Canals

by Everett Powers

  Billy fell into his recliner, turned on ESPN and opened a beer. His wife left without saying a word and drove to her attorney’s office to sign papers.

  Vijay downed a protein drink on the way to the gym.

  Lawless dreamt a new dream.

  He was on an island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Sandra Jensen was there, sitting to his left wearing some kind of micro-bikini that amounted to no more than string and half an ounce of material. She looked good and he was damned happy she was there. They lay on lounge chairs; hers flat so she could stretch out and tan, his upright so he could sip fruity drinks with little umbrellas. In his dream, he laughed when he saw they really did serve drinks with little umbrellas; he thought it was a cliché.

  Jensen lay on her stomach, her bathing suit top untied to prevent tan lines, facing Lawless, telling him a story from her youth: she’d gone skydiving with friends and her parachute hadn’t opened. She described in great detail how free she felt, falling through the air at incredible speeds, and how thrilling the view had been. When she told him she landed safely in a haystack, not a scratch on her, he just nodded and said, “Hmm ...” It was such a whopper of a lie, but he didn’t care. He was having the time of his life.

  He sat in full sun with just a bathing suit on, tanning, not burning. That’s when he knew he was really dreaming; in the real world his skin only burned.

  Looking around, he saw other people on the beach. Kids were collecting shells, filling their plastic pails. Young adults played beach volleyball, diving and sweating, trash-talking and shouting out scores. Teens with boogie boards glided through the shallow surf. Heads bobbed up and down in the water, snorkeling. Old people sat under umbrellas talking about what they had for dinner the night before and what they would eat that night, while peering through huge black sunglasses. Music played from hidden speakers, jazzy and cheery. The sand was white, the sea aqua.

  Jensen fell asleep. A tan and fit couple in their fifties settled into chairs next to Lawless.

  “Just get here?” he asked them.

  “We live here,” the woman said.

  “Lucky you.” Then, “You look like Americans. Do you work here?”

  “We’re retired.”

  “Retired? You look pretty young to be retired.” He smiled. “What’d you do that you could retire from so young?”

  “We were in acquisitions.”

  Lawless wasn’t sure what that meant, but didn’t pry. “We’re cops on vacation.”

  “We know.”

  This struck him as odd; they might guess he was a cop by how he looked, but not Jensen. How could they think she was a cop?

  He was about to ask her — the man was completely ignoring him — how she knew their profession when a commotion started on the beach. One of the boogie boarding teens was shouting and pointing at something in the water. Soon, several children were shouting and pointing. Then, some of the old people began pointing at the water, shaking their heads and tsking.

  Lawless set his drink down and shaded his eyes, trying to see what had everyone in an uproar.

  The tanned and fit retired man said, to the woman, “Such a pity.”

  The woman said, “Why don’t you do something about it, Detective?”

  Lawless stood, but still couldn’t see what was going on. Then he sat back down and picked up his drink. “Not my problem. Let the local cops handle it. Besides, this is just a dream.”

  The shouting woke Jensen. She sat up and looked out at the sea. Seeing her bare breasts, Lawless said, “Top! Tie your top!”

  She didn’t hear him. He turned to grab his towel, intending on throwing it around her shoulders, when he heard her say, “I’m going to go see what all the shouting’s about.”

  “Not until you’ve put something on.” But when he turned back with the towel, she was gone. Upset she was showing her breasts to everyone, he stood, towel in hand, and looked for her. She was walking across the white sand toward the sea, dressed in her khaki deputy’s uniform. When did she change? He was happy she wasn’t bare-chested, but sad to see the micro-bikini go.

  The man said to the woman, “He should have done something.”

  The woman said, “Such a pity. What a pretty girl.”

  The man said, “Yes. If the detective had done something, she would still be alive.”

  The woman shook her head.

  Lawless turned to them. “Well, the detective’s on vacation right now, and besides, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And how did you know we were cops?”

  They lifted their arms in unison and pointed at the sea. Lawless turned and saw that everyone on the beach was pointing at the sea, even the volleyball players.

  They were pointing because the sea had turned to blood, or at least it was red. As Jensen neared the water, she didn’t seem to notice that it was red.

  He was suddenly very afraid, somehow knowing she should not wade into the blood-sea, that it would be a very bad thing to do. He shouted at her to stop.

  She either didn’t hear him or ignored him, so he took off, running across the sand, hoping to catch up with her before she reached the blood-sea. He tripped and fell face first in the sand. After picking himself up, he saw it was too late; she was walking through the shallow surf, red waves lapping at her knees.

  He shouted at her again and took off running. He tripped and fell and thought, this is one of those dreams where everything moves in slow motion. Up again, he saw everyone that had been near the water, the shell-hunting kids, the snorkeling adults, and the boogie-boarding teens, standing in a circle, pointing at something — a body? — bobbing in the surf.

  Fear grabbed him by the throat and choked the breath from him.

  “No!”

  He raced into the water, already knowing what they were pointing at. He shoved his way through the circle and saw Jensen, lying face-up in the surf; her uniform and skin stained red. He stood by her, holding her hand.

