by JoAnn Chaney
I’ve been spending plenty of time out in the park, you know, she’d said.
He hiked down to the bottom of the cliff, enjoying the feel of the sun on the back of his neck and shoulders. It was good being out after being inside for so long, even if it was down to the same spot where he’d last been with cops and rangers. Almost two hours down, picking through the underbrush and along the trail that sometimes faded away to nothing. Past the withered, blackened tree he remembered from last time and along the edge of the frothing river. It’d been almost a month since he’d last been here and it was much warmer than he remembered, an Indian summer, the air warm and full of bugs, and he stopped several times and dipped his hands in the river, all the way past his wrists.
He almost missed the spot beneath the cliff, just like he had the last time, almost kept walking right on but caught himself at the last moment. He shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand and looked up, felt the gentle spray of moisture coming up off the river and misting against his arms and the backs of his calves. The cliff seemed so far from down here, and he wondered how it must’ve been for Marie, dangling from the edge of it. But how had she managed to make it safely down? He still didn’t know. He couldn’t tell anything from this point, because there was nothing to see from so far down, but it must have been terrifying. His wife was tough, he had to give her that much.
There was a crunch of gravel behind him and he whirled around. He’d been alone the whole way down, hadn’t seen another soul, and he’d let his guard down. At home everything was so quiet. The girls had gone back to school without saying good-bye, and the TV was his only company, although he didn’t turn it on much. It was as if everything was listening, waiting for Marie to come back, and his ears were always straining for the sound of her. Her light footsteps on the stairs, the sound of her hand trailing against the banister. But out here his ears had been filled with twittering birds and the rush of the river, and he’d stopped paying attention until now. It could’ve been an animal making that sound, it could’ve been the wind snapping a branch off a tree, but it was too deliberate, and he knew who was standing behind him before he’d fully turned.
“Marie,” he said. He’d known who it was, but he still couldn’t believe his eyes, couldn’t make his brain believe she was actually there, twenty feet behind him, watching, her back to the river. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
A muscle in the side of her neck jumped, then stilled. It was the only part of her that moved, except her eyes, which were wide and glittering like gems in the bright midday sun. He’d always thought her eyes were a honey brown, but now, from where he was standing, they seemed to be devoid of any color at all. They were all pupil. Nothing but black.
“Hi,” she said. That was all. She’d lost weight, enough that he could see it by the way her cheeks were hollowed out and the tendons in her neck stood out like ropes. There was a bruise under her eye, faded and yellowing, and a scratch running down the side of her face. The sweatshirt she was wearing hung down to her knees, and one of her arms had been wrapped in a sling and was held awkwardly against her chest. The blue jeans she was wearing were far too big, making her look like a little girl playing dress-up.
“You said you left the police a surprise,” he said. He had the knife in his hand, had come all the way down carrying it. Just in case. “Are you the surprise?”
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “I knew you’d come out here if I called.”
“What do you want, Marie?” he demanded. Without thinking, he lifted the knife and shook it at her. She didn’t look impressed. “Why can’t you just go away?”
He took a step toward her. The river was still running high and fast, and he had the knife. If he could get close enough, if he ran at her hard with the blade out and then pushed her in—
“Don’t do that,” Marie said sharply.
“Do what?”
“Come any closer,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You always do,” he said.
The birds had fallen silent, he noticed.
“Did anyone follow you out here?” she asked, peering up the path he’d come down and up at the cliff. He took another step closer while she was distracted. Fifteen more steps, maybe twelve—that would get him there.
“No,” he said. “The cops are busy. I told them everything. What’re you going to say when they find you?”
Marie smiled and tilted her head to one side. It was her same smile, the one he could remember from last month, last year. Twenty-four years ago.
“They’re not going to find me,” she said. “Besides, they’ve already figured out everything on their own. I only helped a little.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. Another shuffling step.
“Stop right there,” Marie said mildly. “I’ve been getting strange phone calls. From one of the cops. A woman. She knew it was my number, she must’ve gotten it from when I called you. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“What did the cop say to you?”
“Oh, I never answered. But she left a voice mail. Several voice mails, actually, telling me what you’d said. How you’d blamed me for everything. She even played a recording of you, so I’d know she was telling the truth. Of course, I’d already figured all that out, so her calls just confirmed it.”
“Why would she call you at all?”
“To taunt me. Try to piss me off and get me to come after you, I think,” Marie said. “So I thought I’d do the same thing to get you out here. And it worked.”
Marie reached behind her back then, and when her hand reappeared it was holding a gun. The movement was so smooth and casual that it was like a magic trick. It was a small gun, snub nosed and dull silver, very much like the gun she’d shot him with so long ago.
“I just wanted to see my husband one last time,” she said. “I wanted to see what I felt when I saw the face of the man who wishes I was dead again. And I love you. Even after everything, I still do. I’ve tried to make myself stop. I’ve never understood how I could love you so much, and hate you at the same time, too.”
She straightened her arm, aiming the gun at his face.
