A Long Time Coming

 I put my Ford in park and looked at the trailer for a moment. The rain was just starting to drizzle on my windshield when I saw the first flash of lighting on my right side. The thunder rolled in as I lit up a cigarette. I’ll be honest if I had known how this night would end, I’d have probably smoked the whole pack. But at the time, I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna get out of the car.

      It’s difficult to describe how it felt going back to that trailer park so many years later. I guess after some more life experience, it’s similar to revisiting an old flame or maybe speaking to a long-forgotten friend. However, “friend” seems like a poor choice of words now that I write it. The last time I’d spoken to Mary Peters was almost fifteen years ago. It wasn’t a long conversation, but it was a powerful one. One that I very much wished I could move past but…telling a parent you’ll no longer be looking for their child is not something you just move past. I still remember the way she just stared at me after I’d said it. She’d just frozen as if her body was waiting for the brain to catch up to her. I’d seen it happen a few times during the war, young boys seeing their friends blown to red mist and misshapen chunks of steak by the Germans artillery had a way of doing that. But seeing Ms. Peters freeze like they did ignited something in me as well. It made me feel like I needed to rethink every part of the case. Even though it had been almost five years at that point of investigation I needed to be sure there wasn’t something that I’d missed. If there was one rock I didn’t turn over, or one suspect I didn’t have a word with, I owed it to this woman to go finish it right.

      But before I could take it all back, that face of a desperate mother unfroze. She just sighed and stared at the coffee that was growing colder between us and said, 

“I hope he’s dead.”

I remember I withdrew a bit when she said it.

“If he’s dead then the only wrong we’re doing is to ourselves, I know it sounds awful…but I hope he’s dead.”

I remember some conversation after that but it’s foggy to me so long after. Walking through the rain up to the door I tried not to dwell on that day too much. Things had a way of repeating themselves and that wasn’t why I was here; I was here because despite my best efforts this case had crawled up and grabbed me again.

When she opened the door, I thought I was going to have to explain who I was and repeat old history. But unlike 15 years ago the door opened with a wide and welcoming swing, and there she was. Looking probably far better than I did in a pink floral dress with a warm light as her backdrop.

“Excuse me, Ms. Peters, I don’t know if you”-

Her eyes went wide with a happy surprise, and her jaw dropped.

“Detective Perry?” she asked.

I felt my stomach coil as I took off my hat, the rain dripped down on my shoulders.

“Hello Ma’am, I wasn’t sure if you’d recognize me.”

“How could I not? Please come in and get out of that rain for Christ’s sake!”

It made me happy to see that the cluttered and dark trailer that accompanied a frantic mother worried about her lost child had given way to a home that looked like it was full of love and care. A bright new wallpaper was up and the room was filled with the sound of Sam Cooke singing about working on a chain gang. The biggest spectacle of the room was something that truly warmed my heart, but at the same time made it sink.

“Oh, detective these are my children, Molly and Jamie,” she said holding out a flat hand to the kids sitting under the radio. Toy cars around the girl, and some green army men around the boy. I wanted to feel joy at the words my children when they came from Mary. Knowing her in those five years I’d looked for her son I’d thought I’d seen firsthand what kind of pain and torture it was for someone to lose a child. Selfishly, it made me glad I didn’t have any kids. It would have been a dream come true to know that she’d been able to move forward, it probably would have marked one of the happiest moments of my life, knowing I didn’t have any excuse for dwelling on the past. If she could move on, I could too. I wished it had been that way a lot, I really do.

There was a brief introduction where I clarified to Mary that it wasn’t Detective Perry anymore, it was Private Investigator Perry now. But when it came to the topic of my visit, I suddenly wondered if I should just let things be. Looking around at the peaceful and loving home that had grown from such a dark time I wondered if I was in the right. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone of what happened, or maybe she was trying to forget it? Maybe…it was all in the past. I stood in that trailer longer than I should of thinking about that, but finally, I decided I needed to get on with it.

“Do you have somewhere we might be able to talk?”

She ushered the children back into their rooms down the hall, and in what felt like an almost word-for-word recreation of when we’d spoken fifteen years ago. She said the same thing.

