Fan-Fiction

Pieces of a Whole

written by Betsy J. Bennett

CHAPTER 4

 

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Richard looked up at his sister, unsurprised. He had left the bedroom door open specifically for this encounter. “Does it look like brain surgery?”

He could hear the boys scrapping in the bathroom, brushing their teeth while battling over the toothpaste as siblings do. He loved hearing their laughter, their childish high jinks. It was the healthiest sound he knew.

“You’re packing. Why?”

He shoved his shirts into the cheap suitcase, mused for a moment that although scant, there was more clothing there than he had owned at any one time in the last four years. “Donna, I don’t want to fight you.”

She pointed a finger toward the floor in a command she might have used with either of her children. “Then stay.”

He went to the dresser, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it before he turned back to face her. “You know why I can’t. And before you argue, I’m leaving for myself more than you. I’m used to changing locals. I’ve been here too long.”

The tone of her voice softened, became compassionate. “You’re not a fugitive any longer. You do know that.”

She had been speaking with Gerard. Did he know that? He wasn’t sure. He had no idea what freedom should feel like, but knew it wasn’t this, trapped in this house, in his memories.

“Dick, I’d like you to stay. You need time to find yourself.”

“Find myself.” The idea made sense. There was no denying he was lost, even to himself. But it was easier to mock. “You’re talking Sixties new-age self awareness. Should I wear beads, buy a candle, learn to chant? Maybe I could give away flowers at the airport.”

“Stop it!”

“I don’t think so.”

“So when you leave here, you plan on joining a cult?”

He had vomited after Gerard left, stale alcohol. His stomach was still unsettled, made him fear there was more to come up. “I’m sure they’re big on freedom.”

“Don’t mock me, Dick.”

“I am still recognized. I go to the bank and people talk. I go to the dentist and people talk. Maybe I want to go somewhere when I am not the subject of dinner table conversation.”

“They’ll forget.”

“Maybe. But how can I? I know—knew a lot of these people. They all were drooling at the mouth for my execution.”

“No,” she said, but she lied, and he knew it. Living in Stafford had to be a nightmare for her too, meeting people in the grocery store while picking red apples to pack in school lunches: “Is your brother behind bars yet?” Talking to other parents while in line for parent teacher conferences: “Do you still delude yourself thinking him innocent?” Taking the boys for a haircut: “The police will get him. Only the guilty run.”

She had never once complained to him. Over the years she had only offered comfort and emotional support. He wondered how she could have faced these back-biters year after year and remain sane.

He pulled smoke into his lungs, let it out in a long stream. “Donna, I won’t ever have the words to thank you for all you’ve done for me, the past few weeks, and definitely the four years before that. I’ll never be able to repay you.”

She had a tissue in her pocket, took it out, used it to swipe her eyes. And although she wasn’t a violent person, Donna made a fist and hit him on the shoulder, the way a sister might hit a favored brother. “I don’t want your repayment. I want to know what you’re doing. You have a home here.”

He looked around, the bed, the dresser, the memories, and saw not the Taft house, but another one, where he had lived with his bride, where they had tried to create the American dream. He only saw blood on the carpet of the living room, and any number of lives shattered.

“This is not my home. It’s your home, you and Leonard and the boys. I’m leaving tonight. It’s best for everyone.”

“No, you’re not, and no it’s not. How can you say that?”

He held her, his hands at her arms, as brothers sometimes to do to sisters they need to comfort while she pummeled his chest and cried openly. “Donna, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be. We both know I can’t stay here forever.”

“You’re not—“ she would have finished the statement with “right,” which she knew to be true. There was something wrong deep within him that she couldn’t touch, couldn’t recognize, didn’t know how to cure. “—Ready,” she finished.

“You can’t keep me here.” He would not argue with her about being ready, whatever that meant. He wasn’t ready. And he had to go.

“I can try.”

“I am disrupting your family. Every minute I’m here, you are not healing.”

She broke from his embrace, went to the bed and picked up a pillow, considered whopping him with it. “Healing? What are you talking about? I’m not the one who needs to heal.”

