They’d gotten closer to each other and this time he could hear what the man was saying.
“You all right?” the guy yelled. There wasn’t much anger in his voice but not a lot of concern either.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
The guy just nodded.
“You better get in the truck.”
7
“So you’re back,” Wagner said, “Now what?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Christ,” Wagner muttered, glanced over Frank’s shoulder at the old-fashioned institutional clock on his office wall. Wagner had seen Frank’s old pickup truck when he’d pulled in, thought about turning around and driving right back out. Stallings knew the security code for Wagner’s office, something Wagner never bothered to change, and he’d been sitting there in the reception area waiting for him. Just like Stallings to go MIA without a word and then suddenly show up as if nothing had happened.
The last time Wagner had seen him was three weeks ago at the carefully orchestrated whitewash of the Langdon shootout. At the end of the so-called proceedings Stallings had just stood up and walked out, his eyes straight ahead and his mouth set in a grim line. Wagner hadn’t seen him again, not until today. He hadn’t even been sure Stallings was coming back at all, and he wouldn’t have blamed him if he hadn’t.
Frank looked a hell of a lot better now, but then again he’d looked like shit when he left. He wasn’t big, a little under six feet, but it looked like he’d gained enough weight to put him back where he’d been before the twin shitstorms of Terry Wellner and then Kenny Langdon had upended the natural order of things in Strothwood. Stallings was somewhere in his early forties, but he would have looked younger if the recent tan hadn’t emphasized the pale creases around his eyes and mouth.
He still wasn’t much of a talker. Wagner wasn’t either, but he had better things to do than just sit there and wait for Stallings to say something. Unlike Frank he still had a job, and as Strothwood’s Medical Examiner he pretty much ran his own show.
“So where the hell were you?” Wagner prodded, “I thought maybe you’d gone back to Pittsburgh.”
“Just long enough to get on a plane. I went out west for a while.”
“Job hunting?”
Frank turned those cop eyes on him, maybe deciding if Wagner was trying to be funny.
“No,” he said finally, “too soon for that. Maybe never.”
Wagner knew Frank had a pretty good pension from his years on the force in Pittsburgh and eventually some kind of settlement coming from Strothwood, if he pushed it, so there wasn’t any pressure that way. He was still a young man by Wagner’s standards. He’d have enough money to live on as long as he died soon enough.
Age considerations aside, he couldn’t picture Frank Stallings kicking back on a beach or a golf course. The thought pushed a fleeting smile onto his face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Wagner shook his head. “So where’d you go? Vegas?”
He couldn’t picture Stallings there either, just wanted to get a reaction.
“Got to Chicago, rented a car,” Stallings shrugged. “Drove out what’s left of Route 66. Then I turned up the coast and drove to Seattle.”
“Then what?”
“Turned around and drove back.”
“What the hell for?” Wagner asked. “That Route 66 shit is way before your time.”
“Just wanted to get away.”
“You should’ve stayed here, Frank. You took off so soon after the hearing, people started talking.”
“They were gonna talk anyway.”
Wagner conceded the point. The Strothwood rumor mill had done a lot of damage in the last few months, enough to get Frank suspended from the police chief’s job. That was all down to Hizzoner Ed Cunningham, who’d panicked when it looked like the blowback from a potential scandal could threaten him as well. He’d ditched Frank, covered his own ass by ‘suspending’ him and replacing him with Frank’s number two, Brent Williams. That move had nearly blown up in Cunningham’s face with the Kenny Langdon fiasco.
At the hearing they’d still tried to blame that on Frank, but Rich Comeau’s testimony had put an end to that particular line of bullshit. Comeau had been there, riding a reluctant shotgun to Gary Wheelock, and he made it clear that the whole thing had kicked off before Frank had arrived. If Frank hadn’t shown up when he did things would’ve turned out a lot worse. The trouble was that Kelly Randall had been too far away to confirm anything and Comeau and Charlie Raycroft had both gotten hit in the first exchange of gunfire and couldn’t clarify much beyond that. The only one who knew for sure was Wheelock, and while Wheelock wasn’t very smart he was smart enough not to talk. He’d been shot up pretty badly, badly enough that he almost didn’t make it, and it was easy to paint him in a sympathetic light. Neither Frank nor Jeff Wagner had bought it, but they weren’t the ones running the hearing.
They’d fallen into silence again, something neither man was uncomfortable with, but Wagner still had to catch up on the work he should have been doing when he’d gone to the service for Landers. He glanced up at the clock.
“Frank, it’s been all kinds of fun catching up with you like this, but I gotta get some work done. I spent all yesterday afternoon at a memorial service or a funeral or a celebration of life or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days.”
Frank just nodded, didn’t even look curious. He’s still fucked up, Wagner thought.
“Don’t you want to know who it was for?” Wagner asked.
Frank stood up, started for the door.
“No.”
8
Frank could remember why he’d left Strothwood but now he wasn’t sure why he’d come back. He should have gotten gone and stayed gone. The trip out west had been good, aimless. He hadn’t been aimless in a long time.
