The Timing Curse

The Timing Curse

written by: G. Rod Hamilton

 

“This is all they need to prove guilt?” Gordon asked, his eyes fixated on Karen’s legal pad.

“Every little detail you can give me could mean the difference, but from the surveillance footage they have, it doesn’t look promising,” she said.

Retained as his attorney, Karen Cruz took detailed notes but really felt like she’d be fighting a losing battle. The evidence was clear – clear as a grainy, low-quality video captured two weeks prior.

“What else can I say? I was drinking, and details are kind of fuzzy, but I would never even consider what they are accusing me of here,” he uttered, rubbing his temples. “I know you probably hear this a lot, but I am innocent, I swear. Please believe me.”

“It won’t matter what I think, Gordon, truth is your neighbor’s camera caught you exiting the house around the time she was murdered. That kind of proof is hard to explain away.”

“It was the key to my safe deposit box I retrieved that night, I knew she wouldn’t let me in to get it, so I had to sneak in later. I had no idea she could be dead in our bedroom. Damn, no one’s gonna believe me!” His eyes teared up, “I loved her, I just couldn’t deal with her sometimes!”

“I think you’re telling the truth, I really do, but beside the video, your split with Monica was ugly by your neighbors’ account. It puts you atop the suspect list.”

Gordon Gipson looked away, his piercing blue eyes stared off into a dark corner of the meeting room, trying to come up with the one piece of info that could exonerate him. He couldn’t think straight, but knew he had better quickly, because he perceived the detectives as lazy. They viewed him as the only suspect. ‘It’s so cut and dried, isn’t it,’ he thought. The Gipson brothers are well known here in Garden City for being trouble. His brothers, Lyle and Sterling, have done considerable time in area lockups. Burglary, assault, vandalism. Sterling even got three years at Coastal Prison after stabbing a guy at a biker rally.
Therefore, the clean Gipson boy was the perfect suspect. It had to happen eventually, evil runs in the family, apparently. He felt cursed. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong circumstances. What else could take down an innocent man? Why wouldn’t the reputation of a family name be bandied about for an easier conviction?

He shed a tear for Monica, the only woman he has ever loved. He wouldn’t ever be able to hold her or hear her sweet laugh.
She was different from the other southern girls he’d met. She spoke with a classy charm and was grounded in good living. She was the voice of reason he needed. The marine glue that kept his leaky boat upright. Her only drawback was that she had a fierce Irish temper.
As good as they were together, they hadn’t always seen eye to eye, as they both possessed strong wills. It drove them to loud arguments over the stupidest things, but no matter how messy things got, his love for her had endured.

They had only been split up for a week or so, and he was sure they would reconcile soon, but he needed money so he could stay somewhere other than his friend’s sofa. Bobby was a good friend from the construction company they worked for, but his wife didn’t like the extra body in their small home. He knew this from an overheard conversation.

He needed access to the safe deposit box where he had stashed some money he inherited from his grandfather. It would go a long way to help him get by, for however long it would take for Monica to forgive him.

“Do you think that anyone on that jury will listen to my side of this?”

“I don’t know. You know how the people are around here; they have little patience for complicated answers in a rush for justice. I don’t mean to be negative here, I am just being realistic,” Karen said grimly. “Especially when the prosecution shows that footage of you sneaking around.”

Gordon put his face in his hands.

Karen felt empathetic, “Listen, Gordon, the truth is if you’re innocent, we will beat this. I promise you that.”

Gordon looked up, gazing deep into her eyes and believing in her. “Thank you,” he said with fraying hope.

When Gordon was escorted out of the room, Karen bit her lip and felt like she could cry at the situation. She probably should’ve recused herself from the case because of the way she felt about Gordon. She had a crush on him in high school, but he was always dating others. The time never seemed right for her to make her feelings known. It’s a situation that could cloud her thinking, and her law offices are too reputable to risk for the sake of sentimental memories. However, she wanted to help him because she didn’t want to believe the charges leveled against him.

