Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Loren swung back to him. “That’s different,” he snapped.

  “The difference is,” Luis said, “is that she gives back to the community. She’s a part of the community. She does good things with her money.”

  “Paying us bribes, you mean?”

  Maldonado and Cipriano winced, but Luis didn’t so much as blink. “They ain’t bribes, Loren. They’re how things are. You wanna do business, you pay a price one way or another.” He picked up the ashtray, put it on Loren’s desk, rose from his chair. “I figure that’s the end of the discussion, Loren. You’re on leave. That’s how things are.” He must have liked the phrase, because he said it, a drifty smile on his face, for a third time. “How things are.”

  Maldonado stood. “I’ll need your badge and gun.”

  Loren reached for the folder he carried in his shirt pocket— half had his police ID, and the other half, hanging out of the pocket, had the seven-pointed star. “The badge you can have. I paid for the gun with my own money, and I’m keeping it.”

  Maldonado’s lip quivered, as if he were going to bark out a command like a fantasy Marine D.I., but in the end he didn’t add anything. Loren undipped the badge— Star of Babylon, he thought; he hadn’t realized the irony till this moment. He kept the ID— if they didn’t ask for it, he thought, he didn’t need to hand it over.

  He looked at the star in his hand and decided that he didn’t want to physically contact any of these people; he flipped the star through the air and Maldonado caught it out of the air with a quick businesslike snatch. The hardness in his eyes suggested he would not forget this piece of disrespect.

  “Get some rest, man,” Luis advised as he stepped out the door. “It’s like a vacation, ése. Get out and enjoy it.”

  Cipriano closed the door behind the two. Anxiety tugged at nerves in his face.

  “Sorry, jefe,” he said. “I didn’t know this was coming till just now.”

  Loren stepped out into the middle of the room. He reached out a hand to touch his walnut desk. He leashed an impulse to touch everything, to make sure all was still there, still solid. His mind was filled with mist.

  “What are you going to do about John Doe?” he asked.

  Cipriano frowned. “I dunno, man. Hope somebody comes forward with information.”

  “Huh.” He fought the shifting mist that was trying to occupy his skull, remembered his conversation with Pacheco.

  With a surprise he remembered the Wahoo Mine and its rows of bombs and incendiaries. He’d forgotten about it.

  Resentment clamped his jaw. He decided not to tell Cipriano about either one. He wasn’t a peace officer anymore.

  He could make use of it, maybe. Show everyone he was indispensable.

  He’d have to think about it, anyway.

  Cipriano was looking at him with a worried expression. “You okay, jefe?”

  Loren gave a laugh he didn’t feel. “How am I supposed to feel? Shot down for doing my job.”

  “It’ll only be for a while, man. Till this museum thing gets settled.”

  Loren looked up at Cipriano. “It’s forever, Cipriano. Don’t you know that? What we’ve been told is don’t do your job forever. That’s what it means.”

  Cipriano looked away. “We always take orders from the politicians, right? So what’s new?”

  “The difference is that this community never built its economy on murder before.”

  Cipriano just shrugged. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what kind of deal the politicians made in the olden days. They were dealing with Mickey Cohen, for God’s sake.”

  Loren took a breath, tried to clear his head. “I’m ten-seven outta here,” he said.

  And walked.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He took the Fury home. He hadn’t been told he couldn’t use it anymore; once it was in his driveway, he doubted whether anyone would.

  By the time Loren arrived at his house a vicious headache had filled his skull, soaking up the world’s pain like a sponge. Debra’s Taurus was in the driveway, but she wasn’t home. Loren took off his gun, collapsed onto the sofa, closed his eyes. Anger shuddered through his body, alternating with a fierce despair like fever alternating with chills.

  His thoughts rang with belated protest. He should have pointed out that tolerating a victimless crime like prostitution was significantly different from forgiving a series of murders.

  He pictured the celebration in the mayor’s office, Trujillo pouring the champagne. He’d got the hated Democrat establishment to do his dirty work for him, wouldn’t have to face the consequences of his indiscretion with the baby-sitter.

