The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

  By the time I'd pushed myself up Bobby already had his phone out and was walking away, looking over the fence. I took a few paces back toward the house. Maybe I thought I could go back in and put the fire out. Or that I should save some things. I don't know. I just felt there ought to be something that I could do.

  There was another small detonation, and I heard things break deep inside the house. The heat was building rapidly. The rain had slackened into a faint drizzle, and I remember feeling that this was about typical. It had rained hard all afternoon. Why not now?

  Bobby ran back over to me, snapping his phone shut. He had a small cut on his forehead, which was dripping blood.

  'They're on their way,' he said. I couldn't imagine who he would be talking about. 'Who are?'

  'The fire brigade. Let's go.'

  'I can't go,' I said. 'That's their house.'

  'No,' he said firmly, 'it's a crime scene.'

  When we reached my car he walked quickly all around the vehicle, looking carefully at the ground. Then he went down on hands and knees in the mud and peered up underneath. He got back up, rubbed his hands, then unlocked the door. He squatted down and looked under the driver's seat, then popped the hood, walked round the front, and looked at the engine.

  'Okay,' he said. 'We'll take the chance.'

  He closed the hood and walked back to the driver's side. He stuck the keys in the ignition, winced at me, and turned his hand. The engine started, and nothing exploded. Bobby breathed out heavily, patted the top of the car.

  'But we didn't hear anything,' I said. 'No car.'

  'Not surprised,' he said, and his voice was a little shaky with relief. 'Area like this it's easier to lose yourself in backyards than on the road. I'd stash a car downhill and come the last quarter mile on foot. Though if it had been me, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You hear the way it kept futzing after the first explosion? Someone put it together in a hurry and screwed up.'

  'What difference? Surely the first blast takes the whole lot up?'

  'The sections got blown apart by the ignition charge. Someone tried to put together a real mother, and it blew itself apart before it could go off properly.'

  'If we'd been in the sitting room, it would have been enough.' I abruptly rubbed my face with my hands. 'I guess Chip delivered the message.'

  'Sure looks like it.'

  'In which case…' I looked at my watch. 'They put this whole thing together in just over an hour, including someone getting down here.' I noticed I was bleeding briskly from a gash on the back of my hand, and wiped my jacket over it.

  'Like I said. They rushed it.'

  'They may screw up on the details, but they're definitely on the case, wouldn't you say?' In the distance I could now hear the sound of approaching sirens, and across the road I saw front doors opening.

  'They bombed my parents' house,' I said, incredulously, turning to look at it once more. 'Like, with a bomb.'

  The burning house looked bizarre, a point of utter wrongness amongst a street of perfect little dwellings. I turned to look at Mary's house across the hedge. A few lights were on, and the front door was open.

  'You're dealing with Grade-A cocksuckers,' Bobby agreed, slapping the top of the car again. 'And now let's leave.'

  But by then I was running, slipping and careering down toward the gate. I heard Bobby swear and start after me. Near the end of the path I thrashed my way straight through the hedge and into Mary's front yard. I'd barely made it into her property before Bobby grabbed my shoulder and spun me round.

  I shrugged him off, tried to keep walking up the yard. He reached for me again, but faltered when he saw what I'd seen, and then he was moving faster than me.

  She was lying half on the porch, her head and shoulders tipped downward onto the steps, one arm thrown out by her side. At first I thought maybe a heart attack, until I saw the blood all over her, the pool already turning sluggish on the weathered wood. Bobby dropped to one knee beside her, supporting her head.

  'Mary,' I said. 'Oh, Jesus Christ.'

  Between us we pulled her gently round so that she was lying level. Her breathing was ragged. Enough light was thrown by the fire next door to make the lines in her face look like canyons. Bobby was searching through the folds of her clothing, finding hole after hole, trying to stanch blood that didn't seem to be flowing as fast as it should. She coughed, and a slug of something dark glotted up into her mouth.

