A Short Walk to the End by Daniel P. Coughlin
After the first week of searching, Richard knew he would never find his daughter alive. He felt it in his bones.
Up until four months ago Richard Benton had managed to create and enjoy a nice little slice of heaven in the small town of Watertown, Wisconsin with his wife, Sherry, of twenty-five years and two daughters Mary and Jules. The Benton's were the average American family living in the average American small town. Things were nice and life was comfortable. Richard spent the occasional night on the couch when Sherry and he would get into one of their little "tiffs" but that was the extent of their marital problems. Like most of the other community members Richard worked at the bottling company and Sherry was a preschool teacher, they were high school sweethearts and still very much in love. Their daughters were well mannered and maintained good morals as Sherry and Richard instilled in them the best they could. A small town seemed to be a perfect setting for the Benton's.
Watertown is the kind of town where people are friendly and the most heinous crimes that occur are the ones involving one man with another man's wife. There's the occasional drunk driving incident and everyone mourns the loss of a community member when a tragic accident brings them together. No one is considered extremely, financially, well off and the tone is that of the working class. The community has its share of drinkers and degenerates but overall everyone is good to each other.
The night Jules brought David Miller home for introduction Richard knew the winds of change had decided to knock at his doorstep. He said all the right things and he was polite. Sherry really liked him and they could both see that Jules had fallen hard for this boy. Richard just didn't feel right about him for some reason. He pawned it off as being overprotective of his first-born but the feeling didn't shake, even after a few months.
Jules had been on the football cheerleading squad since she was a freshman in high school and now one of her former pals was going to get married. She wasn't a bridesmaid but she was a good friend and wanted to be at the wedding with her classmates.
She'd gone to the wedding reception around ten o'clock that night with David. At two o'clock in the morning David had given up trying to find her and went home by himself. At first Sherry and Richard thought she may have hitched a ride with some of her girlfriends and gone to an after-party or some such thing. They didn't expect her home that night but when they hadn't heard from her by noon the next day they'd gotten worried. Emptiness swallowed Richard and he knew within the first week that he would never find his daughter alive.
When he found a diary underneath Jules bed wedged between some of her boxes he decided to start his own investigation into the matter. The first entry he read had shaken him so badly that he'd nearly hyperventilated into a panic attack but he kept his cool as he always did.
June 27, 2006
David took my virginity last night and it really hurt. I think I am in love with him but I don't quite know if he feels the same way about me. I really hope he does, I love the way he smiles and the way he looks at me. He was gentle with me last night and he was respectful during and after it happened. We didn't use a condom but I have a good intuition that he doesn't have any diseases so I'm not too worried.
This first entry was how the nicely bound journal opened. The thoughts swarming through Richard's head were maddening. His baby girl was having sex with a boy that he, quite frankly, didn't care too much for. How could this have happened? He'd raised her so well and even though Jules was seventeen years old he still saw her as the whiny little three year old toting around her "blanky" and crying when she couldn't find her mommy or daddy. Richard decided to check up on his good old friend mister David Miller at this point. He pulled out his cell phone and with sweaty hands slid his fingertips across the keypad pushing the appropriate numbers. The phone rang three times. Richard's heartbeat started to race. A voice echoed through the receiver.
"Hello." David answered with a shaky voice.
Richard almost slapped the cell phone shut but his anger wouldn't let him. He clenched his jaws and took a slow breath.
"David, have you heard anything?" he asked, gripping the cell phone so tight it nearly slipped from his hand.
"I wish I had sir. I'm really starting to get scared." David answered with unavoidable sincerity. Richard didn't let the tone of David's voice cloud his thoughts. He had to be sure.
"Look David, I found her diary."
Silence is all that came from the other end.
"Are you there, David?" Richard asked after a few seconds.
"Sir I just want to say that I was in love with your daughter. What we did was out of the love we . . . well sir I don't quite feel comfortable talking to you about this." he said.
Richard closed his eyes tight and held back the scream that wanted to bellow out from his soul.
"I know David but you have to understand that I'm trying to find my daughter who has been missing for over a week now. I need you to go over everything that happened the night she disappeared. Where did you go? Who were you with? Did you stop anywhere to carry out your business? I think if you go over these things with me . . . I think that maybe we can figure some things out."
"Mr. Benton, I told the police everything I know." he replied. And as an anxious father looking for his missing baby Richard started to become perturbed. He needed the answers. The police wanted the answers but damn it! HE NEEDED THEM!
"Look David. If you don't answer me I'm going to become suspicious."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he replied in a tone that Richard didn't appreciate.
