Clean Cut Kid (A Logan Connor Thriller Book 1) Read online

  He sat for a long moment, tapping the top of the box with his fingertips. Maybe he could force it open. Bad idea. Maybe he could pick the lock like on TV. Stupid idea. It was the best he had. He pulled open the thin drawer just above his knees to look for a paper clip. In the pencil tray in the front of the drawer was a little shiny chrome key.

  Logan slipped the key in the lock. It silently opened. Inside the box was a small stack of documents, life insurance policies, marriage license, Social Security cards, Roger’s Army discharge papers, and in the middle were three sheets of paper stapled in the upper left corner.

  The top sheet bore the letterhead of Nelson, Park, and Finney, Attorneys at Law. The second sheet was the Registration of Adoption, notarized by the county. The third sheet was Logan’s birth certificate.

  His name wasn’t typed, it was filled out in ink. It was in Kate’s handwriting. Logan Lanford Connor, born January 1, 1980. Logan took a deep breath. There it was, the thing he wondered about. It looked so small and foreign in typed small block letters: Melissa Rene Whitaker, mother.

  Father, Leonard Charles Pellman. So, my name would have been Pellman? The word meant nothing. The sound of the letters felt uneasy on his tongue as he said it aloud.

  “Pellman, Pellman, Pellman. That’s not me. Neither is Whitaker. After all, they weren’t married. Who am I? Pellman or Whitaker? I am Logan Lanford Connor. It says so right here.” He folded the papers back up. Without further thought, he slipped them back in the stack, locked the box, and put the box back in the drawer.

  At breakfast the next morning, nothing was said of adoption. The table talk was nervous and shallow. At nine-fifteen, Logan hugged his parents and threw his small suitcase in the back of the truck.

  “You’ll always be my mom,” Logan whispered as he hugged Kate goodbye.

  “I love you, dad. I’m gonna miss you.”

  “You’re not going to war. It’s just college. We’ll be up to see you and you can come home anytime you want. Just come.” Roger’s voice choked with emotion.

  Logan got in his green pick-up and backed out of the drive. He wiped tears from his cheeks as he watched his parents wave in his rearview mirror. As he turned the corner he stopped and almost turned around. It was too soon. He didn’t want to leave his home. Logan knew it wasn’t just for college. This was his introduction to the adult world.

  Chamberlain was a fine little college. Logan was proud he could get in, and his parents could easily afford it. He spent the first two years in the dorms. His roommate was a chemistry major with aspirations of becoming a doctor. By the end of the third semester, he flunked out after discovering the recipe for LSD in an Organic Chemistry class. Turns out he fell in love with the stuff and spent hours trying to convince Logan to try it.

  Spring semester is no time to be assigned new roommates, so Logan spent the rest of his sophomore year in the peace and quiet of his roomie-less dorm room. This suited him very well, he had no friends and no close acquaintances asking to room with him. He studied, which didn’t come hard, and pondered what major to declare the next year. With his general education classes taken care of and a B+ grade point average, Logan went home for the summer.

  His father managed to get him a job assisting the janitor at the local high school doing summer maintenance. For weeks, Logan used a small putty knife to scrape chewing gum off the bottom of the desktops and seats. With only his thoughts and a small static-heavy radio, he would while away the hours lost in thought.

  While working on the tables and chairs in his old art class Logan thought of the pleasure that art gave him. He remembered fondly the hours he spent discovering the colors, shapes, and textures of his canvases. In college, he didn’t take art classes. Early on he realized he had no talent, just a desire to be left alone with his imagination. Now, two years from graduation, he must make the decision that would carry him into the real world. A major that would determine a career, a choice that would project an image of who he was, and a decision that would chart his course for life. He was terrified.

  The return to school in the fall was a time of stress for Logan. He needed to declare a major, but as of yet he still couldn’t commit to a discipline that grabbed him. At the end of the spring semester, before leaving campus, he signed up with the Housing Center for an off-campus apartment and one roommate. He felt, and rightly so, that more than one person to deal with would be too much a distraction for his limited social skills.

