September 13th, 2016. 4:30PM
Burlwood, Indiana
Jake and Nikki skated until their ankles, thighs and calves just couldn't take it anymore. It was nearing two o'clock at the point at which their endurance was fading, and the open skating session was soon to wrap up anyway. Each of them were tending to bumps and bruises as they took off their skates because they'd fallen together several more times, each of them her fault as was the first. The brutality of the impact lessened as she got better, but only slightly. Skating simply didn't come naturally to the young girl who had never donned a pair of blades in her life, and they were both paying the price as they peeled the sweaty boots from their feet.
Towards the end of the session, she could shimmy along at very low speed on her own, but that was about the extent of what her sage master was able to teach her before it was clearly time for them to strip off the skates and call it a day. Neither was disappointed to get it over with, despite the fact that they had enjoyed themselves to a degree.
He offered to give her a ride, of course, so she didn't have to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get home on her aching feet and legs. She accepted, and when they drove by a small diner similar to Uncle Jim's Pancake House, he asked if she was hungry. In reality, she wasn't -- but she wasn't going to let that stand in the way of spending more time with the stunning piece of manhood for whom she'd already developed quite the crush. Telling him that she could stand to eat, he obliged her by pulling into the place and they took up seats at a small table near the back. She initially tried to take the seat facing the door, but he quickly and instinctively asked her to allow him that spot, per his tradition. She didn't think twice about the request or why he made it, assuming he just found the bench at the back more spacious to accommodate his large frame.
Being on the ice apparently sparked a deluge of memories for him, the details of which were the subject of conversation for the entire duration of their lunch together. Nikki didn't understand a lot of what he was saying -- she had never been a big fan of hockey -- but seeing him laugh and smile was refreshing enough that it didn't matter whether or not she could make sense of his stories. His glee only faded when she asked a question that, in retrospect, she probably had no business asking... but it seemed appropriate in the moment.
"It seems like you were pretty good," she said in response to his tales, "why did you stop playing after your sophomore year?"
His face fell immediately when the words left her mouth, dissolving from his gorgeous glowing smile into something more troubled, something more disappointed. It was a sour look, something bordering on tormented, and it was full of regret.
"A lot of reasons," he said in barely a mumble. "A lot happened over summer vacation after my sophomore year, and when it was over I ended up leaving town. Things were never quite the same after that, so I wanted to leave everything about this place behind. As it happened, that included playing hockey. It was really all I had here, in the end, and the thought of continuing only reminded me about all of the trouble. That wasn't good, that wasn't what I wanted to be thinking about, so I just let it go."
Nikki was desperate to hear more about it, because she felt the details might hold clues as to what he was doing back here after so long, but she knew that to ask would be to probe too deeply. As much as she wanted to pretend that she had something with this man, she knew that all there really was at this point amounted to a warm and blooming friendship. There would hopefully come a time at which she could scrape the underbelly of his troubles, a time at which they would have no secrets... but this was most certainly not it. With that in mind, she changed the subject and they made small talk for nearly an hour. Even that was thrilling to her, because she was enthralled with this Jacob Gigu?re. She had held crushes and fantasy romances in the past, but none had ever been with as powerful and consuming as this affair in all of her young life.
Eventually, even the small talk ran out and they were largely just staring at each other across the table in silence. She was happy with that and would've been pleased to continue for the rest of the afternoon, but apparently his patience for it had worn out when the check finally came. Jake very kindly paid the bill and announced that he had work to do, so he would have to drop her off at her place and call it a day so far as their date was concerned. That was devastating to her, because she wanted nothing more than to take him home and express her gratitude for his kindness and the time they'd spent together. With no choice in the matter, however, she simply smiled and thanked him for everything.
He drove her to her trailer, which she still had no idea was right next to the former home of his estranged wife, and pulled over just in front of the place. Shifting into park caused her door to automatically unlock, and she looked over to him when the click sounded out. He was looking at her with a smile, the wonder of which melted her into her seat as she sat and commanded her to try for a parting maneuver, there simply was no choice in her mind.