He sat on the mattress, the open case beside him. There wasn’t much in it, everything he had, for he couldn’t consider his good name a possession any longer.

“I taught you to lie.”

Of all the things he could have hit her with, that was one of the most unexpected. “You did no such thing.”

“I have to deal with it on my conscience, the fact that you can look straight at a policeman or a reporter and lie.”

“Richard,” she reached out, her frustration vanished at his words and touched him gently on the shoulder. Although he was the elder by four years, she felt ancient beside him, as if somehow she had become his mother, in the sense she wasn’t ready to send him out in the world, that she needed to protect him, nurture him. “If I lied, it was to protect you. I’d do it again.”

“I don’t want you to have to. I want you and Leonard to have your home back, where you can be parents to your children, and lovers to each other without a weird brother/uncle in the mix.”

“We’ve got room.”

They both knew it was not a question of room.

“I’m used to moving, and moving often. Even when things were good, I didn’t stay longer in a single place than two or three months. It wasn’t safe.”

“Safe? Will you listen to yourself? Dick, you’re safe now. I don’t know what Gerard told you—“

The smile he offered her this time was kinder than any she’d seen on his face in the past years. “That you wanted him looking in on me.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“You didn’t, and oddly enough, he didn’t. The things he said were cathartic. I’m feeling better. Not cured, and certainly not whole, but better.” He touched the envelope he had folded in his slacks pocket.

“I always believed in your innocence. Phillip Gerard Jr.”

“I meant what I said. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, these past few weeks, and especially over the past six years. I knew no matter how black things got, that you were there, and you believed in me. Thinking that kept me alive more times than I care to admit. Sometimes I’d call just to hear your voice.”

“I know.” The tissue she had been using was useless, so he reached into the suitcase, pulled out a fresh handkerchief.

“I’d give you my name and my contact information, but I needed the reality of your life, untouched by the ugliness of mine, to help me get through the nights, and the days, Donna. The days when I wore handcuffs, the days when the nightmares were real.”

“And if you go, if you run, who will hold you when you have a nightmare now?”

“No one. I’ll have to learn to do it on my own. You need your sleep. You don’t need a mad-man in your spare room disrupting the entire household.”

“You’re not a mad man.”

“I am. Until the exoneration feels real, until I can find what’s still haunting me, I can’t stay here. And Donna, I know you’re not a doctor, but putting up with Dad and me all those years, you must have learned something about medicine. When there is a wound, especially one that’s starting to fester, in order to get it to heal, you have to cut away the dead tissue, and scrape down until you get to the clean. That hurts, but it is the only way to restore to health.”

She nodded, bit her bottom lip, swiped at her eyes with a handkerchief already wet. “It’s late. It’s after nine o’clock. Leave in the morning.”

“I can’t. I have to go now.”

“If this is from something I said, something I did—“

“You never hurt me. If you believe anything, believe that.”

“I need you to call me. Every chance you get.”

“I will.”

She went to him, hugged him, needing to touch him, to reassure herself that he was there, actually there. There is one other thing.”

“What?”

“I need your promise.”

He kissed her gently, on top of her head. “Anything. Any time.”

“I won’t keep you. I’ll let you run, and if you have to find work driving a truck or picking cabbages in California or manning a bar in some forgotten little resort town, know that you are a doctor and you are meant for better things.”

He wouldn’t tell her that he didn’t feel like a doctor any more and that there was dignity in picking cabbages and driving a truck. Clean honest work that he needed to keep his sanity.

“The name I want you using is Richard Kimble. You understand?”

That seemed impossible, but he loved her so he whispered, “Yes. I’ll try. I don’t know if I can. There’s still too much darkness attached to the name Richard Kimble. Sometimes being someone else is freeing.”

“Freeing.” She spat the word like it was poison. “Using a fake identity for six weeks or three months, before you have to move on and become someone different, that would be living a lie. Yes, I know it saved your life a hundred times, but it’s different now. To find yourself, to heal this wound you’re trying to clean, you need to be Richard Kimble.”