The first couple of days on the road had been strange, as if he’d been trying to escape some kind of gravitational force. It felt a little like it had when he’d first left Strothwood for Pittsburgh, but that had been more than twenty years ago and he’d been little more than a boy, although if anyone had told him that to his face he would have angrily denied it. It had taken a lot for him to leave, leave his parents and what friends he had and familiar surroundings. Yet he’d done it, and there’d been a hell of a lot more to hold him in Strothwood then than there was now.
It had taken a couple of days before he finally went back through his voicemail messages. Before the suspension the damn phone had been a necessary umbilical, part of the job. Like most cops who wanted to keep their sanity and personal lives intact, Frank had always guarded his privacy. Even so, his private home and cell numbers inevitably leaked out. Lori had them, Jeff Wagner had them, Billy had them, and Hizzoner definitely had them.
So, of course, did Adrienne Simmonds. Before he’d left Frank had found only two reasons to keep checking his messages at all. One had been the hope that Mayor Ed Cunningham had decided to reinstate him, and the other had been that Adrienne had changed her mind. Neither had called, and finally Frank had come to terms with the fact that neither one of them was likely to. That was when he’d decided to get the hell out of Dodge.
The other messages were pitifully few for a middle-aged man who’d been gone as long as he’d been. That in itself didn’t bother him, just confirmed the way he’d been thinking. In spite of that and against all evidence to the contrary he was still disappointed that Cunningham’s office hadn’t called, something along the lines of Gosh Frank, the police department is in chaos without you and we need you back. He shrugged that off, had to smile as Wagner’s earlier messages went from casual calls to see how he was doing, if he wanted to go out for a drink, to the last one, which was Wagner at his pissed-off, sarcastic best and ended with something along the lines of You’d better not be dead in there, you stupid bastard. Billy Dancer had even left a couple, the messages childishly awkward. Billy functioned at the level of a slow teenager and he wasn’t good with t
elephones.
Frank got up and went to the kitchen window, looked across the open field that separated his house from the old farmhouse Billy lived in by himself. Billy had inherited it from his aunt and uncle, people who’d sought out and found Billy a few years after he’d lost his parents. They’d probably saved his life. Until then Billy had lived rough for years, wandered all over the Northeast and God alone knew where else, and they’d somehow found him and taken him in. They’d since passed away, but not before making sure Billy would always have a home and a modest amount of money to live on.
Frank had known them both as neighbors and then as friends, despite the difference in their ages. Family history meant a lot in Strothwood, and his own parents had known them well. Nothing had ever been said, no obligation conveyed, but he was sure that one of the reasons they’d felt Billy could survive on his own was because Frank would always be there.
Now Frank wasn’t so sure.
9
After dropping in on Wagner Frank had made perfunctory stops at the grocery and liquor stores and then had gone back to his house and stayed there for two days, made no effort to go out or contact anyone else, not even Billy Dancer. Billy would have known he was back, had a clear line of sight across the field that separated their homes. He would have known the truck was back and the lights were on in the house. He’d come by at least once, knocked on the door, and then after a long interval Frank could hear his heavy footsteps going back off the porch and down the steps.
Frank wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just gone to the door and opened it. Maybe guilt, maybe a hidden streak of cruelty, maybe he just wanted to be left the hell alone. Still, he made no effort to return the visit. He stayed put another day and then finally got restless, went out again to pick up some odds and ends he didn’t really need.
It had been inevitable that Frank would run into Adrienne at some point, but he hadn’t reckoned on it being quite this soon. He was surprised and genuinely relieved to see that she was with Emily. The resemblance between mother and daughter was striking—both model-tall and slim, same coloring, long legs. The last time he’d seen them had been in the hospital, Adrienne watching over her daughter while she lay in a coma. He’d gone in to see them but Adrienne had made it very clear that nothing had changed, that she didn’t need or want him there.
It was difficult at first but he’d forced himself to respect that, stayed away. Time had added distance, and with the distance had come the realization that the affair with Adrienne had taken him places he never wanted to be again.
They’d just parked their car in the Safeway parking lot and he was coming out, on the way to his truck. Adrienne was just getting out of the car when she saw him. She hesitated, her mouth turning down in a small frown, and then walked around the front of the car to where Emily was still sitting in the passenger seat. She opened the door and reached into the car to take her daughter by the arm.
Frank wasn’t sure what to do. He kept going to his truck and put the bag of groceries he was carrying into the cab on the passenger side. He took his time, but when he turned around Adrienne had only gotten as far as getting Emily to her feet and manoeuvring her around the open passenger door. Emily was moving like someone four times her age.
To hell with it, he thought, I can’t just stand here. Neither one of them looked up as he walked toward them. He stopped a few feet away, careful not to cut them off from their intended path. He knew how defensive and brittle Adrienne could be.
Adrienne finally looked up and saw him, tightened her grip on Emily’s arm. Frank realized that as usual he had done something wrong, couldn’t think of a damn thing to say that wouldn’t sound sophomoric or stupid.
