Road Kill

By R.M. Ferrier

A fatal car accident, a marriage on the rocks, a cesspool of betrayal... R.M. Ferrier dishes it all out and more in a tense drama that wrestles with truth, lies and the grey matter in-between. 
 
Laced with profanity and soaked in depravity, R.M. Ferrier holds nothing back! If you've got the stomach for a closer look at the raw American dream, ROAD KILL is the book for you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.M. Ferrier
• Release date: Sep 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780994821454

Book preview

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to the whistling wind...

Chapter

1 ON FOLEY CRESCENT......................................... 1

2 A drunken kid killer..................................... 11

3 A PARENT’S WORST NIGHTMARE......................... 29

4 STOPPED AT THE CANADIAN BORDER.................. 54

5 UP IN PRESCOTT CUTTING A DEAL WITH A MANGY CANADIAN.......................................................... 60

6 IRENE DULMAGE’S FRAGILE CONDITION............ 110

7 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING UP TO THE ACCIDENT.............................................. 133

8 NURSES, PARAMEDICS, SICKY PATIENTS AND HOUSECLEANING DRONES................................... 142

9 A FORBEARER OF THE TREACHERY TO COME....... 174

10 NAKED, RAW, INCONSOLABLE GRIEF................. 195

11 AN IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG GIRL FROM A BROKEN HOME................................................................ 217

12 A BOWL FULL OF IODINE.................................. 248

13 A TWO-LEGGED VIXEN..................................... 268

14 THE INVISIBLE FIBreS THAT KEEP US FROM COMING APART................................................................ 280

15 IN THE SULTRY STUTTER OF THE DARK.............. 288

16 THE OBJECT OF MY ANXIETY............................ 303

17 COLD BLOODED MURDER IS STARTING TO REVEAL ITS CHARM.............................................................. 313

18 THE SILENCE BETWEEN US AND THE CIRCLING WIND ......................................................................... 335

19 TOO MUCH OF A ROMANTIC FOR THIS KIND OF WORLD................................................................ 348

20 THE SIMPLE TRUTH........................................... 375

Books by R.M. FERRIER

The Crow Flies South For The Winter

The House Of The Black Goat

Cemetery Side Road

The Crow’s Nest Lies Beneath The Snow

Murder Down The French Line

Kentucky Rose Garden

CHAPTER 1

ON FOLEY CRESCENT

STARING OUT THE FROST covered window at the cold January silence makes me think about the futility of it all – but mainly the pointlessness of my life. 1975 is shaping up to be a real bust of a year. With each passing day, I fear I’m closer to losing my job. Not that it would be any great disappointment to me – more a blow to my fragile self esteem. I’m afraid of what my family would think, that’s all. My kids don’t need any more reasons to hang their heads at school. Their old man might be the most boring dad on the block, but at least he’s still paying the mortgage. I got the job at the insurance office straight out of high school and that was only because my uncle was on the board of directors. All I had to do was avoid fucking up too noticeably on a handful of orientation courses and I was in. It has always been my job to lose. Even after my uncle passed away, they’ve been in no hurry to get rid of me. As long as I show up for work and make an effort to smile while going through the motions, my boss seems content with that. The trouble lately has been that I’m finding it increasingly challenging to force myself to smile. I’m not a happy man, and smiles are in short supply among the sad and sorrowful lot.

My home life has been deteriorating and it has encouraged my work life to follow suit – or maybe my discontent with my job has led to trouble of a domestic nature. I’m not sure which one was the instigator. All I know is that these days I’ve got problems wherever I choose to step out of my car – be it outside Labelle’s Insurance Office or my house on Foley Crescent.

