Favorite Sons (25 page)

In the twenty years since that modest beginning, The Judith Norris Investigative Agency had grown to fifteen full-time employees and a statewide reputation for business merger and acquisition due diligence. Corporations hired her to investigate other companies before a merger or acquisition, making sure there were no major obstacles to the plan, such as pending lawsuits, cooked financial records, or that the headquarters of the company to be acquired wasn't built over an abandoned nuclear waste dump. Judy now shunned government work and the mundane investigations that got her started, unless it was me asking. While she disdained criminal investigations, she also knew that I never questioned an invoice and she never had to hound the county to get paid.

When I walked into her office, she was standing at the copy machine. She smiled and said, “Oh, I was just thinking about you. I was going to call you this afternoon and see if you wanted to get coffee.”

“You say that every time you see me, but my phone has yet to ring,” I said.

“I know. It's very disingenuous, too. I promise to be much more sincere if you get elected attorney general.” She smiled and laughed, waving the papers in her hands toward her office. “Come on back. How's the campaign?”

“Good, if you believe the polls. I'm up by eighteen points.”

“That's huge. You've got my vote.”

“That may be the one that puts me over the top.”

“I hope so—then you'll owe me. Want some coffee?”

“I'm good.”

She pulled the door shut behind us. “Your eyes are all bloodshot.”

“Thanks for noticing. It was a rough night.”

She grinned. “So, what's up?”

“I've got a mission for you, but you can't farm it out to one of the twentysomethings out there. I need you on this.”

“God. I'm swamped right now.”

“I'll make it worth your while.” I pulled the print of Jack Vukovich's mug shot from my briefcase and pushed it across the desk. “This is Jack C. Vukovich. Ex-con, did thirty years for murder and rape, likes mentally retarded teenage boys.”

“Nice guy.”

“Unfortunately, he's currently my headache. He's living in Portage Township and under investigation for a sexual assault on another kid, mentally retarded and non-communicative.”

She nodded, jotting down notes in a yellow legal pad. “Do you have witnesses you want me to interview?”

I pulled the rap sheet from the briefcase and handed it to her. “No. I want you to find out where he's getting his money.”

Frown lines stretched across her forehead. “What's that got to do with the sexual assault?”

“Absolutely nothing. That's why I want you on this. I don't want anyone else knowing what I'm looking for. This guy doesn't work, has no visible means of support, but he's driving around in a late-model Saab, living in a house out on Thimble Lakes, and unless I miss my guess he's got a hefty alcohol bill. I want to know how much he's spending every month and see if you can locate the source of his income.”

She scanned over the rap sheet. “His DOB and social are here. Shouldn't be a problem.”

“He's dangerous. Be careful.”

She waved me off and rolled her eyes. “Please. I've been doing this for a while. Who do I invoice?”

She was a businesswoman at heart. “I don't know yet.”

If we filed charges against Jack Vukovich, I would pay for it out of prosecutor funds. If we didn't, I would justify it as a campaign expense and pay for it out of my war chest. I was dancing on the ridgeline of ethics, but that was the least of my concerns.

“When do you need it?”

“Yesterday.”

“Of course you do.”

“Don't send anything to the office. Give me a call on my cell and let me know what you find.”

I
had a dream about Petey Sanchez the summer after he was killed. It occurred on a steamy July night when I was tossing in my sleep, drifting in and out, trying to get comfortable in a house without air-conditioning and a bed that was soaked with my own sweat. I dreamed that I was sitting on the side of my bed, the light of a full moon and a warm breeze filtering through the curtains, floating them into the room and exposing the West Virginia hills and a shimmering river.

