Pursuit

by Gene Hackman

  “Don’t get lathered up. It was nothing; a woman from upstate, a government employee. Incidentally, how did we ever get to be so chummy? You are, I must remind you, still an underling. An employee.”

  “The party of the first part shall honor said agreement pertaining to—”

  “Yeah, yeah, right. Got it, spare me. The poor orphan child with the boo-boo on his hip.”

  “Broken hip, to be more accurate. Along with a broken leg and, I might add, the loss of a sweet friend, one Bink Caldwell.”

  They waited through an uncomfortable pause.

  “Tell me about this attractive member of the opposite sex. Was she trying to pierce the corporate hierarchy? Sexual harassment complaints in the workplace? Some people have all the fun. Were you caught massaging shoulders, pinching behinds?”

  “No, nothing quite so interesting. Just an inquiry of ancient times and events.” He stopped talking.

  “Are you holding out on your trusted employee and loyal friend, sir?”

  “A woman from the state police had a routine inquiry about that past unpleasantness concerning my niece.” The conversation seemed to be wearing out Drew. “You remember that, don’t you, Charles?”

  He took the appropriate amount of time in answering to fortify his seeming concern. “Sorry if I made light of what must still be a trying part of your life.” Suck it up, asshole. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No. It was all routine. They’re reopening several cases of disappeared girls stretching back a ways. I’m sure nothing will come of it, just some bureaucratic bullshit busywork for a cop. Must be a slow crime week.”

  Charles produced a laugh, trying to cover his interest. “What’s her name? I know a couple state-police types up there.”

  “Ware or something close. No, Worth. Yeah, Julie. Nice enough girl. Tough but still feminine. Thorough. Listen, pardner—gotta run. Call soon, will you?”

  “Yeah, right. I’ll do that.” No need for panic. A routine tying-of-loose-ends inquiry. Julie Worth. Maybe out of caution, take a closer look.

  He stood outside the house. The moon had not yet risen. Night birds broke the quiet evening hush. At least six hours had passed, his pace along the sparsely populated road slow and deliberate, occasionally broken by contrived jogging when the odd car approached. A billed cap helped fake an image of an avid health nut. He approached the darkened house and once again slowed. Earlier, he had watched from behind an abandoned shed from across the road. An early-model black Jeep Wrangler was parked outside the house with motor running, lights dimmed. Someone—it looked like a teenaged girl, with long blond hair—darted back and forth in front of a lit window. The car’s horn sounded an impatient toot. The moon started to rise by the time the girl appeared at the front door. She carried several duffel bags and sprinted toward the awaiting SUV. Exchanging words with the driver from the passenger-side door, she swore as she ran back into the house and disappeared. Then the porch light was doused, and the silhouetted figure once again raced to the car.

  He felt they were gone for the night, but he continued to pace what he now considered his nightly rounds. They’d be back; he had to be patient. Perhaps one of them, maybe both, would be introduced to his ring of C. The view from Cameltop.

  Back in her suite of private offices—or basement, as most people referred to it—Julie continued her dogged pursuit of past wrongs revisited. Three weeks into administrative duty, she so far she had spoken with one, and met with two of four missing girls’ relatives—diminished capacity Beverly Preston and William Drew. The redneck woman on the phone seemed uninterested. Gut feelings couldn’t always be trusted, but in the case of the factory boss, she was confident that he’d told her all he knew about niece Trudy.

  Pastor Garthwait, the name being unusual, sounded familiar to Julie. His listing in the phone book came up the same as in the 1995 police file. After listening to eight bars of “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the phone before a human came on, Julie readied herself for a holier-than-thou pastor.

  “We are blessed on this God-given crystal day. Would it be amenable to meet here at God’s temple within the hour, Miss Ward?”

  “It’s Sergeant Worth, and let’s say twenty minutes.” Julie glanced at the grey muddled sky and thought it would be more likely to produce rivers and lakes than crystal.

  On the way out of the building, she bumped into Walker leaving for lunch.

