Dark Specter

by Michael Dibdin

  “You mean like trouble? Hell, no. Dale … Listen, I called him the Philosopher. That was something I got called at school, on account of I was so dumb. Some jerk in the honors program started it off and the thing stuck. But Dale, well, he wasn’t no philosopher, I guess, but he was a guy who lived in his mind, you know? Like you’d look at him, and you could almost hear his brain working, kinda like a dishwasher.

  “Dale never gave anyone any trouble, far as I know. Just the opposite. You were in trouble, he’d come and fix it. Not the way I would, but there’s kinds of trouble you can’t just walk in and say ‘OK folks, you’re outta here,’ right? Like I recall one time there was this guy, his woman’d left him, he was a big drunk, we all kinda felt she’d done the right thing there, but he just couldn’t take it. Used to come in and sink a few, next thing you know he’d be going up to the other tables, people he’d never even met before, and telling them how this bitch’d dumped him after all he’d done for her.

  “What you going to do? You can’t throw the guy out, he ain’t getting violent or abusive, plus he’s one of our best customers. But folks didn’t want to know. Maybe they had problems too. They’d gone out to forget that shit, and here was Clark-that was his name-wouldn’t shut up about it. But Dale, Dale was a genius. He went over to the guy and sat down at his table, said ‘Tell me about it.’ Clark didn’t know what the fuck to do. He’d made a career outta breaking people’s balls about his problems and here was some guy asking him to talk about it.

  “So anyway he starts into the whole story, same as usual. After a minute or two Dale looks at him-I heard all about this from a guy at the next table-Dale looks at him and says, ‘You supporting this woman?’ Clark kinda frowns, what the hell’s this? ‘Hell, no,’ he says, ‘we weren’t even married.’ ‘Yes, you are,’ says Dale, real quick. ‘You’re carrying her around on your shoulders like a monkey.’ And you know? After that, we didn’t hear one goddamn word from Clark about it ever again.”

  Vandestraat hadn’t seen Dale Watson after the accident on the highway, but he said he’d been talking about going home. “Said he was tired of drifting around from place to place, wanted somewhere to lay down his head.”

  Eileen McCann reviewed the progress she had made with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the breakthrough she had initially hoped for had not happened. She had learned nothing which would enable her to close the file on the Evanston killings. On the other hand, she now had a clear image of who Dale Watson had been, a small-town “philosopher” who had never had a chance to test his ideas against a coherent system of thought. He probably wouldn’t have got very far if he had, but at least some formal education might have helped him deal better with the demons that menaced him, with his sense of being different from everyone and everything around him, and his need to grapple firsthand with the big questions which his parents had conveniently packed up and shelved away in a box marked Religion.

  Those demons had always been there, she guessed, nagging away at his peace of mind, continually pushing him to “move on.” When the truck had smashed through the traffic barrier and killed Starr Costello, they had emerged in force, precipitating the crisis which he had managed to stave off for so long. As soon as he got out of the hospital, he had no doubt headed out to the coast, as Kathy Lawson had said, all the way to the edge of the continent, hoping to “fall off.”

  She contacted the Seattle Police, but they had no record of a Dale Watson. But somewhere out there, Eileen McCann was sure, he had crossed paths with Willard Sumner’s stolen revolver. After that, the other idea in Dale’s shocked, guilt-ridden mind had taken over, the one he had mentioned to Eugene Vandestraat about going home. “He was tired of drifting around from place to place, wanted somewhere to lay down his head.”

  But where was home? Not Decatur, where parents and relatives and friends who had never understood the way he saw things, even in the good times, would expect explanations and a “normal,” easygoing, brain-dead mentality which Dale knew he couldn’t fake any more. No, he would go to Chicago, where he had first tasted the joys of independence, a city he knew and where he no doubt still had friends (but who were they, and why hadn’t they come forward when he died?).

