Unspoken Sins

By Leroy Stradford

This story may be too disturbing for some readers. Here there is murder, mayhem, sex, sexual madness, and government corruption. There is also a warning. The way we treat others, especially those we call our own, can have a ripple effect in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leroy Stradford
• Release date: Oct 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301808236

Leroy Stradford

Leroy Stradford was born, raised, and is now retired in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He spent twenty years behind a whistle as a soccer referee. Currently he teaches kids about bugs and the environment at the Albuquerque Biopark. He also performs with a Madrigal company and sings in the chorus of Opera Southwest.

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UNSPOKEN SINS

By Leroy Stradford

Edited by Marla Shin

Cover art by Donna Casey

Published by Leroy Stradford

Copyright 2013

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

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of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locales are real but fictionalized, others are completely fictional. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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Unspoken Sins

Chapter 1

A June Morning 1985

The raven, when it died, had somehow tangled its foot in a loose wire as it toppled from the telephone pole. The large black bird now hung head down from the crosspiece of the pole, wings outstretched, turning silently in the slight summer’s breeze. The huge blue-black wings which moments before had spoken proudly in the language of wind and sky were already stiff, and ruffled only a little as the bird gyrated slowly. Now the wings could only whisper and they whispered blackly of death.

The boy that Ogden Tesson was watching looked the part of a soldier even though he had clearly not yet entered adolescence. His hair was closely cut in a military style and he wore J. C. Penney issue camouflage fatigues. His weapon was a pellet gun. The black barrel on the rifle had the look of a more serious weapon and the boy carried the toy as if it were an ultimately powerful instrument. When the gun was not aimed at a victim he held it stiffly on one hip and pointed it erectly toward the sky.

Ogden and the boy were in the packed dirt yard of the boy’s parents’ home. Ogden sat on an aluminum and webbing lawn chair in the shade of the two ancient cottonwood trees that protected both the house and yard, while the boy lurked near a stretch of bamboo screening that separated the yard from the open ground, acequias, and neighbors beyond. The boy’s mother raised chickens, goats and other small livestock on another part of the property. He took a scoop of hen’s scratch, tossing it out behind the bamboo screen in order to attract sparrows. Near to where Ogden sat was a table made of rough-cut wood, and on the table fourteen of the little birds lay dead, arrayed in a neat line. The boy made a tally as he brought another dead sparrow to his collection.

You’ve got quite a few there, Ogden said.

I usually do better, said the boy.

Why do you shoot them? Ogden asked. Are the birds pests or something?

The boy looked at him oddly for a moment. Just for practice. He walked back to the screen and peered through a small hole he had cut in the bamboo fencing, his rifle ready.

The boy’s father, a man of some girth, came from the house. He wore a red plaid western shirt which was covered for the most part by his overalls. Dwight Corfield had the look of a man who drew his livelihood from the soil, but Ogden knew from having examined the tax files in Santa Fe that Corfield earned the majority of his modest income from driving a delivery truck for a local wholesale company. It provided various detergent products to area laundromats and car washes. Ogden tried to picture this large, burr-cut, sour-expressioned man behind the wheel of the bright green and white Bubble Soap truck that was parked out in front of the farm house, emblazoned with the phrase Happy Wash. Dwight Corfield did not fit the happy wash image.

What can I do for you, Mr. Tesson? he asked.

Ogden rose from the lawn chair and shook the big man’s hand. As I said when I called earlier, I’m from the Program Control Bureau in Santa Fe and I’m here to discuss your daughter’s receipt of Public Assistance from the state of New Mexico. Ogden presented his identification and the agrophile giant held the black leather I.D. case like it was a vile animal. Corfield studied the picture on the I.D. for some time before returning it.

I got one daughter, Mary Jean, said Corfield. I got her up in her room now learnin’ to behave.

I’m referring to a Stephanie Corfield, sir, said Ogden. She’s receiving welfare benefits from the state. Her case was picked at random for review and our records indicate that you and your wife are her parents. Do we have you down incorrectly? Do you know a Stephanie Corfield?

My wife gave birth to the girl but as far as I’m concerned the girl doesn’t exist, the man replied in a hard voice. She’s dead. If Stephanie’s gettin’ welfare she’s worse than dead, she’s a parasite.

So Stephanie Corfield is your daughter, said Ogden.

Yeah, she’s my kid, the big man spat on the ground, but I ain’t seen her in a couple of years. Why do you want to talk to me?