  “Worth!” he called out over his shoulder. “Check with evidence, they’ve got something on the ring we picked up from your Preston gal, okay?”

  Julie parked out front and let herself into the modest white frame building. “Reverend?”

  Pastor Garthwait sat in the front pew of his church, a well-worn King James Bible open on his lap. He turned, stiff-necked, to Julie’s greeting. “You are Sergeant Worth?” He continued, not waiting for a reply. “I’ve been sitting here contemplating”—he motioned for Julie to sit in the pew next to him—“why one covets. The Book states one should not covet our neighbor’s wife nor his house nor—”

  “Excuse me, all good thoughts, but could we speak of your daughter’s 1995 disappearance?”

  The man held the Bible to his forehead.

  “Sir?”

  “Sorry, I needed to give thanks for this message from Him, of our departed.”

  “To be honest, there isn’t any message as such.” She wasn’t sure if any of this would be pertinent. “As I explained on the phone, this is just a follow-up on what we, in the department, refer to as a cold case.”

  “She left as she lived, swiftly and without regard. There was a man, several times seen in the back of the church.” Once again the pastor stretched his neck toward the entrance of the gallery. “Just there, close to the choir loft steps. In thinking back upon it, I recall a smile, not one of warmth but of knowing a vast hidden story—an enigmatic presence.”

  “Did you at the time describe this man to the police?”

  “Yes, I gave as his description ‘a Satan-like presence, diminutive in stature.’ There seemed a glow surrounding him. Others who witnessed him were blinded by his aura.”

  “Was there ever a composite drawn of this man?”

  “I don’t recall. But those who did attest to his presence now dwell in heaven. Gone the way of all flesh.”

  Julie read several eyewitness observations in the reports of a stranger loitering in and around the church several Sundays preceding the young woman’s disappearance, but the accounts were vague and contradictory. One report detailed the man as being middle-aged and white. Another described him as clean cut with slicked-back dark hair; a third said he was definitely Hispanic. But all described him as being of less than average size.

  “Was there ever any word at all from your daughter?”

  “I speak to her at night when the calm envelops the earth. Her image comes to me as a shivering child spending the dark night naked without clothing and without covering against the cold, driving her sainted mother to utter distraction. The last we knew of her, she snooped through her mother’s jewelry box.”

  “Was there anything of value missing?” Julie didn’t recall any mention of jewelry in the report.

  “Value, you mean as in worth? Monetary? One cannot measure what one holds dear. Did it have merit, what she took? Her great-grandmother’s gift to her daughter and then passed on. Value, you ask?” His voice rose, agitated as if sermonizing. “Yes, a deep, painful keepsake; a treasured inheritance. My grandmother was an ancestor of the American Revolution; she treasured her one true item of vanity.”

  “And what was that, sir?”

  “A circled bangle, my child.” Once again he raised the Bible to his forehead, this time with his left hand, his right reaching into Julie’s lap to clasp her folded hands. He held them for just a moment, and then excused himself, walked past the pulpit, and through a paneled door.

  Julie made her way to her unmarked Charger, her hands damp from the reverend’s unexpected pawing. What in the
hell is a bangle encircled? she thought. A piece of jewelry with a band around it? A bauble with a band? Baubles, bangles, bright shiny beads. Ah, Kismet, she mused. Truly a stranger in paradise. Considering the business she was in, “paradise” was too strong a word.

  The one constant in the eyewitness accounts, a “less than average size” description. Cold cases should be left just that. Cold.

  The woman in charge of the evidence locker was of a different sexual persuasion. Being rebuffed by Julie several years earlier had made her less than cooperative ever since. Rather than a “What’s up?” or a “How’s it going?” greeting, she met Julie with a below-freezing attitude.

  “I’d like to take a peek at the evidence in that missing-child case. The name was Preston, I think.”

  “You think? No evidence number? You believe we catalogue evidence under ‘I think’?”