Like the escaping light of a receding eclipse, the moonlight rolled across the room and lit up the side of Petey's face. He was sitting at my desk chair, impassive, unblinking, wearing the same clothes in which he had died, though they were neat and clean. His hair was combed and face scrubbed, without the little stubble that always dotted his chin, and there was a calmness in his eyes that I had never seen in life. The light exposed the crater in his forehead and the streaks of dried blood that ran down the side of his face and disappeared into the collar of his shirt. Although he appeared clean, Petey still smelled strongly of urine and dirt. We stared at each other for a few minutes before I asked, “What are you doing here, Petey?” He didn't respond. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

He slowly shook his head. “Nothing.” In death, his voice was clear and soft, perhaps the tenor he would have possessed had his temples not been crushed by the doctor's forceps.

“If you don't want anything, why are you in my bedroom?”

He waited a moment before speaking. “I wanted you to know that I'm still around. I'm still here.”

“What do you mean?”

There was, perhaps, a slight shrug of his shoulders. “That's all. You can't see me all the time, but I'm still here. I'm never leaving.” “Don't you want to go to heaven?”

“I like it here.”

I kept expecting him to tell me to do the right thing, to tell the truth, go to the police and turn in Adrian Nash, but he didn't. I thought it was the spirit of Petey Sanchez communicating through my subconscious, prodding me to tell someone what really had occurred, but there was no such message. I said, “I don't want you in my room, Petey. You need to leave.”

He began repeating, “I'm never going. I'm never going. I'm never going.” With each repetition his voice climbed higher, and soon the old Petey began to emerge; his eyes turned wild and the squawking, barking voice returned. “I'm never going,” he screamed, rising out of the chair and sending it backward into the desk, the skin stretching taut across his twisted face.

I awoke with a jerk, sucking for air and afraid to look at the desk chair for fear it might actually be occupied by the ghost of Petey Sanchez. Sweat collected in the crease of my neck before releasing streams of warm rivulets down my chest. Imagined or otherwise, the smell of urine and dirt was heavy in my nostrils. I turned my pillow over, trying to find a cool, dry spot to rest my head, and rolled on to my side, my moist back facing the chair. It was a long time before I drifted back to sleep. My brain would not shut down, fearful that Petey had taken up permanent residence in my subconscious.

The dream had been so real, so vivid, that for weeks afterward I hated going into my room at night, and I continued to hear his voice in my head. “I'm never going. I'm never going. I'm never going.” I didn't understand the message and wanted to ask Adrian, Pepper, and Deak if any of them had experienced a similar dream. If they had, perhaps it was Petey trying to contact us from the spirit world. Ultimately, I never said anything to anyone, but too, I was never convinced that Petey Sanchez had left Crystalton.

I recalled the dream just before dusk as I pointed the Pacifica east on Route 250, cruising along the north shore of Tappan Lake, the large, man-made reservoir that stretches for miles though Harrison County, Ohio. Bass fishermen stood in their boats near the shoreline, sending lures into the reeds and lily pads as the last rays of sun painted the lake with a million diamonds. There were times when I longed for such a simple life.

Soon, I would snake through Hopedale and Smithfield and begin the descent out of the foothills and into the Ohio River Valley and the town in which I had grown up. West of Crystalton on New Alexandria Pike, I would round Tarr's Hill and head into the tunnel of maples and oaks that formed a hundred-yard-long natural tunnel over the two-lane asphalt road. Just beyond the tunnel was a nameless hill that cut off moonlight, and on nights when the foliage was on the trees it was like driving into a giant cave. When the leaves were gone, the naked limbs reached over the road like so many bony fingers.

The tunnel is less than a half-mile from where Petey Sanchez dropped. When I was in high school and dating Veronica Strausbaugh from Smithfield, I had to drive through the tunnel on my way home. After the dream that Petey had invaded my bedroom, my imagination assured me that he was still lurking in the area, and what better place for a ghost to hover than the tunnel? On moonlit nights I would round Tarr's Hill to see the pale yellow cast lighting up the approach to the cave; chills percolated in my ribs and spine as my headlights bore in on the darkness. I would turn my rearview mirror upward so that I would not look and see the reflection of Petey Sanchez sitting in the back seat. My eyes focused on the asphalt ahead, fearful that lifting them would reveal Petey Sanchez standing alongside the road.