***

Gordon was taken to the Bay Street police substation in Savannah, a holding tank that the sheriff used when the inmate population exceeded capacity at the county lock-up. It was an old one-story building that was used as a bank in more recent times, the same one Gordon’s grandfather banked at in the 1980s.

Gordon sat on his bunk and watched the water dripping from the faucet, causing a rust stain on the metal sink. He turned his attention to the rain coming down in sheets out the cell window, noting the storms this past week coincided with the nightmare he’s living.

He remembered the day his neighbor, Dan Cagel, mounted those surveillance cams on his porch and garage.
Gordon had watched him and remembered asking him if there was a particular reason for doing so. Dan explained that he put them up for security in hearing about a break-in on the news, where a woman was assaulted by an intruder, and that he didn’t want anything like that happening to his mother while he was at work.

“I reckon these’ll be a deterrent,” he told him in his thick Georgia accent.

The odd thing was, Gordon couldn’t recall ever seeing Dan’s mother there, and they’d been neighbors for the last two years. He thought she must be bedridden or something.

He and Dan were not the warmest neighbors and didn’t talk much. In fact, they bickered more than a couple of times about the Gipson’s dog, Rhett, digging under the fence between properties.
Rhett was a brown-and-white mixed breed that rarely barked, but he was like a little gopher. He disappeared the night Monica was murdered.

Gordon had seen Dan’s adult children, Malcolm and Mitch, stay with him on occasion. They were as much trouble as Gordon’s own brothers. He wondered if they might have been involved in Monica’s death.
She was nice to them, offering them sweet tea if she saw them sitting on Dan’s deck or mowing his grass. Although she was a bit on the chubby side, maybe the sight of a pretty blonde, tanning in her swimsuit was too much for one of the brothers to ignore. He just had no evidence of that. He thought he should let Karen know about the possibility of the Cagel brothers, and maybe the video camera had something from days prior to the murder to review.

The thunder boomed enough to shake the curtains on the window across the hall and startled Gordon from his reclining position on the bed.
He sat upright, revisiting the thoughts about his curse. This curse hanging over him like the cracked plaster on the ceiling above.
His timing has been terrible, someone attacks Monica the same night he would enter the house after drinking a pint of bourbon.
It reminded him of other frequent moments of impeccable bad timing.
A few years back, he met Monica’s parents for the first time in Athens. He was responsible for the death of their little Yorkie dog. He held the front door open just long enough for Monica to enter, but that’s all it took. That little dog bolted out into the street at the same time a car was approaching. It hit him in the hind quarters, sending him spinning on the pavement. Gordon was horrified.
Monica’s parents ended up having to put the poor boy to sleep.
No one blamed Gordon, but he knew better.

He balked at feeling sorry for himself, but evaluating these instances hurt like nothing else. He sank even deeper with the thought it could be all self-inflicted. Was he just too reckless or too oblivious, and these instances are a byproduct of that negligence? If he spends the rest of his days locked in a cage, might it be better than hurting others and himself with this godawful curse?

He then shook his head and whispered, “No! “

He’s tried his best to stay out of trouble and has succeeded until now, and this isn’t his fault. His resolve, however hard this fucked-up situation may be, has got to stay strong. “I’m not gonna take this lying down,” Gordon said aloud.

“Take what?” He heard from the next cell over; a block wall separated the voice.

“Oh, just thinking out loud. Never mind me,” Gordon replied and added, “What are you in for?”

“Theft,” the man in the cell said, “I robbed my ex-girlfriend’s trailer, but it was my shit in the first place. How ‘bout you, man?”

“Murder,” Gordon said expressionless, noting the irony of the other man’s similar actions. He continued to gaze at the rainy weather outside the caged window of his cell.

“Oh, the big one. Well, did ya do it?”

Gordon replied with a curt, “No.”

“I’m Kenny Tucker, everyone calls me Tuck. What’s your name?”

“Gordon Gipson.”