  When he paid his tuition and picked up his schedule there was an envelope attached to his paperwork. The return address was the Office of Student Housing. Inside was a letter, welcoming him to the off-campus program, a list of rules, payment schedule, “Suggestions for getting along with your new roommate”, directions and the address of his home for the next two years.

  In a short paragraph, the letter explained his roommate would be Titus Crow, 28, majoring in International Affairs and Criminology.

  “A double major and I can’t even pick one,” Logan mumbled walking out of the admin building.

  The apartment was only a five-minute drive from campus. All of Logan’s clothes and a couple of books fit in a backpack and a large duffle bag. They kept him company on the passenger seat all the way back to school.

  The apartment building was nice enough. It was old, shady, ivy-covered, and only two stories. He was in apartment 2A. Logan easily found a place to park on the street.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Titus Crow never had a childhood, not in the normal sense. He was in the last wave of post-Vietnam War babies. His father, Samuel Crow, came back from Southeast Asia a changed man, took a job as a machinist and got his mother pregnant.

  The twins were born when Titus was four years old. They were conjoined, Siamese twins, as they were called then. The baby girls were joined at the top of their heads, making them just under forty inches long. One faced right, the other left.

  Doctor Czats said to “Put them aside.”

  “Let them die?” Miriam Crow questioned. Miriam was a member of a cult of end of the world, fear-mongers, who claimed God will unleash his wrath on mankind and would soon allow mankind to destroy the planet with atomic bombs.

  “Best thing for everybody.” The young doctor continued. “They’ll most likely be retarded. They’ll never walk. They may be blind, hard to tell just yet. If they live, they will be an unimaginable burden on you and your family. Put them aside, dear. You are still young enough to try again.”

  “They are God’s children,” Miriam said in horror at the doctor’s suggestion.

  “Then he has a mean streak.”

  “Blasphemer!” Miriam shouted.

  Doctor Czats turned and left the room. He never returned and declined further contact from the Crow family.

  Miriam remained in the hospital for three more days. The twins, now named Connie and Bonnie, were to remain for another three months. Morning, noon, and night Miriam returned to breastfeed the babies. Their pediatrician said they would have a better chance of survival if they bonded with her, and the use of formula was not something the aging doctor approved of.

  Samuel Crow was neither able nor willing to deal with the birth of his “attached babies”. He refused to take Miriam to the hospital for nighttime feedings. In one heated exchange, he slapped Miriam hard across the face.

  “We should have put them down like the Doc said. But no, you had to step up and interfere,” Samuel shouted.

  “It’s your fault they are the way they are! You and your cavorting with harlots. You brought sin, chemical particles, and a cursed disease home, and defiled our marriage bed.” Miriam ran to the bedroom and slammed the door.

  Titus lay on the cool kitchen floor, his cheek against the linoleum. He could hear his heart pound in the veins of his ear. His father threw himself down hard on the couch and planted his face deep into the back cushion and wailed in grief.

  In the morning, Miriam found her son asleep on the kitchen floor. Samuel left for work without a word. Neit
her Miriam nor Titus ever heard from him again. Each month for the next fourteen years an envelope would arrive in the mail with the mortgage payment in the form of a Western Union money order, no note, no return address.

  The twins were indeed a burden. Miriam found it nearly impossible to even move them. She fashioned a hammock-like affair with a loop at one end. Miriam put Titus’s head through the padded hole and he carried one end, while she held the other to transport the twins from crib to playpen and back. Twice a week he helped lower them onto a stack of wet towels in the bathtub for a bath.

  Few people visited the Crow home. Even the people from the Church of God’s Judgment little by little stopped their visits. Other friends simply didn’t know how to react to the strange children with a common skull. At school, Titus was the recipient of taunts and teases. This was the time of Alien, Goonies, Freddie Krueger, and The Changeling. Strange deformed creatures born of demonic powers filled the screen of the local movie theater and VCRs. It wasn’t long before Titus was known as “The Brother of the Two-Headed Monster”.

