Sinister Shorts

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  She stayed right with him, as if he hadn't suddenly changed the subject. “I know what you mean,” she said. “It's like, you went to the optometrist, and he fit you with powerful glasses, and the whole world springs into this vivid focus. And it's the same old ugly world you drank to escape from, and you can see every dirty crevice again…” She looked around the shabby kitchen, at the cracked linoleum and the broken high chair in the corner.

  “Yeah. Like you used to love riding the Ferris wheel, and now all you notice is the operator's tired and mean, hates his job, and doesn't like you,” Tim said.

  Valerie nodded. “I look back, and it's like we used to live in the night, under those romantic hazy-colored lights, and now it's daylight. It's too sharp and bright, isn't it?”

  He sat there looking at her. She had that ironic, crooked smile he'd seen on so many drunks at so many meetings. “Yeah. They keep trying to convince you it's better,” he said. “It's worse, but you can't escape anymore. You're gonna die if you keep boozing, shooting up, whatever you're doing.”

  “Condemned to real life,” she said, laughing a little. “Forced to grow up.”

  “I could love you now,” he said. “We've both been through it.”

  “Quit kidding yourself,” she said. “You could have loved me years ago, when we were kids and drunk all the time, but not now. You can't fall in love unless you can get out of your head.”

  “Normal people do it.”

  “They're just born insensitive. Born lucky. So we sobered up, and you turned into a depressed cop. And I turned into an unhappy housewife. We're big successes now.”

  “There was something brave about what we were doing,” Tim said. “You know? And now we don't even have that.”

  “We are the driest of dry drunks,” Valerie said. She got up and came around the table to him. She took his big head in her hands and drew him to her breast, and his arms went around her little waist. “Maybe this will help,” she said.

  “Maybe.”

  “We could give it a try, anyway. Even if it only lasts a minute.”

  “Count on it lasting a little longer than that.”

  “Sobriety sucks, it really does,” she said.

  “Yeah. The whole situation. Take your panties off, okay?”

  Tim put Bodie on Ed Strickland for the next couple of days. Bodie reported that Strickland sat in on three or four regular floating poker games at Camden and at Timberlake. He seemed content to hang around town, like he was waiting for something to happen.

  After the second day, Tim got another search warrant, and he and Bodie tore up Strickland's room at the Placer Hotel. But they didn't find anything. The Strickland bank account contained about enough money for next week's groceries.

  The Gibraltar man called. “Are you closing the investigation after the inquest tomorrow?” he said. “I need a final report for the records, so I can issue another check for Bayle and get this thing over with.”

  “You're going to give up on finding the money?”

  “Let me put it to you this way,” Burdick said. “You're Joe Schmoe with a mortgage, fishing along the riverbanks, and what do you snag but a bag full of a fortune in cash? What do you do with it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You dry out the bills on an inside clothesline. You wait a few months, and you start spending it slowly and carefully, and you thank your lucky fucking stars,” Burdick said with a laugh. “We call it dead money. Now and then it slips through the cracks. You're never going to find it.”

  At the inquest the next day, nothing came out that Tim hadn't heard before. He gave his testimony, and they all called it a day and sloshed over to the hotel for lunch. The coroner's verdict was accidental death in the course of committing a crime, and Tim had no evidence to the contrary, except they still hadn't found the money.

  He went back to the office, took care of other business, locked up, went home, and looked in the freezer. Burritos. One of those supermarket pizzas that tasted like paper.

  He looked around the place. Something was missing. Oh yeah, Becky and little Dave. They had moved to Illinois. She had filed for divorce a month later.

  He was sick of being struck with that thought ten times a day. Something was stinging his eyes. He was damn bored and damn lonely, and he was sick and tired of being bored and lonely, of listening to the forest outside and not being a part of anything.

  Next thing he knew, he was on the phone to Valerie. “Can I come over for a while?” he said.