“Gipson? You kin to Lyle Gipson? That jerk-off stole my girl, that’s why I’m sittin’ in here,” Tuck said, raising his voice.

‘Well, imagine that,’ Gordon thought, “We’re in jail, and Lyle’s name comes up!’

“He’s my brother,” Gordon replied.

“No offense, man, but if I see that bastard, he’s gonna pay!”

“I’m sure he’ll get what he deserves,” Gordon said.

“So, no love lost between you two, huh,” Tuck replied.

“Oh, I love my brother, I just can’t stand him.”

Gordon heard a cracking noise, and the floor shook slightly.
“Did you feel that, Tuck?”

“Feel what, pissed off? Damn straight I do!”

“No, I felt something like a deep shaking.”

“Nothin’ over here. Oh shoot, I gotta take a leak.”

Gordon heard a draining sound coming from near the sink. Tuck finished and flushed the toilet, Gordon heard water spray under the floor.

“Um, Tuck?” Gordon watched a crack form beneath his feet. A loud shifting and buckling of the floor knocked him backward onto the bunk.

“Tuck, call the deputy!”

“What the hell’s goin’ on over there?”

Gordon jumped up and lunged for the bars at the front of the cell as the floor collapsed, and down went the sink, the bed, and Gordon too. The hole spread to the desk across the hall in a jagged radius. In slid the desk along with the swivel chair into the dark hole.

Tuck screamed, “Deputy!”

The hole had taken a portion of the floor in his cell. Tuck gripped tightly to the black bars. He yelled, “Gipson – You ok?” No answer came.

“Help,” Tuck screamed again. Pieces of the concrete continued to crumble off at the hole’s edge.

The metal door at the end of the hall opened. “What in hell,” Deputy Harlan grumbled, stopping two steps from the edge of the hole. “Oh, my Lord!”

“Let me outta here!” Tuck screeched desperately.

“Okay, okay, just hang on, I’ll get help,” Harlan yelled.

The door slammed shut, and the floor shook, and cracks crawled across the floor, effectively cutting off Tuck from the rest of the jail.
He reached toward his bunk and was able to snag his fitted sheet, pulling at it until it snapped off the front end of the mattress. He tied it around a bar and then around his waist, cinching it tightly.

Tuck saw the wall between Gordon’s cell and his own sagging, suspended with half the floor somewhere in the gaping hole.
He looked up at the bars where they met the wall and realized they had pulled loose from the masonry; they were crooked and sliding out of place. His fear locked him up tighter than any jail.

“Help me,” he cried out.

Twenty minutes or so went by before help arrived. Deputy Harlan slowly opened the door, “Tucker,” he shouted.

“Help!”

Members of the Savannah Fire and Rescue came slowly around the heavy door.

Tuck dangled from the sheet, and his desperate fingers gripped the bottom of the shifted bars.
An aluminum extension ladder was laid to bridge the gaping hole. Glass broke in the window where the desk used to be, and a cable with a hook pushed through. A fireman grabbed it and attached a sling.
He got to Tuck and couldn’t get the bars to swing open.

“You’re going to have to go under the bars,” the firefighter told him.

“Oh, shit,” Tuck said as he struggled to maneuver his overweight body under the bars where the floor had fallen away. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose as he looked down into the blackness. He gulped hard.

***

Gordon’s eyes fluttered open. An intense pain in his chest radiated from his ribs. He felt disoriented, and his vision was blurred as he looked toward the dim light above. He was lying face down on bars and had a weight on his back. He winced as he lifted his head, it throbbed with ache.
He could barely see anything, but he knew he was down deep. He wasn’t all the way at the bottom as his arm was dangling over the side of the bars.
Gordon then realized the bars of the cell and door had wedged almost level in the uneven sinkhole well above the bottom. He felt lucky to be on the right side of them. He arched his back, lifting the weight of the office chair off him, it shifted and fell off into the hole.
It took a long few seconds to hit the bottom with an echoed splash. Gordon gasped.

He sat up, keeping movements to a minimum for fear of dislodging the bars.

