EQMM, September-October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Wally pulled out his cell phone again and checked the time. Over an hour since he had called Bradley. The young man should be here by now. Maybe he wasn't interested in meeting up with Wally. Maybe he just looked at the pictures and figured out where the body was and headed straight for it.

  No sense going back down the beach against this wind now. The warm wind was picking up bits of dry sand and using them to drill at his face and hands. He buttoned up his denim jacket so that he wouldn't feel it plastering his Red Sox T-shirt to his chest, rolled up his cap and tucked it into his back pocket so it wouldn't blow away on him.

  There was a path that was pretty sheltered up near the parking lot, at the top of the stairs. It ran parallel to the beach without actually leaving the trees that separated the grassy mud from the sand for most of the length of the beach. From there, he'd be able to see if Bradley had arrived at the body by another route.

  Wally scraped a hole in the sand to make a bed for B.D. under the stairs, mounded the sand to protect him from the wind, and tied his leash to a nearby support beam. “Stay. I'll be back,” he said. The wind was getting awful strong for an old dog.

  The stairs felt steeper than he remembered, and Wally had to rest halfway up. He decided to risk losing the cap and wear it for a while to keep his hair from blowing into his eyes so much. At the top he came to a complete stop when he saw the sheriff's new truck parked on the far side of the otherwise empty lot.

  Why park so far away from the stairs? Wally thought. Besides, if Bradley had left when Wally called and driven here and parked at the far end of the lot, he'd have found Wally at the bottom of the stairs before now and saved him the long climb. Something wasn't right.

  The parking lot was one of those created by the state for tourists, and no one local used it because it was faster to park on the side of the highway and take one of the barely visible dirt paths that led directly to the beach. With the storm pending, the parking lot was empty even of tourists.

  Wally looked up at the sky; clouds, but no lightning to worry about. He rested against a tree out of sight of the truck. The truck looked empty, but there was no harm in keeping a low profile.

  The truck was parked into the wind. Nobody parks their vehicle into the ocean wind knowing what the wet air does to your wiring, not if he wants to drive home later. So either Bradley was in such a hurry that he didn't care, or he expected to get back in the truck pretty damn quick. So he wasn't planning on going a mile up the beach to the body. So what exactly was the truck doing here?

  Wally wished he had B.D. with him. Even an old dog is some comfort when you're not sure what you're getting into. Going back for B.D. meant another trip down and then up those stairs. No, he wasn't going to do that more than he had to.

  Wally unbuttoned his jacket and the holster he still wore under his right armpit as if he were still a working lawman. He'd never had to shoot it, but it was useful for putting the fear of God into anyone with a guilty conscience. He took a deep breath, ignored the effect of the adrenaline on his heart rate, and left the trees so that he was approaching the truck from the passenger side, moving into the blind spot. Then a final dash and he had the door handle in his hand and the door open. The truck looked empty.

  The ringing of his cell phone rattled his teeth. Wally swung up into the truck's cab and closed the door. He waited for his hand to stop shaking before he answered it.

  "Wally, I can't get there. My damn truck's in for repairs. This loaner Gene gave me has crapped out. Get your butt back here before this storm catches you."

  "Bradley, you'll never guess where I'm sitting right now,” Wally said, but the phone had gone dead. Silly new gadgets! To be reliable they had to be plugged into an outlet half the time. He didn't understand how they'd ever gotten to be so popular.

  As he replaced the gun in his holster, Wally couldn't think why he hadn't guessed that it was Gene who drove the truck here. Gene was always giving nice cars a little test drive when they were in the shop. When they were all kids in high school, the gang of them took every new car in town for a “joy ride,” as soon as anyone left one on the street unattended. Everyone joked about it and they didn't do any harm. That stopped when old man Turner complained to the state police. Gene got a month in the detention center. The rest of them got off with a warning, but then, Gene was the unofficial leader and everyone knew that Gene's mother wasn't about to give him the hiding that was waiting for the boys with the great good luck to have fathers.

