Time and Chance (45 page)

I was tempted to park
in Joe's slot but this wasn't the time.

I pulled behind Joe's
Chrysler, got out, and walked to the entrance. Joe's car still running, I went
inside.

Receptionist Marcie,
red eyed, sobbing, talked to a police officer.

Marcie saw me. “Jack,”
is all she could say.

“What's happening?” I
asked.

She wiped her eyes and
blew her nose and shook her head.

The officer looked at
me.

I said, “Hi,” flashed
my deputy badge, and before he could talk I was past him and down the hall
toward my former office.

The halls were
strangely eerie, empty actually.

I arrived my office.
Hadn't changed much.

Standing by the coffee
pot, Joy talked with Joe Galbo's secretary, P.J.

Joy saw me. Ashen, she
said, “Jack, oh Jack, my god.”

“What's going on?” I
said.

“Oh Jack, it's
terrible.”

More ashen than Joy,
P.J., shaking her head, left quickly.

“What's going on?” I
said.

Joy fumbled for words,
“It's Berry, he … the cleaning people … this morning … his office….”

Conjugating everything
imaginable, I smelled Sea Breeze.

“Ouch.” Sago stepped
beside me.

I said, “Sago, what's
up?”

Sago made a slashing
motion across his neck. “Sally's dead … throat slit.”

Stunned, returning to
the farm, hoping Joyce was there, I flipped WTNN-AM news on:

“… in the wee hours of this
morning, a T.B.I., F.B.I., and A.T.F. task force conducted a raid on a ranch
located thirty miles south of Nashville.

The ranch is owned by Nashville's
notorious Mike Snakebite Walker. A source said that a bunker-like cell in the
basement of the main house was a macabre scene out of hell. A young girl,
identified from the FBI national missing person's database was found in a
basement bunker. Authorities say she will need extensive mental rehabilitation …
Walker was arrested at his Nashville business, Felix The Cat, where he also
lives … in other news….”

I turned the radio off
and felt uniquely ashamed that I was a member of the human race.

EPILOGUE

April, nine months later

Jack’s Time

Married, moved to the
farm, winter over, spring rains ending, a Saturday morning, sitting on the
front porch swing, The Tennessean in my lap, I now realize we can’t understand
time and chance, any of it, where it all began, because our whole being is
clouded in beginnings and ends, that’s all we know. We’re born and die. Things
begin and end—a movie, lunch, sex, days, years, civilizations … the guys who
try to answer it all start at around chapter 10, with a one cell amoeba
something, comets carrying spores, hot mud lakes bubbling up life … they never
get to chapters 1 through 9, where did the one cells, mud lakes, comets come
from?

I heard Joyce in the
kitchen, banging pretty good, preparing breakfast. Yesterday she came home with
the
Book of Names for Boys
she had picked up at Wall Mart. She didn't
like any of them, was thinking Moses. Had a nice ring to it, Moses Carr. We
still had a few weeks to go.

I looked around. The
rising sun cast bright light on Joyce's vegetable garden where she had set out
fifty tomato plants and seeded twenty neat rows of lettuce, corn, and
sunflowers that would soon be popping through the soil.

We bought an upright
piano, own the farm, no rent and her favorite food, spaghetti, is cheap. So is
rigatoni, vermicelli, and ravioli, and her sauce is to die for. We aren't rich
but we are free and a fork is a fork … some call it fate, some luck.

I remember Sago's
words, “Kemosabe, did you plan this day?”

Thinking about that,
looking at the woods filled with Dogwood Blossoms, I still wonder about the
Legend of the Dogwood mystery Aunt Jane talked about—white blossoms, bloody
nail prints, crucifixion, the blossoms fragrance reminding that good things
come from suffering … still wonder why but….

Joyce, no chapters
left out, she had taken a desk job with the T.B.I., told me again, in more
detail, about the undercover sting—the infiltration, the raid, Snakebite,
Chuck, the Houston connection, the sex slave black market, body parts scheme.
Still can't believe any of it.

