there was simply no way to tell.

  Examining all of the pages which seemed to depict the
places bodies were found, he noted that the diagram of Booger Woods drawn to show what detectives saw when they recovered Billy Marsh's remains did not have any sign of redaction upon it. This was curious, since the drawings of every other victim did have at least one redacted section in the diagram.

  Was this because Louie Rambo got his hands on the diagram before the censors had a chance to have their way with it? Or was it, instead, because something was missing... something that had been present at the other scenes, but wasn't found at this one at all?

  The knowledge available to him being only that which was depicted on the pages, in toner black and Hammermill Bond white, didn't allow him to speculate as to which answer was correct. He would need to know what had been excised from the blacked out maps to make that determination, would need to know what was drawn beneath the scribbled patches of erasure and was being held as a secret. Being denied to, and concealed from, inquiring minds that wanted to know.

  The toxicology results for Billy Marsh would likely take weeks, if not longer to come back. He knew that much, based on his experience when he was curious to know how a particular celebrity had died when drug abuse was a probable culprit. Even when they did come in for Billy, that information may be deemed as privileged as well... subjected to the same redaction process.

  Frustrated at the way these censored documents paralyzed him, how they hampered his investigation, he scrolled through his phone log to find Donnell's number. Copying it to his dialing screen, he turned the radio up so that he could hear the audio through his vehicle's hands free system.

  "Hughes at law, it's Saturday -- we're closed." a snotty, feminine voice answered.

  "Um, hi," Jake began, "this is Jake Gigu?re, I'm trying to reach Donnell."

  "Hold," she replied... no please, no hi Jake, I've heard a lot about you, it's a pleasure to speak with you, no how's the family... nothing.

  "Donnell speaking, how can I help you?" Launchpad's voice announced shortly thereafter.

  "Donnell, it's Jake," he said. "Hey, I'm looking over these reports... I can't make heads or tails out of them! There's stuff blacked out, redactions all over the place! I have no idea what the hell I'm looking at! Is there a way we can get clean copies of this stuff?"

  Donnell grunted, thought for a moment. "We can," he advised, "but we'll have to get a court order, and they'll want to know why we need it. I imagine I can tell them that we're looking into whether the crimes are related, whether evidence from the old cases could be exculpatory and, therefore, covered under Brady. If it could exonerate our client, we could get it -- but it's gonna be a pain in the ass, man, and it's gonna take time."

  Jake didn't know what Brady was, didn't care to know. It didn't matter. "What kind of time?" he asked.

  "Well," another grunt, "considering it is Saturday, I can't even make a motion until Monday -- which is a bad day for me as it sits already. I figure I could get it filed on Tuesday. Hagan will probably make a fuss, either him or Boudreaux. They'll probably request a hearing, where we'd have to explain why we think it's important and get a ruling on it from Judge Casella. He could deny our motion, shut us right down. Even if he agreed with us, it could be weeks... maybe a month. That's the straight dope, no bullshit."

  That wasn't soon enough, not nearly. Double Indemnity could be in danger of lapsing by then, he couldn't wait. He needed to know now, right now -- not in a week, not in two weeks, certainly not in a month.

  This made him mad... pissed him off, actually. "Christ!" he barked. "There's no way to get it faster?"

  "Nope," Donnell answered without hesitation. "We'll get the Marsh stuff within the two weeks as part of discovery, that much we're entitled to. All that extra shit, though, the stuff about the old murders, that's another matter altogether. They're not linked, not so far as The State is concerned, so we haven't got any right to see those reports -- to see what they were trying to protect. We can make a request under the Freedom Of Information Act, which would result in us being furnished exactly what you're holding now." He paused, realizing they were in a pickle. "Fuck, now that I think about it, we shouldn't even have what we do yet! Rambo snuck it to us on the down low, so I actually have to make a FOIA request to get the same shit we've got, then make a special request to get access to what's been redacted. We're talking at least a month now. Maybe two, if we don't wanna risk getting Rambo's ass in a sling -- which we can't do -- I promised him that. The man has to work with Boudreaux every day, that's tough enough without us revealing that he's sleeping with the enemy."

  "Two months?"

  Donnell chuckled a bit. "That's nothin', Jake, the wheels of justice turn slow as a motherfucker. The court moves at a glacial pace, that's just how it is. Like I said, we could be talking about a year before we get a verdict in this case... nothing is gonna happen fast, you're just gonna have to learn to accept that."

  "There has to be another way, Donnell!" Jake insisted. "There's got to be a way to figure this out faster than that!"

  There was a pause, Launchpad was thinking. What came to him was a shot in the dark, but it was a chance -- more than they had before.

