Burn Out

by Marcia Muller

  Sometimes when he was done with the horse, he’d join me and talk about our heritages. “You know, our tribes generally had good relationships,” he said one afternoon. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well, huh?”

  “Maybe it’s got more to do with the fact we’re both quiet.”

  “Well, that is a virtue.” He took out a cigarette, lit it, and doused the match thoroughly. With Ramon, I never worried about accidental fires; he was too mindful a man.

  “Sara, God love her, she chatters,” he added. Sara was his wife of thirty-some years. “Of course, when I married a Mexican, I knew she would. And chattering’s not such a bad thing; how else would I know what’s going on in the world? Now, that man of yours doesn’t talk much.”

  “He’s getting better at conversation.”

  “Since he met you. When I first came to work here for him, about a year after his first wife died, he barely spoke at all. A more depressed man I’d never met.”

  We sat in silence for a while, Ramon smoking his cigarette, then grinding it out on the floor and putting the butt in his shirt pocket.

  “You’re damn depressed yourself,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “. . . I don’t think so. Not now, anyway.”

  “You change your mind, I’m here.”

  The next day I brought Ramon a book on Shoshone tribal customs that my birth father, Elwood Farmer, had given me. Lear Jet glowered at me from his stall. Did he think I should’ve brought him something? No way, not after he’d thrown me.

  Throughout the week I had contact with the outside world, of course. Daily calls came from my operative Patrick Neilan, to whom I’d turned over administrative matters at the agency, as well as my office manager, Ted Smalley. Just general reports: everything’s okay here, we wrapped up the so-and-so case, three new jobs came in today. It was all I cared to know about a business I’d nurtured lovingly for years. And that unnerved me.

  Mick had relented and located the person who’d been using my credit card: a deliveryman employed by a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood who frequently delivered takeout to us. Citibank and the police were dealing with him.

  There was also a daily call from Hy, who was restructuring the corporate security firm—formerly RKI, now Ripinsky International—of which he’d become sole owner after the death of one partner and the decampment of another. He’d moved their world headquarters to San Francisco, turned over marginal accounts to other firms, and closed unnecessary branch offices, and was busy creating a corporate culture that—unlike the old RKI’s—was free of corruption. His calls further depressed me, although I did my best to hide it. I’d never heard Hy so vibrant and optimistic, but could only briefly get caught up in his enthusiasm. His feelings about his work were so opposite to how I felt about mine that once the calls were over, I wanted to crawl into bed and bury my head under the pillows.

  Which I did most nights, falling into a restless sleep that was repeatedly visited by the dream of the pit, as well as an odd new one: an Indian girl standing in the cold shadows outside a large white building. She looked at me in the glare of passing headlights, eyes afraid, and then the earth at her feet cracked open and swallowed her up.

  Tuesday

  OCTOBER 30

  I awoke with the dreams heavy upon me, like a hangover. My hands shook as I fixed coffee and my head throbbed dully, even though I’d had nothing alcoholic to drink the night before.

  I took my coffee to the living room and curled up under a woven throw in one of the deeply cushioned chairs by the stone fireplace. Unlike the kitchen, this room was pure Hy: Indian rugs on the pegged-pine floor, antique rifles over the fireplace, and in the bookcases flanking it to either side, his collection of Western novels from the thirties and forties and nonfiction accounts of the Old West. Over the time I’d been staying here, I’d read some of the novels, paged through a few of the nonfiction volumes. But this morning my mind was not on history—at least not anything going back more than five months.

  This stay in the high desert wasn’t working out as I’d thought it would. I’d managed to fill up empty hours with useless activity, while avoiding the larger issues: Did I really want to go on sitting behind a desk hour after hour, reviewing client reports, okaying invoices and expense logs, interviewing new clients, assigning jobs, and mediating employee disputes? Did I really want to continue taking on the larger, more complex cases that required me to be on the move a lot and that—too often in the past year—had ended in danger and near death?

