An Unattended Death

by Victoria Jenkins

  Of course Victor knew what it was. Of course he’d been exposed to it, tried it if he wanted to, used it if he liked it. How could she have imagined otherwise? Middle school, the most treacherous years, were behind him and he was starting high school in a matter of weeks. As a parent, sometimes you had to turn a blind eye because if you didn’t you’d never let them out of the house. You just had to hope their mistakes weren’t lethal.

  “Patrick’s a good driver, Mom.”

  “I’m not even going to have that conversation,” she said. Small-town kids learned to drive young, like country kids. She herself had let Victor drive from time to time on logging roads or on someone’s long driveway. She didn’t doubt that Patrick McGrath probably knew how to drive, but there were two issues here, one was driving, the skills required, and the other was the lunacy of thinking they could get away with it. The law took a generalist’s view and made no allowance for individual talent or particular circumstances.

  Victor told her where to turn.

  Mr. McGrath’s trailer and its surroundings were dismaying. A single-wide set up on cinder blocks in a clearing in the woods beside a chain-link dog run, a woodpile and a burn barrel. The dogs were going crazy at their approach and there was no need to honk or knock. Victor got out to move to the backseat, and as Mr. McGrath came out of the trailer in the glare of the headlights, he ducked his head and pointed a finger pistol-fashion in Victor’s direction in a way that said, catch you later, kid. Irene didn’t like it.

  She smelled beer when he got in beside her. “Evening, sir,” she said. “Irene Chavez. I’m Victor’s mother.”

  He didn’t see her proffered hand or affected not to. “I know who you are,” he said, making it an insult.

  Nobody said anything on the way back to town. McGrath nodded curtly when Irene dropped him at the police station. Officer Rose would get him to his truck.

  “Don’t go out there again,” said Irene.

  “No,” said Victor. “I know.”

  BY THE time they got home it was nearly two. In the hall by the stairs before he went up, Victor finally looked at her. She had nothing to say and just made a small, helpless shrug, but tears were starting, filling her eyes. Victor stepped forward then and put his arms awkwardly around her and squeezed hard. “I’m sorry, Ma,” he said. “It’ll be all right.” Of all things, standing there with her boy’s arms around her, she felt comforted by a man. His transgression, minor as it was, had catapulted him into an adult world.

  THE ALARM was going to ring in just over four hours. Sleep, often elusive, now welcomed her and she sank into it like water. Tomorrow she would think more clearly.

  X

  The phone awakened Irene for a second time shortly before five. Julian Bernstein, Anne Paris’s Cambridge landlord, had picked up his messages. He was traveling, he said, vacationing on the Cape, and he had no idea where Mason County was, who Detective Irene Chavez was, or why she was calling him.

  “Where are you?” he asked. “I can tell I woke you up.”

  “You did,” she said. “Three six oh. It’s Washington State. It’s not quite five here.”

  “I apologize,” he said. “But I had no idea and it sounded urgent—you left three numbers. Your office—the sheriff’s department, did I hear that right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “There was a recording. I guess that makes sense now. And the cell number wasn’t picking up.

  “No need to apologize,” said Irene, trying to collect her thoughts. He hadn’t noticed that the area code was the same as the Parises’, which he had called the day before. She felt quite fuzzy, yesterday’s urgency to reach him now a dim memory. “Mr. Bernstein—”

  He interrupted. “It’s doctor.”

  Jeez Louise, Irene thought, another one. “What kind of doctor are you?” she asked.

  “PhD organic chemistry,” he replied.

  “Oh,” she said. “Not a medical doctor then.”

  “No,” he said. “Academic.”

  “Dr. Bernstein,” she said, “there’s been a death—”

  “Oh, my God,” he interrupted.

  “I’m sorry to alarm you,” she said. “It isn’t anyone close to you. But it’s a tenant, I believe, someone who rents space in your building.” There was silence on the line. “Are you there?” Irene asked. He was processing, she thought, connecting the dots, the area code now registering.

