by John Lutz
Doc. I’ll be sending his folks in from Higgins’ to officially identify him.”
“They know yet?”
“On my way to tell ’em.”
Doc Amis shot him a gray look of understanding. “Don’t let me keep you, Sheriff.”
When Wintone stepped back out onto the street, the heat seemed to envelop him with an eager malice in a way that was strangely personal, as if the elements had conspired to infuriate him.
He tried not to think of where he was going, what he had to do, tried not to think about the heat. From horizon to horizon the sky was a shimmering blue without a single cloud, and without a single hope of rain.
FOUR
WINTONE WAITED IN THE tiny, knotty pine-paneled office of Higgins’ Motel while Lil Higgins went to see if the Larsens were in their cabin. The motel office was so cool that the abrupt change from the outside heat had brought a nauseous, hollow sensation to Wintone’s stomach. An oversized air conditioner mounted in the wall behind the wooden counter hummed powerfully, and Wintone heard the steady drip of condensation falling into a half-full yellow plastic bucket beneath the air conditioner. There were faint spatter marks on the paneling from when the water level in the bucket had gotten too high.
The CB radio base unit on the desk was turned on, and somebody called Bulldog was laboriously giving somebody called Flatiron directions to a restaurant on the main highway. Wintone reached over and turned the unit off.
On the motel desk were a number of wire holders containing maps and travel brochures. Wintone didn’t remember seeing them there before, and on the wall was a freshly painted sign with motel rules and a new and earlier check-out time. One of the knotty-pine walls was covered with dozens of photographs of both Lil and Luke Higgins smiling and holding up prize fish or large strings of smaller fish they’d caught. None of the fish had been pulled from the south end of the lake.
Wintone hadn’t heard anyone approach, but the office door opened and the Larsens came in, fearful and eager. Lil gave Wintone a look that said she pitied everyone in the room and left them alone.
Paul Larsen was a tall man with straight blond hair neatly cut and parted to the side as if it had been flipped there to disguise a receding hairline. He had fine, elongated features and agonized blue eyes. His wife Beth was a narrow-waisted, tiny woman with dark and deep eyes that seldom blinked. Wintone wished she didn’t have eyes like that.
“Why don’t both of you sit down,” Wintone said.
Beth Larsen sat in a chrome-armed vinyl chair, but Paul Larsen said he preferred to stand. He rested his hand on his seated wife’s thin shoulder, as if posing for a photograph.
Willing the feeling part of his mind to be numb, Wintone told them what had happened.
Paul Larsen did sit down then, as if he’d been heart-shot. Beth Larsen’s dark eyes went blank, rolled back, and she closed them and bowed her head, squeezing her slender hands together as if praying, squeezing both clasped hands between her whitened knees. Her thin body convulsed with her soft sobs, as if jolts of electricity were passing through her chair.
“It’ll be necessary for one of you to drive on in to Colver,” Wintone said. “Make sure.”
“I am sure,” Paul Larsen said in a flat voice. There was a stunned expression on his face, an almost-smile of a leer that he wasn’t aware of.
Beth Larsen regained control first. “We’ll both go,” she said, reaching out a hand and touching her husband’s wrist.
“Mrs. Higgins has offered to drive you,” Wintone said. “I think it’d be best.”
Beth Larsen agreed. Her husband was still wherever he had gone inside himself.
Wintone nodded to them, feeling awkward in the curiously graced presence of their grief, and stepped to the door. The voice that stopped him was soft and controlled.
“Did you say an animal, Sheriff?”
With an effort he turned and looked at Beth Larsen’s soul in her dark eyes. “Had to be….” He nodded again and left quickly.
Lil Higgins was standing by the corner of the office. Wintone didn’t say anything to her, was barely aware of her on the edge of his vision, as he strode to his parked patrol car.
He started the car and headed toward Big Water Lake, dwelling on the idea that his job was getting harder with the years. According to Lil Higgins, the Larsens had originally intended to stay at one of the motels on the north shore of the lake, deciding after a long discussion to drive their station wagon south rather than let the northern forest fire ruin their vacation. That was a discussion they would both remember for the rest of their lives.
