by Paula Guran
When he finished up his tale, Ben hit the STOP button on the little cassette recorder we used for interviews. I escorted Mr Bare Ass back to his cell, then met up with Ben in his office.
“That guy couldn’t shut himself up if you gave him a rubber plug and a roll of duct tape,” Ben said.
“Yeah . . . but when I think about what they did to that girl. Man. Sometimes I just don’t know. Talk about a guy who deserves a beating. Walking him back to his cell, it was all I could do to stop myself from ramming his head into the wall. Take my badge if you want to, but I really wanted to knock the teeth right out of his mouth.”
“Oh, he’ll have his beating coming . . . and worse. You can bank on that. I’m sure he’s got a full-course menu of pain and humiliation ahead of him.”
“Where?”
“In prison.” Ben smiled. “They’ve got plenty of experts in there.” He grabbed his keys off the table.
“Now let’s go check on that girl.”
And that’s what we did.
Walking into that hospital room with Jane Doe taped on the door, it was almost like seeing her for the first time. The night I’d rescued her was a blur, and there were really only two things I remembered about her—her eyes, which were wide and terrified. And the trail of bloody burns the bikers had left on her body with those road flares, as if they’d wanted to leave her with a set of brands that marked a trail of pain she’d never forget.
Ben had already called an ambulance by the time I got her out of the lake. We carried her up the access road and met the paramedics where we’d blocked the road with the police cruiser. Maybe two minutes later, the ambulance doors closed and she was gone. That was the last we saw of her until the hospital visit.
A couple days rest had done her some good. She actually smiled at us as we came through the door. We talked for a while, just chit-chat. Nice day . . . nice room . . . oh, you’ve got a great view here . . . and look at that little birdbath out on the patio. That’s nice. I was surprised to find how pretty she was. Especially her eyes. They were dark pools, deep brown, and they shone beneath long bangs that were the same color.
Ben asked her some questions. He was patient. He had to be, because she really didn’t have any answers. After a while she said, “I’m sorry I can’t be more help. I’m still kind of tired. The doctors say things might be better after I get some rest.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “You take care of yourself. If there’s anything you think of, just give us a call.” He handed her his card. “Anything you need, too. We’ll be right here if you need us.”
After that, there wasn’t much else for Ben to say.
But she had something to say, and she looked at me when she said it.
“They tell me you saved my life, and I remember that.”
I nodded.
“It’s the one thing I do remember. I didn’t forget you.”
She stared at me.
“I won’t ever forget you.”
She didn’t blink. I was about to say something stupid, like I was just doing my job, but then she said something else.
Something I’ll never forget.
Her eyes were bright pools beneath those dark bangs as she spoke. “I tell myself there are other things I’ll remember,” she said. “Right now I’m waiting for them, like I was waiting for you. Underwater.”
And maybe that’s the way it was. I didn’t know. There was a lot we didn’t know about the young woman in the hospital room with Jane Doe on the door. Some of the hospital staffers thought she knew more than she was saying. Not so much the doctors, but a couple of the nurses definitely felt that way. One of them even said the girl was in on the dope deal, and that she was just putting on an act until she could get free and clear. Ben and I didn’t buy any of that, and for one simple reason—our Jane Doe just didn’t act like any biker chick we’d ever seen.
The doctors weren’t much help. One dealt the amnesia card on the table; another wouldn’t even use the word. He said that diagnosis was out of his league. And, who knew, it could have been that foul-mouthed biker wasn’t far off the mark. Maybe the young woman was some cast-off flower child, left by the side of the road after a literal and figurative bad trip of epic proportions. Or maybe the bikers had snatched her off some college campus, dosed her up and kept her that way until she couldn’t even see straight. We could have speculated until the wheels came off, but no amount of guessing was going to get us to the truth.
Me, I found another answer. It came in a dream . . . or it might have been a nightmare. I wasn’t sure which.
It was 1963 again. That same Halloween night. I was a kid all over again, battling a mummy, trying to save a little girl. She hit the water, and I dove in. Only this time, things ended differently.
This time, underwater, I reached out and found a hand. It seemed small, but not like a child’s hand. I took hold of it and kicked to the surface, and I came up in sunlight.
In that moment, things changed.
We weren’t kids, either of us.
It was a woman I’d saved, and I was a man.
I carried her to shore.
We were all alone.
“I didn’t forget you,” she said, looking up at me. “I won’t ever forget you.”
And then our eyes closed, and our lips met, and we were like that, together. The wind rose around us. I could smell the clean, cold scent of the eucalyptus grove, hear the dry leaves rattling in the breeze. And when our lips parted, I felt calm . . . as calm as I’d felt in a long, long time.
Then I looked behind me and saw the dead thing standing at the edge of the eucalyptus grove, watching us. Charlie Steiner smiled, and blood bubbled over his lips. He was still dressed up in his Halloween clothes. Still playing the part of the thing he wanted to be . . . and the thing that would get him what he wanted.
His words were slurred around the bloody remains of his tongue. “It takes a long time for a dead girl to grow into a princess,” Charlie said, “and this one is mine.”
Then he raised his bloody hand.