  “I’m here,” he said. “The connection’s not that good. I’m on a cell phone. Who’s died?”

  “It’s Anne Paris, sir,” said Irene. “We don’t know all the circumstances yet but I wanted to let you know that, for the moment, I’ve had her apartment sealed.” There was a pause.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that someone from the Cambridge Police Department has been out to your house to put a seal on the apartment. It’s just a precaution, routine in these circumstances on the off chance that we need to delve further. But there’s a seal so you mustn’t enter. No one can enter.”

  “I’m not even there,” he said.

  “Right,” said Irene, “I know. I’m just notifying you. This is just for the moment while we determine cause of death.”

  “What are you saying?” he asked. “What’s happened? Why are you involved?”

  “There was trauma to the head, sir, and no one with her at the time, and in this county we investigate all unattended deaths. It’s routine.”

  “I thought you meant an auto accident,” he said finally.

  “No,” said Irene, “not auto.”

  “What then?” he asked.

  “We’re investigating,” she said.

  There was a silence on the other end. When he spoke again his voice broke. “Well, you’re wrong about one thing—she was someone close to me. I mean, not close but she was more than just a tenant. I was very fond of her and this is extremely upsetting.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said Irene.

  “You don’t know Anne,” he said.

  “No,” she agreed.

  “I need to know more about this,” he said. “I need more information. You haven’t told me anything. When did this happen? Where?”

  “Our investigation is ongoing, sir, and we’re not releasing details at the moment.”

  “Plus,” he said, now sounding piqued and out of sorts, “there’s income loss, you know. Or could be, if the apartment is off-limits.”

  “Of course,” Irene said. The rent, she thought, the unpaid rent. Now he might never collect it. “I understand. If we need to take a look in the apartment, sir, we’ll decide quickly. No one wants this to drag on.”

  Irene made a note of Dr. Bernstein’s cell phone number and hung up. She felt a tiny relief at having one small thing ticked off her to-do list before the day started. But the day was started, she realized, and with only three hours of sleep behind her it was going to be a doozy. She could function, she knew that— despite sleep deprivation she wouldn’t nod off behind the wheel or with her cheek in her hand while talking on the phone—but she wouldn’t function well.

  She padded down the hall to the bathroom and watched herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. A slender woman in a tank top with a pair of her long-dead husband’s boxers riding her hipbones. A brown-eyed blonde with fine, straw-colored hair just barely long enough to pull back and catch into a rubber band. This morning there were purple smudges under her eyes and crow’s-feet she didn’t remember. To Luis, she had been beautiful. She wondered if he’d find her changed. It had been eleven years. What, she wondered, would he have to say to Victor about last night.

  BY THE time she’d showered and had a first cup of coffee, Irene was feeling improved. For the moment she’d decided there was nothing she could do about Victor. Showering, she had imagined Luis’s voice saying it wasn’t a calamity, Victor was still Victor, still a good boy growing up in a treacherous world.

  The wheels of justice would turn. The charges against Victor and Patrick could have
been a municipal court matter, but the amount of marijuana and the borrowed truck made it a felony in the thinking of Harley Rose, and he was, in his words, ‘sending it up the hill.’

  There was a new county prosecutor whom Irene hadn’t yet met and he would pursue the charge or he wouldn’t, she couldn’t predict; and if he did there would be time enough to decide then what to do. In the meantime, Victor would be cautious and subdued, disinclined to press his luck with his mother or other authorities. Less was probably more when it came to her reaction to the fix he found himself in. Sanctions and recriminations would only turn his remorse to excuses and defiance.

  IRENE LEFT the house before six, getting a jump on the day, leaving Victor still sleeping. It was already hot. This time of year it was hard to remember the pervasive bone-penetrating damp and chill that was the hallmark of the local climate. On these hot August nights you threw off the bedclothes and longed for a fan to stir the air, and in the morning when you went out for the paper the walk was warm and dry under your bare feet. The northern sun was focused by the atmosphere, intense and immediate.

