Travis Starnes
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Going Home - Chapter 23
🕑 Added 2022-06-19 04:06:20 +0000 UTCAfter I parked in front of my parents’ house, I left her sitting in the back seat of the cruiser while I went to talk to them. I’d considered for a moment going to Rosita, who I knew for a fact would help her But between running her restaurant and trying to get the food bank off the ground, there wasn’t really time for Rosita to deal with someone who’d need support. Besides, Tessa’s boyfriend worked at the mine, and since he was an asshole, there was always a chance he’d gotten friendly with Evan. They’d only been here a few weeks and I hadn’t seen him before tonight, but even if it was only an outside chance, I didn’t want to risk giving Evan another thing to go after Rosita for.
My mother, on the other hand, had all kinds of time and loved finding projects to work on. They might have their flaws as parents, but I’d always been loved and never been ill-treated. That was exactly the kind of environment someone like Tessa could use, at least until we found her something more permanent.
“Henry, it’s late. Is everything okay?” Mom asked when she finally opened the door, pulling her robe tight around her.
“Yes, but I could use some help. This is going to be a lot, so just hear me out.”
With her agreement, I walked Mom through who the girl in my car was and what had happened that night. I explained the background of what Tessa had said about the previous times this had happened when she tried to leave him and added that she didn’t have any friends or family in town and didn’t have any kind of money or resources in her own name. Her boyfriend would be out on bail, probably in a few days, and the last thing she needed was to be in their apartment when he got back.
“That’s how they do it,” Mom said. “They isolate them from the people who could help them, so they’re totally dependent on their abuser. People will put up with a lot if they think there’s no way out.”
I hadn’t ever heard my mom talk about this kind of thing before and was surprised when she sounded like she knew something about it.
I must not have been hiding my thoughts very well, because she said, “Don’t look at me like that, you’d be surprised at the things I’ve seen. I’m guessing by your bringing her here you’d like for her to stay with us?”
“Yes. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to take her. I know it’s a lot to ask.”
“No, you did the right thing,” she said, patting me on the arm. “Don’t leave her sitting in the car. Go get her.”
“Are you sure Dad’s going to be okay with this?”
“I’ll worry about your father. You go get her and bring her inside.”
“I won’t say where I put her, but it’s not a big leap for him to find her. Not in a town this small.”
“We’ll be fine. I know where your father keeps his shotgun and, like you said, it’s a small town. You, Al or Orville aren’t very far away if something happens.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mom.”
“You’re a good boy, Henry. Now, stop stalling. Go get her.”
I gave Mom a tight smile and went to the car to get Tessa. I wasn’t able to stay long since I needed to get back to the sheriff’s office and start the paperwork to process the boyfriend. We had entered into one of those situations I had noticed when reading over all of the county statutes and procedures but hadn’t had a chance to bring it up with Orville yet.
Technically, we weren’t allowed to leave a prisoner unattended in our lockup, but with only one officer on duty, our options were to ignore any other calls for service that happened until the next shift started, get someone not working at the moment to transport the person up to Summersville, or do it ourselves and leave the county with no one on duty for two hours or so. None of those were good choices, and I’d meant to ask Orville which one we should choose if something like this happened, but the run-ins with Evan had been distracting enough that I’d forgotten until now.
Al was still at the station when I got there, because of the no prisoners being left alone policy, so I sent him on his way. He looked tired and I knew he’d be wiped in the morning, but I’d had to follow policy. We both knew the shoe would be on the other foot soon enough.
I checked on the boyfriend, whose name was Lonnie Moss, and found him mad as hell, throwing every kind of curse he could think of as soon as he saw me. He was, however, uninjured and healthy, so that was good enough for me. I ran him through the system and was completely unsurprised to find he had a record for violence, including a conviction for domestic assault four years prior against a different woman and a regular assault charge that didn’t have any other notes describing it.
