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  “They’re my kids, too.”

  He nodded. “I understand that, but they’re your kids because you wanted them. You adopted them. Otherwise, she’d be raising them herself, because that deadbeat who fathered them sure isn’t pitching in. You work your ass off, you’re a great father, and she repays you by jumping on Rayce Daubner every afternoon.”

  I sat in silence for a long time. Frankly, I had suspected something was going on, but I didn’t know who she might be seeing. The fact that it was Rayce made the pill all the more bitter. “You’re sure?” I asked after a few minutes.

  “Want to go up on the property tomorrow and see for yourself?”

  I did. Luke had bought ninety acres along a ridge south of Route 26 that had been the Demski and Berta farms. The old Berta home was on the edge of the property, and we entered through the front door and climbed the stairs to the back bedroom. With binoculars, we could clearly see Rayce’s house. At twenty minutes after twelve, our van—my van, actually—pulled into his driveway, around the corner of the house and out of view from the road. At five after two, Dena Marie pulled out of the drive and headed for home.

  Part of me, the part with the slightest bit of backbone, wanted to drive home and confront her that minute. But that part of me was overruled by the part that was afraid of how she might react. I feared that she would simply say that she no longer wanted to be married to me. I love her, and I adore the children. I’m not sure how I would react if she were to say, “You’re right. I’ve been having an affair with Rayce and I’m leaving you for him, and I’m taking the kids.” Maybe that says volumes about my character. This may sound odd to most people, but most people aren’t the class dweeb who ends up married to the homecoming queen. When I was in high school, I never even spoke to Dena Marie Conchek. She was a goddess, the gorgeous homecoming queen who dated the star athlete. I was the pimply trombone player who got picked on every day. And yet, years later, she had been married and divorced and was troubled, the star athlete was in prison, and I was available. Deep inside, in an area of my heart so remote that I could barely admit it to myself, I knew that she would always love Johnny Earl. But I didn’t care.

  Dena Marie and I started talking one day after church. I do little magic tricks, something I use as an icebreaker with the kids I counsel, and I was making a fifty-cent piece disappear to the great amusement of Dena Marie’s son and daughter. Dena Marie came up, and we casually spoke. She was incredibly beautiful in a white dress that probably revealed too much skin for most of the parishioners of the Steubenville First Presbyterian Church, but not for me. There happened to be a potluck that day after church, and I invited her to stay. The kids—Cody and Elizabeth—pleaded to stay for the dinner, and so she did. I had matured greatly after high school. I was never going to be mistaken for a movie star, but I am tall—about six foot two—and attractive. My head has grown to the point where my lips, though still large, are a little more proportional to my other features.

  After the potluck, Dena Marie said, “The kids really like you. Why don’t you come over for dinner some night?”

  “I’d like that,” I said. “I’d like that very much.”

  In all my life, I could not have imagined that Dena Marie Conchek would have been interested in me, but she was. We didn’t have a passionate relationship, but she seemed very content. After her stormy relationship with Johnny Earl and her divorce from Jack Androski, I think she was looking for stability and someone who would support her and the children. I fit that bill. Along with my job at the hospital, I work two evenings a week and one weekend a month on the Steubenville emergency squad. I’m responsible. I own my own house and have no debt except for my mortgage. For a divorcée with two kids in Steubenville, Ohio, I was a catch, except for the terrible nickname and big lips.

  We began dating, and two weeks into the relationship we had sex. I forgot all of my father’s sermons about the sins of having sex out of wedlock. We were in her bed, and as she took my erection in her hand and slid it between her legs, all I could think was, Oh, my God, I’m having sex with the homecoming queen—me, Smoochie Xenakis. We were engaged six months after our first date.

