Drifted

by Jeff Carson

  Wolf said nothing.

  “You went through a tough time last year, I get it. Those two girls left you high and dry.”

  Wolf stared ahead at the desk. “White. That’s what you were talking about in my office before. He’s pulling me under so he can stay afloat.”

  MacLean smiled with cold eyes. “You’ve spent more time unconscious than conscious on the job over the last few months. Are you seriously going to put the blame on White?”

  Wolf put his elbows on his knees.

  “And it’s not just him,” MacLean said.

  Wolf remembered councilman Pritchard averting eye contact earlier that morning, Wolf’s hasty exit.

  “We were doing just fine with three detectives.” MacLean’s voice softened. “That’s why we hired another detective, to make sure we could transition as smoothly as possible.”

  “I’m fired.”

  MacLean slapped the desk. “No! You’re not!” The sheriff’s face quivered and turned red. “I’m not firing you, dumbass. You’re the best detective I’ve ever met.”

  Wolf sat back heavily and crossed a leg. The knee of his jeans were scuffed with black soot. The stain looked old.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Wolf lifted his eyes. MacLean stood with his hands on the desk.

  “What.”

  MacLean turned to the back window. “Jesus. I just said you’re suspended for a week and you don’t even hear me.” He turned back and stepped away from the sun, revealing a hard glint in his gray eyes. “Are you listening to me now?”

  Wolf folded his arms and raised his eyebrows.

  “I said you’re suspended for seven days. If you don’t clean up by next week, just save us both some pain and don’t bother coming back in.”

  MacLean walked to the door, twisted it open, then sat back behind his desk.

  “We’re at the beginning of an investigation,” Wolf said. “A man’s life could be in hanging in the balance.”

  “We’ll take care of that.”

  Heat rose in Wolf’s cheeks.

  I told you, the voice said.

  He needed to get the hell out. He stood and walked out the door.

  “Badge. Gun.”

  Wolf stopped, turned around, and put his paddle holster and badge on the desk. Then he left, ignoring the squad-room glances as he strode out.

  Chapter 9

  Wolf pulled through the headgate, bouncing on his seat as his house came into view.

  The snowstorm skirted south just as fast as it had moved in. The sun hid behind the western peaks, but the eastern mountains ahead were half-ablaze in sunlight reflecting off the fresh blanket of snow. Through the searing brightness, Wolf saw twin tracks in the powder leading to a black Toyota Tacoma parked out front.

  Jack.

  He looked over at the box of Scotch poking out of a brown bag in the passenger seat and thought about the couch and a bottomless glass. This would put a wrench in his plan.

  His breathing accelerated as he neared. Damn it. Why was he here? What did he want? He was probably up from Boulder to ski, but it was Wednesday afternoon. Spring break? That had to be it.

  Wolf slalomed around Jack’s truck and parked in the car port next to the kitchen.

  The frigid air burrowed under his collar as he stepped out. Bag in hand, he stood for a moment, looking at the freshly shoveled wall of snow, and realized the carport was free of the drift that had been building for months. Instead of his SUV-sized groove, now there were vertical walls set wide apart, like Inuit architecture.

  “Thanks, Jack,” he said under his breath, more annoyed than grateful.

  He hurried around the back bumper and up the steps to the kitchen door. Inside, he stopped dead. His boot soles squeaked on the tile as he looked down at a wriggling animal nipping at his feet.

  “What the—”

  A puppy, a tiny German shepherd with squint-eyes and no larger than his foot, licked his boots.

  “Drifter!”

  Wolf started at a woman’s voice and looked up. “Oh. Hi, Cassidy. Hey, who’s this?”

  “That’s Drifter,” she said.

  He bent and ran a hand over the dog.

  He stood up and froze. Cassidy wore jeans and a sweater underneath an unzipped fleece. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail pulled back from a smooth, tanned face. She smiled and Wolf thought if he squinted she’d have been Sarah reincarnated.