  Before this I had only ever seen an old woman, one of those people who clutter up the lanes of supermarkets and stand waiting for buses, who know or care about what gift people are supposed to give on which anniversary, who look papery and cold and as if they can never have been any other way. People who can never have been drunk, or clambered over forbidden fences, or moved, giggling, so that someone else gets stuck with the wet patch in the bed. Dry old sticks who you cannot credit with having loved someone, not someone alive anyhow, not someone who wasn't just a memory, whose resting place was now decorated with fading flowers that only she remembered to bring. Now I saw someone else. Someone she'd once been and presumably remained, beneath the patina of failing cells and dry skin and wrinkle canyons and grey hair curled and cut short. Behind the disguise the years had conferred, behind the mistaken assumption that because of her age she had never been, and wasn't still, somebody real.

  And then her throat clicked, and a full bladder voided, the smell warm and acrid. Her eyes seemed to go from moist to dry in an instant, as if fast-forwarded. Perhaps it was the coldness of the air, but it looked as if she'd been pulled away in front of our eyes, and pulled away fast.

  Bobby looked slowly up at me. I stared back. I didn't have anything to say.

  •••

  'What happened?' I asked. It was the first thing I had been able to say in ten minutes. 'What the hell happened back there?'

  Bobby was peering hard through the windshield, whipping his head back and forth to look up side roads as we sped past them. All were early-evening quiet. Mary's body was two miles behind us now, still lying on her porch. It would receive medical attention there faster than we could have got it to a hospital, and anyway it was dead without hope of reprieve. Both Bobby and I knew that.

  He shrugged. 'She got in the way. Like I said,

  someone came in over the yards. She heard something, came out. So they emptied half a gun into her. I'm sorry, man.'

  'Someone comes down here to blow me up, bringing a gun with a silencer just in case. A harmless old lady gets in the way and they whack her. Just like that.'

  'These people are serious, Ward, and they really don't like you at all.'

  He yanked the car round a sharp left and then we were back down in the main part of town. A fire truck flashed past us along the main drag, heading in very much the wrong direction to get to the house.

  'Where the fuck is he going?'

  A car behind us honked. Bobby and I turned as one and a guy in a pickup indicated that the lights had changed and maybe we'd like to move. Bobby pulled out, and headed down the road after the fire truck.

  'The truck's going the wrong way, Bobby.'

  'I told them the address just as you told me. It was good enough to get me there.'

  'But why the…' I stopped. We could both now see the orange light up ahead.

  Bobby abruptly pulled over, without signalling. We got another stern honk from the oldster in the pickup, who turned to stare heavily at us as he passed. Neither of us really paid him much mind. We could see now that the Best Western, or at least a small part of it, was on fire. I stared at it in frank disbelief, wondering how Dyersburg had suddenly come to reside within one of the circles of Hell.

  'Get closer,' I said, faintly.

  He drove slowly, and after a block left the main drag to come around at the hotel along a side street. We stopped at the top, putting us about a hundred yards from the hotel. From here we could see that the fire was relatively small, only affecting a forty-yard stretch of one wing. The hotel woul
d survive to host another convention. Four fire trucks were already in attendance, and a fifth joined them as we watched. The other end of the street was already thronged with people, and more were walking quickly past the car, hurrying to get a better view of the excitement. Half of the town's police force appeared to be in attendance.

  'That start round about where your room was?'

  I didn't even answer. I felt sick. For some reason attacking the hotel felt like more of a personal wound than the house had done. I wondered if my neighbours had been in, the people in the rooms around me.

  'Ward, this message you sent them,' Bobby said, 'what exactly did you say?'

  'This is ridiculous,' I said. 'This is completely out of hand.' Then: 'What about the house? What are they…'

  'They've probably got someone up there already. Other neighbours will have called it in. And before you even get around to wondering, your stuff is safe.'

  'What stuff?'

  'Well, not your clothes. Look in the back.' I turned and saw my laptop bag in the backseat of the car.