Without thinking twice about it, she leaned in towards him and pursed her lips to give him a kiss. Expecting him to pull back or turn his face, she closed her eyes and simply let her mouth fall slightly open to catch whichever part of himself he offered to her. His cheek, his neck, his jaw; whatever she found, she would kiss. To her surprise, her mouth was soon full of his lower lip with his upper wrapping over top of hers and gently forming around the curves of it.
Overcome with her lust again at the contact, she gently bit on the lip he allowed her to have as she pulled back softly and sweetly. They disengaged with that delicious smack that comes with a perfectly timed, perfectly innocent and perfectly executed kiss. Her eyes still closed, she reveled in the pleasure and didn't risk making the moment anything but what it was by going in for another. She fantasized about what a second would be, what a third and fourth might lead to. Perhaps he would open his mouth for her entirely. Perhaps he would slip his tongue into her and allow her to suck on it, which she longed to do with a passion.
It was equally possible, however, that he would shun any attempt at further intimacy. To try again might be a step to far, and she didn't want to cross any lines with him. When she finally exhaled her desire and let her eyes open slowly, she saw him staring longingly back at her with appreciation and acceptance of what she'd done. With the look he broadcast, she had no doubt that he would've obliged if she tried for another, but this wasn't the time for that, it was too perfect as it was. If she wanted to build a lasting fire, she needed to let an ember glow for awhile before she blew on it and coaxed it into a flame. Pulling her door handle, she opened it and stepped out of the vehicle. He was still staring at her when she gently closed it between them, still giving her an eye of longing and desire. She let it sizzle, leaning in again to kiss the closed window just as sweetly and softly as she had done to him.
For Jake, things were stirring -- as they had been all day -- as he watched her walk away towards her home. The moment they'd shared in front of her trailer was perfect, just as their time at The Garthby Icehouse and the lunch thereafter had been. He wondered as she walked to her trailer and disappeared from view whether he was still falling in love with her or if he had, instead, already completely fallen with no prospect of recovery. Whichever it was, it felt good, and that was quite simply a no-go. The closer to Nikki he got, the more his feelings for her developed, the harder it would be to see double indemnity through to fruition, and that wasn't fair to his family. That was selfish, and it was unacceptable. Those things added together didn't even amount to the blasphemy of it being adulterous, something he had absolutely no inclination to participate in.
For that reason and that reason alone, he needed to try to ward her off. He needed to fight to keep her at a more comfortable distance than she was currently at, because she was way too fucking close. What he'd done with her on this day was a sin, but not just the type that Father Lovett would despise and sanction him for. This was the type that was against the g
reater good, the type that flew in the face of divine plans and threatened to derail what the fates had written in stone. Those universal plans could not go unfulfilled, so he was going to have to reel himself back in when it came to dealing with his darling Nikki.
He was bound for double indemnity, his wife and son commanded him to double indemnity, and his first duty was to them. Not to Nikki, not to the desires of his dick, not to anything that might bring him pleasure, not to anything that might make him feel good because he was no longer entitled to pleasure or related sensations and emotions.
Rewinding his libido and filing it far at the back of his mind, he decided that his next stop would be Burlwood Downs. He was going to find a way to inspect that gate car to see if the VIN matched the one of Evander Hughes' missing Brougham. If it was, that meant FGSI was somehow involved in the murders of old, perhaps in the murder of the present as well. Not paying any mind to fourteen-thirty Applewood as he turned around, he drove his way back to Route 4 and headed for the track.
Lighting a Newport, he was reminded of all of those cigarettes he'd smoked after a night in bed with Tracy. Those were always the best cigarettes, as they followed some of the most intense moments of his life. The times at which he felt the most alive. Tracy was incredible at appreciating his body, and making him do the same through her efforts. Surely, a rose by any other name could not possibly smell so sweet. Surely, sex with another could never hold a candle to making love to his wife. Somehow, though, the cigarette he smoked after simply sharing a kiss with Nikki seemed as good as any of those post coital smokes next to Tracy had been. That scared him, and he didn't like it one bit.