Wintone slowed the car and steered through a curve beneath an ancient leaning elm whose lower branches had been axed to permit passage. Then he turned right onto the narrow dirt road that skirted the lake. Rocks beat against the insides of the patrol car’s fenders and a plume of thick dust obscured rear-view-mirror vision. The green wildness that surrounded Wintone was in many places almost impossible for a man to move through, its interior guarded by brush and thick, upright sapling trunks like sturdy, impassable bars. Even ax and chain saw were insufficient to probe the woods’ depths. Through the trees to his left, Wintone could occasionally glimpse the lake’s surface, dull and flat and endless-seeming. It looked like a place that would keep its secrets.
Sonny Tibbet moved out fast from the shade of a blackjack oak and flagged down the car. He looked glad to see Wintone.
“Joe James had to go on back to town,” Sonny said when the sheriff had rolled down the car window to the heat. “Up over that rise is where it happened.”
Wintone got out of the car and followed Sonny over a small rise and down a flat stretch shaded deep by oak and maple to the bank of Big Water Lake. Insects flitted up at each of their footfalls in the bent, dry grass and mosquitoes and gnats swarmed about the two men. Wintone watched a large mosquito light on Sonny’s sweat-stained shirt collar and crawl toward his red, perspiring neck.
The boy had died right at the water’s edge, and Wintone stood for a moment and looked at the gentle lake water lapping at where blood had soaked into the churned mud. A cane fishing pole still lay on the bank, the homemade bait on the end of the line already covered with ants. The lake was shallow here, sloping out to the deeper area, and the water was dark green and broken by reeds and a rotting, half submerged fallen tree. Not much fishing here except for carp or mudcat, but an eleven-year-old boy wouldn’t know that.
“Lookit here, Sheriff.”
Wintone looked to where Sonny was pointing and saw a good, clear print up where the bank was less muddy. After his first glance he bent low to examine it.
Old Bonifield had been right. Whatever had made the print must have been big, heavy. The impression was over an inch deep, almost round, with one edge of it deeper than the other and sort of gnarled.
Wintone stared at the print awhile and decided he should make a plaster cast. He’d brought equipment with him in the trunk of the patrol car, and he gave Sonny the keys and asked him to get that and the camera in the glove compartment. Wintone hadn’t been sure he would want to make a cast of the print, but now he hoped that moisture hadn’t gotten to the quick-dry plaster mix that had sat so long in his bottom desk drawer.
The plaster was fine, and while the cast was hardening Wintone looked over the rest of the scene carefully, examined the boy’s fishing pole and bait and searched in vain for another clear print. He felt a chill like one of the damned mosquitoes was crawling up the back of his neck when he looked out at the lake and noticed that some of the reeds were bent or smashed in an indistinct path, as if something big had passed through them. When he turned to mention it, he saw that Sonny was up the bank away from him, standing with his hands in his pockets and gazing out at the lake. Wintone snapped his photographs, then walked up to join him.
“Figure out anything?” Sonny asked as they walked back to the dusty patrol car.
“Only that somethin’ killed the boy there, most likely somethin’ big.”
>
“Find out who the boy was?”
“Dale Larsen was his name. He and his folks were at Higgins’ place, here for a vacation. Lil Higgins is drivin’ ’em into Colver so they can see what’s left.”
“That’s rough.”
Wintone slammed shut the trunk lid of the patrol car, leaving four long finger-streaks in the coating of dust on the lighter tan, smooth paint. The sheriff and Sonny got into the car at the same time, slamming the doors almost simultaneously. Wintone twisted the ignition key, fishtailed the car in a dust-spewing U-turn and punched the windshield-washer button once to clear the glass.
They had turned onto the main road back to Colver before Sonny spoke.
“I been thinkin’ about that print, Sheriff.”