  As a social worker, I work with troubled human beings every day of my life. And I can say, without question, that Dena Marie is the most spectacularly troubled woman I have ever met. She is a pathological liar. She will lie when it’s easier to tell the truth. She will lie over the most insignificant things. If she had oatmeal for breakfast, she’ll tell you she had bacon and eggs. She says she abhors smoking, yet slips to the basement at night and sneaks cigarettes, using Mason jars for ashtrays that she tries to hide until she can sneak them to the trash. She’s afraid of growing old. She craves attention and will act out at any cost to get it. She’s a compulsive spender and, unless I miss my guess, has battled bulimia several times. And, of course, there are fidelity issues and the ugliness with Rayce Daubner.

  When I suspected that she was suffering from bulimia, I insisted that she get some professional help. Surprisingly, she agreed. We met together for a consultation with a psychiatrist. He agreed to take on Dena Marie as a patient, and I agreed to pay for twelve sessions and then we would reassess her condition. I think she went to one session. The other times, she took the money and pretended like she was going to the sessions, but I’m certain that she just went shopping.

  One night, six weeks after I watched her drive into Rayce’s driveway, I checked to make sure the kids were asleep, then walked over by the couch where she was curled up watching television, and I said, “I don’t want you to ever see Rayce Daubner again.” She frowned and started to protest, but I held up a hand and shook my head. “Don’t speak, because, if you speak, a lie is going to come out of your mouth, and I don’t want to hear any lies. What’s done is done. Don’t do it again.” And I went to bed.

  I sensed that Dena Marie was embarrassed that I had confronted her about the affair, but we didn’t speak another word about it. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think she ever saw him again. I had Luke do a little spying for me, which he was only too happy to do, and he reported that she was heading home right after work. Some time later, I did receive an anonymous phone call from a male who muttered, “Your wife is screwing Sheriff Roberson,” then hung up. I dismissed the notion as preposterous. Although I had no doubt that Dena Marie could stray again, I knew Francis Roberson. He’s our sheriff, a good family man, and a good Christian. He has too much integrity to engage in such behavior.

  A few months later, the phone began ringing at night—after I had gone to bed, but while Dena Marie was still up watching television. Not every night, but once or twice a week. I picked up the receiver in our bedroom one night and listened. It was Rayce, pleading to see her again. He was drunk and slurring his words.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Just once,” he said. “Just one more time. I need to see you.”

  “No. I can’t,” she whispered. “Rayce, it’s over. You have to quit calling.”

  I could hear commotion and the crack of pool balls in the background. I assumed that he was calling from the Starlighter Bar, which was where he hung out. “You know what? Now that I think about it, I don’t want to see you anyway, you fuckin’ whore! I’m tired of your sorry pussy anyway, you fuckin’ cunt!” She hung up. He was still screaming when I hung up.

  The next afternoon, I left work early and drove to Rayce’s house. He came out when he saw the van. He was wearing a navy T-shirt with white sweat rings fanning out from the armpits, and he was smiling until he realized that it was me driving and not Dena Marie. I walked up to him, my guts on fire, my mouth parched, terrified. In my opinion, it is impossible to look intimidating with bulbous, protruding lips.

  “What do you want, Smoochie?” he sneered.

  “I want you to stay away from my wife and quit calling my house.”