  So it was Gene who parked here. He was the one expecting to be gone just a short time and he wasn't coming back.

  The first raindrops marked the windshield. It was high time he collected B.D. and got himself home. On the off-chance that the salt sea air hadn't eaten anything important yet, Wally hot-wired the truck and was rewarded by a short sputtering sound before the battery died completely. “Ptwey to you, too,” he said, imitating the sound.

  Behind the sprinkling rain, the sky was getting that green-mud look that comes before a serious storm. Better to make for the lighthouse now before the wind picked up any. Two miles to the lighthouse was quicker than the five miles home.

  Wally had never been in the new sheriff's red truck before. When he handed over the reins to the youngster, he'd given him all the advice he could think to give. He'd even given him the old “extra” revolver that he had kept in the glove compartment of his old truck.

  "When you're in a small department, you know there are going to be times when it's just you and the bad guy, no one else around to help out. You're the guy with the gun, but someday, some idiot's going to be tempted to try and take it away from you. That's bad because then odds are either he's shot, or you're shot, or he ends up being the guy with the gun. So what you do is, you leave another gun right there in the glove compartment and you let him see it. If he's feeling lucky, he can go for that gun. By the time he finds out there isn't any firing pin, you have the upper hand well and good.” That's what he told Bradley. The question was, did Bradley listen to him?

  Wally popped open the glove compartment. A bundle of money was crammed in so tightly that it didn't even fall forward when the compartment opened. Wally pulled it out, then looked deeper, feeling over the driver's manual and finding no gun. What he did find was a folded brown envelope.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a great hairy face appear in the side window and snapped his head up. Looking closer, he recognized the nose brushing against the window and the tongue wagging under it. “Damn, B.D., you'll give me a heart attack yet,” Wally said.

  The dog was standing on his back legs, paws against the door, and Wally had to open the window a bit so B.D. would hear his commanding, “Down, boy, down."

  When he opened the door, Wally heard the ocean eating up new ground on the beach below. B.D. squeezed past him into the shelter of the cab. Wally held B.D. on his lap, stroking his neck and back until both their heart rates returned to normal, then made the dog move his long legs and sit in the driver's seat.

  At least B.D. was safe here with him. By the sound of the waves, he'd soon have been drowned by that rising tide if Wally hadn't gotten down the stairs real quick. Lucky thing the clasp had broken on his collar. First time that had happened.

  Wally patted B.D., his big hands checking for any sign that the dog had hurt himself pulling on the collar, and instead he found the collar was still there, intact. Someone had let him off the leash. Wally reached back into his holster for the gun, leaning on B.D. to hide the motion from anyone watching. Somewhere, someone was out there.

  The skies ran out of patience and sent all the rain the clouds had been collecting from miles of ocean. The rain created a grey cocoon blocking Wally's view out the windows. If anyone was lying in wait for him, they were getting good and soaked now.

  B.D. jumped across Wally's lap as the driver's-side door opened. Rain water sprayed them both and someone wearing a rain slicker pushed his way into the cab. In a single motion, Wally grabbed the collar of the rain sl
icker and pressed the gun into the neck behind it.

  "Jeez, Wally, it's me. Lyle Simons."

  The voice confirmed the identity of the little man. For some reason, his voice had never “broken,” just remained the pure soprano of the twelve-year-old choirboy. That was weird enough back when he was a blond-haired and blue-eyed young man. Now that he was bald and bearded, new people looked around to see who else was in the room when he spoke.

  Wally let go and busied himself putting his gun back in the holster. He managed it without letting Lyle see how much his hands were shaking. Then he corralled B.D. between his outstretched arms, pressing his hands hard against the dashboard and tightening every muscle in his arms, neck, and back. He concentrated on relaxing them one by one and his breathing settled down again.

  "What are you doing sitting here in Bradley's new truck?” Lyle asked. He brushed his small hand over his well-kept beard, drying it out by spraying water everywhere else.

  "Trying to get it started. No luck."