  Five days after Titus’s tenth birthday, the twins died. Secretly in the dark of his bedroom that night, Titus thanked God for making his wish come true. In her grief, an unknowing Miriam signed papers allowing the doctors of the nearby university to do a postmortem on the twins. At the funeral, to Miriam’s shock and horror, there were two little sealed white coffins.

  “They will be able to run and play as normal children in heaven,” but the pastor of Judgment Church’s words did not console Miriam.

  An aunt from Iowa came and stayed for a week, but she couldn’t take Miriam’s tales of midnight visits from the twins and left as soon as she felt it wouldn’t make her look bad. She was a tiny woman that told Titus to call her Auntie Vic. She wore dresses made of Rayon passed down from her mother that clung to a mixture of perspiration and dollar store perfume that stayed in the room long after she left.

  “The Brother of the Two-Headed Monster” was given a reprieve of his torment when the State ordered the busing of children from one school to another for “the purpose of a more balanced distribution of the races”. Titus nearly cheered when he learned he would be among those bussed. By the time he was reunited with his classmates in junior high, they moved on to bully some other poor soul, and Titus was barely remembered.

  Junior high was a time for Titus to remain an invisible member of the hormonal jungle of cooties, crushes, puberty, and cliques. He excelled quietly in Math and English. Avoiding the spotlight or any recognition at any cost, Titus declined invitations to go to the State Math Olympics or submit a story to the school’s annual literary journal. At home though, no longer a member of the Church of God’s Judgment his mother retreated into a world of apocalyptic fear, and her stories evolved from midnight visits from the twins to having Connie and Bonnie seated at the place she set for them at the dinner table.

  As his mother became more and more unwound, Titus embraced the world of classic literature, having inherited a set of Harvard Classics from the neighbor who went to the old folk’s home, and the fantasy world of comic books, supplied by a friend of his father who ran the newsstand on Center Street. The covers of the comics were all removed, allowing the shop to get credit for not selling them, but Titus didn’t mind in the least. Spiderman, Superman, and Captain America all told simple stories of good versus evil, something in Titus’s life that was very gray. He enjoyed the simplicity of the colorful panels that balanced the wordy bulk of the classics at bedtime. His embrace of language and the growth of his vocabulary found him on the honor roll throughout junior high.

  High School presented a whole new set of problems for Titus. His interests in books, his constant fear of the twins being brought up by old classmates, his mother’s loose grasp on reality, all made it hard for a teenager to explain why friends at school were never invited over. He was seen as a nerdy misfit by his peers, and even though he was growing into quite a handsome young man, his quirks made the young ladies in his classes mostly giggle and turn away, and the ones who didn’t, were far from what Titus would be interested in.

  “Hey, I’m Charles.” A dark-haired boy in a plaid shirt and black horn-rimmed glasses stood in front of Titus.

  “I’m Titus.”

  “I know, we have three classes together. Mind if I sit with you?”

  “Not at all. It gets pretty lonesome always eating lunch by myself.” Titus scooted over on the bench facing the cafeteria doors.

  “You’re pretty good in math,” Charles said, opening his lunch bag.

  “Yeah, it comes pretty easy for me.”

  “Do you play any sports?” Charles inquired.

  The question made Titus uncomfortable. He was tall and well built, football, basketball, even baseball would seem a natural choice.

  “Nah, I haven’t ever…”

  “Me either, asthma. I would love to play baseball.

  Titus didn’t respond, he just took another bite of his sandwich. As much as he wanted a friend, having someone to talk to wasn’t as much of a comfort as he thought it would be. Charles was nice enough, but he was even more of a nerd than Titus.

  “Say, how would you like to come over after school? I have a really neat model train set up in my basement. My dad and I have worked on it since I was ten.”

  Great, Titus thought, a toy train. This guy is worse than I thought. “I can’t today, got to get home,” Titus tried to sound casual, but feared his voice gave him away. It did.

  “I guess model trains are an acquired taste. I tell you what, I go to my Kobudō lesson tomorrow night. How about you be my guest?”

