The three of us stared at one another through the windshield. They wore sunglasses. Not because of the sun—because of the blowing sand. There was nothing easy about the way they stood. In case there was any misunderstanding, they had put on their hats and pulled the brims down low and tight on their heads. It was cop sign language for “I’m on duty.”
I climbed out of the cab and said hello to Andy. I extended my hand. The wind and sand snatched up my greeting and sent it twisting over the roof of the diner. Andy didn’t take my hand. The sheriff’s deputy took a step backward and rested a thumb on his sidearm. The gun was still in its holster. Its cover was unfastened.
Andy glanced at the deputy. “We have orders to take you in to the highway patrol headquarters in Price.”
“Take me in?”
“Escort you in.”
“It takes two of you to escort me?”
“Deputy Tanner is here to ride along with you.”
“Am I under arrest, Andy?”
“Trooper Smith,” he said.
“Am I under arrest, Trooper Smith?”
“Not unless you refuse.”
“Can I ask what this is about?”
The deputy spoke up. He had a thick neck and a broad chest. He puffed it out in case I might not have noticed. “You could. It wouldn’t do you any good.” His right hand on the butt of his gun, he reached around his back and produced a pair of handcuffs with his left. He rattled the cuffs between us. “What’s your pleasure?”
It was clear to me Andy didn’t care much more for his partner than I did. “No problem,” I said. “I’d rather Andy ride with me. You’re too tough. I might get hysterical and drive off the road. My insurance would go up.”
The three of us spent a long minute listening to the wind roar between us. Though I didn’t like the deputy, that wasn’t why I wanted Trooper Smith to ride along with me. The bad weather meant it was going to be at least an hour’s drive into Price. Maybe in that time Trooper Smith might turn back into Andy and tell me what the hell was going on.
Trooper Smith broke the standoff by simply walking to my truck. He stepped up on the running board and removed his hat. A gust of wind caught a small clump of wispy blond hair and stood it straight up. In the soiled red light he reminded me of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker. For no reason I could fathom, I thought of Duncan Lacey’s corpse in the refrigerator riding herd on the remaining cases of butter brickle ice cream. Without bothering to nod at Deputy Tanner, I followed Andy.
The deputy stood his useless ground while I maneuvered my rig onto 117. He still held the handcuffs, trying not to look like the last guest at a bad party. The wind took his hat. Our last glimpse of Deputy Tanner was as he chased his hat across the diner’s parking lot. Nothing commands less respect than a barrel-chested cop chasing his hat, especially if he’s holding handcuffs in one hand.
The wind rocked the cab from side to side. Neither one of us spoke. Nasty crosswinds howled loudly through the body fairing. We couldn’t have heard each other speak if we had tried. The empty trailer was a metal sail. It caught the wind broadside, occasionally sending us snaking sideways onto the soft shoulder.
Andy took off his sunglasses and his hat.
Sooner or later there would be rain. The cauldron of wind and sand would stir up some moisture and the result would be even more messy and treacherous. Walt would stay on the ridge above the model home for as long as it took, no matter what the conditions. All night if necessary. This wasn’t a possibility I wanted to consider. I cursed at the weather, forgetting about the sensitive ears of my Mormon passenger.
Once we had turned north toward Price at the junction with U.S. 191, the wind slapped harmlessly at the trailer from behind. The sun sank deeper into its brown bed.
Andy stared straight ahead toward Price. “You’re an okay guy, Ben.”
“But?”
“But I think you’ve really stepped in it this time.”
“Stepped in it?” I repeated. “Is that an old Mormon saying? Or a legal assessment of my situation?” When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I get it. This is serious. I’m telling you, for the record, I haven’t committed a crime. I’m innocent.”
My comment lit up a smile on Trooper Smith’s face. “I doubt that.”
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?”
“I don’t know, Ben. That’s the truth.” Andy checked the side mirror. Deputy Tanner was riding our tail with every flashing light he had. Talking to the mirror, Andy said, “What I know is that all the big phones started ringing this morning. There were even bigger phones making the calls.”