Snakebite, charged
with kidnapping, murder, trafficking in body parts, was in prison, no bail,
awaiting trial and, if he didn't die sooner from poor health or at a fellow
inmate’s hand, he would most certainly be put to death. All his properties had
been seized. Chuck, Snakebite's gateway to the world, so to speak, was in a
Texas jail. He'd never make it to trial. Several attempts had been made on his
life, one by a guard.

Sago visits now and
then, brings Whitney, I think they are going to get married but from what I can
surmise, Tony Longtoe has some reservations. Incidentally, Sago's S-Stuff
series won an Emmy. Joyce was the hero.

S&W Broadcasting
had named Big Joe President and General Manager of TV12. Bobbi Overmier was
promoted to VP of Finance. S&W news purists, Joe and I having struck a
truce, I am now VP of News and Public Affairs. It turns out, under the tough
guy facade, Big Joe, kidnapped by the green greed machine in his youth, was a
teddy bear. I discovered he even hated to step on ants. Maybe there was hope.

The call letters of
TV12, WBFN-TV, were changed to WSWN-TV and the police are still looking for the
perpetrator of Berry's murder.

In all this, I had distilled a thought: as evil and debased as Snakebite
was, it is the Berry Frazers of the world who are our worst enemy. Both he and
Snakebite a lie, Berry had the face of respectability.

Peggy Moore landed a new recording contract, had a song coming out, “We
Was Brung Up Poor, But We Wasn't Brung Up Dumb”. She had also swung a deal, got
Buddy One Shot (they are married now) and some people together and had bought
The Berry Inn. It's doing pretty good, I hear. She sings in the Peasant &
Grouse, now named Top of Nashville. She calls me now and then to see how the
marriage is going. I tell her a family is on the way.

As to Stella Pastorini, she hadn't, after the raid on Snakebite, as they
say in Tennessee, ‘been seen around these parts in a coon's age’.

I picked up The Tennessean and read a story at the bottom of the front
page:

New Evidence Sought in
Nashville Slaying

Nashville—Adele Frazer, wife of Nashville's former TV12 CEO, Berry
Frazer, hoping to settle estate matters, has had reopened an investigation into
the savage murder of husband Berry Frazer.

Sources close to the family say that a private investigating firm has
been retained to solve the lingering murder mystery of the notorious Nashville
broadcaster, which occurred over nine months ago. Suspicions in the bizarre and
twisted murder point to a reported gambling connection between Frazer and the
infamous Nashville flesh peddler and bookie Mike 'Snakebite' Walker.

Frazer’s throat slashed, a murder weapon never found, detectives
believe, from autopsy evidence, it was a razor sharp instrument. DNA and finger
print evidence were inconclusive. Sources added, teeth marks on Frazer's hands
have never been identified.

Joyce called, “Breakfast is ready.”

Real Time

Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, 5:00 A.M.,
Central Daylight Time (CDT)

The sedated young
female flown to Guadalajara, a doctor and her assistant received the donor.
Further sedated, the doctor removed the donor’s heart and placed it in a
container for delivery to a nearby waiting recipient. Other organs along with
corneas were salvaged. A kidney was appropriately stored for implant in a
computer mogul's son. The corneas were going to Miami. Total receipts,
$2,500,000. The eviscerated body was placed in a plastic bag for disposal.

The End

About the Author

G. L. Rockey has written three other works
of fiction: The Journalist (revised and re-released in paperback as Redacted), a
five star thriller with a "frightening ring of truth"; and a
collection of sixteen "off-the-wall" short stories, Bats In The
Belfry, Bells In The Attic. Truths of the Heart is G. L. Rockey's latest novel.
 
Also published is a non fiction book, From
The Back Of The House: Memories Of A Steak House Clan.
 

Also
published by Books We Love
Truths of the
Heart

Find out more at
www.glrockey.com

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