19.

~ Norma could feel the change happen. A change she knew all too well. Hadn't it happened to her before? Didn't she know the symptoms well enough by now?

The snow was still on the ground and she couldn't summon the energy anymore to do the simplest tasks. All she wanted to do was sleep and her body seemed to crave even more sleep giving her no energy in return.

She knew better than to drink coffee to wake herself up. Knew better than to do anything more than drink water and eat bread with lots of salty butter slathered on top.

Every little chore now seems to sap her of all her energy and she needed a nap after something as simple as doing a load of laundry or taking a shower. Her body just craved sleep and she dreamed of odd things.

Always she dreamed she was lost in a strange and terrifying maze. A dangerous maze of junk yards and old buildings populated by people with hidden faces. She was looking for something, but couldn't put a name to what it was. She would run past a rusted old classic car that had been pulled from a swap. Police tape wrapped around it and a thin girl with dark hair was looking away from her. Somehow she was familiar and Norma tried to see her more clearly, but she couldn't see her full face. Couldn't recall her name.

No one was willing to show her their face in the dream because they were all on the other side of something. They were in a place Norma didn't belong, only see and not touch. This savage junkyard with it's crumbling buildings and smattering of broken cars was like purgatory. A never ending repository of old clothes and broken things from the faceless peoples lives.

Remnants of what they held dear and brought with them to this strange afterlife. A place where things weren't important anymore but they couldn't seem to let go of.

"What are you looking for?" a woman with a large hat and white scarf covering her face had asked.

"I… my son… I can't find my son." Norma gasped desperately and stepped instinctively away from the strange woman who no matter what direction she looked at her, she could never see her face.

"Your son?" the woman with big hat asked with a light hearted voice. "Oh, he's around. He's very close now."

Norma felt her heart skip a beat and stepped closer to the woman in her dark blue victorian style clothes. Her fine white scarf that billowed over her face from a wind that wasn't really there.

"Where? Where is he?" she asked the woman desperately.

"Did you like my pressed flowers? You found them. You hung them up. No one ever liked them before, but you did." the woman said before slipping away behind a crumbling building.

Norma wanted to chase after the woman but she turned a corner and was in a different part of the maze now. A place the was overgrown with forgotten and disused furniture. There was a bright red coat resting on an old fashioned whicker wheelchair that gave her chills. There was something familiar about that coat. She'd seen it before.

"Norman?" she called into the junkyard that stretched out before her with no end. "Norman!"

She roused awake when the mattress shifted and she could sense weak daylight coming in through her window. Alex was sitting on his side of their bed, and moving closer to her.

"Hi." he said when she sleepily rolled over to him. She hadn't meant to sleep for so long. She had fully intended to wake up before he got home and start on dinner. She didn't want him to worry about her or make him think something was wrong.

He was a cop, and he noticed these things. He'd notice she was eating less at dinner. That she was going to bed sooner and sleeping harder. He wasn't stupid. He'd seen the changes in her. He'd probably noticed them before she had.

"Hi." she said in a weak voice and tried to control an unladylike burp. She wasn't hungry but she asked him what he wanted for dinner.

"Norma?" he whispered instead. His eyes soft and ready to listen to her. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

"No." She said quickly and shook her head. She made her eyes wide and was careful not to blink. Alex had brought with him boxes of reading material on body language and how to tell if someone was lying. A part of his job when interviewing suspects no doubt. She'd read them all with ravenous curiosity and wondered why she hadn't become a detective. It was a fascinating subject and you could tell a lot about someone just by the way they walked or shook someones hand.

Alex was quite. He knew all about body language and interrogating correctly and was waiting for her to say something.

She just shrugged and smiled.

"Just hope I'm not getting a cold." she said after a brief stalemate.

Alex gave her a stony look. His jaw moving back and fourth.

"I'm off tomorrow." he said. "There's supposed to be a nice break in the weather. Maybe we can go into town. See that antique shop you wanted to look at. Have lunch?"

"Oh, that'd be nice." Norma said hoping she'd have an appetite by then but seriously doubting it.

Alex's eyes cast down to her body, all the way to her feet which she knew were swelling already.

"Sure you don't have anything to tell me?" he asked when his eyes met hers again.

"No." she said nonchalantly.

~ It was nice to be outside and away from the house for awhile. Alex had been right that the weather was finally good and it felt like a false spring with the sudden sunshine breaking through. There was still ice on the sidewalks and she almost stepped on a large patch of it before Alex pulled her by the hip and guided her away.

They had wandered through little shops in town like tourists. The kind of thing she loved to do with Norman when they first arrived here. Alex wasn't as fun to do this with. He wasn't a tourist. Norma guessed he was a very efficient shopper as most men like him could be. He knew what he wanted when he went into a store and didn't deviate for a second from that plan.

He didn't enjoy things like haggling for a good deal or taking your time to look for things with no intention of buying. He didn't understand the concept of looking at show rooms for decorating inspiration either. But it was nice that he went with her and made an attempt to appreciate the things she wanted to see.

'Norman would have loved this.' she thought sadly. 'He would have suggested going to the flower market next and getting flowers for the house.'

But Alex was trying and she didn't expect things to be perfect. It was enough that they were having a nice day together. It felt like a gift and she was thankful.

She felt her heart skip a beat when a large crowd of people rushed past them. They weren't even looking where they were going and charging ahead as if there were a heard of animals instead of people.

All of them snapping angrily at each other and paying more attention to their phones or to whatever they were going to yell at one another next than to the other pedestrians that they might knock down.