Across the room sits my biggest source of discontent – my lovely wife, Diane. She’s hard to miss. There she is getting all cozy on the couch with Chuck Meers, a local mechanic and self described jock – whatever that’s supposed to mean. I had the privilege of attending the same high school as him, so I know for a fact that he used to play football but that was at least twenty-five years ago. I hardly think that dragging his beer belly around the eighteen hole golf course at The Adirondack Country Club is doing much to sustain his status as an athlete! It doesn’t seem to have diminished his arrogance none, though; he was an ass hole back in high school, and he’s just as big an ass hole today! Look at him over there flirting shamelessly with my wife. He’s sitting so close to her that he practically has his tongue in her ear. And she can’t get enough of it! She loves the attention! She lives for it! I should have known better than to marry the homecoming queen. Diane has always expected to be worshipped. Most women like to be admired by men, but my wife seeks it out and then leads it on. She encourages men to forget themselves when they’re around her. She passes it off as merely being friendly, but believe me, it goes far beyond that. She craves men’s affection. It makes her feel whole or something similarly base.

Don’t get me wrong; I think my wife is a lovely woman. I just wish she showed more loyalty where her husband is concerned. The only reason that our marriage has lasted fifteen years is because I’ve chosen to look the other way. However, with every anniversary being eclipsed, I can’t help but feel myself a bigger fool and there lies the greatest source of my displeasure. I guess it just boils down to me feeling unloved – or something as simple and sappy as that. But without love, what does anyone have, really? I’ve got a sham of a marriage, two children who are ashamed of me for not standing up to their mother, and a job that I resent having to get up out of bed to go to every morning. It’s not a hell of a lot to have achieved for a man approaching the middle ages. Surely, I can do better than that.

Tonight we are at a post New Year’s Eve party thrown by the Farrells. They live two doors down the crescent in the red brick split level. They use any excuse to throw a party. They love nothing better than having their neighbours over to their house for drinks and conversation. If that was all that went on at one of their little shindigs, it wouldn’t be so troubling to the heart. However, far more questionable deeds have been known to transpire under the Farrell’s roof. After a few drinks have been knocked back, better judgment has too often deserted the guests and hosts alike and left many in the neighbourhood exposed as prime targets for gossip the next morning – and it’s generally of the cruel kind at that. The good people residing on Foley Crescent aren’t always so friendly. They are partial to a bit of sport as much as anyone.

I’m sure the neighbourhood gossip mill will have a thing or two to say about my wife’s cozy conversation with ol’ Chucky Boy tonight – and any details that escape them they will make up or fill in. They’ll have the two of them running away together as early as next week.

Look at her shamelessly laughing as she hangs on his every word. She hardly hears me when I’m talking to her looking at her square in the face. It hasn’t always been that way; I was once the prime object of her attention. It was short-lived, though; she has always sought out attention from afar. I should have known that I’d never be interesting enough to hold her for long. I should just be thankful she hasn’t divorced me yet. Maybe there is still a little bit of love there.

Great! Bob Hoskins from the office has spotted me standing here in the corner trying to blend into the wall. He’s one of Cliff Farrell’s poker buddies. He’s a terrible gambler and a bit of a jerk to round out his personality. We’ve worked together for the past ten years; although, I want to make it absolutely clear that I would not voluntarily spend an hour a day in the man’s company. No one in the office really likes him; he’s one of those pricks that like nothing better than to cut you down and blow his own horn in the same long winded sentence – and here he’s come to make my day once again.

"Hey there, Pat. What are you doing over here all by your lonesome? Are you hiding out till Chuck is done making love to your wife on the couch? Maybe you like to watch. Does it stiffen your crank – huh, does it do something for you?"

He is a prick!

Fuck off! I don’t need this tonight. Haven’t I put up with enough of your shit all week? I think in my head but fail to release to the adoring public. Instead, I censor myself as usual.

Don’t start, Bob; I don’t need this tonight.

Bob laughs easily as though oblivious to my sensitivity to the subject.

Oh, I’m sorry, Patrick. I didn’t think it bothered you. Here, he takes my glass out of my hand, let me get you another drink. What are you having – a gin and tonic?

What? Suddenly he’s showing consideration. Why, that’s not like ol’ Bobby at all. Generally, he prefers to flail out a wound and rub salt in it during the same go around. Perhaps he’s made a New Year’s resolution not to be such a jerk!