It was just a matter of minutes before he was at the track, finding the parking lot almost as empty as that of Our Mother Of Sorrows had been, as this was not a live-racing day. Parking near the main entrance, he walked into the place to find perhaps a few dozen die-hard gamblers in the concourse making bets on simulcast races showing on television sets as they happened around the country. Every one of the players looked completely miserable, each of them with dried up flesh that was ripe with the atrophy of departed hope on their brows. It was as though they knew they would going to lose their money each time they approached an automated teller or visited the counter, but they continued betting anyway. If any of them actually won, they certainly didn't show it with excitement of any sort. Watching them was actually rather depressing, so Jake turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
Walking to the glass doors that led out to the grandstands and the track itself, he pulled at the first on the right and found that it was locked up tight. Undeterred, he moved a door to his left and tried that one only to find that it was sealed just as well. Hoping to find at least one open so that he could casually sneak out onto the dirt and find the vehicle parked over by the stables, he tried every door only to find that they were all locked.
"Can I help you with something, sir?" A kind and familiar voice called from a ways behind him.
Looking back, Jake saw that it was Sarge who was gazing at him with a smile from behind the bet counter. "Oh," Jake smiled back, "hey there, Sarge!"
The man laughed and showed his aged teeth, the scar that bisected his face tightening with his grin. "Please, young man!" He chuckled. "I'm too old to go by Sarge anymore! Grover suits me much better at this point in my life, my friend!"
"Grover it is, then!" Jake said as he approached the counter, knowing full well that he would never be able to stop thinking of the man as Sarge. "It's nice to see you again, sir," he said to break the ice.
"Ah, it's you!" Grover replied when Jake was near enough. "You bet on These Truths a few nights ago! I must say I'm shocked that you didn't end up back here cashing that one in! If I could bet, I would've picked him too!"
"You win some, you lose some," Jake replied casually, not really concerned with the horse's failure to perform..
"Are you looking to make a wager on a simulcast race this afternoon?" Grover asked with his gentle accent. "It's nearing post time at Sagebrush for race three, you've got five minutes to pick your winner!"
"No," Jake said, "I'm after something much different than that, sir."
Sarge looked a bit confused, furling his brow around his characteristic scar and squinting his eyes in thought. "I'm afraid I'm confused, then, what it is you would like for me to do for you?"
"Look, Grover," he began, trying to ingratiate himself through his tone of voice, "I need to get outside." He paused after that, letting it sink it and register with the man. "Is there a way I can do that?"
"There's the exit," Grover explained kindly, "but that won't get you out onto the apron. Is that where you're trying to get? Did you leave something out there after your last visit?"
"Um," Jake stammered, trying to figure the easiest way that he could gain access to the track. "I believe I dropped my phone out there," he said, "I was in a small scuffle, I don't know if you heard about it or not. I was hoping to get out there and see if I could find it."
"No worries!" Grover replied pleasantly. "Our maintenance crew makes a sweep every night and gathers all of the loose items!" With that, he reached for a large cardboard box behind the counter marked lost and found. "See if it's in here," he grinned.
Jake looked over the contents, seeing several wallets, sets of keys and cell phones. Obviously, none of them belonged to him and this technique was not going to get him to the gate car as he intended. He didn't bother sifting through the miscellaneous junk, knowing there was nothing he was after. Recalculating, he decided to be honest with the old man and see if that would get him any further.
"Actually, Grover," he replied as kindly and respectfully as he could, "I didn't really lose anything, I'm afraid you've caught me in a bit of a fib."
"Really?" Grover answered, seeming like he was trying to feign surprise. "Tell me, then," he continued, a hint of intrigue in his voice. "What exactly are you after out there?"
Still computing the odds of getting thrown out versus being escorted to the gate car as the conversation unfolded, Jake answered as carefully and honestly as he could, since Grover seemed a reasonable man. "Well, the truth is," he said, "I'm in town looking into something. A crime, actually, and I have reason to believe that the red Cadillac out there might be -- involved in it."
Sarge looked at him a bit more critically than he had been before, similar to the way he'd looked at him over the weekend when Jake invoked his nick-name in their first encounter and the old man tried to place his face. "You're a detective, then?" He asked, still scrutinizing every inch of the man before him. "Are you with the Elsmere PD?"
"Not exactly," Jake chuckled, nervous in the situation. "I'm a private eye, really."
