by Tim Johnston
“I’m listening.”
“She had a good heart, Mr. Burke. Holly did. She had a strong heart, and that night—that night by the river, she fought. She fought really hard, Mr. Burke.”
She watched his profile. His jaw trembled, then hardened against the trembling. He stared into the wind and didn’t blink.
“How do you know?” he said. And turned to look at her.
“I’ve always known,” she said. “Since the night Caroline and I went into the river. I just never—” And the breath went out of her, or went back into her lungs, as if blown back into her by the wind.
“Never what?” he said.
She turned her face from the wind.
“I never saw him,” she said. “I never saw who she fought.”
Gordon watching her. Saying nothing. Then he said, “Why couldn’t you see?” and she turned to face him again.
“Because it was only girls, Mr. Burke. In the river. It’s always been only girls.”
They got out of the wind. They returned to the van and climbed in and shut the doors and then sat there listening. An eerie moaning, the van creaking like a boat. Gordon holding the keys in his hand, and his hand resting in his lap. Staring out at the bending trees, the old leaves shuddering on their stems. She said nothing, she waited, and at last he began.
“I have this dream, sometimes,” he said. “Or I guess it’s a nightmare, but anyway it’s always the same. I’m in a car, but I’m in the back seat, and in the front seat there’s a man driving and there’s a girl, a young woman, and I can’t see their faces but I know the young woman by her hair, and because I just know her—in the dream I know it’s her, and I can see that the man is talking to her. I can see his breath. And I can see him turn and say something to her, and I try to see his face but I can’t, it’s like there’s a blind spot there, like cloudy glass, or ice maybe, between the front seat and the back.”
He reached up with his open hand and swiped vaguely at the air in front of him, as if at a fogged glass. Audrey watching his hand, the fogged glass.
“And I can’t hear the man either, but I can see he’s getting worked up. He’s getting angry because she won’t answer him, she won’t talk to him, and I can see that she knows she has this one thing over him—she knows that the worst thing she can do to him, the thing that hurts him most, is to just ignore him. And I can feel how that feels to the man, I can feel how angry he is, and I tell her stop it, just talk to him, just talk to him until he calms down again. But she can’t hear me because of that glass, or ice, and my heart is pounding, it’s just pounding because I can feel how angry he’s getting, the man. And this goes on for a while. I can see the trees going past, and I can see the moon shining on the river, and I know what’s coming but I can’t stop it. It’s like I’m strapped down, or handcuffed, and before long the man reaches out to touch her and she just, kind of, jerks away from him, just flinches from his touch, and that’s it. That’s what does it.”
Audrey sitting so still, hardly breathing. The wind pushing at the van.
“And I sit there and I watch him grab her by the hair and there’s nothing I can do, just not a goddam thing, I have to sit there and watch this. And she fights. She fights him. He grabs at her and she swings at him and she even bites his hand, and I see him scream and jerk his hand away and that’s when the door opens and out she goes. Just right out the door, and he stops the car. He stops and sits there, watching as she gets up, as she walks ahead of him in the headlights. And I watch him watching her and I know exactly what he feels. It’s like I’m in the back seat but I’m in the front seat too. It’s like I’m inside this man’s heart and looking through his eyes and I know how he feels about her, I can feel what this man feels, for my own daughter. I know his rage, but I know that behind the rage is his . . . pride—that she would refuse him. That this little . . . that she would find him disgusting. And it’s just . . . it’s just . . .”
Audrey didn’t look at him, and knew he wouldn’t look at her. With his free hand he gripped the padded wheel and she heard the quiet crushing of it in his fist.
“And that’s when I know,” he said. “That’s when I know what comes next, and I tell myself wake up now, wake up, you son of a bitch, and I know it’s a dream but I can’t wake up, and I have to sit there, I have to sit there as the man takes his foot off the brake and the car begins to move again, toward her. And she doesn’t look back—she won’t give him the satisfaction—she knows he won’t do it, he won’t run her down, but I know it. I’ve known it all along because it’s always the same. And he’s getting closer to her and she won’t look back, but then at the last second she looks back and her face is lit up in the lights, and her eyes are full of the light and I know it, I know what he’ll do because I’m inside his heart and I can’t stop him, I can’t reason with him, I can’t change the rage in his heart. All I can do is sit there and watch as he runs her down.”