  Fuck ’em, he thought. Fuck ’em all. Then:

  I live here.

  Get busy on what’s bothering everyone, he thought. Concentrate on blowing away the civil complaint from Dunlop and Bonniwell.

  Funny that the thing that hanged him— or that had been used as the excuse to hang him— was the one thing in which his actions were perfectly justified.

  A.J. and Len, he remembered, had been shooting cats. Maybe, he thought, one of the cats was a purebred that was worth money. Maybe the cats’ owners could be talked into a collaborative suit against Dunlop and Bonniwell for the value of their cats, plus pain and suffering.

  The Dunlops would drop their own lawsuit like a hot potato, Loren figured, when they realized it might cost them money. With Mack Bonniwell, he couldn’t be sure. The man had conviction, and a grudge. But maybe he could talk to the judge about a parole hearing, threaten Len with lockup in juvie hall.

  And of course Mack had just got laid off, really couldn’t afford an attorney.

  He got up and took some aspirin. Then he took the mobile phone and made some calls.

  Someone had, in fact, made a note of the contents of the collar tags of any dead cats that had them, and these had been entered into evidence in the trial. The documents were no longer in the judge’s office, having been sent out to a court reporter for transcription in her home office. Loren got the number of the court reporter, called, and got her out of the shower. Her tone told him she wasn’t pleased by this, but read out the names, phone numbers, and addresses on the tags. He could hear her swiping water off the documents as she read.

  Most of his phone calls went to empty homes. He got two children who promised they’d pass the message to their parents, and one elderly lady who said she’d think about it.

  The headache was still beating at the inside of his head. He stretched out on the couch again, the portable phone by his hand, and closed his eyes. Pointless strategies floated through his mind. At some point he may have slept.

  He came alert at the sound of the back door opening, followed by a woman’s voice. The woman wasn’t Debra; after a few words Loren recognized her as Madeleine Gribbin, the woman who lived in the house behind them. Debra’s voice chimed in. He heard the sound of the refrigerator opening and something being taken from its shelves.

  “I never know how he’s going to feel about something,” Debra said. “He’s so touchy sometimes.”

  Loren’s heart gave an illicit thump. They were talking about him. Maybe he’d better make his presence known.

  “My brother’s like that,” Madeleine agreed. Something liquid splashed into glasses. “I know there are some things I just can’t talk about. Like politics.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Well. Chief of police is a political office. But Elroy, he’s a miner. And you can’t talk to him about politics at all. He’s such a yahoo. He thinks we should have nuked Russia for what they did in Armenia.”

  “Loren’s not a yahoo,” Debra said. “He’s too individual for that.” Loren’s heart warmed. “But still, there are things I don’t want to let him know about.” Chairs in the dining nook scraped back. Loren heard the two women settling in.

  “Katrina’s abortion, for one thing,” Debra said. “I really fought with myself over that one.”

  At the words Loren found himself somehow tr
ansformed, swimming in a translucent sea of absolute warm clarity. He was somewhere else, listening to two women who might be strangers, who might be suspects in some as-yet-undetermined crime. His mind hummed with perfect efficiency. He was surprised at the feeling of objectivity. It might as well be that he wasn’t connected with this at all.

  “He’s against abortion, isn’t he?” said Madeleine.

  “Yes,” Debra said. “But he’s not a fanatic about it. He doesn’t march or give money to the right-to-lifers or anything. He’s just . . . well, he thinks people ought to face the consequences of their actions.”

  “That’s the way a cop would think.”

  “I suppose. And of course his attitudes toward sex are pretty old-fashioned. He’s talked about teenage bimbos trying to evade consequences.”

  That’s not true, Loren thought. I’ve never said that. He found that he wasn’t offended by Debra’s words; his thought was still lucid and objective. Perhaps she was exaggerating for effect.

  There was, he noticed, a cobweb on the white-painted particle-board ceiling. The web fluttered in some unfelt breeze.

