Chapter 6
Alex stared at George’s retreating back until the door was shut, at which time he slid down and kicked his feet out in front of him. He pressed a hand over his eyes and sighed, his hair falling over his shoulders and getting tangled around the buttons of his shirt. What was he getting himself into? He never should have come here. He was perfectly happy in his own naïve little world, thinking that George was happy with his marriage and his son.
He took a deep breath and sat up, pulling his shirt down anxiously before pushing his chair back away from the table and straightening up. He grimaced at the sound of the metal legs cutting into the concrete floor, the high-pitched shriek giving him goosebumps and making his blood run cold.
Alex pushed himself onto his feet and gathered his belongings, trying to emulate how he normally felt when leaving a client. He tried to ignore the heavy feeling in his stomach and the headache prodding at the backs of his eyes as best he could. He forced his right hand down into his pocket and began to walk out of the meeting room and down the hall.
As he made his way back to the front lobby of the prison, he noticed that there was a window from the hallway that looked directly into the visiting center. Through it he could see a middle-aged woman getting held in her chair by her son (or brother, or some other close relationship less than half her age), her eyes ablaze with fury and her index finger jabbing the air between her and an older man angrily. At the table next to the feuding couple was a young couple, the female counterpart looking sad and exhausted, and her mate cooing down at the tiny pink bundle of blankets in his arms. Beside them, there was a pair of men who clearly missed the physical aspect of their relationship, their eyes raking over each other and the incarcerated man’s foot trailing up his boyfriend’s (husband’s? Alex could see the ring glinting from here) calf teasingly high.
Alex choked out a laugh and shook his head. Boy was he glad that George and he had gotten to meet in a more intimate setting. Talking about Martha’s murder amongst all the sad and sexually-frustrated couples? That wouldn’t do, even if George and he hadn’t spent the last five years estranged from one another.
He pulled his eyes from the window and continued down the hallway. A few guards passed him, both with and without prisoners, but Alex tried not to spend too much time looking at anyone else. He knew that if he focused too much on other people, he would find a reason to stay around, be it for a new client or just to find out more about what George had been like since he had gotten to prison—and he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to go home and change into something a little more comfortable, then he wanted to take a nice, long nap until the sun had gone down and it got to be late enough that he could go to a club and get smashed without anyone looking at him strangely. He hadn’t gotten drunk in the middle of the day since his early twenties, when he was on leave and Eliza and the kids were back home.
Alex snorted as the thought crossed his mind. The guard at the front of the prison looked at him strangely before nodding at him to hold his arms out. Alex breathed out through his nose and let the guard run the scanner over his body x-ray his jacket. It almost bored him, the constant routine of coming in and out of prisons. It was the same, every time. Come in, make sure he’s not carrying drugs. Go out, make sure he’s not carrying contraband. Or stolen money. Or drugs.
“So, come here often?”
Oh. Apparently this check was different.
Alex furrowed his brows and peered down over his nose at the young man that was crouched down in front of him with his handheld metal-scanner perched over Alex’s hip and his eyes alternating between the crotch of Alex’s rather tight pants and Alex’s face. The guard winked, and Alex’s eyes widened. “Oh! Uh . . .no? But I live within an hour’s drive.”
“Mmm.” The guard let out a pleased sound and moved the scanner so that the back of his hand was directly brushing Alex’s pants. He bit down on his lip and looked up at Alex, his red-brown goatee making his blue eyes pop. Alex had to admit, the guard was rather attractive.
Alex felt the anxiety leaking out of him as he switched to his flirtatious mode. He winked at the guard and rocked forward onto the balls of his feet so that his hip was thrust more closely to the guard's face.
The guard hesitated for a moment before standing up and getting in Alex's space. "My name's Ryker," he said, nudging Alex with his hip, "and my shift is over in a little less than an hour. My house isn't all that far from here, if you'd like to take a brief intermission from your exciting lawyering." He bit his lip and looked at Alex expectantly.
This time it was Alex who let out a pleased hum. "An hour, you said?"
"Mhm. There's a McDonalds near by, you could go grab a bite to eat before you grab a bite to eat, if you catch my drift." He glanced around to make sure no one was watching before grabbing Alex's rear. He gave a second squeeze before letting go and reaching into his pocket to pull out a small tablet of paper and a pencil. He scribbled down a few numbers and words before ripping the sheet off and leaning towards Alex, tucking the note into his front pocket. "I'll meet you at my house soon."