I wrote up the arrest and followed procedure by sending a copy to the neighboring police department, that would end up housing Mr. Moss, along with a copy to the DA, so they could decide if they were going to advance with the charges.
After logging his possessions into inventory and filling out the arrest documents, I was only left with one thing to do, which I’d been putting off.
“Hello?” a sleepy Sarah said when I called their home number.
“Hey Sarah, it’s Henry.”
“Something better be on fire,” she said, sounding grumpy.
I didn’t blame her. It had taken time to get Tessa settled in at my parents’ house and more time to get Lonnie processed. I’d half considered just waiting here at the station until morning before bothering Orville, but even though Buxton was usually pretty quiet at night, I didn’t want to end up in an emergency that didn’t leave a lot of time to make a decision on what to do with Lonnie.
“It’s not, but it is important. I need to talk to Orville.”
She didn’t say anything else, but I heard some mumbling and rustling before Orville’s tired voice said, “What’s happening?”
“I’m really sorry to wake you up, but I have a situation I don’t know how to handle. I’ve got a guy in lockup on an assault charge. The policy is to not leave him unattended, but there’s still a lot of my shift left. I’m not sure how to handle this, especially if any more calls come in.”
“Have you already processed him and sent his booking docs to Summersville?” he asked, still sounding half asleep.
“Yes, and I copied the DA like the policy says. I was going to take him up there in the morning when Al comes on, but I didn’t know what to do if a call for service comes in in the meantime.”
I heard him rustling around and coughing a few times. I’d probably be fuzzy as hell if someone woke me up and then started peppering me with questions before I could wake up all the way. If anything, this will teach me to not put off addressing issues like this until they came up, since that usually happens at the least convenient times.
“Sorry, man. I know you worked all day.”
“It’s okay,” he said and then paused for a big yawn. “This has only happened a few times and I meant to update the SOP, but just never got to it. Go ahead and load him up and take him up there now. Switch the calls over to my phone and I’ll handle them until you get back.”
“You sure? It’ll be at least two and a half hours.”
“Yeah. Al’s on in the morning and Sarah will be working, so I can get a nap once she goes to work if I’m really beat. Besides, odds are there won’t be a call.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow I have something else related to this I need to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“The person he was assaulting was his girlfriend. They’re both new in town and she doesn’t have any friends or family nearby. Doc Thompson came out and checked her, and only found a broken nose, so she’s fine, but the fight started when she was trying to leave him. Since she couldn’t really go home, since he’s almost certainly going to get bail, and she has no one else to turn to, I set her up with my mom. They have an empty bedroom, so she can stay there for a few days until she figures out what she’s going to do next.”
“You know that makes you personally involved in this mess, right?”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t just leave her. He kept all their money and wouldn’t put her name on the account, so she literally has no access to resources.”
“I get it, but you’re going to have to deal with it.”
“I just wanted to make sure I didn’t step over any lines.”
“As long you’re not engaging in any kind of physical relationship, you’re clear. The DA will probably give you hell, but since you didn’t know her before tonight and she’s staying with your mother and not you, it shouldn’t cause a problem for the prosecution. You know you’re signing up to be responsible for her, right? I’ve seen this before. If she’s serious about getting away from him, she’ll need a bunch of help. And he’s going to figure out you’re the one helping her. It’s a small town and people talk.”
“I know. I can handle it.”
“Okay. Go. Get him booked into Summersville and get back so I can go back to bed. We can talk about this later if we need to.”
“Sure thing. And sorry about waking you up.”
“It was the right call. The three of us need to sit down and rewrite the policy to make something like this SOP, cause you’re right, we can’t take the only guy working out of service.”
“All right. I’ll call you when I get back,” I said, and hung up.
Moving a prisoner from a cell into a car by yourself would have been a big violation in New York City, but since pretty much everything out here was done with one person working, this wasn’t going to be the last time I did it. Besides, Al had moved him in here without a problem.
