Once Again

by Catherine Wallace Hope

  The night before had been a total dud. Couldn’t make himself feel better no matter how much he drank. No one to drink with. Just sitting there at The Old Grizz by himself, watching the TV because there was nothing else to do. Blew a chunk of cash. Couldn’t skip out on his tab because of that fucking bartender. Suspicious fuck.

  Snow flying everywhere. Everything white and buried. Miserable fucking bullshit. Expected him to get out there and freeze to death in the middle of fucking winter. For crap money. Not even enough to pay the rent to that whiney little dickhead of a roommate. And what was the point if he had nothing to look forward to? Not one tiny bit of pleasure in a long fucking time. How long had it been since the last one? Months. He turned on the defroster. And this shitshow of a storm. It was going to be a long, horrible day. And this was all there was now. Just one day after another, and not one god damn good thing ever. He was tired of it. He needed something to keep him going. He deserved at least one thing to get him through to the fucking weekend. Why not? There was nothing to stop him from having a moment of enjoyment out of this whole miserable crapfest. He could go out and find one. One pretty little thing to make him feel good.

  He backed his truck out of the drive and dropped the plow onto the fresh snow. He was instantly all perked up. Much better now that he had a plan. Hold up. He stopped. From somewhere, a thought plinked into his head. If you’re going looking, remember your rifle. Better safe than sorry. He had to remind himself of the stupidest things.

  He parked again, got out of the truck, sniffed up a headful of this fucking frozen air. He ran for the trailer door and got inside. In the living room, there stood his crusty old roommate, that puny little fuck.

  He said to Aidon, “You got the rent?”

  “Fuck,” Aidon said, “Are you on that again? I said I’d get it to you.”

  “That was a week ago.” He pulled up the pathetic pajama bottoms that almost drooped off his ass.

  Aidon headed toward his room. In the back of his closet was his uncle’s M16. This was a tough-ass fucking weapon. Dark and fucking ominous. Maybe even the actual one his uncle killed those motherfuckers with in Iraq. Aidon wished he could have been there. He’d gone online to learn how to handle a semiautomatic, and when he did a little target practice with it, he turned out not to be the greatest marksman yet, but the one bottle he did hit exploded like a fucking grenade. He grabbed the rifle and the only extra magazine he had. Quick as kaboom, he put them in a pillowcase and charged back out toward the front room.

  His roommate was still pinned to the carpet in his floppy slippers, planted in the center of the room. The old man said, “I have to pay bills, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Aidon said, “I’ll get it as soon as I can.” He blew through the front door.

  “See that you do!” the old man called after him.

  Piddly little fuck.

  Chapter Fifty

  1:30 PM

  Friday, February 7, 2020 | Crossroads patrol

  Tom sat alone in the warm airflow in this new Interceptor, waiting for the light to change at the corner of Twenty-sixth and Pearl. It was after 1:30. He wondered whether it would be a good idea to call Rebecca, what with the shape he was in.

  Snowflakes descended on delicate white threads, micro-impacts of ice crystals against the windshield. When he glanced at his surroundings, he realized he was off his schedule and he’d forgotten to take a code seven. Ahead on Spruce Street was his old stomping ground, the natural grocery store, but also around the corner was Nate’s favorite burger place. A pang of nostalgia struck him, a wish that he could return to the time when they were like blood brothers and Nate trusted him. He could pull into the drive-through and order some junk the way they used to on occasion. Or he could park in the lot of the natural store, haul his numb rear end out of the vehicle and go in and get something healthy. Salad and sesame sticks or something. He smiled at the memory of how they used to hassle each other about their diets. Nate’s stomach-of-steel diet, he used to say, as opposed to Tom’s fussy-sprout-eater diet. Tom decided to pull into the drive-through and procure a serving of junk, for memory’s sake.

  It was late enough that there was no line in the car lane. He pulled right up beside the speaker and ordered a burger and cheese fries. The guys would be proud. The teen-girl voice from within the speaker box gave him his total and instructed him to drive up to the window.