  XI

  Irene swung by the office and picked up bolt cutters before heading north on Highway 3 towards Gustavus Island. Under normal circumstances Inspector Gilbert didn’t want his detectives executing search warrants alone, but these, Irene told herself, were not normal circumstances. For one thing, vacations had left the department depleted, and the remaining officers were swamped with their own work, leaving no logical candidate to accompany her on a search of premises that in all likelihood weren’t linked in any way to whatever had befallen Anne Paris. If asked to justify her interest, Irene wouldn’t have been able to offer anything more substantial than curiosity aroused by proximity—a death, a stranger on the beach, a cabin that wasn’t his, and nearby a boat run aground. Anyway, Inspector Gilbert himself had left on his own vacation and wasn’t going to hear about what she was up to in his absence.

  Research the previous afternoon had ascertained that the cabin and the narrow strip of land it sat on were owned by the now middle-aged niece of the man who had built it several decades before. Stationed in Florida, the current owner, Staff Sergeant Celeste Donley, a career army officer, had registered little surprise at the news that a squatter seemed to be utilizing the cabin she had inherited from her uncle. It wasn’t the first time, Sergeant Donley reported. It had been broken into many times and anything worth stealing had long since been taken. It was unplumbed, not wired, mildewed and spider infested. She herself hadn’t been there in years, had no plans to visit, would sell the property in a heartbeat if there were a taker, and the Mason County Sheriff’s Department could carry on however it saw fit. She was gratified that anyone cared. Irene saw no need to reveal the fact that her interest in investigating was tangential to any potential property rights infraction that might be going on.

  Irene drove with the window open. High up the jet stream was pulling a thin scrim of mare’s tails across the early morning sun. She turned off 3 onto the Pickering Road and cruised through the collection of trailers and cottages which, together with a tavern, a drive-through espresso slash drop-ins welcome chiropractor and a couple of gas pumps, made up the community of Spencer Lake. Some miles further, at a fork in the road where she swung left for the bridge, a hand-painted sandwich board advertised the upcoming Gustavus Island dance held every year on the Saturday before Labor Day at the Grange Hall, an annual headache for the Mason County sheriff’s deputies patrolling the highways.

  It was a deceptively wholesome occasion, a throwback to an earlier era when generations mingled. Early in the evening little kids chased each other around until they captured a partner, then gravely rendered arm-pumping fox-trots in imitation of their parents, while a few elderly couples dipped and twirled with clockwork precision. Summer residents attended wearing sophisticated black, and executed intricate lindy and salsa moves to the band’s mix of country and fifties rock. The Grange ladies sold coffee and pie and there was no alcohol served, but as the night wore on the families thinned out, replaced by carloads of teenagers, loggers, and mill workers who drove out from Shelton and Union and Allyn to stomp and gyrate suggestively without ever holding onto their partners. Between numbers and during breaks the new arrivals trooped out to drink beer, clustering around coolers in the backs of pickups and the trunks of cars. There were sometimes fights in the parking lot and often accidents along the two-lane roads in the midnight aftermath of the Grange Hall dance. Tight corners along the county thoroughfares were marked with white crosses and homemade shrines.

  This morning, though, there was little traffic. Once on the island, the road meandered along the shoreline for a while, then cut inland following the section lines. Straightaways ran between tracts of Douglas fir, then changed direction in alarming ninety degree turns. At one of these bends in the road—a blind corner where visibility was obscured by trees and undergrowth crowding the verge—Irene was nearly sideswiped as a car traveling in the opposite direction swung wide taking the turn. It was an easy mistake to make: empty roads, a little too much speed and an unexpectedly tight radius on the curve. The moment of danger passed but the rush of adrenaline preserved the instant.

