by Stephen Frey
I shudder as the image of Mrs. Erickson’s smug smile appears before me like the Cheshire Cat’s when I think about how she might hear Bear blather on about this. I can’t stand to think of how embarrassing it would be to have to explain what happened in my living room last night to the town council as they sit there with their arms crossed over their chests smoking cheap cigars in the storage room of Cam Riley’s hardware store. As they nod to each other like they knew all the time that I wasn’t the man for the job. Sorry that they’d relented and given me the job because they felt bad for an old high school football hero who was down on his luck a few years ago.
“What husbands and wives does in their own homes,” Bear continues, chuckling, “is their business, not mine. As long as no one gets hurt and it’s consensual. But I do think you ought to pull the curtains across the window next time you get the urge to tie Vivian up and to—”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I interrupt, “something you need to know.” The thought of Bear watching me tie Viv up is too much for me. I just can’t deal with it. “Maggie came to me after church on Sunday and asked me to look for Karen.” Bear stares at me blankly for a few seconds as his smirk evaporates, as the realization of what I’m saying sets in. I wonder if he understands what’s going on here. I feel bad but I’ve got to change the subject. “She’s worried.”
“That note Karen left me on Christmas Eve said she didn’t want anyone to come looking for her,” Bear reminds me in a low voice. “Anyone,” he repeats. “She was real clear about that.”
“I know.”
“Maggie’s just butting in where she doesn’t belong.”
“She’s worried about her sister, Billy. That’s understandable.”
Bear stares at me for a long time. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, did you fill out the paperwork? Are you still going to try to find Karen even though she doesn’t want you to?”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You know that.”
“Damn it, Paul!”
Bear called me by my first name and that’s a sure sign he’s getting riled up. And when he gets riled up, it doesn’t matter who you are. Best friend or sworn enemy, the situation’s the same. You’re in mortal danger. You either do what he says or you get out of his way. Those are your two options and there are no others. There’s another outcome but it isn’t your choice and I don’t want to think about it. In hand-to-hand combat with Bear, I’d lose. Just about anyone would. And what you have to understand about Bear is that when he really comes unglued, when he gets past the riled-up stage, when you manage to finally knock down those load-bearing walls of his inner psyche—whether by chance or by choice—once he’s got you down he won’t let you up. He’ll keep fighting until he’s too tired to throw another punch or something he can’t overpower finally gets in his way.
I saw it happen at a drive-in movie theater a few nights before I left for freshman football practice at the University of Minnesota all those years ago. Thank God there were nine of us to get in the way. The bastard Bear attacked is still eating through a straw, but nobody ever ratted on Bear for what happened. The guy deserved what he got, really deserved it. He was that bad a guy, and the rape of the nine-year-old mentally challenged girl he’d committed two days before was that terrible. The point is, even if what the guy had done wasn’t that terrible, no one would have ever ratted on Bear. No one wanted to be on the end of what they saw him do that night and they figured if they ratted on him, they’d get it, too.
One of the few times Bear ever called me “Paul,” one of the few times I saw him really riled up, was that night he grabbed my face mask in the huddle during the first quarter of our high school championship game in Madison. After that I did what he told me to do and I’m glad I did, for a lot of reasons. It all worked out for the best and I need to keep that in mind, for a lot of reasons.
“What’s the problem?” I ask carefully. “Why are you so nervous?”
“I’m not nervous,” Bear growls. “I just don’t want to drag it all up again. I don’t want to think about how she left me for another guy and what I really don’t want to do is meet him. If you find her I don’t want her feeling like it’s okay to come back here to Bruner and bring him with her, even if it’s only to visit. I don’t want her thinking she can come walking down Main Street and run into me coming the other way and everything will be cool.” Bear points a gloved finger at me. “Because it won’t be cool. I’ll beat the hell out of the guy, Paul.”
“Easy, easy.” I could see Bear going ballistic faced with that situation, in the middle of town with everyone watching. And the guy’s face quickly turning into a bloody mess. “Is that really what you think happened? That she left you for another man, I mean?”
“I don’t think that’s what’s happened,” he answers emphatically. “I know that’s what happened.”
I never thought about the possibility that Karen left Bear for someone else. He never said anything about it, he never mentioned that another man was involved. Maggie hasn’t either, not in the nearly two months it’s been since Karen left. I never figured it happened like that because I figured I would have heard something about who the other guy was. Even though Mrs. Erickson does her best to carve me out of her web, I still hear about most everything that goes on in Dakota County. Maybe not as fast in some situations, but I get it.
I trust Bear like a brother but I’m still a little skeptical about his saying Karen left him for another guy because I can’t figure out how she would have met anyone without my hearing. As far as I know there aren’t any men missing from Dakota County or not being heard from lately. And believe me, any guy who’d taken Bear’s girl wouldn’t have stuck around Dakota County. He would have run as far away as he could as fast as he could.
“Was it someone from around here?” I ask.
“Nah. It was some guy from Duluth.”
“How did he meet her?”
Bear looks down and kicks at the snow. “She was on a shopping trip over there.”