“How big?”
“Big. Attorney general. Special investigations captain.” He whistled softly. “Governor.”
I tapped the brakes. Deputy Tanner swerved onto the shoulder to avoid becoming a flashing blue and red suppository. “That explains the presence of Deputy Tanner,” I said. “I guess the governor calling makes me an advancement opportunity.”
“You staying out of trouble?”
When I said I was, he remarked that the condition of my face suggested otherwise.
“Walt Butterfield,” I said, as if that should explain everything.
It did. Andy shook his head. “Last year he punched a tourist who refused to leave without getting a piece of pie.” Trying to sound as if he were inquiring about nothing more important than the time of day, Andy asked, “Anything unusual happening on 117?”
It had been an interesting couple of weeks. I had discovered an abandoned housing development, gotten laid, and was in love. In the process I’d had the shit kicked out of me by an old man who, although he might be my best friend in the world, kept the corpse of his dead wife’s rapist in his bathroom. Almost as an afterthought, there were both halves of a fugitive bank robber in my refrigerator unit.
“Unusual? You mean in general or for 117?”
“I mean like millions of dollars unusual.”
I glanced over at Andy and felt my knuckles go white around the wheel. “No,” I answered. “That would be unusual. UFOs. The occasional killing. Last year I heard about a talking dog, which, by the way, was true. The dog only spoke French. No one paid much attention. That’s the usual. If everyone—man, woman, child, and talking dog—sold everything they had and then borrowed everything they could, among them they couldn’t raise a million dollars. Except maybe Walt. Millions of dollars? Now, that would be unusual. The entire town of Rockmuse wouldn’t bring more than a couple of dollars. That’s if you could find a buyer.”
“Millions are involved,” he said. “That’s all I know. And you, Ben. You’re involved somehow. I’m just following orders. Doing any more is a couple of notches above my pay grade. Whether you know it or not, you stepped in something that smells. Being innocent probably won’t help. If you were a Mormon it might not help.”
Andy’s remark about not being a Mormon struck a serious chord. I was no one, doing a nothing job a hundred miles up the asshole of nowhere. I wasn’t a Mormon. I tried, more or less successfully, to convince myself that whatever the trouble was, it had nothing to do with Claire. Runaway wives didn’t usually merit this kind of attention from the law. If they did, the local law wouldn’t have time for the fun stuff like homicides and drugs. The idea that Claire and her husband might somehow be the source of my immediate woe wouldn’t quite go away.
“I’ve been thinking of converting,” I said.
Andy didn’t respond, not that he needed to.
I’d heard that the Mormon church had been converting dead Jews for years, going that extra mile to save souls. Of course, I wasn’t as worried about my soul as I was my skin. But saving the souls of long-dead Jews? This was exactly the kind of pioneering spirit you had to admire, if it didn’t piss you off too much. It didn’t sit all that well with the Jews. Recently they had struck a deal with the Mormons to knock it the hell off. No word from the souls on how they felt either way.
By comparison, run-of-the-m
ill evangelical Christians were a bunch of slackers. They confined their proselytizing to the living. All the same, I had a vision of church elders running around Jewish graves with nets, scooping souls out of the air like Hebrew butterflies that were destined to be dried and mounted with pins under glass on an LDS ancestry register. The thought made me laugh.
Andy took notice of the laugh. “Glad to see you still have a sense of humor. You’re going to need it.”
That was true. I hoped I had enough to go the distance. I’d be riding this problem out as I usually did, without a safety net. Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel-dragging working American, it wouldn’t matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything.
Andy understood this reality as clearly as I did. The stink, real or imagined, had attached itself to me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was a falling man. At this stage all I was really curious about was how the concrete was going to feel against my head. It was almost exciting.
Andy instructed me to drive my rig into the gated impound lot next to the squat brick one-story building that served as the local headquarters for the Utah Highway Patrol.