  As Irene came out of the turn the image of the other driver was burned onto the back of her retinas, their eyes meeting for a fraction of a second, his face only feet from hers as they passed. It was the face of the bearded man on the beach.

  In a single practiced motion Irene braked and hit her grill lights while swinging the wheel, sending the Crown Vic into a sideways skid, reversing direction. But even so she had to back up and maneuver to complete a U-turn in the narrow roadway, and rounding the curve again, accelerating in pursuit, she saw the other car. She gunned it but she wouldn’t catch him, she’d lost too much time and he was flying. By the time she rounded the next bend he was no longer in sight. She radioed in a report of a late-model silver Camry on Gustavus Island speeding toward the bridge, so that out on 3 and 101 the patrol officers would be keeping an eye out; but Irene hadn’t gotten any part of the license number and it was the most generic of cars. Absent an obvious infraction he wouldn’t be pulled over.

  Irene wondered if he’d registered the Crown Vic as an unmarked police car, seen her blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror. She thought it was unlikely.

  THE CABIN in the woods, once she arrived, was deserted. It was unlocked, the padlock gone. No need for the bolt cutters. All evidence of habitation had vanished. She walked in and flopped into the pink mohair armchair and looked around, frustrated. She felt quite certain, though she knew she was assuming—something she tried not to do—that it was the man on the beach, the man in the car at the corner, who had been the cabin’s occupant. And where was he off to in such a hurry? It was a fluke of timing. Just minutes earlier and she’d have run into him on the overgrown track that led in to the cabin, too narrow for his car to have passed hers. She’d have known then who he was and what he’d been doing here.

  The woods in Mason County might seem primordial as one walked alone, but in fact there was little old timber left. All the woods had been cut at one time or another, and what grew now was in essence a crop. But in the leisurely interval between sapling and harvest, the vast untended Douglas fir forests provided a habitat for wildlife and illegal subcultures. Most prevalent and benign were brush cutters and mushroomers—mostly foreigners from Mexico or Cambodia or other agrarian Third World countries who slipped into the woods with baskets and machetes to cut salal and huckleberry for the floral industry, and to pick chanterelle and lobster mushrooms in the fall and morels in the spring to sell to restaurants and at farmers’ markets. They were furtive and elusive but not dangerous. More menacing were the backwoods’ chemists who hauled travel trailers and propane tanks deep into the forests where they cooked methamphetamines, side arms at the ready and attack dogs on patrol. They moved often, leaving behind squalid evidence of their activity: unburned trash, beer cans and the wrappings of thousands of
Sudafed tablets. Her guy, Irene thought, fit neither category.

  Early morning sun flooded in through the east-facing windows. She could, she thought, dose briefly in the comfort of the ancient armchair.

  WHEN SHE snapped awake not much time had passed. She sat still, listening. Something had awakened her. Then in an instant she was on her feet, yanking open the firebox of the wood-burning range. Papers were smoldering inside, making small pops and crackles. That was what she’d heard. The rush of entering air rekindled the fire and Irene slammed the door shut and fumbled for the damper on the stove pipe. She kicked herself for her stupidity. She should have thought to investigate the stove immediately.

  She looked around and located a lid lifter, and when she checked again the fire had subsided, though there was little left but ash. What had been burning seemed to have been a crumpled grocery bag containing papers and trash. Irene poked gingerly through fragile flakes of ash, but all that was identifiable was part of a Special K box and the charred remains of a panty liner.

  It only took moments to search the rest of the cabin. A grocery bag behind the stove contained what appeared to be recycling, from which Irene could surmise a diet of sardines, chili, and cheap red wine, though there was one heavy, dark bottle with the label soaked off. In the sleeping loft above there was a candle on the windowsill, and on the far side of the mattress, slipped down against the stud wall, Irene found a fuchsia-colored cotton thong and a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine with a yellow forwarding label addressed to Oliver Paris MD on the Fergus Point Road.