  “Hey, Dad.” Jack appeared in the kitchen entrance to the living room, pulling on a jacket. “What’s happening?” The question was literal, not small talk.

  Wolf followed Jack’s eyes down to the bag in his hand. The silvery box poking out of the paper reflected the light from the windows. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened all the blinds.

  “More booze, huh?” Jack zipped the jacket to his chin.

  Cassidy lowered her gaze. “Oh, no! Drifter! Sorry, Mr. Wolf. He keeps peeing everywhere.”

  “No worries.” He stepped over a tiny puddle and set the bag down on the counter.

  The surface smelled of cleaner and shone like new. At least a dozen empty or near-empty bottles were clustered. All Dewar’s, the contents long passed through Wolf’s system.

  Correction: two of them were still half-full. He wondered how that had happened.

  The tiny puppy sniffed and panted, its tongue slopping as Cassidy tried to wrangle him into her arms.

  “What are you guys doing here?” He turned and straightened.

  Jack squared off with him a foot away.

  The last time he’d seen his son wear that expression, Jack had just finished blaming him for Sarah’s death.

  “We talked last week. It’s our spring break, and I told you we were coming up to pick up a puppy from the Watts farm. I told you we’d stop by, and you said you’d make us dinner. Said we’d have some steaks and some baked potatoes. We said we’d bring the salad.” Jack gestured toward a Tupperware container on the counter.

  Wolf nodded, his face slacking. “Oh yeah, right.”

  “You obviously don’t remember shit about our conversation, otherwise you’d have cleaned this shithole up before we came.” He swiped a hand behind him.

  Wolf looked into the living room.

  “Hey!” Jack snapped his fingers.

  Wolf stared at his son, his insides turning to ice. “Don’t do that.”

  Jack stepped forward until his face was inches away.

  Cassidy shuffled to the door, opened it, and went outside.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “About what?”

  “About your life?”

  Wolf put a hand on his son’s chest and pushed.

  Jack slapped his arm away and stepped close again. “You gonna sit here and drink yourself to death? Because of a bitch who left you?”

  “She’s not a bitch.”

  “Hey, whatever you gotta say to pull yourself out of the gutter. She’s a bitch. Fuck her and that daughter of—”

  Wolf slapped him across the face. The sound seemed to last a full five seconds.

  Jack stepped back and stared at him with lowered eyelids.

  “Don’t …” Wolf raised a finger.

  The space between them seemed to crackle.

  “Don’t worry.” Jack turned away and walked to the door. With one hand on the knob, he turned back. “Your happiness matters, too, you know.”

  The door slammed shut.

  Wolf watched through the window as Jack and Cassidy climbed into the truck. The engine revved and the tires spat snow as the pickup disappeared down the drive and through the headgate.

  He stood rooted on the kitchen tile. The sting on his palm turned to a burn. His whole body shook.

  He eyed the living room and his gaze was pulled down to carpet striped with vacuum marks. The coffee table was bare, devoid of dirty glasses and used paper plates. The dryer hummed in the laundry room.

  He stepped onto the carpet. The space looked like it had been visited by
a fairy godmother and her bag of magic dust.

  He walked to his bedroom. The bed was had been made with new sheets. More vacuum marks striped the floor and a calm flame licked off a scented candle perched on the nightstand.

  The bathroom was spotless, including the toilet. Another candle flickered, the rising tendrils of smoke exuding a more feminine scent. He remembered the shopping trip into town when Lauren had picked the candle. He stepped up and pinched the flame with his thumb and middle finger.

  The pain burned to the bone, but he ignored it.

  A tear rolled down his cheek, licked his neck and fell onto the collar of his jacket. He stared at the smoke through blurry eyes, and when he blinked more tears cascaded down his cheeks.