Um, yes, I answer tentatively, but I really shouldn’t; I’ve already had a couple, and I might have to drive later on.

Ah, don’t be a sap! One more won’t hurt you. You’ll be sobered up long before you hit the road.

With those parting words of encouragement, he is at the bar in the corner of the Farrell’s basement mixing gin and tonic and speckling the glass with a stout green olive on a stick. Thankfully, while playing the part of barkeep, Bob becomes distracted by eavesdropping on a conversation between Vic Stotten and Laverne and Cliff Farrell’s niece, who is visiting from down east. They’re talking about Healthcare or some other mundane subject matter, but the fact that young Miss Farrell is a tall handsome redhead is enough to draw him in. Bob hands me my drink with little more than a dismissive half smile and, mercifully, leaves me alone in peace. I return the smile equally halfheartedly and proceed to bury my pain in the bottom of my glass.

I can overhear Diane talking real estate with Chuck. It’s no wonder she sells so many houses; she certainly has a way of making those around her feel more than comfortable – well, everyone but me, that is. Right at this moment I couldn’t feel more uneasy.

Diane laughs.

Oh, Chuck, you’re too much, really. You’re going to need a new fancy condo where you can bring all your girlfriends. There’s just not enough room in your apartment to allow you the freedom to stretch out and entertain.

I wonder how she knows his apartment size.

Hey, they’re just lucky I buy them dinner first. I don’t want them expecting too much or before I know it, they’ll want a diamond ring.

Oh, Chuck, you’re so silly. Diane giggles and affectionately squeezes Chuck’s elbow. All women aren’t out to have a ring put around their finger. If you ask me, marriage is highly overrated.

I feel sick. For God’s sake, woman, your husband is standing across the room! Can you not see me here?! Have I become that invisible to you?

Chuck leans in close as though he’s going to kiss her and slyly shakes loose from his lips, I might consider looking at a few places, Diane, but only if you’re the one showing me around. I wouldn’t mind seeing the interiors of some bedrooms with you.

For Christ’s sake! You son of a bitch! It’s all I can do not to go over there and knock all his teeth out. I ought to take one of those decorative Celtic swords off the Farrell’s wall, pull his prick out of his pants and cut it off and use that for an olive in my drink. I would leave him with nothing but a little stub to wave around. We’ll see how he does with the ladies after that. The piece of shit! Where does he get off?! Who the hell does he think he is?! She’s a married woman – and I’m standing right here! What does she think she’s doing? Does she not feel anything for me at all?

I choke down the rest of my gin and tonic and feel as though I could piss all over the room and it would make no difference to these booze filled drones. This crowd is too wrapped up in the frenzy of their own personal whims to care about what I do or don’t do... Why am I even here at this ridiculous party carousing with this list of neighbourhood degenerates? Is it because I want to know how my wife acts when I’m not around – or when I am? I hardly think so; I already know how things stand between us. What further reinforcement must I endure to convince myself that my marriage is over? Yet I stay... I stay to pay the mortgage so that she can spend all her money on Diane. I stay because I’m nothing more than a spineless coward who doesn’t think he deserves any better from this world. If I possessed any intestinal fortitude, I’d go over there right now and cut his balls off! I would flail the skin right off them with a cheese grater. I’m sure that if I searched through all the drawers down here, I could find one. I wonder if Diane would like to watch. I really should tie him to a chair and castrate him purely to provide the evening’s entertainment. Perhaps then this crowd would stir from their self involved dementia and feel empathy for someone other than themselves. However, I’m afraid that I don’t have the guts to reach for either the cheese grater or the sword, so all will remain just as numb as before... as docile and cramped as ever... and I will have to face the consequences of my inaction, but I don’t have to stay here and watch the very thing that drains the life out of me. I’m out of here! I’m sure that Diane can stagger home alone – and I’m also sure that she’ll have no trouble finding someone to help steady her across the lawn. But I’ve had enough! I can’t stand being in this scene another minute.

