Turbulent Reentry

By Kyle R. Fisher

Instead of college exams and fraternity parties, twenty-two-year-old Wade spent the last four years at Dayton Correctional. Her name was Elisabeth and he met her his first day of college. She was everything to Wade, but he still can't figure out why she lied on the stand to clinch his conviction. Now that he's out, his job is cleaning crime scenes after the police have gone home. Despite the risk, Wade can’t keep himself from driving by Elisabeth’s huge home, a violation of his Reentry Program. All he wants is one glimpse to see how her new lawyer husband is treating her. Then the unthinkable happens; the next murder scene he has to clean is at her house.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kyle R. Fisher
• Release date: Dec 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310840326

Kyle R. Fisher

Kyle R. Fisher enjoys writing in multiple genres including science fiction, historical fiction, and thrillers. His work shifts from a trilogy about time travel to the true story of Judith of Flanders to a spy thriller about ancestors of German Nazis attempting to overthrow the US government. He populates his books with unusual but realistic characters, quirky humor, and unexpected twists. Kyle is an engineer and independent author living in Ohio. He is a project engineer for an injection molding company that makes large parts for many different industries. His wife works in a candy factory and he believes she is the sweetest thing in the building. His oldest daughter is an Ohio University graduate who works and raises three children. His younger daughter graduated from both the Ohio State University and the University of Northern Colorado, and works in the mental health care field. He couldn't be prouder of them. An avid reader his whole life, his first attempt at writing was on a red, toy typewriter at the age of nine or ten. It was a horror story about giant ants, which he never completed. As an adult, Kyle's interest in writing didn't ignite until after his second trip through college, where a tough composition professor gave him the encouragement he needed. In 2010, his first completed manuscript, Turbulent Reentry, won the San Diego Mensa 2010 Creative uRGe award for Best Unpublished Novel. He hasn't stopped writing since.

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TURBULENT REENTRY

By

Kyle R. Fisher

Turbulent Reentry

Smashwords Edition

Kyle R. Fisher

Third Edition

Revised 2021

Text copyright © 2012 Kyle R. Fisher

Book design by Kyle R. Fisher

Cover photographs:

Old Jail © windzepher – Fotolia.com

Holding Hands © Jasminko Ibrakovic - Fotolia.com

Crime Scene Tape © wolterke - Fotolia.com

Cover design by Kyle R. Fisher

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchase for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife and two amazing daughters for making my life infinitely richer.

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

ONE

Sex was the last thing on her mind, but it was the only thing on mine—at least that’s what she told a jury of my peers. Despite the fact we’d been sleeping together for six months, the State of Ohio didn’t consider our last time consensual. So, at a few months over the age of eighteen, I found myself staring down four years at the Dayton Correctional Institution. What a way to start adulthood.

As I waited in the holding area, twenty-two years old and one locked door away from freedom, I stared at a poster depicting an inmate being greeted by his smiling wife and two small children. Below were the words Reentry Means Going Home to Stay emblazoned in large, white letters. For months I sat through the Reentry course, mandatory for all inmates being released and I was no more ready to reenter the world than I was ready to start college four years ago. There would be no smiling wife and eager children to greet me outside that door, only relief-filled parents who had anguished over their oldest boy for four years.

Okay Evans, time to go, the correctional officer said through a semi-permanent scowl. His look was, I’ll see you again on your next time through. It was nothing personal; he was just reacting to factual information. According to my parole officer, fifty-two percent of parolees were back in prison within three years. I’m sure the little wife wasn’t smiling when that happened.

I carried my meager possessions to the door the correctional officer was holding open and entered a small waiting room decorated to look like a modern living room. There stood my parents, Tom and Lacy Evans. Pop stood in an awkward pose leaning against a table. He looked uncomfortable and tears trailed down Ma’s cheeks, like every time they visited me. As always, their salted gray hair and worry lines were more visible than the previous month. They’ve aged excessively since I came here and it kills me every time I see them. After a vigorous hug, Ma rubbed a hand through my short, brown hair and said, How are you, Wade?

Well, Ma, I thought bitterly, I’ve spent the last four years showering, sleeping, and shitting with forty other men, most of whom wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire. I wasn’t forced to have sex with other men, but I listened to it happen numerous times. The food sucked and I was locked in a concrete barracks for fourteen hours a day. How do you think I am?

I said, I’m okay. Glad it’s finally over. But who am I kidding? Will it ever be over?

Pop smiled halfheartedly and shook my hand. Let’s get the hell out of here.