  That much McCann was fairly sure of. The rest, which was everything she needed to close the case, remained obscure. She could understand that Dale Watson might have come to believe that the only place he could finally “lay down his head” was in death. But if suicide was his aim, why kill two total strangers too? And why choose a deserted house in Evanston to do it?

  Maybe the question was the answer. Maybe Watson had deliberately set out to create an insoluble mystery which would enlighten others as he had been enlightened, an action as random and meaningless as the passion he had suffered, and which had made his life unlivable.

  Maybe. Maybe not. As Eileen McCann tidied her papers away and prepared to turn her attention to other matters, the one thing she felt reasonably certain of was that no one would ever know.

  8

  The chance discovery of Sam’s phone number sparked an idea which firmed up into a project over the course of the next few weeks. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I had always wanted to visit the Pacific coast, but had never been farther west than St. Cloud. Now was the ideal opportunity to indulge in a prolonged bout of white-line fever. I had plenty of leisure and no other plans or commitments. And if I needed further justification, I could always claim that it marked another essential stage in my quest for full citizenship, a kind of personal manifest destiny. What have Americans always done, given half a chance, but head west?

  I bought maps and guide books, then a car. This was also a Chevy, but a very different animal from the Nova, one of those elephantine gas-guzzlers which Greg had been driving that night we were pulled over by the traffic cop on the way back from the Commercial. I found it both comforting and exciting, but couldn’t be bothered to figure out why. That was another sign of the way I had changed. Analysis once again seemed as irrelevant and misguided as it had back in the seventies, a futile attempt to understand what can only be seized and lived. Understanding hadn’t saved my wife or my son. Why should it save me?

  The day I left was mild and sunny. I surged through the commuter traffic like a whale through minnows, heading for deep water. I found a country and western station on the radio and cranked up the volume. My classical records and tapes were in storage, along with the whole way of life they represented. I was heading north to Grand Rapids, then west on to Highway 2, the old route to the coast which I had chosen in preference to the sterile efficiency of the interstate.

  I felt deliciously light of head and heart, like a teenager again. I had no idea where I was going, still less what would happen when I got there. That was the idea. For years I’d done nothing which had not been scheduled, priced and planned down to the last detail. Even a trip to the movies had become a major logistic exercise involving extensive coordination and consultation. And yet we might just as well have thrown a dice for all the good it had done us. Now I was prepared to take my chances. What had I got to lose, after all? I had already lost everything.

  Calling in on Sam was a minor aspect of the trip. I didn’t think about him once during the drive across the agricultural grid of North Dakota and the badlands of northern Montana, past innumerable isolated farmsteads, each with its pickup and barn and satellite dish and gaunt tree from which a tire swing dangled like a noose, through innumerable small towns whose most memorable feature was their name: Niagara, Petersburg, Devils Lake, Palermo, White Earth, Wolf Point, Wagner, Harlem, Kremlin, Galata, Cut Bank. The road had led me on across the mountains and out on to the plains of eastern Washington, then through another chain of mountains to the ocean and a town called Everett.

  Everett is not a pretty place. In fact it was one of the uglier towns I’d seen on my trip. The chatty motel clerk gave me the whole story. Originally built to serve the pulp mill industry, it was now a big naval base, a status
for which the local citizens had lobbied long and hard. If that hadn’t worked out they’d probably have tried to get a nuclear power station, or have the state pen moved there. It was that kind of place. It was also the end of the road, where Highway 2 meets the Pacific.

  I stopped at Dairy Queen on the outskirts of town and ordered a cheeseburger and rings to keep my indigestion up to speed. At the table across from mine, a couple of economy-size women in muumuus and elaborate perms were loudly discussing a friend’s colostomy in graphic detail. On the other side of the divider, next to me, a trio of teen tarts were rehashing their Saturday night live.

  “So he goes, ‘No fucking way!’ and I say, ‘Way!’ And it’s like I’m getting weirded out, OK? And I’m going, uh-oh! You know? So I tell him, ‘I’m outta here,’ ’cos I’m getting like majorly, majorly stressed. So I’m home later, and I’m like, wow, this is totally out there.”