  Over the course of my career I’d been stabbed, nearly drowned, beaten up, falsely imprisoned, held at gunpoint, and once, ignominiously, shot in the ass. I’d killed two people and nearly succumbed to violent urges against others. Last winter I’d come close to being killed in the explosion. Enough, already.

  But taking on a strictly administrative role wasn’t an option for me; I’d go crazy confined to my desk. How could I continue activities that had lost their appeal, where I was just going through the motions?

  The agency was profitable and well respected. I could sell it for big bucks to another firm looking to grow, negotiate a deal where my present employees would remain on staff. Take the money and . . . then what?

  I wasn’t cut out for everyday leisure. I didn’t play golf or tennis or bridge, take classes, have hobbies, or enjoy most of the activities retired people do.

  Retired people.

  My God, I was in my early forties! Given the life expectancy of my birth family—relatives on both sides had lived into their nineties—that was a lot of time to fill up. And that’s all I’d be doing—just filling it up.

  Okay, begin a second career. Lots of people did that. But what? My college degree was in sociology, and that hadn’t gotten me anywhere even when my diploma was freshly minted. Consult? That would only put me back in the thick of things. Write a book on investigative techniques, as I’d recently been asked to? No. I’d rather become a neurosurgeon, train as a master chef, or apply to NASA and fly to Mars. None of which was going to happen either.

  Investigation was what I knew how to do—and do well—but I didn’t want to work at it any more. At least not now. Maybe not ever.

  Hy had suggested I come in as a partner with him, but that wouldn’t work. We’d take our business home with us, and ultimately it would consume our marriage. Besides, an executive position in corporate security wasn’t to my liking; it didn’t provide much involvement with the clients, one aspect that I used to enjoy.

  I went to get some more coffee. My headache had faded, and my hands were steady. Back in my chair by the fireplace, I told myself that at least I’d seriously considered the issues I was facing, even if it hadn’t solved anything.

  Didn’t have to be done quickly anyway. The business was in good hands, and I had all the time in the world. A solution would come to me eventually. In the meantime, why not fill up the rest of today with pleasurable activity?

  I would have liked to go flying, but Hy had needed our Cessna 270B, so he’d dropped me off at Tufa Tower Airport and flown back to the Bay Area. The airport had a couple of clunker planes I could rent for a nominal fee, but Hy had told me they were untrustworthy, and from a cursory inspection I’d concluded he was correct.

  Maybe a picnic. Pack a good book, pick up a sandwich from the Food Mart deli, and go—where? Well, the old Willow Grove Lodge had nice grounds and a dock overlooking the lake. It was closed and isolated. The only people likely to show up there would be real-estate agents with prospective buyers, and I doubted that would happen. If it did, I’d concoct some story to explain my presence and leave.

  The main lodge and six cabins that were scattered over several cottonwood- and willow-shaded acres looked shabby. True, the cabins had never been in great condition, but their nineteen-fifties-vintage furnishings, smoke-stained woodstoves, primitive kitchens, and underlying odor of dry rot reminded me of the resorts where my financially strap
ped family had stayed on summer vacations during my childhood. And even after the death of her husband, Rose Whittington had worked hard to keep the place up. Now the cabins’ green trim was blistered and faded, dark brown wood splintered and cracked, composition roofs sagging. Graffiti decorated their walls. Rose’s garden had long gone to the weeds. A developer’s dream: bulldoze it and put up condos or a luxury hotel. The hell with the love and care that the Whittingtons had put into this place over their fifty-year marriage, let alone the happy memories of all the people who’d stayed here.

  Of course, it was hard to argue with a would-be buyer’s logic; these buildings were not salvageable. I only hoped that whoever bought the acreage would leave the trees.