"If I find out that you hurt my baby in any way I'm gonna rip your fucking . . . . You know what David? . . . I'm sorry I called. I shouldn't have called you like this," he said as his anxious nerves became numb.
"That's okay sir. We're all worried right now and we need to stay optimistic," he said.
After Richard hung up the phone he started planning his vengeance. His tone, the sly manner in which he answered the questions so . . . correctly. Richard knew that David had more to do with Jules' disappearance than he was letting on. Richard sat at his desk in the basement and stewed over everything. Thoughts of embracing his daughter for the last time swam around in his head until a sharp pain in his left hand disrupted his focus. When he looked down to his hand he noticed a thick stream of blood running down his wrist. He'd clenched his fist so tight that he'd torn the skin of his palm apart. He cleaned the mess and then went to Jules' room. He picked up her diary and sat on the bed. He wanted to know his daughter, the part of her that she kept from him.
July 4th 2006
I caught David making out with Sara Tibalt at Don Wheeler's party tonight. He's broken my heart. All I wanted was for him to love me the way I love him and he doesn't. I don't know that I should have given my virginity to him. I think that he planned to have sex with me and then get rid of me once he had his thrills. I am going to pray that he feels more for me than just lust. Please, please, I want him to love me.
July 20th 2006
Dear diary, David confessed his love for me tonight. It inspired me to forgive him for making out with Sara. I really believe him and he sounded so sincere. After he apologized we made love in his car at Indian Gardens. It was amazing and I never knew that I could feel the way I do when he's inside of me. I hope I marry this boy . . . I really do.
August 1st 2006
I was really sick this morning. I think I have some kind of flu. David has been great to me though and I think things are really going to be great this year. Wow, we'll be seniors . . . can you believe it? I'm so excited. I tried talking to David about maybe going to the same college in the fall last night. He didn't seem too enthusiastic about it but I think that's because he doesn't plan on going to college. I told him he should think about it and he said okay. Then we made love in my room after my parents went to bed. He did things to me last night that I can't describe in words.
August 10th 2006
I can't seem to kick this flu. But it doesn't matter because David loves me and that won't go away, the sickness will. I'm really getting excited to see all of my friends at school next month. It'll be great and cheerleading practice is about to begin. I don't think my dad likes David much. He made a new rule that permits David to be at our house only until ten o'clock on weeknights and midnight on weekends. I guess he's just being protective.
After reading these entries and a few more Richard's rage began to spread out of control. He asked the Lord to suppress his anger and to help him make the right decisions. He could feel that the Lord wanted him to do something about this but he could also feel that what the Lord wanted him to do wouldn't suppress his anger. Richard knows that taking the matter into his own hands is wrong but he doesn't care, he wants this done his way.
And so he did. Richard followed David around for a few weeks learning his patterns, his hangouts and his friends. David never caught on to Richard. He would go to his friend's house. He would go to "Abby's Diner" and meet up with his buddies. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening with Richard's dear friend Mr. David Miller. Until one night, he'd dropped a boy off at home and then headed out of town toward Indian Gardens where he parked the car and started walking down a trail. Indian Gardens is a wildlife reserve about five miles outside the town limits in an isolated forest. A lot of the town's youth go there to let their hair down with a few cases of beer and some grass.
Richard parked his car as well, a bit farther south than where David parked his car. He followed David from a far distance and nearly lost him a few times. But in the end he found him inside the tree line, next to the lake. He was standing above a mound of dirt and Richard knew right away that his baby girl was buried underneath that cold unmarked grave. In that moment nothing mattered, not God, not Sherry. The only thing he felt was rage. It took everything in him not to run over there and kill David on the spot. He didn't. He sat there and cried until the tears stopped coming. David was sitting down against a tree talking to himself. Richard silenced his grieving sobs and listened. He was barely able to hear what David was saying but what he heard hit him like a nail through Christ's wrist. David spoke to Jules.
"I'm sorry Jules. I'm so sorry but I couldn't do it. This was the only way, you see . . . I couldn't be that," he said as he looked down at the cold mound of earth.
What couldn't he do? Richard asked himself. Was there something more to the puzzle? Richard listened to David as closely as he could.
"When you told me about the baby . . . I couldn't help but . . . freak. I mean . . . me, a dad? How would that have worked? My future would have been ruined. I could kiss off college and you said you wouldn't go through with the . . . you know?"
That's all Richard needed to hear. He drove to the small Watertown police department with tears streaming down his face. He didn't know what to tell his wife Sherry and he dreaded telling her that her baby girl had been murdered. Richard dreaded even more that this little son of a whore, David, had killed his grandchild in his act of selfishness.