  It was then that I remembered Sam. For the first time since leaving home, I had to make a decision. I could go north, or south, or I could turn back, but I had to decide. My week on the road had been interesting, but it had also been enough, at least for now. I couldn’t face the prospect of any more meals in truck stops where everyone was either on the move or wished they were, or any more nights in motels where I woke at three in the morning with images of David and Rachael swarming in the darkness all around me, and got up and sat on the tweed-upholstered sofa and watched CNN until it grew light outside.

  Now darkness had fallen again, and Dairy Queen was filled with happy families who thought of themselves as unhappy, who squabbled and whined and bitched and left in tears, little knowing their luck, their incredible, unearned good fortune at simply being able to go home together. It was not their happiness that I envied so much as their unhappiness. I too wanted the luxury of carping and complaint, the safe thrill of sniping at sitting targets, of taking your distance from the place where “they have to take you in.” But I had no home to go to. The only person I knew for a thousand miles in any direction was Sam. In retrospect, it was inevitable that I would call him.

  A man I didn’t know answered. Sam wasn’t there, he said. He’d try to contact him and have him call me back. I was at a pay phone outside Dairy Queen. It had started to rain, a fine persistent enveloping drizzle which furred my clothes and skin. I gave the guy the number, went back inside and had another cup of coffee. It was another forty minutes before the phone outside started to ring. It was Sam. He sounded preoccupied, and not particularly pleased to hear from me, as if I represented a problem of some kind.

  “So where are you at?” he demanded.

  “Everett. You know it?”

  “Yeah. You’re pretty close.”

  There was a pause.

  “Want to come tonight?” he said.

  “Well, is that OK? I mean I don’t have any other plans, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “It’s OK,” Sam said flatly. “I just got to think.”

  Another pause.

  “You got wheels?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What are you driving?”

  “An old Chevy. Kind of a blue-green color. It’s got Minnesota plates and a big antenna on the back.”

  “OK. Here’s what you do. Take 1–5 north to Highway 20, then turn off for Anacortes. Go into town and park on Main Street, across from the clock. Aim to be there in about an hour and a half. It’s less than fifty miles, so you can take it easy. I’ll send someone to meet you.”

  “Hey, are you sure this is not a problem?” I said, slightly disconcerted by his abrupt tone. “I mean I didn’t let you know I was coming or anything, and …”

  “I knew you were coming, Phil.”

  I smiled at this hint of the old familiar bullshit.

  “You did? That’s interesting. I didn’t know myself until a week ago.”

  “I don’t mean I knew you were coming today,” Sam replied a little sharply. “It could have been any time, next month, even a year from now. But I knew you’d come in the end.”

  I smiled secretly.

  “You’ll really like it here,” he went on, seemingly making an effort to sound a little more enthusiastic. “You’ve got your own room and everything. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, Phil. Believe me, it’ll be just great.”

  “Sounds good,” I replied unconvincingly.

  Traffic was heavy on the concrete ribbon of the interstate. Headlights slashed through the curtain of rain, passing trucks plucked and tugged at my old Chevy. I was glad to reach the exit.

  Anacortes turned out to be a sprawl of modern homes and shopping malls surrounding the original town center. It was right on the water, and must have been a fishing port at one time, but its Main Street looked almost identical to many of those I had passed through on my way to the coast: a core of sturdy two-story brick business buildings with a scattering of big wooden houses. I had no problem finding the clock that Sam had mentioned, one of those models with Roman numerals and a double face standing on a wrought-iron pillar which jewelers used to put up outside their stores as an advertisement.

  I sat there for over half an hour, getting colder and colder and wondering how reliable Sam and his friends were. There was hardly anyone around. By now it was after nine o’clock, and the citizens of Anacortes were presumably hunkered down in front of the TV or tucked in with a cup of cocoa. So when the headlights appeared behind me, I noticed them at once. The only vehicle which had passed me so far was a cruiser with a cop in a Smokey the Bear hat who had given me the beady eye, as if I were casing the jeweler’s premises across the street.