  Angry, he looked at the faces in the crowd and shouted, “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  A girl with a bucket of shells looked up from Jensen’s body and said, “You should have done something, Detective.”

  Her words pierced his heart. Somehow, he knew she was right.

  “What was I supposed to do?” he asked the girl. She ignored him and went back to staring at Jensen.

  He picked Jensen up and carried her back to the beach, away from the blood-sea and the starers. The sand turned red under his feet. He lay her on her lounge chair, where she had been tanning not five minutes earlier, and stood, looking down at her. The white sand had turned red all around him. The whole beach had become red.

  “What a pity,” the woman said.

  “He should have done something,” the man said to the woman. “She would be alive if he had done something.”

  “Shut up!” he shouted in them. “There was nothing I could do to save her, so shut your mouths!”

  They got up and walked to the hotel without saying a word.

  He sat and cried.

  Lawless sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, the final scene of his dream burned into his mind.

  “Great,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “Just great.”

  He looked at the clock: 6:10. Last night Jensen had set her internal alarm for six-thirty; he had twenty minutes to think before she was supposed to wake herself up.

  He padded barefoot into the kitchen, got a glass of water from the tap and sat at the table where they’d left their notes from the brainstorming session. He took a drink from the glass, grimaced at the taste of chlorine, and pushed the notes aside. He wasn’t ready for that yet; the dream was too fresh.

  He wondered why he could remember this dream but not the other one, the one he’d had every night for a week. And why had the dream changed? Was one more important than the other? He kicked the questions around for a while but went nowhere with them. If he couldn’t remember the first one, how could he compare it with the new one?r />
  Maybe something had changed, maybe something they’d done in the last two days had altered the dire future the first dream had predicted. He lingered on that, liking it because it suggested they may have done something good.

  But then, if his dreams really were a peek into the future, his new dream meant Jensen was in danger. Did his new dream predict her death, or was it just a warning, a real-life Ghost of Christmas Future?

  What am I doing? he thought, slapping himself in the forehead. Comparing my life, Sandra’s life, to a fictional story?

  It seemed clear that if she was in danger, it was because she was involved in the canal monster case; that he could change. He was lead detective and could assign any deputy he wanted to this case, or none.

  But what would have happened yesterday if he had been riding with Cruff or McCain, after he throttled the man in Elk Park and then went on his psychic trip with the monster? He would either be in the hospital doped up on psychiatric drugs or on medical leave with an appointment to see the department shrink.

  Jensen had listened to him, believed him, and helped him when everyone else would have called for the padded wagon: she had been his ground to reality for two days. He needed her.

  That led him to his motives: did he really need her, or did he just want her?

  She walked into the kitchen, wearing boxer shorts and a tiny T-shirt, her hair flattened on one side, sticking up on the other, yawning.

  “How come you didn’t make any coffee, Lawless?”

  He looked at the clock on the microwave: 6:31.

  “You got up a minute late.”

  Without missing a beat, she said, “It took a minute to fix my hair.”

  He grinned.

  She fixed coffee.

  Chapter 9

  Lawless was home dressing when he thought to check his office for messages. He’d decided to tell Jensen about his dream later, hopefully over lunch, convinced it was better that way. They needed to focus on their meeting this morning with the Modesto cops.

  He had two messages. Assistant DA Heath Jorgenson called about a drug case Lawless was the arresting officer on, said it was coming to trial soon and would Lawless please call him back. Not today. Jorgenson was windy; the guy would eat up at least an hour.

  Lawless was, however, very interested in the second message.

  Doctor’s Medical Center had called regarding Tony Fruega, the only living person who’d seen the canal monster and lived. A nurse said Fruega was talking, “somewhat,” which sounded better than what they had to work with yesterday.

  He checked his watch: quarter after eight; not enough time to go to the hospital and make the ten o’clock with the Modesto cops. That was okay, especially if he could get a lucid statement from Fruega. Maybe he could get something from the coroner by then as well, something solid.

  He called Baskel and moved the meeting to three. Baskel said he didn’t know if all four detectives would be there, but he would for sure.

  “One other thing,” Baskel said. “Last night a couple of our officers responded to a call about someone screaming. They didn’t find anyone, but they found evidence of a struggle, maybe a fight. There was a lot of blood and some intestines, I think. Could be animal, we don’t know yet.”

  Lawless wondered why Baskel thought he needed to know that. “So?”

  “It happened by a canal.”

  Oh. “Where?”

  Baskel told him and hung up.

  He called Jensen, told her about Fruega, the postponed meeting, and the new thing by the canal.

  “Let’s go see,” she said.

  “Then we can talk to Freuga,” he said. “I’ll pick you up.”

  She was waiting for him in front of her apartment, looking neat in her starch-stiff khaki uniform.

  “D’you eat?” he asked, after she got in.

  “Toast.”

  “Want something?”

  “We have time?”

  “Not for sit-down, Burger King or McDonalds.”

  “Grease on the run? Sounds good to me.”