That’s strange. Bear and Karen didn’t do much together, but he always made sure he went with her when she left Dakota County—which wasn’t very often. He always said he wouldn’t feel right if she was far away from home without him, and she was a real timid person on her own. So he’d complain the whole time they were gone—according to Karen—then ignore her again when they got home. But he rarely let her leave by herself, and it sounded like she always wanted him to go with her despite all his complaints. But maybe she couldn’t take it anymore and she told him she was going to the store in Bruner one time when she actually went off to Duluth instead.
“She left me,” Bear continues. “I mean she walked out on me on Christmas Eve for another man. How awful is that?” He grimaces and blinks several times quickly. “I never felt so alone in all my life as that morning,” he whispers. “It’s the first time I ever, the first time, well …” His voice trails off.
“The first time you ever what, Billy?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Don’t say anything to anybody. Okay, Professor?”
He’s calling me Professor again. That’s good. “I won’t.” He knows I won’t tell a soul no matter what it is he’s about to say and he knows he didn’t have to ask me not to. So now I know this is going to be important, really important. I just hope it’s not what I think it is. Because once someone starts taking mental trips down that road, it’s pretty likely that one day they won’t come back. I should know. “You didn’t even have to say anything.”
“I guess not. I mean, I know not.”
I wait a few seconds. “So?”
“So after I wake up on Christmas and read Karen’s note, I look over at the bookcase, at the top shelf.” His voice is hushed. “That’s where I keep my gun when I’m home, before I take it with me into the bedroom at night.” Bear swallows h
ard and his eyes mist up. “You know?”
Like I said, the only other time I’ve seen Bear cry was at Gus and Trudy’s funeral, not that it’s the Mississippi River coursing down his cheeks right now. It isn’t, it’s barely a stream. It’s just that he doesn’t cry. He wouldn’t even cry when he’d tell me what it was like to have his father beat him all the time as a kid. That’s why the stream seems more like a torrent. “Yeah, I know.” That’s where Bear’s gun has been whenever I’ve been to his house—on the top shelf of the bookcase in its holster.
“So I put Karen’s note down, I get up out of my chair, I get my gun, and I look at it for a long time. I just stare at it as I keep turning it over and over in my hands. I think about how Karen and me had some pretty good times and how this must be some kind of nightmare I’m having. I can’t understand how she could possibly leave me like this.”
“You should have called me, Billy. I should have been there to—”
“Then I chambered the first round.” He raises his right hand, extends his index finger, and puts the tip of it to his head. “And I put the gun to my head.”
I figured this was coming. But now that Bear’s actually said it, the image of his brain splattered across the bookcase and the wall becomes horribly clear in my mind. It hits me almost as hard as the sight of Cindy actually lying on the floor in her pool of blood. “You should have called me, Billy. You should have called me right away. I would have been to your house in ten minutes.”
“I didn’t want to bother you. It was Christmas.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’ve always been there for me. It’s the least I could have done.”
Bear brings his hand down from the side of his head and his eyes flash. “Here’s the thing, Professor,” he says, gazing at me intently. “Mrs. Erickson is telling some people around town that Darrow Clements was in Bruner to help Lew Prescott prove you killed Cindy. That Clements is gonna be back to town over and over until he wears you down enough to get a confession out of you. She isn’t blaring it out there over her loudspeaker like she usually does. She’s just dropping the word to a couple of people she thinks won’t let it out that she’s behind the rumor.”
Like I said, Bear’s a pretty smart guy. He knew I started the Maggie-looking-for-Karen thing as a way to distract him, as a way to turn the conversation away from how he’d seen what I was doing to Vivian through the window. So he took the long way around the barn to return fire, to let me know he knew what I was doing and to shift the focus back on me. It was the long way around it all right, but it certainly was effective. There’s always been a simmering unease between us about what really happened to Karen, but I’ve never investigated the incident as diligently as I should have. Like I said before, I’ve stayed awake nights, lots of nights, staring up at the bedroom ceiling thinking about it. Listening to Vivian’s deep breathing as she slept, wondering if I’d ever come to grips with what I haven’t done. With what I could still do.
The problem is that Bear saved my life—twice. The first time was when we were kids. It was that summer after my father and I built Intrepid and I was canoeing the Falls. It was that summer I was sixteen and I wasn’t alone when the canoe went over—which was another reason I didn’t tell my father what had happened, because he would have been very angry that I had someone else in the canoe without telling him. He was damn strict about that. I made a bad choice on which current to follow into one of the toughest rapids, and boom, before I knew it I went over the gunnels, into the whitewater. So did my passenger.
Which was Bear. He was in the front of the canoe and he went over, too. It was stupid for us to be going through the Falls in the first place, doubly stupid because we each weighed so much, and triply stupid for Bear to be in front. The bigger person should always sit in the back of a canoe. But I had to be in back, I had to be the one steering and in control because my ego told me I did. I told Bear it was because my father had warned me not to let anyone else steer but that wasn’t true. It was just my ego telling me I was the better paddler and it was my canoe. I almost died in those rapids with my leg wedged beneath that rock, but Bear got me out with a Herculean heave.
