Defiled Read online

  Now what? Is he going to tell me it’s a non-standard window that can’t be replaced? Reluctantly, I joined him in the tiny bathroom and found him holding a glass shard up to the light like a sommelier holding up a goblet of fine wine. “What do you see?”

  Now it’s a contest? I squeezed next to him and gazed up his arm to the piece of broken glass. The bright light of day illuminated its red edges. Grabbing the repairman’s wrist, I pulled the glass close and squinted. The red stain was blood. Had to be.

  “The burglar cut himself. There’s more in the frame,” he said.

  Three adjacent pieces in the lower right-hand corner of the frame were spotted and smeared, and on two of them dark hairs were stuck to the dried red stains. Carrie has blonde hair so this DNA belongs to her accomplice. He couldn’t exit by a door or he would have tripped the alarm, so he climbed out the bathroom and snagged an arm on the broken glass. I told the repairman to leave the evidence on the windowsill and take a cigarette break. Then I called the Dolphin Beach Police for help.

  “Help” arrived forty-five minutes later in the form of one squad car and one female officer. By then the security company had arrived and the installer wasn’t happy about the delay in the process. I told him to grab a couple of beers and make friends with the window repairman.

  The officer reminded me of my daughter—serious, enthusiastic, naïve, determined to protect the public from itself. Her name was Brittany Williams. She filled out a form, dutifully noting the date and time of the break-in, the manner of intrusion, my weapon’s serial number, and my contact information. I insisted that my estranged wife did it, but Officer Williams was having none of that. She said break-ins were epidemic up and down the beaches—kids looking for weapons, drugs, and cash. When I showed her the bloodstained shards, she grimaced. Taking the evidence meant tagging it, filling out another form, logging it into the evidence room, and hounding someone to run DNA tests. She grappled with whether one more missing gun was worth the effort. After some hesitation, she promised to file the report and get a detective to contact me. She told me to leave the bloody shards in the paint pail for the detective. Then she gave me her card, which made her the second cop in my rolodex.

  By lunchtime, the bathroom window had been replaced with flat frosted glass. The security system installer, two beers happier, had added a pressure sensor and connected it to the alarm system.

  My Glock had rested in my nightstand for years, had never been fired even for practice, yet now I felt naked without it, so I climbed into my Bronco and went looking for a new gun. It turned out to be a piece of cake. Shockingly, I was able to walk into a gun shop and purchase a 9-millimeter Beretta and a box of ammo with no questions asked, no waiting period, and no license required. Only three counties in Florida required background checks, and they were clustered around drug-infested Miami. The clerk helpfully informed me that it was illegal for any government agency in Florida to keep a registry of firearms. The only restriction was that I couldn’t conceal the weapon and carry it in public. I could, however, keep it in my home.

  “What if I’m living on my boat?” I inquired.

  “Then that’s your home, bro.”

  Afraid to sleep in the house, I packed up some casual clothes, my computer, and some files and headed back to the boat. On the way, I called Jamie and invited her to breakfast on Sunday morning as I had a favor to ask of her. She declined, saying she wasn’t going to let me off the hook with an easy meal in a restaurant. She asked me to come to her apartment on Wednesday, her day off, so she could cook for me. We could have an entire evening together, she said. That scared the hell out of me, but I accepted.

  Saturday afternoon, the weather was perfect for boating—clear skies, intense sunlight with moderate temperatures, a light breeze from offshore. The Bay had just a ripple on its surface, like a dimpled smile on a maiden aunt’s innocent face. I drove the boat to the gas dock, filled up with diesel, and performed the distasteful task of emptying the waste tank. I bought several bags of ice, two cases of beer, and a bag of charcoal at the marina store. Then I drove the boat back to the dock, took a shower, and dressed in swim trunks, boat shoes, a Gators ball cap, a Gators T-shirt, and Maui Jim’s. While I waited for my buddies to arrive, I iced the beer in a huge cooler, filled the fresh-water tanks, and straightened up my nomadic home.