The basic procedures made it at least mostly safe. I had him stick his hands behind his back and then handcuffed them through the slot in the door made for that exact purpose. I also attached leg chains and hooked them up through the bars, which I hadn’t done before, but knew it was at least possible. Between the handcuffs and the leg-chains, it would have been hard as hell for him to make a break for it, but I took each step carefully getting him into the car.
Thankfully, he was sullen and pouting, which meant he was quiet for the entire trip. Sometimes guys like this either berated you for as long as they could because they were incapable of accepting that they’d done anything wrong or they tried to litigate their entire case on the hope that we’d just take off the cuffs and let them go. Both were tedious and annoying, so I’d take sullen and pouting any day of the week.
As predicted, the rest of the night was silent and Orville hadn’t had to do anything covering for me while I was in Summersville, but I was at least glad we’d taken the precaution. At the end of my shift, I called Mom to check and see how Tessa was doing. The girl had passed out in my old room shortly after I’d left. She’d had a hard night and I could imagine she was wiped out, especially now that she felt safe enough for all the adrenaline to wear off.
Mom assured me she had everything in hand, so I headed home to my place to crash for a few hours.
My plan for the day had been to go to Rosita’s in the evening, hang out with her for a few hours, and then maybe spend the night at her place, since I didn’t work until the next morning; but that was before the events of the previous night.
Not able to think of anything else to do, I called Mom to see if there was anything I needed to get to help out, since they were taking care of Tessa.
“Henry, I love you boy, but you have to stop calling every few hours. I said we’d take care of her, and I meant it. You did the right thing finding a place for her to stay, but you need to back off. This girl has spent a long time, years probably, being totally controlled by someone else. What she needs now is to figure out what she’s going to do, and she can’t do that if someone is offering to do it for her. You’re welcome to call and check on me and your father all you want and I’m sure before long there will be some things we’ll need your input on, but until then, just go about your job and take care of that girl of yours.”
“Okay, okay. I haven’t ever dealt with something like this before, and I feel responsible for her, and didn’t want to just drop that responsibility in your lap.”
“I get that, but that’s what you did when you asked us to put her up. Like I said, you’ll be able to help, but only when it’s the right time. Besides, the girl is still asleep, and we’re going to leave her alone to make sure she gets all the rest she needs.”
“She’s still asleep? It’s been like fifteen hours.”
“I know, but she’s been living on terror and adrenaline for a long while. I’m betting she’ll sleep until the morning, although I do go up and check on her every few hours, just in case. Don’t worry, we have this in hand.”
“Okay, okay. Thanks, Mom.”
Mom mumbled something and hung up. I guess I had been a little overbearing, but at least this settled what I was going to do the rest of the day. I thought about just staying in bed most the day and being lazy, but I hadn’t seen Rosita since Monday and I was missing her. It was still a little early, so she was prepping for dinner when I came in.
“Want help?” I asked, leaning against the front counter.
“Hey,” she said, putting the wooden spoon she’d been stirring with on top of the pot and coming over to give me a kiss. “And yes. I have some chicken that just came out of the oven and needs to be shredded.”
She never trusted me with any of the actual cooking, but I’d at least moved up from dishes to being allowed to do simple menial tasks like chopping onions and shredding chicken. The restaurant was empty, but this far into the week she usually had a good dinner rush, since people were tired and didn’t feel like cooking.
“I hear you had some excitement last night,” she said as she continued prepping.
“How could you have possibly heard about that already?”
“A couple fighting in a parking lot and you handcuffing one of them at gunpoint? That might be one of the more exciting things to happen in town this year. I think Joey’s told his story to everyone in town by now.”
Joey was the name of the guy who worked the gas station at night. I always forgot his name, since I didn’t stop in there very often on night shift.
“I guess. In New York City that kind of thing happened fairly regularly, so it would have been a non-event.”
“This isn’t New York City.”
“No kidding. It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it was for the girl. He wailed on her pretty good. Broke her nose and her eye was in the process of swelling shut. I arrested him and took him up to Summersville last night so he could be arraigned.”