The parking lot in front of the entrance was full of cars. Most of them were Price City police and sheriff cruisers. It was a frightening display of jurisdictional camaraderie, like carrion eaters making elbow room for each other at a tiny buffet.
I set the brake, turned my engine off, and looked around the cab as if leaving home for good. At least the leasing company holding the paper wouldn’t have to bother Bob to unlock the gates at the transfer station. Andy put on his hat and sunglasses.
I held out my wrists. “You want to accessorize me, Andy? I don’t mind. Someone needs to look good. It might as well be you.”
Andy peered out over the rims of his sunglasses. “No,” he said. “I don’t need to look good. I am good. I’m a Mormon.” He forced a smile and slapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck, Ben.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m going under, Andy. Bankrupt. I’m drowning in red ink. Today was my last run. If I’d stumbled across millions of dollars I’d know it. And I’d be a million miles away from here.”
Andy shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Everyone knows you’ve been struggling. Run off with millions of dollars?” The idea made him laugh. “You wouldn’t take five dollars. You can’t even bring yourself to collect what’s owed you by the people who need you. You’re a decent, honest man, Ben. Flawed, like all of us, but honest.”
“Is that your professional opinion?”
“Better,” he said. “That’s my Mormon opinion. Not that it makes any difference.”
“Can I ask you a favor?”
He nodded.
“Tell Walt where I’m at?”
Andy nodded again. “Anyone else?”
I thought of Ginny. “No,” I said.
My door opened. Deputy Tanner jingled the handcuffs up at me. In a voice as quiet as iron and yet courteously measured, Trooper Smith leaned around me and said, “Get out of here, Tanner.”
The deputy walked away like a spurned suitor. Andy said, “I’m not supposed to tell you, but this is just questioning, Ben. It might not turn out as bad as you think. Just don’t be an asshole.”
“Me? What happened to honest, decent?”
Andy sighed. “You are. But you are not exactly unknown to law enforcement around here. From time to time you have been an honest, decent, and stupid asshole. Don’t make this worse. You have to trust.”
Without much enthusiasm, I said, “I guess I’ll trust the system then.”
“Not the system, Ben. God.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing I had no choice. But I couldn’t help remembering that advice hadn’t worked out so well for Jesus.
Andy followed me through the side entrance down a narrow corridor lined with red brick and cops without pastries. They seemed to be licking their fingers all the same.
I went through the metal detector, followed by the wand, and then the pat-down followed by the wand again. They weren’t taking any chances with a desperado like me. The fact that I didn’t set off any buzzers seemed to disappoint the crowd. Near as I could tell, there were deputies from two counties, a handful of Price officers, and a couple of Utah troopers, one still dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, as if he had been yanked off his sofa at home. His badge was pinned to his shirt.
Andy opened a metal door stenciled with a black 1. It struck me as a bit odd. I knew for certain there wasn’t a 2 or a 3. He pointed to a metal chair, one of two, at one end of a metal table, one of one.
“Take a seat, Mr. Jones.” I was Mr. Jones again, and Andy was Trooper Smith.
There wasn’t a one-way mirror. Law enforcement had gone high tech. The black marble lenses of two cameras rested discreetly at opposite corners near the low ceiling of the tiny room. I sat down. Experience had taught me that no matter how big a hurry cops were to bring you in, once you got there you were in for a wait. It was an opportunity to ferment your misdeeds and let the little bubbles of fear rise to the surface. The hope was you’d pop like a champagne cork at the first question.
I rested my forearms on the cold table, folded my hands, closed my eyes, and climbed the hill above Desert Home. I saw Claire on her porch. She was waving good-bye to a man I had never met and, if my luck held, never would. He got into the compact SUV I’d seen earlier and prepared to leave with the only thing he cared about—the cello. It was as satisfying a daydream as I have ever had. I was startled when I heard his car door slam shut behind me—it was the door to the interrogation room. I kept my eyes closed.
