by Ray Garton
“Hey, um, Ram?”
“Yeah?” He turned his head and glanced back through the Plexiglas. He had a big smile pushing his cheeks up and it looked genuine. He looked like he was having a grand old time.
“Everything okay?”
“Well, sure, everything’s okay. Are you okay? You guys need anything?”
“Do we need . . . um, no. We’re fine. I just want to make sure you’re okay. You weren’t hurt back there, or anything, were you?”
“Oh, hell, I’m fine,” he said, laughing. “I may have gotten older and fatter, but I’m still tough as nails. ’Member that time on the field when I fell and broke my arm? Holy shit, man, the bone was stickin’ right outta the skin, there, ’member that?” He laughed loudly, nodding his head with enthusiasm.
Andy never played football because his mother prohibited it, so he had no memory of Ram’s broken arm. But Ram seemed to think he would. That made Andy wonder if Ram was sure of who he was talking to in the backseat. He decided it was best to simply go along with everything Ram said. He laughed, nodded, and said, “Yeah, that was something. Hey, Ram, how are your wife and kids these days?”
“Oh, I told you already, I took care of them. Weren’t you with me when—oh, no, I guess you weren’t. Yeah, I don’t have to worry about them anymore. All taken care of.”
Andy wanted to pursue that line of discussion, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it because he was afraid he knew where it would lead—if it led anywhere.
“Where are we headed, Ram?”
“I thought you knew! We’re going to Batten. That’s a CDP on the easternmost edge of town. You know what a CDP is? A CDP is a census-designated place that’s part of unincorporated Eureka, which is why it’s in my jurisdiction, ’cause it’s outside the city limits. This is county out here. Yeah, this is all mine.”
Of course, he knew what and where Batten was, Cuppa Joe’s was in Batten, Ram knew that. What was wrong with him? What was he thinking?
“We’re going to the Clancy place. Just up the road a little here where—” As they passed Cuppa Joe’s, Ram stopped talking. His eyes locked on to the restaurant as it passed, then he turned his frown to the rearview mirror and looked at Andy with confusion for a moment. Then he nodded slightly.
“Well, then, you know the Clancys,” Ram said. “You’ve had some trouble with them, haven’t you? Yeah, that’s right. You have.”
“A little. They like to hunt on my land.”
“Well, hell, they’re not supposed to be hunting anywhere out here. But that’s the Clancy family for you.” He wore a big smile as he said, “Bunch of scum-sucking white-trash parasites. They should all be gassed, far as I’m concerned, every last one of ’em, right down to the snotty little kids they keep poppin’ out. You ever been to their place? You’ll be there in a minute. Jesus, it’s like a little trailer park in the woods, and it’s nothing but trash. Trailer trash, white trash, meth trash. Just trash.”
Oh, Christ, Andy thought, is this going to be another slaughter?
Ram was watching him too closely in the rearview—he’d notice if Andy took out his cell phone and made a call. He felt helpless, and yet he was overwhelmed by the urge to do something, anything.
He leaned back and turned to Donny, who was watching him. He’d been following their conversation. He looked like he wanted to say something, ask a question, maybe, but he kept it to himself because Andy had told him to say nothing, so he said nothing. He was such a good boy, so reasonable and relaxed. Given the fact that his mother was a drug addict and his father was Andy, how was that possible?
Andy leaned forward again. “That’s what the radio call was about? The Clancys?”
“Yeah. Some woman called in about shots fired at the Clancy place. Something about a crazy old man. You know, I think the hurricane is hitting. Or it’s just about to. This storm’s getting a lot worse real fast. We’re gonna be surrounded by a bunch of trees, you never know what could happen. I don’t want to leave you in the car. You and the boy should come in with me. I’ll make sure you’re kept out of danger.”
Oh, Jesus, he’s taking us inside. No, I have to come up with a reason for us to stay in the car.
Ram looked at Donny in the rearview and grinned. “How would you like that, huh? You can watch a real police officer at work, dealing with some real bad guys, how ’bout that, huh?”
