The Fury - Jason Pinter [54]
hold the answers.
Amanda and I had spent the previous night talking
and thinking about the Gaines family, Rose Keller and
Beth-Ann Downing. Drugs seemed to be the only link
between the four people. Two of them were dead,
Stephen Gaines and Beth-Ann. And the stash of narcot
ics from the stolen briefcase was hidden inside my
laundry hamper. I figured if anyone were to break in, the
stench itself might deter even the most hardened thief.
Stephen used to date and party with Rose Keller.
She claimed they'd met randomly. But I had to wonder.
Stephen's name was in the kid's cell phone I stole.
Which meant one of three things.
First, the two were merely friends. Which was
highly unlikely.
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Second, that Stephen was the kid's client. That one
was a possibility.
Third, and perhaps the most frightening yet the most
plausible, was that Stephen Gaines was a dealer himself.
Perhaps Stephen, before he died, was one of the
faceless suit monkeys who entered that office building
in midtown for re-ups. Perhaps had I gone there another
day, I would have seen my brother enter with an empty
briefcase and exit with a full load of narcotics.
Helen Gaines had somehow befriended Beth-Ann
Downing after relocating from Bend to New York City.
They both had children--though I had no reason to
suspect Sheryl and Stephen had met, unless Stephen
happened to have sold to Sheryl's mother. Sheryl was
likely gone by the time Helen and Stephen settled in.
And at some point along the line, both Helen and BethAnn had developed drug addictions.
Chances were Stephen discovered the path to his
own demise through his mother. Anytime you grow up
in a household in which such evils were not only
common but encouraged, it was just a matter of time
before you followed in step.
In my relatively short time on this planet, I'd learned
that there were two types of people. Those who were
doomed to follow in whatever footsteps had been laid
out for them, and those who were strong enough to
carve their own path.
Amanda and I were lucky. I could have turned out
like my father, with a general disregard for decency
and an attitude toward women that could be described
as combative on a good day. Amanda could have been
swallowed by her grief as a child, stifled by the tragic
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deaths of her parents. She never grew close to Lawrence
and Harriet Stein, her adoptive family. She feared that
she would never truly be close to another person again.
She began to write in diaries. There were hundreds of
them, each one chronicling every waking moment of
her life, cataloging every soul she met on her aimless
journey. A moment-to-moment timeline of loneliness.
After we met and later began seeing each other, she
stopped writing in them. I like to think that, in each
other, we found a path through the darkness. She found
someone who would be with her every night and every
morning, and I found a woman strong enough to show
me my weaknesses as well as my strengths, beautiful
enough beneath the skin to make me want to smooth
over the rough edges.
And there were a lot of them.
Stephen Gaines never found that path. He'd never
had a chance. Between his mother and her friends, the
darkness was too much for him to bear.
I gripped the handrail tight as I approached my des
tination. My childhood memories of my father were of
this great and powerful man who never feared anything.
He was an omnipotent tyrant, a man unconcerned with
convention or emotion. I never saw him cry, never saw
him beg. Even when I knew our finances were dwin
dling and my mother was as distant as the sunset at
dusk, he stood rock solid, impenetrable. Seeing him
today would be the opposite of everything I knew as a
child. He was the negative in my life's photograph. And
I wasn't sure if I was prepared.
The New York County Correctional Facility had
several outlets, and as a prisoner your stay was largely
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dependent on a combination of luck and just how many
criminals were waiting their turn before