  "Too late for that. Can't see in this rain. You'd just run yourself off the road.” Lyle shook his head as if to say that Wally needed a keeper.

  "What are you doing out in this weather?” Wally asked.

  "Would you believe that I was sent by an angel of mercy? That would be my Pammie. These days, the sickness makes her almost as squirrelly as the menopause did. She was worried that you'd get caught in the storm, knowing that you walk this beach every morning early. She just went on and on about it until I said I'd come looking for you. So I got all dressed up in this silly yellow rain gear she bought for me and, sure enough, she changed her mind and said there wasn't enough time for me to be any use but I came anyway. Women!"

  Wally stopped listening after he heard “not enough time for me to be any use.” It reminded him of how useless he felt when Terry was dying. Now it was happening to Lyle. His wife was sick with some rare disease that hardly anyone knew how to pronounce. Terry and Pammie had been good friends and strong in so many ways. Wally always thought that they would end up widows, living together long after he and Lyle were dead and buried. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to be, the men running on ahead and leaving the women at home to clean up a few things before they came along in the second car and caught the guys having one last beer instead of setting up the campsite for the night?

  "I don't think Pammie has much time left,” Lyle said.

  "Sorry, Lyle."

  "They enrolled her in those clinical trials in Boston but I guess she didn't get the good stuff.” The little man fumbled around under the rain slicker until he found a handkerchief and used it first on his bald head, then on his nose.

  Wally tried to think of something to say. Lyle had the money to try everything under the sun to save Pammie. He didn't have to wonder what more money might have bought. Not like Wally, a dumb public servant scraping by on a sheriff's salary who hoped the local docs knew enough at least to make Terry comfortable at the end. Still, he felt sorry for Lyle. Sometimes it was hard to see the little bit of luck you did have.

  "It was you unleashed B.D.?"

  "Yep. I heard him howling and figured he'd find you for me."

  B.D. looked around at the sound of his name to see what was expected of him. Wally told him to lie down and he curled up around Wally's feet.

  "Last year the water came all the way up over the highway,” Wally said.

  The two men looked back towards the highway, noticing again how much higher it was than the parking lot. It rose above the ground on both sides. Having driven it many times, they knew that you could see the ocean to the left and to the right. If the water washed over the highway, they would be at sea for sure. It was a good truck, but it wasn't a boat and the water could pretty much cover it.

  "We'd be better off at the lighthouse, if that happened,” Lyle said.

  Again Wally thought that the lighthouse was two miles away. He felt the strength of the wind pounding on the windows. He remembered how hard it had been climbing up the stairs. For the first time in his life he wished Lyle was a bigger, stronger man. As it was, the odds of his making it two miles through the rising wind were not good, alone or with Lyle by his side.

  "I found Gene's body on the beach,” Wally said.

  "Gene? He's younger than I am. What do you suppose did him in?"

  "No blood. Nothing on the outside I noticed."

  "Too much booze, I'd guess."

  "Another thing. Look at all this money.” Wally showed Lyle where the bills were stuffed in the glove compartment.

  "You know Gene was a funny guy sometimes. Like about the election."

  "What do you mean? About the election?"

  "I've been meaning to tell you about it. Gene paid a pile to fix that election so you'd lose. Sorry, Wally. If it wasn't for Pammie being so sick, I'd have got wind of it in time to stop him. As it was, we were in Boston and..."

  "Don't see how his fixing the election fits into this,” Wally said.

  "Well, it's Bradley's truck and he's the guy who won the election. Maybe the money was a final payoff."

  Wally tried to get his head around it. Bradley winning the election by buying votes outright? Using Gene to hand out the payoffs? It sounded more like something Gene would make up than something Bradley would do. More than that, it meant a lot of people on the take, and he just didn't want to believe that.

  "So Bradley had the money to pay Gene."

  "Maybe he just left it in the glove compartment before he left the truck at Gene's garage."

