Pursuit

by Gene Hackman

  It was this thinking that further upended Julie, just on her way out for a slow walk. She had given a lecture to Cheryl about their financial situation—generally, to tighten their unnecessary spending, and specifically, to allot their dollars more carefully.

  In Julie’s divorce settlement, desiring the least amount of ties to her ex-husband, she took no financial support from him but stipulated a trust fund for Cheryl’s college education. Perhaps a tough decision to live with when these tiffs with Cheryl erupted, but Julie would arrange for a truce with her later. She had considered going back to her maiden name, but kept Worth out of respect for her daughter. Getting into this conflict with her girl also reminded her of one particular argument with her ex many years earlier.

  Bart (or, as she would say, the rotten bastard she had been married to for less than a year) resisted living in their house, which her father had built after WWII. When questioned, her husband rambled, “It isn’t mine, it’s not something I built or paid for. Too many cute stories of your parents and all their junk.”

  “Junk? You didn’t know my parents, Bart, how can you say that?”

  “I know you and how you relate to them, your overly sweet recollections of ‘Dad used to say this,’ and ‘Mom sat there in the rocker,’ and ‘the dog pooped on the rug’ in such and such a corner. It’s all too cozy and homespun.”

  She had stepped out into the fall night air, like this evening, knowing then that to stay inside with her husband would lead to trouble.

  But he came out looking for her. “Jules, get your ass in here. Stop the bullshit. You don’t like this broken-down shack any more than I do, so stop pretending you do. It’s full of memories of your old man and when you were Daddy’s little girl.” He mimicked a spoiled brat. Then Bart threw up his arms and went in to make a call. Walking back toward the house, she listened to his shielded conversation through an open window.

  “When do you want to get together?”

  She watched him through the multipane front door. He stood more erect, grinning, his left hand fiddling in his pocket. She thought it wouldn’t be good for her or the expectant baby to pursue this stupid conversation any further.

  Julie turned and walked back to the house, her mind drifting over those past years.

  Her attraction to Bart mystified Julie. She liked classical music, Broadway tunes, and dance, while Bart existed on baseball, hockey, and boxing. She granted that theirs might have been a typical girl-boy difference, but Bart made his love of sports an inherited right, his father having been a minor league baseball player who had been released for deliberately hitting another player with a ball. His defense being “He asked for it.” It didn’t bother him that the other player was on his own team.

  Julie recalled another incident. Bart’s car starting up and backing down the gravel drive. He pulled up beside her and rolled down the passenger-side window. “Going into town to see whatshisname about that computer thing I told you about. Back soon.”

  “Horseshit.” Julie continued to walk.

  “What?”

  “I said you’re full of shit. You’re going out, pretending it’s to talk over your worldwide start-up computer ‘thingy,’ right?” She knew at that particular moment that she wouldn’t be growing old with Mr. Barton Worth.

  He had sped off in a huff, only to flash his brake lights and back up some fifty yards. “You’re a real bitch, you know that? I’m trying to make a better life for us with this programming idea for a better billing system, and you do nothing but piss all over it.”

  Julie leaned against the passenger-side door. “Doesn’t it bother you even a little that I’m pregnant and you’re hotfooting it around town with your computer boyfriend? Doesn’t that rock your self-centered world just a little, Bart baby?”

  When he slammed the car into park and got out, Julie thought that Mr. Manly Man was going to prove himself right by beating the piss out of her.

  It wasn’t a trouncing in the classical sense but more of a mauling, a grabbing hold of arms and scuffling on the dirt road. It took more than a “Get in the car, bitch!” and “You kiss my ass!” before Julie went down.

  “Why didn’t you get in the car when I told you? Now look what you’ve made me do. Get up.” He reached down and offered her his hand; she spit on it.

  “I wouldn’t feel right about having you assist me up after I made you knock me down, so fuck off.”

  It was, as she got back to the house, a resolution; a sense of closure. She knew she’d reached a change in her life, one that didn’t include Barton Worth.

