Bad Monkey

“Stompin’ my heart to pieces, doesn’t that count?”

“It was her English class where you first met, right? Back in the day.”

“Not regular English but AP English,” Cody said. “That means, like, super advanced.”

“Got it.” John Wesley Weiderman didn’t have a sarcastic bone in his body.

“I love her the same now as I did back then. It’s like nothing ever changed, time standing still, whatever.”

“Why do you think she left you this time?”

“Dude, come on. Why do they do anything they do? Yesterday she shows up in a green convertible, packs her shit and off she goes up the highway. Monster hormone attack is my theory.”

The agent didn’t doubt that Plover Chase was gone; there were no women’s clothes in the closet, no lipstick tubes or makeup items in the bathroom. On the unmade queen-sized bed lay a sad stack of men’s magazines, raw jerk-off material that even a loser like Cody would have concealed had a female been in the vicinity.

“Any idea where she went?”

“Not really,” said Cody. “Home maybe?”

“Was your family aware that you two re-connected?”

“Dad passed six years ago and Mom’s in assisted living, thinks she’s Shirley MacLaine. And guess what, bro, I’m thirty years old and I can bone whoever I want, long as she’s legal age and says yes. And Ms. Chase, she said yes, yes, yes, and more yes, please, Cody baby! Bottom line, I didn’t break any laws.”

John Wesley Weiderman pointed out that it was illegal to aid and abet a wanted criminal.

“Only thing I abetted was rockin’ her world. They gonna send me to the penitentiary for that?” Cody was striving to appear indignant.

“A jury might see it your way,” said the OSBI agent, “but good lawyers cost money. Maybe by then you’ll be rich from selling your journal, right?”

Cody Baby didn’t appear to be emotionally pulverized by his lover’s abandonment. He was, however, troubled by the possibility of being prosecuted.

“Listen, I just remembered,” he said. “There’s a guy lives on Big Pine Key, Ms. Chase had a thing with him for a while.”

“I spoke with the gentleman. He used to be a police detective.” John Wesley Weiderman wouldn’t soon forget Andrew Yancy baring his ass to present his alleged wild-dog bites.

“Well, that’s where she might be,” Cody said without rancor. “With him.”

“He told me their affair was over.”

“Maybe he’s not the one calling the shots. Obviously you never met Ms. Chase.”

“Someday,” said the agent.

“She wasn’t too jazzed about the dude gettin’ another girlfriend, okay? She acted all like isn’t-that-nice, but I could tell she was seriously frosted.”

“So you think she went to win him back.”

“You know how whacked chicks can get. The guy’s new girl is a doctor, ’kay? Ms. Chase couldn’t deal with that, is my theory. It’s all in the diary. I do a hundred words every night, not longhand but on my iPad. That still counts, right?”

“For sure.”

Agent John Wesley Weiderman fully realized that pursuing Plover Chase was an unfair burden on the taxpayers of Oklahoma. Her capture would not make the state a safer place. It would instead make a tabloid celebrity of the ex-schoolteacher, and possibly a best-selling author of her now-grown-up victim, whom John Wesley Weiderman perceived as a grubby oversexed slacker. What a circus that would be, Plover Chase returning to Tulsa in handcuffs. Plus the waste of a perfectly good jail cell.

But Agent Weiderman was a follower of orders, and there were worse places to be sent than the Florida Keys. He’d diligently scouted the health department’s website and located a relatively clean seafood joint, where for lunch he had eaten grilled mahi served with Cuban plantains and black beans. It was maybe the best meal he’d ever eaten that wasn’t a rib eye.

“What about those jerry cans?” he asked Cody Parish.

Parish gave a loose-jointed shrug.

“On the Visa bill were four six-gallon gasoline containers from Ace Hardware.”

“Weird.” Cody said Ms. Chase must have purchased the items on a day she went out alone.

“Have you ever known her to be violent?”

“No way,” Cody said. “But, like I told you, we were in major love.”

“Maybe she feels different about Mr. Yancy.”

“There’s a wild streak, for sure. It’s all in my diary.”

“We’ll be in touch about that,” the agent said. He headed toward the door.

“You catch her, don’t let on it was me that told you where to look.”

“Of course not. We protect our sources.” Which is what John Wesley Weiderman was trained to say, and almost always they bought it.

Flip-flops slapping on the floor, Cody Parish trailed the agent to the stairway. “Twenty gallons’ worth of gas cans, what do you figure that’s all about?”

“Twenty-four.”

Cody’s spotty lips moved as he redid the math in his head, six times four. “Maybe she’s just stocking up for the drive home. Doesn’t wanna waste time stopping at service stations.”

John Wesley Weiderman said, “I didn’t think of that.”

Because only a chowderhead would think of that. People used jerry cans for fueling lawn mowers or ATVs, but there was no good reason to carry four of them unless you had a bigger job in mind.