  “Damn it.” He roughly wiped his face with his jacket sleeve, then turned and stormed to the living room, through the kitchen, and outside. As he marched to the barn, his feet squealed on the snow. His face lay slack. The cold burned his eyes but he didn’t blink as he walked to the barn and opened the workshop door.

  The florescent lights flickered and sizzled overhead in the freezing-cold space. He crossed the dirt floor and flicked on the second bank of lights.

  He searched and found the wheelbarrow leaning against the wall behind the John Deere. He grabbed the cold wooden handles, worn smooth by his father.

  The front wheel was completely flat, but the rubber rolled well enough, staying on the rim as he pushed it through the workshop and out the door.

  For an instant his resolve dimmed. As he stopped and zipped up his jacket, his breath clouded in the fading light, evaporating on an icy breeze.

  He remembered the sound of his hand bouncing off Jack’s face. His son’s frozen gaze.

  And the last time he’d seen Ella. She’d been so excited to toss flower petals in front of him and her mother. He imagined equal doses of her disappointment.

  His mouth watered, and he envisioned a cool, ice-filled glass touching his lips.

  Slowly, he bent over and clasped the wheelbarrow handles again. He grabbed too high with one hand and a splinter dug into his thumb. He ignored it, turned back and heaved the rusty metal and decaying wood up the stairs into the kitchen.

  Inside, he placed the bottles into the wheelbarrow’s bed, and topped the heap with the heavy bag he’d just purchased. The glass clanked as he grabbed the handles and wheeled the barrow into the living room to the front door.

  He pulled the Browning twelve gauge out of the hall closet. The cover’s zipper sang as he pulled it open, revealing an oiled over–under model his father left him when he died.

  He took a box of shells and placed it in the barrow. Followed with the gun. Then he opened the front door and pushed it outside.

  The snow chilled his feet through his boots as he pushed the heavy payload through the powder to the side of his house. A deer stared at him, then shot twin jets of steam out of its nostrils and ran into the woods.

  With cold hands, he broke open the shotgun and draped it over his shoulder, picked up the box of shells, and upturned the wheelbarrow.

  The bottles clanked as they splayed out into the snow.

  He second-guessed his location—no more than a dozen paces from his bedroom window. Then he cursed under his breath and dragged away the wheelbarrow.

  He pushed two shells into the barrel, closed it, and walked back to the pile of bottles.

  His mouth watered again, and he stared at the undamaged box spilling out of the paper bag atop the pile. He stutter-stepped forward, shifting the gun to his left hand to grab the box.

  One final swill would be a fitting goodbye. That felt right. He’d never been an alcoholic, never had trouble holding his liquor or controlling his desire for drink. Never had the shakes like he did every morning now or felt a wave of pleasure as liquid passed down his throat. This was all new to him.

  He pinched one end of the bag and let the box slip out.

  What the fuck are you doing? Jack’s voice replayed in his mind.

  Wolf dropped the bag and stood upright.

  “Good question.”

  He pointed the barrel down and fired.

  Chapter 10

  Three months later …

  June 18th. 8:47 a.m.

  Wolf bared his teeth and leaned on both knees. His lungs pumped hard, his heart double-timing to keep the oxygen flowing through his body at the high altitude.

  Without looking, he stopped the timer on the new digital watch he’d purchased for this occasion. He didn’t have to look to know he’d beaten his best time by at least a few seconds, but he checked anyway—00:36:41.

  His eyebrows popped with surprise. He’d never broken the thirty-seven-minute mark, and he’d just shattered the record without feeling especially exerted the entire hike.

  A shadow was peeling back across the Chautauqua Valley below, revealing a green carpet and shining river hemmed in by forest.

  As the sound of his breathing subsided, the roar of rushing water filled the air. He spotted a deluge racing down a crag in the mountain off to his left. It had rained hard last night on his roof and judging by the saturated ground under his feet and lack of fresh snow, it had rained hard up here, too.

  He turned around, looked up, and saw new streams of water webbing the mountainside.