  Marty Weinstein was the first buddy to show up—short, skinny, graying, bespectacled, and with a goatee to prove he was a psychiatrist. Marty came to the boat for a cruise dressed for golf although tennis was his game. Next Fred Tanner shuffled down the dock. The private investigator, who worked for Tony’s law firm, was taller and heavier than I and also more athletic. Consistently disheveled, he rocked worn-out boat shoes, cargo shorts, and a button-up, short-sleeved shirt that looked like it was made of bandage gauze. Tony completed our foursome. The swarthy Italian was of average height but thick in the torso with a full head of wavy black hair. He wore dress shorts and a Hawaiian-print shirt and flip-flops. As a group, we defined the term “middle-aged men.”

  I started the engines, and as we waited for the big diesels to warm up we mingled on the bridge and exchanged small talk. Marty complained that he didn’t have enough patients. People flocked to marriage counselors, psychologists, and sociologists because they were less expensive than psychiatrists and few people wanted to invest in deep psychoanalysis. That trend had reduced his practice to writing prescriptions for the patients of counselors who weren’t medically qualified to prescribe the drugs that were now a substitute for formal treatment.

  “I may have to work for an institution,” Marty whined. “Maybe work for the VA, treat soldiers with PTSD.”

  Fred said, “It’s important to stay out of the free-cheese line. I run all kinds of crappy little errands for Tony’s firm just to make ends meet.”

  Addressing me, Marty said, “Weren’t you going to recommend me to your wife?”

  “I did. She said she isn’t going to tell her secrets to a friend of mine. She’d rather cry on the shoulder of a sympathetic counselor than get serious help. She dragged me to one of those sessions so I could hear her complain about me. The counselor told me I should validate Carrie’s emotions, respect her feelings. I said, ‘In order to be valid, don’t her feelings have to be based on facts?’ They both got mad at me, and Carrie never took me to see the counselor after that.”

  Marty said, “Does the counselor use a psychiatrist to prescribe drugs for your wife?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, “a boatload of drugs. She uses some woman in Safety Harbor.”

  “Does Carrie ever see the psychiatrist?”

  “Nope. They talk over the phone once a month. If Carrie likes the way the drugs make her feel, she gets a new prescription.”

  “Modern medicine,” Marty said in a depressed voice.

  Tony Zambrano weighed in. “We’ve filed a Baker Act petition so we can get a formal evaluation of her mental state.”

  “Can you include me in the evaluation somehow?” Marty said.

  Everyone turned to me, and I felt trapped. I was saved by the sound of a female voice calling my name from the dock. I stepped down to the aft cabin where the Plexiglas “windows” had been rolled up, and through the openings saw my wife standing on the dock. She was dressed to kill—deeply tanned in a yellow bikini top, cutoff jean shorts, and stack-heeled espadrilles. A soft fabric bag hung from her shoulder. She was smiling.

  “What are you doing here?” I sounded more brusque than intended.

  “Calm down, the restraining order doesn’t apply to our boat. We need to talk about our situation. We could take the boat out and make it pleasant.”

  My buddies crowded around me, staring through aft cabin windows at the woman below. They reminded me of dogs with their tongues hanging out of their mouths. I gave them a disgusted look and walked out of the aft cabin and down the stairs on the side of the boat to the swim platform at the stern. I was on the same level as Carrie, but with a gap between the boat a
nd the dock. The water between us was a metaphor for the emotional gap in our lives.

  I jerked a thumb at the men in the aft cabin and said, “We’ve got plans.”

  Carrie looked up at the men and gave them a smile, but through gritted teeth she whispered, “If you want to avoid mediation, let’s discuss a deal. I’m not going to keep coming back.”

  A cold chill ran up my spine. Was it an accident that she turned up unannounced the day after my gun had been stolen? She probably thought I couldn’t have replaced it this quickly.

  “If I had known you were coming I’d have told these guys to stay home, but I can’t change our plans now.”

