by Randy Alcorn
“You can.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I didn’t say it was easy. It’s your choice. Make it while you still can.” She smiled. “You like being the rogue, the unbeliever, the black sheep. Kind of your identity, isn’t it? I know you get tired of people saying they’re praying for you. So I won’t say it.”
“Thanks for restraining yourself.”
She laughed. “You’re funny. You’re just a teddy bear. You’re this big skeptic with all your tough questions and smart remarks. I love you.”
In a flash I saw Kendra as a four-year-old saying she loved me. When I heard Carly say it, I felt like she was my daughter. I didn’t want to lose her. I could barely see her now. Something was in my eyes. Carly leaned forward. I felt her arms around me. She couldn’t squeeze me, but I squeezed her, gently.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine. I really am. And I’m going to give Sharon a really big hug for you.”
I stumbled out the door. Carly was on the inside of something, and I was on the outside. And I knew, without doubt, she was in a far better place. Part of me wanted to join her there, and part of me just wanted to run to the elevator. Instead I walked briskly. When I got to the parking lot, snow pelting me, washing my face, I ran to the car.
I sat there, head against the steering wheel, smelling wet upholstery, and wondering why that dying girl was so much happier than I was … so much happier than I’ve ever been.
36
“Stand at the window here. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? … Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE SIGN OF FOUR
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 9:30 A.M.
CHRISTMAS DAY had been a disappointment. Kendra, long ago, had planned to be with a friend’s family. I was grateful we’d had Christmas Eve together, but Christmas was an anticlimax. Mulch and I lounged around the brownstone after my visit to Carly. Bing and Nat weren’t enough to pick us up. Not even Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “Christmas, Don’t Be Late.” Mulch loves those Chipmunks, but the merriment was fleeting. The snow stopped falling. As the day spent itself, the gray morphed into darkness.
In those hours of melancholy I decided that Sharon was Christmas, and Christmas died with her. Mulch’s eyes were pitiful, like he was remembering bygone days as a Russian refugee. Dogs can’t be happy when their people are sad.
I turned on the radio to the all-Christmas-all-the-time station and heard Andy Williams croon, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” I turned it off. I agree with the sentiment, when Christmas is still ahead. But when it actually comes, I ask myself, Is this all? Why is it so much better in the anticipating than in the reality? Or is there a reality that’s supposed to last beyond the day itself?
I understand why the suicide rate’s higher on holidays. Ironically, so’s the murder rate. People alone kill themselves. People together kill each other. What a messed up world. We could use a new one.
I read Sherlock Holmes’s The Red-Headed League for the sixth time. (I put a checkmark on the stories every time I read them.) Sometimes they pull me up. But not on a lonely Christmas. If Christmas can be lonely, what hope is there for other days?
The more I drank the darker it felt, until I stopped feeling. The bottle never brings happiness, but it can cover misery for a while.
Thursday morning I dragged myself to the office, bleary-eyed. Forty ounces of coffee hadn’t facilitated a resurrection. I drank the last twelve ounces without looking at the mug any more than I’d look at a needle when the nurse gives me a shot. If there were a caffeine IV, I’d have plugged in.
I sat there alone, I don’t know how long, the Christmas blues and the hangover keeping me from focusing on the case.
I remembered my grandmother talking to me about heaven once. We’d no longer have these corrupt bodies, she said. We’d no longer be doing earthly things like eating or drinking or going to carnivals or pizza joints.
I asked her if we’d be able to swim, run, and play baseball. She said we’d no longer want to do worldly things like that. All we’d want to do is sing and play zithers and go to church. That sealed it for me. I didn’t want to go to heaven.
Strange how Grandma talked about heaven but made me not want to go there. Obadiah Abernathy, on the other hand, was one of the few who made me want to go there. Most people I’d never want to spend a day with. It takes a rare person to make me think I’d enjoy spending forever with them.
When Clarence showed up, it was obvious his Christmas had been better than mine. He nearly bordered on being cheerful. Trying to cure that, I said, “Mark Twain claimed it was heaven for atmosphere but hell for company.”
“Meaning what?” Clarence asked, in a voice that makes Darth Vader sound like he’s in the Vienna Boys Choir.
“Meaning that heaven might keep your feet from the fire, but you’ll have more fun with your buddies in hell.”
“You think anyone will have fun in hell? It’s God who made fun. He invented laughter. God has a sense of humor. The devil doesn’t.”
I kept thinking about that dream. And hearing the voice of Obadiah Abernathy: “Can’t get on board widout yo’ ticket.”
I didn’t tell Clarence about the dream, for the same reason I wouldn’t hand ammo to someone pointing his gun at me.
Obadiah Abernathy shook his head. “I loves that man, but he gots it all wrong. It’s You he should be thinkin’ ’bout. With You, any place is heaven. Widout You, any place is hell. And hell’s got nothin’ to offer nobody, that’s fo’ sure.”
“You’re a loyal servant, Obadiah.” The Carpenter laughed and put His arm around him. “Ollie Chandler’s mostly wrong, yet … he’s closer to being right than you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“He saw something in you. He saw Me in you.”
