Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

  “Halt or I’ll shoot.”

  Cody didn’t believe that, not for a second. He kept running, a vague plan forming in his mind, a plan based on getting to Route 7, flagging down a—

  Crack! Crack of a gunshot, sharp and clear in the woods. At just about the same instant came a second cracking sound, and something invisible splintered the bark of a tree a few feet ahead of him. A tiny cloud of sawdust spurted from the trunk. Cody stopped running.

  “Hands up high.”

  Cody raised his hands.

  “Turn around real slow.”

  Cody turned.

  Sergeant Orton came trudging up the trail, gun raised. Bud stood quietly behind him, as if he, too, had been ordered 184

  to halt. The sergeant spat; a red glob landed in the snow. “The type that makes everything harder than it has to be, aren’t you?” he said.

  Cody didn’t know what to say about that. He was going to be arrested. He had rights, didn’t he? On Cops—Junior’s favorite show—no one ever seemed to know about their rights, blabbed everything. Cody knew he had the right to remain silent. On the other hand, he hadn’t done anything wrong—except for that one punch. And what was there to say about that? The punch was undeniable—hit someone in the mouth and both of you remember it forever—but also not wrong, not in this case, and Cody didn’t regret it.

  Sergeant Orton came right up to Cody, the gun still up, pointed at Cody’s chest. The sergeant’s bushy gray mustache was tinged with red. He spat again, spattering more red on the snow at Cody’s feet. “Assaulting a police officer,” he said. “Any idea of the future, you get charged with something like that?”

  Cody remained silent.

  “Charged as an adult, I’m talking about, which I’ll make goddamn sure is what happens? State pen, three-year minimum, record or no record.”

  Cody came close to hitting him again, stopped only by that gun, unwavering in the sergeant’s hand.

  “That how you want this to play out, boy?”

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  At that moment, Cody remembered his last conversation with Mr. Lorrie, his English teacher and faculty adviser. Have you ever thought about what you’ll be doing, say three years from now? Although he couldn’t see much similarity between the two men, Cody realized that conversation with Mr. Lorrie resembled this one, almost a practice version, like running through the plays with no pads on; or maybe like touch football compared to the real thing. That time, with Mr. Lorrie, he’d ended up quitting school. Three years. Cody shook his head, a tiny movement, barely made at all.

  But Sergeant Orton caught it. He lowered the gun. “That’s smart,” he said. “You wouldn’t do so good behind bars. No one does, actually. Even the ones that are already ruined get ruined more.” He dabbed at his mouth with the back of his sleeve. The temperature was falling. Cody could feel it in his feet, hands, ears; and could see it in Sergeant Orton’s mustache, where the ends of the hairs had frozen, looked like tiny sprinkles of red glass. “What you’re going to do now—you want any chance of coming out of this undamaged for life—is come clean. No lies, no halfway lies, no bullshit.” Sergeant Orton’s face was close to Cody’s now. Cody could smell his breath, not good.

  “Come clean about what?” Cody said.

  “And no stalling.”

  “I’m not stalling. I don’t—”

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  Sergeant Orton cut him off. “Start with how come you hid who you really were, let folks go on thinking you were local?”

  Cody just stood there. The real reason was quite simple, simple and stupid at the same time: Clea had a new boyfriend, making him, the ex-boyfriend, look like a pathetic loser, no better than a gawker at some wreck on the highway. Maybe not quite so simple: How did breaking up with Clea, pretending he didn’t care anymore—supposedly a noble gesture, supposedly for her own good—how did that factor in, especially given how quickly she’d moved on to someone else? For one thing, it made him a fool, a fool as well as a loser.

  “Haven’t got all day,” said the sergeant. “Haven’t got more than a minute.”

  Cody just couldn’t bring himself to confess the truth. Sergeant Orton reached around his belt. Cody heard a cold, metallic clink, handcuffs for sure; even then, he couldn’t do it. But at the last moment, he found words that at least had some truth in them. “These people,” he said. “They’re all very different from me.”

  “So?”

  “I couldn’t . . . if they’d known where I really, you know, came from, then . . .”