  A VW van pulled up alongside me. I could just make out the silhouette of a man sitting in the driver’s seat. He seemed to be looking in my direction. The van was covered in garish magic-bus artwork, amateurish swirls of color depicting naked bodies in various poses surrounded by stars and flames. There was a brief peep from the VW’s reedy horn, then it revved up and proceeded down Main Street. I restarted my motor and followed.

  We drove in tandem out of town along the highway I had come in on, then turned off down a narrow road winding through dense woods. The rain had ceased by now, and the clouds were breaking up, allowing glimpses of the almost full moon. After several miles, the VW slowed down and signaled left. A battered mailbox with a number crudely painted in white was nailed to a post at the entrance.

  We turned on to a dirt road which zigzagged steeply downhill. It was pitted with potholes filled with water and ruts formed by the runoff. The Chevy scraped painfully several times, and I had visions of losing my muffler. After about five minutes the ground leveled out, the woods dropped back, and we emerged onto a patch of level grassland. Up ahead was an isolated house. As we approached, an external light high on the eaves came on, the door opened and a figure appeared in silhouette. I assumed at first that it was Sam, but as my headlights passed the doorway I saw that it was a man I didn’t know.

  The VW drew up beside one of the barns. I parked behind it and got out, savoring the odors of pine sap and salt water. I could hear the ocean somewhere close by. Sea gulls circled invisibly overhead, screeching intermittently. A light breeze stirred the tall, seemingly impenetrable barrier of conifers all around.

  The man who had emerged from the house walked over to the VW and spoke briefly to the driver, then they both came over to where I was standing. The driver was in his late thirties, short and chunky, with a soft beer gut. His face was chubby and battered, and he had a droopy mustache and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. The other man was taller and sparer, with the kind of leanness which looks like the result of malnutrition or bad genes, not diet and exercise.

  “I’m Rick,” the driver said. “This is Lenny.”

  “Phil,” I replied. “Good to meet you.”

  “We’ve got some stuff to unload,” Rick remarked, jerking his thumb at the VW. “You want to give us a hand, it’ll go quicker.”

  “Sure thing.”

 
When I looked more closely at the kitschy designs painted on the VW van, they reminded me of something I had seen before, although I couldn’t place it-an album cover, maybe. Rick opened the side door, lifted out a large package and walked off with it. Lenny did the same, and then it was my turn. The inside of the van was filled with shrink-wrapped multipacks and rows of institutional-size drums and jars. There were packs of canned spaghetti and wieners and nukable chicken noodle soup and industrial desserts and containers of peanut butter and ketchup and Coke like characters from a child’s nightmare, the familiar form and features swollen to monstrous proportions.

  I chose the lightest-looking item, a plastic bag containing sixty packs of cheese-flavored corn snacks, and set off the way the other two had gone, following a barely visible path in the rough grass. The sound and scent of the ocean grew stronger. Then the moon glowed from behind the clouds and I saw it, a seething dark surface stretching away on all sides. The house, I realized, was built on a promontory. The next moment the ground beneath my feet turned hollow and I stumbled on something, almost falling.

  “Take it easy,” said Lenny. “We don’t want to lose any of that stuff.”

  I discovered that I was standing on a narrow pier of wooden slats built out into the water. There was a boat alongside, and what I had stumbled on was the heavy metal ring to which it was moored.

  “Just set it down here,” Lenny told me. “Rick’ll load her.”

  He brushed past, heading back the way we had come, his lanky figure outlined against the yard light on the house.

  It took us another twenty minutes or so to lug all the groceries down to the water, while Rick manhandled it aboard the boat and stowed it away.

  “You got any baggage?” he asked when we were done.

  “Just an overnight case.”