Helpless

Chapter 38

Tom pulled the faded yellow armchair in front of the couch where Jill was seated. His stomach spun a few nerve-rattled cartwheels. He knew what had to be done, but that didn’t make it any easier. To keep Jill safe, she had to learn to trust him.

“What I’m about to tell you is going to shock you. I’m not proud of what I did. But I had my reasons. I’m not expecting you to understand completely. But I need you to listen with an open mind. Deal?”

“Deal,” Jill said.

His daughter’s eyes were owl-like, wide, and intently probing.

“Even though your mother and I never officially broke up after high school, I didn’t see or hear from her for ten years. I was focused on becoming a Navy SEAL, and that’s all that mattered to me. Then my unit was sent to Germany to conduct a series of training exercises. It was a few years before September eleventh, and our combat deployments were few and far between. Your mother was living on that base. We reconnected and fell back in love, or so I thought.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jill asked.

“A shooting took place while I was living on that base. One of the lieutenants, a guy named Stan Greeley, was attacked in his home and shot several times. The military police found Kip Lange inside Greeley’s home. Lange had been shot twice in the leg and once in the shoulder and couldn’t walk or even crawl away. They arrested him on the spot. But the MPs never recovered his gun.”

“I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Mom?” Jill asked.

“Be patient. You need to know all this. Lange was deported back to the States, where he was going to face court-martial. Greeley had been gravely injured and was in a drug-induced coma. I had only a few days left before I was scheduled to fly home with my unit, so your mother and I tried to make the most of what little time we had left. On the day I was to leave, your mother showed up at the airport with a crate in the back of a truck she had borrowed. She asked me to bring the crate home for her.”

“Why?”

“She had a limit to how much stuff she could bring back, and I didn’t. With rank comes privilege. She opened the top of the crate and showed me a couple bottles of a German beer we both liked, and told me to call her when I got home so we could have a toast together. The rest of the crate was really densely packed, but I caught a glimpse of some of the other things inside—dishes and souvenirs and…”

Tom pointed to the cuckoo clock mounted on the living room wall.

“Ugh! I hate that clock,” Jill said.

“But that wasn’t all she had packed in that crate. Security and customs, even for military transport, weren’t like they are today. The guys working customs knew me. We joked around together. So when my team was getting the plane ready to fly home, they made only a cursory inspection of what we were bringing home with us. Like I said, with rank comes privilege.”

Jill’s eyes were unblinking, deeply focused on Tom.

“I had a few weeks of leave, so I drove to Shilo to stay with your grandparents. I remembered the beer bottles your mother had packed in the crate, and our plan to toast together. I got the bottles out and decided to unpack the rest of the crate to see what your mom had me bring home for her.

“That’s when I found it. Ten objects, wrapped in black plastic and shaped to look like the insoles of shoes. They were buried underneath several layers of shredded newspaper and packaging peanuts. There was also a gun.”

“What was wrapped in plastic?” Jill’s expression said she didn’t really want to know.

“Heroin,” Tom replied. “Seventeen pounds or thereabouts.”

“Is that a lot?”

“I’m glad you don’t know,” Tom said. “I didn’t know myself, but I later found out it was ninety percent pure, enough for over half a million doses. It had a street value of about ten million dollars.”

Jill’s hand went to her mouth. She gasped.

“That’s when I called your mom. I was incensed. I couldn’t believe what she had done. But she was crying hysterically. She told me she was in very big trouble. That men had threatened to kill her if she didn’t get me to smuggle the drugs out of the country and be their mule.”

“What’s a mule?”

“A drug smuggler,” Tom said. “Glad you didn’t know that, either.”

“Who was threatening her? Kip Lange?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She just begged me to hide the drugs. I told her I didn’t think I could do that. This was a very serious crime that could destroy both our lives. I asked her whose gun she’d packed. She said she didn’t know, that the same men gave her the gun when they gave her the heroin. Then she told me something else.” Tom paused.

“She told you she was pregnant with me,” Jill said. “That’s what she said, isn’t it?”

“You’re a very smart girl,” Tom said. “So I made a choice. Until I had more information, until I knew what was really going on, I decided to hide the evidence. I didn’t know who gave your mom the gun and the drugs, but I took a lot of precautions to keep any trace evidence intact. I didn’t want to destroy any fingerprints or damage the weapon. The gun was army issued, and I already had my suspicions about Lange. I knew that the MPs hadn’t recovered his weapon.