"Ohhhhhhh," Grover nodded. "May I ask, then, what you're investigating, my friend?"
Wondering why it mattered, wondering why he would care, Jake decided that his best course of action would be complete honesty with the man. Grover seemed the type that appreciated honesty and would be more likely to cooperate if he didn't feel like he was being duped, so that was the card he would play. Plus, he might have some inside information on this FGSI Services given the fact that he worked at the track, so open and honest dialogue with might reveal more than he expected to leave with when he came.
"I'm working on the Billy Marsh case," he explained plainly.
"Oh my! That was the young boy they found in town recently, was it not?" Grover replied with a cringe. "Such a terrible thing, after so many good years here in town! The idea that old ghosts should rear their ugly heads! A terrible thing! I remember when all of the other boys died, it was such a strain on Burlwood!"
"Yeah, it was awful," Jake concurred.
"And you think our gate car could have something to do with that?" The man asked, disbelief on his face.
"Well, it's a long story," Jake admitted. "But I'd like to have a look at it, if that's at all possible."
Grover s
canned the concourse as if he were looking for someone in particular, someone who wouldn't approve of a behind the scenes tour. Not finding whomever it was, he bent down and looked for something under the counter. After a moment, he reappeared with a ring of keys in hand and scanned the room once again.
"The owners don't like anybody out on the apron when there's no live racing," he explained, "but I don't see any of them around here, so follow me!" he said, moving to the far end of the counter where there was a swinging door he could exit through.
Jake did as instructed, strolling casually behind the man as he continued to look around for those pesky owners whose identities only the teller knew. Fortunately, the men who might put a stop to this escapade didn't appear before Grover had the key in the lock of one of the glass doors that separated the concourse from the apron of the track. He opened it without consequence, letting the chilled breeze in as they stepped through and closed the door behind them.
Once outside, they walked to their left until they were at the point where the guardrail met with a brick wall that kept the race fans confined to this area. There was a fence in the rail, which Grover opened by disengaging a hidden latch. Pushing the gate opened, he led Jake onto the dirt of the track and on a long walk deep into turn three where there was a garage door hidden in the wall. Looking closely at it, Jake realized that there was a heavy padlock that kept it sealed closed when there was no racing taking place.
"Oh shit," Jake complained. "I don't suppose you have a key for that one?"
Calmly flipping through his ring, Grover found a key marked Masterlock and slid it into the receptacle.
"Oh, but I do!" He smiled.
With a flick of his wrist, the shackle was open and he popped the lock off of the plate that sealed the door. Apparently no longer worried about being seen by the ownership, he raised the garage door roughly and loudly. Inside, of course, was a modified Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, red in color.
"Here it is," Grover said, looking at it discerningly. "What exactly are we looking for?"
"The VIN," Jake said as he scrolled through his phone for the e-mail from Donnell that contained his father's old registration. When he found it, he opened the image attached and zoomed in on the seventeen digit alpha-numeric code that would tell the tale.
"That's easy enough," Grover replied as he leaned in towards the windshield on the driver's side. "It should be right here, if we can find a way to see it."
It was dark in the garage, so Grover scanned the blackened recesses of the place with his widened eyes and outstretched hands until he felt a flashlight on a table at the back. Turning it on and holding it out to illuminate the front drivers side dashboard behind the glass, he searched for the VIN plate that should've been there.
"Hm," the man grunted, leaning in closer. "That's quite strange," he said enigmatically.
"What? What is it?" Jake asked, leaning in to try and see for himself.
"The VIN plate," Grover answered, "it seems to be missing!"
"What?" Jake snapped, immediately suspicious. "Why would they take it off?"
Grover grunted again, putting his finger to his lip in thought. "I don't know!" He replied. "I've only heard of it being done in chop-shops or in the street when a car is hot! To conceal the identity of the car, that's why they usually do it!"
"But this FGSI owns this car, right? Why would they seek to cover its identity?"
"I don't know that they would," Grover answered. "There are other places we can check, though. Maybe this one just fell out riding over this rough track or something."
This came as a surprise to Jake, he'd never been too keen on the study of automobiles. The fact that the VIN was indicated in more than one place was something he wasn't aware of, but he we certainly happy that Grover knew better.
