‘Coop’s a friend,’ Susan said. ‘That doesn’t mean I have to get his approval about the decisions I make about Jamie.’
Linda held up her hands in mock surrender. ‘Hey, I didn’t say anything about approval. I just thought you would’ve talked, that’s all.’
But it was more than that, Susan thought. ‘I have to go,’ she said, finishing her coffee and sliding off her stool. ‘See you tonight.’
When she reached her office she hesitated, then turned and walked along to the old Somers hardware store. The windows were covered over, but from inside she could hear the sound of hammering. She knocked, and a moment later Michael opened the door. Beyond him wooden debris littered the floor, the light angling inside captured columns of dust in the air.
‘Hi, I was just passing,’ Susan said. It sounded lame, but she couldn’t think what else to say. ‘Can I come in?’
He stood aside. ‘It’s kind of a mess.’
They faced each other a little awkwardly since there was nowhere for them to sit. ‘How’s it going?’ she asked looking around.
He ran a hand through his hair. He looked tired she thought. He appeared a little bemused by all the wreckage.
‘Okay. I think. I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything. I’m not set up for visitors yet.’
‘So when’s the grand opening?’ she asked.
‘I hadn’t thought about it. A few weeks maybe.’
‘What are you going to sell?’
‘I don’t know.’
Susan was taken aback. Who would do all this work without having a proper plan?
‘I suppose that sounds a little strange,’ he said.
‘A little,’ she agreed. She wondered how much money he would spend fixing the place up, and if he realized his chances of success no matter what he ended up selling were virtually nil. ‘I started a business myself when I first came here,’ she said. ‘The real estate office along the street. It was really tough there for a while. You know how people can be in small towns. They weren’t exactly beating down my door.’
‘You don’t think this will work, do you?’ he said, gesturing to their surroundings.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Not in as many words, but it’s what you meant’
‘It was just an observation,’ she said. It seemed like every time she said anything he did his best to take it the wrong way. ‘Actually I really came here to thank you’
‘For what?’
‘I know Jamie’s been going over to your place a lot. I hope he’s not in the way?’
‘He’s fine. He just watches me train Cully.’
‘That’s your falcon, right? I found some pictures Jamie drew. And there was a book too. Did you give it to him?’
‘It’s not a kids book, but I thought he might like it anyway.’ He paused. “Does it bother you?’
‘What?’
‘Your son coming over. Actually he never comes close if it makes you feel better. He just watches from the woods.’
‘Why would it bother me? Like I said, I came here to thank you.’ She had the feeling he didn’t believe her. She looked at her watch ‘Anyway, I should get back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said as she turned to leave. ‘I guess I can be a little defensive. Besides, since we’re on the subject of thanks, I never got the chance to thank you. For lending me the rifle.’
‘Right.’ She had almost forgotten about that.
‘Anyway, thanks. And don’t worry about Jamie.’
‘I didn’t say I was worried.’
‘About him being in the way, I mean.’
‘Oh, okay,’ she said. ‘Thanks. Well, like I said, I ought to go.’
Shit, Susan thought as she headed back to her office. That didn’t go the way she planned it.
CHAPTER 20
It was late in the afternoon. Coop and Miller were sitting in a patrol car five miles out of town, just off the main county road that joined the highway to Williams Lake.
‘Hey, this guy’s in a hell of a hurry,’ Miller said, his eye on the radar monitor.
Coop glanced over and saw the digits suddenly start changing down. ‘He’s picked us up,’ he said and looked in the mirror.
A truck appeared around the bend a half mile behind them. The driver’s detector had warned him there was a radar trap up ahead, but it was too late.
Miller started to get out and Coop watched him in the mirror as he waved the truck down. He walked with a youthful swagger aided by the uniform and the nine millimeter on his hip. He was twenty-two, fresh out of college.
He wouldn’t stay, Coop knew that. Miller was eager and ambitious. He probably had his whole career mapped out from start to finish and being a small town cop wasn’t a big part of it.
The truck belonged to Tommy Lee who was climbing down, a cigarette stuck between his lips and a scowl on his face. Coop decided he wouldn’t get out just yet. Maybe it was time Tommy met the rigid arm of Miller’s law.
Had he ever been as enthusiastic about writing tickets as Miller was? He didn’t think so. He was never particularly ambitious. Apart from his training he’d worked all of his eighteen-year career in the town where he’d grown up. He made Chief after Dan Redgrave retired a few years back and he fully expected to keep the job until it was his turn to retire.
He liked what he did. He knew he was respected and he was paid well enough. Crime around Little River was fairly low key stuff. He’d never had to threaten anyone with his gun and he never expected to. Most people took one look at him and thought twice about getting into a fight. The worst he’d ever had to do was crack a few skulls in a barroom fight in Clancy’s before throwing the perpetrators in jail for the night to sleep it off.
A lively discussion was going on between Tommy and Miller and he thought it was about time he intervened.
‘Listen here,’ Tommy said animatedly, his cigarette bouncing up and down on his lip. ‘If I kept to the damn speed limits all the time I’d never get through enough work to keep myself going. It ain’t easy running a trucking business around here, son, let me tell you that.’
