In this story, hindsight is 20/20, proving the statement, "Ain't love grand?"

When it Went Wrong

Patrick Reed

Davis sat in the back of the squad car with his hands cuffed behind his back. He tried to think of when things went bad for them but was interrupted by an FBI agent opening the door. He sat down with his back to the steering wheel so he could face the man he was talking too. “Things are getting worse for you Davis, we pulled up some floor boards in that place of yours and found some freshly turned over dirt. You have about ten minutes before the Sheriff comes back with some shovels. That would be a great time for you to give me your story and tell me what they're going to find.”

He remained silent and went back to trying to think how this whole thing had gotten so ugly. Calling Jasmine when things went south was his first thought. He had panicked when he realized his shitty luck of having the second guy walk in when everything was going down. Such a simple plan; rush into Collin's office, wearing a ski mask, scare the old fart, who was Jasmine's husband, into opening the safe and take the hundred grand he had in the safe. “Dammit! We can't talk! Leave the gun there. If you take the gun with you they catch you, they'll be able to put it all together. Leave everything there, I'll come back and take care of things over there. You need to disappear for a few days. I'll meet you back at that farmhouse you talked about in a few hours. Go to a bar and try to relax until then.” She had freaked. Davis had thrown the money in a duffle bag and went to bar he had never been to before.

The agent, Davis had remembered him saying his name was Gonzalez, continued talking. Seeing the far off look in the kids eyes, Gonzalez thought that maybe every other word he was saying was getting through to him. “You seem like a smart guy, do you really think we found you by luck?”

Davis gave it some more thought; he should have never gone along with Jasmine's plan. He had tried to tell her that they didn't need the money they could just run away and live a normal life. Money was an overrated resource in his opinion.

She would have none of it though, “We deserve this! I deserve this, I've had to take too much shit from him for too long. I can tell him that we are sleeping together and he won't care. The only thing he cares about is money, if we take his money we'll hurt him and I need to hurt him!” As Davis thought about it now, Jasmine never really explained what the old man had done to her, it seemed pretty irrelevant to him now.

Davis kept quiet, but that was fine with Gonzalez he wasn't expecting an answer. “You also seem smart enough not to leave your drivers license behind.” He studied Davis and could see the slightest reaction; it was enough to tell him Davis knew he had been double-crossed.

Gonzalez could feel the kids resolve begin to break, “We want the girl Davis. If you can help us find the girl who's making you take the fall for this we can help you out when it comes time for sentencing.”

There was no way he left his drivers license behind, Davis knew it. He never took his license anywhere, it was always under the drivers-side visor of his Taurus. All of that was true until he noticed it was missing a couple weeks ago and just as sure as he was about not leaving his license behind he was willing to bet that they did find it there, courtesy of only one person. His mind flashed on having sex with Jasmine in his car. He should have known then something was wrong too. She had seemed disinterested in the whole event unlike the other times when she was passionate and a little crazy. Jasmine had been covering her bases.

He looked out at the shack that he had grown up in. The agent had mistakenly called the structure his “place.” He hadn't lived there in years and his family had never owned the place, they just got to stay there as long as they brought corn in every spring and summer. Davis had hated everything about this place, the winter was depressingly cold and the summers were so hot and humid you went to bed in a sweat and woke up the same way. Today it looked worse than ever. A crop had not been grown in over twenty years mostly due to the land being overworked. Today it was just a weather beaten clapboard house in the middle of field of dirt.

But hate it or not this was home and it was nice to see it one last time. The few memories he had of his mother were here and memories of his father the hard working rarely drank were here. The memories of an unemployed father that drank too much would come later. It was near the end of these awful last couple days and he was under no illusion that he was going away forever.

He had talked to Jasmine about this place when their relationship took a change from homeowner and landscape laborer to friends looking to be lovers. Davis hated this shack and what it represented but for some reason he couldn't stop talking to her about the place. As he thought about it now, Davis reasoned that it was his way of making excuses for his white trash ways. He could have had a nice life had he just not accepted her offer of lemonade and to sit down to talk. Such a simple thing, but him sitting down with her and having a conversation set everything in motion.

Another agent walked up to the car holding a plastic bag in his hand. Gonzalez would have preferred letting this kid stew a little longer but you had to roll with the situation. The agent with the bag had taken his jacket off and had his sleeves rolled. “Look what we found!” he gave the bag to Gonzalez.

Gonzalez glanced at it quickly then held the bag at the top with one hand to make sure Davis could see it. “Gee Davis this kinda' looks like a murder weapon.” He said trying to sound sincere. He looked at the kid in the seat behind him, the gun didn't phase him and why should it? Damn kid probably buried it there.

“You want to know something else Davis ?” Gonzalez and continued without waiting for an answer, “It was no coincidence Collins partner walked in you.”

He tried to show no reaction, but Davis had no idea what the agent was talking about but there had to be a reason for him saying it. His thoughts went back how he should have known better than to get caught up in this. “Yeah that's right. It seems that he got a call from the secretary of one of their clients and they needed to meet him down at the office. Of course we wouldn't know this except it turns out the he had visitor when the call came in.”

Davis couldn't help but listen to what Gonzalez was saying. He closed his eyes and tried to absorb what was being said to him. The agent could feel the kid start to fold a little more and it would be done. “We went through the client list, no one wanted a meeting today. We're working on getting his phone records for today but I'm not holding out a lot of hope, she seems a little too sharp to make that call from her own phone.”

Davis ' composure had come back and he started to wonder how long Jasmine had had this planned. Gonzalez wasn't done yet and had one more switch to flip, “I bet you're asking yourself, 'Why would she send that guy to catch me?' I think she had a pretty good hunch of what would happen when a guy like you had a gun in his hand and panicked. The money is nice for her, but what she really wanted is her husband dead. Sounds like she knows you better than you know yourself.”

The last comment hung with Davis and he thought of the last time he saw Jasmine. It was at the shack, she again kindly called the place the ‘farm house.' She had a look in her eye he had never seen before, to this moment he was trying to decide what emotion he was betraying. “Hey babe,” Jasmine said the words suddenly seeming forced to him. “I really wish you had left the money at the office, you should have left everything there...”

“I'm not going to kid you Davis, you're going to be going to prison for a long time, maybe the rest of you life. The rest of your life is a long time to regret not doing something when you had the chance. I don't even want to think how long the rest of your life is going to feel like when you let a woman you loved get the better of you,” Gonzalez tried to sound like the college kid that was helping a friend through a bad breakup. “This is really your last chance for closure with this woman. I can tell she hurt you kid and it's only going to hurt more if you let her run free from this.”

Just like that Davis knew what his big mistake was. His flaw was thinking that he would ever do better than this place, this weather beaten collection of kindling wood in the middle of nowhere. You couldn't change what you were, not deep down at least he would always be the kid that other families would look at and take solace they were not him. He took one last look at the place and saw the sheriff deputies and FBI Agents walk out.

Gonzalez pushed one last time if it didn't payoff now there would be other times with this poor son-of-a-bitch, “Did Jasmine tell you where she wanted to go when this was all over? Did she talk about a favorite place?” Still nothing, “She strikes me as a beach bunny. That's where she'll be tomorrow.”

That was it Gonzalez had nothing left. He started to turn around in his seat when Davis broke his thousand yard stare and looked at him. Davis jutted his chin toward the men who had just walked out of the shack with shovels in hand and as if it was an answer for everything Gonzalez had been asking him said, “Keep digging.”