Ryker winked again before straightening his back and getting back into a professional position. "And that's how you get back to the highway," he said in a loud voice, clearing his throat and hooking his thumbs into the front belt loops of his khaki-colored pants.
"Wonderful, thank you," Alex responded in the same tone of voice, raising his hand and giving the other man a mock solute. He pulled his wallet and keys out of the bucket next to the walk-through detector and went to the door, purposely swaying his hips more than was strictly necessary as he felt Ryker's eyes on him.
He crossed the parking lot in less than a minute and climbed into his car, suddenly feeling completely exhausted as the excitement of flirting with someone new wore off and he remembered why he was visiting the prison in the first place. He was surprised, however, that he didn't feel the same crushing agony that he had experienced every other time he had directly acknowledged something about George since their breakup. He felt numb, yes, but more in a confused way than he did in a heartbroken one. He knew one visit wasn't going to provide closure, but if this feeling continued? He'd be the rest of the way over George in no time.
Alex cleared his throat and got into his car, closing the door and getting buckled before letting out a long breath and turning the car on. He didn’t remember seeing the McDonalds that Ryker talked about, but he did remember seeing a Dairy Queen, and he could really go for one of their large Mint blizzards right about now.
He pulled out of the parking spot and weaved his way through the parking lot, avoiding cars and children alike as he made his way back to the road. He turned on the radio and began to hum to himself when one of his favorite songs began to play.
He backtracked the directions in his mind until he reached the restaurant a few miles down the road. He debated going through the drive-through before pulling into a spot and going inside. He picked what table he was going to sit at before going up to the counter and smiling at the young woman who was standing there.
The woman's eyes scanned over Alex's body, coming at a stop at the top of his pants before she looked back up to his face. She smiled at him and fluttered her lashes before leaning forward and popping her hip out to the side so that her full, round buttocks were full display beneath her tight black pants. “Hi. How can I help you today?” She leaned down further and propped herself up on her elbows, making her work shirt slip down and reveal the top of her breasts, an inch of skin appearing over her name tag. Her name was Chloe.
Alex pursed his lips at the woman’s obvious flirtation and rocked back on his heels, linking his hands behind his back and straightening into his fully-militant posture. He glanced up at the menu and at the machines behind Chloe, looking around and focusing his gaze on anything that wasn’t the overflow of cleavage. “I’ll take an order of chicken and white gravy, and a Grasshopper Blizzard, please. Extra mint syrup, too, if you can do that.”
“I’ll do anything for you, sweetheart.” She reached across the counter and held her hand out towards Alex’s arm, leaning forward until her fingers were nearly brushing Alex’s shirt. Alex took another step back and released his grip on his wrist so that he could pull his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled out a ten dollar bill and put it down on the counter before giving the woman a curt nod and moving away from the counter.
Chloe let out a huffed breath before saying, “Sir, I need a name for your order. And a phone number.” She winked.
Alex rolled his eyes and ignored her. He pulled his phone and his headphones out of his pocket and went over to the table he had chosen, plugging his earphones into the device and turning up his music as loud as it would go. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, counting down from 100 in his head. Hopefully, by the time he reached zero, enough time would have passed for him to go up and grab his order without having to deal with Chloe’s flirtations again.
Fortunately, when Alex reopened his eyes, his meal was sitting on a tray directly in front of him. He raised an eyebrow in confusion before leaning forward and taking a bite of the chicken. He had known that his sound-blocking earphones worked well, but he had no idea that they worked well enough to actually block out the sound of someone coming by and giving him food. He picked up his phone and switched to a different song before taking another bite. He flinched when the gravy burned his tongue, but he had to admit, it was rather delicious. He used to love eating meals like this, back when he was younger, but it had been years since he had really wasted his money on a full meal like this. He had gotten small things from McDonalds, a cheeseburger, maybe an order of fries, but it was never enough to tide him over for more than a hour or so. This, though? He was sure that he would be full until suppertime.
Alex slouched down in his seat and unlocked his phone again, only this time, rather than going to his music, he got into the internet. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was that he was looking for until he realized that somehow, while he was thinking, he had managed to search “Martha Washington – murder.” He knew that he was going to find a lot of media hype about what happened (George and Martha had moved to a smaller town after they had gotten married, where any news was big news), but he had to know if there was at least some basis to him working George’s case. If the man really had done it, and there were enough proof to back it up, then he was going to forget that any of this ever happened, that he had ever seen George again. If there wasn’t solid evidence, though . . .