  The state patrol opportunity, though, had been the right choice, but her time as a rookie did not pass uneventfully. Her partner at the time hit with a baseball bat as they attempted a drug arrest at a dope house. Tommy had walked much too boldly into the suspect’s apartment. He saw the woman, looking contrite and scared, standing against the kitchen wall, her arms cramped behind her. Tommy moved as if to walk past her, and the woman lashed out with the metal bat. He never regained consciousness. The druggie’s wife swung the bat again. Julie yelled “Freeze!” to no effect. The missus continued her windup and uncoiled. Julie stepped inside the arc of the bat and cracked the woman on top of the head with her Sig. The woman went down in a thud. Julie’s misgiving came immediately. A young girl stood between the parting of drapes separating the kitchen and living room.

  “Mommy, why are you lying down? I’m hungry.”

  Every day for the next fifteen years, Julie tried to be an exemplary officer, never again wanting to hear a child’s voice pleading with its mother.

  The aftermath proved difficult. Because she was a rookie, her superiors and most of the older patrolmen treated Julie as an incompetent. The investigation exonerated her, but it stayed with her. The stigma of losing a partner as a rookie followed her long after others in the department had forgotten. She went out of her way to be thorough and fair, and gaining a reputation for being tough not only on lawbreakers but also especially on herself.

  His boss, William Arlen Drew—or Wad, as Charles called him in the privacy of his thoughts—confronted him earlier in the day with the notion that he, Charles, should be more aware of time, taking care to arrive when his coworkers punched the clock, taking only the prescribed breaks during the days, and making an effort to enjoy his fellow drones.

  He didn’t use the word “drone,” but he might as well have. “It’s incumbent for all of us to pull together; to create a sense of commonality in the workplace.”

  Each time Mr. Wad spoke to him, Charles grinned like a white-faced circus jester. He acquiesced by moving his head obediently from side to side or acknowledged him with a “Got it, sir” and sometimes a condescending “Wow, that’s terrific.” At least he would have described his days as entertaining.

  Quitting would have been easy. He didn’t, only because he had signed the property settlement as a youngster, and he enjoyed his present circumstance.

  Part of Charles’s deal with the company included an office. A needless waste, but it amused him to still be tied to Drew Inc. At thirty-eight, the envy of most other young guys in the plant, he was named disposition manager, a cooked-up position given to him after he’d worked the floor for twelve years. He never understood his duties, but it had something to do with solving problems, being a liaison between management and union, putting out labor fires, and holding hands. He appreciated the authority of his managerial position.

  He nipped a sexual harassment complaint in the bud, so to speak, when he presented the company with the woman’s resignation, a letter absolving her boss of any wrongdoing and her promise to Charles personally that she would settle in a place “far removed from Drew Inc.”

  “Congrats on cleaning up that Russell dung heap. She’s no longer a bother, right?” William Drew seemed to hate Charles and his unholy bond with the company but remained pleased with the outcome of the Russell situation.

  “Yep, the fifty thousand was money well spent, sir.”

&nb
sp; “You got the usual paperwork? Everything signed and agreed to?”

  “She wouldn’t meet with our lawyers, but I convinced her and her people that this was all the company could do. Otherwise, ‘See you in court, sweetheart.’ ”

  “You have such a succinct way of putting things. And she’s . . . left town?”

  “I can promise you, sir, you will not be hearing from her or her people.”

  Charles took pride in his persuasive ability. It took barely an hour to convince Miss Russell to relent, her painful options being slender and nil.

  The company never heard from her. Nor did anyone else.

  He also made a number of friends on the production floor. Charles gained trust by playing a tricky game of “I’m on your side, dude” to “The men can be handled, sir. We just have to convince them it’s in their best interest.”

  The pay was good, and his hours were made flexible by a series of white lies, outside meetings, and pure bullshit. No one alive, other than the senior Drew and a long-past-departed exec, knew of his sweetheart agreement with the company involving his lakeside cabin and grounds.