  In front of him in the lane sat another vehicle, a black pickup, the customer driving it reaching out and paying for his food. Tom’s ALPR picked up the plate and displayed the registered owner’s name and address; not hotlisted, no warrants.

  As he dug his wallet out of his pocket, he noticed there was a bumper sticker on the rear gate of the truck. He always liked to read bumper stickers—“Wag More, Bark Less,” for example, “Property of the Denver Broncos,” “Zombie Response Vehicle”—that kind of thing. When he’d nosed his vehicle up close enough to read the sticker on the black pickup, he leaned forward. “Honk if you want to suck my dick,” it said. He went furious inside at the filth of it. His heart pounded at his ribs. Here was this foul little puke of a human being, spewing profanity everywhere he went, in front of decent people, families, children. The kind of person who lowered everyone into the sewer with him. Tom couldn’t stand that kind of behavior.

  The truck inched forward, away from the window, but before it could get to the curb, Tom hit his lights and gave a blast of siren to signal the driver. He knew no one gave tickets for obscenity anymore, but he could do it. It was still on the books. And this was really ticket-worthy. He gave a quick wave to the girl in the drive-up window and told her he’d be back. The brake lights on the truck reddened and then went dark. As he reached for his cite book, he got on his loudspeaker and instructed the driver to pull over.

  The truck took off. “No way,” Tom said. It turned onto the roadway and sped northbound.

  He followed it and radioed in the call, letting a dispatcher know he was making a stop. “In pursuit,” he called. “Twenty-sixth and Spruce.” Somehow, his mind whirred smoothly into high-rev focus, a calm separateness from the discomfort tightening in the center of his chest as he pursued the truck.

  The dispatcher came back: “Officer in pursuit, Twenty-sixth and Spruce.” The voice of someone he knew well—Jackie, a longtime friend.

  Tom accelerated to catch the truck. “Black Ram Niner Tree Six Henry David Queen,” he called over the radio.

  The truck ran a red, clipped an SUV in the snowy intersection, and swerved north onto Twenty-eighth. Tom mentally added hit-and-run to the offense of evasion and relayed it to Jackie. As he pursued the truck northbound through the storm, his engine crescendoed, the hum as frightening and thrilling as it was when he was younger.

  Tom used his lapel unit. “Northbound Twenty-eighth approaching one-nineteen.”

  “Copy,” Jackie replied.

  Vehicles were slow to clear the snowbound route. The truck darted from lane to lane, putting distance between itself and Tom.

  Tom pushed his vehicle faster. Discomfort. Nausea. Exhilaration.

  The truck veered right. Took off onto the highway.

  “Northbound one-nineteen.”

  “Copy.”

  Unit speed eighty-nine. Roads sanded but pretty damn perilous. Hard breathing. Heart rate. The white fields opened around him. Chest twinges. Vest tight. Gray trees like lace on the edge of the world.

  He traced the black road north behind the truck. Chirps of the radio and the swing of the sirens. Tom called, “Proceeding northbound.”

  “Copy.”

  He raced along the highway between the soccer grounds and the reservoir. His past. The truck skidded on the road ahead and then righted itself and pulled into the left shoulder lane. Tom followed, feeling the vibration of the rumble strips under his tires. Unit speed ninety-four.

  Time seemed to sponge up the space around him. What was he even doing out here? Did he think this was somehow valiant? He knew he’d never g
et his old life back, but didn’t he still want to regain some sense of the man he’d been? Yet instead, he felt ridiculous. Like he was playing at being a cop, but really he was just nauseated and dizzy and scared of losing control of this vehicle. He followed the truck up the inner shoulder and passed the IBM plant and the shopping center. The highway passed over the ditch.

  The truck took a sudden tack right across both lanes, and Tom thought for a moment that the driver might be giving it up, but instead he veered onto the shoulder.

  Tom grabbed his lapel mic. “He’s ditching at Eighty-third. He’s ditching out.”

  The truck piled down the exit ramp and spun across the intersection onto the frontage road.