I don’t say a word to anyone – not my wife, the Farrells or the dog on the mat inside the door. I walk out of the house with my mouth draped in silence and my motives shrouded in the mystery on my back. No hastily assembled questions hinder my exit. I hardly expect that anyone will notice I’ve left.

CHAPTER 2

A DRUNKEN KID KILLER

I LEAVE THE FARRELL’S post New Year’s shindig with flames of anger splitting the hairs down my back. I fume across the two yards separating our house from theirs, crushing last week’s stale snow under my heavy boots with every grief laden step. These neighbourhood parties make me sick! They only add insult to an already injured heart. My battered and bruised self-esteem can’t take much more of this. I wonder how much I can shoulder before I snap. Perhaps it’s just a matter of days.

I get to my car with no real reason to continue. I don’t feel much like driving over to the office. I have a good mind to forget about the papers until morning, and instead, bury my head in the soft pillow top mattress on my bed. I really should go through them tonight, though. Charlie, my boss, will be calling tomorrow to see what kind of progress I’m making on the claim. I don’t want to give him any legitimate reasons to fire me. If my cheerless demeanour hasn’t been enough incentive to push me out the door, ineffectual effort leading to a blatant lack of productivity is sure to do it. I will heed the warning in the rumours and do whatever is in my power to avoid being canned. I need this job – without it, I’ve lost my family.

It’s a cold January night and it’s freezing in my car. I’m in for a chilly ride to the office; I drive a 1970 Chevrolet Impala and it takes forever to heat such an expansive sprawl. There is nothing compact about American cars from the early seventies – with the exception of a few like the GM Vega, AMC Gremlin or the Ford Pinto. They are made to guzzle gasoline and own all the real estate on the road.

The starter stutters rigidly as it grinds over a couple of times in vain. I pump the gas pedal and try it a second time, with more luck on the back end. The engine agrees to be cooperative and fires up with a whine, a growl and then, finally, an all out roar. We are in business; we have lift off, Houston!

I claim the cold, frozen, icing sugar coated streets as my own as I take the back way in to the office. We received a light skiff of snow late this afternoon and it’s made everything look as though it’s been dipped in frosty shellac. I haven’t put any snow tires on the Chevy; money has been tight as usual, and it’s not as though I drive that far anyways. Ten minutes to work and the odd detour to the liquor store is the full range of my wanderings abroad. I’ve tried to convince myself that it’s going to be a mild winter with little snow and even less reason to seriously contemplate taking on the expense of winterizing the car; however, my rational mind keeps getting in the way every time I look out the window and see another foot of snow littering the landscape and clogging up the roadways. It’s increasingly challenging my belief in an early spring.

I’m feeling kind of downhearted and full of self pity as I turn onto Bolton Street. Another few minutes and I’ll be at The Kirk Building. It was named after the pompous ass hole who built it fifty years ago. It has served its purpose, I suppose; folks still remember his name, if little else about the man.

I’m barely paying attention to what I’m doing. Driving far too often becomes automatic. We do it without thinking – at least, I find that I do. I see the street in front of me, but I’m not really here. I’m still back at the party staring at my wife and Chuck Meers on the couch... I don’t see the kid run out in front of me... I don’t see him until it is too late. It’s like it’s in slow motion, yet I still don’t react. I hear a thud! Then he’s rolling over the hood of my car. Only then do I try to swerve. It’s the first time I notice the car coming towards me on the other side of the street. I nearly run head on into it. It is so close that I can see the woman’s face behind the steering wheel. I recognize her. Her son is in the same grade as mine.

I hit the brakes and skid to a stop along the right curb. The woman isn’t so lucky; her car fishtails and runs up onto the far sidewalk, not stopping until its front grill is crushed by a lamppost. I’m sure that the sound of the impact is enough to wake the entire neighbourhood. Thankfully, we’re in the business district and there aren’t a lot of houses around to bother. Still, someone must have heard the commotion.