“He did?”
The Carpenter smiled. “Those most like Me never seem to realize it. They’re more aware of their failings.”
“That’s somethin’ I knowed plenty ’bout.”
“Yes. And I love you for it. Ollie Chandler’s far from Me, yet not so far. For in Me he moves and breathes and has his being. He loves what he does because I’m in it. He loves logic and deductions and the exhilaration of search and discovery, all from Me. What he hates about life is the part that’s not from Me. Even what he loves in food and football is a reflection of the way I made him and the earth itself.”
“I saw You in baseball, Lord, all those years. I played it for You, You know I did. It drew me closer to You, my sweet Jesus. Some of us ball players been talkin’, You know.”
“Yes, I know.” His smile broke out again.
“We’re thinkin’ on the new earth there’ll maybe be baseball again.”
“Can you think of a single reason why there wouldn’t be?”
“Before I got here, I could have thought of some. Now I can’t.”
“Ollie’s love for sports is a love for being connected, being part of a team with a common goal. I made your bodies and minds to reach upward, to improve, excel, have dominion, find joy and pleasure in the small and large. To see and draw close to Me.”
“I don’ think I really knowed that.”
“You sensed it. And you lived it. Ollie saw Me in you. So you see, it’s not only you he wants to be with. It’s Me.”
“But he doesn’t know that.”
“No. Clarence and Jake and Carly and the others must help him understand. I’ve put them there for him. It’s their job to point him to Me, just as you did.”
“What a wondrous job that is,” Obadiah said, smiling remarkably like the One he spoke to. “What a truly wondrous job.”
An e-mail appeared from Carp. It said “Photos attached
.” Manny had collected the originals, all taken in Palatine’s living room, from various people, including Palatine’s sister-in-law. I’d asked Carp to enlarge them, hoping to find what was in the “missing picture.” I clicked open Photoshop.
Doyle stood with a cup in his hand and pretended he wasn’t staring at my screen. I turned the screen away from him.
The first three pictures were terrible, but Carp had ordered them worst to best. The fifth picture was clear enough to make out a blonde and a brunette by the professor, but the facial features were indiscernible.
I felt a presence behind me and turned to see Tommi.
“Pictures?” she asked. “Family?”
“This is private, Tommi. Sorry.” She walked away, pretending her feelings weren’t hurt.
I called up the last picture, which was slightly better overall. The jewelry was a little clearer, including the chain necklace. Still, these could be any of a million girls. Whoever they were, the killer had wanted this picture—and not wanted the homicide detectives to see it.
What I’d give for clarity. I was so close I could taste it.
I decided to print it anyway, on the color printer by the copy machine. When I went to get it, Chris Doyle bumped shoulders with me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Watch where you’re going.” That’s when I realized he’d done it deliberately.
“Got a problem with me, Chris?”
“Everybody’s got a problem with you.”
“Just doing my job.”
“You’re doing a lousy job. And we’re sick and tired of you.”
I thought of eight different ways I could take him. But I had other things on my mind.
Chris Doyle, the Pillsbury Doughboy, was wearin’ cheese underwear and walkin’ down rat alley.
He was beggin’ for a whuppin’.
37
“It was a straight left against a slogging ruffian.
I emerged as you see me. Mr. Woodley went home in a cart.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 11:00 A.M.
I STEPPED OUT for a brisk walk in the asphalt jungle.
Walking to the west side of the Justice Center, I looked across Third Street to Chapman Square, with its shade trees now skeletal and even its resilient evergreens flinching in the cold wind. I considered crossing to Terry Schrunk Plaza but instead turned around and headed east down Madison, toward the Hawthorne Bridge.
Despite the teaser on Christmas eve, the dream of a white Christmas hadn’t materialized. It seldom does in Portland. Now the day after Christmas, a heavy twenty-five-degree air pressed on my eyes, which watered, threatening to freeze. Tough as it can feel, winter has its own mystique, one of the reasons I like living in Oregon, where the seasons are well defined. Going out in the cold is an escape for me.
And perhaps a metaphor of my life.
I crossed Madison, then walked by two homeless guys, hands out. I ignored them. Then, on the corner of First Street, I came to a woman in bulky layers of old clothes under what looked like a Russian soldier’s survival coat. She stood, leaning on a rusted shopping cart, exposed to cold and wind, unprotected by buildings.
She didn’t look at me, didn’t ask me for anything. Turning to make sure no one saw me, I removed my wallet and gave her a five. “Get some hot coffee,” I said, pointing to Kaffee Bistro. She said a quiet “thank you,” but didn’t go for coffee. Maybe it was free somewhere in her world, at a rescue mission or something. I don’t usually give cash to street people, but on a cold day after Christmas, I couldn’t stand that she was out on the streets, with all she had to show for fifty years stuffed in a lousy Safeway cart.
I walked toward the southwest edge of the Hawthorne Bridge, knowing it would offer an arctic wake-up, especially with the twenty-mile-an-hour wind. In my four-block walk thus far, in one moment I’d inhaled absolute freshness, with all its promise, then the next exhaust fumes, then garbage, then urine, then a poor woman who hadn’t bathed in months.