  “What is that, some church thing?” Titus was ready to make an escape.

  “No,” Charles laughed. “It is a self-defense class. The teacher learned it in the Marines, then was trained more in Japan. My dad thinks asthma is making me a sissy so he signed me up. He doesn’t want anybody pushing me around. In Karate you learn how to kick the other guy’s butt before he knows what hit him.”

  “Like Jackie Chan?” Titus was suddenly impressed with his new friend.

  “Yeah, kind of,” Charles paused. His face showed that perhaps he made the invitation to quickly. “It requires a lot of discipline, and respect and, and respect and…”

  “I get it.” Titus interrupted. “Serious stuff, no foolin’ around.”

  “That’s right. Real serious.”

  “I’m game. I could use some way to keep some of these idiots from pushing me around.” Titus indicated a table full of jocks in letterman jackets.

  “Yeah, but you can’t use it to start stuff. You can only use your skills if you are attacked. Hit at first.”

  “Do I look like I would go around starting trouble?” Titus laughed. “So how did your father find out about this Kobudō stuff?”

  “He was stationed in Okinawa when he was in the Army. It is really popular there. My dad took lessons, then even helped train some of the soldiers. When he found out that a dōjō was opening he went straight down to get me in the class. He says the sensei is the real deal.”

  “You learning Japanese, too?”

  “No, you just learn to call things by their right name. Dōjō is a class, like gym for Karate. Sensei just means teacher.”

  “Very cool.”

  “One warning, my sister. She’s a Pearl Jam and Nirvana fanatic, I hope you like music. She’ll be driving us.”

  “How old is she?”

  “A senior. Thinks she’s going to live in Seattle after graduation. Fat chance.”

  “No problems for me.”

  The bell rang with a deafening blast right above the boys’ seats.”

  “We’ll talk more tomorrow.” Charles crumpled up what remained of his lunch and tossed it in the trash can at the end of the bench.

  “See ya.” Titus stood stretched and grinned. “Kobudō, huh?” he said, watching Charles walk away.

  The last three periods seemed to crawl by as Titus thought about learning a Japan
ese way to fight. He knew about Karate, who didn’t? He watched Judo and Jujitsu during the Olympics, but this sounded like something special, exotic, and unknown to the other kids at school. When the bell rang at the end of the day, Titus headed straight for the library and the big encyclopedia set in the center of the room.

  Quickly flipping the tissue-thin pages of the K volume, Titus found the entry he was searching for, “Kobudō: an ancient Oriental martial art, meaning “the empty hand”. It is a fighting system that is practiced by the native peoples of Okinawa, and monks of the Zen Buddhist religion practiced in Okinawa. When Japan took Okinawa from China, Kobudō was given a rebirth, now it’s one of the most influential styles of fighting in the world.”

  For a long moment, he stared at the page. This is something special. Titus took a scrap of paper from his binder and wrote down the definition. He folded the paper and slipped it in the front pocket of his jeans. As he turned to leave, Titus was struck with an idea.

  “Excuse me.” He said to the rather grim-looking woman behind the desk next to the door.

  “How can I help?”

  “Do you have a book on Kobudō?”

  “On what?” The librarian said, completely baffled by the strange new word.

  Titus reached in his pocket and pulled out the paper with the definition. “Kobudō.” He repeated.

  “Hmm, that is a new one on me. Let’s go take a look.” The librarian armed only with her knowledge of the Dewy Decimal System headed for the oak cabinet filled with drawer upon drawer of three by five cards.

  After spending several minutes flipping through the well-worn index cards, the librarian turned to Titus, “Sorry, we don’t seem to have anything thing like that in the library. You might try City Library downtown.”

  “Thanks, but that’s a bit far. Thanks though.” Deflated, Titus headed for home.

  The introduction to Kobudō changed Titus’ life. He became a serious student of martial arts. He sought out different styles offered in several dojos in town. By the time he was a senior, Titus earned several high-level belts in the various schools and styles of Karate.