The Current

by Tim Johnston

  20

  The garages were just something to do—one thing he knew he could wrap up by midmorning, be back up to Rochester before noon to check on her and see if he could take her home. It was something to do other than sitting around going crazy.

  Like driving down here with your sheriff’s jacket isn’t crazy. Questioning that poor girl at the station.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  I know you know what you’re doing. That’s what scares me.

  “Hey, I’m her father—all right?” he said, but she said no more.

  At the third and last garage, three miles from the second, he pulled in and parked and walked slowly past the three bay doors, one of them just raising and four or five men at work in there, a face here, a face there, but mostly their backs, their blue mechanic’s shirts. Lug-nut removers shrilling. A radio tuned to country. In the office a redheaded woman sat tapping at her keyboard, squinting at her screen. Thirtyish. On the wall behind her a round clockface set in a small-scale Goodyear tire said ten minutes to ten.

  “Hi there how can I help you,” said the woman, and Sutter waited for her to look up.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m here to see the young fella who worked on my car.”

  “All right, what’s his name?”

  “Well, that’s a good question.” Sutter scratched his head. “I wanna say . . . Bud?”

  “Bud?” She frowned. “There’s no Bud here. How long ago was this?”

  “Coupla weeks back.”

  “No Bud then, either. There’s never been a Bud worked here since I’ve been here.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Sir?”

  “How long have you worked here.”

  “Too long. You sure it was here you had the work done?”

  Sutter glanced again at the tire clock. “Well, I’ll just talk to someone else then.”

  “All right, who do you want to talk to?”

  “A mechanic.”

  “Any mechanic?”

  “Your best one.”

  “Best one? I couldn’t say, sir. It depends on the problem.”

  Sutter placed his fingertips lightly on the countertop. He nodded toward the glass door that led to the garage. “How about I just go on in there and talk to one?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, customers aren’t allowed, for safety reasons.”

  Sutter smiled. “All right.” He lifted his fingertips from the counter. How about just fuck it then, how about that?

  Then aloud he said: “How about that young one then, what’s his name.”

  “Which young one?”

  “I forget his name. The tough one.”

  She made the face of guesswork: “Ryan . . . ?”

  “That’s him,” Sutter said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  She smiled thinly and said, “He might be on break, but I’ll try,” and she picked up her handset and pushed a button and said into the receiver, “Ryan to the front desk, please, Ryan to the front desk,” and through the glass door at the same instant came the same request in electronic echo.

  She hung up and regarded him. “There’s coffee there, and chairs.”

  “Thanks,” Sutter said and stood where he was. He looked at the tire clock again and checked it against his watch. The woman resumed tapping on her keyboard. Just go back out and walk in there and look each of them in the face and walk out and get in your car, what are they gonna do, call the cops? He’d already turned toward the glass door he’d come in through when the other door opened and a young man walked in wiping his hands in a rag and looking around. No one to see but the woman behind the counter and Sutter, and Sutter’s heart slapping once on his breastbone when he saw the lines on the young man’s face—four neat scab lines running from cheekbone to jaw, like he’d been swiped by a large housecat. The markings gave him a strange, primitive look, like some Indian brave in the making, dressed weirdly in blue shirt and blue Dickies and grease-darkened workboots, and Sutter’s first impulse was to grab the young man by the throat.

  “Help you?” the young man said, stepping toward Sutter. ryan stitched in red in the white oval on his shirt.

  “Hey, Ryan.”

  “Hey,” said the young man, taking a closer look.

  “Tom Wilson.”

  “Sure. Hey, Tom.” Brown eyes half-hooded and underslung with blue shadows. Brown hair too, buzzed on the sides and thick on top, tossed and peaked. Sutter gave the young man’s right hand a shake and let go. He described his problem and the young man was happy to follow him out to have a look and a listen. Sutter pulling the hood release and turning over the engine, then stepping out and standing beside the young man, who was aiming his ear toward the whirring pulleys, the snaky blur of the belt.

  “I don’t hear it,” he said, and Sutter said, “That figures. Doing it all week long and now it stops.”

  “Probably the tensioner rod. They do that on these old Fords. Sounds like somebody dumped a jar of bait crickets under your hood.”

  “Yep,” Sutter said. “What do you drive?”

  The mechanic’s eyes swung up from the engine. He looked at Sutter, then gave a slight toss of his chin toward a half dozen parked cars and trucks. “That Chevy there.”

  “The two-tone?”

  “Yep.”

  “’Eighty-seven?” said Sutter.

  “’Eighty-five.”

  “They don’t make ’em like that anymore, do they.”

  “No, sir.”

  They stood listening to Sutter’s motor.

  “Well,” said Sutter. “Looks like I wasted your time, Ryan.”

  The young man looked at him again. Trying to place him. He put fingertips lightly to the scab lines on his face, one to each line, as if to make a chord on them. Then he said, “Hell,” and swung down the hood. “It’s the boss’s time, not mine.”

  “I hear that.”

  They stood there, Sutter holding the young man in place with his eyes.