‘That’s not the point here,’ Miller said, his jaw jutting out. ‘The laws are made for a reason and you have to obey them just the same as everyone else. Now let me see your paperwork.’
‘Jesus.’ Tommy looked away and spat in disgust. ‘Don’t you have some real criminals to catch?’
Coop smiled to himself. Miller was coming across as the kind of sanctimonious upstart guaranteed to upset Tommy, who looked relieved when he saw Coop approaching.
‘Hey, Coop. I didn’t know you was there.’
‘Hey, Tommy. Everything okay here, Miller?’
‘This guy hasn’t given me his paperwork, Coop,’ Miller complained. He glowered at Tommy Lee. ‘I already told him we got his speed on the radar, and I’m going to have to write him a ticket.’
‘Jesus Christ, Coop, you know how it is,’ Tommy appealed. ‘I have to get this load down to Jordans and then I have to get back over to fetch another for Paul Davidson at the mill. How the hell am I ever going to get that done if every time I come around a corner I got to worry about getting a friggin’ ticket?’
‘Well, Miller’s right, Tommy,’ Coop said. ‘You were well over the limit back there.’
‘Yeah, but like I said ...’ Tommy was indignant.
‘Hold on,’ Coop cut in. ‘All I’m saying is it would be good if you just kept it down a little. Okay?’
Tommy looked hopeful. ‘So I can go then?’
‘I think we can settle for a warning this time.’ Coop stared at Miller who opened and closed his mouth but didn’t say anything.
They watched as Tommy climbed back to his cab and drove away, gunning the gears as he started to build speed for the climb ahead, the big Kenworth spewing fumes out the back.
‘Why’d you do that?’ Miller demanded.
‘Because the man’s trying to make a living and he only just gets by. He’s got a wife and three kids,
and if he gets behind on the payments on that truck the bank will call in the loan, and then he won’t be able to make any kind of living at all, and if that happens the bank’ll foreclose on his house. I can’t see how that would help anybody, can you?’
‘He should’ve thought about that before he decided to break the limit,’ Miller said obstinately. ‘The law’s the law.’
‘Around here,’ Coop said, ‘there’s a little discretion where that’s concerned.’
***
Coop got home around six-thirty and took a shower. Afterwards he dressed in clean Levis and a freshly ironed shirt and combed back his hair, then he went into the kitchen and took a beer out of the refrigerator and sat down at the old kitchen table to polish his boots. His thoughts turned to Susan. He remembered when Dave Baker first introduced them, after he brought her to Little River. He and Dave were buddies in high school. Dave always wanted to be an architect and he’d been smart enough to go to college and achieve his aim. He was the kind of guy who Coop always knew would make a success of himself, just like Ron Taylor, who’d always had a flair for business and was now a big-shot developer, or even Carl Jeffrey who ended up becoming a lawyer like his dad. Coop was never envious of their achievements. He always wanted to be a cop and that’s what he did. But when he met Susan that changed.
For the first time in his life he wanted something he knew he could never have. He didn’t like the feeling, especially as Susan was married to his friend, but he accepted the situation because he thought the things he felt would sooner or later go away. They never had though, and he discovered things about himself he hadn’t previously been aware of.
He had thought about her a lot. If he was with another woman it was Susan’s face he saw in his mind’s eye. He would be over at their house sometimes in the summer for a barbecue, and would see the way the sun silhouetted her body underneath her dress. He’d think about her and Dave in bed. He kept his thoughts hidden. She always smiled at him, never seeing what his eyes told her. Dave would affectionately smooth her rump when he thought nobody was looking, and she’d grin at him. Coop would taste his beer go sour in his throat.
As time went by he spent less time at their house, but they didn’t appear to notice, or if they did neither of them commented on it. Then came the day he formed a search party to look for Dave after Susan had called, her voice tense with worry. Before they even set out a part of him hoped Dave was dead, though he hadn’t admitted it to himself for a long time. When they found him, his first thought at seeing all that gore on Jamie was that nobody could survive losing that much blood. Later, after he’d broken the news to Susan, he held her while she cried, and all he could think of was how warm she felt. His fingers brushed against the skin of her neck, just below the hairline, so lightly she wouldn’t have noticed. He felt her thigh against his own.
That night he got drunker than he’d ever been. People thought it was because his best friend had died. He tried not to think about it anymore, but sometimes it came back to him.
Coop finished his beer and pulled on his boots. It wasn’t his fault that Dave was dead. He had to remind himself of that. He thought Dave would actually approve of the idea of his friend and his wife ending up together. Coop would treat Jamie as if he was his own son, and he would love Susan more than anyone else ever could.
When he arrived at her house forty minutes later she was on the step, wearing jeans and a shirt with her hair swept back. Behind her, Wendy Douglas was standing in the doorway, and as he arrived they stopped talking, though they both wore odd expressions.
‘What’s up?’ he said, getting out of his car.
Susan shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. We were just looking for Jamie. He must be around somewhere.’
