.Wav File

By Rich King

Get ready for explosions, intrigue, scandalous acts, sex that might blow your mind. While being tracked by a well-known Manhattan investigator, Benjamin Holder won't stop at anything until he finds his daughter. After being imprisoned for fifteen years, he finds himself in some financial distress struggli

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard King
• Release date: Feb 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087937359

Book preview

Chapter 1:

Wife One

  1  .

Before moving to New York, Ben and Allison spent a few years together in Madison, Wisconsin. They had a blast. Life couldn’t have been grander. Nights out with friends and coworkers were full of fun. The suicide runs down State Street from the University of Wisconsin Madison Library to the State Capitol’s front lawn (vomit puddles appeared like patchy grass); this involved downing a couple of drinks at every establishment that spanned the entire length of State Street.

Every piece of their life was what any couple would envy. People would look at them like they were a cute couple. Now there’s a couple that deserves each other...right? the incoherent people would think or say. The ultimatum was aired out like dirty panties left on the floor of an Uber. So, Benjamin Holder did what he had to do; in his heart and his mind he knew he was duty-bound to follow her wishes—even if his entire family was in the state of Wisconsin. The ultimate sacrifice was leaving everyone he knew behind. Like any loving husband, he catered to her wishes and caved to any man’s deepest darkest regrets—the relentless love of a woman over self-happiness. The story's crumbs were embedded so deep in the floor fibers even the twisted panties stuck in the seat slide mechanism. It was just the beginning. Ben found himself in this nightmarish ultimatum, yanking at the threads trying to release mind over matter. He tried to understand if this was the right thing to do. The ultimatum: If you love me, you will go to New York with me. Either way, I’m going with or without you!

He called Human Resources in Latham, New York requesting support in finding a new job. What Ben didn't expect was the immediate response; they needed a supply sergeant to stand up a new unit in Carthage. He had an over-the-phone interview that went rather well. So well, they hired him on that same call. After he hung up, he drafted a request memorandum to his company commander. Naturally, the commander blessed off on it and sent it right back to Ben. All he could do was sit and stare at the letter; it was about to change the course of his life. And before he could give his wife the pitiful news she desperately longed for, he sat on it for a couple of days. Meanwhile, he tried to concentrate on his inventory while digging deep through numbers and words on his word processor. His boss sat across from him. The young sergeant first class douchebag thought he was one of God’s worldly disciples. His ego was about as inflamed as the first-case bunion on a schoolboy’s testicles. It was something so uncomfortable, even sitting on it was as painful as the sound of his boss’s voice. It was either the snot in his boss’s brains, spewing garbage almost daily or thoughts of being God’s greatest gift to women that irked Ben the most.

And then one early evening, crap hit the fan. When the slender pubic hair swerved over his typewriter, the slight squeak in his chair pierced Ben’s ears like the sudden squelch of a bullhorn. His boss turned toward him and demanded, You can take out my trash!

Ben continued to stare at the memorandum of approval from his battalion commander. He decided it was time to cut the pubic hair down right where he sat. It was time to pop the bunion. Ben replied, No, you can take your own goddamn trash out!

When the chair rolled backwards, the plastic against the manila block wall hadn’t even come close to the echo that cracked the door window three offices down when his red-faced bunion exploded. The testicle stuck up from his veiny neck in rage beamed across the room like an Asian beetle missing a dot.

At ease, Sergeant Holder, you will do as I order and take out my trash.

Without a blink, even though he repeated himself as if that were going to sway the young sergeant’s mind, Ben Holder didn’t even cower to this spewing waste of oxygen breathing down his neck. Instead, he dropped his finger over the print button and said. As a matter of fact, take your own trash out from now on. You’ll find some young army chick to take over for me; she will appease to your cheap little antics, I’m sure. I’m leaving this place and most importantly, I’m leaving you, Dick!

At ease, Sergeant!

Read em ‘n weep...