I sit in my car with my hands resting on the steering wheel and wait for the inevitable discovery... I wait for what I am certain to be several minutes, but nothing is happening. Only dead silence breaks the nausea churning inside my guts. It is so quiet that if I strain my ears enough, I can hear the cat walking on the thin crust of snow two blocks away. I can very nearly decipher the distant hum of a few stray snowflakes falling from the skies above me. All is quiet except for my racing mind. What just happened?! I think I just hit a kid! He came out of nowhere. I was just driving along – and then bam! He was right there in front of me. I couldn’t get out of the way.

Nothing is happening, so I decide I had better get out of my car and have a closer look. Perhaps he wasn’t there at all and I just imagined it... or maybe I only clipped him. He might still be okay. Maybe I’ll find him sitting on the other curb crying with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises... I’m wondering who I am trying to kid. He rolled across the hood of my car and bounced off my windshield, for Christ’s sake! I must have hit him pretty hard. His face was practically kissing the glass! He was close enough for me to place his age between five and ten and to know he was a boy. I am sure that he came out of nowhere and ran in front of my car. I don’t think he was already on the street and I just didn’t see him there. I can still picture the empty street in front of me, and I’m just about certain that he was not part of that scene. He didn’t enter into it until it was too late to stop. I couldn’t do anything at that point; he ran directly in front of me. There wasn’t a damn thing that I could have done to avoid him. Even if I’ve killed the kid, there’s no way they can rule it anything more than an accident. I can’t be held responsible; it’s the dumb kid’s fault!

The thought pervades my racing mind that I was drinking and driving. If the police show up and give me a breathalyser test, I’ll be up shit creek paddling backwards with a broken handled spatula. They will think I was slow to react due to my impairment. I may have had a few drinks, but I was alert enough to get behind the wheel of a car. If that dumb kid wasn’t fool enough to run out in front of me, things would have been just fine. I would have gotten to the office without incident and made it home in time to catch the evening news, rather than winding up on them! Shit! If the police bust me for drunk driving, I’ve had it for sure. I could wind up in jail and lose my job over it. Then I wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage, and consequently, my marriage would fall apart. Everything that I’ve feared most is manifesting right in front of my face as I sit here in the cold, dull air of my stalled out Chevy Impala. Well, there is no sense postponing the inevitable any longer. I might as well ball up and survey the damage done by my misdeeds tonight.

Stepping out of my car, I find I need to steady myself against its door upon standing upright for the first time since leaving the Farrell’s party. I appear to be drunker than I thought. Perhaps my drinking did slow my reaction time down more than I realized. I don’t think I was paying attention to what was on the street in front of me. The kid could’ve already been standing there, for all I know. To be blatantly honest about the whole horrible mess, there is no way that I can say for certain. I have no idea how I am going to lie my way out of this. I know one thing; I sure the hell can’t tell the truth, that is for God damned certain. There couldn’t be a surer method of suicide or a simpler means of giving up. I might as well book myself into a jail cell right now direct and avoid the daunting formality of it all in its entirety.

Putting one foot unsteadily ahead of the other, I leave my car behind and creep towards the centre of the street. Even in the dark settling dusk, I can make out an unnatural mound rising out of the pavement like an unwanted growth upon the flesh. In spite of this beacon’s clearest of warnings, part of me remains true to the hope that the boy somehow escaped unharmed and, by this time, is safely on his way home. Perhaps that mound is nothing more than an old roll of burlap or a pile of dirty, water-logged snow. A drift can often take on unusual properties. However, no beacon flashes a warning without due reason, and this cold January evening is proving to be no exception to the rule. I am now close enough to the mound in the middle of the street to see that it resembles the body of a child. A few hesitant steps more and all doubt is wrung out of the truth. The sight of the crumpled body of a young boy laying on his back and staring up at me is the reward for my bravery. He’s not moving... He’s just staring up at the dark horizon and keeping silent. There is little question; I am certain he is dead. I’ve just killed a child... I was drunk and I killed someone’s little boy. I’ve often wondered how I’d feel if something like that happened to one of my own children. I’ve also wondered about how the person driving the car would feel... I never thought that it would be me on the