  Tom slowed as his tires gabbled over the railroad tracks. The truck decelerated, no brake lights. It crawled down the edge of the thin gray road and slowed to a halt.

  Tom stopped a safe distance behind him, flicked off his siren, and got on his speaker. “Get out of the vehicle,” he called.

  The truck sat immobilized at the road’s edge. No movement from the driver.

  He repeated, “Get out of the vehicle. Now!”

  No response.

  Tom opened his door, shielded himself behind it, and drew his weapon. He shouted, “Put both hands out the window. Now!”

  Two hands appeared. From within the truck, the driver yelled, “I’m just out of gas.”

  “Open the door from the outside and get out of the truck!”

  Hesitation.

  Adrenaline. But then compliance. The door opened, and a man stepped out with his hands above his head.

  Tom trained his weapon on the suspect and took two steps forward, yelling, “Step away from the vehicle.” He recognized the man’s face. It was the creeper from that day at the library. The one who’d slipped away. A wide slice of pain peeled open in the left side of Tom’s chest. He staggered.

  The suspect leaped toward his own vehicle.

  Tom tried to capture a breath against the fierce pressure in his chest, tried to issue a command, but he could not.

  The man pulled out a rifle, fired a drumroll at Tom. Hit him. Hard to say where. Vest. Pain drilling all around his chest and neck.

  Tom returned fire. Body shot, head shot, body, body, body, body until the man dropped.

  Tom reeled. Pain turning him inside out. He reached for his lapel unit. It hung in pieces against the front of his jacket. Shattered plastic. Wires wet with blood.

  He staggered across the outstretched white terrain to where the suspect lay, and he kicked away the rifle. The man was dead. Head shot above the eye, no free bleeding.

  Tom picked up the rifle and fought to get back to his vehicle. Sweating like a worked beast in the freezing air, he consciously instructed his legs: Left, right. Left, right. Hurry up. Equatorial fricking heat. A half ton of deadweight descended on his chest. Had to retreat and find some air. Deep breaths. Had to sit down. Left, right, left, right. Time to puke, I think. Hurry now. Sit down. He crumpled into his cruiser and got on the radio.

  “Shots fired!” he shouted. “Shots fired! Officer down.”

  “Tom,” Jackie called, “you’re injured?” There was the echo of a cathedral in the coppery sound of her voice.

  “I’m hit!” He felt the warmth of his blood seeping into his collar. “I’m hit, Jackie! And I might be having a heart attack.”

  “Okay, Tom,” she came back. “It’s okay—we’re en route. You’re running hot, grade one.” Her end of the line chirped and crackled. “Tom!”

  He forced a barely audible “Okay.”

  Other voices, other responses played on the radio. They knew where he was. He felt with trembling fingers around his ear. It didn’t seem to be all there. Protruding from the side of his neck were fragments of shrapnel from his exploded lapel unit. A gash. Warm, fresh blood flow. He couldn’t apply pressure because of the fragments. Knew he wasn’t supposed to pull them out. Light and dark pulsed with his spasming heart. Just sit here and try not to bleed to death. No dying today.

  It would be too absurd to die over a stupid obscenity ticket. Out here in the drifting white. If he were to die out here, it would be Rebecca who would come as coroner to claim him. Ironic. He’d always thought she was very enchanting. She would be a regret he would take away with him.

  He started to feel a sweetness, the pressure of part of him squeezing himself out of the top of his head, rising upward. No, no, no. He fought with his mind to stuff himself back in. He heard a siren. Thank God in Heaven, they’re here. But it wasn’t a siren. It was music. Where was music coming from? He tried to sit up straighter. To listen for it. Oh, come on, he thought. Exit music? Am I hallucinating my own exit music? But no, it wasn’t music either; it was the sound of crying. Someone was crying. He turned his throbbing head, trying to locate the origin. With both arms, he pulled himself out of his vehicle and stood swaying in the scatter of bright snow shards. The crying was coming from the direction of the suspect’s truck. There he still was, primary piece of crap accounted for, his dead body lying pancake on the pavement.

  He has someone in there.