The SFC dick-wad snatched Ben’s new military orders off the dot matrix printer and read it. Sergeant Holder shut down his word processor. He wandered out of the office. Richard was furious; he must have torn the printout because that was all Ben heard, a rip and then a crumple. He also heard a grumble, You are still my soldier until Thanksgiving. Where are you going? I didn’t release you yet.

Wisconsin was in the rearview. Allison was in the passenger seat. The scenery whipped by, the trailer of household belongings cut the air behind them. The gleam in her sunglasses was bright. Her smile melted his soul. Her face lit up even more. New York was her home state where she grew up. Ben was about to embark on a whole new world, one he was unfamiliar with, yet one he was willing to try for the love of his life.

Allison turned toward him and coughed. Ben squinted while concentrating on the road. Her cough seemed real deep and raspy. After focusing on traffic, he glanced at her a second time. His wife’s face transformed into a block wall. He squinted again. The bright sun sank inside the block pattern. Everything around him faded. His mind suddenly flashed forward.

A man’s cough was heard. It could have been a guard outside the cell. It surely wasn’t his wife. Ben was keeping his mind occupied while in confinement. His eyeballs rolled across his lower lids expecting the cough to return. It didn’t. Once again, his mind slipped from reality. He continued thinking more about Allison.

  2  .

During Ben’s time out east, the cart of the roller-coaster he was in never seemed to remain affixed to the rails. He bought a beautiful 2,500 square foot Cape Cod. He established himself in the community and his new office. Things were looking up for his wife and him. They both had stable jobs. They both had a nice warm house with a real wood-burning fireplace. It was what he always wanted too—a house with a fireplace.

Their bit of paradise on heaven's outskirts sat between farm fields in Lisbon, New York; glorious exhibitions of countryside landscape fulfilled their dream during all four seasons. Crazy as it may, the house they purchased was a mile from his wife’s parents. Ben thought, Who lived so close to their parents and expected sanity? Was insanity moving to this place?

It’s not that he didn’t want to. He would have done anything for the woman he loved. He would have gone to the ends of earth and back, which was a rather dumb statement since the earth was truly round. He would have just gone in one big ass circle. As long as she remained faithful and true to the same, his heart was pure.

And then the one night he decided to surprise her had finally come. It was the ultimate surprise—a surprise that would take much more balls than a swerving pubescent ingrown pubic hair stuck deep in the sweatiest taint like his former boss was. It would have secured the vested interest in any future with their marriage.

He painted the wall of the third bedroom with one big tiger. The tiger’s tail wrapped around the entire room and even held quotes on the wall like: Tiggers can bounce! Even the tail blended in with the heat registers. The ceiling was a light orange—it was Tigger’s belly. The walls were the rest of its body. And black stripes traveled up from the baseboards to the ceiling.

When his wife, Allison, arrived home from work, he had an arrangement of candles on the table. It was much like the night he had proposed to her. Only there wasn’t a diamond ring involved this time or a kitten. This time his proposal was filling the third bedroom, hence the nursery, with a little tyke. He wanted to expand the Holder family. He already had her favorite chicken parmesan dinner with a couple glasses of wine filled to the brim. A romantic story was behind the kitten, now their cat Precious who was as snug as a bug in a spider’s cast on Christmas Eve.

Seven and a half years ago, the cat was the prop he had used to propose to his lovely wife. The cat had the engagement ring on its collar. The clue should have been the Saran Wrap over their meals while she read a letter folded next to her dinner plate. The page turner was his cue to grab the kitten from the pantry and set it on the table. The cool part about it was when the kitten strolled right up to her plate, prominently sat down in a nice gray ball of fuzz and made a little meow.  In this proposal to have a kid, the only kitten was a wall-to-wall-to-ceiling tiger cat from Winnie the Pooh.

Honey-bunches-of-oats, I believe it’s time for new adventures. We made it this far in our life, our relationship, our marriage, and I feel so blessed to be here tonight. I want to show you something.