  I parked behind the lodge where the Land Rover couldn’t be seen from the highway, carried my deli lunch down the rocky slope to the rickety dock, and spread an old blanket on its planks. Sat down, feeling the pale autumn sunshine on my face. The lake rippled on the stones below, and in the distance I could see plovers doing touch-and-goes on the massive central island. The lake is a major stop on the Pacific Flyway, along which approximately a hundred thousand migratory birds travel, and over the years I’ve seen most every kind there. If the lake had not been saved through the efforts of dedicated environmentalists like Hy, the birds would have had a long journey to their next stop.

  A natural wonder restored, a man-made resort dying.

  Suddenly I didn’t feel as sad about the Willow Grove Lodge’s demise. Long after whatever replaced it was gone, the lake would endure.

  The book I’d brought along wasn’t very engaging—a long-winded narrative about a former alcoholic holed up in the woods to contemplate what he claimed wasn’t a midlife crisis, but that damned well sounded like one, as I should know. After I finished my lunch, I dozed off while reading and woke to a chill wind gusting off the lake. The shadows of the trees had moved over me.

  I sat up, disoriented. In my peripheral vision, something moved through the dark grove to the right. I turned my head, narrowed my eyes. Nothing there. Then I saw it again—a figure that darted from trunk to trunk, creating a ripple effect.

  An animal? A person? Either way, I was the interloper here. Time to get going.

  I folded the blanket, grabbed the book and the sack of leavings from my picnic. At the Land Rover I looked back at the grove. No more motion, but a prickly sensation arose at the base of my spine, spread up to the back of my neck. Something colder than the wind washed over me.

  My old woolen peacoat was in the Land Rover and before I drove out I put it on. As I stopped at the top of the drive, I saw the yellow-leafed aspens in the declivities of the hills to the far side of the highway swaying softly in the breeze; the late afternoon sunlight made them gleam like a river of molten gold.

  There had been gold in these hills long ago and some poor veins remained. Normally the beauty of this view would have entranced me, but now its glow was dimmed by the aura of what I’d felt at the lodge. I thought of the ravages that cyanide—which the big mining companies had used to extract gold from the waste dumps and tailings of played-out claims—had wreaked upon the land.

  The thought took me back to the case I’d been working here when I met Hy, investigating a conglomerate that planned to start up a large-scale and environmentally unsound mining operation above a semi-ghost town called Promiseville. I remembered us fleeing hand in hand from a dynamite blast that took out a part of a mountain. And Hy saying, as we lay on the ground gasping and panting from our flight, “. . . You’ve got even more of a death wish than I do.”

  Not any more.

  I waited for a logging truck to pass, then turned left toward town. The highway topped a rise, then began a gradual descent into Vernon. Halfway down I saw an old brown pickup truck, its paint spotted gray like a piebald horse. It was pulled onto the opposite shoulder and, as I approached, its passenger-side door flew open and the figure of a woman hurtled out into the ditch. The truck’s driver—bearded, with a knit cap pulled low on his brow—got out and stood on the edge of the ditch, yelling down at her.

  Reflexively I U-turned across the highway and pulled onto the shoulder. As I jumped out of the Rover the man turned, his features mostly obscured by his hat and turned-up collar.

  “Just a family fight, lady,” he said in a rough voice. “No need to get involved.”

  “The hell you say!” I started forward just as the woman clawed her way up the incline. It was the Indian girl whose face had been haunting my dreams. Now her long hair was tangled, and she looked dazed.

  The man made a menacing gesture toward me. I braced for an attack, feet spread wide, arms flexed. He stood still, studying me, then muttered something that sounded like “Ah, fuck it!” He whirled and got into the pickup, revved its engine, and sped off, spraying gravel.

  I went over and helped the girl to her feet. I couldn’t tell if she recognized me or not; her expression was blank.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “. . . Yes, I’m okay. No big deal.” She brushed at her clothing, smoothed down her hair. She was dressed more warmly than she had been the last time I saw her, in a quilted jacket, jeans, and hiking boots.

  “What happened here?”

  She shrugged. “I said it was no big deal.”