  The horizon tilted upward as Tom staggered toward the truck. He stepped over the body and looked through the open door into the cab. The crying came from some sort of bundle in the passenger footwell. The sound of a child. Tom moved his feet as if they were big puppet shoes attached by strings to his hands, and he edged around the hood to the other door. He pulled it open and saw movement within a canvas bag. Small. So small.

  He knelt in the snow. “I’m a police officer,” he said, “I’m going to get you out of this.” The crying grew sharper. “It’s okay now,” he said, “you’re safe,” and he untied and opened the canvas bag. Glittery little-girl snow boots wriggled toward him. He widened the opening of the canvas bag and tugged it off her.

  A little girl, six or seven. Terrified. Red teary eyes and wet nose. “Help me,” she cried as she leapt against his chest. He braced himself with one arm and put the other around her. Then she drew back from the sight of him and said, “There’s blood!”

  “It’s okay,” he said, “help is coming.” He blinked hard, trying to stay with her. “Did he hurt you?”

  “He hit me,” she wailed.

  Sirens moaned in the sharp air. Finally. He held her against him and turned so he could sit down. “It’s okay now,” Tom told her. “We’ll be okay now.” Backup was almost here. He could hold on. He pulled in a breath so cold it made him cough. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Brennay,” the child said. “It’s Brennay.”

  “Okay, Brennay,” he said. “I’m Tom.”

  Sirens screaming. Approaching. Several vehicles whining in chorus. Red and blue light streaking across the snow.

  “We’re okay now. Here they come.”

  The pure white world billowed before his eyes like waves on an ocean. Tires grinding into the snowy surface on the far side of the truck. Radio sounds. Lots of voices. More tires.

  “Here!” Tom called over the sirens. “We’re here!”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  5:32 AM

  Saturday, June 20, 2020 | 371 Nysa Vale Road

  At sunrise on the summer solstice, Zac stepped softly out onto the front porch of the house and locked the door behind him. The cool, sweet, first-light scent emanated from the pines, and he inhaled deeply. Joyfully. He walked out onto the gravel path toward the garage, stopped, and looked back at the cottage. The upper windows reflected the lavender tinge of the early morning sky. Behind one window, Erin slept. Behind the other, Korrie. He’d looked in on them as he got ready to go. What was it, he wondered, that made his heart brim over like that, seeing the people he loved sleeping, lost in their dreams, serene?

  He felt as if he were forgetting something. His tablet and his printouts were in his messenger bag. He patted his pockets. Wallet, key fob, phone. He didn’t need anything else. He would get coffee on the way. It was a four-hour drive to Aspen, and then he would have breakfast with
the group once he got to the Aspen Center for Physics. The presentation he’d prepared was informal, part of the summer conference, but he was nervous about it.

  Loop quantum gravity was still seen as heresy by much of the old guard, and he wanted them to embrace this idea he was presenting, to join him in his perilous search. His mathematics showed that according to the laws of time-reversal symmetry, spacetime retained phantom memories of everything that had ever happened, even those fragments that appeared to be dismantled in the passage of gravitational waves. Traces of their existence could be found in the ultra-high-frequency memories left behind after the parent grav-wave memories could no longer be detected. Memories of memories. Orphans.

  He would present his paper and do his best to reply to the barrage of skepticism he expected to follow. Then he would return home.

  It was going to be his night to cook, and he wanted to make his farfalle pasta, butterfly wings in red sauce with spicy sausage. Korrie was big enough to help now. He would ask her to butter the garlic bread and put together the salads, and she would sing her little absent-minded tunes about elves and fairies and ladybugs while she worked. Erin would putter around the periphery the way she did whenever someone invaded her kitchen.

  When dinner was ready, the three of them could sit together and talk about what had happened that day. He projected himself forward into that future to remind himself to gather that precious memory and hold it in the waves of his mind, his own quantum realm that rippled on and on in the endless history of time beyond time, because if the math was true, the universe recorded even the slightest electromagnetic pulse in time. And he wanted to keep every millisecond that was his.

  Chapter Fifty-Two