Oh, boy. She was flustered. He could sense it.

He got up and walked upstairs toward the nursery. Luckily, she left the wine on the table. The visit to the third bedroom was much shorter than expected. Before he knew it, she was jogging back down the staircase after her reply was, What, have kids, with you? Never…

He was not too far behind her while she called him by anything but his name. Her sweet breath of pain breezed over her shoulder in stride. It wasn’t long when he had returned to the kitchen only to watch her pour hundreds of dollars’ worth of alcohol down the sink drain. He couldn’t defend himself over the abuse. In all the humiliation and rage, he remembered hearing things like irresponsible, a good-for-nothing curse, a boring homebody, and he was just a soldier coming home to a place with a bed and a TV and a woman with a few holes. The sex wasn’t even great. The tone had done a complete 180-degree spin. He would have much rather sucked on a hot tailpipe with his bare lips than listen to this crap or witness alcohol abuse.

The nearly eight-year relationship was torn in a single-handed night’s blow. The discussion of making babies had never come up before. They lived the life any young married couple would have dreamed of. They had no clue of each other’s motives, goals or life plans. Almost eight years of fun together without a clue.

The night was pure torture. The weekend was complete hell. Monday was a relief waking up to the dreaded alarm clock just to escape it all. Aw, such a cute couple, they will go far in life. Slam. Brick wall ahead!

Unfortunately, the planning for the purchase of the house wasn’t the greatest. He had never done a route recon. His route ended up being seventy-two miles one-way due to the fact he hadn’t reviewed the map to realize he had to drive around the ranges of Fort Drum to a small town called Carthage, New York. That’s where his new job was.

The second unfortunate miserable attribute from the weekend was the snowstorm. It wasn't a sweet mixture on the roads at all. In those days, he was driving a blue Corsica. With his mind spinning, the blinding flurries whipping across the windshield, life seemed to have taken a turn. He didn’t want to lose his wife. Home seemed farther away. Even if they had known each other for eight years, their marriage barely brushed the tip of three; in one night alone, the relationship had transgressed to shaky-ground almost like with his Corsica barely clinging to the road that morning.

One windy country road, on his way to work in a small town called Harrisville, wound around a ravine on the southbound side. On the northbound side, a rock-faced cliff climbed into the heavens. The swerve in the snaky road was a 35 mile per hour drive through a pile of vanilla ice-cream—only it wasn’t sweet at all.

He was in his Physical Training (PT) uniform because he had planned exercise once he got to the armory. Boy did he get his exercise in early in the morning, especially when the ice cream smothered his windshield; his mind was doing hula hoops around his gut from the alcohol abuse his wife performed a couple nights ago, and then it happened…

…his tie rod snapped!

Without control, all he had was instinct. He let up on the gas. He could brake but the ice cream had flushed his white, lactose intolerant soul. His mind was a mess like the translucent slush formed across the windshield. Before long, the Corsica was pulling a Dukes of Hazard stunt like the General Lee up on two wheels.

The odds stacked against him. At home, he had an angry, miserable cur of a wife. What was even worse there was no more booze to boot. Coat those troubles with an out of control car. Truly, he only had one way to go (unless his car split in half). Ben would either plummet thirty feet to his sudden death in the ice-covered ravine or barrel up against the ridged boulders on the north end of the sloppy sludge. His eyes scanned the dash. Panic knocked his heart through his chest cavity. Snow beat the windshield. Ben peered left, the treetops swayed from the pond's edge below. Jagged rock neared the passenger windows. And the car's ultimate course had chosen its final resting place.

It rolled for the better of the two options.

The seatbelt yanked over his chest, and the roof of the car nailed the boulder at the cliff’s base. The car rocked on its side and Staff Sergeant Holder was hanging sideways in his seat trying to understand what path God had intended for him.

