The Ruse

by Jonas Saul

  “Get what? You want to end it. That’s easy. I get it. Just save me the name in the paper. Do it at home. And what does this have to do with love?”

  Jessica hesitated. She held the doorknob and stared at the floor.

  “If you loved your sister and didn’t judge her for what your parents did, you would’ve taken her call. Had you done that simple, humane task, she would be alive today. If you could fathom what love is, you would be alive today. You’re dead on the inside.” She raised her head and stared into my eyes. “I lost my parents. I feel responsible. If I could go back, I wouldn’t be driving that night. I’d had too much to drink. If I could go back, I wouldn’t be working here, for a soulless man who only cares about money. You’re more dead than I will be in the next minute.”

  She turned the knob.

  “Wait!”

  She stopped and looked at me.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. Put the gun down and step away from the door.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because, I can change.”

  She shook her head back and forth. “No one changes. This isn’t about you. I die today and ultimately, as much as it is my fault, it’s yours too.”

  I heard a noise in the back of the office. Maybe they were coming in through the rear entrance to surprise us. I hoped they hurried and disarmed Jessica before she did something I would regret.

  “Please,” I said, thinking maybe I could disarm her first. “Give me the gun. We’ll deal with this together. We’ll get through it. I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass to you. Give me a chance. Show me what it means to love again. Teach me. I’ll be your student. It’s quite evident how much love you have to give. Your parents are gone and it crushes you. My parents are gone and I laugh about it. Bring me over to your side. Teach me how it is you are the way you are. Help me and I’ll help you.”

  Yeah, right. As soon as you go home I’ll fire your ass and you can kill yourself there, in your own bathtub.

  She let go of the doorknob and turned toward me. “Are you serious? No jokes?”

  With a show of exaggeration, I shook my head back and forth. “No jokes. Realness here. Seriousness.”

  Someone was moving around in the back of the office.

  Good. They’re coming. I will have her gun in seconds.

  I reached out. Jessica shivered as she started to cry. She handed me her weapon. Then she stepped over to her desk and sat down, resting her head in her arms on top of the desk.

  I lifted the gun up to look for the safety.

  “Drop it!”

  A red laser pointer moved about on my chest. I looked up and saw three men dressed in some kind of ski hats, with what looked to me like military fatigues.

  “I’m trying to flip the safety on,” I said, my heart thumping in my chest. The last thing I wanted was these guys to see the gun in my hands.

  “Drop it!” the cop repeated.

  I turned it around, my fingers shaking, found the safety and used my other hand to flip the switch. I didn’t realize that the barrel was aimed at the cop.

  They fired at me.

  A barrage of pops resounded in my small office. My heart felt like it stopped. I lost all ability to stand. There was pain in my chest. More popping sounds. I dropped the gun. Jessica screamed somewhere off to my left. My eyes closed.

  #

  When I look back, I realize the text messages were a chance for me to set things right: to curb my personal evils. I could have done right by John Turnbull and sold a cheaper house to the lottery winners. I could have spent more time with my sister. I understand now why the text said: your last chance. It was my last chance at salvation.

  I know I saved a life.

  Mine.

  There never was an explosion at the Garrison house. Jessica had been approached by my sister six months before and together they worked out an elaborate plan to bring me back to the land of the living. My sister acted like she was dying of cancer. The texts were a collaboration of work between Jessica and my sister. Jessica knew the Turnbulls were going to call in. She knew on most Friday’s I love to buy meat for a barbecue. She’d called my sister and told her to meet me there, and then sent me a text.

  The suicide thing, at my office, was a set up. Would I save a life? Even after finding out I’d just lost my only other family member?

  The three officers had a key for the back door. Two of them were ex-boyfriends of my sister and one was Jessica’s brother. They fired blanks and one of them tased me so I’d lose control of my body and assume that I’d been hit and dying. They took me to the edge and brought me back so maybe I could live again.

  They did it because they love me.

  Life is but a river of tears. At least now they flow from joy. I’m married and I have two lovely children. I work from home so I can spend time with my family every day. For me, waking in the morning is a blessing. Every day I breathe is one more day I get what I wasn’t supposed to have. Hearing my kids laugh, enjoying the smile on my wife’s lips, eating ice cream, playing catch with my son, watching a sunset: all examples of life’s little pleasures, that for me, amplify the beauty of my surroundings.

  I know what’s important in life. And it isn’t money. It’s hearing my wife whisper, ‘I love you’ while we’re having a family hug before bed each night.

  I don’t own a cell phone.

  I don’t send or receive texts.