  “Spit it out,” said Sergeant Orton.

  “There’d have been a lot of questions,” Cody said. 187

  “About you?”

  “Yeah. But none of that would have helped find Clea.”

  The sergeant gave Cody one of those deep, probing looks. “You obsessed with her, is that it?”

  Obsessed? Obsession had sickness in it, and there was nothing sick about Clea’s place in his mind. “No.”

  “Then how would you put it?”

  “I love her,” Cody said, without hesitation—it just came right out, very natural—and also without the slightest feeling of being a loser or a fool.

  The expression in Sergeant Orton’s eyes grew distant, as though he’d been struck by a thought. “This business of holding back who you really were, avoiding questions—anything else to it?”

  “I told you—it wouldn’t help finding her.”

  “Yeah,” said the sergeant. “I can remember back that far. Any more to it than that?”

  “Like what?” Cody said.

  Sergeant Orton laughed. A big surprise for Cody, almost as unsettling as the moment when he’d stepped out from behind the tree. “You tell me,” the sergeant said.

  Any more to it than that? Sergeant Orton had an answer waiting in his mind, and somehow Cody knew it had nothing to do with all that fool and loser stuff. Something else; not 188

  just something else, but something more. How could hiding his true self be about more than the fact that revealing it would only be a distraction, wouldn’t help find her? Deep in the silent woods, Bud motionless, temperature falling, wind rising, this cop right in front of him, gun in hand, and his own lips going numb, Cody took a guess. “Maybe nobody knowing about me would actually help find her.” The thinking seemed logical; the words sounded right; the implications completely escaped him.

  “Yup,” said Sergeant Orton. “What took you so long? I’m freezing my ass off.”

  Cody was a little lost. They looked at each other. Cody couldn’t read the sergeant’s mind at all. “Am I under arrest?”

  For a second or two the sergeant seemed about to laugh again, but no laugh came. “Stay away from questions like that,”

  he said. “Some people might miss your charm.” He smiled and gave Cody three taps on the cheek with his open hand, friendly taps except for the last, which was more like a slap. Yes, a slap. Cody felt the sting. Sergeant Orton’s smile got bigger. Something had amused him, but Cody had no idea what it was. 189

  SO WAS HE UNDER ARREST or not? How could he not be? He’d punched a cop in the mouth. But the cuffs had never come out, and now the gun was back in its holster.

  “Let’s get moving,” Sergeant Orton said. He handed Bud’s reins to Cody.

  Where? Cody followed the advice Sergeant Orton had just given him and kept the question inside. They headed back up the crossover trail. When they came to the loop, the sergeant walked around a thick spruce, the Christmas-tree kind. Cody followed and saw a snowmobile parked behind the tree.

  “You knew I was coming,” Cody said.

  Sergeant Orton smiled. Cody decided he didn’t like the sergeant’s smile, preferred his face in its usual unsmiling and watchful mode. “Meet you back at the barn,” Sergeant Orton said. “And no dillydallying,” he added, “not when you’re working for me.”

  “I’m working for you?”

  Cody hadn’t gotten all those words out before the sergeant cranked the engine, drowning him out with its
roar. He zoomed off.

  Cody stood at the loop-crossover junction, the reins in his hand. He wasn’t under arrest; in fact, might even be free to go.

  “What do you think?” he said to Bud. He stroked that long face with the diamond-shaped blaze and actually thought he glimpsed what was going on in Bud’s mind at that moment: It was all right with Bud if he wanted to climb up and ride him back to the barn. Cody had never ridden bareback, had little riding skill of any kind, but he got one hand on Bud’s mane and climbed up. Without any signal from him, Bud started walking down the loop trail. Cody held the reins loosely, made no attempt to guide Bud’s movement, just sat there, feeling the horse’s great warmth.

  “We’ll find her,” he said. There was nowhere to go, not with Clea missing.

  Sergeant Orton was waiting inside the barn, no one else there. Cody got Bud in his stall, removed the halter, hung it in Clea’s 191

  locker in the tack room; and felt Sergeant Orton’s gaze on his back.