“Somethings happened with Mikey, hasn’t it?”

Her face took on that look of a grieving mother once more, and while I can’t say for certain if it was the same look. It certainly gave my heart the same heavy feeling. I wondered if she knew that? If she knew what her appearance and the way she acted did to me and that’s why she did it. I tried to stay stoic and not fly into a confrontation that would get me nowhere. I hadn’t dug up the past to leave here with nothing.

“I’m afraid so, I don’t want to trouble you but…”

I waited to see how she’d react to that, my hat tight in my hands. 

 “What is it?” she asked with urgency. “Detective, or sorry…Perry, I know that you wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t something you thought was worth it.”

I only nodded slowly and sat down keeping my shaking under control.

“Well, I’ll admit it to you now that this isn’t a guarantee to make light of anything, but I felt the need to come see you.”

She waited for me to continue.

There was a guilt clutching me that I was trying to throw off. It was like my body didn’t know why I was there. I started not even looking at her cause of it.

“Well Mary, I heard a rumor this week you see. I was on a pretty standard catch-a-cheater investigation,”-

“Catch a cheater?”

I nodded; I wished my job resembled the police work I used to do but the pay was hard to pass up.

“Yup, that’s the majority of my work now actually. I do about ten every month. And the one this week wasn’t any different, it came from a husband who thought his wife wasn’t out with girls as much as she claimed and instead was…well”-

She looked confused, which was understandable I was beating around the point. And I knew that.

“I understand…what does that have to do with Mikey?”

I started to twiddle my thumbs, and I looked down at the floor. When I looked back up I saw her eyes flick up from there quickly, and my stomach shrunk. Constricting so tight it almost hurt.

“Well long story short Mary, I found her, but she was dead. And she had been cheating with a man who wasn’t treating her very right and things went bad. Really bad. I called the right authorities and the guys been locked up. I needed to get some basic information on him for my investigation and that’s when the detectives told me that he started to come clean about some things.”

“You see Mary, the man claims that this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. Said that girl wasn’t the first person he’d killed, said this had been something of a habit for him in truth.” 

“Oh my god!” Mary said her hand going over her mouth and her eyes went wide.

“Now none of it is credible,” I cautioned, “sometimes men say bizarre things after they’ve been arrested for a murder like that. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s a lie or something in between. And frankly, I was partial to believe the last of those options. But I’d done some digging on my own time and turns out he was known for being a bit handsy back home with a few girls too.”

I went quiet, that desire to not spoil the harmony of the home I’d walked into was holding back my tongue hard now. I looked at the toy cars littered about, and the green army men around them. I can’t express this enough, from the bottom of my heart and everything in between. I hoped I was wrong at that moment.

“See…but then he started to tell another story. One that I needed to hear for myself. The man’s name was George, and he told me that one time in the summer of 1944 he’d shacked up with a woman around here back when he was a trucker, said she took him back to a trailer park not far from the overpass.”

All of a sudden she froze, a mirror image of when she’d frozen the last time. But now I wondered where that shock came from, what part of her emotions seasoned it. I suspected it was fear, but maybe it was regret.

“He said her husband was off in Europe at the time which made her perfect, and like all sick bastards do, -I won’t pretend to know how the man thinks-, he starts getting that urge again as he called it. So he comes back to the trailer park ready to fulfill it, only she wasn’t there, her son was. A boy, about seven or six he said.”

      It was eerie how still she was, she didn’t even blink at me. The rain was pattering on the glass harder and harder as a roll of thunder came through, and I just kept talking.

      “He chalked it up to the right place, but wrong person type of thing. I’ve no idea what that even means. But the kid didn’t survive that encounter. Said he beat him to death with a telephone she had on the wall.”

      I glanced over at the phone. Her eyes stayed locked on me, unwavering and frozen.

      “Told me…he had to do it. He had to.”

      She spoke quickly, in a choked breath as if it had escaped her without her knowledge.

      “I thought he’d hurt me…that he’d be mad.”

      I just kept going. If that was true, she’d of said something.

      “You know I thought that was the worst thing id heard in my life. Someone thinking they had to murder a child. It's sick…evil…unforgivable.”