Richard pulled up in the parking lot of the police department and watched as the on-duty officers shuffled through the doors and into the small brick building. He couldn't bring himself to get out of the car. The police would just arrest David, process him and then give him a light sentence. That was fine as far as the law was concerned but what about the people that mattered, the people that loved Jules? Richard's rage was beginning to take control.
Many hours have past and it is dark now. Richard is walking about a mile outside of town. His tire blew and his car slid into the ditch of the highway. He knew he should have changed the tire when the bald spots started getting too thin but he's a procrastinator and it didn't occur that he'd be in the dilemma that he's in now. The howling wind is beginning to redden his face but he doesn't care, Richard is changed, he is different. Richard is empty.
The first mile of the walk was actually refreshing and he was in need of some exercise anyway. The cold night air was good on the lungs. Breathing had become much easier since he quit smoking about three months before Jules had gone missing.
Richard can see a pair of headlights in the distance and wonders if it's someone he knows. Maybe they'll give him a ride back into town. As the headlights grow closer Richard watches the car swerve over the centerline of the highway. He wonders if maybe the driver has had a few drinks.
The last thing Richard remembers before waking up in the ditch with blood caked to his face and in his nostrils, making it hard for him to breathe, is if the police have found his car down the highway pulled off to the shoulder. He wonders if they've discovered the remains of David Miller in the trunk neatly placed in four plastic trash bags that Richard bought at Wal-Mart earlier this afternoon. He put David's legs in one bag, two arms in another and his torso in the third. He double bagged his head.
After sitting in front of the police station earlier that night, after hearing David's confession to his daughter's grave Richard thought to himself about the current judicial system. He wondered if there was any way the system would somehow botch the case and set David free. He couldn't let that happen, he wouldn't let it happen. So Richard went home to tell his tale of tragedy to Sherry and to his dismay she wanted exactly what he wanted.
Sherry was always talking about how we must obey the laws of God and the laws of man equally but she, nor he, had ever been in a situation that would involve them on such a personal level. She didn't even want to go out to Jules' grave and make sure. She just said "take care of it . . . make it right."
Richard waited for David outside his house on this cold Friday night in October, tonight. The air was chilly as he pulled into the driveway. Richard got out of his car and approached David in a friendly manner. He told him that he'd been missing Jules and wanted to talk with him, to reminisce. Easily enough, David agreed and Richard took him to the place he knew she was buried.
Richard could see the fear in David's eyes when he took him to the gravesite and told him what he knew. He told David of the journal entries and of his investigation and about the theory he'd come up with. David could see that Richard intended to harm him so when he tried to run. It took Richard all of five punches to render him unconscious. The cold air made his knuckles ache as they pounded into David's face. After he beat him, Richard dragged him back into the woods. After setting him against a tree, Richard went to his car where he grabbed his wood ax.
When he got back, David had come back to consciousness and was trying to crawl away. Richard's anger took the best of him and with each swing of the ax his rage was suppressed, even if only temporarily it felt good. He felt alive and so he kept going. David's screams didn't bother Richard in the least and the blood that splashed upon his clothes was refreshing. David died shortly after his left leg had come off but that didn't stop Richard. He wanted David apart. The way his soul felt.
Before tonight he'd only used the ax to chop wood for the fireplace in the living room. It was a nice fireplace that kept the family warm on cold winter nights. The Benton's used to gather around the fire and watch television, talk as a family. These were times when Richard would watch his little gang and thank God for what he had given him. Now he was using this piece of metal and wood for something much different.
A man's legs are easier to cut through than a hard block of wood. The mess was great but winter would come soon and that "icy three months" would cover his tracks. By spring the blood would have been removed with the thaw. There wouldn't be anything left to show signs of his great sin, his vengeance.
Richard burned his bloody clothes next to Jules grave and said his peace to her. He would take David's remains to another county where he would bury him in a far off place where no one would ever think to find him. At least that was the plan. Richard had already dug an eight-foot deep hole in the back woods of Dodge County, about thirty miles north of Indian Gardens. Eight feet would be deep enough that the animals wouldn't go digging for him.
Now, broken down and wrecked, Richard is freezing in a ditch and there is no car in sight. It must have been a hit and run. He tries to move but can't feel anything below his neck. The only thought running through Richard's mind is "What next?" Are his sins too great to allow him through the pearly gates, or will the Lord understand and have mercy on him? He also wonders what his life would have been like had he just turned David in to the police and eventually found it in his heart to forgive him. He'll never find this out. He just hopes that he'll see his daughter when he gets to where he's going.