Opening the driver side door, Sarge shone his light in several areas and scanned both the inner and outer end of the door jamb for any sign of a secondary VIN plate. "Nothing here either," he said, then he reached into the car and pulled a lever that popped the hood. Stepping around to the front of the vehicle, he opened it wide and propped it up with the bar inside. "There should be one on the front of the engine block," he said, shining his light at it. "Either that or the front of the frame." He looked for several seconds, sweeping the flashlight from side to side, before he eventually settled on a particular area which he seemed to study for longer than was reasonable. "Look there!" He said, pointing to a spot on the front of the engine block.
Jake moved in and looked where Grover was pointing, and to his dismay he saw an area of metal about three inches long that had been scratched and ground at until whatever was there had been completely obliterated.
"They scratched it off?" He asked, surprised.
"It looks that way!" Grover agreed. "And there's no plate on the front of the frame either! It should be here, right by the windshield washer fluid jug!"
With all of the evidence, Jake was thoroughly convinced at this point that the vehicle was the same as the one that poor little Timmy had been taken away from his life in. With that conclusion, he was convinced that FGSI Services was the key to his investigation. Revealing who this company was and who it belonged to would lead him to The Butcher of old. He was ready to storm out of the place and start digging in to it and its relationship to Rusty, but Grover wasn't finished with his investigation yet, so he paused and held formation.
"There's one more place," Grover said, moving to the driver's side of the vehicle and stepping deeper into the garage. "On these old cars, a lot of times they put it in the rear wheel-well. Most folks don't know that, so we can hope that whoever modified the rest of this thing didn't know that either!"
Grover dropped to his knees and then his back on the ground without hesitation, dirtying his work clothes like it was nothing and he had no care in doing it. Holding the flashlight up into the wheel-well, he brushed at dirt and caked on debris until finally he saw what he was after.
"Here it is!" He declared. "I've got it!"
"Read it out!" Jake cried, looking to his phone for the numbers that would make this car a criminal.
"Are you ready" Grover asked.
"Yeah, shoot," Jake replied.
Reading small digits in a dirty spot, Grover struggled through the numbers and letters slowly. "Okay, I've got 1-G-6-D-W"
"Check!" Jake exclaimed, his numbers matching exactly.
"6-9-Y-3-G-9-7-4" Sarge continued, still matching what was on Jake's phone to perfection.
"Yes!" He celebrated.
Jake's heart started to pound as he realized that the VIN was an exact match so far with only four numbers to go. He was almost home, needing to hear only 7X61 to confirm that this was Evander Hughes' car. 7X61 would confirm that this vehicle had once belonged to The Butcher Of Burlwood, that it was missing evidence in six cold cases of murder. A four digit combination would make this the cornerstone of his investigation. Holding his breath, he waited and heard --
"7-X-2-2... that's all of it!"
At that, time froze... the investigation froze... everything froze... this was not Evander Hughes' Brougham... this was not the vehicle that the children had been kidnapped in... this was not The Butcher's Brougham, this was not the final piece to complete the outline of the puzzle.
Fuck, this was nothing!
Now he had nothing!
Sure, it was suspicious that the VIN had been concealed in all but the most unlikely spot, but there was still a VIN, and it did not match the vehicle he needed it to match.
Suddenly, he was right back where he started -- suddenly he was nowhere.
"Is that it?" Grover asked excitedly from his place on the ground. "Does it match?"
"No," Jake answered, his heart broken in two or twenty. "No, that's not the right number."
"Well shit!" Grover exclaimed, crawling out from under the car and brushing himself off as he stood up. "Even I was gettin' excited, and I don't have the sli
ghtest idea why it's important!"
Totally demoralized, totally confused and totally unsure of what to do next, Jake put his hand to his brow and thought as hard as he could possibly manage to think in the fallout of hope. Even if this wasn't the car, clearly FGSI Services had something to do with Rusty. That alone made them suspicious, that alone made them worthy of further investigation, but making it a tag-team with the vehicle would've been a home-run instead of a pop out.
"I'm sorry," Grover tried to comfort him, as he was visibly upset and shaken. "I hate that it went that way, my friend, but if there's anything else that I can do..."
