WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (141 - 145)

141

It was dark. Maybe in a park, I couldn’t really tell. A young girl in a short skirt walked up to a lump of something on the ground and stopped.

Whoever was operating the camera began speaking to someone. “Check it out! She’s standing right over him.” There was some off-camera snickering by at least two people as the girl poked the lump with the toe of her shoe. The lump on the ground moved. It was a man, a homeless guy, by all appearances.

“You believe this? She’s letting him look right up her skirt!” The snickers gave way to laughter.

The homeless man sat up, engaged the girl in conversation. She turned and walked—sashayed, really—toward the camera. As she got close, in better light under a streetlamp, I recognized her immediately. She came close to the camera and spoke directly into it. “He said okay,” she tossed her head back, laughing hysterically. “He said he’ll do it.”

“All right!” one of the off-camera voices said.

“I can’t believe she actually did that!” another voice said.

As I watched the next segment. Two homeless men fighting. One of them, I recognized as the man I’d found on Lanter Construction’s property. And I also recognized the music coming from the party van’s sound system as what I’d heard my last night on the job, not long before I’d found the intruder and called 911.

The video was sickening. The brutality. The lack of respect for fellow human beings. The fight’s tragic end. The chase through the pasture.

At some point during the chase, the camera was dropped. It continued to record, lying sideways. Flashes of lightning showing what happened. Shelby screaming, “Jimmy, No!”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and held it, then slowly exhaled. I paused the video and got up from the chair. I stood there, staring at the computer. I picked up my pen and notepad and left my cabin. I needed to get some fresh air.

142

Jared Mulligan

At sea—Fiji to Sydney

I had an idea, and not much more: Write a story about a guy, a pilot, who finds a runaway harem girl on his airplane. I liked the premise. It was something that I would enjoy reading. But, how was I going to write it? It was overwhelming. I had an outline, and I’d written a few pages. Since then, nothing. I just couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t put my past behind me.

The girl in the video was Shelby Meyers. The sheriff’s niece. And, I confess much too late, my daughter. Conceived sixteen years ago in room 4 of the Lakeside Resort.

Shelby’s mother, April, and I never were involved in a full-fledged affair. More like an ongoing attraction that led to a few clandestine rendezvouses.

She worked the desk of the parts department at the local Chevrolet dealership, and I’d become acquainted with her whenever I brought my vehicles in for service.

Then, one day, she saw me at the local airport. I was still flying for Polaris Air at the time, and on days off I would take my seaplane—a Cessna 206 with amphibious pontoons that would allow landing on either water or dry land—up for fun. Not many places where you are allowed to land a seaplane in Indiana, but there were a few lakes around where nobody complained. I’d kept it, always thinking that someday I might end up in Florida, where I could go just about anywhere with it.

April was taking lessons. We chatted. I stuck around to watch her make her first solo. Watched as they cut her shirt tail and pinned to the next to the map on the wall in the office of Chandelle Aviation, our local fixed base operator. Then, following tradition, April bought Cokes for everyone.

She asked if I would take her up in my seaplane sometime and I agreed. We flew together maybe half a dozen times. I was attracted to her but had no illusions. April was not yet thirty. I was in my mid-forties, married, with two kids. I’m not a troll, but I’ve never been a ladies’ man. A young blonde with a smoking hot body, she could do a lot better.

She was recently divorced, thinking that it was time to make a career change. She’d just given her two weeks’ notice to the Chevy dealer and would be starting a new job at the airport, working the FBO counter at first, with a goal of getting her pilot certificates and eventually flying for a living.

April asked me to be a mentor, and again, I agreed. It was perhaps the biggest mistake she ever made, bringing me into her life.

Like I said, I never was a ladies man. That’s probably why it didn’t occur to me to find someplace more romantic, some place with a bit more class than the Lakeside Motel. But April never complained.

I wanted it to continue, and I think she did, too, but the guilt I felt would not allow it. Not only the guilt of cheating on Dianna, even though we were going through a rough patch and separated at the time and I didn’t think we would get back together. There was also the guilt I felt for taking advantage of someone who looked up to me.

April never did become a pilot. What she became was pregnant. I offered to leave my wife to be with her and the baby, but she said no. She said that it was up to me whether or not to stay with Dianna, but she did not want another husband or a live-in. She and the baby would be just fine.

There was no bitterness. It is not April’s nature to be bitter. She is one of those people who accepts life as it comes and deals with it.