And he agreed, and when he left, he took two brownies wrapped in waxed paper.

 

After leaving Donna he had traveled south, heading toward Texas, with nebulous plan of maybe traveling on to Arizona with a possible end destination of California, with no particular destination in mind, except to put some miles on the car. He knew the demons he had been chasing were no longer real, but that didn’t mean they still didn’t feel real.

When exhaustion hit him so that he could no longer keep his eyes open long enough to see the road, he pulled the car off the highway and checked into a nameless hotel, similar to ones he had been in for four years. He knew he was acting irrationally, he had enough self-awareness to realize that he would not find what he was looking for if he ran. He had no idea what he was looking for, except that something inside him was shattered, and he needed to find a way to make himself whole.

He slept a full twenty hours, then, stiff and out of sorts, he showered and went downstairs to check out, and found two pain clothes policemen waiting for him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, nodding his head in greeting.

“Richard Kimble?”

“Yes?”

“We don’t want any trouble here.”

“Fine. I’m checking out. I’d like to avoid trouble myself if I could.”

“No need,” the taller man said, as Kimble pulled out his wallet. “We’ve paid the room for you.”

“That’s very gracious of you, but if that’s the case, I’d like to leave a tip for the fine service I received.” He handed the desk clerk the money he would have paid for the room. “I’d like a receipt, if possible.”

“A receipt, for a tip?”

“If it’s not too much bother.”

As the clerk wrote out the receipt, the policeman said, “We’d love to give you an honor escort out of town.”

“Then I’d be honored to have it,” he said, shoving his wallet back into his slacks. “Would you like to see my license and registration while you’re at it?”

“That’s not necessary. We haven’t gotten any calls about a stolen car.”

“Then, if you’re ready, let’s go.”

He didn’t breathe again until he reached the state line and the unmarked cruiser made a U-turn and headed back to town.

Kimble debated finding a job just to keep his hands busy, when he realized as he said to his sister, there were open wounds he needed to cauterize.

He was a doctor, knew there were other, more humane ways to treat a wound than to burn the edges shut, charring skin to stop bleeding, but this wound, within his own soul, he could see no other way to do it. He needed to find atonement, and he knew where to start.

By his friendship, Richard knew he had hurt people. And like talking with his sister, he knew just saying ‘thanks’ wasn’t going to be enough.

So, Kimble changed directions and drove north until he reached Chicago. He was not a man who liked big cities, and Chicago had particularly painful memories for him. Gerard had chased him here, gotten close, but Chicago was where he first saw the one-armed man years after the night of Helen’s murder. He had been looking for him for months by then, and Richard had information that the man who had killed his wife was in Chicago, so he came. He could have done nothing else. But the damage he had done while he was here he might never be able to repair.

The murmurings started the minute he walked into the newspaper’s main lobby, people recognizing him, pointing him out to their companions, recalling their memories. These were reporters after all, and those who worked to bring the news to the people. There wasn’t a lot they forgot but no one bothered him as he went up to the receptionist.

“Mike Decker, please.”

“Twenty second floor, take the second set of elevators.”

He thanked her and set off to follow her instructions, well aware that six months ago he couldn’t have been able to do this, not without finding himself back on death row.

The elevator opened up to a broad newspaper room filled with about twenty desks and about twice that many people on the phone or typing madly to get their stories in under the deadline, or moving from place to place, all in the pursuit of bringing the truth to print, or whatever slogans the press was using these days.

Decker’s name was on an office door, which stood ajar, but Kimble stood just outside and rapped.

“Come in!” Decker said without looking up.

“Are you sure you want to be seen with me?” Richard asked. He knew his voice had been recognized for Decker’s head popped up, and seconds later he was enveloping Kimble in a massive bear hug.

“God, it’s good to see you. How are you doing? You’re looking better than you did the last time I saw you, although I’ll admit, that isn’t saying much.”

“I’m fine. The exoneration doesn’t quite seem real yet, especially as I walk into a newspaper office and every single eye in the place is watching me. I can’t tell you how hard I’m trying not to run.”

