Sinister Shorts

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  The parents looked at him, flummoxed. The father slammed his open hand down on the Formica. “ Taylor shot him! I didn't like him the moment I saw him.”

  “No. Taylor didn't shoot him. Roman says it was someone he didn't know. But Taylor 's got plenty to answer for.”

  “Well, then…?”

  “Here's my take on it. Number one problem. Not enough blood on the sidewalk. That's easy. Roman was shot inside the store. Number two problem. Where's the blood? Well, we've got an immaculate store all of a sudden. Taylor 's been mopping and scrubbing like a maniac. You said the day your son was shot, you got there and Taylor was cleaning. He probably had cleared away the blood seconds after Roman got shot right there behind the counter. Problem three. Who shot him? I don't think it was someone Roman knew. I don't think it had anything to do with drugs. I think Roman got shot the same way most people get shot in convenience stores. He got shot during an attempted robbery.

  “My guess? It was a young-looking customer, a nervous one. Maybe put a six-pack on the counter thinking he'd get your son to open the register, then he'd make his move. But the owner's been on the warpath about selling to underage drinkers. Your son demands some ID, which is not something a thief is eager to show. The thief balks.”

  “Roman would stand up to the guy,” Victor said sadly. “He's got a temper.”

  “So, okay, at this point Roman's already defensive, maybe a little mad. The customer looks young. Maybe he's a little fellow. And Roman's big, intimidating. Roman says Taylor keeps a baseball bat under the counter in case things get rowdy. So, let's say, Roman reaches under the counter. Anyway, for that reason or some other one, the would-be thief gets nervous and pulls a gun. Your son gets shot. Happens all the time.”

  “It doesn't make sense. They found him outside.”

  “That slowed me down a little, too. That's where your friend Taylor came in. He moved him.”

  “He dragged Roman outside?” asked Roman's horrified mother. “After someone shot him?”

  “Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He thought Roman was already dead.”

  “But why would he do that, Mr. van Wagoner? Why leave our son dead on the sidewalk?”

  “Bert Taylor didn't carry workers' compensation insurance. He knew he'd be liable if your son was shot in his store. Outside, he might be able to avoid any financial responsibility. He's not a murderer. He's just another small businessman trying to protect himself. Almost everybody lies to save money. He figured your son was dead already, so why invite trouble?”

  “My God!”

  “My ex-fellow cops are over there right now. I'm sure Taylor will be persuaded to help them identify the person who shot your son. He probably saw the whole thing.”

  “They better catch him,” said Delilah, “before I do. Boys with guns. I never let Roman play with guns.”

  “By the way, I had a talk with Roman's doctor,” Paul said. “In spite of being only a few feet away, the shooter missed anything vital. The doctor says Roman's as strong as a prizefighter. He'll be out of the hospital soon.”

  “Without a job to go to,” worried his mother.

  “No troubles on that score now. Taylor will make it up to him,” Paul said. “I'll see to it.”

  “If he can't even afford insurance, we're not going after Bert Taylor,” said Victor. “We don't want to put him out of business or anything. What he did was really low, but he didn't actually harm our boy.”

  “Oh, but Taylor can afford insurance. He just prefers to put his money into real estate. He owns a section of coastline south of Carmel.”

  “He can help us with Roman's medical bills?”

  “I'll give you the name of a fine workers' comp attorney in Salinas who will make sure Mr. Taylor takes care of all Roman's needs for now and for a significant chunk of the future, guaranteed.”

  “You mean…” Delilah began, but her husband interrupted.

  “Hot damn,” cried Victor Maldonado, knocking the chair over as he stood up. “Roman's going to college!”

  Dead Money

  Through his sunglasses, darkly, Tim Breen watched Sunday-morning sun heat the fence outside the sheriff's office, sending steam off the fence and the roof of the town library next door. It had been raining for a month, but today would be clear.

  All around the little Sierra foothill town of Timberlake the forest whistled and cawed, rustled and stirred. The gullies along West Main Street ran like creeks, splashing up water as the cars rolled by. He watched a mallard sail down one, making for the river, sun glistening on its iridescent green head. As it passed, it rasped out some quacks, like an old man laughing at him.