  'Never assume you've got refuge,' he said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, and watching the fire. 'I'm a prospect man myself. Keep what you need within reach. I think now would be a good time to blow Dodge.'

  I wanted to go up into the hills and kill someone. Bobby read my mind, and shook his head firmly. 'Once this fire is under control they're going to find which room went up first. Chances are they'll have taken more time and made it look halfway credible. But add it to the house and you're going to leap straight to Dyersburg's Most Wanted.'

  'In what fucking sense? I didn't do anything.'

  'There an insurance policy on your folks' house?'

  'Yes.'

  'Big one?'

  I sighed. 'Probably. I didn't listen. And then they'll find Mary and some bright cop will decide to dust her down just in case. That much blood, they may get some latents. Your prints on file, Bobby?'

  'You know they are.'

  'Mine, too. You're right. It's time to leave.'

  Twenty minutes later we were at Dyersburg airport.

  Chapter 16

  Zandt reached Beverly Boulevard at nine in the evening. He was exhausted, and his feet hurt a good deal. He was also drunk.

  At 3.00 a.m. he'd stood outside the cinema where Elyse LeBlanc had last been seen. Cinemas look strange at that time, as do stores and restaurants. In the small hours they seem odd and arbitrary and edificial—as if we are explorers who have missed, by a bare decade or two, whatever civilization brought them into being. A few hours later he watched the house where Annette Mattison spent her last evening with a friend. He recognized the woman who came out at seven o'clock, dressed in a business suit, on her way to the television mines. Zandt had interviewed Gloria Neiden on more than one occasion. She had aged a great deal in the past two years. He wondered if she was still in touch with Frances Mattison. Their daughters had visited with each other many times, and always walked the three short blocks home. It was the usual arrangement. They lived, after all, in a very nice neighbourhood, up in Dale Lawns, 90210—and surely one of the reasons why you paid seven figures for a house was so that you could walk under the stars after dark. Zandt suspected that the relationship between the two mothers would have become strained, if not altogether dead. When Zoë Becker had mentioned Monica Williams, her voice acquired a colourless tone—though the latter could hardly be held responsible for Sarah's electing to wait out the time until her father came to pick her up. Their small community had failed. When this happens, you ask what it's for, and look for someone to blame. The people within the walls are closest.

  Zandt turned away as Mrs Neiden's car swished past. It was possible she would recognize him, and to have watched for longer would have made him feel unwelcomely like another man, the one who had stood outside her house, perhaps in the same spot, two years before.

  He walked on. By late morning he had been in Griffith Park, at the place where Elyse's body had been found. There was nothing to mark the space, though for a while there had been flowers and he found the remains of a broken glass jar. He stood there for a long time, looking out over the hazy city, at the places where a million people worked and slept and lied, turning rank in the urban field.

  It was soon after this that he first went into a bar. And, a little later, into another. He kept walking in between and afterward, but more slowly, feeling his sense of purpose bag around the seams. He had walked these routes many times. All they had brought him was blood and breakage. He could still hear the voices that had propelled him to his feet when Nina left, the cries of the missing—but obscured by daylight and rationality they were too faint to lead him anywhere. His shirt became untucked, and when he passed other pedestrians he was aware of their scrutiny. It's claimed that you can tell the police, especially a policeman, by his eyes, a gaze that measures and assays, that judges from a position of suspicion and strength. Zandt wondered if you could also tell someone who was not a cop any more, by the look of emasculation, of having turned away. He had known this city once, known it from inside. He had walked the streets as one to whom the residents turned in times of chaos. A part of the immune system. Now he lived without this sanction. He was no longer identified, was without fame or its equivalent in function. He was just a man on the street in a city where very few people walk—and where those who did regarded him with caution. It was a habitat as real as any steppe or shaded valley, no more different to the countryside than Death Valley was to Vermont, or Kansas to the bottom of the sea. The only distinction was in the people, the smog-stained and battle-weary. All the people.

