“What happened?” Emily said.
“It’s kind of a long story without a happy ending. I would honestly rather not get into it now.” Steve took a quick swig of his drink. “How about I tell you something else about me instead. Pick a number between one and twelve.”
“Okay,” Emily said, raising an eyebrow. “But, why one through twelve?” Steve could tell she wanted to press him further, but he appreciated the fact that she didn’t. He wasn’t ready to tell her about his father’s death just yet. He had learned over the years that it tended to be a downer topic, and he didn’t want anything to spoil the mood.
“Whatever number you pick, I will tell you a story from that grade of school.”
“OK. Well, Arrested Development taught me that three is the magic number. So, third grade.”
Wow, Steve thought. One in twelve chance and she picks third grade, the year dad passed.
“Hmm. Let’s see. Third grade?” Steve sat quietly for a second, trying to remember a third-grade story other than the one thing he didn’t want to talk about. He decided on one of his favorite memories about his dad. It had happened a few weeks before the accident and was one of the last memories he had of his father.
“I grew up in a small town about an hour outside of Tulsa, a place called Pryor Creek. It has a large park in the middle of town that lots of people go to when the weather is nice. One day, my family went there for a picnic. It was my mom, my dad, my brother, and me. After lunch, we all went for a little hike around the park. At one point in our walk, we came to a stream that ran throughout the park. There was a sewage tube that ran from one embankment of the stream to the other. The sides were muddy slopes that led down to the stream, and the tube was probably about ten feet above the water at its tallest point.” Steve mimed the general layout of the stream and tube with his hands. “Originally, the tube was probably underground, but erosion made it visible over the years. The tube itself was black, about two to three feet in diameter, and very similar to the one Andy Dufresne crawled through to escape prison in -”
“Sorry to interrupt, but I love the Shawshank Redemption.”
“Really? It’s one of my favorites too. It’s the one movie that, anytime I come across it while channel surfing, I always stop and watch it all the way through from whatever point it’s at. Do you have any movies like that?”
“Any Harry Potter or Bridget Jones movie. I also love horror movies. But my guilty pleasure is Pauly Shore, so Son-in-Law will suck me in every time.”
“Pauly Shore, huh? Okay, interesting to know.” Steve smirked a little as he said this, and Emily emitted an embarrassed laugh.
Then she shot him a playful glare and said, “Now, finish your story.” She grabbed her beer and brought it to her lips, so Steve picked up where he left off.
“Anyway, we had this pipe in front of us. It was basically a path to the other side of the creek where the playground area was. The original plan when we left camp was to walk over to the swing sets and swing. My mom said we should just keep walking to the footbridge down the way. But my brother, being the adventurer he is, decided to tightrope-walk across the pipe. It was about twenty-five feet across to the other side. After he finished, I decided to try. Of course, my older brother was far more athletic than me; he’d made it look easy. Somewhere around the middle, my nerves got the best of me. I lost my balance and fell.” “Awww,” Emily said sympathetically.
“Luckily, I fell into a part of the water that was about five feet deep, so I didn’t hurt anything except my pride. But the stream was disgusting. Since it was stagnant in some areas, the water was full of who knows what. The stream bed was several inches of thick black mud. My brother stood on the bank, looking down and laughing at me.”
“What did your mom and dad do?”
“My dad walked out to the middle of the pipe where I had fallen off and belly-flopped into the gross pool with all of his clothes still on. He then started splashing and playing in the water with me. We were laughing and having such a good time that, eventually, my brother jumped in too. At that point, my mom ran to the car and went home to get us towels, clean clothes, and a camera. The three of us played in the water for the twenty minutes or so it took my mom to get back. When we finally climbed out, she took a picture of us all drenched and covered head to toe in muck. I still have that picture sitting on a bookshelf in my office.” “Your dad sounds like a good man,” Emily said.
Steve checked the time on his phone and pretended not to hear her. “Okay. It’s your turn. Tell me a story from eleventh grade.”
Emily thought for a second. “Well, it’s similar to yours in that something bad happened to me, but the ending isn’t so happy. In high school, I was the drum major for the marching band. The way it worked in my school was that one band member each from the junior and senior class was chosen to be drum major. If you were selected, you learned how to do it during your junior year and then lead the band during your senior year. So, usually only seniors performed during football halftime shows.”
“I’ll assume that you got to lead the band your junior year since I picked eleven,” Steve said. “That doesn’t sound bad at all.”