And he started forward.
My shoulder healed up fast, but that dream stuck with me. Sometimes it made it tough to be in the Steiner house, though I tried to stay busy and wear myself out with work. I tore out drywall, started on the electrical. That kept me going. A lot of nights, exhaustion kept the dreams at bay. Other nights I’d go to bed, and I wouldn’t sleep at all. I’d listen to the wind outside, waiting for a sound that didn’t belong. And when I did sleep (and sleep deeply), it didn’t turn out well, because Charlie Steiner was waiting for me.
“She’s my dream,” he’d say, his mouth bubbling blood. “Not yours. Mine.”
And so I’d get up and work. I’d walk around the house, listening to the floorboards creak, wondering if they’d creaked that way for Charlie when he was on the road to insanity. That wasn’t a good way to think. Sometimes I’d grab Roger’s old Louisville Slugger and use it to take out some drywall. That made a mess, but at least it worked off some energy, and it felt good. Then I’d clean it up and do some real work. And, eventually, I’d sleep.
Sometimes working with the Slugger, I’d imagine that I bashed in a wall and found the missing pages from Charlie Steiner’s notebook tucked between the wall studs. I’d wonder what those missing pages would say, and what they’d tell me, if they told me anything.
I’d wonder if it would be anything I didn’t already know.
I didn’t think so.
See, by then I understood Charlie Steiner pretty well.
There wasn’t really anything I could do about any of it. I didn’t think talking would be a good idea. I wasn’t good at talking. The way I was built, I figured there wasn’t much to do but ride it out.
So that’s what I tried to do. But maybe I wasn’t the only one pushing my way through a bad patch. I didn’t see Jane Doe again after that day at the hospital, but I heard a lot about her. For a few weeks her picture was in all the papers. The story even made the national n
ews a couple of nights running. But no one came forward to ID her. No relatives, no friends, no co-workers. It was as if she’d come from nowhere.
Or out of a dream.
That’s when the gossip geared up. A tabloid ran an article, “The Lady in the Lake.” That got them through the first week. By the second, they’d dredged up the old Terror of Butcher’s Lake stories about Charlie Steiner. A few of them even mentioned me. They ran with that until the story cooled off, and then they found something else.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it around here. The local chatter started up, and it was running strong by the time the young woman was released from the hospital. Some of the nurses had taken to calling her “Ananka” behind her back. And maybe she’d heard them. Maybe that’s why she took the name “Ana Jones.”
Anyway, Ana walked out of the hospital. She walked into town and found a studio apartment with some money a few of the doctors had raised for her. Pretty soon she was working at a roadhouse out by the state highway. A place called The Double Shot.
She worked swings, same as I did. Mornings she had to herself. Nights, too. Sometimes I’d drive by The Double Shot toward the end of my shift, thinking I’d stop in and say hello. See how she was doing. Then I’d remember what she said to me, and how her words had frozen me up. I’d remember the look in her eyes, and I’d remember Charlie Steiner’s words. And I wouldn’t stop. I don’t even know why, exactly, but I wouldn’t.
I felt like I had to figure things out before I could talk to her again. Sometimes it seemed things were coming full circle, and other times I felt like I was just going around and around like a cat chasing its own tail. Maybe life (and fate) were doing the same things. Which is another way of saying that the wind blew in different directions, and it definitely had me in its grip.
I don’t know how those times were for Ana. For me, the nights remained the worst part. Even if I didn’t dream, Charlie Steiner was waiting there behind my eyelids. Some nights Ana was waiting there, too.
Things stayed that way for a while. Some mornings I’d get up early and go for a run on the dirt road that ran along the lakeshore. Sometimes on my way back I’d take that familiar cutoff down to the water, just to stare out at the lake. I’d listen to the wind whispering through the eucalyptus, and try to convince myself that there was nothing there at all.
Sometimes I’d take that road and find that there was already someone else down by the water.
Sitting, watching, listening.
Ana Jones.
I didn’t talk to her.
I left her alone.
I left most everyone alone.
Things settled into a routine. Not a pleasant one, but a routine. Six weeks like that, maybe seven. I still wasn’t sleeping much, and I wasn’t really trying any more. It just didn’t feel right, and, like I said, I didn’t like what was waiting in my head when I tried to sleep.
So I’d bang nails during the day, replacing dry rot around the doors and windows. Then I’d go to work at the cop shop. Walked in one afternoon, and Ben Cross was waiting for me.
“How’s your shoulder?” he asked.
“Ancient history, Ben. The bullet didn’t dig deep. I’m all healed up.”
“Really?”
“Well, I don’t sleep on it, if that’s what you mean. But, hell, Ben . . . I’m fine. It’s not like I ended up face down in a campfire, like that biker did.”
“Let me be straight with you: I’m thinking you should take yourself a couple weeks off. Rest. Relax. Rehab. We’ll take a break from working on the house. I won’t come around, and you won’t bang nails.”
“C’mon, Ben—”
“No arguments. Go to the gym. Drink some beer and eat some barbecue. Get laid. Do whatever it is you young guys do these days.”
“Really, Ben. It’s no problem. If I’m screwing something up, I’ll fix it. Just give me some time.”