  "You can try to beat it out of Clyde," he suggested. "If anybody's gonna know what's written in those reports, it's old Sheriff Rambo... he probably wrote up half of them himself, is probably the one who decided what was kept secret and what was released to the public and the press. If I know Clyde, he'll remember every word of those reports, redacted or not. Try him, that's the only shot we've got."

  Upon hearing this, Jake became even more enraged. It wasn't anger directed at the system, this time, nor at Donnell. He was furious with himself, now, for his failure to figure this out. Hell, he had used the threat of talking to Rambo to twist the knife in Ron Boudreaux's heart just the day before -- how could he have forgotten about that? Why did it take Launchpad's help to figure out something so elementary, so basic and remedial?

  Shit, what kind of help could he possibly be to Chucky if he was functioning at such a low level? If his body's refusal to operate up to spec because he had spent so many nights poisoning it caused his friend to spend a single day, a single hour, a single minute, a single second longer in bondage than was absolutely necessary, how would he ever be able to forgive himself? The stakes of this game were too high, the antes too rich and the penalties too severe for him to limp through this thing like some hack rookie detective leaving all of the important stones unturned. He needed to get a grip on himself, and he needed to do it fast... perhaps faster than he could.

  "Do you think he'll tell me?" he asked, not letting his frustration speak out in his voice.

  "He shouldn't," Donnel said, "he isn't supposed to. If he does, nothing he says will be admissible in court, because he's not at liberty to divulge that information anymore. We'll have to go through the process if we want to use anything we find to defend Chuck, so I'll plan to get it started anyway. If you choose to go talk to Clyde before the stuff comes in, that's on you. I can't really be too involved in all of that, I've got my license to consider, bro. Do what you're gonna do, but play it on the QT. You heard what Boudreaux thought about the idea of you diggin' up his backyard. It's a dangerous game, Jake. You'll have me driving back to Garthby to represent you if you're not careful."

  "I've gotta do what I've gotta do," Jake answered. "I want this over -- quickly."

  "Yeah, I've noticed," Donnell remarked. "I'm tempted to ask you why you're in such a hurry, but I have this strange feeling in my gut that I'm not gonna like the answer that you give me."

  "Let's just say that I don't like the idea of Chucky sitting in a jail cell and leave it at that," he replied. "I can't imagine he's enjoying himself in there."

  "Oh, of that much I'm sure. He's gonna be there for a minute though, man, no matter what we figure out. Do what you've got to do, what you feel like you need to do... just do it carefully, step lightly. Tampering with evidence and obstructing justice ca
n be serious charges, Boudreaux could saddle you with a third degree felony if you play your cards wrong. Thirty six months, Jake, he could put you away for three years if he got charges like those to stick."

  Jake appreciated his friend's concern, but he couldn't care less about Boudreaux or his threats. Dead men can't be sent to prison, that was the least of his worries.

  "Alright, Don," Jake concluded. "I'll be in touch if I need anything."

  "Sounds good, thanks," Donnel replied.

  Without saying bye, he pressed the end call button on his steering wheel. It was a preemptive measure, because he was inclined to thank Donnell in return... to thank him for nothing, which was what he had contributed to climbing the mountain in front of them thus far. He seemed completely unengaged, entirely indifferent to what was happening and what needed to be done.

  Perhaps he had been right about Launchpad after all... perhaps he should've left things where they landed when the dust settled after their last encounter -- when Deputy Ron had to step in to peel them off of each other and nearly taser the both of them. Maybe it would've been better that way... if they'd stuck to their shouted oaths to never look upon one another again.

  Confident that looking through the reports would do no more to serve him, he stuffed them back into their envelope and pitched it unceremoniously to his passenger seat. It was time to go back home, to return to the scene of the crime that was his childhood. He wasn't thrilled about the idea, wasn't eager to see the sights... to rekindle the emotions, to relive the nightmares.

  There were things living on the streets of Burlwood that were more horrific to him than any withdrawal-induced hallucination he'd experienced during the night gone by. They were more lurid, more ghastly, more obscene and more revolting than any of the images that had been conjured by the changing chemistry of his brain. They were morbid, they were depraved, they were flagitous and perverse. They were shadows, they were specters, they were ghouls and they were wraiths. They were memories, and they were real...

  I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it...

  ...except he hadn't forged it, others had forged it for him. His father, his mother, The Butcher and Ron Boudreaux... Launchpad...

  There's more of grave than gravy about you, whatever you are... not the other way around... not at all, not in his case... there was more of grave, for sure.

  EIGHTEEN