Birdsongs (6 page)

    Tilley was located in north Georgia, lakeside. It was close enough to the city of Atlanta to attend major sporting events, concerts, and to utilize the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, but far enough away to take deep breaths. Benny made a name for himself in the big cities of the country. Tilley was the pot of gold at the end of his escape route. He preferred to call it his getaway town. As much as he liked to imagine himself as retired, the town of Tilley helped him feel out of the game. The cases he worked were child’s play. He equated it to searching for stolen lunch money versus missing documents disappearing from fortune 500 companies, or a bully pulling at a ponytail versus decapitation. The suburban cities were growing out into Tilley and the big city problems would eventually become Tilley’s problems. Until now, Tilley was still a small town with small town problems. All was about to change and put Tilley on the map, as well as on Fox News and CNN.

Chapter 14

   Benny noticed the changes immediately as he turned down his street. His lawn, which earlier in the day resembled an unkempt cow pasture minus the patties looked manicured with the precision of a major league baseball grounds crew. The weeds that were attempting to infiltrate and overthrow the flowerbeds had obviously lost their conquest and were nowhere in view. A fresh layer of pine straw was nestled cautiously around the blooms, shrubbery, and island borders. The walkway and driveway were swept free of all debris. Red was on the roof, bending like a gymnast. He looked comfortable as a mountain goat on a slippery slope as he cleaned out the gutters.

    Red saw Benny pull into the driveway and magically descended the roof, meeting Benny as he exited the car. Red hung his head as if he had done something wrong and stood before Benny in a submissive pose.

    “My God, Red,” Benny said. “I think I’m at the wrong house.”

    “No,” Red said straight-faced. “This you house.”

    “It looks great,” Benny responded, still bemused by the new country club look his home on land extruded. “Where did you get the pine straw?”

    “Red scrape up in woods.”

    “How did you get on the roof?” Benny asked. “I don’t have a ladder.”

    “Red good to climb,” Red countered. Red once again bowed his head in surrender to Benny. “Red need talk with Bendy.”

    “OK,” Benny answered. “Let’s talk. Why don’t we go inside so you can get out of this heat.”

    Once inside, Red walked over to the coffee table and picked up Benny’s old FBI badge. Benny thought he had hid it well in one of the dresser drawers. He placed it in Benny’s hand. “Red find this when put up clothes. Bendy is police?” Red asked.

    Not knowing how to answer in a way Red would understand he simply said, “Yes.”

    “Red need help.”

    “OK,” Benny answered, extremely curious as to where this was going.

    Red handed him the newspaper clipping from his pocket without a word and he watched Benny’s expression evolve from curiosity to suspended disbelief. “What is this?” Benny said, thinking out loud. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

    “Red mama give to Red before dead. Under Red mama bed in box.”

    “Is this you?” Benny asked. “Are you William James Baker?”

    “Red not know - Who is Red?”

Chapter 15

   Benny grew up in a town smaller than Tilley. He hailed from Horse Knot, Alabama. Story has it the first settlers in the area found a gigantic tree that had a large protruding knot resembling a horse. The tree still stood just outside the main drag, surrounded by ancient, rusted chains attached to rotting posts. A time scarred plaque tells the story. Benny never told anyone, but he thought the knot looked like a sinking ship. He saw the bow of a steamer in the air with the stern dipping towards the bottom of the tree. The admission, as a native would be treason.

    Benny’s parents ran the general store, which long ago was run out of town by big business and the inevitable super centers. After the store shut down his mother cut hair in their kitchen to make a few bucks. She had a steady clientele and the money coming in was just enough for the couple to make ends meet. His father smoked cigarettes and tried his hand inventing things in the backyard shed. One afternoon while mixing some of the leftover cleaning powders from the general store with some of his own invented powders, he stumbled like a mad scientist upon a recipe that removed rust. He sold the recipe for 675,000 dollars and never entered the shed again. Benny’s mother never cut another head of hair. The two of them sat on the front porch of the same house, hardly spending any of the money, smoking cigarettes and drinking. On most days the pair started the festivities around ten a.m. and ended them around nine p.m. with a nightcap. They barely made it past Benny’s nineteenth birthday. They died two days apart from one another.

