The Deadly Fling

By David R Dowdy

IT'S A CRIME! You're not ready for the world to learn your biggest secret. It's only a matter of time before the police start asking questions about your strange fascination. You don't cooperate. You're not truthful. You can delay the inevitable only so long. They dig deeper. If they find what they've bee

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indy Pub
• Release date: Mar 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869266545

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Also by David R. Dowdy

The Pull and Kick Murder, 2016

The Hero of Deceit, 2018

The Ways of a Serpent, 2020

Zebulon's Oath, 2023

the

DEADLY

FLING

David R. Dowdy

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

the DEADLY FLING. Copyright ©2019 by David R. Dowdy. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Third edition. March 2024

ISBN13: 979-8-8692-5

Imprint: Indy Pub

Table of Contents

1: BURGLARY

2: DOUBT

3: RUST & DUST

4: TWO-DOG CEMETERY

5: DISCONTENT

6: FLING

7: ENTER HAYNES

8: DR. PARKS

9: THE CRIME SCENE

10: THE TAPHOPHILE

11: FLINGS & ARROWS

12: THE PATHOLOGIST

13: EMOTIONS

14: THE COLLECTION

15: INTERVIEW

16: DNA PROFILE

17: NEMESIS

18: STRESS

19: THE DRONE

20: A THEORY

21: STORYBOARD ENTRY

22: COMMISERATION

23: RESULTS

24: REST NOT IN PEACE

25: A GUEST

26: REALIZATION

27: FOG

28: 911

29: INTO THE GAP

30: COMPANY

31: EXIT INTERVIEW

32: RESTORATION

1: BURGLARY

Settlers rejected a spring's mineral tang. Evermore it cuts the back of Earth like an avenging knife.

It was only the backdoor that slammed. The heaviest, loudest eruption of thunder would have been less unnerving.

Moisty froze for a second and ran across the shop. Turned right and rushed past a drill press and a lathe. At the end of the room, light poured through a gap between the door and the frame.

He gently pushed the door open and swung his head out. Whoever had been in his shop was gone. There was no sign of life. Not a tremble from a blue-faced intruder holding their breath.

The whisper of a sweet woody scent came into his nostrils as he stepped back into the shop and locked the door. Alert and keeping his head still, his eyes panned the room. Beyond the machines, the doors of his hand tool cabinet spread like the gaping jaws of a whale turned on its side.

He ran, eyes squinting, and pulled the doors fully open. Several packets from his private collection were gone and a few lay scattered on the shelf and floor. His heart raced as he sucked air. He ran a shirt sleeve across the perspiration bursting on his forehead.

A stark, fearful change came over him as his biggest secret was out. He reflected in anguish, leaning on the cabinet with his eyes closed. After several minutes, he forced himself to grab a dust mop head from the cabinet and trudge back to the classroom hall, burdened by thoughts of what might happen.

#

Weldon Moisty Felters leaned into a dust mop, one hand over the end of the wooden stick and the other hand covering the first. He pushed it down the long, main corridor of Woodward High School. The white yards of tile were all to himself on that Tuesday morning as the first period continued.

The janitor-handyman looked down the stick the way a billiards player lines up a ball with a pocket. It seemed the view of everything except the head of the dust mop must be avoided. The door at the end of the hall that opened to the custodial areas and his shop especially must be avoided. He turned inward.

Usually, it was nothing to let his mind wander while he worked. The first thing that popped in his head would hold his interest and help make the workday pass. One small thought followed by another until the day was consumed.

Lighter subjects always crowded out heavier ones and brightened his mood. Today was different. Amidst the confusion of where he stood, he struggled to find peace. He replayed in his head what had just happened.

I went to my shop to get a clean dust mop head. As I walked toward the service door at the far end of the Language Arts hall, passionate voices came from behind classroom walls instilling the ways of reasoning. While in the hall, my rubber soles made embarrassing squeaks.

The door to the custodial area closed gently behind me. I crossed the gray concrete floor past two restricted rooms—high voltage and STEAM—to the left and right. Electric panels hummed. Impellers and squirrel cages galloped. I stepped to my door at the end marked Custodian’s Shop, put my key in, and turned it to the right. The lock clicked open. I whistled as I sauntered into my shop.

That’s when I saw my shop had been violated and my collection ransacked.

Let me set the record straight. I didn’t touch that girl. The only thing I’m guilty of is stupidity. Of allowing this tragedy to be laid at my feet. Is it OK that I don’t feel somehow responsible?

There’s a pest in this building. They’ve done something awful and—I’m sure of it—done it in my name. They’ll use my collection to cover their deed.

Before I went to my shop, everything was fine. The rumors may have centered on me, but they weren’t provable. Now, whoever took my samples will pin the assault on me.