  Marty said, “We can leave if you want to talk to your wife, Randle.”

  I gave Marty a fierce look. “I promised you guys a fishing trip, and that’s what you’re going to get.”

  “Fishing?” Marty blurted.

  Fred roughly shoved Marty aside, out of view from the dock.

  I turned back to Carrie. “We’ll have to do this another time.”

  Carrie turned red. “You just blew your chance for a good deal. And a nice afternoon, if you know what I mean.”

  She was about to stomp off, so I said, “Now I have proof, Carrie. So we’re even.”

  She looked at me with a mixture of hatred and confusion. I could see her mind working, wondering how much I knew and what exactly I meant. Not able to figure it out, she pivoted and hurried down the dock, tail wagging and head bobbing as she spewed a stream of invective.

  Fred whistled. I climbed back up the stairs to the aft cabin and said to Marty, “Make yourself useful. Cast off the lines and we’ll get underway.”

  I headed for the bridge, but Tony stopped me with a hand on my arm. “You should have talked to her. She may have made you an offer.”

  I lied to the lawyer. “We’re going to stick to our plan. No sidebars without attorneys present.”

  I pulled away and took the captain’s chair. Fred, the practical guy in the group, went down on deck and began untying the lines. Tony sank into the other captain’s chair, and Marty perched on the lounge seat. When Fred climbed back onto the bridge, he stood behind me with feet spread for balance as I advanced the throttles and maneuvered out of the slip and into the channel leading to the Bay.

  Fred said, “You’re making a mistake, divorcing her. Bodies like that don’t grow on trees.”

  “She’s hot,” Marty concurred. “Oh my God, is she hot.” He shook his hands like he had touched a hot stove.

  Marty was married to a mousy little university professor, and Fred had been separated from his wife for over a year. Tony was divorced. My friends were a bunch of envious losers.

  “Cut it out, guys,” I said. “She’s still my wife, so give me a little respect, okay?”

  Fred and Tony looked sheepish, but Marty was irrepressible.

  “Just for my professional interest, what sort of troubles did you guys have?” Marty asked.

  I looked at him with a question mark on my face. Why was the little weirdo asking personal questions? This wasn’t a group of women; it was a group of grown men.

  To shut him up, I said, “All the usual.” I drove the boat through the narrow opening leading to the Bay and pushed the throttles forward. Wanting to get away from the crowd on the near shore, I headed toward MacDill Air Force Base.

  “Sex, money, and religion are the usual,” Marty said, as though he were imparting rare wisdom.

  Annoyed, I glared at him. “Why are you asking these intimate questions?”

  Marty held his hands out defensively. “Men look at a woman like your wife and think they’d do anything to keep her. But you’re letting her get away, so I’m curious what went wrong.”

  The other guys perked up their ears like deer in the woods.

  I sighed. “The problem we had with sex is that she doesn’t like it.”

  The three men issued a collective groan. “She looks like sex on a stick,” Fred said. “She’s advertising.”

  “She’s compensating, Fred. The fake boobs, fake nails, false eyelashes, the polish and jewelry are all compensations for not being sexy in the bedroom. It’s like men who compensate for their lack of masculinity with guns and uniforms and Corvettes.”

  “Hogwash,” Fred muttered.

  “Tattoos and piercings,” Marty said.

  We all turned to the weird little psychiatrist. He blinked. “Women use tattoos and piercings now as a signal that they’re hot. I’ll bet Carrie has a tattoo.”

  I looked at the little pervert and decided to tantalize him. “She has a tattoo of a butterfly on her butt. Monarch. When I do her from behind, her butt jiggles and the butterfly looks like it’s flying.”

  Fred and Tony laughed appreciatively. Marty licked his lips.

  Picking up on the list of our problems, I said, “Money was an issue. We both want more of it, but we use it differently. I like to pile it in a corner and admire it like a work of art.”

  “You’re just keeping score,” Fred offered.