  They found a Burger King, ordered breakfast croissants and orange juice, and ate as he drove to Lateral No. 7. They parked on the street, walked down the access road and found the spot in five minutes.

  “No shit something happened here,” she said. “They just found some guts?”

  He pulled at his ear. “That’s it.”

  “This is new for it, eating everything.” She studied the ground. “Man, I’m always amazed at how much blood can come out of a human being.”

  Then she remembered something, a thing she thought of after he left that morning. “Hey, I didn’t find any new bruises on my shins this morning.”

  “So?”

  “I got some the night before. You didn’t have your dream, did you?” She sounded hopeful.

  “No.”

  Lawless looked away. She caught it and said, “What?”

  “I didn’t have the dream. I don’t know why.”

  “You’re not telling me something. Out with it Lawless, what happened last night?”

  He sighed. “Okay. I didn’t have that dream, I had a different one.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me this morning?”

  He looked off into the canal. “I wouldn’t call it ‘good.’ You were in this one.”

  He was about to kick a rock into the water, but reconsidered, thinking of the damage it might do to his shoe. “I was going to tell you at lunch.”

  Now she looked worried. “What happened?”

  He blew out a breath and looked at his watch. “Okay. But remember, it’s just a dream.”

  She was staring at him. “With you, nothing’s a ‘just.’ ”

  He couldn’t disagree. He told her about his dream.

  Jensen was smiling as he recounted the dream, until the part where the sea turned red: it was all downhill for her after the sea turned red.

  She tried to play it cool. “So we know not to go on vacation together to the Caribbean.”

  “Yeah,” was all he said.

  “So you think it means I’m going to die?”

  “If we took everything that comes out of my crackpot head literally, I’d say you might be in danger. Or I could be nuts or have a brain tumor.”

  “The problem with your theory about being crazy or having a tumor is, we have physical evidence that backs up your psychic experiences.”

  She turned her back to him and took a few steps down the canal bank, thinking. Then she turned back and said, “What do you think I should do?”

  “You should request to be reassigned back to your regular duties,” he said, looking at his shoes. “We should take the dream seriously.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I don’t think I can do this without you, but if something happened to you and I couldn’t see you every day ...” He trailed off. “Even if the monster swam back to whatever hell it came from, or someone found it floating dead in their pool, I’d still want to see you every day. I’m just afraid my selfishness will get you killed.”

  She came to him and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I don’t want to go away. I like what we have and I’ve never felt so needed. We’ll just have to watch out for each other.”

  He smiled. But still, in the back of his mind...

  Then she said, as she looked at the ground and went back to work, “Besides, I can’t see McCain nursing you back to sanity. You think he’d do the dinner and dance thing afterwards?”

  “Maybe. Bet he couldn’t give me the boob job lesson, though.”

  “Bet he could.”

  They studied the dark dirt and abstract signs of a struggle for a few minutes, made nothing of it, then Lawless took several shots with his digital camera. He went to put it back in his pocket and stopped.

  He looked at the camera.

  He looked at her.

  He smiled.

  She caught it. “Not in your wildest drea
ms, big boy.”

  He shrugged. “Let’s go see Fruega.”

  “You should be able to talk to him as long as you don’t push too hard. You push too hard and he’ll clam up.”

  Fruega’s treating doctor, Dr. Nielson, looked like the actor Robert Wagner when he was on Hart to Hart in the 80s.

  Dr. Nielson glanced at Jensen, his eyes lingering a bit too long: Lawless felt a jolt of insecurity shoot through his chest.

  After a long uncomfortable moment, at least for Lawless, the doctor’s fault was at last revealed: starting with his right eye, half his face contracted in a slow spasm, as if the whole right side of his head winked, or grimaced, or did something. Then he sniffed, as if the sniff explained the massive contortion his face had just gone through. The massive tic made him look ridiculous, and Lawless was relieved of his distress.

  Dr. Nielson gave them Fruega’s diagnosis and medications, but Lawless didn’t bother writing them down; he knew he wouldn’t get the spelling correct and he could get a copy of the file if he really needed the details. “Post-traumatic stress syndrome” was all he needed for now. Fruega would stay in the hospital until they were “reasonably confident he isn’t a threat to himself or anyone else,” a time Lawless guessed would coincide with his insurance benefits running out.

  Then, before hustling off, the doctor added, “One of the medications is for the hallucinations he’s been having.”

  “Hallucinations?” Lawless asked, feeling his only eyewitness slip away.

  The doctor was already gone.

  In Fruega’s room, Mrs. Fruega was fast asleep in a chair. Her chin rested on her pillowy chest and an inch of drool hung from her bottom lip. Air whistled in and out of her constricted airway.

  “Should we wake her up?” Jensen asked quietly.

  Lawless shook his head. “Let her sleep. She’ll probably wake up in a minute, anyway. Her son’s an adult so we really don’t need her permission to talk to him.”

  He pointed his chin at the young man in the bed, who had his eyes closed but didn’t look asleep. “Why don’t you go ahead and talk to him.” He pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket and handed it to her. “See if you can get his permission to tape the conversation.”