I had to pause then, her look had changed to an almost pleading expression, I didn’t want to see it. 

“But then…he told me the mom came home. That she saw him standing over her son with a bloodied telephone and didn’t run out of the house screaming for help. She didn’t plead for him to leave her be, or try to fight him. He said…she helped him hide the body.”

      “He told me too.”

      “He said it was her idea, Mary. That she took one look at him and one look at the boy, and then said she’d get a sheet.”

      Those big brown eyes started to water like the day I’d first spoken to her as a young detective. Only slowly I wasn’t feeling the urge to get out and find the kid so badly, now I just felt my blood start to simmer and nothing more than a deep sadness start to pour into this once peaceful and happy home. Like water, it seeped through the walls.

      There was a pause before she spoke, she’d stopped looking at me entirely her eyes on the floor under my feet. 

      “Perry…I…”-

      “He said she got a sheet, wrapped her own son up in plastic wrap, and then in a sheet, and buried him. Right. Under. His own house.”

      When she sat back against her couch I leaned forward, my fingers locked together as I stared intently at her face. I was watching for every bit of detail I needed from this…woman now. But slowly it was all coming back to me like the way hearing an old song brings back my time in France and Belgium during the war. I was beginning to remember it all, the long nights in an empty police station coming witness and neighbors' testimonies, talking to every single person on that street, each one of little Mikey's friends, their parents, and they all said the same thing. 

      Oh, she’s a kind heart.

      I don’t know how she’s still going now.

      God bless her, I hope she never gives up.

      She doesn’t deserve any of this.

      That was all from one side of the trailer park…but when I ventured to the other end things were a bit different.

      She’s a hussy that one.

      I have seen a lot of men in and out of that trailer, and none of them was her husband either.

      I am willing to bet she’s slept with most of the bartenders in town.

      She ain’t faithful…

      At the time, it didn’t matter though. It was all rumor, and whatever the women’s bedroom habits were had nothing to do with my investigation of finding her son. I’d never gotten the chance to talk to the husband, he’d died over in Germany before I could hear his side of the story. Maybe if I had, this would have been something I could see coming. But the truth was I had no one to blame but myself. I’d spent time after time on the phone with this woman and never known. She’d been so involved, she’d walked around the entire neighborhood hanging flyers, coming down to the police station when I didn’t return her calls. I’d never suspected a thing; I didn’t know whether that meant I wasn’t as good of a cop as I thought I was. Or if she was the smartest murderer I’d ever come across. To be honest I didn’t care to think about it for too long. I was growing tired of the tears running down her face, the same ones that used to drive me forward, were now as meaningful to me as the raindrops coming off the windows.

      “Hell of a story isn’t it?” I asked as she sniffled, her hands white-knuckled her shoulders.

      “I couldn’t believe it myself and I to be honest…I didn’t draw anything from it. Course, then I asked him the woman’s name, and my heart damn near dropped out of my stomach.”

      She was fully sobbing now, staring at the carpet under my feet like it was speaking to her. I heard the children giggling in the back room, and all I could think was what this was gonna do to them. Did I just save them? Was I still in the right? Was she telling me the truth? I wish I could tell you I cared more than I did at that moment. But enough was enough, and this nightmare was fifteen years in the making. I was past caring.

      I let out a deep sigh.

“Mary, I need to ask you something now…has little Mikey been under this trailer all this time? Gathering dust and maggots while I searched all those years, lost all those nights of looking, and while you slept right above him?”

      She didn’t answer me. She wouldn’t say another word for the rest of the night. But she didn’t need to. 

      We’d sat in the pattering of the rain and the sniffles of her tears a bit longer before I walked to the door of the trailer. I waved out to the rainy street and parked behind my car the red lights started to spin marking the last of my pull at the station. I watched them lift the couch, and tear up the floor boards, I’d expected a smell, but it was not existent, bones don’t smell like much in truth. But I just felt the warm home life feeling of this room lift away like heat coming from a pan. And I looked down at the browned and old sheet in the dirt as the two officers lift it and thought if I hadn’t heard all the things about Mary that I did, I’d never put this together. And I think just a little bit…part of me wishes I hadn’t.