As I said, your daughter’s getting public assistance and I’m reviewing her case, he replied. It’s all very routine and nothing to be concerned about, I just have to ask a few questions. Ogden had given his spiel about his investigations being random case reviews thousands of times during the ten years he had spent with the program control bureau. The cases selected for investigation were indeed chosen at random by the computers in Santa Fe, and in most instances the welfare case reviews proved to be routine to the point of being dull. It was the occasional case, the case tinged with a bit of intrigue, the case where deception was being practiced by the petitioner for public assistance or by the public official charged with administering those benefits, that kept him reporting to work every day. The more complicated the case was, the more artful the deception, the better Ogden liked it.

The main thing I need to know about, he said, is whether or not you’re giving your daughter any financial support. Do you ever send her any money to help out with the bills or for birthdays, you know, that sort of thing?

I told you I ain’t seen her for two years, snapped Corfield. I don’t know where she’s living and I ain’t givin’ her nothin’. I threw that girl out of here when she had that second bastard child four years ago. She snuck back here a couple of years ago to see her mother but I caught her and sent her on her way. I don’t want that girl with her drugs and illegitimate kids around here trying to despoil my other two. That girl has the mark of the sinner on her, the mark of Cain.

I did note in reviewing your daughter’s case record, Ogden said, that your daughter was still a minor when she left your home but it didn’t indicate that you had put her out. Were you aware that it’s illegal in this state to force a minor child out onto the streets?

The Good Book tells us, pronounced Corfield, that it may be necessary to sever the finger to save the hand.

I didn’t know that phrase was biblical, Ogden replied, but I guess the issue’s moot now that your daughter’s an adult and on her own. I should tell you however that you may be asked to repay some of the benefits your daughter received while she was still underage. You were still legally responsible for her whether or not she was in your home.

I’ll be damned, Corfield snarled. I didn’t tell you to put that girl on the dole. You should have let her go hungry. You should have let her druggy friends take care of her.

It’s not a matter of choice, Mr. Corfield, Ogden said. No matter what you or I might feel about your daughter’s lifestyle, the state still has a responsibility to care for those minor children if there’s no other support available. We can’t just let innocent kids go hungry, as you put it, now can we?

That’s where you people are making a mistake, Corfield snorted. "Nobody’s innocent.

We’re all born dirty and you’re making things worse by taking care of these sluts. They have a baby and you take care of them forever. They do anything they want from then on and you just take care of them. They never have to learn to live right. Let them go hungry, I say. These girls would quit having these bastard kids if you didn’t take care of them. The only way you’re ever going to put a stop to it is to put a stop to it. Cut them off. You know what I mean?"

I’m familiar with that viewpoint. Ogden scuffed at the dirt in front of his chair as he considered his next question. For various reasons he disliked it when his interviews slipped into philosophical dialogue about the merits or lack thereof of the public assistance program. Such discussions were inefficient, they did not further his gathering of information and they made him uncomfortable.

While he pondered his next line of inquiry Ogden noted that the young rifleman had lost interest in killing sparrows and was now plinking intently at the dead body of the raven he had slain earlier in the day. The boy seemed annoyed that the bird had not fallen free from the telephone pole and he was now shooting one stiff wing repeatedly. Each shot made the bird spin. It looked like he hoped that the motion would somehow loosen the tangled wire that held the bird aloft. Ogden found the gyration of the shining, blue-black bird hypnotic and he had to shake his head slightly to bring his mind back to the interview.

Well, I don’t suppose, he went on, that you could tell me anything about your daughter’s present circumstances? I know you haven’t seen her in two years, but maybe your wife has talked to her on the phone or something. Do you know whether she still sees the kids’ father? Is she living with him?

I don’t know anything like that. Corfield lifted his hands in a dismissive gesture. I don’t know who fathered those kids. Just some drug addict. I haven’t seen my daughter and I don’t know anything about her. She doesn’t exist in my mind.

Ogden sensed the end of the interview was imminent. He closed his notepad and stood.

And your wife....

My wife doesn’t know anything about the girl, said Corfield. They don’t talk on the phone or write or nothing ‘cause I don’t permit it.

The two men walked slowly through the heat that had been intensifying as they talked, heading from behind the house to the dirt and gravel driveway where Ogden climbed into his old blue Audi. Corfield went over and began grumbling at something under the hood of a rattletrap pickup truck. Ogden had barely put his car in gear when the man came over and leaned down beside the open window.

Listen, Mr. Tesson, Corfield said, I don’t mean to seem like such a hardass about the welfare and all that but I really can’t tell you anything about my daughter. I don’t know nothing about her these days.