“From those blood-thirsty savages you should run. They’d all sell their grandmother for a Richard Kimble exclusive. Sit, we’ll shut the door. No sense letting anyone eavesdrop. I’ll get coffee. Wait, I’ll be right back, then we can talk.”

True to his word, Decker returned with the coffee. He sat one mug in front of Richard, kept one for himself, as he seated himself on the other side of the desk. The desk was cluttered about twelve inches high in old newspapers and news copy, some piles looking comfortable, as if they’d been there a dozen years or so and had taken to setting down roots.

“This stuff isn’t bad. Traditionally newspaper coffee looks and tastes more like newspaper ink, but there’s a forward thinking editor here who understands that to get good reporters, you need good coffee, twenty-four hours a day. Just about everything is better with a good cup of coffee in front of you.”

Richard said nothing, hadn’t bothered to taste the drink.

“Your situation, of course, being the exception. If I’m being insensitive, tell me.”

“No, it’s not that.” He forced himself to go to the table, to pick up the mug and swallow. If it had been hydrochloric acid, he would have done exactly the same thing.

“Sit, take a load off. Tell me what I can do for you and then I hope you’ll answer a few of my questions. I won’t pry, much, but you did come to me.”

“I’ll answer your questions. That’s why I’m here.” The wound would be cauterized, but he had to bleed a bit first.

“I don’t have words—“ Richard handed Decker the bag he held.

Decker opened the bag, pulled out a bottle. “Scotch. The good stuff.”

“Not much of a repayment, but I do want you to know I’m sorry for what you went through on my account.”

“I don’t drink anymore. Paula and I gave it up, and we both go to meetings, but if you don’t mind, I’ll leave it here on the shelf as a trophy.” He laughed, pleased with the image. “Richard Kimble gave me this. It still has his fingerprints on it.”

Kimble rolled his eyes while Decker roared with laughter. “Why is everyone still so concerned with my fingerprints?”

“In my case, it’s a badge of honor.”

“Probably so.”

Decker was a newspaper man, knew how to conduct an interview, knew by watching mannerisms what angles would work. He knew Richard Kimble, or thought he did. This man sitting opposite him was different, healing maybe, but he’d been shattered. Too bad there wasn’t an X-ray machine to capture images of mental pain.

Decker drank his coffee and studied the man opposite him, the way his hands shook, the way he was avoiding eye contact, the way he jumped at every noise, real or imagined. Kimble had not been this shattered when on the run. “So, are you still with the woman?”

“What woman?”

“The one who clung to you in Stafford. The one who looked like she should have been dancing in a Go Go Girl cage.”

He had no idea what a Go Go girl was, but he had vivid images of cages of all sizes and descriptions. “No. I sent her home.”

“To her mother?”

“Her mother lives in Stafford. No. California. She had a job there.”

“I’m glad. She was too young for you. Sorry. That was insensitive.”

Richard took another sip of coffee, this time it did not burn all the way down his throat.  “Probably, but true. You’re right, she was too young for me, but more, she was too innocent. I don’t want her knowing the things I know about prisons and life on the road. I want her keeping her innocence forever, but at least a little bit longer. She wouldn’t have stars in her eyes if she stayed with me.”

“You did it to protect her.”

“I’ve been considered a wife-killer for a lot of years. I didn’t want people looking at her like that. I didn’t want her worried.”

“You protected her.”

“I protected myself.”

Decker chewed on that for a long second, twisted his lips as if he had been faced with a massive math problem and finally figured out the solution. “Go on believing that.” He handed Kimble a cigarette, waited while he lighted it, waited until the man opposite calmed slightly with the rote familiarity of smoking. “So, Dr. Kimble, tell me what I can do for you.”

“I haven’t given an interview yet, or rather nothing more than the few things I said at the courthouse steps when I couldn’t breathe and I expected handcuffs. But I owe you.”

“Dr. Kimble, I’ll repeat this until you believe it: You owe me nothing.”