  “Do you need a ride someplace? I can—”

  “Look,” she said, “it’s none of your business. Okay? I take care of myself, nobody else does.” Then she turned and began walking the way the truck had gone.

  I watched until she disappeared over the rise, berating myself for trying to intervene in a private matter. It was as if I had a compulsion to get involved in things that didn’t concern me—just as I’d often involved myself too deeply in cases I’d handled. Dammit, why couldn’t I leave people alone? That was what I wanted to do, wasn’t it? It was what I’d been telling myself.

  I got back into the Land Rover. A fight with a relative or her boyfriend, I thought. They live someplace up the highway and by the time she gets there he’ll be sorry.

  But the way she shot out of that truck, it looked like he pushed her. He’s an abuser and all abusers feel sorry—until they do it again.

  As she said, it was none of my business. She didn’t want my help.

  I could ask around in Vernon. . . .

  No, I couldn’t. Or, more correctly, wouldn’t. That kind of uninvited snooping had no place in the new life I was hoping to create.

  I stopped by the Food Mart because I was getting low on milk. And only for that reason.

  But as the tired-looking woman at the checkstand was ringing up my purchases—I can never go into a grocery store and buy just one item—I said, “There was an Indian girl waiting for a ride outside here last Tuesday night. I wonder if you know her?” I described her and what she was wearing.

  The checker nodded and began bagging my groceries. “That’s Amy Perez. She stocks shelves here a couple days a week. What d’you want with her?”

  Don’t go on with this, McCone. Don’t.

  “She . . . dropped something, and I’d like to return it.” God, the lies that rippled off my tongue after so many years in my business! It had gotten to the point that I didn’t need to think them up ahead of time.

  “You can give it to me, I’ll see she gets it.”

  “Actually, I’d like to return it in person. It’s a bracelet, and I want to ask her where she got it, so I can buy one for myself.”

  The checker shrugged. “Well, I don’t know where she’s living these days. She moves around a lot, you know what I mean?”

  I asked, “Is she any relation to Ramon Perez up at the Ripinsky place?”

  “A niece maybe, I’m not sure. There’re Perezes all over Mono County, some related, some not. But, yeah, I think Ramon’s her uncle.”

  I thanked her, paid, and left.

  It wouldn’t hurt, I thought, to ask Ramon about Amy, tell him what I had witnessed that afternoon. If she was in trouble, maybe her uncle could help.


  “Yeah, Amy’s my niece.” Ramon was sitting on the bale of hay inside the stable door.

  Lear Jet was already in his stall. I glared at him, and he glared back.

  I said, “Tell me about her.”

  His gaze shifted to the darkness gathering in the empty stalls beyond Lear Jet’s. “My sister-in-law’s youngest. She was such a beautiful little girl, and she loved her Uncle Ramon.”

  “And now?”

  “She’s still beautiful. You saw that.”

  “And she still loves you?”

  He sighed heavily. “Who knows? Who knows anything these days?”

  I couldn’t debate the latter question. “She’s in trouble, Ramon.” I told him what I’d seen that afternoon, and Amy’s reaction to my offer of help. “The clerk at Food Mart said she ‘moves around a lot.’”

  “One boyfriend, another boyfriend, sometimes she crashes at my sister-in-law’s house.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Eighteen in three months. She looks a lot younger.”

  “Still underage, then. Can’t her mother rein her in?”

  He looked at me, eyes sad. “Look, Sharon, it’s not that simple. Her mother has her own problems.”

  “There’s no father in the picture?”

  “My son-of-a-bitch brother Jimmy took off when Amy was a year old. Miri—that’s his wife—did her best by all five kids, but it wasn’t good enough. Her older girl left town nine years ago, before she finished high school. We don’t know where she is. Last I heard was a postcard from Las Vegas, and that was over a year ago. The two older boys’re in prison. The younger boy was killed in a car wreck—his fault, he’d been drinking.”