Reflections. Chapter One Pt. One Some may recall this from quite a few years back. A rewrite. And in my real name.

One

Frankie’s Diner

Adam Carter twisted his wedding ring around and around on his finger as he stood at the foot of two graves in Richmond’s Holy Cross cemetery. The grave on his left belonged to his wife, Stephanie; the one on his right to his eight-year-old son, Theo.

Everyone had said it wasn’t his fault, said it was an accident. A drug-bust gone wrong, a car chase, a red light ignored. But accidents have a habit of leaving behind a trail of “What ifs”. What if this had happened? What if that had happened? What if the drug dealer hadn’t driven down that particular road? What if Stephanie’s green light had been red? What if she’d been a minute late when she picked Theo up from school, or a minute early? But the biggest “What if” is the one that haunts him the most … what if he’d followed orders and stuck to the plan?

What if?

Six letters.

Two words.

Massive implications.

He checked his watch, already eight-forty; it seemed the day had slipped closer to night without him realising. He turned to leave and noticed someone a half dozen graves farther down. Male, white, about five-seven, medium build, mid-forties. His grey overcoat reached the knees of his black trousers, which in turn half covered a pair of tan brogues. He held a kerchief to his mouth with his left hand and a brown leather briefcase clutched in his right, a city guy, an office worker. He wasn't there when Carter arrived an hour ago, and the grave he stood and stared at didn’t have a headstone, only a small wooden cross pushed into freshly turned soil. A new grave, a recent death, another soul to bring another mourner to shed tears on the cemetery’s hallowed grounds.

The man raised his head to peer under the branches of a tree beyond the grave he stood at. He wiped his nose, shoved his kerchief in his coat pocket, and turned and hurried away. Carter looked where the man had looked to see six or seven black teenagers fooling around on skateboards. He shook his head, no wonder the white guy took off.

He looked back at the two graves before him.   

‘I gotta go now, Honey,’ he said to his left. ‘Theo,’ he said to his right. ‘You make sure you look after your mom for me. And who knows … maybe I’ll see you both real soon.’

It was a warm, humid mid-August evening, but as Carter turned away he felt a chill run up his back. He wasn’t sure if it was a cool breeze he hadn’t noticed, or that death was scattered all around. Either way, he took his jacket from over his arm and shrugged into it as he made his own way out the cemetery.

He reached the kids on the boards, showed his ID, and told them to have a little more respect for the dead, and to skate somewhere more appropriate. But it wasn’t until he told them to stop scaring the white folk away that they smiled and moved on.

He drove his black Taurus down East Broad Street and took a left onto North Third before taking the second right onto the parking lot of Frankie’s Diner. He pulled up at the side of a red Dodge pick-up and climbed out. The pick-up, and the only vehicle on the lot beside his, had dents on every panel and dried mud spatters as far up as the windows. Next to the West Virginia plates was a sticker that read, “If it flies it dies, if it hops it drops” and below that, “Cedar Creek Hunting Club”. On the bed of the pick-up a piece of tarp covered whatever innocent creature the owner had hunted and killed that day. He thought about pulling it aside to look, but opted against it, he’d been around enough death for one day.

He entered Frankie’s to see three guys left of his peripheral vision shooting pool and paid them little attention as he made his way to his usual table. The only other person in the place was Maria, Frankie’s wife, who came over to pour him coffee.

‘Hi, Carter,’ she said, her English laced with Italian. ‘Did you catch all the bad guys for me?’

He smiled. ‘I did the best I could, Maria, and if I did any better there would be no more bad guys left, and I’d be out of a job before the end of the week.’

‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘You can work here, the pay is not so good but you can meet all the nice people, just like you.’

‘I bet you say that to−’

‘Hey, Lady,’ shouted one of the nice people at the pool table. ‘Get your fanny over here and serve us some more coffee. Damn near dry as a toad in a sandstorm.’

Carter turned to see they all wore the same style boots, the same denims, the same checked shirts, and the same camouflaged shooting vests. One was short and dumpy, the other two tall and stocky, one of the tall ones was bald as an egg and the other wore a “Salem Red Sox” cap. Dumpy had his ass perched on the edge of a dining table and wasn’t holding a pool cue. All three stared at Carter as he shifted in his seat ready to rise.

Maria touched his arm. ‘I can handle them,’ she said.  

Carter took his coffee black and strong, and it had to be good coffee, and Frankie’s was the only diner in Richmond that served coffee the way he liked it, it would be a damn shame to trash the place on account of these three losers.

He relaxed, looked at Maria. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Don’t worry; I will be closing soon, anyway. So one more coffee and then they will leave.’

‘Where’s Frankie?’

‘He go home,’ she said, ‘Little Frank, he not so well. He got, how you say, the tommy bog?’

‘Tummy bug?’

‘Si, tommy bog.’

‘Jesus, Lady, would ya come on already?’

Carter got to his feet, his six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame dwarfing Maria. ‘Hey, fellas,’ he said. ‘You show the lady here a little more respect, unless you want me to come down there and teach you how.’

Neither of the three responded, other than to look at each other and the floor.

         ‘I think I best go,’ Maria said.

Carter nodded and resumed his seat; he twisted square with the table and sipped his coffee. The Sun had almost set and the few streetlights visible from where he sat poked a dim glow through the darkening night. But it was the bright lights in the diner that made the glass in front of him a virtual mirror. He watched Maria’s reflection walk away and down to the hunters. Baldy and Red Sox had resumed their game and Dumpy had remained perched on the table’s edge. Maria refilled their coffees and said something about closing time to them before she walked behind the counter to start wrapping the place up.

Carter took another sip and checked his watch, nine-oh-five. He still had plenty of time. Senator Caine's nephew wouldn’t leave the printers until his shift ended at nine-thirty. Then he has a twenty-minute journey home, which included his usual trip to the “Chicken Palace”, where Carter had planned to intercept the creep. There were a few questions he needed Henry Caine to find the answers to. But Carter wasn’t going anywhere until Curly, Larry, and Mo had finished their game of pool and left the diner. And if that means missing Caine where he’d planned to intercept him, then so be it, he could always make a house-call.