"Tell me about this company," Jake replied, thinking on the fly. "Tell me about FGSI Services. Who the hell are they, what do they do, and what the fuck do they have to do with this place?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you a whole lot when it comes to those things," Grover replied. "I know they run the gate car, they have something to do with maintenance of the track, and I know they took over the shoeing and what not of the horses when I moved over to the counter. Management didn't have anybody else could do it on the roles, so they hired it our when I got too old!"
"Can you name any of their employees?"
"No, I can't say as though I can," Sarge admitted. "I keep my nose out of all that, my job is just to sell bet slips now, so that's about all I do. I used to take this place home with me everyday when I was working the stables, now I just do my thing and go home!"
Realizing this was the extent of the man's knowledge, Jake asked one final question of Grover. "Have you ever met a man named Rusty Parker?"
"Rusty who?" Grover asked visibly confused.
"Rusty Parker. He used to be the maintenance man at Our Mother Of Sorrows."
"Oh!" Grover replied with a hint of recognition. "That's the red-headed guy that used to work down at the church, right? Yeah, I suppose I did meet him back then. Don't really know the man, though. Why do you ask?"
"It's nothing," Jake said in monotone, turning to make the walk to the concourse. "Thanks for your help, Sarge, I really appreciate it."
"You're welcome," the man said to Jake's back as he was moving away, "but like I said before; it's Grover!"
Utterly defeated, the wanna-be detective made his way back through the concourse of the track to the exit, then out to the Malibu. He fired up another Newport, sucking at it so hard and so deep that his fingers were shaking when he finally blew the smoke out. The ups and downs of the day left him feeling shell shocked. The victories and the defeats were almost too extreme to reconcile with each other and balance in any form or fashion. The collision of his psyche with the greasy, dirty bottom after such a dramatic plunge from the height of the fluffy white clouds was painful and traumatic to say the least. He'd felt so down on himself after talking with Father Lovett, then so full of life after his time with Nikki, and now he was splattered on the concrete of the reality that he still had no fucking idea how he was going to save Chucky from Ron Boudreaux.
The Newport burnt all the way to the butt again before he decided what he would do for the rest of the evening, having struggled to remember and prioritize what was left to do. He still needed to figure out who FGSI was somehow, and what exactly they did to earn so much money. Even if they weren't directly involved with the crimes of the present or past, details of their identity could well reveal something about Rusty that tied him to the murders. The company was a ghost, as Donnell had said, so his only clue related to them was that they used PO Box 65 in Blackmoor to receive mail. To figure out anything else about them, he was going to have to stake out the Blackmoor post office and wait for someone to come get the fucking mail out of that box. That could be a once a month practice, so far as he knew. Watching for someone to appear could be a long and drawn out process, eating up more time than he really had to spare given his remaining budget of just one-hundred and ninety-eight dollars. The post office would be technically closing for the day soon, so starting that end of the investigation wasn't likely for this evening.
He'd surveilled Daryl Lane, and he was convinced that doing so further would be a dead-end. He could devote more time to that, but it hardly seemed worth it, so that was out.
He wanted to call Clyde Rambo to ask who was responsible for watching Rusty during the time that Timmy Lane was kidnapped, but he was in no mood to hear any more bad news. If it was Ron Boudreaux, that opened a wealth of questions. If it was not, though, it would mean he'd run head-long into another brick wall and had nothing new to work with. Done with brick walls for the day, he voted that option out as well.
He wanted to look in to old Deputy Ron himself and figure out exactly what the nature of his ties to Voodoo were. Whether or not he could've been responsible for the idols found with the previous six victims would be determined with the call to Rambo too, so there wasn't much promise in starting to watch him tonight either.
He wanted to find Freaky X and get his account of what happened so many years ago with Rusty at Central High, but Donnell was working that. He wasn't likely to find anything different than old Launchpad would if he tried, so he would leave that in his friends' capable hands. Hopefully, he would come up with something useful -- and soon.
In the meantime, he decided, the best thing for him to do would be to go see how his prime suspect Rusty Parker spent his evening. If he was any less crippled than he seemed, well... that would change everything.
FORTY