The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  “Should be able to.”

  The second deputy walked up to the side of the dozer where the accident had happened. He spent a moment scrutinizing the area in front of the operator’s seat and noted the different controls.

  “He had to handle more than one of these levers, and unless he wore gloves, I’d say we can get a damn good set.”

  “It’d be a damn good start if we can,” Jack said.

  Jack noticed something between the inside of the bulldozer’s track and a back panel.

  “What’s this?”

  His partner looked. “Motor oil?” He grinned.

  “Not very damn likely,” Jack said. “And those flies don’t think so, either.”

  “Yeah, if that’s not blood, I’ll turn in my badge.”

  “And something else mixed in with it, huh?”

  “Yeah, it looks like hair…and a few pieces of flesh…”

  “A real mess…”

  Together, the two deputies peered at what increasingly resembled leavings from the floor of a butcher’s shop before being swept clean. The first deputy picked up a dime-size piece of flesh and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “It’s still moist,” he said.

  The conclusion came to both men at once.

  “We got a little more here than we thought, don’t we, Jack?”

  “I think maybe you’re right.”

  Both men gazed about, noting how the ground near the track had been disturbed. Jack knelt down and took a closer look. Here and there, he saw what he thought were discernible patterns in the dirt. Some of them resembled the telltale swirl of the underside of a running shoe, and others, the more symmetrical imprint of a cleated hiking boot. In places, they had been almost obliterated by the concentration of several feet in one area, but there were enough impressions to signify that several individuals had indeed been gathered close to the bulldozer.

  “It looks to me like they go off in that direction, toward the woods,” Jack said after another moment of studying the prints.

  “Yeah, and it looks like something was dragged or carried that way, too,” his partner agreed. “What do you think?”

  “I think we better check out the woods…”

  The two deputies picked up an obvious line of travel and walked along it. The combination of footprints and the visible track of something being dragged in the dirt took them away from the construction area and right up to where the line of trees and waist-high undergrowth began. Some of the undergrowth had been turned aside enough to make it evident that someone had entered the woods where they now stood.

  “What have we got, Jack?”

  His partner grinned. “I don’t know. But let’s find out.”

  The deputies stepped into the gap and, two or three yards in, found themselves under two trees where the brush had obviously been trampled down. Whit’s body was against one of the trees where it had been left, but had fallen to one side so that now it resembled a slumped-over, skid-row drunk. One side of his head had been almost flattened, and part of his face had been crushed in. His left shoulder and his left arm both showed signs of having been torn and chewed up.

  “Well, well, well, lookee here.” Jack said.

  “Yeah—ain’t this a bitch!”

  “Big time!”

  “Poor fucker got caught on the inside of the track.”

  “Yeah, just about pulverized him. A real restoration project for some funeral home.”

  “I’ll say.”

  A short while later, the first deputy was back at his squad car, radioing in the latest development. Jack, his partner, was addressing the workmen, who had been standing around for the better part of two hours.

  “For the time being, this is an official crime scene, gentlemen, so you may as well go home and stay there until further notice…probably a day or two, anyway. We’ve got a body over there in the woods, and as soon as our colleagues get here, we’ll be doing an investigation.”

  He handed a clipboard to the nearest man. “I’d like all of you to fill in your name, address, and phone number, in case we need to question anyone.”

  He turned to the security guard. “I’ll need your help with a composite sketch of the woman. Do you suppose you can do that?”

  The guard smiled haplessly. “I’ll do my best. But like I said, it was dark and she had a hood up over her head. All I could see was that she was blonde, with a lotta makeup.”

  “And she was about your height?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, this is more than just a run-of-the-mill case now, so whatever you can do to help is really important. Understand?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. Just hang out, for now.”

  The security guard and his supervisor returned to their cars, and the deputy went over to his partner’s car.

  “Roy,” he said, “I got my own theory about what happened here, but I’m gonna let homicide work it out. That’s what they get paid for.”

  “You’re right about that, Jack. Let them handle it. Say, did you bring any coffee with you?”

  “And donuts.”

  “That’s why you’re my partner!”

  23

  As a city engineer, Heidi’s husband usually spent long days conferring with other city engineers and in roundtable discussions with budget committees. As a result of the pressures and frustrations involved in oftentimes trying to push for conflicting agendas, Ed customarily anticipated a quiet evening at home, where, over a cup of oolong tea or a cold bottle of Guinness Stout, he could read the newspaper, peruse reports, do a crossword puzzle, play with his daughter, or just relax with a detective novel. Once away from work, he had few requirements other than to be allowed the opportunity to recharge his batteries according to his own predispositions.