  By late afternoon he had stood, weaving slightly now, by the side of a side road in Laurel Canyon. The bushes that had once grown there had been uprooted and replaced with a stretch of pavement perhaps a couple of feet longer than Annette's body. By now he was quite drunk, but not so that he didn't spot the person watching him from the safety of the nice house across the road.

  Within a few minutes a man emerged from the house. He was wearing jogging pants, a pale grey vest. He looked very healthy.

  'Can I help you?'

  'No,' Zandt said. He tried a smile, but the man wasn't having any of it. Had Zandt seen the result of his attempt, he probably wouldn't have blamed him.

  The man sniffed. 'Are you drunk?'

  'I'm just standing here a moment. Go back inside. I'll be gone soon.'

  'What is it, anyway?' The man turned slightly, revealing that he was holding a phone in the hand behind his back.

  Zandt looked at him. 'What?'

  'That pavement thing. Why's it there? It's useless.'

  'Somebody died there. Or was found there, dead.'

  The man's face became more open. 'You knew them?'

  'Not until she was dead.'

  'So what do you care? What was she—a working girl?'

  Zandt's throat constricted. Death's sliding scale, as if whores and addicts and young black men were little more than unwanted pets, as if they had never run laughing to the return of a parent, or said a first word, or spent long nights wondering what their stocking would hold.

  The man took a hurried step back. 'I'll call the cops,' he warned.

  'They'd be too late. Maybe you'd rate one more slab of pavement, but I wouldn't bet on it.'

  Zandt turned and walked away, leaving the man no different and no wiser.

  •••

  When he finally reached Beverly Boulevard he went past the Hard Rock Cafe, tucking in his shirt and straightening his jacket, pulling his shoulders back. He walked into the Ma Maison hotel without incident, steered right and straight to the gents in the bar. A splash of water and no one but a barman could tell he didn't belong. He went back out into the bar and sat at a low table where he could see the street. After the miles of walking, the softness of the couch made him feel like he was sitting on a cloud. A pleasant young man promised to bring him a drink.

  While he waited, Zandt looked out at the road wher
e Josie Ferris had disappeared. It was not quite the last scene that related to the crimes, but he was unwilling to go and stand by the school Karen had attended, or outside the house where his family had once lived. And there was no point going back to that other, final place. It was a place he had created. Though it had a bearing, it couldn't help him now. It had not helped him then. Standing above the dead body of the man he had killed had done nothing but prove the fineness of the distinctions we turn into laws.

  Jennifer had known what he had done. He told her, two days later, when the sweater had arrived. It had not been the death of them, not at first. She'd understood his actions, condoned everything except the mistake. They tried to hold it together. They failed. His position had been untenable. Either he bore the horror of Karen's disappearance and remained strong for his wife, while feeling like he was going to break apart into small sharp pieces: or he could reveal the pain he was in. When he did so he lost the male claim to strength without gaining any foothold on the high ground of revealed trauma that was the preserve of women. It was her job to express the outrage; it was his to withstand it.

  He decided he could no longer pretend to be a policeman at around the same time that she decided to go back to her parents. Someone had stolen their golden egg, and the goose that laid it had died.

  Now, when he looked back, he believed he had been most in the wrong. It was his rigidity that had enabled the fault lines to form. She would have let him be weak for a spell. Women are often wiser when it comes to understanding which rules can be allowed to bend. Relationships require flexibility, particularly in times of high stress, those periods when they feel like a desperate pact against a world of unbearable darkness. Strong pairings will fight to retain an equilibrium, regardless of short-term changes in balance. Though it was a double-edged consolation, this realization had enabled him to stay alive. Sometimes the key to regaining one's life is looking back at a terrible situation and realizing that you were partly to blame. Before you see this, you feel wronged, hurt—and cannot find any peace. But 'It's unfair' is the cry of a child, of someone who does not realize that causal relationships act in two directions. When you come to understand that you were also at fault, the pain slowly fades away. Once you realize that you made your own bed, it becomes easier to lie in it, however hard and soiled it may be.