Dustin Jeckle & Mr. Hydel, Page 2

mercifully into a deep sleep. It was almost dusk when he woke. His mother was just coming through the door. She carried a small grocery bag.

  “I could just eat peanut butter,” he told her, moving to a sitting position.

  “My son is writing a masterpiece, and he needs decent nutrition.”

  Sure, he thought, if you call political drivel in Maine a masterpiece. He would be doing right to smash the laptop and burn the hard drive. He didn’t tell her that though.

  Dustin rubbed his leg. He was starving. Within just a few minutes his mother had cooked up a wonderful meal that tasted like authentic oriental noodles.

  “This is really good,” he told her, but apparently she had already slipped off to her room.

  She works too hard.

  The days fell into a regular cycle. He would sleep all day and then wake in time to see the attorney across the street carry on with what seemed to be some serious issues. Unfortunately, it all began to remind Dustin of his own last days in the legal world. He found himself thinking more and more about the way Susan had slowly begun to unwind and how their marriage started to become an issue for the partners.

  “She needs to stop calling the office all hours of the day and night,” Henry Fournier had told him. “She’s upsetting the secretaries, and your billables have been dropping lately. This firm functions well only when our attorneys are functioning well.”

  Dustin’s eyes flew wide as the young attorney across the street destroyed another phone and hurled his office chair straight through the window. Fortunately, no one was standing on the sidewalk when the chair smashed in a flattened heap amid the shattered glass below.

  “How’s the book coming?” his mother asked the next day when she came through the door.

  “I’ll never practice law again,” he told her as though it was something he had never considered before that moment.

  “You don’t know that,” his mother said, coming up behind him and stroking his ears. “One of these days, the state police will come to the end of their investigation and will realize you’re innocent.”

  “Tell Susan’s parents that,” he said.

  His mother scoffed.

  “That little harlot deserved everything she got and then some.”

  He didn’t answer but did accept the pizza she handed him a little while later. Though she made it from scratch, it was easily as good as anything the best local pizzerias ever made. He stacked the pizza box on top of the rest and resumed his vigil of the office across the street. Never one to disappoint, the young attorney was pacing angrily in the center of the large room. Dustin didn’t know if the other man realized he was there, but every once and a while the attorney would look out with those piercing blue eyes that looked so much like his mother’s.

  As the attorney paced, Dustin remembered waiting for Susan’s drug dealer much the same way at their condo one night. Unfortunately, the dealer turned out to be nothing more than a young teen mule. The real hustler remained safe and sound in some urban hole as the Portland police dragged the young boy off to juvenile court.

  Dustin peered through his binoculars and watched a man storm into the young attorney’s office. He was tall and thin and wore what seemed to be an expensive suit. The young attorney was obviously not happy but seemed to keep his anger intact. Dustin immediately thought of the way Jacob Hewitt had fired him not so long before.

  Turning away from the window, Dustin knew he couldn’t watch anymore.

  Up later than usual, his mother came into the room and pushed an entire stack of Chinese takeout containers out of the way so she could sit on the couch. At the back of his mind, Dustin knew there was something wrong about the containers, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  “My boy looks so glum,” his mother said, reaching over to stroke his unshaven cheek. “Your law career isn’t over, you know. Someday you’re going to be able to prove that miserable woman you married was at fault. If you hadn’t killed her that day, she sure as hell would have killed you. I knew from the moment you brought her home, she was trouble.”

  Dustin would have been angry at the statement but knew his mother was only trying to make him feel better. It couldn’t have been easy taking care of both a murderer and a cripple. His law degree was next to worthless and until the Portland police officially closed the investigation, there was always the chance that he might have a prison term to look forward to.

  He fought the tears that threatened to break free.

  Though he had been forced to kill Susan in self-defense, he knew he’d never forgive himself. It had been the heroin that drove her to do what she did, that turned her to prostitution when he had finally closed the checkbook on her.

  His mother had already slipped away to bed when he wiped his cheeks and looked down at the street three stories below him. It was hard to believe he had fallen nearly that far when Susan’s pimp had chased him out onto the fire escape. Only luck and a shock-absorbing leg bone that shot through his hip and nearly hit his ear had kept him alive.

  The office across from him had gone dark. Dustin typed, and typed and typed.

  “Jesus H,” Kristin said, as she made her way through the disgusting apartment. The place reeked of rotten takeout and body odor. It was a good thing he paid her well.

  “Mr. Hydel,” she said to the unshaven man sprawled across the rented couch. “Are you okay, Mr. Hydel?”

  “Dustin,” he said, slowly opening and rubbing his eyes.

  She winced at the sight of drool running down one side of his mouth. The man might be a genius, but living like this for even a few weeks at a time hardly seemed worth the three bestsellers he wrote a year.

  “Mr. Hydel, your book is finished,” she said. “Your computer sent us the entire manuscript when you typed The End.”

  She knelt down to unclamp the aluminum brace on his leg. It was so tight it might have been cutting off the circulation. What would he do next, cut his own hand off to get in character?

  “My book?”

  “Your agent, Margie, doesn’t like the Death of a Law Career title but after reading the first few pages she said you’ve done it again. She says it’s a guaranteed bestseller.”

  “Bestseller?”

  “Mr. Hydel, do you know who you are?”

  “Dustin Je—Hydel. My name is John Hydel.” He swung his eyes around in panic “My mother—“

  “Is at your California home and wants you to call her when you get a chance.”

  Kristin stared out the dirty window at the abandoned warehouse across the street. The entire neighborhood gave her the creeps. Why a wealthy man like John Hydel would put himself through something like this she would never know, but she intended to quit just as soon as she received her bonus.

  The End

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