Alex shook his head as he clicked on the first link. He could tell just from looking at the header that the website wasn’t creditable, but still, he read through the article. It talked about what had happened, almost verbatim for what George had said: Martha had gone missing, and her body had never been found. The article talked about how neighbors heard Martha getting into an argument over the phone with someone at the store the day before she went missing, and that whoever she was talking to did a number on her. She left all of her groceries sitting in the parking lot and fled, tears streaming down her cheeks and her makeup running from her cheekbones to her chin. George had been home by himself while she was gone, but a neighbor said that she had seen him arguing with someone over his phone, as well.
No one had been able to prove that they had been talking to one another (just like her body, Martha’s phone was never found), and George’s had conveniently gone missing that very morning. Martha had rushed straight home from the store, and the rest was history. She had missed work the next morning, something that was incredibly unusual for her, but everyone just assumed that she had gotten sick and forgotten to call in. The few times that she had missed work were for when her son was sick, and in her exhaustion of being up all night, she had forgotten that she needed to call her boss and give them a heads up about her absence.
When Martha didn’t show up to evening mass that night, however, people began to talk. Her sister, Naomi, stopped by the Washington household on her way home from church, and was horrified to find that the house looked like it had been ransacked. The furniture was broken and tossed around the living room, the front window was shattered, and the safe that was hidden behind a painting of the crucifixion was completely empty.
Naomi had called the cops and reported the break-in, telling the officers who arrived that there were no blood splatters or any signs of a struggle, but her sister and brother-in-law were missing. Martha’s son was away at school, but he had no recollection of his mother and step-father’s whereabouts, either.
Alex shook his head as he got to the end of the article. He didn’t know how much of what he had just read was true, but if it really did follow the events that led to George’s arrest, then he could understand why the men and women investigating the crime thought that George could have had something to do with it.
He went back to Google and went to the next article, this time reading through his options until he found one that seemed like it was from a more credible source. Normally, when he was working a case, he did everything he possibly could to avoid reading what the media said, in case it construed the way that he defended his client. With this, though . . . there wasn’t much that he could do that wouldn’t change the way that he viewed George.
This site seemed to talk about much of the same information that the first one did, leading Alex to believe that maybe, just maybe, the non-credible details were, for once, the truth. Just like the other article, however, the article cut off before it talked about what led George to being the main suspect. In fact, as he scoured through the other articles, there was nothing that so much as mentioned George’s involvement in the crime.
Alex would just have to use his access to the police database back at the office.
He snorted as he realized exactly what thought it was that crossed his head. Here he was, planning things out as if he was really going to take the case. Perhaps, though, looking into the database would make that decision easier for him. If there was plenty of information, either for or against George’s defense, then it would be easy for him to make his decision. Now, though, with only his gut to go off of . . . that wasn’t the best way to make a knowledgeable decision.
He skimmed through one more article before closing his internet browser and deleting his search history. His stomach was being to tie itself into knots, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to finish eating. That wasn’t something that he could do, especially when he still had an entire Grasshopper blizzard to eat. He forced himself to finish his chicken and gravy before starting on the ice cream so that his anxiety would have a chance to unwind, but it still felt like he was swallowing glass with every bite that he took.
He cleared his throat as he took the last bite and scooped all of the wrappers onto his tray, taking a big bite of his ice cream before going over to the trashcan and tossing the bag and paper. He took another bite of ice cream and made his way back to the car, keeping his eyes averted as Chloe started to catcall him from across the room. He hurried out of the restaurant and made his way back to his car. He got in and put the ice cream in his cup holder, staring down at it before picking it back up and getting back out of the car. By the time him and Ryker were finished, the ice cream would be nothing more than a cup of liquid green mush. The chocolate chips would be the only thing that was still good.
He took the cup over to the trashcan and threw it away, rubbing his stomach absent-mindedly as it let out an irritated growl. Maybe eating such a large processed meal wasn’t the best idea, especially before he went to meet an attractive guy.
Alex glanced down at his watch. “Fuck,” he muttered, realizing that he was five minutes late from the end of Ryker’s shift. He stuffed his hand into his pocket and jogged back to his car, quickly jumping back in and starting the engine.
His mind would be clear of George soon enough.