  He watched the town come out to dry, thinking, Now they'll bring me all the trouble they've been storing up behind their screen doors. He liked it better dull and sleepy in the rain, nobody bothering him. He was burned out, and he knew it, but he hid it behind a lumbering good-natured facade.

  Warm yeast smells drifted toward him from the Ponderosa Coffee Shop across the street. At ten fifteen, more or less, he was usually there, eating donuts and drinking coffee with Bodie Gates, the other deputy assigned to the tiny Timberlake station.

  He still had half an hour. He pulled the missing persons report on Roy Ballantine out of his pocket, scanning it again.

  Anita Ballantine had been waiting for him at eight when he rode into the parking lot in the patrol car, wound tight from anger or fear, he couldn't tell which. Inside, while he washed out the coffeepot and settled himself behind his old metal desk, she had told him about Roy Ballantine, who had gone AWOL in the night.

  He knew Roy, the local agent for Gibraltar Insurance Company. Roy worked out of a storefront office three doors down and across the street.

  Anita had said Roy never stayed out all night before. He had to be at work at eight A.M., and he never missed a day. He had taken the car about ten the night before, saying he was going to the liquor store for beer. The car, a 2002 Honda Accord, was in good shape, but maybe he'd gone for a drive in the woods, god knows why, broke down, and passed a cold Saturday night out there.

  Tim had listened, noticing Anita had gotten thinner over the winter. Her skin was so white he could see the blue veins in her neck. He had written down the license number, and promised to check it out, telling Anita he was sure everything would be all right.

  It was probably nothing, but he'd have to do something about it. He stuffed the paper back in his pocket, a little angrily. The duck floated out of view, ruffling its feathers, and he went into the station.

  First he woke up Henry Salas with his phone call. Henry had been on shift at Timberlake Liquors the night before. Roy hadn't shown up there, for beer or anything else.

  Then he drove down the highway, out of town, toward the Feather River Bridge, the tall firs along the road black against the strong sun. Across the bridge, six miles farther south down the highway at Camden, there was an all-night supermarket that sold Roy 's brand of beer.

  As he got on the two-lane bridge, forty feet above the swollen brown torrent below, he saw Roy's black Accord parked on the right, smack against the bridge railing. He turned on his flashing lights and parked behind the car.

  Nobody inside. On the front seat of the unlocked car, Tim found Roy 's wallet with twenty-six bucks in it. The back seat was covered with suit ties, paper cups, and burger wrappers, quite a few files, some girlie magazines. Like most insurance agents, Roy did a lot of business out of his car.

  No blood smears, no sign of violence, but all wrong. Tim looked up ahead, looked back down the road.

  Looked over the metal rail, about four feet high, coated with corroded green paint and bird guano, and down, to where the river poured by.

  Back to the Accord. He searched it thoroughly this time. No note in the glove compartment, current registration above the driver's side visor. Keys in the ignition, shit. He got in and started it up, using his handkerchief. The engine roared. No breakdown here.

  He called Bodie from his car
radio and asked for backup and binoculars. Then he drove slowly the rest of the way across the bridge, searching with his eyes, and all the way to the Camden supermarket. The manager there made some calls. None of the night clerks had seen Roy. He had never made it that far.

  When Tim got back to the bridge, Bodie was leaning over the rail, his hand shading his eyes. “Some good-sized trout down there,” he said. His uniform hung on him. Still a growing boy, six feet four and rising, he weighed a hundred sixty pounds after dinner and cake.

  Tim handed him the report from Anita, and said over the roar from below, “Roy Ballantine. He may be a jumper. But there's no note.”

  “I see the car keys,” Bodie said. “I brought a couple pairs of fishing boots like you said.”

  “Let's get started, then.” The two deputies climbed down the slick, weedy, muddy banks on the west side of the bridge, in the direction of the water flow, poking through the underbrush every few feet.