  “Did you arrange this job for me?” Cody said. He turned. The sergeant was smiling again. Cody noticed he’d washed the blood off his face; the smile no longer seemed so scary.

  “Got a brain locked away in there someplace, huh?” the sergeant said.

  “Why did you do it?” Cody said.

  “Need to keep an eye on you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the anomaly.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The thing that stands out. Like an eagle in a flock of geese. Only got one card, you play it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a whole syndrome of perps joining search parties like this.”

  “Perp? You think I’m a perp?”

  “Not anymore,” the sergeant said, and in a lower voice, maybe to himself, added, “in all likelihood.”

  “I’m not a perp.”

  The sergeant gazed at Cody for a moment, then filled two Styrofoam cups from a coffeepot by the workbench. He handed one to Cody. “Take a seat.” They sat on stools, a few feet apart, 192

  sipped coffee. Weak coffee, and maybe a bit stale, but it felt good. “When people disappear,” the sergeant said, “there’s only a few possible explanations.” He set his cup on the workbench, ticked them off on fingers. “Runaways. Kidnappings. Homicide. Getting lost. Death in some unwitnessed accident where no corpse shows up, like in a drowning. Amnesia victims, forget who they are, wander off. That one’s much rarer, but it happens.” He looked up. “Any others?”

  Cody couldn’t think of any others.

  “In this case, we started off thinking accident, all the way. An accident mixed with the getting-lost variant, or even the amnesia possibility, which is why we checked all the hospitals. But we’re a week out now, and what do we have? Zip. You can get lost in these woods, true, but for how long? They’re really not that big, with plenty of trails, all eventually leading back to people.”

  “But what if she’s injured—holed up somewhere, like you said before?”

  “We looked. Found squat.”

  “So you’re just giving up?”

  “Didn’t say that.” Sergeant Orton picked up his cup, took a sip. “And not finding anything—at this stage, that’s a good result.”

  “Meaning . . .” This was hard to say out loud. Cody tried 193

  again. “Meaning there’s a better chance she’s still alive?”

  Sergeant Orton nodded, a very slight nod; Cody hoped there was no significance in that slightness. “Also meaning we’ve got to open up the investigation, look into those other possibilities, starting with the most likely, namely runaway.”

  “What about kidnapping?” Cody said. “Clea’s not a runaway.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “She . . .” Cody paused, thought about it. “She has a life.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Cody shrugged. “A good life. There’s nothing to run away from.”

  “She into drugs?”

  “No.”

  “What about sex?”

  “What about it?”

  “People sometimes go off the rails in that area.”

  “Clea’s not off the rails in any area.”

  Sergeant Orton had his head tilted to one side, perhaps waiting for Cody to say more. Cody kept his mouth shut—

  Clea’s sex life was none of the sergeant’s business.

  “A young woman sometimes runs off with an older man.”

  “Not Clea.”

  “How do you know?”

  19 4

  It was unimaginable. But Cody knew unimaginable wouldn’t do for Sergeant Orton. He surprised himself by coming up with something else. “She’d never do it like that—leaving Bud by himself out in the woods.”

  Sergeant Orton sat back a little, as though struck by the force of his argument. But then he shook his head. “People can make bad decisions.”

  “She loves Bud,” Cody said. “So that leaves kidnapping.”

  He took another sip of coffee, found that his hand was suddenly unsteady.

  “Want to talk kidnapping?” said the sergeant. “Okay. Basically three kinds—political, ransom, weirdo. Pretty safe to rule out political in this case, bringing us to ransom. Problem here is—no ransom demand. Who ever heard of a ransom kidnapping with no demand?”

  “How do you know there’s no demand?” Cody said, surprising himself again.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ransom demands are for money, right? So the kidnapper would get in touch with Mr. Weston.”

  “And the very next minute he—or his wife, what with this hospitalization—is on the phone to me. I explained the importance of a quiet police presence in a ransom situation while Mr. Weston was here, and he agreed.”

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  “Maybe he was lying.”

  “Any special reason for saying that?”

  Cody shook his head.