  “Wait until nine or so,” she said. “I'll get the kids to bed early.”

  ***

  He couldn't bring wine, so he stopped and bought her some flowers at the hotel. She opened the door, holding her finger to her lips, and led him directly into the bedroom. The sheets and pillowcases smelled like vanilla and roses, like her. She comforted him, and he did what he could for her.

  Sometime later he woke out of a doze, to the clicking of a key being inserted into the kitchen door. Valerie woke up, too. He got up quickly, pulling his service revolver out of the holster hung on the bedpost. Valerie tiptoed behind him as he walked down the hall.

  Ed Strickland had his head in the refrigerator. When he saw them, his bloodshot eyes went wide and he let out a strangled yell. “You been sleeping with him!” he said. “I'll fix you-”

  “Shut up, you prick,” Valerie said. “I'll sleep with him if I want. Get out.”

  “This is my house,” he yelled, stumbling toward them, his fists up.

  “Get away, Ed. Go on, leave,” Tim said. He kept the gun down, but Strickland charged him, still yelling, grabbing for it. They locked in a furious embrace, Tim trying to keep the gun off him. Valerie ran over by the stove. Strickland smashed him in the face, a big dangerous drunk. They wrestled for the gun-

  Tim heard the explosion, saw Strickland's head bloom out red on one side, and then Strickland crumpled on the ground, and the kids were standing in the doorway holding each other and screaming-

  The sheriff, Bud Ames, came thirty miles from the county seat for the investigation. They took Tim's badge. Valerie backed him up all the way. The coroner called it an accident, and he got his badge back. But he knew that when the time came for layoffs of county staff, he'd be right up there on the list.

  About a week after the Strickland inquest he went back to Valerie's. Her kids acted afraid of him. Valerie said maybe they shouldn't see each other anymore. The pain he felt when she said that shocked him. He hadn't known he was in love with her.

  He went back to his routine.

  April passed. The sun came out, the dazzling mountain sun that the tourists loved. He arrested drunks, rode patrol, issued citations, played dead. Or maybe he was dead.

  He kept seeing the two deer when he drove home at dusk. They must have a nest under one of the trees not far from the cabin. As the weather warmed, the birds returned to raise hell at dawn.

  On another Saturday night, he had just finished his dinner at the Placer Hotel when the desk clerk came over, the mayor's other daughter, the smart one. “I guess I shouldn't say this, but I hope you don't feel too bad about what happened,” she said. “Strickland used to sit up in his room and drink, and then he'd lurch down the stairs looking for trouble. If you hadn't killed him, he might have killed somebody else, like his wife.”

  “I appreciate the thought,” Tim said. He sipped his decaf, thinking about Strickland's face when he turned around and saw Tim there in the house.

  “Why'd she call him?” the clerk said. “If I was separated from him, I would have left well enough alone.”

  “Valerie called him? At the hotel?”

  “She called him that night,” the clerk said. “You know, the night he… died. They didn't talk long, but he didn't look upset or anything when he came down. He left right after.”

  “Excuse me,” Tim said. He picked up the check with trembling hands and took it to the cashier.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “Fine. Do me a favo
r, call Anita Ballantine and tell her I'll be over to see her in about ten minutes.” He drove carefully out to the Ballantine house.

  “Hello, Timothy,” Anita said. “Do you have some more bad news for me?” She was haggard, her body lost in the heavy sweater.

  He said, “Anita, did you get your March phone bill?” When she nodded, he said, “Go get it. Please.”

  When she came back, he unfolded it and stood there reading the numbers in the lamplight. “What is it?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just something I had to check.”

  He drove out River Road to the portage point. The rain had finally stopped, but the roads were still slick. The motel sign was lit, and he could see she had a good crowd. He parked along the road and walked into the forest, toward the river, avoiding the motel.