Andy turned to Donny and tried to tell him how to respond by smiling slightly and giving a subtle nod of his head. Donny picked up on it immediately. He looked at Ram and gave him a genuine smile and a nod and said, “Yeah, sure. Yeah.”
He looked at Andy in the rearview. “Hey, do you remember Miss Fisher? Our science teacher? Remember how hot she was?”
Andy rifled through his memories. He’d never paid much attention to the teachers or faculty at school. None of them seemed engaged in what they were doing and, in fact, seemed miserable. They bored him and he didn’t trust them, so beyond whatever he needed from them to complete his classes, he ignored them.
He vaguely remembered a young blond teacher in a white lab coat. That was when they were busy dissecting things, something he did not enjoy. He remembered her being young and funny and pretty, but not hot. There always seemed to be something bothering her and her distraction, her nervousness, and discomfort kept her from being hot. In Andy’s mind, anyway. If he remembered correctly, she’d committed suicide just a few months after Andy and Ram graduated.
“Yes, I remember her. The pretty blonde.”
“Pretty?” Ram said, glancing at him in a kind of triple-take. Then he shouted, “Pretty?”
Startled by Ram’s shouted question, Andy quickly said, “Well, yeah, she was, like you said, she was, um, hot. She was really hot, I remember. She even made that lab coat sexy, didn’t she?”
“Fuckin’ A, she did. An amazing fuckin’ piece. I used to fuck her, you know.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. The first time—well, no, it wasn’t the first time ’cause we didn’t really do it, but we got each other off through our clothes in her office after school. I was supposed to be making up a test.” He laughed loudly. It was a forced, exaggerated laugh with no real joy in it.
Why is he telling me this? Adam tried not to let the question show in his face or eyes and kept a smile plastered on his mouth like a big pair of red Halloween wax lips.
Why is he even thinking about this now? He just killed a house full of people, isn’t he worried about that? Isn’t he thinking about his next steps? About how he’s going to avoid his fellow deputies and other law enforcement now that he’s—
No, no, no, he interrupted himself. You’ve abandoned your first thought, which was a mistake, because you were right the first time. He’s crazy. He’s just goddamned crazy, and you cannot figure out crazy. Just keep smiling and nodding.
“Then I had to sneak to her house,” Ram went on, “’cause we couldn’t be seen together, Jesus, she’d lose her job and I’d probably end up in therapy for the rest of my fucking life, or something, I mean, can you imagine that? Can you imagine how fucked up I’d be by now? Anyways, there was a big, steep hill behind her house and on the other side of that hill there was another neighborhood. I’d park in that neighborhood in front of an empty lot between two houses and I’d climb up that hill, trying to stick close to the trees, ’cause there were some oaks up there, and I’d go to her back gate, where she’d be waiting for me. The gate was in this really tall fence that went all the way around her backyard, which was huge, with a big aboveground pool—we fucked in that pool a few times—and a pond full of gigantic goldfish.”
Ram was talking slower now and his grin had melted into a vague smirk. He laughed again, but this time, it was warmer, quieter, more genuine. “And then I’d go in and we’d—oh, Jesus, we’d fuck like rabbits on steroids. To this day, I never met a woman who was more into sex and more ready to try, Jesus, anything, she’d do anything. That bitch loved cock.”
Andy didn�
��t know if Ram was telling the truth, but as he remembered Miss Fisher, he could believe his story somehow, it seemed right. She was always eager to please her students and wanted everyone to like her. As he remembered her, Miss Fisher’s need to be the cool teacher was obvious. Even a little desperate. Coupled with the fact that she always seemed troubled by something, she’d struck Andy back then as a neurotic person who probably needed help. But what the hell did he know? He was just a kid. He’d never told anyone about that, but he remembered it well because—now that he was rummaging through memories long unexamined, things were coming back to him—he remembered fantasizing about finding Miss Fisher in some undefined, isolated place in some distress, crying, sobbing, alone, vulnerable, and sitting down to talk to her, asking if there was anything he could do, and from there, it always descended into the kind of lurid, wildly unlikely masturbation scenario for which teenage boys have always been so well known. At some point, he’d decided that Miss Fisher was indeed hot.