The adrenalin streaming through my system begs questions that I can neither answer nor silence. If I’d brought the fear on myself, well that would have been my own fault and I’d have to let it ride itself out. Yet, someone has brought the problem to me. Should I find and silence them?

His thoughts, the dust mop, and he himself came to an abrupt halt. Humiliation burned his face as his nose contacted the dust mop handle which contacted a three-foot round concrete column holding up the section of the building above him.

He rubbed the reddened and stinging tip of his nose and furtively looked about the hall. Lukas Greene, who’d seen the crash, turned his head so fast he risked a neck injury. He leaned against a wall holding a textbook open at the halfway point in front of his face.

You don’t fool me. Who reads a book upside down? Anyway, you can’t tell me you’re that far in a book this early in the semes—.

Alyse Elonko appeared and snapped the book shut. It fell to the floor. Lukas raised one arm defensively as if to block a potential swipe of his face. The other arm he held low to block a knee to vulnerable parts of his body.

Hey, what are you doing?

You should be in there. Elonko nodded at the classroom behind him as she tugged on the strings of her drawstring bag.

I’m late and it’s almost over anyway. I’m waiting for Hunter.

She pointed to the door. Get in there or get reported.

Moisty watched Lukas enter the classroom. Alyse left.

#

There’s no question about it. I’ll be connected to the crime. I have done nothing. How can anyone say I caused the school’s pain? I’m the victim. I feel terrorized.

Moisty closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. On the one hand, there truly had been a victim and it wasn’t him. On the other hand, if he believed the rumors, his collection had played a part in her victimization and he’d be victimized as well should anyone abuse what they stole today.

Even though I’m not the true victim, I may as well be one if my collection is tied to the assault. They didn’t have anyone to pin this on last semester. I’ll get blamed. I’m a victim and a non-victim rolling on a figure-eight track. On one lobe I’m in deep trouble. On the other, my trouble is nothing compared to hers.

#

Moisty wasn’t the only broken one. No one knew exactly what happened. They knew who’d been hurt by it. They knew bits and pieces of the tragedy. Rumors filled the gaps but didn’t explain or close the wound. Lingering doubts led to acrimony and division. The student body fell into its own gloomy mood as the effects left over from the previous school year visited the new one.

To put some perspective on the aftereffects, Moisty compared it to the disaster that follows an unattended water hose filling a mop bucket. The spill runs to every corner. Anyone who’s experienced flooding knows the dampness and ruination caused by unbounded water. Even prioritizing where to mop first meant damage would occur somewhere.

Gloom, like water in a flood, leaks. The trauma resulting from mysterious and illicit activity had been bottled up in the school since before the summer break and was never resolved. Unbottled, again like a flood, it grew into a festering sore that refused to go away and threatened the new school year.

Weak, sparse conversation emanated from small groups in front of lockers. Whispers came from wracked faces in the halls. Each new piece of information descended like a dark cloud and threw new doubts about who could be trusted. Not knowing the truth only enlarged the imagined horrors that surely befell the victim.

It’s plausible that a random small percentage of society at any one time feels despair. Yet, people, as soon as dread presents itself, act to negate it. Next, another small portion of society takes its turn going through the same dark-light phases, and so on. In ideal situations, despair doesn’t accumulate and the greater population strides on.

What if personal and societal challenges can’t be overcome and accumulate? What if they come to all of us at once?

Despair had amassed imperceptibly. It entered the high school as casually as the dirt students carried in on their shoes. Just bits of soil and sand that fell unnoticeably on the floors. Tiny fibers dropped from their shirts, dresses, and pants in an unseen shower. Soon, under the force of static, a speck of dirt combined with a fiber. Pairs of dirt-fiber lingered and travelled in the moving indoor air and combined and grew into larger masses until, palpable as cotton candy, they couldn’t be denied.

With a contingent of extra help, Moisty worked hard over the two-and-a-half-month summer break to rid the school of the lingering problem. Great, huge machines hummed and crawled and sucked dirt from every horizontal and vertical surface. Discs rotated furiously to remove grime and encapsulate the white tile in a clear, polished veneer of hard polymer. Every surface wore a shiny new coat to resist clinging dirt, fiber, and dust.

Early September had come with all the accompanying hope that growth and progression bring teens as they hurtle through life. Humidity had broken, squeezed from the air by high pressure. Skies were blue and sunny. The floors of the school gleamed white, clear-coated, and clean in their fresh resurfacing. Underneath it all, the ruin caused by the flood proceeded. Soon, chipped paint, crumbling plaster, and tiles delaminated from the subfloor would attest to the power of the unresolved issue.