“I should’ve done this twenty-three years ago,” she said. “Think how much trouble I could’ve saved the two of us.”
“Put the gun down!” Spengler shouted. She stepped out of the trees and onto the gravel of the river’s shore, Loren close behind her. They both had their guns drawn and pointed at Marie.
“Man, the two of you just can’t stay away from each other, can you?” Loren yelled.
Marie was distracted, watching the cops come out of the trees, so Matt took the opportunity and lunged. Ran the dozen or so steps at her, the knife out. It was sharp enough that it would slide right through her skin and past flesh and bone to the innards beneath, and there wouldn’t be time to call for medical assistance, and his wife would die here, on the shore of the Three Forks River. He saw all of this happening in his mind, and then Marie whipped around to face him, the gun still out, pointed at his head, right between the eyes. No way she could miss, not from this distance.
She was always one step ahead of him, it seemed.
Marie pulled the trigger.
There was the blast from the gun, and he felt the heat of the bullet entering his flesh, strangely familiar, not into his head but into his chest, and he thought that she might’ve shot him in the same exact spot she’d shot him before, even though she hadn’t been trying to kill him that time. But history repeats itself, doesn’t it?
The bullet had hit him, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from barreling forward and shoving the knife into Marie’s gut, and the force sent her flying back, end over end, somersaulting through the air until she came down into the river, the arms of water reaching up and seeming to embrace her, to suck her down into their depths. Matt managed to stand long enough to watch his wife get swept away in the fast curr
ent and then he collapsed, a pool of blood spreading around him.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
October 1, 2018
“Ortiz is back in town,” Preach said. “Didn’t I tell you, Ralphie? He just wanted to shake you up a little.” There was a crackle and buzz over the speaker. Preach must’ve been on his cell, in an area with shit reception. “Wanted to see if you’d break down and admit to anything. There’s a new suspect in the case, so you’re outta the hot seat.”
Loren closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair. Outside his open office door he could see the bustle of Homicide, gearing up for a busy fall. The temps had dropped and the overcast sky seemed to be threatening snow instead of rain.
“That’s why I called,” Loren said. “Ortiz left me a note before he skipped town, taped to my door. Said he knew what he knew, but I’d somehow managed to pull a fast one on him.” Loren paused. “But I didn’t do shit, Preach. Do you know what happened?”
Preach sighed.
“It’s been taken care of, Ralphie. That’s all you need to know.”
Loren closed his eyes.
“What’d you do?”
There was a long pause.
“Turns out old evidence resurfaced connecting Gallo to a drug ring up in Philly,” he said. “Looks like he was making some extra cash by working with some dealers, but he crossed the wrong guys and ended up with a bullet in his head. A guy out in Terre Haute already confessed to killing Gallo.”
“Preach—”
“This particular guy didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of walking free even before this confession, so it doesn’t much matter one way or the other,” Preach said. He sounded almost cheerful. “Another life sentence added on top of the five he already has—a dead man walking can’t get any more dead. You know what I mean, Ralphie?”
“Yeah. I guess I do.” It was more of the same, Loren thought. Good ol’ boys pulling together to protect their own. It wouldn’t have taken much to convince a man serving life at Terre Haute to confess to one more thing. Some cold hard cash, maybe, or a little something for the family he had outside. And it took care of everything. Case closed, because that’s all anyone wanted. To close a case, put it behind. Easy to follow, easy to swallow, like old Detective Reid said. “But listen, I’ve gotta tell you what happened—”
“Ralphie, let it go,” Preach said sharply. “I don’t know where this sudden spurt of honesty is coming from, but channel it in a different way. People say sharing is caring, but that’s the biggest pile of donkey shit I ever heard. Why don’t you pay your taxes on time, or start tipping your waiters a decent amount instead. Use that warm feeling you’re suddenly having to spread some good in the world.”
“Fuck you. I’m a great tipper.”
“Not from what I remember.”
“You don’t remember shit.”
“Maybe not.” Preach laughed. “But I’m serious, Ralph. You coming forward and getting shit off your chest is nothing but trouble. Better to let it go, that’s what I think. Keep your trap shut.”
“But—”
“Listen, I go down to Cincinnati sometimes,” Preach said, and Loren lapsed into silence. “There’s a nice lady down there, makes a helluva pot roast. She always asks about you.”
Loren had left Ohio thirty years before without a word and he’d never looked back, not even to check on Connie once. It’d bothered him for a long time, that he’d dropped and run, but it was what he did. He either got mad, or he got gone.
“She’s alive?” he asked.
“And doing real well,” Preach said. “She reached out about a year after you left. She was looking for you, and fed me some half-baked story about how Gallo had upped and run off with some stripper, left her with the baby. She’s got a couple kids, a half-dozen grandbabies. I had a little free time after you called, so I drove down there. Told her what was going on with you. She went pale, had to sit down. I thought she might’ve had a heart attack, but it was just shock. Then she brewed a pot of coffee and told me everything. She confessed.”
“No.”