He let go of the wheel and rested his hand in his lap again, next to the hand that held the keys. Audrey was silent. Her heart pounding.
“Anyway what I meant to say was, all these years I could never see the man’s face. But now I do. Just before I wake up. The car has stopped again and he’s looking all around, like did anyone see . . . ? And finally he looks back. He looks through that glass, that ice, and I see him. I see those eyes of his. I see those froggy eyes looking right at me.”
He was silent. Breathing. Staring ahead at the signs of wind, the dipping and lifting branches.
“Then what?” Audrey said.
“Then nothing,” Gordon said. “Then I wake up.”
66
There was just the one cruiser parked in front of the building, the sheriff’s, and she parked next to it and went up the steps toward the glass doors as she’d done so many times before, a little girl following her father; later, a teenager going to see him there, just to sit in the old wooden armchair and do her homework as he worked, just to be near him. The same woman behind the desk today as then, and the glass door had not swung shut behind her before this woman was up from the desk and coming for her—taking her in her arms and murmuring, “Oh, sweetie . . . Oh, honey . . .” Smell of powder, cigarettes, hairspray, before Gloria released her from the hug if not from her hold, strong little hands gripping Audrey’s forearms. Wet eyes searching Audrey’s and Audrey looking into these eyes behind the great lenses, both women silent until, suddenly, painted eyebrows rose and Gloria let go of Audrey’s right arm as if it she’d just noticed it was on fire—“Oh, you got your cast off! I’m sorry, did I hurt it?”
“No, it’s fine,” Audrey said, lifting the forearm and giving it a squeeze herself with her other hand. “Good as new.”
“It may feel fine,” Gloria said, sternly, “but my Ginny broke her arm when she was ten and the doctor said you have to be careful when the cast comes off. You have to be very, very careful.”
“I know. I will.” She looked over the woman’s gray head toward the gray metallic door in the back wall—nothing to indicate what it led to unless you noticed how different it was from all the other doors, all of which were wood and frosted glass and wobbly brass knobs. The gray metallic door was always shut, its latch handle always locked, and for a window there was only the small square of glass with wire mesh in it, too high for a little girl to look into unless she dragged a chair over there to stand on.
The sheriff’s door was shut too.
“Is he in there?” she said, and Gloria’s eyes lit up behind the big lenses.
“You bet your sweet fanny he is.”
“I mean the sheriff,” said Audrey. “I mean Sheriff Halsey.”
“Oh,” said Gloria, putting her fingertips to her lips. “He’s in there. He’s expecting you. Let me just buzz him.” But before she could do so the sheriff’s door swung open and there he stood.
“Sheriff, this young lady is here to see you.”
“I see that, Gloria. Thank you. Come on in here, young lady.”
&
nbsp; She did, and Halsey shut the door behind her, then sat down at the old desk, in the old swivel chair with the big map of the county behind him, and Audrey sat down in the wooden armchair facing him.
The sheriff watched her. Taking her in as if he’d not seen her in a long time. Then he opened a drawer to his right and pulled something out and placed it on the blotter and slid it across to her and sat back again. After a moment she reached for it and collected it and held it under her hand on her lap. It was her father’s little black notebook.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I see you got your cast off.”
“Yes, sir.”
He picked up his pen and tapped it once on each end and set it down again. “Do you want to see him?” he said, nodding toward the wall to his right.
She thought about that, about going back there again. She’d only been that one time when she was ten, maybe eleven—her father unlocking the metallic door and walking her down the narrow aisle between the empty cells. Stainless steel toilet bowls sitting out in the open. Little stainless steel sinks jammed into the corners. No mirrors. Bunks of bolted steel and thin, scuzzy-looking mattresses. Concrete everything—floor, walls, ceiling.