“Your mother applied for a medical discharge from the army because she was pregnant. Lange was in a military prison, awaiting court-martial, and I had just committed a felony by hiding the drugs and the gun. At the time, I was thinking about you. My unborn baby girl. I was thinking about you being taken away from us, being raised by another family, never having a chance to be ours. I left the navy and bought this house in Shilo. Your mom got her discharge, and the next time we were together, it was here in this living room.”

“What about the men who were after the drugs? Did they ever come?”

“You really are a smart girl,” Tom said. “No. They never did, and your mom never gave me a good explanation as to why. But I found out soon enough. There were no men who had threatened her. Your mom confessed that she and Kip Lange were the only two people involved. They had stolen the drugs from Stan Greeley, who was planning to smuggle them out of the country himself.”

“Where did he get the drugs from?” asked Jill.

“We think they probably came from Afghanistan. I think he traded them for military secrets.”

“So the gun belonged to Kip Lange?”

“That’s right. The weapon that went missing was the one that I hid. Your mom’s job was to keep Stan Greeley distracted. Lange knew that Greeley had the drugs hidden under some floorboards.”

“How did he know that?” Jill said.

Here Tom paused. “I don’t know,” Tom said. “And your mom couldn’t say. Lange just knew.”

“How did Mom distract him?”

“Honey, I don’t think you want to know.”

“I’m not a child. I want to know.”

“She seduced him. Went back with him to his house. Then she drugged him. Only it wasn’t enough to knock Greeley out. He heard Lange looking for the drugs. That’s when the shooting began.”

Jill got a faraway look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry you have to hear all this.”

“But why did Mom hate you? You helped her. You kept her out of prison.”

“Kip Lange was in prison, and he wasn’t going to be getting out anytime soon. Your mother wanted me to retrieve the drugs so we could sell them. We’re talking millions of dollars. But I told her no. I told her I was going to destroy them. She started sobbing. She begged me not to do that. We both knew Lange would get out one day. If the drugs were destroyed, we’d have no leverage if he ever came after her—or you. And you were our lives!”

“What did you do?” asked Jill.

“I agreed. For the sake of our family, I agreed. But even though I wouldn’t destroy the drugs, I told your mom that I’d never reveal where they were hidden. And I hid them in a place where they’d never be found.”

“So Mom wanted you to sell the drugs and you wouldn’t? That’s why she hated you?”

“That’s why. She kept pressuring me to get the drugs. When our finances were in shambles, she’d say I could fix it. She became single-minded. Lange got his sentence. Twenty-five years to life. He was going to be locked up for a long time. That only made your mom more determined. Eventually, she gave up hope and asked for a divorce. Then she used the only weapon she had left to get what she wanted. She used you to hurt me.”

Jill sucked in a breath.

“It’s all my fault,” she said repeatedly.

“No, honey. None of this is your fault. It was a bad situation to begin with, and we made it worse. But I don’t regret it. I can’t. Because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t have had those years with Mom.”

“So it was Lange in the woods that night,” Jill said.

“I’m pretty sure it was, yeah. He got out early on a technicality. We didn’t know.”

“You think he was the one who broke into the house?”

Tom nodded. “My guess is he came here looking for the drugs. Your mom saw him and panicked. There was a struggle. She ran. You know what happened next. Until I find Lange, I can’t be sure of anything I just told you. But I have to think Kip Lange is somehow connected to the charges against me. I just don’t know how, or even why.”

Jill was quiet for a long while.

“Do you believe me?”

Jill shrugged. “I don’t know what to think right now.”

“I understand. I really do,” Tom said. “But I didn’t make all this up just to keep you from seeing Mitchell Boyd. I told you the truth because I need you to trust me on this one. Will you do that, at least for now? Things aren’t safe here. Roland Boyd is dangerous, and Kip Lange is still out there, somewhere. You need to keep away from the Boyds, and never go anywhere alone. You go to school, and you come home. That’s it.”

“I’m not ready to move back here, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Tom looked away to hide his disappointment. “I can drive you back to Vern’s, if that’s what you want. But no more sneaking out. Understood?”

“I don’t get it. Why would Kip Lange want to make it look like you’re sleeping with Lindsey?”

“I don’t know,” Tom admitted. “I thought maybe Lange was going to blackmail me, but that didn’t happen.”

“Because maybe it’s true.”

“It’s not.”

Jill kept her interlocked hands between her knees and held her father’s gaze. “This is a lot for me to process,” she said.

“Now you know why I kept this a secret from you.”

“I think I do,” Jill said.

“Jill, I’m so very sorry,” Tom said.

“For what?”

“Because now it’s your secret to keep, too.”