Alex had put himself between these rude people and Norma and she felt her hands move to her belly out of instinct. The little boy that followed had been the worst. He'd been swinging some kind of toy around, purposefully hitting cars and anything that was in his path. His parents were probably apart of the rude and yelling crowd.

Norma noticed how Alex moved closer to her, his hand going to her stomach when the horrible little boy ran towards them. The Sheriff giving the child a look that made the disobedient boy speed away.

"Alex." Norma sighed feeling a blush come on. His hand was pressing firmly on her belly and they would be attracting looks soon if they weren't careful.

As if unaware of what he was doing, Alex looked back at her. His hand dropping away and he smiled nervously.

"Did you see that kid?" he asked.

"He was five." Norma told him. "All little boys are like that."

"He needs to be more careful. He could hurt someone." Alex said darkly.

"Come on." she said pulling him to the local cafe where the food was good. She was finally hungry and just wanted half a sandwich. Her feet were already hurting and she wanted to sit down for a while. "You promised to buy me lunch."

~ The lawyer his dad's old partner recommended wasn't cheap. The good ones rarely were. He was the kind of scumbag lawyer that Bob Paris would have run to if he needed to weasel out of problems. Hell, Bob Paris probably used this guy.

Alex turned his silver wedding ring over and over and kept his thoughts on Norma. On his future. He'd met his dad's old partner for coffee a few days ago and told him everything.

The older man had given Norman the lie detector test and remembered the young man's mother very well. Commenting on the pretty blond woman Alex had kept stealing glances at. He had been a little shocked Alex had gotten married. Surprised to see the silver band on his ring finger.

"Let me guess, that blond woman." he had laughed and Alex had nodded. The story came out over terrible coffee. Everything, Alex held nothing back. How he'd shot and killed Bob Paris, how he'd married Norma and her son was in PineView. The insurance investigation and the mess of the DEA and the damn key he didn't know what to do with.

"You have to go to the DEA." his dad's old partner said after a long silence. "I'll give you the name of a good lawyer. He won't be cheap but he's worth it. Tell him nothing about what happened to Bob Paris. They'll suspect you had a hand in his escape if you bring him up. Tell them this Rebecca woman came to you, just like you said and mentioned this bank box with the money. Say it happened recently and that will be more than enough to get a warrant for them to open it. Never mention you have the key. They'll wonder why you have it and they will make them investigate you."

"What if there's more?" Alex asked. "Bob Paris kept ledgers on flash drives. They could be in there to."

"Are your hands dirty, Alex?" the older man asked. "Were you involved with the money?"

Alex was quite.

"I looked the other way too many times." he admitted soberly.

"Yeah well, haven't well all." the old man grumbled.

"It's bigger than me now." Alex said.

"Why? Because you've got a wife? She knows you're not perfect?"

"My wife is pregnant." Alex said the words for the first time and seemed to make them true. "I don't want to be in prison when our child is born."

~ The fancy lawyer with expensive suit didn't think prison would happen.

"You have any idea how many people lie to federal agents and then retract them?" he laughed. "Happens daily. They rat everyone out they can to get a better deal. Almost none of them serve jail time either."

"I'd been drinking that night." Alex explained feebly. "I'd just gotten married… I didn't want my wife to find out I had been seeing this woman-"

The expensive lawyer held up a hand and shook his head as if it were no big deal.

"We'll prepare something very nice and formal for your official statement to the DEA. Something humble. That's the key. You've given them the county's drug trade on a silver platter, why should they be mad at you?"

"Prison time?" Alex asked worriedly.
"I wouldn't think so." the lawyer huffed. "It's not like they caught you. You redact your statement and came forward with new information when you had it. Like you've always done."

The lawyer made it sound so easy, and it seemed to be easy. Clean and distant. Handled with a few phone calls. Alex gave testimony that he'd been drinking the night he spoke about his relationship with Rebecca Hamilton and, in a panic over questions about an old girlfriend so soon after getting married, he'd lied. He'd sobered up and remembered what he'd said to the agent only after Rebecca Hamilton had started asking about a bank key and disclosed she'd laundered money for Bob Pairs and there was millions of dollars in cash he could share with her if he helped her get into the bank box.

"I suppose she wanted me to use my connections to get an illegal warrant." he said casually. "I have reason to believe, there are more documents in that bank box as well. It can't be just money."

The lawyer nodded his approval and gave him a thumbs up.

"My client has helped your agency and we've agreed to the immunity?" the lawyer asked.

"If the box exists." came the terse response over the phone. "Yes. Sheriff Romero will not be charged with any crime. But don't leave town, Sheriff."

The line clicked off and Alex looked at his high priced lawyer.

"That's it?" he asked in disbelief.

The lawyer nodded.

"That's it." he said.

~ Rebecca drove by the bank to see the DEA vans and the FBI marked cars had swarmed the place. She spotted Alex to in a dark blue jacket with SHERIFF emblazoned in large letters on the back.

For better or worse, they'd found the Bob Paris' box and Alex was walking away clean. She drove away and didn't go back to her apartment. She was thankful she cleaned it so well one last time. Now she knew Alex and other strangers would be going through her things. They would be going through her apartment and looking for clues. Maybe now Alex would finally see her old scrap book in her closet. See her old pictures of when she was Miss Teen Indiana.

Rebecca tossed her cell phone in a mailbox and drove out of town into the woods. Bob Paris had a little cabin there off the books where she planned to stay. She'd fully stocked it when he disappeared in case such a thing happened. She wasn't sure how long she could stay up there, but she would rather die than go to prison and everything in that lock box pointed to her.