  The Burning - A Preview

  An excerpt from The Burning.

  Chapter 1

  Monday, October 18, 2011…

  Jared Tavallo stood in the clearing as his gun’s echo reverberated off the mountainous walls surrounding the valley. The sun shone bright on the bushes into which the doe had scurried, making it impossible to see blood on them from where he stood.

  His heart raced and his breathing rasped as Jared ran after his kill. He was certain the doe had taken the bullet about the neck. No way did he miss. Not from that range.

  The bushes were thick in the area where the deer had entered. Jared hit them hard and fast in the hopes of finding and securing his kill before anyone could see how close he’d gotten to the city of Banff.

  The National Park strictly prohibited hunting. He had a dilemma: he was too close to the park’s border, but the deer was too tempting to let go.

  He would locate his prize, cover it in the recently received snow, and that evening, his hunting partners would come and help him haul the carcass out.

  No one in the National Park had to know.

  The kill was his and his alone. He’d worked too hard for it — fought the cold temperatures and stumbled a long way from home to let the deer go simply because it didn’t follow man’s rules on geography.

  He pushed harder through the brush and stumbled, dropping to one knee in the foot-high snow.

  “Damn!”

  Back on his feet, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged on through the white powder. The deer tracks led deep into the thicker foliage. A line of lodgepole pines were on his right. The fawn’s tracks turned toward them.

  A light snow began to descend from the dark gray clouds. Jared stopped and examined his surroundings. A tall tree to his left sat beside a boulder the size of an SUV. He would use that as a marker to find his way back. He had no way of telling how much snow would fall in the next hour and getting lost would only move him one step closer to hypothermia. All he needed to do was get back to the clearing where he had taken the shot. Then he could find his way back to the cabin.

  But first he had to locate the wounded deer. The cold had worked on Jared all day, but he was just now starting to shiver. He collected himself, took a deep breath and started toward the line of pines.

  The deer’s tracks disappeared beyond the scatter of bark and needles, leading into the darkness beyond. Jared struggled with his left sleeve, lifting it far enough to see his watch. Thirty-five minutes to sundown.

  “Shit.”

  A slight breeze brought with it the
smell of something burning. Jared let his sleeve fall back into place as he looked around to see what was on fire. He stopped breathing and listened. He couldn’t see anything or hear the familiar crackle of a fire.

  Maybe it’s a nearby cabin’s wood stove or fireplace.

  He released his pent-up breath and inhaled heavily, taking in the acrid smell of something that wasn’t just wood.

  “What the hell is that?”

  He sniffed again. His stomach rolled. It smelled like burning hair or flesh.

  “What a putrid smell.”

  He brushed it off. He’d leave the area within minutes whether he found the stupid deer or not. He would never call the fire department. Even if he saw a house on fire, unless he could block his number and make an anonymous tip. He couldn’t allow any officials to see him on park property with a rifle. The fines would be too much and the uproar ridiculous. Whether he shot the deer a kilometer away or where he stood made no difference to Jared, but the powers that be always had an ear of corn up their asses for someone just like him.

  He stepped into the relative darkness of the tall pines and tried to follow the tracks. Ten minutes later he entered another small clearing.

  The burning smell intensified.

  It was time to turn back. If he’d hit the deer, it would’ve dropped long before.

  Then it hit him.

  “What a fucking waste of time.”

  There had been no blood in the white snow or on any tree. Absolutely none. If he’d hit the animal, there would’ve been blood. All he had followed were white tracks in undisturbed snow.

  Amateur fucking hunter.

  Something banged against a tree. Jared jolted and looked to the right where the noise had come from. He could just make out the edge of a shack or cabin. The animal’s tracks had turned that way.

  Maybe that was the deer falling over.

  He stepped around a tree and took a closer look at the cabin wall. The chimney lay dormant, no smoke.

  That’s weird. Then what’s burning?

  He stepped forward, intrigued. He covered his mouth with his glove and breathed through the cloth, the smell intensifying with each step.

  Fifteen meters from the cabin, he could see that it was once a large house. The wall he had walked up to was a small part of the garage area left over after a recent fire. He stepped toward the front and took in the immaculate features of a beautiful two-story wooden chalet. It had the traditional look of many of the resort homes in the area. Someone had taken great care to keep this one in top shape. Many hours of labor had gone into the intricate detail surrounding the windows and doors. Cherubs and angels acted as trim. Gargoyles framed the roof’s edge along with a crazy-looking weathervane in the shape of a beast he couldn’t identify.

  He had never seen such a contrast. A modern wooden chalet half turned into Gothic architecture.

