Gary V. Powell, Author

(The following is excerpted from my novel, Beyond Redemption. It serves as a pretty good introduction to Chooch Bartkowski's world).

Chooch Bartkowski pulled the blanket over the little boy’s shoulders. Brick Bartkowski looked up at the big man who’d married his mother and adopted him four years earlier. “I want to go to the construction site with you this weekend,” he said.

Bartkowski smiled down at his son. The first time he’d seen Brick in his mother’s yard, the kid had been playing with construction trucks. “Sure, Buddy.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell the boy that if business didn’t turn around soon, there wouldn’t be a site to go to.

“High five,” Brick raised his palm.

“High five,” Bartkowski gave him a slap.

“Is Momma coming home soon?”

“Yeah, any time.”

Bartkowski figured there was no way a seven year-old could understand what it meant for his mother to be in Cocaine Anonymous, but Brick knew what it meant when she was high. And he knew that CA was the cure.

“Goodnight, Daddy.”

“Goodnight, Brick. I’ll send your mom in to check on you when she gets here.”

He closed the door, walked down the hall, and eased onto the sofa. His body ached like he’d been beaten. Since the recent downturn in business he’d been forced to get out from behind his desk and work the sites with his dwindling crew. He might have been an All-American shot putter in college, but he felt like an old man.

All-American. Big fucking deal. Now he was just an ex-cop, an ex-private investigator, and soon to be an ex-construction company owner.

He flipped on the TV, hoping to catch a baseball game. Instead he got local news. An overhead camera showed a black Mercedes pulling into the drive of a large custom-built home. A Lexus SUV waited in the drive. He knew that house, that SUV. The camera zoomed in on Trip McCool and Bartkowski’s old boss and former brother-in-law, Mitch Fawley.

The newsman said something about “murder…a police chase.”

Fawley and McCool approached the Mercedes. The driver’s side window opened and Fawley leaned in. He talked to the driver for several minutes. After a while, another man Bartkowski recognized slid from the car—Fawley’s old friend, Potter Mills. He looked a mess and required help from Fawley and McCool to stand. Each of them supported an elbow. No sooner was Mills on his feet than a single police cruiser crawled into the drive. The officers cuffed Mills and ushered him into the back of their car.

Once the cruiser pulled away, police cordoned off the drive and investigators swarmed Mills’s Mercedes. The scene shifted and a talking head replaced the action footage. Bartkowski turned off the TV.

“Holy shit,” he said under his breath.

Bliss Henderson’s murder had been all over the news the last week. At first, Mills asked the public for help in finding his wife. Then after her body was discovered, he asked for help in finding the murderer. Now, it looked like maybe he was the murderer. Except Bartkowski would never have pegged him for that. A little crazy for marrying into a family of holier-than-thou TV evangelists, but not a killer.

He went into the bathroom, took a long, satisfying leak, and brushed his teeth. When the toilet wouldn’t stop running, he set the pot of fake flowers aside and removed the lid. Caught on the chain was a baggie with white powder in it.

He was holding the baggie to the light, when he became aware of her presence. She stood in the doorway watching him. The look on her face told him he’d found her secret stash.

“Goddamnit, Shana.”

“Don’t start, Chooch.”

“Don’t start?” He brandished the baggie. “How long’s this been here?”

“You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

He flushed and watched the baggie disappear with the swirl. “I know Brick and me deserve better than this.”

Her face broke. She swatted at a tear. “You don’t know,” she repeated, before turning on her heel and heading for the door.

This time he didn’t try to stop her.