  “Something like that,” I said. “But Carrie sees money for what it can buy: cars, houses, clothes, jewelry. She wants to convert money into possessions, so it was a problem for us.”

  Marty jumped back in. “And religion. Was that a problem too?”

  “No,” I said, “but we’re different. She’s a fundamentalist Christian, and I’m a ‘none.’”

  “A nun? Like a sister?”

  “N-o-n-e. What you put on a form in the space next to religious preference.”

  “You believe in God, don’t you?” The psychiatrist sounded alarmed, as though it would be risky to ride in a boat driven by an atheist.

  I pulled back on the throttles and let the big boat settle in its wake. We were standing off the end of the runways at the air force base. I grabbed a pair of binoculars from under the dashboard and handed them to Tony. “See if there’s a quiet spot along the Tampa shore,” I said.

  To Marty, I said, “I don’t argue about religion, because there are no facts to argue. You either believe or you don’t. I choose to believe. Some people call it faith; it’s really more like hope.”

  “The benefit we get from religion is morality training,” Marty said. “A civilization requires a population that is moral.”

  Tony, the hardened lawyer, sneered. “Morality is the position you hold on abortion before your teenaged daughter gets pregnant. After that we all behave in our own self-interest.”

  “No,” Marty said. “Morality is real. We’ve isolated the chemical in the brain that controls morality. It’s called oxytocin.”

  “Only chemical my wife is missing,” I said. “She took two helpings of silicone instead.”

  They laughed.

  “Karma,” Fred said, as though he had uttered an entire sentence, and everyone turned to wait for more. “Karma controls the universe, not some moral code. The Hindus believe that every good act and every bad deed is returned to you in kind during your lifetime.”

  Marty was ready to argue the point, but Tony announced, “There’s a clear area up toward Davis Island.”

  I altered course and crept around the base toward the islands at the mouth of the Hillsborough River.

  Marty wore a thoughtful look as he said, “Your marriage can be saved. Given a little counseling, you could hold on to your wife.”

  “I don’t want to hold on to her, Marty. She cheated.”

  Fred said, “Did you see the news about the two websites that got hacked? The one where you find a married woman for an affair? Thirty million members. Thirty million! And the one where you can find someone for one-night stands? Sixty million members. Twenty percent of our population is cheating. So it’s not that big a deal anymore.”

  I hated Fred for that dose of repugnant reality. “Call me old-fashioned, but it’s a big deal to me.”

  The three men looked at me with pity. Right or wrong, the male opinion of the cuckold is that he’s a guy who wasn’t good enough in bed to keep his wife
from straying. Rather than argue the point, I said, “There is another problem that is more up Marty’s alley—her mental health.”

  Staring at the Bay to avoid looking at me, Fred said, “Too many boats.”

  “Head farther south,” Tony said.

  I turned south, cruising slowly. Fred and Tony left the bridge and walked out on the foredeck. Marty slid into the copilot’s seat.

  To Marty, I said, “She suffers from anxiety and depression and takes antipsychotic drugs.”

  “Antipsychotics? Prescribed by the psychiatrist she never sees in person?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s unethical. You can’t prescribe antipsychotics outside a formal treatment program. Give me the psychiatrist’s name and I’ll report her.”

  “I’ll have to look it up in Carrie’s medical records.”

  Tony overheard my remark and gave me a warning look.

  Marty plowed ahead. “Is there an official diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder?”

  Tony, jumping in, said, “We’ll find out when the State shrinks get a look at her.”

  “It’s beer o’clock,” Fred shouted. “Who wants one?”

  Tony and I raised our hands, and Fred played bartender, digging the beers out of the ice chest and delivering them. Marty asked for a Coke.

  “What would it mean to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder?” I said.

  “It would mean she has to take antipsychotics to control her behavior. Or she could get institutionalized, but nowadays you have to commit a crime to get institutionalized.”

  “She’d have to be a psychopath?”

  “Or a sociopath,” Marty said. “The clinical diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder is symptomatic of both psychopaths and sociopaths.”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”