“Help,” he called upward and then clenched his chest – it hurt to yell. He must have bruised or broken a few ribs when he landed.

He saw the small desk on its side next to him. He looked up and saw only a wall and ceiling. He estimated to be about twenty feet up.

“Tuck,” he said, seeing that the better part of his cellmate’s floor was gone.

He questioned aloud, “Are you down here too?”

He slowly peeked around the desk and saw a crumpled heap of something.

“Tuck?”

With no answer, he reached over as far as he could without shifting his weight and tugged at what felt like a sheet. It gave resistance, and Gordon didn’t want to tempt fate by jerking too hard. If, in fact, that is Tuck, he was certainly not going to endanger them both with a precarious weight shift.

He was insanely thirsty and wondered how long he had been down here. He spotted water dripping down, presumably from plumbing, and he wanted to cup a handful to drink, except he couldn’t tell if the water was draining from a toilet pipe up there. He whispered, “I’ve fallen into hell.”

He slowly reached over to the desk and opened the file drawer, it slid out sideways fluidly, and a handful of paper clips fell tinkling through the bars and into the void. It held nothing more than some file folders crammed with papers corded with oversized rubber bands.
He gathered a couple of the rubber bands and a folder full of papers fluttered down into the hole like gulls circling for discarded food.
He thought he could maybe use the rubber bands to somehow MacGyver a means of escape. Gordon gave a weary snicker at the thought.

He eased open the shallow storage drawer. More paper clips and some pencils tumbled out. He stretched his hand as far inside the drawer as he could without letting its contents dump. His fingers touched a cylindrical shape he figured to be a flashlight. He meticulously eased it into his grasp and pulled it out.
He pushed the rubber-coated button, and a bright shaft of light spotlighted the other side of the hole. He then shone it downward and saw the bottom of the hole, it looked to be another thirty feet down from what he could tell.
Papers floated on its dark, glimmering surface with no sign of the swivel chair.

“I don’t even want to know how deep that water is.”

Gordon then heard a loud creaking from above. He thought he saw the hanging masonry wall moving.

“That whole ceiling is coming down!” He breathed heavily as reality set in.
“I shouldn’t even be here, I’m innocent!” He yelled and grabbed at his ribs, wincing from the pain.

“Tuck!” He aimed the flashlight beam at the crumpled heap he thought to be his cellmate – it was only his bunk mattress accordioned on its end.

“Well, Tuck, I guess you’re one lucky son of a bitch…or maybe not,” he looked below and sighed.

“This curse will be the death of me. Why would they even try to save a ‘murderer’? They probably think this is karma!”

He wedged the flashlight handle between his legs and put his hands back in the top drawer on the desk. “C’mon, some food would be nice. You cops are always pigging out on something”.

Several bite-sized Butterfingers dropped before he could snatch them from the long fall. “Damn!” He felt around more and touched a bag. He eased out the rest of the pack of Butterfingers.

“Yes!”

He was careful to unwrap one and shoved it in his mouth, savoring the sugary flavor.
To better rip open another one, he placed the flashlight on his lap, inadvertently illuminating a part of the dirt wall nearly directly across from him. He saw something strange.

***

Karen came to a screeching stop, parking her white BMW in the lot across from the county lockup. Her black hair bounced as she climbed the stairs and entered. Soon, she found Sheriff Miller in his office with the door open.

“Sheriff, I saw you on the news saying you’re not going to even attempt to rescue my client! That’s bullshit!” Her wide eyes narrowed. “You’ll just let him die like that?”

Miller threw up a defensive hand. “Hold on, Ms. Cruz. That building isn’t even safe enough for our men to enter, let alone attempt to rescue Mr. Gipson. Truth be told – he probably didn’t survive anyway. From what I witnessed, that building is nearly hollowed out from that sink hole, the whole goddamn place is gonna fold like a house of cards!” His face contorted as he peered somewhere off behind her.