“If you were screwing up, we’d be having a different conversation.”
“Fair enough.”
“The thing is, I don’t want you screwing anything up . . . and I think we’re getting to a point where you might.”
“Okay. That’s plain enough. But—”
Ben put up a hand. “No ‘buts.’ Two weeks off, pardner. Sick leave. You get paid, and you hang on to your vacation time. As far as I’m concerned, that’s doctor’s orders, and the clock starts ticking right now.”
“All right, boss.”
“That sounds better,” Ben said, and we shook on it. “Like I said, I’d better not catch you pounding any goddamn nails, either. Get out of that goddamn house.”
Of course, I didn’t take Ben’s advice. I went right back to the Steiner place. I holed up there like a grizzly with a toothache. It wasn’t the best move I’ve ever made. I might as well have barricaded the door.
Around that time, my phone started ringing more often. I didn’t answer it. Ben and I had hooked up a police radio in the house, so I knew it wasn’t someone calling from the cop shop. If Ben wanted me, he would have called on the squawk-box.
For my part, I didn’t really want to talk to anyone . . . especially another tabloid reporter. I was even avoiding my family. You could get away with that in those days. It was easier to check out of the game for a while. People didn’t walk around with phones in their pockets. The phone hung on a wall in your house, or sat on a table. It was easy to ignore. If it rang and you didn’t answer it, you’d have no idea who called. No caller ID. No muss, no fuss.
My phone didn’t ring a lot, just enough to tell me there was someone out there who wanted to talk to me. Just enough to tell me they were going to keep trying.
And then one day it didn’t ring at all.
It was a Saturday. I’d been off for a full week, and I was trying to figure out what to toss on the barbecue.
That was the evening Ana Jones knocked on my front door.
“Take a walk with me?” she said. “I’d like to talk.”
So we walked. It was a crisp night coming on after a sunny day, the kind of day that makes you think of spring more than fall. Ana wore a long dark skirt, sandals, and a flannel shirt over a tight top—the kind dancers wore. As we walked the road toward Butcher’s Lake, sunlight trickled through the branches and shone against her long black hair. Wherever she went that night, I would have followed.
She wanted to go down to Butcher’s. I wouldn’t have suggested going there. I would have thought she’d never want to see the place again, but she said she needed to. So we went down to the lake, neither of us saying a word. I was carrying a couple of blankets and a bottle of wine. I thought the wine was the least I could do for putting her off. because I was sure it was Ana who’d been calling. Besides that, I figured a little wine might help loosen my tongue. Hell, I probably could have used a case of wine and a shoebox full of dynamite, too. But there were things I needed to know. I didn’t know if Ana had the answers, but I knew I needed to find some before I skidded into a really bad place.
We sat, and we watched the sunlight on the dark water. That wasn’t exactly a conversation starter, considering. So I took out my knife, flicked the corkscrew out, and opened the wine.
The sun went to orange and started to set. “I guess I forgot cups,” I said.
“That’s okay.” Ana smiled. “I think there’s enough history between us to share a bottle.”
It was easier after the bottle went back and forth a couple of times. Ana talked about her job, and the town, and what it was like settling in. She even talked about the gossip that was going around.
“Have you heard the latest? Some people are saying you shouldn’t have saved me. They say I’m a witch, and that I would have sunk to the bottom of that lake like a stone.”
“People.” I stared across the water. “That’s why I like to be alone.”
“Yeah. I kind of figured that out.”
“Look, it’s nothing personal. I’ve been having a tough time of it. Nothing like you’ve had . . . but it h
asn’t been good for me lately. Ever since that night with the bikers some old ghosts have come knocking at the door. I’m trying to handle them.”
She handed me the bottle, and when I took it she caught my arm and my gaze.
“Am I one of those ghosts?”
“I don’t know, Ana. You’re the only person who can answer that one.”
“I wish I could. Sometimes I think I’m so close to figuring things out. I feel like I’m scratching at the surface of a real memory. I wish I’d never read any of those tabloid articles or listened to any of the gossip. It gets in there, too . . . and sometimes I can almost see some of it happening—even that whole thing on Halloween night all those years ago. I wonder if I really could have been there. And sometimes I have these nightmares—”
“I have a few of those, too.”
“About Charlie Steiner?”
“Yeah.”
I handed back the bottle and she tipped it against her lips—a short, sharp swallow. “Last night was the worst. I dreamed of Egypt. I was standing near a pyramid, and Charlie was there . . . fresh off the autopsy slab. He didn’t say anything. Every time he tried, blood spilled out of his mouth and splattered the sand like rain. But it didn’t matter that Charlie couldn’t speak. There were a dozen dead roses in his hands, and I knew what he wanted. I couldn’t get away from him. I tried, but he just kept coming. And then he cornered me, and he peeled the petals off one of the roses with a three-fingered hand, and he pressed them against my lips, and he opened my mouth with a pair of withered fingers, and—”
“Don’t torture yourself. It was just a nightmare.”
“You really believe that?”
I looked at her, realizing what I’d said. We might have laughed then, and maybe we should have, but we couldn’t.