    The day after the double funeral, a lawyer contacted Benny and his only sibling Douglas to discuss the inheritance. Neither of the boys had any idea of their parents secret fortune because of the fact they had never mentioned it and their mother and father never bought anything of any great value. The boys just believed they made enough money from the General Store to survive their simple lifestyle. When they discovered they would each receive 225,000 dollars, they were completely dumbfounded. Douglas, being older and wiser, invested his money and started his own company. He always had an interest in flying and he acquired his pilot’s license, bought a small plane, and slowly built a profitable company jetting executive types to tropical vacation destinations. Benny on the other hand dropped out of college after his first year thinking the money would last forever. He traveled extensively all over the world, womanizing, living free, and learning life’s lessons the hard way. His wake up call came on the morning he read a bank statement detailing the fact he had 99,000 dollars left to his name. This meant he blew through 126,000 dollars with nothing to show for it but memories. The next flight he took was home as he realized he would need college after all to sustain his future. Benny received a degree in criminal justice and signed on with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accounting was his double major.

    With a knack for numbers he previously ignored during his playboy stint, he received assignment to investigate dealings with tax matters. After three years of dedication and solid work, he received a requested transfer to homicide where he thrived as a renowned crime-solving mastermind. He was a legend in Quantico, Virginia. He hesitantly resigned twenty years later after getting mixed up romantically with a young woman during an investigation that eventually found her guilty of murder.

    After two decades fighting crime and investments involving his remaining 99,000 dollars, Benny decided to call it quits. With his experience he could have easily signed on with just about any police department in the country as a detective or consultant. His pride squashed any future ambitions in the public realm. The job brought him many successes, times of sorrow, times of joy, death threats, and a life that literally consumed him with work. At the age of forty-four, he was retired and at forty-six and one-half years old, he created James Investigations out of boredom. Two years later, he found himself back on a government payroll investigating a possible serial killer in his getaway small town.

Chapter 16

   R.C. woke up to the sound of a banging headboard in the room beside his. He looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand unintentionally decorated with burns from forgotten cigarettes and it read 8:24 a.m. He thought it was awfully early for a romp, but decided he would make a ménage à trois of sorts out of the situation. He masturbated in rhythm with the pounding, and thanks to the paper-thin walls of the cheap lodging, he was stimulated by a woman’s voice, which clearly expressed her pleasure. He let his imagination do the rest and finished his business before the two probable cheaters reached exhaustion.

    As R.C. showered, he noticed more cigarette burns lining the tub. He hadn’t had his morning cigarette and he thought of tobacco and coffee as he washed his hair. Soaping up his arms, he studied the scar on his wrist. It was a self-inflicted wound he acquired during his first week in prison as a result of a failed suicide attempt. The day the letter he still held in his possession arrived, his anger and desperation erupted. He traded two packs of cigarettes for a shank and did the best he could with the blunt piece of metal to drain his blood. Above the scar on the innards of his forearm was the tattooed silhouette of a bird. After his recovery, he had another inmate give him this as a reminder that he was not his own enemy. His enemy was the author of the letter that sent him over the edge, Miles Davenport. R.C. determined after he finished dressing and fulfilling his need for coffee and a few smokes he would take a motorcycle ride into Atlanta and make a special purchase. The thought of his prospective purchase smothered his rage for the time being.

    As he exited the steamy closet of a bathroom and turned off the fan, which was ineffective in alleviating the clammy air, he couldn’t believe the headboard was still rocking. The clock now read 8:57 a.m. He heard about Viagra in prison and wondered if the drug was in use in the room next door.

    R.C. walked to the front desk and decided if someone compiled a list revealing the top ten worst cups of coffee and the places that served them, the Tuck ‘Em Inn lobby would be number one. He swore, but couldn’t prove it, that they used the same coffee grounds twice, changing them with new disgusting ones every other day. Every second day the deplorable brew was lighter and tasted like hot water and rust.