  He was, among other things, a lucky guy.

  A nice woman by the name of Deidre took care of him early on when he was just settling into his new office. If it hadn’t been for their torrid lovemaking, Charles would have considered her more of a mother figure. Her fastidious handling of his inexperience as disposition manager was touching. She coddled him. His favorite pastime was watching her walk away, her tight skirt and barely perceptible swagger reminding him of earlier times at the foster home.

  They played spanking games. Deidre scolding Charlie for his bad-boy behavior, and giving him numerous erotic chores to perform. While little Charlie whined and begged for his titty pie, Deidre laughed a lot. Baby Charles, though, took it dead serious. Deidre, when married barely ten months, drifted into Charles’s slim arms. Their brief affair didn’t seem to bother a working relationship that sustained itself for nearly five years. They never spoke of it, Charles now limiting his office flirting to an occasional pat on the behind.

  He reminisced, his thoughts drifting to topic A: his current enterprise, and the overwhelming piece de resistance project in his life.

  So delicious and special, he restricted his daydreaming to a paltry couple times per work session. Sometimes he would indulge himself to twice that. Why shouldn’t a man have a few hushed pastimes?

  On his way to Bait Shack, Charles passed the First Episcopal Church. He had attended a few times, always struck by the devoted. Their prayerful, self-conscious attitudes got the better of him. Although he liked their summer dresses, the women all stank of simple bathwater and cheap soap.

  Charles stopped at his front gate, the house situated considerably back from the road. His hundred-odd acres wasn’t a farm as such, just virgin timberland, and because of the lake, it seemed even larger. But most important, it was isolated.

  He reheated supper, a roast chicken from Splendid Farms, half of which he put back in the fridge. A fresh salad and a container of store-bought sweet beans divided between two plates. A muffin sat on a tray along with plastic utensils and fresh coffee. Charles looked at the inexpensive bottle of red wine and decided to be generous, pouring a substantial portion for himself and, in a large paper cup, an equal amount. He had tried a variety of enticements. Maybe a special dinner and wine would do the trick. He balanced the cup, paper plate, and coffee on the tray. Next to a heavy wood door, a large key ring hung from a hook. He took the key with the flashlight attached and opened the door to the basement.

  In the late evening, he watched the pundits on the Slyboots channel, admiring their preening and dismissive attitudes. The stark pale blue light of the television washed the room in melancholy. It reminded Charles of earlier days, running naked through the woods with Patty, her high-pitched laugh a stark contrast of things to come.

  He bounced the remote in his hands, suppressing an urge to shatter his television.

  Patty had been naive, exuberant in nearly everything she undertook. She believed the world to be dominated by truly good people. Surrounding herself with all manner of hangers-on at work, her treating friends like family became maddening. Bringing home strangers, he predicted, would bring about a cataclysmic event. To his chagrin, his childlike bride persisted in her innocent ways.

  Her quick tongue and wit annoyed him. He thought people of a certain caliber seemed arrogant to those of lesser education or advantages in life. Her pertness gnawed at him; a cheerfulness in the face of devastation rattled his very being.

  He enjoyed only her athletic body; a tribute to a lifetime of exercise. Patty finished her degree and went on to teach, saying to him nearly every day, “I want to experience everything before I die. The good, the bad, the sublime. I want my life to amount to something.”

  When Charles tried to explain to her the reality of the cold, cold world, she would laugh.

  “Reality is what one makes of it; beauty can be found in a trash heap.”

  And that is exactly where they found her.

  Julie didn’t mind the storeroom work. She devised a system, laying out files on a long worktable. Much of the text was standard procedure, dry statements of assaults leading to deaths, outright homicides, and abductions. As Captain Walker explained, most of the files were recently reviewed by other officers; their notes on the various events, self-explanatory.