  “That’s some scratch.”

  “What?” He raised his hand again but stopped short of touching his face. “That ain’t nothin.”

  “Cat?”

  “What?”

  “Looks like a cat scratch.”

  The young man looked at him and looked away. “It ain’t nothin.” And turned to go.

  “Well,” said Sutter, his heart thudding. “Thanks anyway.”

  “No problem.”

  “Say hey to Bud for me.”

  The young man paused.

  “Bud?”

  “Bud. He said go see Ryan at Anderson Auto.”

  The young man nodded, sucked at something in his teeth, and when he said nothing more, asked no more questions—How do you know old Bud?—Sutter knew he’d made a mistake, although he wasn’t sure where, which was the worst kind. He saw the young man glance at his Minnesota plate before he moved on. But then after a few steps he turned back to toss Sutter a kind of two-fingered salute and an empty smile. “If those crickets come back,” he said, “you bring her on back and we’ll get her fixed up.”

  21

  The woman put him on hold and in those minutes Sutter ordered a coffee from the waitress and received it, stirred milk into it, and drank half of it down. From the booth window he could just see the garage a half block away, the two-tone Chevy in the lot.

  At last the doctor came on the line to tell him that Audrey was doing much better today, stronger, her temperature considerably down, and he was taking her off the drugs.

  “When can I take her home?”

  “Let me have another look at her after lunch, and we’ll see about sending her home this afternoon. But no promises.”

  Sutter hung up, then sat staring at the phone’s home screen, at the image of his daughter and himself smiling out at him, that time she got him to go skating with her, both of them red-faced and wearing black knit caps like a father-daughter burglar team. Then he dialed the same number and asked the nurse on duty to let Audrey know he’d called and that he�
�d be coming in after lunch to see her.

  The waitress returned and he found the simplest thing on the menu and she wrote that down on her pad and collected the menu and went away again—unsmiling, no-nonsense; another breed entirely from the one at the café, with the birthmark.

  He drank his coffee and watched the garage. He pulled out his wallet and his notebook with the names and numbers of the garages and set them before him, and after a while he opened his wallet and slid the white business card free and held it at its four points between his thumbs and forefingers.

  She might remember more when she’s feeling better, Tom. I know you know that.

  Keep it, Ed. I’ve got your number in the phone.

  Well, take the card anyway. And Tom . . . I’ve got this. I promise you.

  sheriff edward moran, the card said, in raised black. Little sheriff’s star up in the corner that caught the light like gold, that looked damn near like the real deal. One good-looking card, Sheriff.

  He looked out the window for a long while. His phone was under his hand and he kept turning it round and round on the tabletop.

  You could just take the bastard’s picture and show it to her.

  That still wouldn’t prove it.

  Be enough to bust him, though.

  It’d still be his word against hers. Only one thing can prove he was there.

  Hard evidence, pal. I know it.

  He took another sip of coffee, then picked up the phone and punched in the number and held the phone to his ear. The woman who answered was the same one he’d spoken to thirty minutes ago, in person, and he said, “Yes, is Ryan working today?”

  “Ryan Radner?”

  Sutter hesitated. “Is there another Ryan?”

  “Not today there’s not.”

  “Well, Radner’s the one I want.”

  “Did you need to speak to him?”

  “No, ma’am. I was just wondering how late he’ll be there today so I don’t miss him.”

  “He’ll be here till five today, sir. That’s when we close.”

  “Thank you very much,” Sutter said.

  “You’re very welcome, sir.”

  He was at the hospital at half past noon and when he looked around the doorjamb she was sitting up with a spoon halfway to her mouth and she looked so much like her mother in that bed, in that place, that his heart went out from under him, and she looked at him, the spoon halted in midair, and said, “—What?”

  He corrected his face, his heart, and stepped into the room.

  “Nothing,” he said. He held up the white paper bag, and her eyes widened.

  “Is that a Portman’s bag?”

  “Kept it in the trunk all the way up here.”

  “Strawberry?”

  “What else?”

  She set aside the pudding and pulled the large paper cup with its coat of frost from the bag and fastened her lips on the straw and caved her cheeks and shut her eyes.

  The doctor floated in, the wings of his open labcoat riding his currents, greeted Sutter and stepped up to Audrey. “Don’t mind me,” he said, and she went on sucking at the straw while he shone his penlight into her eyes, put his stethoscope on her back and on her chest, held her cast out of view from her and pressed his ballpoint pen to the tips of her fingers, asking her to wiggle each finger when she felt it. He seemed to like all he saw and heard, but at the end of it he said he wanted to keep her one more night just to be on the safe side, and Audrey shook her head at Sutter and Sutter said, “Whatever you say, Doc,” and the doctor floated away again.

  She released the straw and pushed her head into the pillow as if for a better view of him, standing there.

  “Did you sleep at all last night, Sheriff?”

  “I got my share.”

  “I think we need to go home.”

  “You heard the doctor.”

  “I don’t think he sees the big picture.”

  “What’s the big picture?”