  “It’s because he’s spent his whole life here,” Debra said. “Aside from his time in the Army. If he’d spent time in a city . . .” Her voice trailed away. “I dunno.”

  “Maybe he’s never thought about it.”

  “I know he hasn’t. And I finally decided that I didn’t want him making up his mind when Katrina was pregnant.”

  “That was probably the smart thing to do.”

  “And who knows how he would have reacted toward Marty? You know what his temper is like.”

  Marty, Loren thought. Katrina’s boyfriend from when she was thirteen to a little over a year ago. He’d always wondered why they broke up. He hadn’t seen any signs of trouble.

  And Katrina hadn’t had a steady guy since, just a long, intricate tangle of hopeful suitors. No wonder.

  Marty, he decided objectively, ought to have his knees broken.

  Loren decided he didn’t want to hear any more of this. One of the girls could come home at any time, discover him on the couch. He leaned back, tried to relax his body. Let the air out of his lungs.

  He began, deliberately, to snore. Softly at first, not knowing how to make the sound convincing, but to him the snores seemed right enough, so he increased the volume.

  A guilty silence loomed from the breakfast nook. Loren heard a chair scrape back and footsteps hesitantly move toward him. He moderated his snores, tried to relax his body. The pattern of light on his eyelids shifted; there was someone hovering over the couch. Loren blew his breath out through his lips, rolled on his side, tried to imitate coming slowly awake.

  “Loren.” Debra’s voice. “I didn’t know you were home.”

  “Taking a nap.” Loren rolled upright, blinked his gummed eyes open. “I should have gone to bed.”

  Debra, he could tell, was thinking hard. Loren decided to let her. He picked up his gun from the coffee table, walked past her, and went into the bedroom.

  His headache still beat at him, but he seemed somehow to have transcended it, put the pain in another realm. The exemplary efficiency of his mind continued unabated. He wondered if this was a migraine— he’d never had one to his knowledge, but this might be what happened. He hung his gun belt from the gun rack, stretched out on the bed, and lay straight with his hands at his sides, like a corpse waiting for the body bag.

  So much for querencia.

  Thoughts flickered through his mind, unwinding as if from a film reel. Perhaps he should move the explosives to another location, someplace where he could uncover it later, when he judged the time ripe to become a hero. The F’bee might not have got all the eco-terrs; the survivors might shift the stash somewhere else. He’d have to prevent that.

  He could at least get the Dunlops out of the civil suit with his plan to mobilize the cat owners. The Bonniwells were another matter.

  He’d have to just try the cat-owner plan and see. Mack had a lot weighing on his mind right now, his own joblessness high on the list. He might be too weary to hold his hatred for long.

  Which left John Doe, William Patience, the wreck of the maglev.

  His mind probed at what he knew, and the name of Joseph Dielh kept rising to the surface. Flying off the labs’ private field in its private jet, the physicist had been in Washington since Sunday.

  Maybe he was consulting his superiors. But it occurred to Loren that Dielh might have realized early on just how crazy Patience was and figured Washington was the best place to hide. If he could just get the man to return his phone calls, Loren might find out.

  He could, he realized, fly to Washington. Nothing was stopping him. He could track Dielh down at the Department of Energy or Defense or wherever it was he was hiding.

  Loren didn’t have a job here anymore.

  Hell, he could do anything he wanted. He was free. He had no responsibilities at all. With cold glee he realized that Luis Figueracion and Edward Trujillo had just given him all the freedom he needed to pursue any investigation he wanted.

  Randal Dudenhof’s blood splattered across his thoughts. Too much depended on whether Dudenhof and John Doe were the same person, whether there had been a miracle. His rummaging through Randal’s coffin hadn’t settled things, and Doe’s disappearance had only confused matters.

  How to find out?

  Maybe it was for you. Rickey’s words.

  The man had called him by name. Called for help, and Loren could give none.

  Betrayed. He had been betrayed. The unblinking realization rolled up from deep inside him, filled his skull, pressed outward. Pain crackled along the bone seams. His fit of abstraction had kept the feeling from him.