  She had worked briefly on some of these herself. The Herod case, a homicide ten years earlier where the wife allegedly killed the husband and then disappeared. Cops called it a “forty-nine-dollar divorce,” in reference to the cheap Saturday night special handguns often favored in these killings. The woman’s picture in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looked provocative. Julie’s daughter, Cheryl, was almost seven at the time. She recalled her asking, “Who’s the pretty woman, Mommy? Did she do a bad thing?”

  “Dear, we just don’t know. We can’t find her. When we do, we’ll ask her. Okay?”

  They never found the woman; she’d simply vanished. An odd part of her job—pursuing people who harmed others. Not so much godlike in terms of discipline for the community but an attempt at balance for those who had been wronged.

  Julie, lugging a stack of files, knocked politely on Captain Walker’s door. “Got a minute, sir? I’d like you to take a look at a couple items.”

  “What’s up, Worth? What do you have?” He sat down, closing a Missouri State Patrol convention brochure and its intended agenda.

  Julie pulled a two-page report from her binder. “A disappearance seventeen years ago. That in itself is not unusual, but three others took place over a period of ten months—all within a couple-hundred-mile radius. At the time, they were thought to be runaways.”

  “Females, I presume.”

  Julie nodded. “Tracked a mother of one these women to a trailer park. When I phoned her, she says, ‘It took you near a decade or more to get back to us. Why you botherin’ now?’ I asked Mom if the girl took any items with her when she left: clothes, toiletries, anything. She said, ‘Marylou left cocky, naive, and naked as a jay.’ That doesn’t sound like a runaway to me.”

  Walker puzzled with a ring of keys, dropping them in an ashtray. “The problem with cold cases is they’re just that. People just don’t give a damn. Tell you what. Pursue the three-runaways in any order you want, but keep it to yourself.”

  “Oh, another gal. Name’s Preston. I’d like to talk to her about her sister’s disappearance. Okay?”

  “Keep it to yourself.”

  “Can I bring my partner into this?”

  “Not until your admin duty runs out. Otherwise, if the commish finds out, I’ll be down in the basement with you, and I am way too old for that. Good luck, and, of course, not a word of this to anyone.”

  “Mrs. Preston?”

  A slight pause. “Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Sergeant Juliette Worth. Missouri State Patrol, Criminal Investigation.”

  �
�Criminal?”

  “No need to be frightened. Are you Beverly Preston?”

  “Maybe.”

  Julie thought she’d heard some strange answers to an “Are you so and so?” inquiry, but “maybe” was the weirdest.

  “May I have a few minutes of your time? I’d like to come out to your place and speak with you.”

  “Does this have to do with Betty? It will be several months before the sun crosses the equator, so day and night are still unequal.”

  Julie explained the recent opening of unsolved case files and that she would like to speak to a family member in regard to the missing Betty Preston. Telephone number changes were made over the years, the victim’s family having kept the police department up to date. Preston agreed to have Julie come to her home. Julie wasn’t sure it would lead to anything, but it was good to get out. She got into her Dodge Charger work vehicle, appreciating the drive to Walnut Springs, a bedroom community just twenty miles west of Saint Louis. She could get to the Preston house before the spring equinox. She smiled at her own joke.

  She drove down a dirt road scattered with homes that sat a hundred feet back, all of them featuring well-tended yards. Grassy expanses stretched through a culvert area right up next to the road’s shoulder.

  The door to the suburban cottage opened right away, answered by a woman who appeared older than her years.

  “Mrs. Preston?”

  The woman seemed distracted. She opened the screen door without speaking and ushered Julie into a pleasant though sparse living room. Dressed in baggy sweatpants and a faded T-shirt proclaiming she’d visited Meramec Caverns, a former hideout of the outlaw Jesse James, she gestured for Julie to sit.

  “You have a nice home, Mrs. Preston.”

  “Thank you, and it’s ‘Miss.’ I’m Betty’s sis; she was taller.” She raised her hand above her head.