  The moon floated behind thin cirrus that veiled the stars, but he could see well enough. The pines were thick enough here that not much brush grew under them. He walked on, pushing away the wet boughs, his throat dry and something pressing on his chest, until he came to the clearing at the top of the falls.

  Just before the drop-off, the riverbank rocks narrowed the river down to twelve or so feet across. He got down next to the narrows, felt around in the wet dirt.

  The metal anchor in the ground was still there. He remembered how, as a kid, he had watched some of the men net fishing one summer. They had stretched netting across the river at the narrows, tying it firmly to the metal anchors on either side.

  Those nets were strong, to catch many fish in a very fast current.

  For quite a long time, he stared out over the river. Moonlight fell heavily on it, but it rushed ahead, dark and unstoppable.

  He turned slowly and walked over to the motel that backed onto the clearing.

  Valerie answered the door. She stepped back when she saw him and sent the kids off into the other room. The kitchen table was piled high with magazines. Tim went over and looked at the covers.

  “Next time, please call first if you need to see me,” she said. “I already told you-”

  “The Bahamas,” Tim said. “I read those travel magazines, too. I see myself on a green mountainous island, sitting on the sand, looking out at turquoise water, with a pitcher of ice-cold daiquiris right next to me.”

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “I like that flowered dress. I bet Roy liked it, too. That's the dress you were wearing the day you found his body.”

  “Is it?” she said.

  “He called you four times in the two weeks before he died. Now, why would he do that?”

  “Who?”

  “Ballantine. Roy.”

  “No, he didn't call me. Do you have some kind of phone record? Maybe he called Ed. They were both gamblers.”

  “You're so beautiful. So harsh and so beautiful,” Tim said. “How could he resist?”

  “Me and Roy? Don't be ridiculous.”

  “He would jump over the bridge, and you would catch him at the narrows just before the falls and pull him out. He'd strip off the wet suit and you'd drive out to the airport with him and fly away from all the bad things.”

  “No!”

  “That's what Roy thought, anyway. Was he willing to take your kids? Then when Roy was gone, were you worried that Ed would stay on your case, figure it out eventually? You remember old Ed, don't you? You called him at the hotel and asked him to come to the house. The clerk told me.”

  “No!” Valerie said, backing away. “You're crazy, Tim. Just because I won't have you after what happened- Calm down, let me make you a cup of coffee. Let's talk…” She reached up into the high cabinet and Tim caught a glimpse of the gun.

  “Don't touch it,” he said. “You think I'd come here unarmed? We searched this place. I knew you'd have it somewhere handy. Close the cabinet. Come toward me with your hands up.”

  “Tim-”

  “No more bullshit.”

  Her shoulders slumped. She seemed about to fall. He brought her over to the table and made her sit, sat down across from her. Cracked linoleum; greasy stove, one soft flowing flowered dress to wear… “Valerie,” he couldn't help saying, “I loved you.”

  She raised her head, and he caught something ancient and inhuman behind her eyes. It was the thing that had made her drink, still alive inside there. He had to look away.

  “You were supposed to catch him at the narrow spot, weren't you?” he said.

  She shrugged and said, “It would have been a very small risk. I knew how to use the net. Yeah. Catch him, and then we'd leave with the money. That was his plan.”

  “Did you try? You lost your grip, he went on by?”

  “No.”

  He had to breathe a minute, hard, before he could say, “You let him go by, over the falls?”

  “I let him go.” Her mouth, that had kissed him so tenderly, saying those things-

  “What did he do to you, that you would let him die like that?”

  “It was what he would do to me someday. I thought it over. I just wanted to be alone.”

  She was alone, she would always be alone. “Why didn't you strip off the wet suit? I might have bought the suicide.”

  She backed away, saying in a hopeless, hostile voice, “I planned to. But when I saw him, the… injuries, I couldn't stand to touch him.”

  “You had it made.”

  “You know how it is, Tim. At the last minute, you sabotage yourself. You realize you're a loser, you don't have the strength to carry it off. Maybe if you'd been with me-but I wanted to be alone. That's all I wanted-”

  “I'll have to take the money back,” Tim said, interrupting.