I understand. Ogden felt an odd sort of discomfort. He studied the big man who was leaning down and peering into his car window. There was a pleasant smile on Dwight Corfield’s face. The expression seemed out of character.

I don’t ever want to have anything to do with my daughter again, said Corfield, that’s just my way, but my wife probably would like to see her. You know how women are, they forgive everything. Why don’t you give me the girl’s address? I could call you if my wife does go see her and finds out anything you might want to know.

I’m sorry, Mr. Corfield, said Ogden, but your daughter’s records are confidential. I can’t give out her address to anyone.

Corfield no longer looked pleasant. Are you telling me that you can put my kid on welfare without telling me, that you can come out here and threaten me, tell me I owe the state money ‘cause you put my kid on relief, ask me all kinds of questions like I’m some kind of criminal, but you can’t tell me where my own kid is living?

I’m afraid that that’s the way it is, said Ogden. He slipped the car into reverse and began to slowly back out of the drive.

Shit, said Corfield, get off my property. He fished a two-foot stick of wood from the litter around the drive and banged it across the hood of Ogden’s retreating car. Get off my property, he shouted again, needlessly.

Ogden sped down the dirt road that led away from the Corfield residence. As he drove he shrugged off the tension that had stiffened his neck during his interview. It wasn’t uncommon for interviews to end the way this one had. He learned early on that most people were pretty touchy when it came to discussing their kids and welfare and fiscal responsibility, and many reacted in much the same way Corfield had. Ogden knew, in spite of how he might like to see himself, that the people he interviewed did not see him as the emissary of a kind and benevolent society. They usually saw him as a man who knew too much about their failures and their shame, and as an unprincipled voyeur constantly seeking ever more intimate details about their lives. Ogden shrugged again and Dwight Corfield was left behind completely.

The day had now become searingly hot but he still preferred being out and about to being stuck in his office, routing forms and reviewing paperwork. He glanced at his watch and decided that there was time to interview Stephanie Corfield before he indulged in a long lunch at home. He drove north and east out of the valley, crossed the river and headed toward the old residential area south of the university.

Chapter 2

A few blocks before reaching Stephanie Corfield’s address, Ogden pulled over into the shade of a tree. He wanted to go over his notes and formulate his first few questions prior to confronting the young woman. It had been obvious just from the case record that there was a problem with Ms. Corfield’s benefits. Why didn’t the approving caseworker pick up on it? Stephanie Corfield was spending more for rent and utilities than she could afford on the small check she received from the state. She had to have a few dollars coming in from somewhere to make ends meet, but she was reporting no income whatsoever. Ogden felt pleased with himself. Even though the dollar amounts would probably prove to be quite trivial, this case had a nice little riddle to solve. He considered the facts.

The neighborhood south of the university was a low-rent high-density area jammed with a myriad of trashed-out apartment complexes and many once-fine old homes that had in recent times suffered too many indignities. Virtually all the remaining homes built for grander times had quarters in the rear which had once housed gentle and well-mannered servants. These buildings, like the rest of the neighborhood, now gave shelter to the no-money, government-loan part of the student residents. A parasitic adjunct population was made up of ineffective over-forty child prodigies and a displaced intelligencia suffering with perpetual social dysfunction, bizarre individuals who would be tolerated and appreciated nowhere else but in the broadminded student milieu, urban academe. There were a few in this population who were dangerous. Blending in with the quaintly deranged, like sinister chameleons, were the clearly sociopathic and psychotic, vicious vagrants, who sensed instinctively a safe place to hide and to feed.

In this neighborhood there were many ways someone like Stephanie Corfield could earn the few extra dollars that she clearly needed. Because of the inhabitants, the neighborhood was a Mecca of cottage industries and backyard businesses. Many of the houses were also used as shops. The works of artists and artisans could be purchased everywhere. Even the corner fast-food joint doubled as a gallery. On weekends potters, candle makers, and leather workers put up temporary booths along the sidewalks for buyers who came from all parts of the city. Saturdays in the neighborhood took on an air that was both modern and medieval. The city government’s only official attempt to regulate this free market had been to install a forest of parking meters. This marketplace, however, could have used some regulation. It was here that clean-cut, supposedly innocent kids from all over the city came to buy their marijuana. It was bought and sold openly in the neighborhood. Not quite so openly, and usually after dark, the harder drugs, those associated with crime and death, were sold too. Also after dark, from around the city, came respectable buyers looking surreptitiously for young prostitutes, boys and girls.

