Guilty by Association Read online

  The night before them was no different from the others over the years. The summer nights differed from the fall nights, which differed from the spring nights and so on, but only due to climate and scenery. In the summer, as midnight drew near, not a single cloud would hover in the sky. Minutes filled with silence would pass as everyone leaned back, heads pointed skyward, gazing into the night at the billions of stars and planets hovering millions of miles away in a yet unknown territory. It was one of the perks of small town life. No one felt the need to speak. Absent were the smog, smoke, and other fumes of the larger industrialized cities. What remained was stillness, peace, and a view not often duplicated.

  Clark’s home mirrored the town: small and simple. It had been built in the 1950s, evident by the style, architecture, and even the original color scheme. The entire house, save the basement, was on one floor. In the days when Clark’s mother and father both occupied the house it always seemed cramped, far too small for all of the bodies, much less the personalities. Once his mother left for her more familiar setting in the deeper south, the space and breathing room seemed to expand almost immediately. Now that Clark’s father, an attorney, had moved to the northern part of the state, both to care for his elderly mother and to secure a new position as partner in a recently opened firm with longtime associates and friends, the space sometimes felt too large. That was until Adam, seeking privacy and a quiet environment of his own, had moved in just days after Ryan’s invitation. Clark’s excess room and occasional loneliness vanished into thin air.

  Only a few thin strips of cloud floated above their heads in the clear, cool evening. A bright full moon shone in stark contrast to the otherwise pitch black sky, occasionally obscured for a matter of seconds by a stray cloud before once again coming into view. The weather was particularly cool, especially for the season, and the moisture in the air produced by the creek seemed less dense than usual. The wood burning stove was full, providing both a mild heat and a flicker of light to those around it.

  Ryan, Adam, and Kara were all present, per the usual, and Adam’s latest catch, Lisa, had been brought along for her first ever fireside experience. She had asked Adam to come along for weeks until he arranged tonight’s get-together, more to get her off of his back than anything else. Hearing about these infamous yet sometimes uneventful occasions had piqued her interest. The storytelling was extra vivid for her benefit. Adam was doing his best to persuade Ryan to tell the story involving him, Adam, Ryan’s cousin, and a train tunnel, one that sounded farfetched but was quite true.

  “Do I really need to tell that story again?” Clark asked. “We’ve all heard it a thousand times.”

  “Just do it, man. Why not? Lisa hasn’t heard it and I can’t tell it like you do.”

  “You can try, can’t you? You were right there beside me as I recall.”

  “Come on, please? I want Lisa to…”

  “Just tell the story, Ryan,” Kara interjected, eyes rolling. “He won’t shut up until you do. It’s my favorite juvenile thing you guys have done, plus Lisa needs to hear it so she knows what she’s getting into with Blondie over there,” Kara said with a smile, pointing in Adam’s general direction.

  “Okay. Since you asked nicely, I’ll tell it.”

  “Oh, oh,” Adam said, throwing up his hands with a shade of added drama. “Since she asks you to, you do it. I see how it is. I knew you…”

  “Stop right there,” Ryan said, pointing and Adam and cutting him off.

  Kara Morgan was not a run-of-the-mill Southern girl, much less a typical Spring Creek product. Her life began a far cry from her current location. The move to Spring Creek from the state capital of Charleston came when she was nine years old, forcing her to meet new people and establish friendships at a time when those native to the area had already done so years before. Difficult at first, the task of meeting new people became easier when those around her began to be drawn to her already vivid personality. That is until young adulthood, which became the start of womanhood. This was when her friends became pursuers and her personality was not the focal point for the coming-of-age boys around her.

  Born to a white father and a Syrian mother, Kara was blessed with an exotic beauty to which no one nearby could compare. At least that was the thought in the head of a teenaged Ryan Clark the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Her light brown skin was complemented perfectly by her dark hair that extended below her shoulders. She stood no more than five-foot-three but that never mattered to anyone of the male persuasion. Clark, though, was always drawn to a particular feature than so many other young men around him rarely took time to notice, much less appreciate. Kara’s vibrant eyes, a medium shade of kiwi green with a tinge of both aqua and light gray so subtle that Clark thought he was the only one who truly knew it was there, always possessed the ability to render him speechless. With the years of experience, he was able to see her feelings on any given day without her so much as saying a word. Even through something as mundane and emotionless as an instant message on a computer screen, he knew… something. Few things in life could render Clark speechless but Kara was undoubtedly one of them.

  She was pursued constantly, and relentlessly, but it was usually her strictly platonic friend that seemed to be on the receiving end of most of her time. There were dates and boyfriends and even the occasional serious relationship but they all faded and eventually ended. It was Ryan’s phone that would inevitably ring in the early morning hours of those fateful nights. On every occasion, Clark’s stomach boiled upon hearing her ask the most grating question in his world, why she couldn’t find a man like him, or finding himself against subjected to her commentary on how happy he was going to make some lucky woman one day. Whenever she’d mention being lonely, he wondered if he was romantically invisible. He could always think it but never say it.

