Birdsongs by Jason Deas Page A

any idea of their parents secret fortune because of the fact they had never mentioned it and their mother and father never bought anything of any great value. The boys just believed they made enough money from the General Store to survive their simple lifestyle. When they discovered they would each receive 225,000 dollars, they were completely dumbfounded. Douglas, being older and wiser, invested his money and started his own company. He always had an interest in flying and he acquired his pilot’s license, bought a small plane, and slowly built a profitable company jetting executive types to tropical vacation destinations. Benny on the other hand dropped out of college after his first year thinking the money would last forever. He traveled extensively all over the world, womanizing, living free, and learning life’s lessons the hard way. His wake up call came on the morning he read a bank statement detailing the fact he had 99,000 dollars left to his name. This meant he blew through 126,000 dollars with nothing to show for it but memories. The next flight he took was home as he realized he would need college after all to sustain his future. Benny received a degree in criminal justice and signed on with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accounting was his double major.
        With a knack for numbers he previously ignored during his playboy stint, he received assignment to investigate dealings with tax matters. After three years of dedication and solid work, he received a requested transfer to homicide where he thrived as a renowned crime-solving mastermind. He was a legend in Quantico, Virginia. He hesitantly resigned twenty years later after getting mixed up romantically with a young woman during an investigation that eventually found her guilty of murder.
        After two decades fighting crime and investments involving his remaining 99,000 dollars, Benny decided to call it quits. With his experience he could have easily signed on with just about any police department in the country as a detective or consultant. His pride squashed any future ambitions in the public realm. The job brought him many successes, times of sorrow, times of joy, death threats, and a life that literally consumed him with work. At the age of forty-four, he was retired and at forty-six and one-half years old, he created James Investigations out of boredom. Two years later, he found himself back on a government payroll investigating a possible serial killer in his getaway small town.
     
     

Chapter 16
     
       R.C. woke up to the sound of a banging headboard in the room beside his. He looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand unintentionally decorated with burns from forgotten cigarettes and it read 8:24 a.m. He thought it was awfully early for a romp, but decided he would make a ménage à trois of sorts out of the situation. He masturbated in rhythm with the pounding, and thanks to the paper-thin walls of the cheap lodging, he was stimulated by a woman’s voice, which clearly expressed her pleasure. He let his imagination do the rest and finished his business before the two probable cheaters reached exhaustion.
        As R.C. showered, he noticed more cigarette burns lining the tub. He hadn’t had his morning cigarette and he thought of tobacco and coffee as he washed his hair. Soaping up his arms, he studied the scar on his wrist. It was a self-inflicted wound he acquired during his first week in prison as a result of a failed suicide attempt. The day the letter he still held in his possession arrived, his anger and desperation erupted. He traded two packs of cigarettes for a shank and did the best he could with the blunt piece of metal to drain his blood. Above the scar on the innards of his forearm was the tattooed silhouette of a bird. After his recovery, he had another inmate give him this as a reminder that he was not his own enemy. His enemy was the author of the letter that sent him over the edge, Miles Davenport. R.C.