  Wally felt very tired. He hadn't said anything to Lyle about Gene driving Bradley's truck here. It was something Lyle could have guessed, but more likely something he knew from having seen Gene drive it here. That sure explained why Lyle hadn't asked where Bradley was, even though they were sitting right here in Bradley's truck.

  "There was a brown envelope in the glove compartment, too,” Wally said. It wasn't a very strong challenge to Lyle's explanation, but rich men aren't used to any challenge at all and Wally knew it didn't take much to send them running down the very road they were trying to avoid.

  "Gene was an awful bastard, Wally. I heard all about his run-in with you last Saturday. Everyone heard about his telling you that Terry ought never to have married you, that she'd be alive and kicking if she'd been his wife."

  "Yep, a lot of people heard about that,” Wally said, thinking that the story of Gene's outburst had spread like wildfire because it was such an odd thing. In all these years, Gene hadn't said a thing to anyone about Terry as far as Wally knew. If he was still angry about losing Terry he'd pretty much kept it to himself.

  "What I'm saying is, maybe Gene just got what he deserved from someone who was fed up with him."

  "Fed up with his mouthing off in bars?” Wally asked. “If that's enough to get a man killed, than half the men in town are in deep trouble."

  "No. Fed up with his being a dangerous drunk! You know he was. You knew it all the time and you did nothing. You were the sheriff and you did nothing. So he just went on and on making money off people while he messed up their cars. His life didn't skip a beat even when he let people drive off in cars that had bad brakes that gave out on steep hills and crippled people for life."

  There it was then. Twenty years ago Lyle's right-hand man was crushed in a car accident. The accident was caused by defective brakes.

  "You mean like Darren's accident. What makes you think it was Gene's fault?"

  "Look in the brown envelope, why don't you?"

  Wally pulled the envelope out of the glove compartment, pushing the money back in while he dealt with the envelope. It held only one page, a copy of a day's repair log from Gene's Garage. It was from the day before Darren's accident. The top entry was a charge for brake repair for the only yellow Caddy in town and that had belonged to Darren.

  "So Gene drove here for a short meeting with you, in a parking lot that was bound to be empty this time of year, in this weather?” Wally said. He watched Lyle thinking, ch
ewing on his lip, realizing how far down this particular road he had gone.

  The wind was shaking the cab and B.D. stuck his head up between Wally's knees looking for a sign that they were going to get out of here.

  At last Lyle said, “I didn't intend to kill him. I sent him an anonymous e-mail, told him to bring all the money he could lay his hands on. Mailed him the copy of the log."

  "That does explain the money. He brought a lot of it. Still, he's dead on the beach, Lyle. What happened?"

  "I was an hour late showing up. It wasn't dark or light, just grey, and he'd already been drinking, so I surprised him sitting on the top of the stairs. He had a gun in his hands, Wally. The bastard was looking to shoot someone!"

  "So you were looking into the barrel of a gun?” Wally said.

  "I just pretended he was joking. Showed him a flask and told him I'd snuck away for a little binge on my own, wink, wink. He never for a minute thought I was the one sent him that log page."

  "So you walked him down the beach to the break in the trees where you could keep an eye out in every direction, make sure no one saw you together?"

  "No, that was his idea. He kept looking over his shoulder. Maybe he had some premonition, you know, that there was someone there who wanted to see him pay for all his sins."

  "How did he die, Lyle?"

  "Drinking. Let's face it. That's how he'd want to go anyways."

  "Drinking what?"

  "Homemade hooch. A new batch. Pretty high octane. It'd have to be to stop a heart that pickled. I didn't make him drink it! I didn't pour it down his throat!” Lyle said. There were tears in his eyes, but his lips were tight and his eyebrows were almost level.

  "You brought the hooch with you, then?"

  "Yes, but I'd already changed my mind about that. I decided that I'd settle for just taking the money and telling him he had to close up the garage. Then he pulled the gun and I had to pretend I was there to drink myself silly. So I pretended to take a swig or two and soon he was really belting it back like he couldn't get enough of it."