#

Moisty dissolved into the background as he reverted to his  normal cleaning tasks. Mostly invisible to the young people around him, he performed his duties as an unseen force. Necessary, to come out and wipe up a spill or remove an errant mark. Unnecessary, to be unseen again.

Back and forth, back and forth, he bent over the wooden pole and walked and pushed the dust mop. Down a long length. A turn. Down another length. To dust a floor was to take long, lonely walks and be seen by others as a robot cleaner if seen at all.

He passed by the table he’d positioned near the Language Arts offices. This was his public collection of items—shirts, shoes, socks, and books—he’d found throughout the school. Missing an item of clothing? Homework? Go to the table. There’s a good chance it will be there. The shirt will be folded but not washed. The homework neatly stacked. Each item will be packaged, often with the owner’s name attached.

A pink t-shirt blazed through the transparent plastic. Petite and folded, it brought to his memory a peach singlet Stephanie once wore during her runs. He made a crooked smile knowing Stephanie’s muscles would go wasting forever. He remembered the joy he’d felt watching her run. While he longed to see her living happily, the whole student body longed to see Kira happy.

He passed Alyse Elonko, who tacked a poster to a cork board outside her office: Girl’s Robotics Competition. September 23. In the Woodward HS Field House! Teams from the tri-county schools. All girls!

Ever since her position had been created to inspire and recruit half of the student body in STEM and sports, girls were signing up in droves for an after school robotics program. All seats of the intermediate archery class Ms. Elonko convinced Principal Larry Miller to add to the schedule were quickly filled by boys and girls.

He passed Lukas Greene who was wrapping duct tape around the small mouth of a glass jug that was full of various coins and denominations of paper money. His drive to benefit the homeless shelter on the edge of downtown was successful.

Moisty had been moving well along the floor. When the sensitive tentacles of the dust mop detected an unmovable spot of debris, he stopped to investigate.

Cold and hard, it stuck to the tile floor like an ugly wad of bubble gum dropped on his perfect tile and trod by hundreds of feet until it lay flattened and dirty. Only, it wasn’t gum.

#

Principal Miller likes to give the impression he’s a fair-minded man. When it comes to the safety of his students, however, there’s no such thing as fair. He was quite aware that, as the head of Woodward High, the wellbeing of the students was his responsibility. It wasn’t enough to push them along. With Kira’s assault fresh on everyone’s mind, he must keep the order.

When he heard the Student Council had discussed ways of protesting the lingering injustice left over from the last school year, he listened. The investigation had taken too long and ended unsolved. They needed justice. Authorities had delayed doing anything at the end of the term in June. Without additional information coming forth, it was time to act.

We’re going to walk up and down Elizabeth Street, promised the Council. Quietly in single file, at night in front of the school. Our placards will speak for us:

stop IT OR something terrible WILL happen

get loud and stay loud

Anything can and will be used against you

We’ll ruin Your future

declare A state of emergency

ASSAULT HAS A COST

We’ll don hoodies, they said. People will mistake us for monks. Cars will stop. Traffic will halt. Drivers will honk their horns in solidarity. Our candles will offer hope and a brighter way. We’re tired of talking.

Nothing would ever be the same. People talk about the natural order of things. What happened to Kira Providencia was unnatural and out of order.

The kids would have their say. They wanted closure, a way to move through the new semester. To throw acid at the old semester and make things all right.

Miller envisaged students putting too much on the line and having to suck it up when the message wasn’t well-received. He soon imagined honking horns, ridicule, and the bodies of cars and students meeting.

You will do no such thing he told them and they pressed their hands to their ears. He cleverly reigned them in with a tactical counter offer: Parade down the school’s corridors under the shelter of its roof.

Not good enough they said. He begged them. Their hands came away only when he allowed the press to be invited to cover the protest. We’ll make our grievances known throughout the state and region they told him.

#

Wax! Dropped from one of the many candles carried by students in the indoor parade they held the night before, a sticky pink blob lay near the center of the hall, amorphous and fuzzy. He tried to pinch it. No luck. Picking up a dime with wet fingers would have been easier. He kicked it with the hard sole of his boot and only made a dent. Once again and a third time. Still nothing. Only by getting under it and lifting it would it come off the floor.

The small screwdriver he took from the bib pocket of his overalls made small spatula-like undercuts. Wax was lifted at last in one-eighth of an inch by one-quarter of an inch pieces. Any larger amount would crumble. Moisty noticed other deposits of pink, yellow, purple, and red wax. He couldn’t see himself removing them using such an approach. He propped the dust mop against the wall and patted the hip pocket of his overalls. Luckily, he had the bubblegum scraper with him.

