The Groundskeeper (Part 2)

Fiction by Oliver Cassidy
Author of The Groundskeeper (Part 1)



Sometime during that period – probably when poor Molly was on the phone with yet another babysitter who’d found something better to do – something terrible happened. Meg was unsupervised in front of the house, riding an old Schwinn with training wheels, when a silver Cadillac – a car like Butch Plude’s – zeroed in and crushed her, striking her dead solid perfect with its front fender. The True Truth, an independently published digest at the time with a local circulation of fifty or so, reported that Meg's body "disintegrated on impact." According to the article, the only item to survive the accident in tact was a small bell originally fastened to the bike’s left handlebar. It was found in a doghouse in a neighboring yard. The Truth boldly accused Butch Plude of being the driver of the car. It reasoned he was the only man in town with a silver Cadillac. It also said he’d been drunk, that he’d been doing at least eighty.

The writer of the article and sole publisher of the Truth was a teenager named Carlton Sharkey. He claimed to be the only witness to the accident. I knew Carlton from a book club we both belonged to. He was a thoughtful, private kid. Unkempt, with a good sense of humor. He had a habit I liked of lightly punching my arm to say hello. He was found dead in a sandbox in Rockhound Park roughly a week after the article was published. He'd been shot in the head. I'm no genius, but I managed to put two and two together just like everyone else. I knew Plude was somehow involved. And I needed to know, because he’d asked me to defend him in court.

I’d had no intention of ever practicing law again. I’d moved to New Mexico to escape the law, my history with it, from both sides. But we all have stray thoughts – lapses in concentration – that sway us from routine. Moments when we tell ourselves to go fuck ourselves and do something different for a goddamn change. I’d had one of those moments when Plude asked me to defend him, so I told him if he expected my best work, I needed his complete disclosure. He didn’t hesitate. He cleared his throat and told me he did it.

We were opposite each other, seated in easy chairs in his office at his private golf club. We’d just finished my first round of free golf and were enjoying pina coladas in oversized glasses. He began tapping his toes and bouncing his knees and squashing his lower lip between his tongue and his teeth. He wouldn’t look away from me. Stayed focused the whole time. His brothers, standing at attention, flanked him.

"What exactly did you do?"

"I hit the little retarded girl," he’d said. He took a sip of his drink. I held his eyes for a moment, then looked to his brothers for a reaction. They stared at me blankly.

"Were you drunk?"

"Nah, just getting a cigarette and dropped my lighter, the car lighter. Lost control."

I was certain he hated having to explain himself. His need for someone like me was really sticking at him. I know that he saw me as something of a loser, a bit of a misfit. He saw me as a guy who was hiding from something, living in Truth or Consequences as a means of escape. His irritation at needing me irritated me. I was intentionally taking my time, testing his patience, asking pointless and obvious questions to look for a weakness or a predilection for knee-jerk frustration. He was holding up, always focused; he just kept squishing his lip. I asked him if he’d had the front fender of his car repaired to eliminate incriminating evidence – a move I’d certainly make – and he said yes. He assured me the mechanic would keep the secret. I asked him if he knew anything about what’d happened to Carlton. He said no and I didn’t believe him. He told me he hated what happened to Carlton because it was a fucked up coincidence and made him look involved. I still didn’t believe him, but I knew he was a smart man who lied well, a man who’d make a suitable client.

"Why me?" I’d asked. "I’d assume you’d have representation."

He slurped the bottom of his drink and said, "Cost management."

"I haven’t named a fee yet."

"Whatever it is, it’s less than I pay my regulars." He leaned forward and clasped his hands. This was Butch Plude in no nonsense, guy-to-guy mode. "This shit’s easy, hombre – in and out, one-two-three – and quite frankly, you look like an easy-shit kind of guy. Just do your thing, take my money and enjoy yourself. Everyone makes out, right?" I clearly remember thinking this stupid bastard didn’t realize he was talking to the soon-to-be-rich-and-famous author of "Galaxy Runners," the first of my countless science fiction bestsellers. Easy-shit kind of guy? Really, asshole? Well, we’ll just see about that. We’ll just see who’s doing favors for whom down the road. But then, as today, money was money, and it was easy to convince myself I was funding my writing career. So just like that, I’d thanked him for the free round of golf and the free clubs and agreed to defend him.

Everything I’ve done in my life – even the things I’ve convinced myself were somewhat noble – I’ve done for money. It’s a sobering notion.

The trial was quick. Without physical evidence linking him to Carlton, the prosecution chose only to pursue Plude’s likelihood of being the driver of the alleged silver Cadillac. Plude testified to being in Taos at his brother Martin’s home at the time of the accident. Martin testified to the same. So did Mel, Plude’s youngest brother. A mechanic named Paul Vox denied working on Plude’s car on the day following the accident. That was all I needed. No witnesses testified; none existed. Plude was right, it was easy. After just twenty minutes of jury deliberation, he was found not guilty of vehicular manslaughter in the death of Meg Knowles.



Six months or so after the verdict, the formerly defunct Truth starting showing up on people’s doorsteps again. "BACK IN BUSINESS!" screamed a headline. "THE FIRST NEW ISSUE SINCE BUTCH PLUDE MURDERED MEG KNOWLES AND CARLTON SHARKEY!" The first new issues I’d received were overnight hand deliveries, creepily left on the spot where my welcome mat would’ve been had I had one, then they started arriving by mail. Copies were sent to everyone. The issues were pretty much exactly as they were when Carlton was printing them. Hand-lettered headlines, typed articles and photocopied pictures on letter-sized paper, folded in half in digest form. The writing wasn’t as good as it had been, but the format was identical. Every article had something to do with Plude. There was an article about his flunking his road test in Taos the first three times he’d tried, an article supposedly written by a former girlfriend describing his chronic impotence, another about his being "the asshole who turned our town into a fucking game show." An issue found its way to the Albuquerque Tribune, and suddenly the Truth and its mysterious new publisher graduated to a statewide story.

"This bullshit’s over, just fucking over," Plude had said. He’d called me to invite me to golf on that upcoming Sunday. He told me he intended to sue and prosecute whoever was responsible for the continuous libel onslaught, and wanted my help when the time came. He asked if I’d seen the latest issue, then told me it was the "fucking last straw." The issue, a "SPECIAL DELIVERY FROM THE FUTURE," was postdated ten years and had a goofy, futuristic look. The cover shot was an enlarged copy of one of Plude’s old cheesy realtor badges, featuring his "how may I help you" smile. The article described how, a decade earlier, Plude was kidnapped from his golf course, tortured in an adjacent horse stable, and brutally murdered. It said the party responsible had never been brought to justice, just as Plude had never been brought to justice for killing Meg Knowles and Carlton Sharkey.

"So this fuck likes to makes threats," he’d said. I could hear his teeth grinding. I told him when the person was apprehended, a menacing charge could be added to the libel counts. Menacing is a fourth degree misdemeanor with a maximum jail term of thirty days. Plude seemed happy about that.

NOTE FROM IVY:
The third and final part of the story will arrive in November.