  It was the one source of tension between them, one of which Kara was unaware and one that Clark was left to battle alone.

  “Okay, Lisa, you wanted it so here it is,” Ryan began. “Over where my cousin, Peter, lived, between here and Monroeville, there was a train tunnel down below his house. We were maybe thirteen or so and it’s not like we could drive so all we had was our bikes. Anyway we always needed something to do after school so we’d meet up at his house and hang out for a while. So one day our resident genius over here”—Ryan pointed at Adam—“gets the bright idea to go down to the tunnel for a while and check it out and our lives were forever changed. A train comes through maybe eight or nine times a day but the drunks would stay there overnight and just get tanked. So, there were empty bottles lying everywhere. I’m talking beer, liquor, 40’s, everything. It didn’t really take much to keep us entertained, so we’d go down there and bust the bottles off the walls and the ceiling. That thing was twenty or thirty feet high, maybe more, so it was no big deal, you know?

  “After a while that wasn’t quite as intriguing and exciting as it used to be and we needed a little more to hold our attention. This place had been used and abused for years. There was graffiti all over the walls, dates from the eighties painted on there in some places, garbage everywhere. There was even an old mattress that someone had dumped. It was crazy. So one day we all rode down to the dollar store, bought as many cans of spray paint as our budget could handle, so probably six or seven, headed for the tunnel and just went to town. We sprayed stuff everywhere.” Clark laughed for several seconds at the image in his head and said, “We still talk about Adam’s little depiction of sexual deviance on the wall, too. I’ve got pictures if you want to see them.”

  “I’ll have to see those immediately,” Lisa said with a smile.

  “Ryan, I swear to God, if you show her those pictures I will beat your…”

  “Now, don’t be impolite, Picasso,” Clark interjected, with his hand raised. “The lady wants to see them and she shouldn’t be deprived.

  Adam held his head in his hands then threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed, “Fine!”

  “Anyway,
where was I? We’re spraying our names and everything until Peter decides that the element that has been missing from all of this is fire. Yeah, I know. So he pulls out a can of butane that he took from his house, lights it and we all just take off running. This thing blows and goes airborne. The tunnel is probably seventy or eighty yards long, maybe more and we were at the end of it. Here comes a flaming can flying at us. Adam ducks, it hits Peter in the head, and bounces off my leg.”

  “Sensible people would have stopped that course of action right then and there. We were thirteen, though, so we weren’t rational people! We thought fire was the most entertaining thing around, especially for our limited budget. A few days later, Peter gets some paper and stuff like that to burn in the tunnel. It’s harmless, small, you know. So he puts the stuff on the tracks and lights it. I’m down at the other end just walking around and see the train coming.”

  “Oh, no! You’re kidding!” Lisa said with her hand over her mouth. She held back her laughter but doing so was getting more difficult with each piece of the story’s puzzle.

  “Just wait. It gets better. So, I yell down to them ‘Hey, guys, there’s a train coming!’ and they don’t believe me. They’re saying ‘Yeah right’ and ‘Whatever’. After the third time, I said ‘Guys, there is a train coming. You can get arrested or run over if you want but I’m not!’ and they finally got the message that it’s coming and getting closer. Adam and Peter had both come down to see for themselves that it was indeed a train. Okay? We go up to where the fire was to put it out, but Adam and I get up there only to look back and see Peter already on his bike and pedaling like he was on fire! He’s out of sight and there we are left all to our lonesome, trying to stomp this pile of crap out with our feet and me in sandals, no less. Finally, we decided enough was enough and bailed before anyone was the wiser.”

  Lisa could barely speak through her laughter. “Oh, that’s great! You guys never got caught or anything?”

  The silence of the night was broken by the sound of a helicopter flying overhead and looking to be on the gradual descent that precedes a landing.

  “That’s a first. Your dad’s the only one from around here that could afford something like that. Anything you need to tell us?” Adam asked facetiously, looking upward and following the flight path.

  Clark looked up and said, “That sure would make vacations easier, wouldn’t it? Let me finish up the all-important story. So, we go back to Peter’s, half out of breath, of course. We’re kicked back, playing some Sega Genesis, when somebody knocks on the door. Adam opens it up and it’s a deputy sheriff. I’m not joking. We’re all terrified and I’m trying to think of what defense my dad can use for me in court. As it turns out, the cop was there to serve a paper to Peter’s mom. We thought we were screwed but, yeah, that’s what happened. Honest to God.” He held up his left hand, as if he was giving an oath in the courthouse a mile away.

  Lisa still hadn’t caught her breath and everyone else was laughing despite their having heard the story countless times, even the participants.

  “That’s hilarious. I bet that was the last of those little adventures, huh?”

  “You’d lose that bet,” Adam said.