There were many ways in this neighborhood that Stephanie could earn money and Ogden wondered what sort of commerce he would find Ms. Corfield practicing. Whatever it was, he’d find out. He always did. There was of course the possibility that she received money from a lover, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or even perhaps from the father of the children. Ogden knew that it was not unlikely that he would discover the father living in the home with Stephanie and her offspring. Because of a quirk in the eligibility system, women and children could not receive welfare benefits simply because they were poor and in need. It was also necessary for their men to disappear.

And disappear they did. In case file after case file when Ogden would review the parent information section he would find in the space for the father’s address the catch phrase ‘whereabouts unknown.’ That phrase always struck him as being somewhat peculiar, and he knew it was almost always a lie. Sometimes it was a lie that made a difference and sometimes not, but in Stephanie Corfield’s case it was a matter that needed investigation. There were cases where onetime lovers fathered children and then disappeared forever, but Stephanie had named the same man as the father of both her children. The children, now six and four years of age, were born two years and some months apart and that meant that there was, or at least had been, an extended relationship between her and the father of her children.

From experience Ogden knew that if the man was not still living with the family he probably was not far away, or at least Stephanie knew where to reach him when she or the kids needed something. That was the way it usually went in cases like this. Stephanie’s case record showed that the father of the children was a gentleman known only as Spider. Ogden figured that a man with a name like that would probably be known in the neighborhood and would be fairly easy to track down.

He looked up from his papers and peered over his steering wheel at the deserted street in front of him. It was not quite the noon hour and already the June morning was nearing the hundred degree mark. The main drag by the university was always busy but these side streets would remain virtually empty from now until the heat began to break in the early evening. Then the streets would come alive with porch-side congresses and front lawn picnics. These would remain until the night finally became cool enough for sleep.

As Ogden looked out at the street he noticed the dramatic new scratch on the hood of his car. Dwight Corfield had laid a fine new welt over the cosmos of older dings and blemishes on the hood. He wasn’t concerned about the scratch. He didn’t particularly care what his car looked like as long as he could depend on it to make the sixty-mile commute north to Santa Fe every day, and to get him about his business on those days he chose not to make the intercity trek to his office. It amused him somewhat that his blue Audi would have been the perfect car to complement his status as a top-level manager, except for the fact that the Audi was already fourteen years old when he landed the bureau chief’s position. The idea had occurred to him that he really should get a new vehicle but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It wasn’t that he was a tightwad. He was the type who would spend his money on pleasure before paying his bills, but the idea of spending the better part of a year’s pay on a piece of machinery seemed obscene to him. Moreover Ogden found the notion that there might be some middle ground between his junker and the top of the line just too much of a nuisance to worry about while his present buggy, his old pal, kept on chuggin’.

Ogden drove on down the street until he came to the corner house that Stephanie Corfield was paying too much rent for. The brown house, which was smallish for the area, was of frame, slat, and stucco construction. This was a type of building that had been popular about sixty years earlier. It was a method of construction that was very durable and sturdy. The houses would last forever, but unfortunately these houses were also about as airtight as a butterfly net. Ms. Corfield’s winter heating bills must be ridiculous, thought Ogden. He made a note of it before he got out of the car.

As he walked up the drive he could see the little apartment behind the house. This building looked not only unoccupied but abandoned. There were a couple of broken windows and the front door was open and slightly off its hinges. The entire property, the house, yard, and apartment, had a rather unsavory look to it. As Ogden mounted the front porch a rather feral looking yellow cat looked up from the patch of shade that it had laid claim to and then, deciding that this human was no threat, went back to his nap. There was no screen or storm door covering the entry door, so Ogden knocked on the old wood. Some of the peeling paint came off on his knuckles.

He had made a mental picture of Stephanie Corfield from his review of her case files. Hers was the typical profile of the unwed child mother. She gave birth to her first child when she was just sixteen, and two years later she had another child and a welfare grant. She had been on assistance now for four years. Ogden imagined an attractive young woman who, because of her life’s experiences, was mature beyond her years. He pictured a woman who in the face of struggle had become a sophisticate. Ogden associated the name Stephanie with some forgotten idealized love from his high school or college days. To him, girls named Stephanie were always sweet and auburn haired. They were cheerleaders. They were his halcyon fantasies. They wore tweed skirts and sweaters knitted from the fibers of autumn romance.

There had been no answer the first time Tesson knocked so he tried again. This time he got more paint on his fist and a response.

Just a goddamn minute.

The door opened slowly, about halfway, and revealed a sallow, bag-eyed young woman in an old terrycloth robe which once had a pattern, but now was just unpleasant variations of gray from too many washings with