Wintone was silent, watching the countryside, the gentle roll of green-wooded hills, like the soft curves of a reclining woman, the angled line of rough cedar-rail fence, the faded, miraculously standing outbuildings canted to the wind.
“There weren’t any more prints,” Sonny said, “up the bank or in either direction.”
“Meaning?”
“It seems whatever it was must have come outa the water and gone back in.”
“It does seem so,” Wintone said.
The patrol car topped a rise and passed Sam Olfer’s red-roofed barn. They were almost into Colver. Wintone hoped he could avoid the Larsens.
FIVE
WINTONE DETOURED TO DROP off Sonny at his sawmill, then drove the patrol car the rest of the way into Colver and parked in front of his office. The heat had run everyone off the street except a couple of teen-aged girls dressed in shorts and halters and riding ten-speed racing bikes. Wintone didn’t recognize either of the girls as they pedal-stroked the bicycles past him with graceful muscularity. Tourists.
Inside the office he sat at his desk and tried to work, but couldn’t. He picked up a dull metal paper clip and bent it into various meaningless shapes, pricking his finger several times with the deceptively sharp wire end. Colver was changing, Wintone was changing, everything was changing. It was as if Etty’s death had altered the meaning of it all.
The sharp ring of the telephone broke the oppressive silence of the office and Wintone’s gloomy musings. He reached out and lifted the receiver from its cradle slowly, as if it were glued.
He was glad to hear Sarah’s voice.
“I thought you’d be back earlier,” she said.
“I had things to do at the lake.”
“The Larsens made a positive identification of their son.” Her voice told Wintone there had never been any doubt in anyone’s mind; the formalities had to be observed.
Wintone thanked her.
“How did they take it?” Sarah asked. “When you told them at the motel?”
“Like you’d expect.”
She sensed Wintone’s reluctance to talk about it. “If Doc Amis comes up with anything I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Sarah.”
“Billy, you come by if there’s any way we can help you find out what happened, any medical information, or for that matter any kind of help we can give you. You come by.”
“I will, Sarah.”
Wintone hung up the phone. He picked up the paper clip he’d been toying with from his desk top, deftly worked it into a kinked though reasonably straight piece of wire and tossed it into his waste basket. As he sat back in his chair and stared at Etty’s picture on his desk corner, Wintone wondered if he really kept her face there—where he could look at it every minute—out of his dark suspicion of guilt. Probably, he decided. If his mind were opened like a walnut and all its contents examined, probably.
Wintone stood, started to put on his tan uniform hat, then remembered the heat outside and tossed the hat onto his desk. He left the office and walked down the street to Mully’s, where he found old Bonifield still using his talk of the boy’s death to milk the other customers for free drinks.
“Ain’t it like I told you, Sheriff?” Bonifield asked in a voice a shade taunting. “We’ns was just talkin’ about it.”
“Like you told,” Wintone said, taking a stool at the long bar. It was cool in Mully’s, and Wintone accepted a mug of beer and sat watching the soft shadows of the revolving overhead fan blades play on the rough wall near the ceiling.
Bonifield’s heavy boots clopped on the plank floor as he came over to sit at the bar near Wintone. “Any ideas?” the old man asked, his face an eager, serious mask.
“No inklin’ yet,” Wintone said. He knuckled some foam from his beer off his mustache.
Luke Higgins settled down on the other side of Wintone. “A hard thing for that Larsen family,” he said. “Lil told me the man cried. Doc Amis had to give him somethin’.”
“Can’t blame him.”
“Guess not.” Higgins stared at the backs of his hands on the bar. “Listen, Sheriff, it’d be best all ways if you didn’t let some creature story out now, with the tourists an’ all. Lotta money comin’ in an’ around Colver ’cause of the forest fire up north, an’ some of these folks might come back next year—if they ain’t spooked away this year.”
“Nobody’s sayin’ anything about a creature except Bonifield here,” Wintone said. “I ain’t said anything cause I don’t know anything yet, but I’m not coverin’ anything up, either.”
Higgins started to say something else, then lapsed silent.