  “That staying here isn’t making me any better and it’s making you worse.”

  “It’s not making me worse.”

  “It isn’t making you any better.”

  He rubbed his open hand on his thigh to warm it and then placed it on her forearm. “It never has and it never will, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, Daddy, don’t be morbid.”

  “It’s just the truth.”

  “That’s not what you said when Mom was sick.”

  “That was different.”

  “How was it different?”

  “You were just a little girl then.”

  “Maybe I needed to hear the truth.”

  He kept his hand on her arm. “Maybe. But I couldn’t say it. Not then.”

  She stared at the ceiling. “I missed her funeral.”

  It took him a moment. Caroline Price. “Yes, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

  “I want to go down there. I want to see them. Her family.”

  He nodded. “All right. When you’re stronger.”

  “I don’t want to wait.”

  “Well.” He squeezed her arm.

  “Well what.”

  “Well, they may want you to. Wait, I mean.”

  She turned to look at him. To see his eyes.

  “They don’t want to see me, you’re saying,” she said.

  “I don’t know what they want, sweetheart. I can’t even imagine. But I think maybe those folks need a little time just to themselves.”

  She stared at the ceiling again. She wiped at her eyes.

  “They don’t think they want to see me,” she said, “but they do. I’m the one person they want to see.”

  He stayed until she slept again, then stayed a while longer just watching her face, the faint tremblings of her eyelids, seeing her face from long ago, a little girl in her bed, night after night when he’d read her to sleep. And then he saw that hand, Radner’s greasy right hand pressed over her mouth, and his heart began to bang again. Finally he got up and crossed the room and drew four purple rubber gloves from the size L dispenser and tucked them into his jacket pocket and walked out of the room.

  Sutter, she said once he was in the car again, on the road again. When she wanted to be sure she had his attention she called him Sutter.

  “Please, woman,” he said aloud. “Just . . . for a little while here.”

  22

  Wabash had the one loaner and Gordon could take that or he could wait for Wabash to get back with the wrecker, Goss advised him, and then Goss himself could drive him home—he couldn’t leave Marky alone at the garage—but if it was a bad heater core, as Goss would bet dollars to donuts it was, then Gordon would have to leave the van for a day at least, because to get to the heater core you had to remove the AC housing and to get that out you had to remove the blower and the filters and to take those out you had to pull the dashboard and to pull the dashboard you had to—Jesus Christ, gimme the loaner, Gordon had said, and he’d taken the key from Goss and left the van and all his tools and his supplies behind and he would have to cancel his appointments for the day and that was just as well anyway, way he felt.

  The loaner was solid, clean, fast. A ten-year-old Crown Vic Interceptor that Wabash had picked up at the Minneapolis PD auction and painted all black, but even so when you were behind the wheel you had the feeling that everyone who saw you coming saw the black-and-white and they slowed way, way down or they hit the turn signal and turned off the road you were on, because a certain kind of man knew the shape of the Crown Vic whatever the paint job and did not like having that shape in his rearview one bit.

  Gordon drove the car slowly through town, but when he hit Old Highway 20 he opened her up and let her run. Clear, cold winter day with no snow or ice on the road, the car soaking up the sun, heat pouring from its vents, and he did not ease off the gas until he hit the narrow bridges that crossed over the Upper Black Root as it snaked its way south toward the state line and its new name, the Lower Black Root . . . upper, lower, all the same river as far as t
he Indians were concerned, back in the way-back days before highways and bridges and Crown Vics.

  Not Indians, Daddy: Native Americans.

  Twelve years old and her eyes bright with knowledge. With education—with wonder at his lack of it.

  Do you think the Sioux, or the Crow, or the Cheyenne changed the name of the river at the Iowa border? she wanted to know.

  Sure, he said, teasing—such seriousness, such big eyes! Why not?

  Daddy—do you think they had borders at all? A line that said ‘America’ on one side and ‘Canada’ on the other? No, they didn’t. It was all one land, all one river, all part of the big open everything. Until we came along. Lying to them, cheating them, killing them but keeping their names, Minnesota, Iowa, Dakota—ticking these off on pink, serious fingers—Mississippi, Miami . . .

  We, she’d said. The bloody old work of her own granddad’s granddads: kill off the people, kill off their buffalo, kill off their songs and their stories but keep their names.

  That young girl gone now too, lost to the river that was the same river whatever you called it and that emptied into a greater river that once had no name and that emptied into an ocean that once had no name, and that ocean evaporating into the sky and coming back down in water that ran over the land whatever you called it and found the creeks, and the creeks found the rivers once again . . . and so ran his thoughts, winding north through Sioux country in a machine that spewed from its backside the smoke of creatures that lived and died a million years before any man, Sioux or otherwise, took his first breath, until he reached the sign that warned him of a reduced speed limit and he slowed the Crown Vic and drove lawfully into the little town, and stopped at the one light and then sat there after it had gone green, no one behind him, no one anywhere that he could see, and after the light turned red he drove through it and no alarms sounded, no sirens wailed, and he drove on.