  Sergeant Orton watched him for a second or two, then went on. “If he was lying, he’s a tricky customer, seeing as how he let us tap his phone.”

  “You tapped his phone?”

  “Standard procedure—gives us a chance to trace the ransom call in real time.”

  That left weirdo. Sergeant Orton didn’t speak the word. He drained his cup and said, “We’ve got a couple level-three sex offenders in the area—I visited with them on day one. Doesn’t rule the idea out completely, of course. Last, there’s homicide. Homicide can result from some of these others—kidnapping, for example. Also from an enemy. She have any enemies you know of?”

  “Clea?” No way. But then Cody remembered the letter, still in his glove box. The word enemy didn’t appear in it, but there was that part near the end. He went out to the car and got the letter.

  Sergeant Orton put on a pair of glasses, suddenly didn’t look like a cop, more just like any tired middle-aged guy. He read the letter—in silence until he came to that part near the end. “‘One or two I don’t like at all. It’s hard to know who to 19 6

  trust sometimes. Like rolling the dice—a cliché that turns out to have real meaning.’” He glanced at Cody over the rims of his glasses. “What’s that about?”

  Cody had no idea.

  The sergeant took off his glasses, gave him one of those visual probes, looking like a cop again. “Is she into gambling?”

  “Gambling? Kids don’t gamble. Not like that, where you’d get in trouble.”

  “No?” said the sergeant. His little eyes shifted, gazed at the steam rising from his coffee.

  Cody remembered that Dickie van Slyke’s older brother had gotten beaten up pretty bad after some kind of poker game. “It’s just not her.”

  “People are full of surprises,” Sergeant Orton said. “Can I keep this?” Cody hesitated. “You’ll get it back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Or at least a copy,” Sergeant Orton said. He pocketed the letter. “Know what a mole is?”

  “An animal.”

 
“What kind?”

  “Burrowing.”

  “Exactly,” said the sergeant. “Mole also means a spy, the burrowing kind. You’re going to be my mole.”

  “Your mole?”

  197

  “Means you’re going to work this job, get to know your way around here, keep your eyes and ears open.”

  “For what?”

  “Information.” Sergeant Orton tapped the side of his nose.

  “I’ve got a real strong feeling that whatever went bad started here.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “You’ll know. Anything comes up, you call me at this number.” He handed Cody a card. “Other than that, no contact with me from this point on.” Cody hesitated, trying to absorb everything he’d just heard, a hesitation the sergeant must have misinterpreted. “Course you can always say no,” Sergeant Orton said. “In which case, I’ll slap you with that assaultingan-officer charge.”

  Cody’s face heated up, right where the sergeant had slapped it. What was the word? Blackmail. The sergeant was blackmailing him. That pissed Cody off. Even worse was the fact that it was unnecessary. “You didn’t have to say that,” he said.

  “Meaning you’re a willing volunteer?” the sergeant said.

  “Hoped you might take that approach.” He reached into his jacket, handed Cody a manila envelope. Cody looked inside, found his license plates. “Don’t want to invite any annoying questions,” the sergeant said. “I put Vermont plates on your car—the special Building Bright Futures ones, my personal 19 8

  favorites.” Sergeant Orton rose, gently touching his upper lip, swollen and turning blue. “Any questions?”

  Cody had nothing but; the problem was they all got tangled together in his mind, ended up in a confused snarl. Clea was right: Hard to know who to trust sometimes.

  “Almost forgot,” the sergeant said, and gave Cody fifty bucks.

  “What’s this?”

  “Got a fund for this kind of caper.”

  “A mole fund?” said Cody.

  “You can call it that. And one other thing—no more of those expeditions into the woods, you and the horse.”

  But why not? Wasn’t it still worth a try? Sergeant Orton seemed to be waiting for an answer. Cody made a slight movement of his head, perhaps readable as okay. The sergeant left. Cody went out to his car, opened the trunk, tossed his Colorado plates inside. Then he knelt and examined the Building Bright Futures plates, saw, over to the left, a stick-figure illustration of a boy and a girl jumping for joy.