“She was fucking other guys, I think, but I never found out who. Horniest woman I ever knew. She was always wet. Always.”
Andy turned an apologetic expression to Donny, who was looking out the window, pressing his lips together hard, and trying to stifle his laughter. That relieved Andy a little. Donny was holding up well.
“But Jesus, she got so fucking weird,” Ram said, shaking his head. “First, she got real clingy and needy and that wasn’t so bad, I mean, it was pretty nice, you know, because, hey, who doesn’t enjoy being wanted?”
Andy remembered not being surprised by news of Miss Fisher’s suicide and being puzzled by the fact that so many were—or claimed to be, anyway. It had seemed obvious to him that she was disturbed by something, maybe a touch unstable. He had no logical reason to back up those conclusions and certainly wasn’t qualified to render such an opinion—that was why he’d kept it to himself—but he saw it in her face, her eyes, her behavior. Maybe others didn’t see it. But it was there. Had it been pills? Had she overdosed?
“But then she got so weird and . . . possessive,” Ram said. “She wanted us to keep seeing each other the summer after graduation and we did for a while, but I had other things to do. I was looking for a job, and I finally got one, remember? Over at that tacky tourist-sucking cavern, the Samoa Cookhouse. You remember?”
Andy had no idea where Ram had and had not worked throughout his life, but he kept smiling and nodding as Ram talked.
“But she kept wanting me to come over, or meet her someplace, and I couldn’t always do that. It was nothing personal, didn’t have anything to do with her at all, not at first, I just had other shit to do, that’s all, shit I had to do. But she didn’t believe me. Said I was seeing some other woman. Then she said I was seeing some guy.” He sighed.
No, it hadn’t been an overdose. Miss Fisher had shot herself. She’d put a handgun to her temple and squeezed the trigger while lying on her bed. Later, Andy had heard that she’d been wearing sexy black-and-red lingerie when she ended her life, including fishnet stockings, crotchless panties, and a peekaboo bra. It was a titillating fact back then, but now it seemed extraordinarily odd that a woman would dress herself in such a way before blowing her brains out.
“She just got weirder and weirder,” Ram said, “until she started making threats. But her threats didn’t make any fucking sense. She said she’d tell everybody about us, which would probably land her in jail because I was underage at the time and she was my teacher. It was crazy, so I didn’t take it seriously, and then she said she’d kill herself and she showed me the scars on her wrists where she’d tried before, and I said she didn’t seem to be very good at it, so I wasn’t too worried, and boy, did that piss her off! She went crazy. Said she’d kill herself and make it look like I did it, you know, frame me, and, well . . . I couldn’t let that happen.” He shook his head slowly then, his eyes pensive in the rearview. Then the look was gone and he was smiling again. “Yes, had to take care of that, couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t know who she was fucking with. She was crazy, but . . . not prepared. Just like Grandpa. And the coach.” Another laugh, this one through clenched teeth as he slowly shook his head. “That coach,” he said. Then he screamed, “That goddamned fucking coach!”
Donny turned to Andy with wide, frightened eyes.
Coach? What coach is he talking about? Probably Kowalski, the football coach.
Coach Kowalski had claimed to be “prematurely grey,” a phrase which became a punch line at Eureka High. He was fleshy and had a paunch, with little piglike eyes that looked out from beneath folds of flesh, rosy cheeks, and with his perpetual smirk, he always looked at you like he was imagining you naked and found it funny. Andy considered himself fortunate to have gotten through that school without ever having a single exchange with Coach Kowalski. No one liked him, everyone avoided him, he was loud and bossy and rude, and most of the time, he was downright creepy.
Andy looked at Ram, who appeared hunched, tense, uncomfortable. But he said nothing more. Andy found that a little disappointing because now he wondered what memory involving a coach had made Ram so angry.
About five years after Andy and Ram graduated, the same year Coach Kowalski announced his plans to retire to a life of sun and luxury in Florida, the coach was killed while hiking at Patrick’s Point, where he fell off a cliff. Andy reached back in his memory for details.