“Well, isn’t this just convenient? How about someone grow some balls around here and at least try. He’s not worth it in your eyes, that’s my guess! I guarantee if it was you down in that hellhole, an attempt would be made.” Karen glared in disgust.

“That’s not fair, Ms. Cruz, we did attempt a rescue when we saved the other prisoner. We tried to communicate with Gipson but got no response. Please understand we can’t risk anyone else succumbing to what is just an awful accident. I’m sorry,” he said sincerely.

Karen’s lip quivered. “Will you please at least continue to investigate this murder; I have reason to believe my client wasn’t responsible. It’s the least you can do…for Monica Gipson if for no other reason.”

“I assure you we will.” He nodded.

“Thank You. You of all people should know, sometimes a man can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Goodbye, sheriff.”

Karen walked out with heels clacking on the wooden floor. Sheriff Miller stared at his hat on the coat rack, listening to her purposeful strut.
He stroked his greying mustache with a thumb and forefinger, having to admit that this case was a little too open and shut for his liking.

Gordon Gipson seemed truly broken by this, with real tears. Despite the notoriety of his siblings, he hadn’t been in any kind of trouble prior to this, not even a misdemeanor. So, how could this loving husband slash up his wife and then casually waltz out of his house like he was off to the county fair? It hasn’t added up. He needed to check out the video again. There must be something more to it.

***

Gordon’s flashlight lit the area on the opposite side of the sinkhole. It looked like an opening. The light penetrated it, and he could see it had depth. Was it a tunnel? He remembered the stories in high school about Savannah having these tunnels under the city, supposedly for crooked innkeepers in the 18th century. They would get paid by pirates that frequented here to help smuggle drunken patrons out to their ships on the river. Kidnapping them into forced labor out on the high seas.

He wondered if he could get over there somehow. The prospect of making it out to the Savannah River was intriguing, but what if it was just a muddy dead end? He thought he would have a better chance staying put. He then heard a thundering noise from above. He saw what he thought was the ceiling cracking. Plaster bits rained down with poofs of dust trailing. Gordon knew he had to act quickly. He would try anything to fight this dismal fate.

The tunnel was probably in the direction of the river, in his estimation. He tried to remember how mountain climbers scaled cliff walls from those cable TV shows he’d watched. He needed a rope, the sheet would suffice if torn into strips and tied together, but there was no rock face to drive any makeshift anchor into, only a crumbling dirt wall.

He heard twisting and snapping above, and more chunks of material rocketed downward close to him. He reached over for the sheet and yanked at it until it was freed. Maybe his only chance would be to tie one of the cinder block pieces to a sheet rope and throw it into the tunnel, hoping that it embeds in the dirt deep enough to support his body weight. The popping noise he heard next really frightened him.

A cluster of cinder blocks crashed onto the desk next to him with a ringing clang. The blow toppled the desk over the bars and into the abyss below. He juggled the flashlight from the shockwave, almost losing it. It then occurred to him he may just be out of time for any kind of rope making.

More cinderblocks and chunks hit like a mortar blast, knocking him backward onto the crumpled mattress. He sat there stunned. The raining debris pelted the bars, and they shifted to slant downward. Gordon positioned his feet in the bars like ladder rungs. He heard a deep crumbling above him.

He broke down, “Monica, honey, I’m coming soon.”

He peered over at the tunnel’s opening and thought he saw her standing there. She smiled at him and then shook her head.

Out of nowhere, he then had the clearest thought he’d had for a long time – If this tunnel didn’t end here, it would have another opening opposite to the one he couldn’t get to.

He turned his flashlight to the area to his left and pulled back the mattress to reveal the other opening to the tunnel.

He scurried inside to barely escape a car-sized section of masonry wall, bashing his cell door perch with an echoing boom.
Gipson lay there huffing with his face in the moist dirt. That really put the hurt on his already aching ribs, but he was still in one piece.
He got upright quickly, thinking he had better move on as the tunnel could collapse too if the sinkhole expanded.