  Julie examined her shoes, smoothed out her belt, and sipped in air. “Check under ‘Preston,’ and if it’s not there, give Captain Walker a call on his cell. He told me to take a look at this case. He didn’t have an evidence number, but I’m sure if you disturb him at lunch, he’d be glad to give it to you. Okay, Maddy baby?”

  The woman went into the back of the cage and returned holding a file box with an envelope attached. “Sign the register.”

  Julie did so, noting time and date. “You might want to put this in your memory bank—one little word for the future, Madeline.”

  “What’s that, Juliette?”

  “The word is ‘Sergeant.’ Don’t forget it.”

  The woman gave a halfhearted salute and returned to a table piled with bagged and tagged evidence.

  The ring sat nestled in a layer of cotton. Julie used tweezers to lift and turn the piece in the light. The lab’s exam hadn’t taken much of the caked debris from the object. Here and there a bit of shiny metal but, all in all, much the same. In the envelope, a description of the article.

  1. item 5205. Preston estate.

  2. one gold ring. Size 6

  3. age of item. Undetermined.

  4. missing jewels on left side.

  5. blurred insignia. Possible “delta” letter in ring’s center

  It continued on for almost a full page. Most of the information, routine.

  “Do you have a magnifying glass, Madeline?”

  The property clerk reached into a drawer and handed a rectangular magnifying glass to Julie. “Sign, please.”

  Julie looked closer at the ring and spoke to Madeline at the same time. “If I have to sign for this glass while standing at this counter for thirty seconds, I’m going to make your fucking life miserable.” She lowered the glass and tossed it back to Madeline.

  “Why you giving me shit?”

  “I think you’re aware of why. A simple ‘no’ doesn’t seem good enough for you. I have nothing against your lifestyle, but it’s not for me, and you seem to have taken offense. Get over it. That’s the last I’ll say on the subject. Give me an evidence withdrawal form.” Julie signed it and went to her file room on the same level.

  In the strong light above her worktable and with her own high-powered magnifier, she discerned an embossed, damaged B or D for the first and third letters, and in the center of the ring, a triangular shape that looked like the letter A, or Greek symbol for alpha.

  Julie continued to consider the ring and once again scanned the item with the magnifying glass. The third letter might also have been an R without the bottom stem of the letter. On closer examination, she saw a spot where glue could have held the diagonal leg of the letter. But it didn’t make sense, a fraternity or sorority ring with an R.

  A full moon lit the sky in a blue-grey wash, and trees and bushes cast dark shadows against gently rolling hills.

  The lone figure stood on what local hikers referred to as Cameltop, the large, rocky hump being a challenge even to the best outdoorsmen. The night climber had a series of steps that only he knew. It had been, over the years, a simple matter of moving a few rocks at the bottom of the escarpment. When he was finished with his nocturnal ascent, he would place them back, sometimes sprinkling a little dirt into the cracks. He liked the idea that his vantage point was secluded and, for the most part, inaccessible.

  The view became his salvation; his only real fancy. He had been careful all these years to come only at night and preferably when natural light lit his way.

  He sat on his familiar rock, a smooth-surfaced bench-like outcrop. The cool night air tingled his hands as they pressed against the age-polished stone.

  Somewhere beyond the nearest hill, in a valley, a coyote yelped its eerie song. The sound repeated through the earth’s canyons.

  He took the binoculars from the padded case and scanned the night, the slight swaying of pines, their crooked branches spiraling upward. Near the middle of this dark panorama, nestled between a silver stream and a gentle pasture, lay a shadowed group of boulders looking as if, over the years, they’d grown tired of their loftier homes and rolled gently down into the glade below. From his vantage point looking down, they formed a large C. He felt it vain but couldn’t help himself, each stone a triumph.