It was a trail Kowalski had been hiking weekly, no matter how bad the weather, for twenty years. An autopsy proved the fall had killed him, and he hadn’t had a heart attack or stroke.
It was a big story in Humboldt County because Kowalski was such a prick and so many people hated him that, if someone had pushed him off the cliff, it could have been virtually anyone in the county. Kowalski’s wife said he’d gone to Patrick’s Point alone, as always. Three people in the park told police they had seen Kowalski walking the trail with a young blond man in a yellow T-shirt and jeans, and two others claimed to have seen a young blond man in a yellow T-shirt and jeans coming the opposite direction on the trail later, by himself. But police had no reason to believe there was foul play and his death was declared an accident.
How long has Ram been doing this? How many people has he killed?
Andy didn’t want to think about it anymore. Maybe he was thinking about it too much and overanalyzing it. It didn’t matter now. He could think about it later. Keeping Donny safe was all that mattered right now.
“What the fuck was I talking about?” Ram said. He glanced at Andy. “Huh? What was I talking about?”
Andy didn’t think it was a good idea to take the conversation back to the coach. “You were, uh, talking about doing it with Miss Fisher.”
“Oh, yeah, she was, oh, fuck, she was such an amazing piece of ass.”
“I can only imagine.”
“What?”
“I said, I can only imagine.”
“Well, yeah, sure. Of course.” Ram chuckled. “You can only imagine, Andy, because”—he turned his grin toward Andy as he shouted—“you’re a mommy’s boy!” Then he bellowed with laughter.
Andy pulled away from the Plexiglas and pressed his back against the seat, pressed hard, trying to break through and fall out of reality and disappear. The words “mommy’s boy” being spoken in that sickeningly familiar voice, in front of Andy’s son—it was like a shovel that scraped out his insides and left him empty.
“Mommy’s boy, mommy’s boy!” Ram chanted, then he laughed some more. “Those were the days, huh, Andy? And you were a good sport, too. You took a lotta shit like a real sport, you deserve respect for that. A lotta guys? They’d cave. Not you, Andy. Hey, look, we’re almost there.”
Andy remained slumped in the backseat, trying to press himself through the upholstery. The car turned right, off of Emerald Canyon.
“And here we are,” Ram said.
Suddenly, Donny’s face appeared in front of Andy’s eyes. “Dad?” he whispered. “We’re there. What’re we gonna do?”
; That is the question, said a dramatic, Shakespearean voice in Andy’s head. What. Are you. Going. To do?
Andy sat up and looked out the windows. They were in the woods and passing several mobile homes and RVs parked among the redwoods.
“You know, Ram, to be honest, I don’t think it’s a good idea for Donny to go in there. I mean, with this being police business, and everything.”
“Not police business. I’m with the sheriff ’s department.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s right, sure. With this being sheriff ’s department business, and everything, I think we should stay in the car while you answer the call.”
“Is that what you think?” Ram said as he parked the car and killed the engine. Then he unfastened his seat belt and turned and smiled at Andy through the Plexiglas. “Huh? Is that what you think, Andy?”
“Yes, I really think it would be best. Would you have a problem with that?”
Ram laughed as he faced front and reached for his door. “Get out. Both of you. We’re going inside.”
37
“What did you put in your pocket back in the office?” Emilio said.
Fara reached into her purse, found the cold metal of her snub-nosed .38 revolver and removed it, then turned her flashlight on it so Emilio could see it.
He stopped walking and faced her. “You mean to tell me you had that in your purse when that crazy guy came into the office and attacked Corcoran?”
“Oh, please, be realistic. I’m not going to fire this in a crowded room like that. I probably would have shot Corcoran, or even you. I have this for protection, not wholesale slaughter. And only for protection in situations where I have any hope of protecting myself, not when I’m—”
“Okay, okay. Jesus.”
“Well, you have a gun, why shouldn’t I?”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I’m just surprised you’d—never mind. Really, just never mind. Let’s go.” He tucked the Ruger under the waist of his pants in the small of his back.
So many of the men with whom Fara got along well came completely unraveled when they learned she had a gun. Those who reacted to her gun with enthusiasm and delight usually were men with whom she did not get along.