Infuriated, Moisty scraped the wax from the floor. Why Principal Miller ever let a parade of candle-bearers proceed through the darkened halls of Woodward HS, he would never understand.

He didn’t have to see the parade to know the route on which it proceeded and where it stopped for speeches. A shrine for Kira was still erected. Last year’s junior photo of her smiling face and flaxen hair had been reproduced into a thirty-six-inch by forty-eight-inch poster. Candles, some pillars and some contained in jars, bordered the poster on a shelf.

Like crying statues, candles had dripped their hot, viscous tears on the tile where they hardened. They had to be chiseled and wouldn’t completely go away. With the bulk of the wax lifted, a resinous, sticky film remained.

Many would say it’s exploitive to hire someone to work in the public eye—and blend into the public walls—to clean up after spoiled kids. Who wants to serve people who take advantage of service? I can’t subscribe to that view. No one owes me anything other than wages. That’s it.

What of it? I’m meant to do this for the kids, some at least twenty years younger. I’m meant to do this menial chore because I chose work over an education. I’m meant to do this while Stephanie sleeps off her depression at home all day and night.

Stephanie and her depression. It hurts to be surrounded by teens who if not happy are at least energetic and, unlike her, are trying to change their situation.

I sold my car and ride the bus. With Stephanie not working, my salary is just enough. I must be frugal and keep cutting back. I can’t afford care. I’m cracking. What will happen if I’m not there for her?

#

I was working close to the floor and the trill of the bell meant first-period classes expired. A wave of students scrambled out of rooms down and around the hall like an army of filthy cockroaches coming out in a nasty, infested kitchen when the lights go out.

You didn’t see me scraping up puddled and solidified wax drops in that useless, windowless alcove by the administrative offices where the parade ended. I heard the murmur of your voices coming from the well-lit hallway around the corner. I halted my work and listened. The clogging of your short heels intensified as you neared.

Your words became plainer and more oppressive. I felt little salve in the few silent pauses between your words. You trembled me with every anxious, hurtful sentence. I felt like stabbing myself with my daggered screwdriver!

There are no windows around the corner where I worked. You came walking from your bright, sunny hall. When you neared the sharp point where the walls meet, your light met my dark. It reminded me of our school, cleaved into two camps.

One wants this matter to be over. You’ve had your parade, they say. The other knows they won’t reconcile their differences so easily. Friendships have come to an abrupt halt, permanently torn asunder. We are in disarray. Common ground is nowhere to be seen.

Their voices and marching heels closed in. Across the divide a shoe planted in half-dark, half-light near my left hand which I used to brace myself on the floor. My right hand lay on the tile and from it grew the scraper with wax, dirt, and hairs clinging to it. I was on all fours. You looked down on me. I was a mutt beseeching your kindness as drops of saliva fell over my bottom lip like water over a weir and splattered among the thin wax circles.

When my eyes met yours, your poses vanished. Your faces collapsed. Your bodies snapped and halted. You turned shocked eyes on me. I didn’t want to look yet I didn’t want to turn away.

In the seconds before our encounter, you talked about me as if I blended into the texture of the wall and the squares of tile. As if I had no feelings. Suddenly, your cold eyes cracked and awoke to my presence. Only then did you cease your mockery.

I decided to take the high road and turn my face away, releasing your stunned faces from any guilt. I returned to chipping the wax. You slipped away as the flat, hardened puddles lifted. Your legs and ankles and shoes crossed my view only inches from the floor as you left me.

When you passed, I replayed what you said. ‘His crippled wife can’t satisfy him’ and ‘He should keep his sexual urges in control’. Typical. Don’t pretend to know me. Don’t flog the man who keeps your school clean.

How the venom spewed from their red-lipsticked gobs!

Brazen Autumn Herbst turned to Isabella Reya and Madison Street. The mangy animal. How he drools! She flipped her auburn hair.

I know it was him, Isabella said. She took a moment to run the fingers of both hands through her corn silk hair to stop it from spreading across her shoulders. Once, he looked at me like I was a piece of meat. He must not get any at home.

Figures, with a name like Moisty. Ewww! Never mind Felters, Madison said. She stopped and finished putting the small elastic band on her brunette ponytail and made a final dig. That’s a pervert’s name. I just bet he has a moisty finger.

#

I know what they’re thinking. I know they’re fantasizing, associating my name with the trial this school’s going through. My name isn’t pertinent.

I, Weldon Moisty Felters, could easily have been nicknamed giraffe because of my long neck. It didn’t get noticed in first and second grade. By third grade, I had to deflect the Apatosaurus jokes and start wearing high shirt collars. Now, my personal rule to live by—I stick my neck out for no one—doesn’t have to be about the trunk between my head and shoulders because no one notices it sticking out anymore.

I might have