  From a backpack, he retrieved a silk scarf, carefully folded with four corners tied. His keepsakes—the only evidence of a life filled with the complete domination of other humans. He ran his hands over the smooth cloth, relishing the objects inside. Each treasure elicited a separate but distinct pleasure. As he jiggled the contents, a wide metal bracelet pressed against the sides of the bundle. His fingers felt the cross with its jeweled exterior wrapped with a soft woven cord. A thin gold watch and a metal American flag clinked together. Missing was his most treasured of all—the ring and chain. He had searched the area where he was sure it had been lost. After all these years, maybe he would look once more. He began his ritual as an errant cloud shifted its position. Liking the unexpected darkness, he reminisced. Starting with the first, his trousers tightened. He smoothed the offending bulge several times and squeezed his eyes tight.

  By the time he had finished reliving the history of his stony quintet, he was breathing heavily, his trousers at his knees. His bright celestial cousin peeked through her shaded cloud. He shouted in joy and anguish.

  Each time, the same melancholy settled in his chest and then gradually spread through him. He made it a point to descend his stony pinnacle before his wretchedness got the best of him, always vowing that this would be the last. A part of him laughed at his empty pledge, for he knew there would be another pilgrimage to his site. But he would try not to; he would be strong.

  His supreme hidden life. The pursuits. But maybe, just a final and triumphant event; an homage to his silent years of red meetings.

  Charles knew right from wrong. No conflict there. But doing wrong had been such a part of his life that it seemed an old friend making a decision. He recalled the fall of ’95, the comfort he felt when he dispatched his disciples.

  The decision had been to quit, to give up his moonstruck needs, to squelch his desires in more conventional ways. As his former keeper, nee “shitso minder,” or better yet, county-paid father figure, used to say, “Shrimp, face it. You’ll never be a normal, desirable person. Deal with it, shit-for-brains.”

  He tried religion: went to a church where he made an unusual alliance. A lady who, marked by her relationship with God, had been transformed into a hedonist slave, a believer of the flesh. He then took her to the depths.

  No, in fact, religion didn’t work for him. But through sheer force of will, he began to taper off, his conquests became fewer and for the most part ended in simple degradation and the reduction of his captives’ ability to think of themselves as decent humans.

  He felt good about his progress. An advanced study in self-denial and a lot less risky, as his disciples were oftentimes not coherent enough to report what happened to them.

  Charles Clegg, the happy philanthropist. He reasoned the sparing of human life to be God’s will. The Almighty empowered him to give life bac
k and make these women a symbol of his work.

  Maybe if he deviated from the prescribed on occasion, he would be forgiven. Completing his ritual at the height of his special mountain, it would be only a matter of hours before he would be forced to the edge of oppression.

  Anger and desire split his life. They became mixed, with desire usually winning. Early on, dreaded anger took over, culminating in what he called his Scarlet Rendezvous.

  Hey, Dev, how about I take you to lunch?” Julie offered.

  “What you hungry for, partner?”

  “The Mexican joint up north where we caught that parole violator?”

  “Let’s do it. We’ll go in separate cars. I need to make a couple stops after lunch.”

  Julie started to leave the department parking lot. She saw Todd with his cell phone to his ear, waving at her. He held up his left hand to signal five and pointed for her to go on. He added a halfhearted tap at his chest. She glanced once in her rearview mirror to see him going back into the station. If she understood correctly, he’d be along in five minutes along with his yearning heart. Knowing her partner, it would take a world-class prison break for him to miss an invitation to lunch. She thought a lot of the guy, but mostly like a kid brother.

  She liked the drive up north. The paved road bordered with Lombardy poplar led immediately into the country. Although an isolated road, folks on the north side of town used it regularly as easy interstate access.

  Julie looked forward to lunch. Rodrigo’s La Playa, located next to a busy interchange, specialized in seafood. Her favorite, a ceviche-style shrimp cocktail.

  It seemed quiet for a weekday. Traffic, light, on the two-lane blacktop road. Another week of basement duty, and she would be back in present-day crime investigation.

  In some ways, her penance in the dark confines of the storage files proved to be good for her. Rather than being held to the strict accordance of investigation, she took her time analyzing items long since restricted to the cellar. Maybe not a quantum leap but a minor revolution.