There was some intonation in her voice that he couldn’t identify. It was dark and late for Jamie to be outside. ‘You don’t know where he is?’
‘He can’t have gone far.’
Again Coop felt he was missing something. Susan and Wendy exchanged glances.
‘I’ll go look for him.’ Coop hesitated, unsure which direction to go, and then he fetched a flashlight from his truck.
‘He might have gone that way,’ Susan said, indicating the woods.
‘Towards the Somers place?’
‘He’s been going over there lately.’
‘What for?’
‘He goes after school to watch Michael’s falcon. He came back earlier, but then he just went again.’
Coop noted the way she called him Michael. It sounded like she knew him, like they were friends, which was something she’d never mentioned. And this thing about Jamie going over there threw him. He just nodded, wondering what else he didn’t know about.
‘I’ll go find him,’ he said.
Coop thought some people have an antenna for danger, for when something comes along that might threaten the status quo. He sensed a subtle change had occurred and that it altered the balance of things.
He didn’t know if he’d planned the way everything had happened with Susan right from the day Dave was buried, or if it just happened. He liked to think the latter, but his conscience told him differently. At first he would stop by to make sure Susan and Jamie had everything they needed, and he would help out by fixing a dripping tap or a door that was warped, and then as time went by he started staying for supper now and then. He and Susan would stay up talking at night after Jamie had gone to bed, Susan doing most of the talking while he just listened. She talked a lot about Dave, and he thought that was why she’d been able to speak to him, because he was Dave’s friend.
She missed Dave and because of the way Jamie had taken it she felt more alone and uncertain than she might have otherwise. Over time she told him stuff that surprised him, like that she hadn’t always been sure she wanted to be married to Dave. It was a chink in their relationship Coop hadn’t known was there. They’d fought like any other couple, but she’d also had doubts that went deeper, though it was all in the past.
Occasionally she’d cried on his shoulder.
There were times he’d wanted to tell her how he felt. He could feel she needed somebody right then, and he thought if he made a move she might respond, but it would have been from need and not a clear head, and it probably wouldn’t have lasted.
Instead he tried to be her friend. He did his best with Jamie too, though no good had come of that yet. Eventually Susan began to come out of herself, and he knew she understood how he felt about her. He hoped she respected the fact he’d never tried to rush her. She was uncertain because of Jamie, but one day when Jamie finally accepted him, Susan would too. Coop was certain of that.
He saw the lights from the house ahead and thought about Jamie being over there. He was surprised Susan had let it happen. Michael Somers had always been a loner. When they were kids everybody knew his mother wasn’t playing with a full deck. She spent most of her time in that house, rarely venturing into town, going around in her nightgown all day and treating herself for all kinds of illnesses she thought she had. It was no wonder that Somers’ dad had taken refuge in the bottom of a glass, which over the years had made him a drunk. Basically, as people said, they were pretty fucked up as a family.
When the mother killed herself there were people who said it was convenient that John Somers was out late that night. With that kind of history Michael Somers was on a no-win ticket. His mom had been crazy and if you listened to what people said, his dad had as good as killed her.
***
Michael was on the porch, wrapped up in a jacket, drinking whisky while he watched the night sky.
The clearing was ethereal when there was a bright moon. The snow was silver grey, the trees darkly shadowed. From the porch the sky seemed curved, like a massive dark outer sphere that encased the world. He saw the white flash of a shooting star and he wondered where it had come from before it burned up in the earth’s atmosphere. How long had it spun and travelled through space?
An owl flitted silently acros
s the clearing, a swift dark shape in pursuit of some victim. He’d read online that owls had given up the protective coating of oil on their feathers to achieve silent flight. Caught in a downpour they would become sodden, unable to fly. There was a price for everything.
At the bottom of the steps a figure melted from the darkness soundlessly and was there. It startled him, and he almost dropped his glass. One second there was nothing, then a pale face materialized and he thought he was either drunk or seeing the ghost of a boy, maybe himself. It was Jamie.
‘Where did you come from?’
Jamie held out a book and placed it on the step. Michael picked it up.
‘Did you read it?’
He wasn’t expecting an answer, but Jamie nodded, and in the second it took him to absorb that fact he realized this was the closest Jamie had ever come to the house.
‘Did you like it?’
Again there was a nod, then Jamie peered into the dark recesses of the porch.
‘Looking for Cully? She’s in the woodstore, asleep by this time. She doesn’t like to stay up late.’ He grinned, and in response the ghost of a smile passed across Jamie’s expression.
He heard the sound of somebody approaching through the trees and then Coop emerged into the clearing, but this time he wasn’t wearing his cop’s uniform.
‘Jamie? Your mom’s worried about you, son.’ The look Coop gave Michael was reproachful. ‘It’s late for him to be out here.’
‘He just returned this, that’s all.’ Michael showed him the book.
There was a long silence. Michael noted the way Coop’s hand rested on Jamie’s shoulder, but he sensed a gulf between them. Jamie looked at the ground.
‘We’d better go, son,’ Coop said.
As he turned away, Jamie cast a quick questioning glance back over his shoulder.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Michael said.
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