  By noon they had covered both sides up to a half-mile down. They had found the carcass of a dog, about a million beer cans, and somebody's bra, and they were half-blind from the reflections off the river, but Roy hadn't turned up.

  They went back to town, changed clothes, ate at the diner down the street, and called in a local construction crew to search the remaining half-mile stretch down to the falls. Anita called in and said she had had no word. Tim told her he'd have to hold on to the Accord for a while, and told her not to worry, but she was a smart girl. A few minutes later, he saw her in her old Mercedes heading toward the bridge.

  The foreman of the crew came in at five to report that his men had searched the full mile down to the portage camp above Timberlake Falls, then hiked down around and had a look at the dense foliage at the bottom, where the rocks were. “Nothing,” he said. “You're gonna have to bring in a diver. Why would Ballantine jump anyway? He was lookin' happy last Saturday night at the Elks, real happy. He won at least two hundred bucks playin' poker.”

  Tim said, “Thanks, buddy. Send me the bill,” and then he went out on the front porch of the sheriff's office, where he had set up a folding chair, and thought.

  The spring sun cast sharp shadows down the street, filtered here and there by the trees. He half-expected to see Roy come meandering down the sidewalk, returning from some backwoods bacchanalia, dirty and beat. But Roy didn't oblige.

  Aside from the Elks Club and the Episcopal Church, the Ballantines kept to themselves. They had two kids in the elementary school. Roy and Anita had problems, but Tim had never received one of those late-night, help-he's-trying-to-kill-me calls. They had moved to Timberlake five years before, when Roy transferred in from San Francisco. Anita missed the big city. She still visited family there about once a month.

  He left Bodie on the phone to his girlfriend. He felt tired, and he wanted to go home and hide like he'd been doing for a long time, but he had to talk to Anita again.

  In the big white rambling Cape Cod on the edge of town, Anita sat in the dark dining room, curtains drawn, a bottle of expensive Chardonnay mostly empty on the table, a glass in her hand. She was usually careful about makeup and hair, but tonight she had pulled her long red hair into a ponytail and let the freckles show, and she was wearing one of Roy's old flannel shirts.

  She jumped up when he came in, said, “Did you find him?” breathlessly, and when he had to tell her no, she sat back down with a thump and put her face in her hands while he told her about the search.

  After a minute or two she stirred and said in a hostess voice, “I'm forgetting my manners. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”

  “Water or a soda would be fine,” he said.

  “Come on,” she said. “You're off duty now. I heard you can drink the whole town under the table.”

  “I don't do that anymore.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You got religion. How trendy. How middle-aged.” She shuffled into the kitchen in her floopy slippers, came back with ice water.

  “Ginny's out back,” she said. “ Roy rigged up a tree house for her and Kyle. Would you like to see it?”

  “Some other time.”

  “I told them Roy had to go out of town. I didn't think I ought to-you know. Yet.”

  He had put it off as long as he could. “I'm not much good in the tact department, Anita. I hope you'll take this right. I need to know, has Roy been talking about suicide? Did he have any problems that were getting him down? Sleepless nights, signs of depression? Secrets?”

  Anita said, “I've been sitting here all day, thinking about his car on the bridge. I suppose that's what Roy 's done, committed suicide. I thought you came here to tell me you found his body.”

  “Did he give you any indication…” Anita cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, smiled brightly.

  “Indication? No, he was actually quite specific. How he didn't love me anymore. How he hated this stupid town and all you rednecks riding around in your pickups. How if he never saw another tree it would be fine with him. He applied for a transfer, but the company's cutting back, and he was lucky to have this job. So he smiled and schmoozed all day and lay awake at night staring up toward the ceiling.”

  Having dumped its emotion, her voice trailed off.

  “Funny. I thought he liked it here,” Tim said.

  “He was bored,” Anita said. “Bored with me and the kids. Roy never wanted to sell insurance. He wanted to be sailing a yacht in the Aegean wearing a white cap with his arm around a teenager's waist. Then Ginny came. And Kyle the next year. How interesting. We're both talking about him in the past tense. He's probably going to walk through the front door any minute, pissing and moaning about his dinner being late.”