  “Really?” He looked at me with a smile that was part amused, part menacing. He walked around me, smiling all the
way, cutting me off from the van. “And, uh, what if I refuse, Smoochie? What if I decide that I like fucking your wife?” The smile was gone. His eyes were dark and angry. “What are you going to do then, Smoochie?” He started walking toward me, and I began moving backward. “Huh? What are you going to do about it?” He reached out and slapped me across the face. “What are you going to do then, Smoochie? Tell me. What?” He slapped me with his other hand. “Want me to tell you? Nothing.” Another slap. My face stung and burned. I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. “You must not be much of a man, or she wouldn’t have come up here begging me to screw her.” He slapped me again, this time following up with a backhand. Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth. “You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ nerve, junior, coming up here and thinking that you’re going to tell me what to do.” He slapped and backhanded me five or six times. I was crying and wishing that I had the nerve to swing at him. “I fucked your wife because she wanted me to. If you took care of things at home, she wouldn’t have been knockin’ on my door.” He reached out and grabbed my nose between two fingers and twisted until blood gushed from my nostrils, covering the front of my shirt. He laughed. It was more embarrassing than painful. I felt helpless against him, and I could not escape. Blood ran from my nose; tears ran from my eyes. He took another step toward me, and I instinctively stepped back, stepping off the sidewalk and turning my ankle. My right arm twisted under my hip as I fell. I heard it snap, and pain seared through my arm. My forearm looked like a “V.” Rayce reached down, grabbed my dress shirt under my chin and effortlessly pulled me to my feet. He released my shirt and grabbed my belt in the back of my pants and walked me to the van, pinching my balls, forcing me to walk on tiptoe. “Don’t ever come around here again, Smoochie. The next time, it’ll be a lot worse.” The tears were so thick that I could hardly see. I took a step toward the open door of the van and lost my footing in the gravel. My forehead hit the edge of the door and I pitched backward into the ditch. A gash opened up along my hairline and blood poured down my face. “Christ, Smoochie . . .” He picked me up and set me in the driver’s seat. “Get the hell out of here before you bleed to death.”

  I pulled out my handkerchief and tried to stanch the bleeding from my forehead and nose. I fumbled to get the key in the ignition. When I got the van in gear, Rayce was standing directly in front of my grill, a hateful smirk on his lips. I toyed with the idea of running him over, but I didn’t even have the guts to do that.

  When I walked through the door at home, blood covered my face and shirt. Elizabeth didn’t recognize me under the blood; she screamed and ran off. Dena Marie, too, screamed. “Oh my God, sit down. Elizabeth, get me some wet towels.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “Put some pressure on the head wound. I’ll hold my nose. I’ve got to get to the hospital. My arm is broken.”

  “I’m going to call the emergency squad,” she said.

  “No. Don’t. I’ll be okay. Help me get cleaned up, and drive me to the hospital.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Elizabeth had gone to her room. I turned and said, “Your boyfriend beat the hell out of me.”

  I must admit that I felt a degree of satisfaction in having confronted Rayce. The results were disastrous; most of the damage was self-inflicted. But it was by far the most courageous thing I had ever done. As she drove, I cradled my broken right arm in my left, while trying to keep pressure on the gash in my forehead, making the trip with my head down.

  “I can’t believe you went up to his house and confronted him. I just can’t believe you would do that,” she said.

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Why would you do that? I haven’t seen him in months. It’s over.”

  “I picked up the telephone last night and heard the things he said to you. Do you think I’m going to let him talk to you like that?”

  “I just can’t believe you went up there. What were you thinking?”

  For all her dalliances, romances, boyfriends, and husbands, Dena Marie had never had anyone defend her honor, and now her eyes betrayed her. She could pretend to be angry or upset, but I could see the love in her eyes. As we sat in the emergency room, waiting for the doctors to set my arm and stitch my head, she sat on one of the folding chairs in the corner. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked at me with more passion in her eyes than I could ever remember. I was her Lancelot, and at that moment I felt fortunate to have this woman in my life.

  It didn’t take long for the rumors to start. One had Rayce propping my arm on a porch step and breaking it with the heel of his work boot. I supposedly got the gash in my head when he put me in a headlock and rammed me into the grill of the van. Of course, even if that was true, it wouldn’t have earned Rayce any status. People would have just said, “Well, who couldn’t beat up Smoochie Xenakis? He’s nothing but a little band geek.” Rayce hadn’t wanted to really hurt me. His objective had been simply to humiliate me. He could get a lot of mileage out of that story down at the Starlighter. I knew how he would begin. He would say, “Guess what I did to ol’ blubber lips?” Then all the mill rats would lean forward on the bar and listen and roar with laughter when he told them how he slapped my face and how it made me cry. They would snort when he told them how I became so flustered that I fell and broke my own arm and how I became so disoriented by tears and blood that I nearly knocked myself unconscious trying to get into the van. Yes, they would all have a grand laugh.