The legs of the metal chair across from me screeched against the floor. Something large and soft landed on the table, probably a file. I smelled Right Guard deodorant and sweet tobacco. A man sat down and made himself comfortable. He stared quietly at my closed eyes. Another man stood behind me near the door.
After a while the man grew impatient watching my eyelids. “Do you play a musical instrument, Mr. Jones?”
Without opening my eyes, I said, “I’d have to say no. Though I confess I’ve played my own flute.”
The man at the door stifled a hitch of laughter. A look passed between the two men. I felt it graze the side of my head. It was that kind of look.
The man at the door said, “Give this man your attention, Ben.”
The man wasn’t Andy. It was a familiar voice I couldn’t place. He knew me well enough to call me by my first name, and he wasn’t bothered by the informality. I let my eyelids drift slowly up to reveal the man in front of me one slice at a time. He wore a brown tweed jacket that was too small for him, a white shirt, and a red knit tie that strangled a thick neck. His thinning gray hair and the round rimless glasses he wore were out of place on such a large body. Even his mustache and goatee seemed too small for him. He looked like a retired NFL lineman who had awakened one day to find himself an overweight high school math teacher. He offered me his hand. “My name is Ralph Welper. My friends call me Doc.”
We’d never met, but I knew who he was from Ginny’s description. I ignored his hand. “Let’s give it a few minutes,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come up with a name that better suits you.”
I glanced over my shoulder to the man at the door. It had been a long time since I had last seen him. “Hello, Coach,” I said, almost happy to see him. “Under the circumstances, should I call you Captain?”
“I always preferred Coach,” he answered. “You don’t have to address me at all. Just direct your responses to Mr. Welper. I’m only here as a kind of chaperone.”
“For him or me?” I asked.
In addition to being in the Utah Highway Patrol, Dunphy had been my high school baseball coach. Usually teachers doubled as coaches. He was the exception. He had been an all-American in college, pitching for Brigham
Young, followed by a year in the minors.
While I spent twenty years driving 117, Coach Dunphy had been transferred all over Utah as he moved up the ranks. I’d heard he’d made captain. At over six feet, he was still every bit of the lanky kid who at one time had the eleventh fastest pitch in the American League. He was casually leaning with his back against the closed door. His gun-blue uniform fit like a tailored suit. He didn’t answer my question, not that I expected that he would.
Dunphy instructed me to take the man’s hand.
I complied. Briefly.
Welper said, “I wasn’t aware that you two were acquainted.” He was genial enough, but obviously bothered by the connection. “As pleased as I am to be the cause of your little reunion, I’d like to get down to business.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Can I ask you a question first?”
He nodded, eager to have the conversation under way.
“Is there a young kid, a teenage girl, or maybe a boy, in your neighborhood? Someone you’re friendly with?” He was obviously surprised at my question. He shrugged. “Sure, a couple of them, I guess. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering if you were screwing one of them? How would you feel about me asking one of them if you were?”
Captain Dunphy barked my name in rebuke. Mr. Welper held up his hand to reassure the captain. He removed his round glasses and set them on the file folder between us. He knew I was referring to his conversation with Ginny. “I wouldn’t like it one damn bit,” he said. “But if doing so was part of your job, I’d understand it.”
I turned toward the captain. “Why don’t we ask Captain Dunphy what part of your job calls for talking to a pregnant teenage girl the way you did?” Welper didn’t like the way our conversation was going. The captain shifted his weight against the door and said nothing. My guess was Dunphy didn’t know of Welper’s conversation with Ginny. He might not have cared even if he had known. I liked to think he might.
Welper apologized, except there wasn’t any apology in it. He opened the file and skimmed the contents of the top page. When he was done he made a point of letting me know he was doing an inventory of bruises and scabs on my face. “It seems you have a taste for violence, Mr. Jones. Several years ago you shot and almost killed a man.”
The Never-Open Desert Diner Page 20