I’m barely hanging on here, he felt while sitting sideways. It was true. Where did I go wrong?

A passerby stopped and a lady shouted, Are you okay?

At the time, Ben was crawling out the driver window and jumped down from the side of his car. He glanced at the under carriage where smoked rose from the wet snowflakes that sizzled over the exhaust while the heat radiated off the transmission and bent the cold air. Either that or he wasn’t quite seeing straight since he had crashed. Yes, ma’am, he replied.

She exclaimed, I’ve already called the police. They should be here shortly.

Thank you, he said while patting his front pouch on his gray army sweater. No flip phone or wallet was inside. It must have been lying on his passenger door since it was the side of the car resting on the ground. Who knew where anything was? His folded uniform on the passenger seat was probably scattered across the inside of the car along with other contents.

You know you’re lucky...

I am?

Yes, a man died down there last winter. After the ice thawed, they found his body. No one knew he was down there all winter.

Benjamin stood in the middle of the snowy road in awe after she had driven off. Snowflakes clung to his brow. As the flashing lights of a squad car shone across his cheeks and forehead, he stared into the ravine like he stared at the approved memo from his battalion commander, the same one that had gotten him to this point in life. He could hear a car door shut, the crunch of snow from beneath the patrol officer’s shoes, the beeps of a handheld radio as dispatch spoke with other officers; he felt the chill where the flakes melted along his collar. He seemed numb from reality at that very moment; all other senses were heightened.

The following weekend was movie night with his wife and her coworker, Lindsay. Lindsay only showed up at the house and not his wife. Ben pressed her with a few questions, trying to get to the bottom of his wife’s whereabouts. After a couple of glasses of whiskey, he finally yanked the regrettable information from the damn woman. The information he needed to settle his mind after it had been running rampant. Thankfully, Lindsay brought booze since they were out.

After getting a blanket for Lindsay, he continued to maintain the volume of alcohol in her glass by keeping it to the brim; he pumped for information after each swallow. Finally, she told him the truth; it was a hard one to swallow. Lindsay was only there to occupy his time. Meanwhile, his wife was having dinner with another man and who knew what she may have been swallowing that evening.

Ben couldn’t quite contain the thought. A horror movie was playing. Ben wasn’t watching. The only horror he could fathom was the horrific performance his wife endured. The horrors of loving whores, and he was in the middle of a goddamn nightmare. I love my wife; how could she do this to me? Ben gripped Lindsay’s foot beneath the blanket, squeezed it, and clenched tightly to her white sock. He could feel the chill of her toes through the material. Tingles ran down his spine in the mystery of it all, the strange sense of sheer compassion or how Lindsay might take it.

He glanced at her. Your feet are freezing.

You can warm them up, can’t you? She asked. It was almost conniving—the tone in her voice. The smirk at the corner of her mouth was a tell-all.

Ben tore her sock off. It flung over the armrest and landed on the tile before the fireplace. The firelight danced over the logs. The shadow of the sock receded from the grout lines of the tile. Ben found himself rubbing her foot. The calluses of her heal scraped his boxers. A few rubs in, he found out the sudden arousal lifted his penis from his leg. Before he knew it, he was using both her feet to masturbate his erect penis. The sensation of cold feet pressing his shaft and the softness of the blanket brushing his sensitive head sent quivers to opposite ends of his body. The bulge in the blanket rolled back and forth. Lindsay had no qualms with it and after he let go of her foot to take a swig of whiskey from the end table, his erect penis pressed against his inner thigh as she continued rubbing it with her foot. Ben closed his eyes after taking a sip, took a deep breath, and was caught in a retaliatory affair shortly after learning of his wife’s dirty deed.

Lindsay’s eyes were riveted on the blanket. She was either concentrating on rubbing his dick or curious about what was hiding beneath all the fabric. Do you need help with that? She asked.

Well, it most certainly poses a problem, Ben smirked.