That’s it, he said. That’s all there is.
Thick stink of dog kennel back there, if dogs smelled also of barf and cigarettes and feet and underarms.
Any questions?
Who feeds them?
Who feeds them? The county feeds them. Three times a day.
I mean who brings it to them.
I do. Or one of the deputies.
She tried to see that, her father bringing food to some filthy, stinking man in a cage. Did they speak? Hey, Sheriff. Hey, prisoner.
He’d stood behind her, silent, as she took the bars in her fists. Cold. Scaly, like the bars on an old jungle gym. After she let go and stepped back again he said, Ready, Deputy?
Ready, Sheriff.
OK, let’s wash those hands and hit that pizza.
To Halsey she now said, “No, sir. I don’t need to see that,” and the sheriff nodded.
“I expect you’ll see plenty of him at the trial.”
“I expect so.”
He sat studying her. “It won’t be any picnic,” he said. “His lawyer won’t take it easy on you. Just the opposite. But I guess Ms. Kelley has already told you that.”
“Yes, she has.” Like Mr. Trevor, the county attorney wanted Audrey to call her by her first name—Deirdre—but Audrey couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to be the woman’s pal; she wanted to be her witness.
“And I guess you know you won’t be alone either,” said Halsey.
She looked at him.
“The other women,” he said. “Three of them now, not even counting Katie Goss.”
Audrey nodded. She looked beyond him, to the big county map. So many roads. So many young women driving them.
She looked at the black notebook in her lap. How far back did it go? Would she find Holly Burke’s name there? Katie Goss’s? Danny Young’s?
She looked up and Halsey was watching her.
“I guess you’d tell me if you’d found him yet,” she said.
It took him a moment. “I’d tell you,” he said.
She was silent. Then she said, “Do you think he’s still alive?” and the sheriff frowned, and nodded.
“Yes, I do.”
Audrey nodded too, although she knew he had to say it—had to think it, even. That it was his job to think it until he had proof otherwise.
She looked down again at the notebook. “Sheriff,” she said. Turning the notebook in her hands, rubbing her thumbs over the worn, leathery surface. “Sheriff—do you regret it?”
“Regret what?”
“Letting him go down to Iowa like that. Moran. Back then.”
She looked up and he held her eyes. Finally he picked up his pen again and stood it on its tip, as if about to write something on the desk blotter. It was a plain blue Bic, the kind she’d used for school all her life. The kind she’d once loaned to Caroline Price.
“Do I regret it?” said Halsey. “As a man, as a human being, yes, I regret it. But would I have done anything differently?” He frowned again. He shook his head. “We got him out of our county. Out of our state. We knew it was the best deal we were gonna get.”
He set down the pen and put his hands together.
“And down there in Iowa?” he said. “It’s like I told you before: the man did his job. If he was doing any of that other business, pulling girls over . . . well, we never heard one peep about it up here.”
Audrey nodded again. She wiped her cheeks with her fingertips. “OK,” she said. And sat there. Halsey watching her.
“Your dad never knew the whole story, Audrey. Remember that. He never knew about Moran and Holly Burke, or any other girls. All he knew was one story he couldn’t prove, and so he did what he thought was the best he could do, given what he didn’t know. And still it dogged him. I know it did.” He looked down again and shook his head. “I remember the day we heard he was running for sheriff down there—Moran. I remember the day we heard he’d been elected. Your dad and me, everyone here . . . none of us said a word. It was like . . . Hell, I don’t know what it was like. We just got on with it. We got back to work.”
She looked up again and she saw something more of his eyes, or in them, than she’d seen before. Like stepping through that gray metallic door for the first time.
“I can’t even imagine what it was like for your dad,” he said, “seeing Moran—Sheriff Moran—standing in your hospital room like that, asking you questions.”