“Your assumption is half right, counselor. Yes, I did get to lead the band my junior year because the senior got sick before one game. However…”
“Wait, before you finish. There is something I have always wondered. What exactly is the point of a drum major anyway? Doesn’t every band member have the music in front of them?”
“Yes. They have the music, but the drum major keeps them on beat. When you are down on the field in the middle of the band, some members can’t hear the percussion section. They use the drum major as a visual guide to follow the beat, so everyone stays in sync.”
“Okay. That makes sense. I think I get it now. Please continue.”
“As I was saying, I was the first junior in who knows how many years to lead the band during the halftime show. We were halfway through “YMCA” by The Village People when a small swarm of bees started attacking me. I started wildly waving my baton in all sorts of sporadic, sweeping motions, trying to scare the bees away from me. Instead, they just got more agitated, and they spread out across the field, attacking the rest of the band. Of course, the entire band lost formation. When the trombones were so panicked that they ran right into the tuba section, it stopped being funny. One girl ended up with a broken arm, and several others were injured.
“I’m sure that was the only time in the history of high school football that more students were injured during the band’s halftime performance than during the actual game. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life up to that point. The worst part is that someone offered me a cigarette that night, and I was feeling so crappy that it actually calmed me down. I haven’t stopped smoking these damn things since.” As if to prove the point, she set her drink aside and lit a cigarette.
Steve couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I’m sorry. That does sound embarrassing, but the thought of a bunch of band members crashing into each other is kind of hilarious. I guess I am one of those people that laughs when I see someone fall before I help them up. Plus, it’s not like it was truly your fault. You just got
super unlucky with that swarm of bees.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose I can forgive you for laughing; I do see how you might find it funny. And, yes, it was unlucky, but that seems to be my M.O. I’m always the person that these things seem to happen to.”
“Then, would you consider it good or bad luck if I asked you out to dinner?” Steve leaned forward, “I’m getting hungry, and I would love to hear some more of your stories about band, bees, birds or whatever.”
Emily’s steely blue eyes met his unwaveringly. Her demeanor changed as she took a long drag of her cigarette. She began talking as she stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Listen, I am going to be frank with you. I’ve completely enjoyed chatting with you the last hour or so. You’ve got great looks, brains, and that hair. Damn!” She paused to stand up. “Let’s just say, I think you are fucking sexy.”
Emily grabbed her beer and, in two smooth swallows, finished it without breaking eye contact with Steve. She set the empty glass on the table between them. “But right now, you represent the person whom I am helping the state send to prison. I never mix business and pleasure. When this case is over, give me a call. Until then, it was nice meeting you.” She held out her hand, gave him a firm handshake, and walked off.
He followed her with his eyes to see if she would look back, admiring her fine figure as she walked away. At first, he thought she wasn’t going to do it. Then, at the last second, as she opened the door to go back inside, she turned her head and gave him “fuck me” eyes over one last smile.
As he sat alone on the patio, slowly finishing his beer, Steve replayed the entire conversation to himself. He felt like he had made a good impression. There was something about Dr. Emily Babbage that made him uneasy. Uneasy in a good way. Unfortunately, any further investigation of this feeling would have to wait until Hamilton’s case was done.
As he drove home, Steve thought about calling Hamilton to discuss the offer Turner had given him. He decided it would be best to confront Hamilton in-person with the evidence and plea deal. Steve felt this would give him a better chance of breaking through Hamilton’s fortress of denial.
Finally, Steve’s thoughts turned to the boxes of Scottie Pinkerton’s case files that were still waiting for him in his office. Tomorrow would begin his weekend of transcript review, the first layer of information about Ashley Pinkerton’s murder would finally become uncovered.
CHAPTER 11
Steve sat and stared at the volumes of transcripts in front of him. His morning meetings this Friday had run longer than expected, and he had received a couple of emergency calls from divorce clients right after lunch. When he was finally able to truck all of the boxes down from his office, to his car, and then into his house, it was mid-afternoon.
Steve smiled wryly. Another exciting Friday night in Tulsa, America.
When he worked at the federal court, Steve had read thousands upon thousands of pages of transcripts of murder trials. Yet, this time, the process seemed more daunting. In those previous cases, he was merely reviewing the arguments made by the respective attorneys and working with the judges to see whose side the law fell in favor of. This time, he was the one who would have to make the winning argument.
