In the detective's briefcase, there's a computer-printout spreadsheet of names next to disabilities next to an address for each one. Here's guys with carpal-tunnel syndrome. Guys with nonspecific soft-tissue damage to their lower backs. Chronic pain in their cervical vertebrae. Listed here is the disability provider, the insurance company. Here's the painkillers prescribed in each case.
And on that spreadsheet, there I am: Eugene Denton.
Inside the briefcase, a rubber band wraps a thick stack of business cards, all of them saying: Lewis Lee Orleans, Private Investigator. And a phone number.
When I dial the phone number, a cell phone inside the briefcase begins to ring.
Outside, Lewis Lee Orleans is hollering for me to help open the shithouse door.
If it would help Sarah Broome feel better about killing me, I'd tell her how the detective, he cried. His sobs muffled behind both hands, he told me he had a wife at home and three kids. Little kids. But he didn't wear a wedding ring, and inside his wallet were no pictures.
People say they can feel getting looked at. Being watched has the same feeling as ants crawling up your pant leg. Not me. That afternoon, I rotated my tires, checked the wear on my brake pads. Changed my oil, going from winter 10-10 weight to summer 10-40 weight. Here on the little video screen, here was me with a full case of motor oil, dragging it out from under the motor home and lugging it under one arm. Totally disabled me, the poor delivery driver who swore in court I couldn't lift my arms high enough to brush my teeth. A crippled invalid who deserved to be put out to pasture for the rest of my natural life. Here, shirtless on camera, the sweat from my armpit soaking a dark-brown shadow on the case of oil, I could pass for a circus strongman.
Living outdoors in good weather, not eating much, sleeping long nights, this tanned little muscle man could be me when I was nineteen years old.
This was the best life I'd ever known, and the man trapped in my shithouse was about to wreck it all.
Most big disability cases, they're always in appeal. The workers'-comp insurance folks, they want years to trail their man. To get just five minutes of good clear video that shows him lift a rototiller into the back of his pickup truck. They play that tape in court, and it's: Case closed. Disability denied. The plaintiff, one minute he's set for life, a good-enough chunk of cash every month, medical benefits covered, plus all the Vicodins and Percocets, all the OxyContin he needs to stay sweet the rest of his days. The defense team plays that tape in court—the rototiller going into his truck bed—and he's got nothing.
He's forty-five or fifty years old, and he's accused of insurance fraud. No chance he's getting anything but minimum wage the rest of his life. No benefits. No free time until he's sixty-something years old and qualifies for relief.
Right this minute, to Sarah Broome even life in prison for murder looks good compared to falling behind in her property taxes, losing her car, and pushing a shopping cart on the street.
When I was in her shoes, all I had on hand was a case of four bug bombs. The Winnebago where I lived had a wasp nest underneath. The directions on each bug bomb said to shake well and then break the tip off a little nozzle on top. The bomb would spray out poison smoke until it was empty.
The label said it would kill anything.
The poor detective. I climbed up a ladder and dropped all four of those bombs down the shitter vent pipe. After that, I clapped a hand over the pipe to stop any leaking out. Me up there, Adolf fucking Hitler, dropping poison gas and listening to my detective cough and beg for air. Just the sound of him gagging up wet puke, then the glop of it hitting the wood floor in chunks, just the sound alone almost made me hurl. The sulfur smell of bug spray and the puke smell. Those bug bombers kept hissing until white whiffs curled out from every little crack and nail hole. Gasoline-smelling smoke puffed from each side of the shithouse as the detective threw himself at the walls, then the door, trying to break out. Beating his arms to bruised pulp inside the shoulder pads of his good brown suit. Wearing himself out.
Sitting here, my leg aching from the waist down, waiting for Sarah Broome to play problem solver, there's so much I want to tell her. How the insecticide only made the detective and me both sick. How it felt, hitting somebody in the side of his head with a lug wrench. How, the first dozen times you hit, it only makes a mess. Even swinging with both hands, you're pounding hair and blood, not really breaking much bone. How the blood gets the lug wrench so slippery you can't hold it, and you've got to go find something clean to finish the job.
If I wasn't disabled before killing that Mr. Lewis Lee Orleans, I was after. Killing somebody is hard work. Hard, messy work. Hard, messy, noisy work, with him bellowing loud, his words making no more sense than a cow on the killing floor.
How I figure is, even if I didn't kill my Mr. Nosy Detective, the long cold night would have. The deer flies and shock from his broken leg would have. Dead is dead, and this way neither of us had to suffer. Not much.
Even if I never got caught, killing the detective spoiled my taste for being crippled. Now I knew people were watching, I'd seen the spreadsheet, another detective would come spying on me someday.
So, if you can't beat them, join them.
On television, the next commercial for a correspondence school, I called them up. They teach you how to stake out a suspect. How to dig through a garbage can