  He didn’t call the house again, as far as I know. Much to my good fortune, two months after our encounter, he was found shot to death in Jefferson Lake State Park.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHERIFF FRANCIS ROBERSON

  When Toots and Gearhard left to round up Johnny Earl and Smoochie Xenakis for questioning, Borkowski and I drove out to Daubner’s house, which was a couple miles outside the city limits on Route 26, between Cross Creek Road and Fernwood State Forest. When we arrived, Deputy Kirk Wagner was sitting in his car in the driveway. He got out of his car and walked up to mine.

  “Evening, boss,” he said.

  “How ya doin’, Kirk? Holding down the fort?”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s been quiet.”

  “Is the place secure?”

  “The doors are locked. I checked all the windows; none of them appear to have been tampered with.”

  “Good work. You eaten yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, why don’t you go grab yourself some dinner. We’ll be here for a while.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Daubner’s house was a two-story frame that had been covered with white aluminum siding while his parents were still living. He had done little besides live in the house, and it was in disrepair. The front porch roof sagged, and several floorboards were missing. The door looked like it hadn’t been used in years. “Let’s go around the back,” I said, leading Borkowski to a small stoop protecting the back door. I got out the ring of keys that had been retrieved from Daubner’s pocket and gained entry to the kitchen. Borkowski and I circled through the downstairs, from the kitchen to a pantry and hall that led to the front foyer, left into the living room and through a wide opening to the dining room and back to the kitchen. The drapes were faded and tired, and they were coated with a patina of dust. The carpet was threadbare on the path leading to the kitchen. Nothing had been replaced or cleaned for years. “How do you live like this?” Borkowski asked.

  “He rarely took a bath, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “Does it really surprise you that his house is a pigsty?”

  Borkowski followed me through the upstairs and then into the basement, which was dominated by the hulk of a coal-burning furnace that had been retired years earlier and replaced with a smaller gas furnace. A dilapidated coal bin had been built into one corner; the washer and dryer stood against a whitewashed wall across from the coal bin.

  “You take the living room, dining room, cellar, and garage,” I said. “I’ll
check the kitchen, pantry, and upstairs.”

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  “Drugs, cash, photographs, written records, weapons—anything that might give us a clue as to who wanted him dead. You’ll recognize it when you see it.”

  “There won’t be any shortage of suspects, Sheriff. Nobody liked the son of a bitch.”

  I started in the kitchen, first checking out the refrigerator and freezer. Borkowski gave the dining and living rooms cursory looks, then disappeared into the basement. He was back upstairs before I closed the refrigerator door. “I didn’t find anything,” he said.

  “Did you check the heating ducts?”

  “No.”

  “Did you check inside the old coal furnace?”

  “No.”

  “Did you take the back off the washer and dryer?”

  “No.”

  I could feel the heat creeping up the back of my neck. “Stanley, you’re supposed to be an investigator, for God’s sake. Once the feds learn that one of their favorite snitches was murdered, they’re going to be crawling all over this county. If they come up here and find something that we should have found, I’m going to be very, very angry. Get your ass downstairs, and I want every inch of that basement searched. The same goes for the living room, dining room, and garage.” I could tell he wanted to say something. His jawbone was twitching, and I knew he had a smart-ass remark that he was dying to unload, but he wisely returned to the basement without comment.

  We were in the house for the better part of three hours. I found a video camera and an orange crate full of unmarked videotapes, which I took out and tossed in the trunk of the cruiser while Borkowski was busy in the garage. When he emerged, I waved him over to the car. “Find anything?” I asked.

  “No, sir. Nothing of interest.”

  I shook my head. “I would have bet my bottom dollar that we would have found drugs and a stash of cash.”