    As he entered the lobby the clerk said, “Sorry bud, I usually don’t put nobody beside or above our guests staying the whole week, but they requested that room. It’s their special room.”

    “It’s special all right,” R.C. commented unable to muster any jest.

    Some people called it mud, java, or Joe; R.C. affectionately called this coffee the brown drown. Compared to this liquid disaster, the coffee in the Fairbrook County Penitentiary tasted like Starbucks gold. R.C. sat on the curb with his Styrofoam cup, a cigarette, and his map. He feared his two naughty neighbors were still going at it and he didn’t want to hear any more debauchery at the moment. He was certain someone was going to be sore later in the day. The course R.C. set would next take him through the city of Roswell. Roswell, Georgia didn’t have an Area 51, but they did have aliens of a different variety. Once through Roswell it looked like he would have to throw some coinage in a tollbooth basket to continue on the most direct route. It appeared the silver would grant him entrance to the biggest and most friendly, it claimed, city in the south, Atlanta, Georgia.

    Once in the city R.C. parked the bike amidst some smushed fountain drink cups, forty-four ounces each, and started footing it through the tall buildings. He loved to walk. Wide-open spaces were still a novelty. Before long he found what he was looking for. His quest produced a sports store that engraved Louisville Sluggers. He bought a bat he thought was the perfect weight and gleefully stepped to the counter to request engraving.

    “That’s a nice bat,” the pimply geek said behind the counter.

    “Sure is,” R.C. smiled.

    “What do you want it to say sir?” The pimply geek’s voice cracked and he sprung a new zit as he uttered the words.

    “Make the letters real dark.”

    “OK” Pop. Pop. Pop. New zits formed on the boy.

    R.C. rubbed the tattoo of the bird through his shirt and the vein that ran through the bird’s neck raced and thrashed like a New Orleans’ tornado. He stood almost at attention and demanded, “Birdsongs!”

Chapter 17

   Red walked all the way around the house twice and back into the woods a fair distance. He just assumed they were somewhere nearby earlier; he could not find Benny’s crops. Red stirred at the ground with the tips of his fingers at first. After flirting with the surface, he dug in fingernails first and pulled a handful of dirt to his face for inspection. He transferred half of his dig to the other hand carefully studying its makeup. Following a quick sniff, Red flipped his hands over and brushed them off. It was good soil he thought. It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t bad.

    Red was miffed. The soil was decent, Benny had a big enough yard but there were no crops.
No wonder he doesn’t have any food
, Red thought. The pizza, wings, and submarine sandwich were delicious, but the trio made Red sick. His body was not used to being fed in such a way and his stomach revolted soon after Red completed what looked like an audition for a professional eating contest.

    When Benny passed by the house later in the day for a quick pop-in visit, he had to field some tough and pointed questions from Red.

    “Bendy,” Red began a bit upset. “Where chicken? Who corn? What the vegables?”

    “I don’t grow stuff Red. I don’t have time for that. If I was in charge of making stuff grow by watering and paying attention, we’d all be Ethiopian looking bastards.” Wanting to go on with a street corner preacher rant, Benny cut it short knowing Red was lost.

    “What do I do?” Red begged.

    “What do you do with what?”

    “My all day!” Red pleaded.

    “Oh,” Benny said with a sudden understanding of Red’s boredom. “I can get you some seeds, and you can plant a garden to take care of. Will that help? Do you want me to get you some seeds?”

    Reds eyes sparkled like a slot machine that had just emptied its bowels.

    “It comes with a cost,” Benny explained, not knowing what Red would and would not comprehend. “His name is Ned. He’s the only person I know with seeds and I don’t have time to go looking for other seed sources. “Let’s go inside and I’ll give Ned a call,” Benny said motioning to Red.

    Once inside Benny motioned again, this time for Red to sit on the couch. Jezebel gracefully vaulted onto the cushion next to Red and lightly tiptoed into his lap. Benny just shook his head with misunderstanding.