Chapter 1: 1960-1966

My future wife and I met at the Lone Star Bar & Grill. We we’re in Arizona; but the owner had immigrated from Texas, so it was all good.

She’d been cruising; I’d been cruising. But she’d been cruising for paying customers. I was just cruising for a girl to buy a drink for; and that night, she’d let me buy her one. It’d been a slow night for her; well, Tuesdays, as she would eventually inform me, were almost always slow.

We drank. We talked. I heard her sad tale. No family, parents died in a car crash. Her pimp was also a drug dealer, mostly heroin but also cocaine. On the spot, the two of us plotted; well, it was mostly me, to sandbag the guy and get her the hell out of the streetwalking business. She thought she knew where the man kept his stash; she had, after all, been working for him for going on two years.

I eventually informed the cops. They busted him. The cops congratulated me. And Valerie Scott was free and out of the business. And now I was on the hook to support her. Which I had been doing anyway in the months since that first night.

Mister Williams ended up getting ten years. I ended up getting the girl. We married on January 14th, 1961. Uh, and I also soon ended up getting her pregnant, totally my fault. Our offspring and the pride and joy of my life, Jillian Benedict, joined us August 1st, 1962.

Our first years were happy years, but then there was a change in my wife’s mood. And no, I had no clue as to what the reason was. But such, I would eventually discover, was going to lead to some very bad stuff, well, for me.

“Val, you married a good guy. You married him to love you, and support you; and oh yes, to protect you. Tell him the bad guy is back and making demands. I have a really bad feeling if you try to do what you’re thinking of doing,” said Lilly Jensen.

“All I’m going to do is tell the asshole, that if he bothers me anymore, that I will be going to the police! I’m sure he must be on parole, right?” said Valerie Benedict.

“You actually think that threatening the man, a man who also used to be your pimp, is going to stop mister Devon Williams,” said Lilly.

“Mister Williams just got out after spending the last five years in prison for drug trafficking. If he’s back bothering me now, I mean after five years inside that awful place, he must be desperate. So, yes, I think my threatening to go to the police will stop him, He sure as hell is not gonna be wanting to go back.”

“Yes, he likely is desperate, that’s why he won’t be taking no for an answer,” said Lilly. “He’s needing to get back in the game, make some money. He needs you. You’ve still got the looks and all that. Hell, you’d be carded at any bar in the state you ordered a drink at. Plus, he knows you’ve got a kid; that’s his leverage. Guys like him are dangerous when they get desperate. I’ll say it again; you need to tell Chase and let him handle it.”

“I don’t know, Lil, you may be right. I need to think about it. I will think about it. Okay?” Her friend was shaking her head.

“Val, there’s nothing to think about. Just talk to Chase. Mister Williams isn’t your problem anymore; he’s your husband’s, well, and the police’s. Let your husband take care of things for you. Chase is your knight in shining armor. I’ll say it again; it’s his job not yours.”

“Maybe. You’re probably right, but...”

The car was gone when I got home—strange. My woman was missing in action which meant that dinner was going to be late in happening. Shit! I was starving. The wall phone next to the entrance to the dinette rang just as I closed the door behind me. I pocketed my keys, walked over to it. I answered it.

“What?” I said, kind of irritably. I listened for the next minute. I was on the road two minutes after that! My Valerie was clearly in trouble, and now I was no longer thinking about food.

I pulled into the cheapass motel’s lot at exactly 5:48 p.m. It was Monday, August 15th, 1966. It would turn out to be the worst day of my life. My wife was indeed in trouble, bad trouble. Oh, and for the record, I’m Chase Benedict: husband, father, and grocery clerk. An hour earlier, my family’s future and my future had looked good; that would no longer be the case.

I was standing just inside room 206 of the Rumpus Room Motel. I was alternately staring at my stricken wife, and the very dead body across the room from where she was sitting. My gun, I knew it was my gun, was lying on the floor next to where my wife was sitting. This was going to be bad, very bad. I took a seat across from her.

The one piece of good news, if that was what it was, was that apparently the cops had not yet been alerted. I’d have a little time to figure things out.

“Okay, tell me everything. I need to know everything,” I said. I know I sounded calm, but inside I was a typhoon of fear and desperation.

“That’s Devon, my used-to-be pimp. I mean like I told you in the beginning. He got out of prison recently. I guess he was on parole. He somehow found me. He was pressuring me to go back to work for him. I told him to go to hell. He threatened me and ... you and Jillian. I came here today to tell him I was going to be going to the cops if he didn’t leave me alone. He got mad and slapped me, hard. I had your pistol from the house with me just in case.”

“Did he have a gun?” She shook her head.

“Chase, I didn’t even think, not really. I just pulled it out of my purse and shot him. And well, I guess you can pretty much figure the rest,” she said. “Chase, I’m going to be going to prison. I know that. But I needed to talk to you first, before I called the police.” She started to sob. She was looking down, trying to avoid my gaze.

“You’re not going to prison. But...” I started.

“What?” she said, confusion in her tone.

“But I will be. Our baby girl needs her momma more than her daddy at this point.” She stared at me. Her mouth was opening and closing like a fish’s, but no words were coming out, not immediately, but then they did.

“No!” she screamed.

“Keep it down and listen. We don’t have a lot of time. You need to do what I tell you to do, and I mean to the letter. You could get first degree murder because of your colorful history and the fact that he was unarmed. That could mean life in prison for you or worse. I left that last hanging in the air for a long moment. She was clearly terrified.

“I’ll get manslaughter. I’ll be out in ten years, maybe less. I just need you to be there for me when I do get out. Okay?”