Chapter 82: Back To Normal

It did end, of course, and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Sort of, anyway. That sounds a lot more poetic than what it felt like at the time.

That evening, the lead story on all three local stations was the press conference and the reports we had provided. WMAR and WBAL pretty much gave the truth, although they couldn’t help sensationalizing it. WJZ reported that I was the owner of a shadowy investment company with unreported ties to local politicians, and that it was doubtful that the truth would ever come out. The Baltimore Sun gave a very thorough breakdown of the reports, along with a second report on some of the wilder stories being reported by unnamed official sources.

That was pretty much it for the news. By Friday we were way down the list of things to talk about, although WJZ kept us on their headlines. Then that issue went away. My friend Turcos landed a job at a TV station in Philly, and left Baltimore so fast it took his ass a week to catch up! By Saturday I was able to take Marilyn and Charlie for a walk around the Inner Harbor area, with only a few people pointing at me (and then hustling their children away from the ‘killer’.)

Monday morning, I drove out to Hereford and went to work for the first time in almost four weeks. The welcome was heartening, a standing ovation when I came in the door. I thanked everybody, and then moved off to my office, with John and Grace following me. John had gotten all our phone calls to the house routed to the office, and Grace had been taking the messages. Grace had broken down all the messages into different categories. In one pile were the purely business messages, including calls from both Bill Gates and John Walker asking why I had missed their board meetings and why I wasn’t returning their calls. Another group was from various reporters and got shitcanned. A third pile was from people known to be friends, like Tusker and Tessa (who knew what was happening) and Harlan and Anna Lee (who didn’t). I grabbed those first. Another very large pile was of people who were just calling to offer either support or tell me I was a murdering bastard who was going to hell. That pile got shitcanned, also. Finally, there was one more small pile of messages, from people who had been investigated by the cops, and who called angrily to demand I leave them alone. Shelley Talbot was in this group, as was her husband, who was threatening me as well.

I spent the morning on the telephone. First, I called my friends. Tusker was angry with me for not letting him in on the problem and letting him help. How he was going to help neither of us knew. I simply invited them downtown to dinner; Tessa would sort his ass out just fine. I couldn’t call Harlan until the afternoon since they were six hours behind us. I called the various companies on the west coast we had invested with and apologized for being out of contact. I promised a trip out west to discuss things in a few weeks. I let Bill in on my problems, since we had started to become friends. I would never have thought I would ever be friends with a guy like Bill Gates, but he was a decent guy

I spent the day at the office, not even going out for lunch, and then drove back down to the Hyatt. Despite the closeness to the house, I didn’t drive out. I didn’t want to see what was going on. I was starting to contemplate simply selling it and starting over. I mentioned it to Marilyn that night over dinner. She gave me a very hard look and set her fork down on her plate. “That is my house. That is my home. You may move out if you wish, but I am moving back home. Is that understood?”

I smiled at her. So much for that idea. “Okay.”

“Is that clearly understood?”

“Okay, okay, we are moving back. I get it.”

She nodded and picked up her fork again. “Good. And you need to get out of this funk you’re in. It is getting old.”

“What are you talking about?”

She set her fork down again, and then leaned towards me. “Do you remember last year, when we were in the Bahamas, and you told me that you would protect Charlie and me - the exact words were that you would do whatever it would take to keep us safe. Remember that? Remember when you told me that? You asked me if I could handle it, and I said I could. Well ask yourself the question now. Can you handle it?”

I stared at her for a second and picked up my own fork to work on my own meal. Then I set my fork down again. “I don’t know.” I stood up and carried my plate into the kitchenette. I had barely eaten anything, and what I had eaten was sitting like a lead ball in the pit of my stomach. I went into the sitting room and sat down in an armchair facing the window. It was dark out, but the view over the Inner Harbor was well lighted. I could twist my head and see the houses up on Federal Hill and the lights on the walkway over by the Torsk.

Marilyn was quiet as she moved around behind me, cleaning up and taking care of Charlie. Then she came in and sat down on a couch near me but not next to me. I just sat there and wondered what I was doing.

By now I was well into my nineties in terms of experience. When I came back, I just had a few goals in mind. Survive junior high and high school. Meet Marilyn again. Win her again. Have a few bucks and not live paycheck to paycheck. What more does the average guy really want, or need? There was nothing in that list about being valedictorian or getting a doctorate in math or joining the Army or becoming a hero or starting an investment company or becoming a multimillionaire. Certainly, there was nothing in that list about destroying my family, which I had most certainly done. Hamilton was dead, my mother was in and out of the loony bin, my parents were divorced, and even Suzie had told me she couldn’t talk to me or see me for a while.

What had I become? What was I becoming? What would I become?

I had never killed before, not on my first trip, never even been in a situation where that could happen. Now it seemed routine to me. Back on my first trip, I had only been in one fight after I got out of junior high school, and that was nothing but a tussle in a pizza joint. Now I had lost track of them. What kind of monster had I become? What was next for me? Serial killer? Had I been like this before, but suppressed?

I sat there looking out over the Inner Harbor until my bladder complained. I roused myself and found Marilyn asleep on the couch. I tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Time to go to bed.” Marilyn got up and went into the bedroom while I went into the bathroom. When I got out, she was asleep again. I went to bed without any answers, only more questions.

The next day Marilyn insisted on coming out to Hereford with me, and she had Charlie ready to go on time. There was no arguing with her, so we drove out, and she dropped me off at the office, and then she continued. I wasn’t sure where she was going, but she had to be as stir crazy as I was by then. At lunchtime she returned, and after parking the Town Car, she brought our son in for a visit. Missy and Grace wanted to talk to her about what she had been through, and most everyone else said hello as well. Not everybody, however, since there were a couple of new faces in the accounting department that didn’t know her. She was just the boss’ wife.