The second time Bear saved my life was three years ago. I was in the Kro-Bar by myself breaking up a fight late one Saturday night and Bear shot a guy who was just about to shoot me. He got to the Kro-Bar in the nick of time and blew the guy’s knee apart with a well-aimed bullet just before the guy pulled his trigger.
So that’s two times Bear’s saved my life and the score’s two-to-nothing. I’ve never returned either favor. Not that I’ve ever had the opportunity to, but the bottom line is this: I owe him. Man, do I owe him. If you’ve never been trapped underwater with about three seconds to go before your body takes that first uncontrollable gulp, if you’ve never felt that incredible panic, you can’t understand how much I owe him. Or if you’ve never had an angry drunk aim a gun at you. And therein lies my dilemma.
I don’t really believe Bear did anything to Karen. It’s just that I haven’t followed up the way I should have because of that sliver of a chance that there was foul play and Bear was somehow involved or knows more about what happened than he’s ever let on. He’s my best friend and he saved my life twice. How could I ever do something that might land him behind bars for the rest of his life? On the other hand, how can I not do my job?
“Mrs. Erickson’s telling those same people,” Bear continues, “that you went out to the Prescott estate at least twice on the day of Cindy’s murder. Once in the morning after Cindy called you when we were out on the trail to Silver Wolf Rapids, then again after lunch. But she’s telling people Cindy didn’t call you that second time. That you went out there on your own the second time and there’s lots of unanswered questions about why you went and what you did while you were out there.”
I stare at Bear for a long time, trying to figure out how Mrs. Erickson’s getting her information. It must be coming from Lew Prescott or Darrow Clements. It wouldn’t surprise me if Prescott or Clements recruited Mrs. Erickson to help them in this matter, but it could be coming from someone else, too.
“Answer one question for me, Billy.”
He nods.
“And answer it straight. Don’t pull any punches. I want the truth.”
He nods again. “Okay.”
I take a deep breath because I know he’ll do exactly as I asked. Maybe it’s an answer I don’t really want to hear, but I have to ask. “Who do you think killed Cindy?”
15
AFTER BEAR ANSWERED that question I asked him, I told him I needed some time to myself, some time to think. Then I told him to get back to the house and start shoveling my driveway. I was demanding about it, too. I said I wanted to see a lot of progress by the time I got home, and I said it in a tone that couldn’t be taken as anything but a boss giving orders to a subordinate, certainly not a friend talking to a friend. He agreed to get started right away and that he understood about me needing time to myself. He also swore he’d never tell anyone what he saw through my living room window last night.
I believe him; I believe he’ll never tell a soul what he saw, despite my concern about what could happen when he gets drunk. What bothers me is that I think I know why he’s willing to keep my secret. And why he didn’t seem put out at having to shovel my driveway by himself on my orders. He didn’t even give me that exaggerated exhalation and glance to the sky he usually does when he feels like I’m being a jerk. Which was a warning signal about as subtle as a freight train whistle at a crossing that something strange is going on.
I hope Bear’s being so easy to deal with because of everything we’ve been through together, because we’re best friends, and because he understands that a sheriff needs to get to his precinct as soon as possible after a storm like this. But there’s this nagging voice in the back of my head that’s telling me he’s willing to maintain his silence and start shoveling the driveway alone at my specific orders for another, darker reason. A voice that’s te
lling me we executed a fragile but crucial treaty before we lugged that branch off the road, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s of our unwritten armistice without any obvious negotiation. I’m concerned that he was so quick to agree to the treaty because he assumes I no longer care how he saved my life twice, because he’s worried that my dedication to duty might override my mortal loyalty. So he took out an insurance policy and he’ll never say anything as long as the premiums are paid.
I’ve always wondered if Bear had something to do with Karen’s disappearance. I’ve never said anything that would even subtly suggest a whiff of my suspicion to him or anyone else around here, but Bear knew where I was headed when I told him about Maggie wanting to follow up on Karen’s disappearance. He knew I could have stopped Maggie dead in her tracks as soon as she brought up the search if I’d chosen to. He knew I could have told her right then and there in a firm voice that it was a waste of time because there wasn’t anything to investigate, given the note Karen left for Bear on Christmas Eve. And that would have been that.
After all, who’s Maggie going to complain to? Her parents are lying side by side six feet down in the frozen Wisconsin ground, her sister’s disappeared, and if there’s one thing most Dakota County residents don’t want to do it’s get sideways with the sheriff’s office. Especially when a woman’s just been murdered in her home a few miles from town and Mrs. Erickson’s telling anyone who’ll listen that the victim had multiple pentagrams carved in her nearly decapitated body. Getting sideways with us has nothing to do with me personally. The citizens don’t want to be at odds with the sheriff’s office in general because it’s simply not smart. A police force has too many ways to hassle or not help troublemakers. Throw on top of all that the fact that Maggie’s a meek soul to begin with and it’s game over.