  “Fuckin’ weird.”

  There were no tracks in the snow except for the deer’s. If no one had come or gone in the last twenty-four hours and there was no vehicle in the driveway, then who started the fire? Had there even been a fire?

  The deer tracks led to the front porch of the chalet. Jared held the glove over his nose tighter as he walked toward the door. The smell of burned flesh and hair was as powerful as a fine pepper spray, served with a side dish of bear spray. He wondered if he would vomit from the pungent odor.

  The deer tracks stopped at the edge of the closed door.

  What the fuck? Where did it go?

  The white button on the doorbell was quite small. He held his breath, pulled the glove away from his face and yanked it off to use his bare finger for the bell.

  “Holy shit,” he shouted and jerked back the second he touched it. The tip of his finger turned red and began to blister.

  “I just got burned by a doorbell,” he said out loud. “Payback for all those years of nicky nicky nine doors.”

  He examined the doorbell. It was plastic. But that was impossible. To burn his finger as badly as it did, the plastic should have melted.

  Maybe it was an electrical burn. A short in the wiring. Making sure to protect his finger, Jared closed his hand into a fist and knocked on the door. He wanted to ascertain whether a fire raged inside the cabin’s walls or not. If anyone was home, would they need help?

  And where was the deer he’d shot?

  His knuckles rapped the door again and began stinging the second he pulled them away.

  What the fuck!

  He examined his burnt knuckles.

  How could that happen?

  The wooden door didn’t have electrical wires attached to it like the doorbell did. There had to be a very hot fire raging just beyond the door with an enormous amount of heat radiating through it.

  He waited for a response from within and looked at his hand. He slid his glove back on and walked along the porch until he could see inside the front bay window.

  The furniture inside appeared normal. A couch and a love seat completed the living room ensemble. A gorgeous marble coffee table sat in the middle. Near the rear of the house, beautiful high-backed chairs surrounded a long wooden table in the dining area.

  Everything appeared intact and he could detect no sign of a fire.

  As he stepped away from the window, something moved on the floor by the base of the three-seater couch. The edge of someone’s hand, charred and still smoking, dragged away from sight.

  He covered his face with the glove again, this time to keep down the sandwiches he’d had for lunch.

  Someone was in trouble and needed his help. He now had no choice but to make an anonymous call to the police.

  But first, he wanted to see what the problem was.

  Jared pulled his weapon off his shoulder and leaned it against the wooden railing that framed the front veranda. Then he stepped back to the front door and knocked on it with the tip of his boot. Little puffs of smoke rose from where his boot touched the door.

  With no answer, he lifted his boot higher and kicked at the door. It gave way and opened wide. The smell was instant and overwhelming, hitting him like cow manure permeating the air.

  With his glove firmly in place over his nose, Jared stepped into the house. From where he stood, the back of the couch sat exposed.

  There was no one behind it, burned or otherwise.

  The hand had been attached to something, but that something was gone now.

  Outside, heavy clouds darkened the sky and brought an early dusk. He had followed the deer too far and waited too long to head back. He stood in the foyer of someone else’s house as it grew dark outside. He figured he had ten minutes left with any source of light.

  “Hello? Anybody here?”

  A light smoke filled the air, like fog floating throughout the main floor. He tried to detect the source, but since there wasn’t a breeze inside, it only floated, not moving left or right.

  “Hello?” Jared called again.

  He moved farther into the house. Could the person from behind the couch have the strength to drag themselves into the kitchen? There were no pictures on any of the walls. Nothing adorned the cabinet to his right. It was like no one lived here and cared for the home — but yet it seemed in top shape.

  Could be a vacation home for skiers, he thought.

  At the archway to the kitchen, he stopped and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. A red light glowed from inside the stove. He leaned closer to get a look, but from the doorway, with little to no light coming in from the outside, he couldn’t see much.

  It was time to leave. Evidently someone was home and cooking something in the oven. No lights were on and it got harder to see with each passing second, but Jared didn’t want to touch anything. He didn’t want to get burned again.

  The heat rose under his feet. The rubber soles of his hunting boots were melting. Little bits of smoke rose off his feet to add to the already dense foggy air.

  Time to leave. Fuck the deer.

  He pivoted on the sp
ot but his boots stuck. He’d left part of his rubber sole behind.

  “That is fucked up. The whole place is going to go.”

  The front door slammed shut. He searched in the dim light for who closed the door. Nothing moved. Jared stood stock still.

  A game? Someone was playing a game with him? His hunting partners, maybe?

  “Okay, Mr. And Mrs. Fuck Off. You know what you can do.”