At the rate we were growing, we would be needing some larger office space before the end of the year. That was one of the good things that had occurred. Jake and Missy spent some time with me over the last couple of days outlining our current financial position and holdings, and we had discussed future investments. In our first year of operation, The Buckman Group had achieved a rate of return of almost fifty percent, most of which we kept in the firm. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me, but Jake laid it out for me. Our Microsoft investment had, in its first year, roughly doubled in value, at least on paper, and that wasn’t the only investment we had with an incredible rate of growth. Even Tusk Cycle was worth far more than it had been and looked to be growing even faster. Tusker and Tessa were working their asses off!

Jake and Missy even raised the topic of growing even faster, by becoming an investment company for real. Currently we were just investing our own money (mostly mine, but they had ponied up some cash, also). What if we were to sell investment partnerships, or Class B shares with lower voting rights; we could raise a lot of money and begin collecting fee income on our work. I had no idea how that sort of thing worked, and was a bit skeptical, but I told them they could look into it. One thing I told them, for sure, if we did something along these lines, we would need some people who knew more than we did about it, and the whole thing would have to be squeaky clean for me to go along with it.

When it came time to go to lunch, Marilyn kept driving, which surprised me, since she normally lets me drive when we are together. Instead, she drove us out Mount Carmel Road, and to the house. “Charlie and I came out here this morning and looked around. Now it’s your turn.”

“I was wondering where the two of you went. I wasn’t sure if you were going shopping or what,” I replied.

“Also, you need to get your other car. We can’t be sharing this one down in Baltimore.”

She was in an ‘I will be obeyed!’ lecturing mood, so I just said, “Okay.”

There was a van in the driveway from a flooring company that had been one of the subcontractors on the house. We pulled into the driveway and got out. It was with considerable trepidation that I got out of the car and went inside.

Marilyn led the way inside, carrying Charlie to keep him from wandering off on his own. It looked like a mess, but a somewhat organized mess. The cleaning company had come and gone, and they had taken care of a lot. The kitchen unsurprisingly was in the worst shape. There was a patch on the wall where the drywall had been ripped out and replaced. The island had been unbolted from the floor and the linoleum had been taken out. The fellow who was there from the flooring company told me that new linoleum was scheduled to be brought out tomorrow, and he had a crew of guys coming to install it and then rebuild the kitchen. Also, I was lucky - the bloody footprints through the rest of the house had all been able to be scrubbed and sanded off the hardwood floors, although they needed to be refinished, starting tomorrow. Only some of the throw rugs would need to be thrown out.

I went through the house with Marilyn. The damage was mostly cosmetic. The cops had been through everything, even Charlie’s stuff, and clothing was strewn all around. My desk in the den wasn’t any better, and the locked drawers had been busted open with a pry bar. The desk was ruined and would need replacement. Our kitchen knives and my knives in my desk and bedroom had all been taken away. I had no idea why since Hamilton had brought his own knife. I called DeAngelis and told him about the condition of things. There was very little he could do; since there was a bona fide reason to search (a dead body) they didn’t even need a warrant. He did think he could get the Troopers to release my possessions, including my knives and my gun.

I went back through the house to find Marilyn and Charlie straightening up his room. Well, Marilyn was straightening; Charlie was playing with his toys. At least he had his priorities straight. I kissed my wife farewell and headed to the office in the 380. I would meet her again in Baltimore that evening.

The next day I got a call from Carstans telling me to drop by his office. He had all my stuff and was releasing it. He couldn’t explain why the Staties had grabbed my knives, but they had turned them over along with my Colt when they turned me over. The forensics report on the gun matched the autopsy results. The bullets had been fired from the gun at a distance of six to seven feet, with a ballistics match and the proper level of powder residue. No surprise there. I went over after lunch and picked it all up and thanked him. He had been decent throughout the whole affair, even if the State Troopers had been assholes.

We moved home on Friday. Marilyn and Charlie had spent the week cleaning up everything the cops had tossed around, all except my office. We checked out of the Hyatt that morning and I had a small heart attack with the size of the bill. I started totaling up all the expenses of this nightmare and had another heart attack. When you added in the cost of the security detail on Marilyn and Charlie, flying the bunch of them to Sacandaga Lake, the lawyers, and the repairs and cleaning to the house, I was about two hundred grand out of pocket! DeAngelis’ bill alone was over ten grand! When I mentioned this to John he simply shrugged and told me to pay it, smile, and say thank you. If I had been arrested and charged, and then gone to trial, we would have just started adding zeros to the check! I told him that I was obviously in the wrong business, and he laughed and threw me out of his office.

How do normal people do it? Mostly, they don’t. While some of the house damage costs were covered by home insurance, good lawyers and security companies are beyond the average person’s means. In cases like this, if they have somebody stalking them, they end up hurt or dead. If they kill their attacker, they go to jail. DeAngelis had told me it was even money that I would be charged with murder, since they could argue I had a duty to leave Hamilton in the house and run away. Hell of a system!

I spent Friday evening cleaning my den, with Charlie playing with his toy trucks on the carpet and Marilyn puttering around the house, wandering in and out of the den and serving me iced tea. I was going to have to buy another desk, but I got everything sorted out and put away properly. I silently showed Marilyn my Colt, which I had kept locked in my desk. That was no longer an option. When Charlie was looking at something else, I slipped it inside a plastic bag and put it up on top of my tallest bookcase. She didn’t look happy, but until I could lock it up again, that was the best I could think of. I just wanted to pack it all away. If I never had to use it again, that was just fine by me.