“Higgins’s got a point, though,” Frank Turper threw in.
“Good point,” Bonifield said. “Main point.”
Wintone suddenly wanted shed of Mully’s. He drained his beer and got off his stool. “You shouldn’t have any trouble if you shut up old Bonifield,” he said as he walked toward the door.
“Ain’t been worth hog slop since his wife died in that car wreck,” Wintone heard Bonifield say as he stepped out into the heat. Through the window he saw Frank Turper buying Bonifield a drink.
Wintone walked back toward the office with long strides, slowed down when he realized he was working up a sweat that was making his clothes stick to him.
He wondered what it was curdled the soul in a man like old Bonifield. Age, maybe. Age coupled with loneliness. Something Wintone might be able to learn about firsthand.
Lately there’d been so much he wished hadn’t happened. Etty’s death … the Larsen boy’s … the fire that had brought the tourist invasion of Colver …
Despite his slower pace, Wintone was sweating again.
SIX
AFTER BREAKFAST THE NEXT day Wintone stepped out of Turper’s Grill into the comparative coolness of morning just as Sarah Ledbetter was passing.
“Billy,” she said in greeting, with a smile of pleasurable surprise. She was wearing her white uniform dress, pulled tight with a sash about her lean waist.
“On your way to work?” Wintone asked her.
“Been an’ goin’ back,” Sarah said. “Had to go out to buy some plant food for the office ferns.” She held up a small, folded white bag. “Doc’d have a fit if those things died.”
They stood for a moment, moving awkwardly out of the way as several breakfasted fishermen exited from Turper’s.
“Walk me back, why don’t you?” Sarah asked.
Wintone walked beside her, adjusting his stride to her pace. They were on the shaded side of the street, their own dark shadows merged with the stark black outlines of the buildings. Wintone felt good walking beside Sarah.
To the right, down Hawk Street, green hills rose behind shaded frame houses. It was still early enough for there to be wisps of vapor clinging to the sides of the wooded hills, like gentle night spirits longing to stay in the shelter of the tall, huddled cedars.
“You still think about the accident, don’t you?” Sarah said.
Wintone slowed his pace and Sarah slowed beside him, as if they’d begun walking up a grade.
“Be unnatural not to,” Wintone said.
“I don’t like to see you blame yourself.”
“I don’t.”
> “You seem to.”
Their steps fell out of rhythm on the cracked pavement.
“I wasn’t even hurt….” Wintone said.
Sarah was silent for a while, staring down at the ground as she walked. “You can have certain kinds of internal injuries,” she said. “Any doctor can tell you that … any nurse.”
“Maybe they take awhile to heal. Maybe they never heal.”
“They’ll heal if you let ’em. You can’t go on an’ on blamin’ yourself, not forever.”
“Maybe it’ll be my fault forever.”
“Even if that’s so, it seems eventually you oughta swallow it.”
“It sticks.”
They turned the corner toward Doc Amis’s office, into the face of the slowly climbing sun. The sudden warmth seemed to saturate the front of their clothes like heated liquid.
“Not likely to be any cooler today,” Wintone said. With the sun’s warmth had come the internal heat of his awakening anger. Sarah had no right to talk to him about Etty’s death. It was a private, painful matter. Maybe too private and painful, but that was his business, not Sarah’s.
Beside him, she seemed to sense his resentment. “Maybe it’ll rain,” she said with baseless optimism, “cool things …”
“I doubt it.”
“Learned anything else about the Larsen boy?”
Wintone shook his head. “There aren’t any solid facts to grab onto.”
“The family took the body back to Little Rock last evening. I felt really sorry for ’em.”
“They deserve your pity.” Wintone was telling her that he didn’t deserve it, and she seemed to understand even if she didn’t agree.
“You think we’ll ever know what happened to him?” Sarah asked.
“Don’t know that it makes a difference; he’s dead. It was one of those things that happen from time to time in this country an’ nobody ever explains it. Remember the Iron Ridge man was found dead up in the fork of the tree some years back?”