In the vast but empty parking lot we found Pop’s car and headed home. It’s the same car he drove when I went in. Pop worked for a local automaker on a brake assembly line and bought a new car every three years with his employee discount. That stopped when I went to prison. Not much was said on the twenty-five-minute drive home until Ma brought up Garrett.

Your brother couldn’t make it today. He had a test this morning. He’s doing so well at Ohio State. He said he’d try to come home to see you over the weekend.

It was a valiant effort on her part, but she didn’t have to try. I knew he wouldn’t be home this weekend. He hadn’t visited me in four years, why should he start now? Nothing was ever spoken, but I knew he never forgave me for putting Ma and Pop through this.

Garrett is in his second year of college at Ohio State University in Columbus majoring in Mechanical Engineering. He’s getting the college education I didn’t. Oh, I got an education—just not one you can put on a diploma. For starters, I learned a whole new language. On my first day of prison, I learned the term Ho Check. That’s the initial group beating you receive to see if you’ll defend yourself. Fail this test and you’re called a Catcher, better known as someone’s bitch. A bed was called a rack. Food was referred to as chow. A Gunner was someone who masturbated while watching another person, typically female, but those were rare birds in our neighborhood. There was other colorful, new vocabulary, but you get the idea.

Along with the new language skills, I learned some survival skills, too. I learned unlike the outside world, violence is the only way to stay alive and unmolested. I learned you fight back or you get bent over your bunk. I learned everyone was your friend when they wanted something and nobody could be trusted, not even the correctional officers. Some of them were scarier than the inmates.

That’s okay, I said in a mumble. He needs to keep up those grades.

Ma and Pop spent a fortune on my lawyer even though he was one of the least expensive in town. Because of the legal bills, there wasn’t much money for Garrett’s education. He had to keep his nose to the grindstone all through high school to get good enough grades to earn a scholarship. He had to study just as hard in college to maintain it, but that wasn’t enough by itself to explain why he never visited.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. My name is Wade Evans. I’m six feet one and weigh a hundred and ninety pounds. I have dark hair, average looks, and if I don’t shave I have a heavy, five o-clock shadow on my face. My only non-average feature is the Michael Douglas-style cleft on my chin. Pop says it looks more like the chin on Michael Douglas’ father, Kirk, but I’m not sure who that is.

I met my accuser, Elisabeth Brooks, in the campus bookstore at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. I’ve lived in this area all my life. Everyone’s heard of Dayton, the Birthplace of Aviation, where Orville and Wilbur tinkered their way into aviation history. It’s a city in the middle of Ohio with a population of a million people. As cities go, it’s probably decent, but you try to live here all your life and see how badly you want to get out.

To be accurate, I live in Huber Heights, a northern suburb of Dayton, with my parents in a cookie-cutter, single-story brick ranch style house nestled among all the other ranch style brick houses. When I met Elisabeth, I had recently started attending Wright State in their computer engineering program. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up and picked this major because I was halfway decent at some of the programming classes I took in high school.

Wright State is a big, urban campus located south of Wright Patterson Air Force Base on the northeastern side of the city. Like many things in this area, it was named in honor of the Wright brothers. The story they tell you during orientation is they almost named it Southwestern State but the Ohio Senate voted it down and opted to again honor the Wrights. The large sign at the entrance depicts a silhouette of the Wright’s first plane. With a heritage like this, you’d think the university would offer a degree program in Aeronautical Engineering, but Aerospace Medicine is as close as they get.

The on-campus bookstore is located in the Student Union. I, along with every other student, it seems, needed to buy books that first week of class. After a numbing hour-long wait in line, I glanced ahead at the college girl working behind the cash register. She was drop-dead gorgeous on anyone’s scale. She had sandy brown hair in a loose perm, which floated ethereally around her head. Her sensuous lips were currently producing a weary, forced smile. She appeared physically perfect in every way, from her crystal-clear, lightly tanned complexion to a body from a Victoria’s Secret catalog—the lingerie provided by my imagination.

When it was finally my turn, I dropped a thick stack of textbooks onto the checkout counter with titles like Engineering Economy and Introduction to C Programming Language.

Will this be all? she asked as she held each book in front of the bar code reader, waited for the beep, and shoved them in a plastic bag. She hadn’t looked twice at me. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her. As I stood there almost salivating—so great was my attraction to her at first sight—I couldn’t help but think every guy she meets must act this same way. I felt even smaller and more insignificant than when I first walked onto campus as a freshman two days before.

Yeah, I managed to mumble without spitting on her.

She glanced up and forced another smile. I smiled back. She wore a