It reminded me that this world has survived two thousand Christmases, but somehow the promise of Christmas hasn’t yet been kept.
I walked on to the bridge’s pedestrian path, where the wet air over the Willamette River, splitting Portland in half, assaulted my face. I looked east hoping to catch a glimpse of Mount Hood. Nothing. I looked north at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, so alive in summer, so dead now. I looked west at the Justice Center and KOIN Tower, then southeast, across the river, toward the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I contemplated all the creativity, the ingenious design and countless man-hours invested in this great city.
I considered the paradox of its stunning outward beauty coupled with its stinking underbelly, two worlds impossibly coexistent. I thought about how great Portland could be if only things were different. If we were different. I thought it’s the same with every city, every town. And I thought about how every day our leaders, local and national, keep spouting off promises that never come true.
I still vote because I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t. But I don’t read the literature anymore, the latest blueprints for utopia. I refuse to listen to the campaign commercials that no longer stop in November. I can’t change the channel fast enough.
There must be sincere leaders concerned about justice and helping people who need help and stopping crime. There must be leaders who know what to do besides point fingers and make promises. But I can’t find them.
The political parties and talking heads serve up words that are shelled husks. I’m sick of them. I wished the cold east wind on my face would blow away empty words forever, or bury them beneath the icy river I peered down upon.
I wondered how many people had jumped off this bridge, how many finally gave up on a life that offers dreams only to kill them. I wondered how many jumpers had once believed that this world offers solutions to the problems of evil, suffering, and death.
I used to try sifting through the political rocks and mud, but I never found the gold. I can’t stand the wonks and opinion polls and PR automatons who conduct their stupid studies and put their finger in the wind to find out what they should say next. The world will never be rescued by opinion polls. And from where I stand, rescue is what we need.
For ten years I listened to Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher and others on every side. I’d agree with one, then the other, but I couldn’t stomach the arrogance and word-wrangling and oversimplification and disdain. I didn’t need help getting angry. I couldn’t see conservative rage or liberal rage doing anything more than propagating themselves into sanctified smugness, which smells no better on one side of the political aisle than the other.
So now I just say no to news. I try to catch killers by day, then retreat by night to Nero Wolfe and 24 and Star Trek reruns, leaving the universe to self-destruction or Borg invasion or spontaneous utopia, not putting my money on the latter.
I would never jump off a bridge, I thought as I stood there. I recalled two occasions in the last year when I’d sat on my bed, Glock loaded, once having felt its muzzle on my right temple. That’s how I’d do it if I ever did.
I gazed east one last time, still hoping to catch a glimpse of Mount Hood, outrageously beautiful, a giant snow cone this time of year. But what is to me the world’s most beautiful mountain remained hopelessly hidden in the clouds.
A hundred feet onto the Hawthorne Bridge, I leaned over the south side, raised my arms, and clenched my fists. I screamed into the cold wind, knowing nobody could hear me.
My scream lasted five seconds. When it was done, I put my hand to my raw throat, then walked back past other cold people, homeless and hopeless, to the Justice Center.
When I returned to detective division, I wasn’t the only one with a red face. Chris Doyle was on the prowl, face sweaty, a pale crimson, looking for someone to bump into.
Not just anyone. Me.
“You’re pathetic, Chandler,” Doyle shouted, posturing like a peacock wit
hout the goods.
Eight pairs of eyes locked on us. Apparently he’d let it be known that he was going to teach me a lesson. He could have let me thaw first.
“We don’t want you here anymore,” Doyle said.
“Does this mean you’re going to stop paying my salary, Chris?”
“We don’t deserve to be treated like criminals.”
“Suspects. Criminals are the ones we arrest. Nearly everybody here is innocent. Are you?”
“You think I did it?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white.
“I think you’re a disgrace,” he said.
“I don’t give a rat’s patootie what you think, chess boy.”
He took a step forward. I held my ground.
“That’s your opening move?” I said. “If the professor had been bored to death, you’d be my prime suspect.”
His fist connected with my jaw half a second later. I staggered backward.
“Over here,” Phillips yelled. “Chris and Ollie. Hog fight!”
It was like high school, everybody running to the end of the courtyard to see the fight.
I stood there fingering my lip and opening and closing my jaw, testing the hinges. I sized up the Pillsbury Doughboy.
“It’s smackdown!” Noel said, grinning like a moron.
“Take him, Doyle!” Cimmatoni called.
“Twenty bucks on Ollie,” Jack said. He pulled a Jackson out of his wallet and waved it. Jack had seen me head butt guys into tomorrow, so he figured it was easy money.
Doyle was waiting for me to make the next move while he caught his breath. I was waiting for the crowd to settle in at ringside.
“Chandler couldn’t take my grandmother,” Suda said.
“He’s not fighting your grandmother,” Jack said. “He’s fighting Doyle.”
“They should sumo wrestle,” Cimmatoni said.
“That’s not a pretty picture,” Phillips said.