After he placed his hands over the soft blanket, her head bobbed underneath it. A sloshing sound was heard.

Ben’s eyes snapped open. A rat dug into a meal on a tray. It sounded like galoshes stuck in the mud as the rat chewed at the cheesy, spongey noodles. He quivered. He had been sleeping on the concrete floor and never noticed a food tray delivered. The rat stopped as Ben scooted away. Drool accumulated where his head was positioned on the floor, a thin band of saliva wound into the drain. He crammed his back between two adjoining block walls. His legs arched against his chest; he wrapped his arms around his legs.

Ben closed his eyes once again. His head dropped into the corner of the block walls. His mind transported back to when he visited Mom and Dad.

  3  .

Around early April, Ben bought a brand-new Chevrolet Silverado and returned to Wisconsin. He wanted to visit his family. Of course, his wife did not come. He had seen much less of her lately. She was never at the house. The family visit had been long overdue. He wept on his mom’s sofa and tried to listen to his stepdad’s ranting tidbits of advice.

His mom, Sindy, left his side to prepare dinner while his stepfather, Karl, brought him outside to discuss what he should consider doing next. As they talked near the woodshed, Ben stared into the emptiness of stacked logs. That moment reminded him of the ravine. His mind wandered into the past remembering the cold flakes turning to water on the back of his neck. The cop’s soles imprinting patterns in the snow, all the small sounds and cold feelings were so profound. The voice of his stepfather carried on and on in his ear. Dirty fingernails plucked a couple arm hairs as Ben snapped out of the daze he was in. Karl unraveled a watch from his wrist and handed it to him. Either the Oyster wristband or his fingernails had plucked the hair. 

Here, I want you to have this. It was from my father. And now, I’m giving it to you, son!

Ben looked at it and noticed it was a Rolex. Karl was like a real dad in the moment. Ben glanced back at him and shook his head, I can’t take this. Your father gave it to you!

To give to you... now you can always know what time it is. And eventually, you will be able to look at it and know what time you should come back to Wisconsin and finish living your life. Always remember, the time you have to live it may not always be enough. And even when you’re down and out or confused and need inspiration of some sort, just watch the second hand smoothly circle those numbers. You’ll find a reason to move forward. Someday, you’ll give the world something it’s never had. You may even save the world someday. Who knows? But if you’re looking for time, you got it. I love ya son. I couldn’t be more proud of my son and soldier. Make a difference, boy.

Ben hugged his stepfather. After seeing the family for a week, Ben needed to face the facts. He needed to face the fear of losing the love of his life, and had to go back east to deal with it. He needed to take down the bullwhip that cracked his heart.

  4  .

When he returned to New York, the house remained empty. Some of the household belongings they had shared together were still in place. All the knickknacks, half the dinnerware, the simple things that completed a home, were gone. Bare spots remained where picture frames used to hang and the carpet divots where furniture used to rest was what remained.

For the most part, it was everything she had owned or brought into the relationship. It wasn’t the missing material items that mattered. It was the hole in the heart hurting the most. How could one simple question end everything he had worked so hard for?

Let’s have a kid together was the statement looming inside the cells of his cranium. It rung true as the single most painful question in the history of their eight-year relationship. Although, the many nights of surfing porn may not have helped matters; playing with Lindsay’s feet surely wouldn’t win brownie points; he still loved her—none-the-less. It wasn’t his fault Bill Gates made a pathway to the sex-starved mind. If anything, the Interweb saved marriages as much as it had destroyed them. Boobies made great webpage headers, though.

After his wife abandoned him and the home, he found out they were shutting down operations in Carthage and moving his position four hours in the wrong direction to Schenectady. With the wrong direction, he meant Wisconsin was the other way. How could it get any worse? If things could have only gotten worse, it had to be it. To sum everything up: the great move away from family, the ultimate sacrifice, the expense of buying a new vehicle in the aftermath of the accident, the cheating, and now the job relocation… unless he were to ever get married again, talk about shaky-ground.