  His eyes were drawn back to the valley floor and the shining Chautauqua. It had been a large run-off year already, and today river conditions would be especially dangerous.

  But it was his day off.

  He unzipped his fleece and welcomed the cool air licking the sweat off his body.

  He sucked from his CamelBak water pack, then took it off and placed it on the granite slab rock in front of him. He opened the top zipper and pulled out two bananas.

  Breathing calmly through his nose, he stood and ate the two pieces of fruit and raised his eyes to the jagged horizon. June in the Rockies. The bottom of the valleys were carpeted in never-ending green, while the mountain tops were still covered with white frosting left behind by a late May storm. He loved the juxtaposition.

  He finished the two bananas, and with more than a little ceremony, added the skins to a pile under the overhanging lip of granite. There had to be at least fifty now, in varying shades of black and degrees of decay.

  His phone chimed in his pack and he pulled it out.

  Two text messages and three missed calls. The first message was from Patterson, the second from Rachette.

  Call me ASAP!

  Call the station as soon as you get this!

  He pressed the first message and tapped the call button.

  “Hey, there you are,” Patterson said.

  Wolf checked the time on his wrist. It was still before 9 a.m. “I’m here. What’s going on? Flooding?”

  “What?”

  “It rained hard on the snow above my house. Is the river flooding?”

  “No, it’s not. I know it’s your day off but you have to get in here immediately.”

  “And why’s that?”

  She told him.

  He grabbed the pack and took off down the hill at full speed.

  “You coming in?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Wolf said into his phone. “I’m on Main, almost there.”

  “Okay. We’ll be in MacLean’s office.” Patterson sounded like she was in the squad room. Somebody hooted with laughter in the background.

  He hung up and slapped the wheel. He should have taken First and cut one street over. Now he crept along in a train of cars passing through the heart of downtown.

  The Rocky Points Mountain Bike Festival banner spanning the road bounced on the breeze, reminding him why traffic on this June Friday morning was more like a Sunday ski season rush hour.

  A woman stood at the edge of the road, holding a coffee cup and the hand of a little girl.

  A small jolt rippled through his body. The sight of any woman with a young daughter did that now. The passing cars were preventing them from stepping alongside the driver’s side of their vehicle, s
o he slowed to a stop and waved them out.

  She peaked her eyebrows and mouthed Thank you.

  A car sucked up against his bumper and honked. The train behind came to a halt.

  The girl, unprepared and yanked by her mother, twirled and landed on her backside. Her eyes clamped shut and she screamed.

  Whoops.

  The car behind him honked again, this time a full whole note. Obviously, the guy had failed to recognize the significance of the folded spotlight mounted to Wolf’s side-view mirror, or the government plates, or the dark paint job and tinted rear windows.

  He flicked the dash switch on and off, which set his spoiler alight with red and blue strobes.

  The man behind him put up his hands and sat back in his seat.

  Girl now kicking and screaming under her arm, the woman stepped off the sidewalk and went to the rear driver’s-side door. Red-faced, she moved fast while she set her coffee on the roof, shoved the kid in, strapped her into the car seat, shut the door, and jumped behind the wheel. It was like a new rodeo event and she’d broken the record time.

  Wolf honked, but it was too late.

  The woman waved out her window and took off. The car lurched forward, sending her coffee tumbling off the roof and onto the pavement.

  She pulled over and jammed to a stop. A moment later, her hand came out again, this time waving him on.

  He rolled down his window and eased up next to her. “Geez, I’m sorry. I tried to—”

  “Just”—she was barely audible over the screaming in the back seat—“go.”

  “Right.”

  He let off the brake and accelerated up the two blocks of now open road, took a right turn, and parked at the rear of the Sluice–Byron County building.

  He jogged through the lot and into the double automatic doors. Two uniforms were getting into the elevators, but he passed them and took the stairwell instead. His legs were tight from the morning’s exercise, but as he summited the third flight of steps his lungs barely strained.