  One of the requirements that he did have—in fact, insisted upon—concerned the expectation that his desire for peace and quiet be accommodated. He did not deem it too much to ask that Heidi keep to an acceptable noise level the sometimes heated debates that took place between her and other group members or among the group as a whole. Though he found distasteful what had turned into an activity that consumed much of her time and energy, though he did not approve of it, he could tolerate it so long as it did not interfere with his own life other than to the extent to which an infrequent dinner party might force him to spend the evening visiting friends or stay the night at his parents’ house. An occasional inconvenience was a small price to pay for domestic harmony, and so long as neither party violated a simple understanding of the rules, the arrangement worked well enough. For his part, when he came home at night, unless they had discussed it beforehand, he usually wanted nothing more than to settle into deserved and purposeful repose. He did not even care if dinner did not await his arrival. When it did, when Heidi had taken the trouble to prepare a full-blown meat-and-potato spread, complete with all the trimmings, he certainly appreciated the effort. Sitting down at the dinner table together reinforced the sometimes weakened sense of family unity resulting from practically separate lifestyles within the same household. Especially considering that he himself did not always come home at the same time, he could live with the inconsistency.

  But not with the noise.

  Arriving late, he had gone into the kitchen to fix himself a meal. He no intention of eavesdropping. Usually, when the basement door was open and he could hear Heidi and the others talking, even if their voices occasionally arose above a normal volume, he merely went about preparing a meal for himself and then retreated to the living room, where he couldn’t hear them at all. More often than not, if they were a little louder than usual, he just closed the basement door. Whatever discourse they were up to at the time, whether it involved politics, the imminent collapse of civilization due to global warming, or an injustice visited upon one minority group or another, moving about the kitchen, dishing up a plate of tortellini salad, or fixing a sandwich, he ignored them. As part of an agreement between
Heidi and himself, an agreement established long ago as a way to keep the peace, they made a genuine effort to maintain their separate spheres. The marriage had its dubious aspects, but in spite of, or perhaps because of, such an agreement, it had held together.

  Ed could not hear what they were talking about, but the tone could not be construed as anything less than fiercely argumentative. Though the door was closed, he could tell that tempers had gotten out of hand. Real anger was present. The normally respectful but animated exchanges had given way to outright accusations. Carlos’ voice, for one, rose and fell above the others, and as a distinct counterpoint to his wife’s, who was uncustomarily shouting. Whatever issue had cropped up, an apparent crisis had been triggered.

  Setting aside the package of cold cuts he had bought at the corner grocer’s for sandwiches, he quietly walked over to the door and cracked it open just enough to listen.

  “I’m not prepared to deal with something like this, Heidi!” he heard Carlos yell. “No fucking way! This was like a thunderbolt, man, and it’s not on any of my fucking maps! We’ve had our differences, you and me, but this shit is way outta the territory!”

  “You need to keep in mind that this isn’t a game we’re involved in, Carlos,” Heidi yelled back. “You know we’ve talked about it all along, and you’ve known about the risk…Everything we’ve done has carried a certain amount of risk, and that’s a given that goes with the territory. I can’t control it any more than you can…None of us can.”

  “You’re right about one thing, Heidi—it’s not a game, not now, anyway. You got no argument there. And the risk part—that’s true enough, as well. But what happened to Whit is not the kind of risk I signed on for. Maybe it was his own damn fault, maybe it was a stupid fucking thing to do, but that doesn’t change anything. It still happened!…I still have to deal with it! Okay?”

  “Remember Seattle, Carlos, when heads were getting busted and people were being sent off to jail?”

  “Yeah, I remember—I was there. What’s the point?”

  “Those people didn’t give up afterwards because some of them got hurt, did they? Some of the same people you knew went right out and continued to fight. They stayed the course. They stayed on track. And that’s what we need to do—”

  “That’s a great theory, Heidi. But we’re not talking theory here. Right now, we’re deep into reality territory, too deep for me.”

  “I feel as badly about it as anyone, Carlos,” Lisa jumped in. “But you’re making a mistake. Now’s not the time to cut and run. As an organization, we’re either committed to a cause or we’re not. Sure, we’ve had a letdown, and we all feel terrible about it. But we can’t let it mean the end. If anything, we have to draw some kind of strength from it.”

  “That’s exactly right, Carlos,” Jody said, eagerly picking up on the theme. “We’ve come too far as an organization to back out now. What happened out there was a battlefield casualty, and we have to think of it that way. Armies don’t quit fighting because some of their soldiers fall by the wayside. I recall that you, yourself, likened our effort to save the environment to the battle of Thermopylae. You said it took the same kind of courage and persistence to hold your ground…”

  “That was Mike that said that. He comes up with that kind of crap.”

  “It doesn’t matter who said it,” Lisa took over again. “What happened to Whit may not have been glorious. He didn’t go down with a banner in one hand and a spear or a sword in the other, but his cause—our cause—was every bit as noble. We, and everyone like us who shares a concern for the earth, are trying to hold the ground against the hordes of people who have not yet recognized what’s at stake.”