***

Sheriff Miller noticed something on the surveillance video. It showed Gordon pulling the door closed and stepping down the stairs of the porch. There was a slight movement in the picture window drapes. It appeared to be a hand opening them. He watched it a couple more times and asked his deputy to take a look.

Deputy Faris said, “Well, it’s a hard angle, but it looks like what my dog does when I leave for work. He climbs on the back of the sofa and sticks his face in the curtain to watch me drive away every morning.”

“Well, I’ll be – that’s Gipson’s dog! That’s his muzzle. He was still there when Gordon left that night, so where the hell is he now?”

“Does that change something, Sheriff?”

“Well, I’m not sure, but maybe.”

“I wonder how we missed that,” Faris thought aloud.

Sheriff Miller rubbed his brow and said, “Simple, we only saw what we wanted to see.”

Faris said, “Well then, if we keep rolling the video, we should see what happens to the dog, right?”

“We all watched the video until the end, and no one else entered the house,” Miller said while wondering. “We didn’t catch the dog footage until now, so maybe there is more to it.”

They both watched for several more minutes.

Faris pointed, saying, “There, look!”

“What is it?” They backed up the footage, and Miller spotted it.

The screen blinked, and the time stamp at the top corner jumped from 1:23:16 a.m. to 1:52:12 a.m.

“Twenty-nine minutes gone,” Faris said.

“I’ll be darned…I think we’ve been had! Faris, see if you can find out who handled this video other than the Gipson’s neighbor.” Miller felt an ache welling up in his gut.

***

Gordon saw the end of the tunnel when shining the flashlight beam at an old piece of plywood with a red spray-painted target. He lay on his back, kicking at the plywood barrier. The top splintered and crashed against something on the opposite side, exposing white light at the slight opening. He kicked again, slamming his heels full on into the bottom of the plywood. The piece bulged out as it ripped from its screws and fell to the floor. He saw a wire shelf and pushed it enough to climb out of the tunnel. It took a moment for his pupils to adjust to the fluorescent tube light above a corner sink. He scurried over to it and turned on the water, placing his mouth over the faucet. He drank the cold flow like his gut was on fire.

He washed his dirty hands and then splashed water onto his face. Surveying the room, he figured it was the basement of a restaurant with its stainless-steel pots resting on some other wire shelves.

He then noticed the huge crack in the foundation wall where he emerged from the tunnel. He immediately looked for stairs, hoping to avoid another fall into an underground realm. Gordon made his way quietly up the stairs to the ground floor, not knowing if he was alone. He recognized the place as one he’d dined at before, a cafe known as The Goldeneye.
Not a soul was in the dark interior. It was late evening as far as he could tell. He couldn’t see much through the big picture windows, only the duck-shaped sign with a distant streetlight over outlined buildings.

He pondered that surely everyone thought he was a dead man, because no one even came looking for him, or even if they had, he was probably unconscious. He did not know how long it had been since he had fallen.
His ribs still ached, but his head felt better, and clearer thoughts presented him with a dilemma; resurfacing probably means going back into custody for a murder he didn’t commit. Maybe he should continue to be dead to the world and start a new life as someone else. Maybe he’d use the name ‘Jesse’.

It dawned on him that this ordeal was not part of the curse, but a disguised blessing. God’s justice. The path was clear.

Gordon went back downstairs and cleaned up his muddy shoe prints. He peeled off his prison-issue clothes and threw them back into the basement tunnel. He secured the plywood back into its place and slid the wire rack against it.

He roamed the diner with his flashlight until he found a box in the coat room that read: ‘Lost and found’ in thick black marker. Inside were ball caps and single gloves, mostly. He dug to find a pair of black athletic shorts that looked like they would fit and a red XL-sized t-shirt that had the Georgia Bulldog logo on it. It would have to do. He would top off the ensemble with a well-worn trucker cap. He was ready to disappear.