As I drove back to Crystalton that evening, I no longer feared the ghost of Petey Sanchez. After more than three decades, I had grown somewhat immune to his hauntings. Still, I got goose bumps at the sight of the tunnel and the memory of long-past fears. I drove into the north end of town, where New Alexandria Pike pulls hard to the right, emptying onto High Street, and a part of me lamented the years away. I was sure that beyond the darkness, Crystalton was badly
showing its age, and the little town of my youth had disappeared. The years since I had left had not been kind to the entire Upper Ohio River Valley, and like the other towns that lined the river, Crystalton was sagging under its own weight. The steel mills were dying a slow death, employing a small fraction of the people they had twenty years earlier, coal mines had closed, and the domino effect pounded the railroads and suppliers up and down the river.

Although I had left Crystalton at the first opportunity, I must admit that in the years since, I never felt as though I knew and understood my place in the world as when I lived there. I was Miriam's son and a varsity letterman for the Crystalton Royals. In my world, that was sufficient. Crystalton had been the cocoon that shielded me from the harsh realities of the outside world, and with one stark exception, my memories were grand. But as an adult, I avoided returning. No class reunions, no homecomings, no firemen's festival. I treated my hometown like poison ivy. I felt that by going back, I was somehow tempting fate. It was like walking along the edge of a cliff and hoping that a gust of wind didn't come along. Petey, as he had said in my dream, was still there.

I loved the memories that Crystalton provided, but I had virtually abandoned my relationships with its people, even those who had once been my closest friends. My years in Crystalton seemed like a slice from another lifetime.

I had made an occasional holiday visit to see Mom, though I was always in and out on the same day. My last trip to Crystalton had been ten years earlier when I went down to help her close up the house and move to Florida. She and Walter Deshay had moved to Apalachee Bay and opened a charter boat deep-sea fishing business. They had never married, though their relationship had progressed quite a bit from my mother's previous contention of simply “seeing each other.” I went down to Florida at least once a year to visit and I would usually find them at work on the deck, tanned, gray-haired, and spry. In Walter, Mom had found someone she could rely on; he had become the focal point of her life.

The summer before my senior year in college, two Steubenville police officers broke into my brother's apartment when neighbors
complained of the emanating stench. Steven had been dead at least a week. Drug paraphernalia was scattered on the coffee table next to his body and his death was ruled an accidental overdose. I took the urn containing his ashes from Mom's closet shelf and boxed it up for her move to Florida.

I had seen my sister only once in thirty years. The last I knew, Virginia Sue was living in a trailer park outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, with Lou and a grandson she was raising for a daughter who was doing seven to twelve in the Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center on a methamphetamine rap. I was in Las Vegas for a prosecuting attorney conference and went out to visit her. She had grown quite round—a bowling-ball figure that pressed against a dirty pink housecoat and was supported by spindly legs that were eaten up with twisted cords of purple varicose veins. Her flabby tits hung to her waist and her breath had the stale odor of yesterday's beer. Virginia Sue's hair was oily and her teeth were rotten, and I suspected that the daughter wasn't the only one with a meth habit. Virginia complained about Lou, who was working as a janitor in a hospital, and talked constantly about her dire financial situation. She chain-smoked and had a voice like a transmission straining to find a gear. I gave her a hundred dollars and was glad to be gone.

A few years earlier I'd received a call from the Brooke County, West Virginia, prosecutor, who was working on an extradition case concerning an inmate in our jail. We were chatting a bit and I asked him if he knew of David Van Buren.

“You mean Mugs Van Buren?”

I recalled that “Mugs” was my father's nickname. “I think that's his nickname.”

“Yeah, I know him; he's the town drunk. What a pathetic character. I'll bet he's been in my drunk tank a hundred times.” He paused, realizing after the words were out of his mouth that we shared a last name. “He's not related to you, is he?”

“Distantly. He's a cousin a couple of times removed. I knew he was living in Wellsburg a while back, but I had lost touch with him.”

“I wouldn't go out of my way to get in touch with him. He's trouble.”