  “With all due respect, Lisa, I’ve heard different versions of this same speech before, and you know I feel the same way. But what I’m talking about here is getting my head around something that was not supposed to happen. And what I need to do is figure out where I go from here…”

  Ed had heard enough. Softly closing the door behind him, he went back into the kitchen. Spreading mayonnaise and mustard onto a slice of pumpernickel bread and layering it with thin slices of Black Forest ham, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles, he finished making the sandwich he had already started. He poured a bottle of ale into a glass and carried it and a plate with the sandwich on it into the living room. He set the plate and the glass on a side table next to his recliner, shut the double doors between the dining area and the living room, then, trying not to think about anything he had just overheard, he settled down to read the newspaper.

  § § § § § §

  The meeting in the basement broke up a couple of hours later. Ed, who had gone upstairs to bed, heard the group go out the front door and the front door close behind them. Lying atop the bed in his pajamas, he waited for Heidi to finish clearing the basement office of cups and saucers and then come upstairs. As she came down the hallway a few minutes later and entered the bedroom, he remarked that their meeting had lasted longer than usual.

  “It must have been something important, huh?”

  Heidi pulled her jersey over her head and laid it across the back of a chair. She kicked off her sandals and unbuttoned her jeans.

  “Nothing important, really,” she replied. “Just the usual stuff.”

  She pulled her jeans off all the way and put them with her jersey, over the back of the chair. In her bra and panties now, she went to the closet, where she removed a terry cloth bathrobe from the back of the closet door and put it on.

  “I’m going to take a shower.”

  Ed watched her leave the room and go across the hall to the bathroom. She probably knew that he had been listening; that their raised voices and quarrelsome tone had piqued his curiosity enough to overcome his usual scruples about eavesdropping. But judging from her attitude just now, she probably didn’t care. Whether he had heard everything or nothing at all did not obligate her to give him an account of herself.

  Thirty minutes later she came back into the room, wearing her bathrobe, with a towel around her head. She disappeared into the closet and came out in a flannel nightgown. She unwound the towel and, rubbing her hair vigorously, sat down on her side of the bed.

  “We need to talk.”

  She continued drying her hair, then put the towel aside. She looked at him over her shoulder. “What about?”

  “I overheard what you and the others were talking about this evening. You know I don’t usually do that, but I couldn’t help but hear…What the hell is going on, anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. It sounded like this fellow, whoever he is, got hurt badly, or worse.”

  “It was an accident. And, as you may have heard, since you were listening, we’re having trouble dealing with it.”

  “It sounded to me like Carlos is the one having the problem. From what I heard, the rest of you are dismissive of the whole thing and are prepared to carry on like before.”

  “Yes…we are. What happened was unfortunate, but the world doesn’t stop because someone has an accident. Life has to go on.”

  “Just exactly what kind of accident are we talking about, Heidi?”

  “Just an accident, Ed. It’s really none of your concern. We’ve taken care of the matter, anyway.” Picking up the towel, she got up and went into the bathroom. When she came back into the room a moment later, she went to the nightstand on her side of the bed and picked up a book.

  “I think I’ll go downstairs and read for a while.”

  “Do you suppose you could do me the courtesy of hearing me out? I’m not finished with what I have to say.”

  “Well, hurry up and finish.”

  Ed propped himself up on his elbows and pushed up against the headboard. Sitting cross-legged, he continued. “You know, this obsession of yours has gotten entirely out of hand. In the beginning, when we first got married, you talked about wanting to remain ‘involved,’ as you put it. But you never said you were going to carry it to the exte
nt that you have…”

  “What extent is that, Ed?”

  “What I’m talking about is, I never thought my wife would turn into a radical tree-hugger or whatever crazy activities you people are into now. It’s gotten a bit extreme, don’t you think, even pathological? It’s reached the point—”

  “It’s not pathological and it’s not crazy, Ed. It’s a vitally necessary reaction to—”

  “Spare me your standard stump speech about endangered species, environmental degradation, the heating up of the atmosphere, and all the rest of it. I’ve heard it all before. And it’s not the point, anyway.”

  “What is the point, Ed?”

  “Just this—this has to stop. It has to stop or I intend to take drastic action. Bottom line—I’ve had enough. I want my wife to be a wife and a mother, not some cockamamie firebrand running around raising Chicken Little alarm bells—”

  “By ‘drastic action,’ you mean exactly what, Ed?”

  His shoulders slumped and he made an outward gesture of frustration. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I mean, we don’t even talk anymore. And we hardly see each other. I get home late and you’re involved in one of your damn meetings or you’re out somewhere making one of your environmental statements or attending a rally of some kind. We live in the same house, but it’s like you’re always at one end and I’m at the other. Anymore, our paths hardly cross. And Jennifer—when was the last time we did anything together as a family?”

  “Oh, that reminds me…could you pick her up from Mother’s tomorrow? The women from the church auxiliary keep pestering me to donate some time.”

  He looked at her with an expression of sad hopelessness. Where he had once entertained the notion that he could appeal to her by pointing out how their marriage had become an untenable arrangement, barely qualifying as a marriage in any meaningful sense of the word, he now felt defeated and alone. After several years and numerous attempts to create some kind of balance between his own needs and her needs, he suddenly realized they had reached the point of no return.

  “Yeah, I’ll pick her up tomorrow,” he said.