“Decker, of all the people who helped me, and there were quite a few, you’re the only one I know of who went to jail for aiding and abetting. That’s my fault. I knew what I was asking of you, and you didn’t let me down. Because of you I saw Johnson. For the first time after that night Helen was murdered, I saw him. He was real. I was starting to believe Gerard’s rhetoric that I couldn’t tell the difference between fact and fiction.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Doc. You knew the one-armed man was real. It was your testimony, and many other people believed it then too. The one who couldn’t face reality was Gerard. If there was a one-armed man, then he was the one living in a fantasy world, chasing you, the wrong man.”

“Mike, you’re getting off topic here.” He found it difficult to breathe, wondered if he’d made a mistake coming but he needed to apologize, needed to beg forgiveness if such were possible. “Because of me you went to jail.”

“Best time of my life.”

Richard, who had just taken a sit of steaming hot coffee, started choking. Decker waited for him to regulate his breathing again.

“I have had experience doing time in prison.” He offered that transient smile and met Decker’s gaze directly. “Best time of my life is not the first thought that comes to mind.”

“Ahh, but you’re not a reporter. It gave me street cred. Believe me, six months in jail and I’m walking on water. I am the reporter who proves he won’t give up his sources. I’m the man Richard Kimble trusted enough to come to. They actually gave me two years. Did you know that?”

“No. Sorry, I couldn’t follow through at the time.”

“But then I started writing from prison. I wasn’t considered dangerous, so I was able to send letters out to my editor. He lapped them up as if they were cotton candy. The first thing I wrote was a three piece expose’ on life in jail that was picked up by the AP. Anyway, eventually the DA decided I was causing more trouble in jail and recommended I be released on parole. Since then felons have been coming out of the woodwork to offer me their life stories.”

“We live in a weird world.”

“That we do. There’s more. Paula stopped drinking, she got help, no, that’s not correct, we both got help. I came to understand how I’ve been hurting her, and she never deserved that. We’ve had counseling, and my marriage now is better than when we were newlyweds.”

“I’m glad.” Decker’s wife had been complicit too. It’s a wonder she didn’t spend as much time in jail as her husband.

“I was at those courtroom steps, they day they let you go. That wasn’t something I was willing to miss. In case you’re wondering I was one of the vultures.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I know. I saw you, saw what no one else was noticing, so I tucked my tail behind my legs and went home. The last thing you needed that day was another reporter looking for his pound of flesh.”

“I’m sorry. That day. It was…not what I expected. All those years I wanted freedom, wanted not to run, to have my name cleared, and reality turned out a bit differently.”

“It usually does. And, in case you’re wondering, I tried to contact you, you know. I couldn’t get through at your sister’s house.”

“I’m not surprised. The Tafts kept the phone off the hook, eventually changed their number. All kinds of crazies called.”

“That I can easily believe,” his laugh was honest. “I was planning on making a trip down to Stafford. I’ve tickets, if you want to see them.”

“I’m here now. I’m glad your life turned around. I was worried about you.”

“Still, an exclusive with Richard Kimble wouldn’t hurt.”

“Ask your questions. As much as I can, I’ll answer them.”

“First, there’s talk of a book. Are you going to write it?”

“Maybe. In a couple of years or so. Too much now is too painful, and I’m not sure I’m objective enough to write the story I want told.”

“I can be objective.”

“If and when I decide on the book, I’ll let you know.”

“So, tell me about Fred Johnson. That’s the story. All the press really knows is that you were completely exonerated, and that the killer was a man named Fred Johnson. There hasn’t been any other details, and the world wants to know.”

“Johnson was arrested in Los Angeles for a bar fight and any number of other charges. Gerard recognized immediately who he was, and he knew that he had the bait to lure me into his trap.”

“And did you fall for it?”

“How could I not? I saw Johnson’s picture in the paper, and I was on my way west within ten minutes. It was Jean who recognized it as a trap. She called Donna, my sister, who just happened to have my contact information.”