“What happened to the girl?”
I knew the restaurant was empty, but I looked around anyway. Of course, with how fast the news of the arrest had traveled, it wouldn’t be long before people found out the woman was staying at my mother’s place. Hell, there was a better than even chance my mother would be the one to tell people that’s where she was.
“She’s at my parents’ house.”
“She’s at your parents’ house?” Rosita asked, stopping cooking and turning around to look at me.
“Those two are pretty new in town and he’d kept her isolated from anyone she’s ever known, controlled all the money; you know, all the normal abuser stuff. She’d told him she was leaving, since this wasn’t the first time he’d done this to her, which is what led up to last night’s attack. I couldn’t really just leave her there and it was the only thing I could think of, other than bringing her to you, but you’ve got enough going on right now.”
She looked at me for another few seconds before turning back towards her pot. I thought maybe she was upset, since she didn’t say anything for a good minute.
Finally, she asked, “What’s she like?”
“I don’t really know. She was quiet and a little in shock last night. She agreed to stay at my parent’s, but I think that was mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. I called and checked this morning, but she was still asleep at lunchtime. Honestly, I think after describing the fight, she may have only said a dozen words in total. I was thinking about going down there today to check on her, but Mom said she’d take care of it and that she’d call me when she needed me.”
“So, no impression?”
“Not really. Just that she was scared and exhausted.”
“I can imagine,” Rosita said, and then fell silent again.
After almost ten minutes of the two of us cooking in complete silence, I asked, “Do you think I made a mistake, taking her to my parents?”
“No,” Rosita said instantly. “I was just surprised. I’m glad you stepped in to help and taking her to your mother was a good idea.”
I went back to shredding the chicken and putting the meat in containers for Rosita to use. I was glad she wasn’t upset, but I was also pretty sure she hadn’t dropped the subject either. Although we’d only known each other for three months or so and had only been dating officially for just about a month, I spent a crazy amount of time with her and was getting to know her pretty well. I could tell she was still working something about this topic over in her head, although I also knew her well enough to know the best thing I could do was to leave her alone and let her tell me what was up once she worked it out for herself.
Sure enough, after another few minutes of silence, she asked, “So what is she going to do now?”
“I have no idea. I guess she’s going to have to figure that out.”
“Is she going to stay in Buxton, or go back to where they moved from?”
“Again, I only got about a dozen words out of her, and they were all either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to direct questions. Why? What are you thinking about doing?”
“Well … since Julie’s gone I could use someone else to help around here, especially once the summer ends and we get into the school year. I was thinking maybe I could give her a job.”
“You don’t even know if she can cook?”
“Or if she wants the job, which is why I was asking questions. But if she can and she wants to, it would be a way for her to start making some money so she could figure things out for herself. We both know I’m a big believer in charity, but I also believe that for people to really improve their lives, they’ve got to be able to help themselves. It’s why the best charity is setting up means for people to pull themselves up, instead of just giving them what they need at the moment.”
“Okay. You don’t even know her though. You don’t know if she’d work out here.”
“No, and if she doesn’t, then she doesn’t, but I’ll never know if I don’t give her the chance. We can go talk to her and see if this is something she wants, right? By then, your mother would have talked to her some, and she’s a pretty fast judge of character.”
“Well, she’s fast to judge, that’s for sure,” I said, and then laughed as a damp hand towel smacked onto my back.
“I’m serious.”
“So was I, but I get your point. So when do you want to go talk to her?”
“Tonight. She’s going to start going over all the reasons she’s stuck and why she should just go back to him. The more she feels trapped, the easier it will be for her to make a bad decision. If she’s going to get a hand up out of this, it has to happen sooner rather than later.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” I said, picking the thrown towel off the floor.
“We’ve all made bad decisions in relationships.”
I couldn’t argue with her there. Terri had been an almost decade-long bad decision.
“Go call your mother and arrange for us to stop by after we close up tonight, so we can talk to her.”