“We have to get in there, Frank,” Adrienne said, “Emily’s still having trouble with her balance. If you have something to say, say it.”
Shit. She was at her imperious best. Frank didn’t back down, glanced briefly at Emily and smiled. She looked embarrassed. He looked back to find Adrienne still glaring at him.
“Sorry,” he said finally, “I just wanted to tell you both that I’m glad to see Emily is getting better.”
Adrienne stared at him for a long moment before she spoke. The wall behind her eyes was intact and more impenetrable than ever
“I appreciate your concern, Frank, but it’s a little late for that. We have to go.”
Frank thought of protesting, reminding her that he’d respected her wishes, stayed away only because she’d asked him to. Instead he just stepped back as Adrienne guided Emily away.
He watched as they shuffled slowly toward the door of the supermarket. He felt a sudden flash of anger, not only at how she misinterpreted everything he did but at his own selfishness. He thought of what Adrienne and her daughter had been through and what they were still going through. Emily had been a vibrant and impetuous and beautiful young woman. From what he’d just seen she wasn’t that way now, maybe would never be able to tell her mother what had really happened.
Frank knew that he never would. He’d left that up to Emily, and maybe, some day, Emily would finally come back to herself and set the record straight. Events had overtaken them all, and whatever Frank may have wanted to happen with Adrienne had become insignificant. Now it was probably too late, and Frank found himself surprised that, finally, he didn’t care as much as he once had.
He realized he’d still harbored an expectation that somehow Adrienne’s feelings for him—more correctly, against him—would soften. Now even he could see that it hadn’t happened. He’d been away and in some perverse construct of time and space he’d assumed that things might have changed somehow with her as well. Seeing her with Emily had disabused him of that notion. Her focus had remained the same as it was when he’d left. It was on helping her daughter recover, and there was no room for anything or anyone else.
Only a day later he realized that single, brief encounter had been the tipping point. He had no family, no personal obligations that he could see other than Jeff Wagner and Billy Dancer, the two people in Strothwood that if pressed he would describe as friends. Frank felt vaguely guilty about the conversation he’d had with Jeff Wagner. There was no reason at all to be secretive about what he was thinking, not with Jeff. He knew Wagner didn’t like the way Frank had been treated any better than he did, had even gone to bat for him with Cunningham and the mayor’s office.
Not that it had done any good, but that hadn’t been Jeff’s fault. Frank Stallings didn’t have or want many friends, but Jeff Wagner was one of them and he deserved better than Frank holding back what was on his mind. So did Billy Dancer, maybe especially Billy Dancer. He realized he’d dropped the ball where Billy was concerned.
What Frank had on his mind was getting out. He’d been a cop virtually all his adult life, put in his twenty in Pittsburgh and then a few more as Strothwood’s police chief. When he’d taken the job it had seemed ideal. He’d been born and brought up in Strothwood, should have known what he was getting into even though the only real contact he’d maintained had been sporadic visits back to see his parents. It had been painfully ironic that the chief’s job had only come up after they’d passed away, but there was still an innate appeal in the thought of coming back to where he started, back to a presumably more settled and less violent environment than the one that had taken him to the edge of burnout.
The last few months had changed that. He’d been so disgusted with the whitewash of the Langdon incident that he’d done something uncharacteristic and just left town, not giving a damn about the so-called optics of it. He knew if he stayed he’d just get swallowed up in the unending vortex of speculation and innuendo that Strothwood seemed to wallow in. It was something that hadn’t figured in his decision to come home, probably because he’d left the place at a comparatively young age. It sure as hell figured now, and if his three weeks away had shown him anything it was that there was life elsewhere on the planet. He knew that if you dug too deep while you were out there you might find many of the same thi
ngs you were running from, so maybe the secret was never to dig too deep in the first place. The time in Strothwood had been a mistake, all of it.
Frank realized he’d been staring at the sign. It was stapled to a plain wooden stake crudely fashioned into a point at one end. It wasn’t much to look at, just red lettering on a plain black background with a white border, something sold in virtually every hardware store in North America. He’d dug up an old felt marker from somewhere and scrawled his phone number at the bottom, reminded himself that he’d have to pay more attention to his incoming phone calls.
10
Billy Dancer had been trying to decide what to do. He hadn’t talked to Frank in a long time. Billy had always thought of Frank as his friend, maybe even as his big brother, despite the fact that they were around the same age and Billy towered over Frank and virtually everyone else he’d ever met.
Billy was what was called these days ‘mentally challenged’, basically a twelve or thirteen year old in a giant’s body. He’d seen a lot of the northeastern United States, had wandered around for years until somehow his aunt and uncle had found him. They’d given him a home and for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, had made him feel like he was part of a family.
It hadn’t lasted long. Billy had been in his thirties then and they were a lot older than he was. He lost them within a year of each other. After that he hadn’t known what to do. Fortunately they had. They’d never been wealthy people but they’d made sure he could go on living in the same house, made sure he’d have enough money so that he could live, and made sure that he didn’t get it all at once. It was doled out to him every week at the bank, not a lot but Billy didn’t need much.
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