  The remainder of the night played out exactly as planned, even though there never was a plan in the first place. Stories were told, some were retold and expounded on, food was consumed, sides ached from laughing, and by the end of the evening everyone was drained. The late evening became the early morning before those involved went their separate ways, although three of the four would be staying put. This would make another night, the kind of which had become more frequent as of late, that Lisa would stay overnight with Adam at the house and again reminded Ryan of the soundproofing project that now seemed more important than ever. Only Kara would be going home and each night that everyone got together in this manner Clark felt it necessary to personally escort her every step of the half-mile travel to her house.

  The early morning hours instilled a chill in the air, prompting Ryan to drape his unlined nylon athletic jacket over Kara’s shoulders. Aside from the dim moonlight, only the streetlights at periodic intervals prevented total darkness on Main Street. Passing under each streetlamp momentarily placed an angelic glow on Kara’s face, which placed a small smile on Clark’s.

  The town seemed quiet at any point during the day but 2 AM was completely silent. Once or twice an hour, a black police cruiser would slowly roll down Main Street and through the surrounding blocks but the action ended there, for the most part. Ryan made a point to walk on the side closest to the road, a piece of gentlemanly etiquette long forgotten by at least one generation and possibly more. Kara’s steps were becoming labored. The two glasses of wine combined with the increasing drowsiness were playing games with her coordination. She was talking and he was hearing but not necessarily listening. Ryan’s thoughts were elsewhere and yet still focused on the young woman walking at his side. Her hair was down, which was Clark’s preference, and she was dressed in the t-shirt and oversized sweatpants that she always wore when they spent the night fireside, a choice made for the sake of comfort rather than an attempt at a fashion statement. Despite her relaxed attire, Clark knew he had never seen her look more beautiful.

  “Hey! Are you listening to me?” Kara asked, noticing Clark’s distant stare.

  Ryan shook his head and said, “Yeah, of course. Just a little tired that’s all.” His eyes were drawn to the light reflecting off of the highlights in her otherwise dark brown hair.

  “Okay, just checking. I never know for sure when you space out like that,” she said, looking up at him.

  “I’m always listening. Of course, that’s because you’re always talking,” Clark said and smiled.

  “Smartass.”

  Clark raised his eyebrows and said, “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry. Did I stutter?” Kara said, smiling and remembering that it was Clark’s favorite line of hers when delivered with attitude on anyone but him.

  Halfway down Main Street, the two turned right onto Turner Lane. At the end was Kara’s house. Clark silently wished it was further away. The elder Morgans spent their summers at one of any number of their favorite exotic and tropical locations, allowing Kara the peace and quiet that she so often desired but was rarely granted. At least once per summer, she would accompany them to a vacation spot but her week in paradise had already taken place.

  The area around her two-story brick house was dimly lit, if at all, by moonlight, which was the primary reason Clark always insisted on walking her home no matter how many times she tried to convince him otherwise. The walk up the stairs onto the porch was always the hardest part for Clark, knowing that his time with her was done for the night.

  “Tonight was great but I’m about to pass out,” Kara said, yawning and fumbling for her keys to open the door.

  “I know. I’m headed there myself, unless you want some company tonight. It’s supposed to get cold and…”

  “Shut up. I know where you’re going,” Kara said, jabbing her finger into his chest. “What would you do if I actually took you up on it?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it. Are you making me an offer I can’t refuse?”

  “Not tonight but you never know.”

  “Then I guess there’s still hope, right?” He smiled and hugged her with one arm. “G’night, babe,” he said and kissed the side of her head.

  “Goodnight Ryan,” Kara mumbled through another yawn before turning and walking through the doorway.

  After watching her disappear into the house and waiting for the light to come on, Clark turned and began his walk toward Main Street, headed back for his home. He knew what the scene was probably like at his house for the moment, so his walking speed would be slower than normal. His eyes were drawn to a source of light that had gone unnoticed on the walk to Kara’s just minutes earlier. Across the creek and behind the Spring Creek Police Department building shone a cluster of floodlights and what appeared to be the ou
tline of the helicopter they had spotted on its descent hours before. He dismissed it as nothing more than police business, peculiar as it was, mostly because he was too tired to think it through any further, and continued the mile-long trek back to his house.

  Upon walking though the door, he was relieved to hear nothing in lieu of the sounds he expected. He could almost hear the computer calling his name, beckoning him to check his email or at least chat with Julie for a few minutes but his body rejected the idea as quickly as it appeared. Clark felt his way through the dark, careful not to create enough noise to wake everyone else, before finally falling into his bed with an exhausted exhale. His mind was swept back to where it had been all night, enough to delay the process of falling asleep. Ryan knew what was ahead in the next several hours: first to pray himself to sleep and then to dream. The subject would likely remain the same.

  CHAPTER

  3

  The helicopter ushering in the featured guests of the evening was already fifteen minutes late. Dusk was fast approaching and the low-light conditions made landing in unfamiliar territory highly difficult for a pilot on any level that did not involve military training. The sky was clear and only a slight breeze blew from time to time, meaning ideal conditions for the business at hand. Darrell Sparks was nothing if not punctual. Not only did he make a point of being on-time for anything he did, the same was expected of those around him. Anything less resulted in the kind of angst that he was feeling throughout his body at the moment.