She held his eyes. He’d joined the department after Moran and the other deputies, Halsey had, her father’s youngest, greenest deputy, and he’d never known how to talk to her, how to even be around her. This big young man with no idea about children, about little girls. His technique was to pretend he didn’t see you.
In the silence she heard her father’s watch ticking on her wrist—felt it—before she remembered she wasn’t even wearing it; it was at the jeweler’s—an old man with shaky hands who said it probably wasn’t worth the cost of fixing it. It was, she told him.
“Do you think,” she now said, and hesitated. “Do you think he would’ve gone down there like that, to Iowa, and shot that boy in the hand if it had been anyone other than Moran in that hospital room?”
The sheriff looked at her for a long while.
“I’d have to call that a damned interesting question, Audrey. I’d have to call that altogether worth considering.” He gave her a smile then, and pushed up from the chair, and Audrey stood too.
“You let me know your whereabouts,” he said, coming around the desk, “you go back down south or wherever. I want to know you’re OK out there. All right?”
“All right. Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Don’t thank me.” He opened the door. “Go on, now. I’ll see you when you get back here.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will—in court. Every day. You just look at me if you need to, and I’ll be there. All right?”
She nodded. She was about to thank him again but caught herself. She wanted to put her arms around him, just once, just quickly, but she knew it would embarrass him, alarm him even, this man with no children, no daughter of his own, and finally she just turned and walked away.
67
She was wearing the aviators when she drove into town and she saw the town as he’d seen it himself through those lenses: the wide lanes of Main Street with the cars and trucks all parked at angles to the curb, the glass-and-brick storefronts, the Iowa sun flashing in the windows. But there was no snow in the streets now, and the smell that blew into the car’s open window was the smell of the earth and the trees and the sky, and even of the sun itself.
Her father had not written the name down in the little black notebook, or if he had he’d ripped it out and destroyed it. She might’ve asked Halsey and she might’ve asked the lawyer, Trevor
, but both would’ve asked why she wanted to know. And what would she say?
The last three entries in the notebook, in that large but nearly unreadable scrawl of his, were the names and addresses of the garages, and she went to the nearest of these first, Yoder Auto Repair, and there she was met by Yoder himself, who stood wiping his hands with a red rag as she explained who she was and why she’d come. Strong smell of oil and gasoline in the garage. A radio voice talking and talking from a shelf at the back until Yoder stepped over to it and shut it off. He came back and looked at the large canvas jacket she wore, then he looked her in the eye and said, “I’m sorry for your loss, miss.”
“Thank you.”
“I only met him the one time when he came in here himself, but from what I hear he was a good man. And a good sheriff. Despite what he came down here and did. And even that . . . well.” He frowned. “I got a daughter myself about your age. She’s off to college down in Kansas and—” His voice caught, and he looked down at his hands. She saw a vein jump with blood in the side of his neck. He looked up again and said, “Way I see it, he let that boy off easy.”
“Yes, sir,” Audrey said. “If it was the right boy.”
Yoder frowned again. “I reckon your dad was pretty good at finding the right boy.”
Audrey said nothing. Did they even know about Holly Burke down here? Would that name, or the name Danny Young, mean anything at all? How quickly did you forget about people when they weren’t your people? When it wasn’t your town. Wasn’t your river . . . even though, really, it was the same river.
Yoder began wiping his hands again with the red rag. “Well, it never was in the papers,” he said, “but it might as well of been. You could of asked anybody and they’d of told you: the boy’s name is Ryan Radner. Do you know Anderson Auto, down on Frontage Road?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got it on my phone.”
“I figured you would. But he won’t be there.”
“He won’t?”
“No, he won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Yoder tucked the rag into his hip pocket. “I’ve been in this business since I was sixteen and in all that time I’ve only known one mechanic who didn’t have two of these.” He showed her his open hands. “That was old Boots Franklin who worked for my old man. Best damn auto mechanic I ever knew but then he’d been born with just the one good hand. Now maybe getting shot in the hand isn’t much of a reason to fire a good mechanic. But then again maybe it is. In any case that boy got fired.”