He cleaned himself up the best he could and washed the mud off his canvas shoes. He waited in the men’s restroom until daylight so he wouldn’t trip any alarms to get out. He soon found no one had come for breakfast. No staff or customers. When he peeked out, he then saw the condemned sign on the front glass door and yellow police tape in the parking lot. The sinkhole was spreading to adjacent properties. He unlocked the back door and snuck down the alley and into the morning rush of the city.

***

Deputy Faris popped his head into Sheriff Miller’s office. “Hey, I have an answer for you.”

“The video,” he asked.

“Yes. A handful of people viewed this tape, including the prosecutor’s office, and members of the state police; none watched it alone before it went to evidence lock-up. Ms. Cruz was given a copy, not the original. That leaves the neighbor, Dan Cagel. He had to have edited the video.”

“I bet I can guess why,” Sheriff Miller concluded. “C’mon, Faris, let’s go for a ride to Cagel’s place.”

The two men climbed into the brown cruiser and soon were at Dan Cagel’s home, next to the boarded-up Gipson house. They knocked at the door of the modest ranch-style house. A burly man with scraggly hair and goatee answered.

“Well, it’s the county boys! C’mon in,” he said, enthused.

“Thanks, Mr. Cagel, we just have a few questions concerning the Gipson case,” Miller said.

“Okay, I guess it’s a shame what happened to Gordon, but he got buried like his wife. Serves him right, I say. Good thing I got him red-handed on video, because that don’t lie, now does it, sheriff?” Cagel wore a satisfying grin.

“Funny you should say that. There appears to have been some doctoring to that video. There’s a time gap in recording; can you explain that,” Faris probed.

Cagel looked up at him with worrisome eyes. He appeared to break into a sweat. He swung his gaze to the sheriff with mouth agape.

“Um…well the, uh…the power coulda flickered a time or two ‘cause it was raining that night, and…and that coulda seemed like doctorin’, but I assure you, I didn’t do anything, ‘cept catch a killer for you boys.”

Miller looked at Faris, and they shared a silent moment. “What happened to the Gipson’s dog,” Miller asked sternly.

“I… I dunno…maybe it got killed too, who knows,” he said, mocking a throat cut motion with a thick finger.

Miller’s brow rose, and Faris moved a hand to his hip near his firearm. Cagel’s face became the shade of a kidney bean.

“You know what, sheriff, I think I’m gonna have to have my lawyer come over before I answer anything else. I’m gonna ask you to leave now…please.” Cagel subtly shook, pointing at the door.

As Miller followed Faris out to the porch, he turned to glare at Cagel through the torn screen.

“We’ll see you soon.”

As they walked out to the driveway, Miller told his deputy, “We’ll see what we can dig up with a search warrant.”

***

On Sunday, around 10:00 a.m., Karen typed file notes on her laptop detailing the new lead on the Gipson investigation.
As she stopped to sip her steaming coffee, the mid-morning sun lay a stripe of light across her bare legs from the kitchen window. That warmth inspired thoughts of driving out to the ocean today to breathe the salty air. She lazily traced the stylized K on her mug with a finger. Her thoughts and sadness about Gordon made her feel unprofessional, but she did her best to control them. Her crush on him was long ago; she needed to tuck it away into memory again.
She dressed in a white swimsuit and then pulled on a tattered pair of jean shorts over it.

Karen drove out to the Tybee Island beach and parked near the two-toned lighthouse with her windows down. She gazed out at the sunbathers with colorful umbrellas and the choppy ocean behind them. She tried to let a calm wash over her like the surf on the smooth sand. As a stiff breeze blew strands of hair in her face, she noticed a fluttering piece of paper pinched between her windshield and wiper. Karen walked around to the car’s passenger side and plucked the paper, unfolding it. She read the handwritten note:
‘He who longs to find his way is more so lost when other hands are swift to cut his path. Into the sun, blind as he too, must look to the periphery and not lose sight.’

Karen dabbed her thumb and finger to the corners of her tearing eyes.

“Someday,” she said, nodding.

She smiled, lifting her hand in the air to let a gust of wind take the note. She watched it swirl upward and fly out to sea like an albatross.