  “I don't have it.” She had realized he wouldn't help her. Her mouth tightened, turned bitter.

  “Of course you have it. He wouldn't risk floating down the river with it. No reason to. You were holding it. Go and get it.”

  “I tell you, I don't have it.”

  Tim said gently, “Write it off. It's dead money for you now. If you don't give it to me, I'll have to tear your house apart, dig up your land. If you tell me now, I'll say I found it somewhere else.”

  She said without any shame or guilt, “All I did was not save him when he was floating down the river. It's not a crime, is it?”

  “I don't know. But stealing the money would be a crime, and I can't let you do that. And then, look what you made me do to poor old Ed.”

  “It's in the fireplace, above the flue. Get it yourself.”

  He made her walk into the small living room with him. He could hear the TV through the kids' door. “Is this all?”

  “All except the back bills I paid. Are you going to tell on me? If you do, I'll just go on over the falls like he did.”

  “No. I'm not going to tell.”

  She stood in the doorway, glaring as he drove away. “Good-bye, then, you cold bastard,” she yelled after him.

  ***

  When he came to the bridge, where he needed to take a left to go into Timberlake, he took a right instead, and drove to the county airport, his right hand caressing the sooty bag. The Southwest Airlines plane bound for San Francisco was circling above, preparing to land. Through the open car windows, rustles and rushings and sighs drifted in on the wind.

  He went into the dark airport bar and sat at a small candlelit table overlooking the runway. He placed the bag carefully on the table. “Drink?” the waitress said.

  “A double Jack Daniel's, straight up.”

  He picked it up, savored the fumes-

  Liquor, money, blurry romance, some faraway place-all he had to do was drink it down, have another, buy a ticket, and drop a postcard in the mailbox resigning as deputy sheriff-

  “It's such a beautiful night, isn't it?” the waitress said. “I guess you're not ready for another.”

  Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars-

  But it was dead money. He'd be alone like Valerie, resurrecting that presence in the back of his mind that made h
im drink-

  He wasn't completely finished. He wasn't extinguished like Valerie; he could still love somebody. She had taught him that by making a fool out of him.

  He was looking down at the table, staring at the little flame guttering in its holder. “Even the candlelight hurts tonight,” he said. His voice sounded husky and strange.

  She leaned down, put her hands on the table as she looked at the candle. “Blow it out, then, honey,” she said. “Then the moonlight can come in from outside.” She had a strong definite tone of voice and hair sprayed to stand firm against anything.

  “You can take this drink away,” he said.

  “You're not going to have it?” Surprise lit her face.

  “Not this time.”

  “Where you headed?” she said curiously. “ San Francisco?”

  “Not this time,” he said again. As he climbed back into the patrol car and headed back to Timberlake, he glanced out the window.

  Outside, the plane was landing, its red lights twinkling off the wet tarmac in the soft haze of evening.

  O'Shay's Special Case

  After they finished some initial paperwork, the interview proceeded in the usual fashion, starting with facts, ending up with emotional content, but something about the client made Patrick O'Shay uncomfortable, and it took a lot to shake him after all his years in the business. “You say you have good coverage?” O'Shay asked.

  “Thirty years I've been their slave.” Jeff Colby worked for Dunkirk Enterprises, a construction company that specialized in huge real estate developments. “Typical profit-driven corporation,” he said, voice full of loathing. “Nobody gives a damn how the job gets done, long as it's done. I take the blame if anything upsets their damn schedule.”

  “You feel you aren't treated well?”

  “Nothing to do with feeling,” he said, angry. He looked around the rumpled, file-filled space, possibly wishing for something slicker. O'Shay's office didn't intimidate; its comfortable shabbiness welcomed workers from the farms ringing Salinas and the central valley. “They treat me worse than dirt.”