  “Was he a good swimmer?”

  “What do you mean by that? He was trying to kill himself, so he wouldn't be swimming hard to save himself. Would he? And the water's freezing, how could he survive? He's dead, Mr. Deputy. Go find him.”

  “Keep your spirits up,” Tim said.

  “Actually, I'm drinking 'em down,” Anita said, waving the wine bottle. She stopped herself after a second, and set the bottle carefully back on the table. “Whether he comes back or not, Timothy Breen, I don't want you telling anybody what I just said. About my marriage. About how Roy felt. I talked too much. Under the circumstances.” She straightened up in the chair, put her hand to her hair. “Who knows. If he does turn up, mustn't hurt his business. Insurance agent, you know, he's like a minister or funeral director. You know, stable, good marr-marriage… Elks.”

  “If he's dead, that won't matter, Anita.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “I can't promise, Anita. But I sure won't hurt you unnecessarily.”

  She smiled humorlessly, put her elbows on the table and her head back in her hands. “All you care about is your stinkin' self,” she said. “Gonna use my weakness against me.”

  He let it pass. She was talking to Roy, he knew that.

  Just before six, back in town, he stopped into Gibraltar Insurance and talked to Roy 's secretary, Kelly Durtz, the daughter of the mayor. Though she was eighteen, she looked about fourteen years old and had the brains of a pigeon. Roy would not have confided in her.

  She let him go through Roy 's desk. Everything was in order, more files on the desk, a pen set from his wife, certificates and family photos on the walls. No note, no private desperate musings stuck away in a corner of a drawer. Kelly locked up and left with him, walked toward home two blocks away.

  Tim locked up, too, leaving his home number on the answering machine in case of emergency. Timberlake was too small to justify a 911 service. People were leaving, not arriving. Soon enough they would have to close the sheriff's substation there, and he would have to move somewhere or take up a new trade.

  He drove home, five minutes away, off the highway and down two hundred feet of gravel road, startling a buck and doe browsing in the brush at the turnoff.

  He really should get a dog. He turned on the lamp in the main room of his cabin, went into
the kitchen, and microwaved three burritos. After setting them on his kitchen table, breathing in their beany aroma, he got the big bottle of orange Gatorade out of the fridge, not bothering with a glass.

  He ate, watched TV, had a shower, got into bed with the old Ross Macdonald he was reading, keeping half an ear open for the sound of the phone or tires crunching in the driveway, but nothing happened. Nothing much ever did happen.

  Right before he turned out the light, he thought to himself, I thought he liked it here. He hadn't really known Roy. No one had really known Roy, and no one really knew Tim.

  And then he thought, if no body turned up, you have to wonder, what if Roy faked it? He lay there on the lumpy bed that gave him backaches and chewed on that thought for a long time.

  As usual, he slept badly. Outside, the crickets built their wall of sound, the moths mated in a flutter of wings around his porch light, and a bullfrog raised his nightly ruckus down by the river, but Tim pulled the covers over his head, because he didn't want to hear it. The forest made him crazy, he didn't know why.

  The next morning when Angel Ramirez opened up at the bank, Tim was there, and he got Angel to look up Roy 's accounts without a warrant. Angel had that bad habit of driving to neighboring towns late at night and peeking into windows when the urge got too strong. Tim had helped him into a diversion program the year before, and Angel still saw Doc Ashland every week. If he was still peeping, he had gotten too discreet for Tim to hear a whisper of it.

  “He has the individual checking account, in his name only, a joint checking account with his wife's name on it, too, a business account, and a trust account,” Angel said. “Here're the last month's statements on each of the four.”

  Inflow, outflow, some bounced checks on the individual accounts. Like everybody, Roy and Anita spent more than they took in.

  The trust account showed a big check being cashed for a client ten days before. “I'd like to see this one,” he told Angel.

  Made out to Roy Ballantine, as a Gibraltar agent, and Peter Bayle, jointly, the check was for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Gibraltar Insurance had already cleared it.