Fortunately, he was offered another position four hours in the other direction—closer to Wisconsin. Aside from its very similar beautiful landscape, he would still be stuck in the suck-hole of upstate New York. He figured closer to Wisconsin was a better plan. After all, his goal was to return home someday. He had become lost in a world of released aggression. He watched the second-hand passing numbers on the face of his Rolex. That’s what Karl told him to do, stare at it.

He got a roommate from the armory, a great kid, and the brother of the coolest squad leader he had ever met. The worldwide web was his new playground. Almost nightly, he got on the dialup internet. He started prancing about in the wonderful world of Yahoo chatrooms. It was where he had met his wife. Those were a thing of the past. Sometimes if he asked girls nicely, they would send pics of their boobies among other things. Usually, his roommate, Ryan, wasn’t home.

Once again, he wooed some young girl’s heart. They communicated through the virtual netherworld of Yahoo via webcam. And before he knew it, he was undergoing a divorce; the house was up for sale and he started packing some belongings to store in the garage. Of course, with his wife in hiding, he had no clue how to have her served.

In the meantime, he decided to meet the girl he wooed from Yahoo. The girl was slender, short, and beautiful. The crack pipes were bright as she smoked them frequently and in no time, Ben found out she was a crack-whore from Watertown.

He had no clue she was an addict until he shelled out $40 each visit only to watch her step inside a young man’s van in the downtown district. Before long, he was woven into a society of warm snuggly spider webs of booze, drugs, and sex. The nights in the alleys, backs of vans and motel rooms were rapidly normalizing. He continued to shell money out. He fed her addiction while he fed his own hunger for sex.

One night, no matter how dizzy he was, he had landed inside a sex-crazed dream of sorts. Although he refused to smoke her crack pipe, he didn’t refuse the intake of liquor. Sunset brought on dimness to the quiet little house where Ben found himself lying on top of a mattress, on the floor of a loft. The girl’s younger sister was playing between his legs. In between the strokes, the entrails of her saliva glistened along his shaft from the bit of light that crept in through the upstairs window—covered by only a bedsheet. Yup, it was then he had felt he hit rock bottom while some strange girl sucked him dry in the rundown home in the same shit town, USA.

On his way out, he stood on her front stoop and turned toward her and said, I’ve had a lot of fun with you, and now your sister… but I don’t think I can come around anymore. I’m moving away.

Her eyebrows bunched as she squinted. She followed him out the front door and slowly shut it behind her. If you don’t see me anymore, I will report what you just did with my sixteen-year-old sister, she said.

What?

You heard me.

She is only sixteen?

Yup...

You told her to.

I don’t remember saying a damn thing.

I didn’t know she was only sixteen.

Yup, you’ll be a sex-offender for life. You’ll probably lose your job and anyone you’ve ever cared about. Sorry, see ya tomorrow? She walked inside and the door hammered the frame before his face.

He slowly turned around with a bit of confusion. In the end, it was always about the money. She needed her fix. He was her sugar daddy. He glanced at his watch. It appeared as though the secondhand stopped. Of course, he had no idea of the entrapment she had laid out for him. However, it was seven in the morning, and he had to get to the armory.

After Sergeant Holder reported to his duty station, it was Army drill weekend, Saturday morning; he pulled into the armory parking lot. When he walked around to the other side of the truck to grab his bag full of duty clothes, all he could think about was the threat. He dropped his head against the opened door to sulk after they had conspired against him. Truth be told, he was helping feed the girl and her sister’s addictions to the drug.

That was when he spotted a crack pipe on the passenger floor of his truck next to a purse. He closed his eyes in disbelief. The sex was awesome. The sex wasn’t worth having if drugs were the daily lifestyle. He didn’t know her sister’s age. She guaranteed the trust fund for her addiction through a threat tactic. He wanted out; here he was with a crack-whore’s purse, her pipe,