  He had served Luis Figueracion all his career, and this had been his reward. Bounced out of his office, told to hunt elk while killers cleaned their guns and lined up the next target.

  He had served his family with the same diligence that he had served Luis. And they had betrayed him as well.

  What would he have done if he had been confronted with Katrina’s need for an abortion? He thought about it and realized that he didn’t know. Now, thanks to the silence in which he had so carefully been wrapped, he would never have the chance to know.

  This seemed too large and important a concept for so small a room as the one he was lying in. He rose from the bed, walked to the door, and stood in the doorway. The scents of home, of querencia, came newly to his senses. He could still hear voices in the breakfast nook— hushed, self-conscious voices.

  He walked down the hallway to Kelly’s room and entered. Dirty laundry was ground into the carpet. Posters of male celebrities, bare-chested, long-haired, gazed from the wall with narrow-eyed, suspicious scowls that were, from one to the next, oddly similar. Loren drifted through the room, through the bathroom that smelled of baby powder, perfume, and hair spray. A pile of wet, dirty towels invited mold in a corner. The cowboys in the Wrangler ad on Katrina’s door stared at him like members of a Hollywood posse.

  Loren opened the door to the room he had built for his daughter and drifted in. Katrina was orderly compared to her sister. Books and recordings were filed neatly. There was room to walk here, and the only clothing in sight was her pajamas thrown over a chair, and the dress she’d worn to church that morning laid out on the bed. The computer she shared with Kelly sat under its plastic cover.

  Two of the windows were open to the dusty wind, and a third— the one without a screen that she sometimes used as a door— was shut. Marty probably got in that way, Loren thought, and had very likely impregnated her on her own bed.

  Loren decided not to think about that anymore. He stood in the room for a while, absorbing it, knowing that it seemed different now than it had before, not in detail, just in the way Loren was looking at it.

  He realized that he was acting like a cop. He was looking for evidence, clues as to what was going on here. He didn’t want to behave that way with his family.

 
He concluded that he needed an infusion of clarity. He went to his room, changed out of his uniform, put on Levi’s and a jeans jacket. As he left via the front door he heard the conversation in the kitchen stop.

  Once out the door he wondered whether he should have said goodbye.

  He got in his Fury and drove at random around Rose Hill, past the Fortune house with the FBI seals on the doors, past the battered old Queen Anne where Roberts made his nightly consultations with his bottle and the Almighty. No prophet appeared; no miracle dazzled his eyes. He drove on, downtown, past the deco storefronts designed to speed into the future. He headed out beyond the city limits, past the turnoff to Connie Duvauchelle’s, the hatchet-waving Indian of the Geronimo, and the speeding rocket of the Atom Lounge. The unnatural fenced-off flatness of the UFO field spread out on his left, and he slowed.

  Weeds covered the field now, obscuring the pentagram that the patient, passive gang of saucerheads had assembled. The big metal-walled work shed where they’d slept and stored their tools was dripping rust from its galvanized roof. Loren turned into the field, bounced along old ruts, parked by the work shed.

  Another millennium postponed. Joseph Smith and Samuel Catton had both announced the momentary end of the world in the impending cry of Gideon’s trumpet; somehow the world had avoided its judgment and finale. Another apocalypse was to come in a rain of thermonuclear fire, again postponed indefinitely. The turn of the millennium was to feature the saucers, glowing vic formations rolling soundlessly across the midnight sky, bringing salvation and enlightenment to their sad, hopeful, hopefully sad worshipers.

  The greenhouse was the world’s nightmare now, glaciers calving, oceans rising, crops browning in the furrow-striped fields like waffles on the griddle. People like the eco-terrs, with their spiked trees and wrecked power lines, fought a rear guard against that future, a future already visible in the heat and drought that bleached this alkaline country.

  That wouldn’t be the end, either, though it would be bad enough.

  Enough people would survive to imagine, perhaps realize, another, more ominous conclusion to their existence.