“What are you doing tomorrow?”
I looked down at the dashboard. “My mom’s gone, and she was the only family I had except my son. My ex-wife moved to Hawaii and took him with her a couple of weeks ago. Since my fiancée broke up with me, I guess I’ll be on my own. I know that sounds pitiful, but I’m okay about it. I’ll be fine.”
“Where are you staying, Darren?” she said.
“At the Days Inn at Exit 388. I’m looking for an apartment.”
“I can’t stand the thought of you being alone on Christmas,” she said. “My family always has a big meal together at lunchtime, but I can break free tomorrow around six. Would you like to have dinner together somewhere?”
“That would be nice,” I said.
“I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon. Merry Christmas, Darren.”
She got out of the car, and I watched her walk up the steps toward her apartment. The time we’d spent together made me want to spend more time with her, and I realized that probably wasn’t such a good thing. Still, there was chemistry there. A lot of chemistry. If she was a rat for the cops, she was damned good at it.
I drove slowly back to the motel. I’d bought a bottle of bourbon the day before, figuring I would be spending Christmas Eve alone. It was sitting on the nightstand by the bed in my room. I opened it as soon as I walked in, turned on the television, and drank until I passed out.
CHAPTER 45
Will Grimes was microwaving a bag of popcorn, getting ready to watch It’s a Wonderful Life on television in his small house in Elkins.
Grimes’s father, William “Billy” Grimes, had also been a West Virginia state trooper. He’d been gunned down during what he thought was a routine traffic stop near the family’s home in Ranger, West Virginia, when Will was eight years old. The shooter turned out to be a parole violator who didn’t want to go back to jail. Will’s father managed to kill the man before he died.
Will believed his father was as fine a man as had ever lived, and he’d resolved to follow in his father’s footsteps. Will’s mother, who had loved her husband deeply, was unable to handle his death. She’d gone into a deep depression that had lasted for years, and she’d begun to drink heavily. Will and his sister had become more parents than children when they were in high school and college. Eventually, when Will was twenty-five and after he had become a trooper, his mother got drunk and drove her car across the center line of a state highway within a mile of the spot where her husband was killed and hit another car head-on. She died instantly. Two people in the other car, a woman and her fourteen-year-old daughter, were also killed.
After seeing the effect of his father’s death on his mother, Will decided he would never marry. He didn’t want to subject a woman or children to the same kind of devastation he and his sister and mother had endured if he was killed in the line of duty. He’d met a few women during his life that he felt he could love and marry, but he’d always turned away from them.
He was thinking about the differences between himself and Darren Street as the microwave buzzed and the popcorn crackled. Will had suffered terrible losses, both his father and his mother, but he hadn’t turned to the dark side. He hadn’t begun murdering people. There was no one for him to murder, of course, since his father had shot and killed the man who had mortally wounded him, but he could have just as easily become bitter and angry and turned to violence as a way to vent his anger and frustration. But he’d chosen another path. He chose to enforce the laws drafted by the duly elected representatives of the state of West Virginia and the United States of America. He believed in law and order. He eschewed the anarchy and vigilantism that Street had embraced. Grimes was certain Street had killed Frazier and Beane, but he still couldn’t prove it. He would, though. Eventually, he would gather enough evidence and find enough witnesses to put Street behind bars for the rest of his life.
Grimes was accustomed to being alone on Christmas Eve. His sister had moved to Wisconsin with her husband years ago. They kept in touch, but neither of them felt the need to get together during the holidays. Grimes wasn’t maudlin or depressed. He actually enjoyed the solitude.
The microwave beeped, indicating his popcorn was finished, and he retrieved it and let it vent. He pulled a can of Pepsi from the refrigerator and filled a glass with ice. Just as he was about to walk into his den and turn on the television, his cell phone rang. The caller ID indicated Sergeant Eric Young, the detective from the Special Enforcement Unit in Charleston, was calling.
“Merry Christmas, Sergeant Young,” Grimes said when he answered the phone.
“I have a gift for you,” Young said.
“Is that right?”
“We popped your boy Rex Fairchild about an hour ago as soon as he left his dealer. He had an ounce of powder on him. It’s resale weight, so you should be able to lean on him.”
“That’s the best gift I could have hoped for,” Grimes said. “You have what, seventy-two hours to get him arraigned?”
“Right. We’ll do it on the twenty-seventh.”
“What’s the judge like? Is he tough on drug offenders?”
“Not really. They’ve loosened up a lot in the past couple of years. I mean, Fairchild has a previous conviction and has done some time, and you can come in and testify that he’s a suspect in a murder conspiracy, but I don’t think the bond will be something he can’t make. His old man is loaded.”
“Maybe Daddy won’t be so hot to make this bond since Sonny Boy has been popped for cocaine again,” Grimes said.
“Maybe,” Young said, “but you know how parents are. They stick their heads in the sand.”
“I think I’ll come on down and see him in the morning,” Grimes said.
“In the morning? Tomorrow is Christmas.”
“Yeah, well, this case is important to me. Tell the guys at the jail I’ll be there midmorning, okay?”
“I’ll do it,” Young said. “Good luck.”
CHAPTER 46
Rex Fairchild was craving cocaine and worrying about what was going to happen to him when a guard came and knocked on his cell door on Christmas morning.
“Back up to the pie hole and give me your hands,” the guard said.
Fairchild had been through the routine many times, and he backed up to the slit in the steel door and put his hands behind his back. He felt the cold steel of the handcuffs wrap around his wrist as the guard clicked them on tightly.
“Step back into the cell,” the guard said.
Fairchild complied, and a moment later the door opened. Two guards were standing there in black uniforms. They walked in carrying a waist chain and shackles and went through the process of hooking him up.
“Let’s go,” one of them said.