I sent her some money at first, without Dianna knowing it. I’d fly a couple extra trips every month, make enough to send some to April. Dianna never knew that we were paid per diem for our trips with a separate check, so most of that went to the care and feeding of the baby. I was sneaky about it. Opened a separate checking account with a bank in New Castle. That way, Dianna never missed the money.  And she never knew about Shelby.

143

I got to hold the baby once. Once. April had married a high school math teacher. She was still working at the airport at the time, and for whatever reason, had brought the baby to work with her that day. I came into the office to pay for the gas I’d pumped into my Cessna, and there she was. April saw the longing in my eyes, took the child out of her carrier, and handed her to me.

April asked me to stop sending the checks. “But, I want to help,” I said. “It’s my responsibility.”

“We’ll be fine, Ty,” she said. “Raymond loves Shelby like she’s his own. If you really want to help, please, let it go.”

“What? I don’t have any rights?” I protested. “I am her father.”

“Maybe,” April said. “Then again, maybe not. At any rate, the birth certificate says father unknown.”

That set me back, the thought that someone else might have been involved with April the same time as me. Was April just saying that to get me to back off? The only way to know was to do a paternity test, and I wasn’t going to push for that.

From then on, the only times I saw Shelby were from a distance. Sitting in my car, watching her play in the park. Sitting in the back row at her kindergarten graduation. Blending in with the congregation at her church to watch her sing with her Sunday School class on Easter and Christmas. Shelby had no idea who I was, or that I even existed, as far as I knew.

The van was badly mangled, unmistakable. Royal blue party vans with blaze orange striping are not a common sight in a town the size of Page. It was the same one in the photograph from the crash on Dead Man’s Curve, where the four kids had been killed.

I recognized a couple of the faces. The Coffey boy, who would have played for IU, and Tina Gibson. Rocky had babysat Tina years ago. She was a sweet little girl back then. Hard to imagine her growing up to become involved in something like I was watching on the video. Tina was Wade and Cindy Gibson’s only child.

144

Jared Mulligan

As I said before, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, so I was only now starting to put it all together. Starting with the known, I worked my way toward the unknown.

1 – I knew that some kids had made a video of a bum fight.

2 – I knew that the man I had seen on Lanter Construction property, all swollen, bloody and filthy, bore a strong resemblance to one of the bums.

3 – I recognized the van in the picture of the wreck as the same one that was in the video. It stood to reason that the kids in the video were the same ones killed in the crash.

4 – The girl in the video was Shelby Meyers. Sheriff Bridges’ niece. My daughter. She had not been in the van when it crashed.

5 – The sheriff was very concerned that no one had viewed the video.

6 – Someone had tried to kill me. I had managed to turn the tables, and killed him.

7 – The sheriff had in the past shot and killed one suspect for trying to escape, and another for trying to take his duty weapon. That I knew of.

8 – The sheriff had taken me to a remote location to murder and bury me.

9 – I had killed the sheriff, and there was no turning back.

From all this, I assumed that the sheriff had been protecting Shelby. I had found the video camera, and therefore had to be eliminated. Same for the kids in the van. He’d hired Mulligan to kill me. But, who killed the kids in the van? Or was that really just a random accident?

And it was really strange that there had been no mention of the death of the sheriff. Or that he was missing, although I could not believe no one had found his body yet.  Did I miss something?

I went online and checked the local news for Page County, and in minutes I found it.  I’d been expecting to see a major story, with big headlines. But the only mention of the sheriff was in an article I had overlooked:

        PCSD Vehicle Destroyed

A Page County Sheriff Department unmarked vehicle was totally destroyed last night when Sheriff Mike Bridges swerved to avoid hitting a deer. Sheriff Bridges was treated and released from Page Memorial Hospital after sustaining minor injuries. 

So, I had not killed the sheriff, after all. On the one hand I was relieved. One less murder charge hanging over me. On the other hand, this meant that Sheriff Bridges was still in office.

Sheriff Bridges being alive didn’t really change my situation all that much, other than he would be even more determined to have me killed now. What could I do?

145

Jasmine

Daniel Seton was roaming the ship, taking candid photographs of passengers as they splashed in the pool, relaxed in lounge chairs, or enjoyed the zip line nine decks above the Boardwalk.

“Hello,” Jasmine approached him, smiling. “I was wondering if you ever do any . . . personal photographs,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening, then whispered, “You know . . . intimate?”

Daniel Seton grinned. “That could be arranged.”

Jasmine moved closer to Seton, placed a hand on his arm, whispered her cabin number in his ear. He nodded. She walked away. He lingered maybe a minute, and then followed.