“Yeah, I think she’s still carrying a flame for you, although I don’t understand how anyone could love a man with a face that resembles an ugly dog’s ass end.”
“Fuck you.”
“I think I’ll pass on that offer, Ralphie,” Preach said easily. “Anyway, she asked me to help keep you outta trouble. Made me promise I’d help, and you know me. I never could say no to a pretty face. And the only reason Connie got to keep her face pretty is because of what she did.”
It was easy to start over in those days, and Connie had done it. Janice Evans had done it, too.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then keep your mouth shut. Lucas Gallo was a piece of human sewage,” Preach said. “We all knew it and we dealt with it because he was one of us. Maybe we shouldn’t have. He’d been thumping that wife of his hard, and you were the only one who ever stepped in and said something. Maybe that makes us all shitheads. You always were the best of us, Loren. Not the best looking, but you know what I mean.”
“Fuck you, Cocksmoke.”
“But whatever Gallo got in the end, whoever gave it to him—he deserved it. And it really doesn’t matter how he ended up in that hole. It just matters that he got there, sooner rather than later.”
Loren grabbed a tissue from the box on his desk and blew his nose.
“You crying, hoss?” Preach said. “Is all my talk making your eyes well up, maybe giving you a little wood?”
“You remember that time you pissed on that electric fence? I bet that’s the most action you’ve seen in years. Your dick’s probably still smoldering.”
Preach snorted.
“Same old Loren,” he said. “See you soon, maybe?”
“Not unless you go to your mom’s house for dinner this weekend. That’s when I’m busy banging her.”
“Fuck you, numbnuts,” Preach said, but he was laughing. “My mom’s been dead for ten years, unless you’re into that necrophilia shit. One more piece of advice, Ralphie?”
“What’s that?”
“Quit whining and just take what life gives you. People are nice because you’re so damn ugly, and if sympathy kindness is all you’re getting you should be thankful.”
They hung up, and Loren blew his nose again. Would he ever go home, back to Springfield? Maybe a weekend trip to Cincinnati? Probably not. Too much bad shit had gone down out there, and he’d didn’t need that in his life anymore. And he’d keep his mouth shut, like Preach had suggested.
He sat up, shoved his feet into his shoes. He took them off when he sat at his desk because they’d been swelling lately, but it was a part of getting old. The Sunday edition of the Post had been on his lap and wafted to the floor, fell so he could see the front page. It was a photo of Matt and Marie Evans, and a short article about the events of the last month. Not that any news outlet had the whole story—hell, he wasn’t sure anyone knew exactly what had gone down between the Evanses, except that it was fucked up. But that’s how marriages were—like a private room for two, where no one else could see inside. And even if you could, you might not want to.
Looking at Marie’s picture on the front page, he realized she didn’t remind him of Connie so much anymore. Not at all, really, and he wondered why he thought it in the first place. He’d tried to see a connection, but there hadn’t been one.
Life isn’t a circle, he thought. Life is a diamond, with all the facets and points and corners reflecting the light back and forth so quickly that you can’t ever begin to figure out where it all actually started, or where it’s going to end.
GAVE AWAY THE THINGS YOU LOVED AND ONE OF THEM WAS ME
As much as everyone would’ve liked, it wasn’t the end.
There was a wire tree standing on the round table near the window, a foot tall and decorated with what looked like tiny eggs hung from hooks, painted in orange and black. He’d asked the nurse what the little tree was and was told
it was called a celebration tree. You could keep it up all year long and just change the decorations to fit the next holiday. Halloween was next, so the branches were sagging with little pumpkins and skulls.
There was a soft knock on the door, and then it pushed open before he could respond. It was the on-duty nurse, a woman named Kimmy, although Matt wouldn’t have remembered if it wasn’t written on the whiteboard beside his bed, the i dotted with an overinflated, cheerful circle.
“The police are here to speak to you,” Kimmy said. She was wearing pink scrubs with white hearts scattered across them, like she was still stuck back on Valentine’s Day. Or maybe looking ahead. “If you’re not feeling up to it yet, I’ll make them wait.”
Matt nodded. It was like it’d been before, with Reid visiting him in the hospital with all his questions. The same, even down to the bullet wound, although this time Marie had managed to hit farther from his shoulder and closer to his heart. He couldn’t remember any of the time after Marie had shot him, except for a brief few moments inside a helicopter, a paramedic leaning over and snapping an oxygen mask over his face. He’d woken up in the hospital, having already made it through surgery and into recovery, feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest. That was different than last time, at least—the pain. Worse because of where the bullet had gone this time, or because he was getting old?
He wasn’t sure.
You’re very lucky to have made it, one of the nurses had said to him.
He’d laughed at that, which had turned into a grimace, and then he’d clutched at his chest.
Luck wasn’t the reason he was alive, he wanted to say. Marie could’ve shot him in the forehead, she had a clear shot, and he’d seen her eyes shift at the last minute, and the gun’s muzzle drop. She could’ve killed him, but she’d decided to let him live.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I can talk to them.”
“I’m serious.”