“And how did that happen?” Decker asked, chuckling.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Richard answered straight-faced. “I knew Jean from Stafford. Her father, Ben Carlisle, had been arrested for embezzling. Stafford, known as The Friendliest Little Town, is filled with back-biters, out for blood.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Decker said, then encouraged Kimble to continue.

“Helen and I were polite to her and her mom. I guess my Dad and Donna were too. We were probably the only friends they had in town. Anyway, Jean found me as I got into town and warned me of the trap Gerard had closing around me. I planned on giving myself in. I swear that’s true. With Johnson in custody, I hoped I could get the detectives to start asking him questions about Helen’s murder. I’d had his confession before, a year back or so, but nothing that would stand up in court, but I knew he was the right man, the guilty man.

“Mike, I was so tired. I wasn’t sure I could run any more. I wanted it over.”

“Even if they killed you?”

“Well, no, not that. But the police had Johnson in custody. I hoped by turning myself in, I could show he was a murderer. Then someone paid Johnson’s bail and they had to let him go.”

“Who?”

“The name the man used was Leonard Taft.”

Decker looked up, his mouth hanging open. “Your brother-in-law?”

“I never for one second believed Len guilty. He’d been too good to me over the years.”

“You’re not going to elaborate on that, are you?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

“Once his bail was paid, Johnson headed back to Stafford. I knew this. He wanted to kill the man who witnessed him kill Helen.”

“There was a witness?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“And it wasn’t your brother-in-law?”

“No, of course not. I told you, I trust Len.”

“So, this idiot who had no problem implicating your brother, kept his mouth shut for six years, knowing you were scheduled to die?”

“His name was Lloyd Chandler, the Stafford City Planning Commissioner. He testified at the trial a few months back that resulted in my exoneration. Yes, the trial transcripts are still sealed, and he doesn’t want his name out there, but he did testify he was there and witnessed Johnson kill Helen.”

“What was he doing there? It was late at night. Helen was alone. Was there—“

“No, whatever you’re implying, no. She called him because Lloyd and his wife had adopted a baby years before. Helen wanted to know about it. I think she was softening to the idea of adopting a baby.”

“Ok, so after Johnson made bail, you weren’t going to give yourself in?”

“That’s right. Without Johnson in custody, there was no reason to. I tried to get out of town, and Gerard caught me. He knew me. Don’t get me wrong. He knew every single thing about me. It was only a matter of time before he caught me.”

“And handcuffs?”

“No. Believe it or not, Gerard was very reasonable. If I didn’t fight extradition, I could have twenty-four hours of freedom under his watchful eyes before he took me in for booking and notified the press. We took the train back to Stafford.”

“Which is where you wanted to go anyway.”

“Yes. My life wouldn’t have been worth a nickel if I’d turned up in Stafford on my own, so honestly I am grateful to Lieutenant Gerard for what I saw then, and still think of as compassion.”

“Compassion. I know the man. That’s not an emotion I got from him.”

“Yeah, well maybe you have to know him for a couple of years first.”

“No thanks.”

“We cornered Johnson in a closed down amusement park where Gerard took a bullet. I went after him, and eventually Gerard killed him.”

“You needed him alive.”

“I thought so too, but Lloyd Chandler testified that he witnessed the murder, and gave his reasons why he didn’t come forward years before—“

“Which you’re not going to tell me.”

“No. That’s not my story. I’ll give you his phone number. Ask him if you want, and he might tell you why he kept quiet, but it was on his testimony I was set free, even if it could have saved me some bad nights if he had more integrity and done so six years before.”

“So the trial went well.”

“Yes. Judge Reistling had moved up to a federal court, so he was unavailable to hear or rule on the exoneration. The new judge had no involvement in my first trial, and with Chandler and Gerard’s testimony about the gunfight at the park, well, you know the rest. Honestly, the best I was hoping for was a retrial. I never expected exoneration, not that quickly.”

“Well, I’m glad.” Decker poked and prodded about an hour more, getting the details he would need for his story, and although Kimble found the experience exhausting, he also found it healing. He had wanted to speak, tell his side of the story to someone who would believe him.

Link to Chapter 5