Inheritance

by Joe McKinney

  “You think he’ll talk to you about it?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe. All I can do is try.”

  “Yeah, well, do us all a favor and hurry up with that, would you?”

  Anderson frowned. “He was my friend, sir. I’m working as fast as I can.”

  Allen started to speak, but stopped himself. He nodded instead, then glanced back at the rest of the Command staff. They were waiting for him.

  “So where do you go from here?” Allen asked. “What’s your plan?”

  Anderson thought about that. He said, “I guess the best thing to do is to follow the bodies. I find it hard to believe that anybody, cult or not, could commit a triple murder and steal that many bodies without leaving some kind of physical evidence behind.”

  “I agree with that,” Allen said. He shrugged his shoulders inside his great coat, then grabbed the hem of the white long-sleeved shirt underneath and tugged at it so that it showed the regulation one-quarter of an inch from the hem of the coat. Then he stared down the steps at the throng of officers moving across the lawn and, in a voice so low he might have been talking to himself, said, “You know, I’m glad we could do this for Jenny. I think going forward with this gave her some power over the situation. I think she needed that.”

  Anderson was shocked.

  Allen saw it and raised an eyebrow at the expression on Anderson’s face.

  “What?”

  “Sir, you’ve got to be kidding me. You don’t honestly believe this is a good idea, do you?”

  “Yes,” Allen said, a little defensively, “I do.”

  “I just...” Anderson trailed off, shaking his head.

  “You just what?”

  Anderson sighed.

  “I just look at all of us out here, and I can’t help but think we’re fooling ourselves. Like this is some kind of sick joke.”

  Allen turned and faced him. Anderson could almost feel himself shrinking under the weight of the man’s hard stare.

  “Excuse me?” Allen said. “What did you say?”

  “Look, sir, I just—”

  “I helped set this up, Keith. And you know why I did it?”

  Anderson didn’t say anything.

  “I did it because it’s going to help Jenny. And you know who else it’s gonna help?” He pointed at the crowd marching towards the church. “You see them, Keith? That’s who it’s gonna help. Those men and women out there. They need to see the Department honoring its own. They need to see that we give a shit. We won’t leave an open wound, which is exactly what postponing this funeral would have done. We need to heal.”

  “I know that, sir. That’s not what I mean. What I’m trying—”

  Another Traffic officer’s whistle cut him off. Both men turned towards the circular drive and watched as a marked police car pulled into the drive, its overhead red and blue strobes blinking slowly.

  “Damn it,” Allen said, looking at his watch. “She’s early.” He turned to Anderson. “That’s Jenny. I know she’d like to see you before she has to go in. And I know she’d appreciate you not calling her husband’s funeral a sick joke.”

  Anderson didn’t blink. He had no idea how to express himself, how to say why he felt this was so wrong. He only knew that he hated it.

  “He was my friend, Robert.”

  “Yeah,” Allen said harshly. And then, more gently, “Yeah, I know, Keith.”

  Allen left him then and walked down the long flight of white concrete steps and across the wide sea of emerald grass to the circular drive, where a patrolman in an honor guard uniform was getting out of the driver’s side of the patrol car and walking around to the passenger side to let Jenny Cantrell out. Anderson watched the deputy chief’s back as he walked away, and he couldn’t help but feel the sting of someone whose good intentions have been misunderstood. Yes, he did think this funeral was a sick joke. They were burying empty coffins for Christ’s sake. How useless was that, how fake? And no, it didn’t feel like healing. Hell, it didn’t even feel like a step in that direction. It just felt like a lie, both to the living and the dead.

  And then Allen was standing there at the patrol car, taking Jenny Cantrell’s hand as she stepped from the passenger seat in a black dress. Officers and wives turned that way and a hush fell over the lawn.

  Anderson watched Allen guide Jenny toward the walkway, and he thought, not about Jenny, but about Allen. There was a man who had done just about every high-profile job the Department offered. He was a founding member of the SAPD SWAT team. He had been the leader of a twenty-six county narcotics task force. He had won just about every medal and commendation the Department gave, some of them twice. He was a graduate of the FBI’s National Academy. And yet he had paid a heavy price for all those honors. For everything he’d put into the Department, he’d lost more than that from his personal life. It had cost him a marriage. He had two children he hadn’t seen in ten years. When he left the office at the end of the day he stepped into a void that only going back to work could fill. Anderson looked at the man, the legendary Deputy Chief Robert Allen, and he wondered what he thought about as he led a sobbing widow to the church.

  ***

  Anderson turned away and saw Margie staring at him from the shadows. She was leaning against one of the columns that made up the colonnade, and the look on her face suggested that somebody had just pulled the mask off her husband’s face, revealing a man she never knew existed, and a man she didn’t like.

  He said, “Margie, I...Do you want to go down with me?”

  He held out his hand for her to take.

  She didn’t even look at it. She walked right by him.

  He said, “Margie, wait.”

  She turned around and stared at him. Waiting for him to speak.

  He didn’t know what to say.

  She said it for both of them. “A sick joke?” She shook her head in disgust. “You bastard.”

  And with that she walked down the steps to be with Jenny Cantrell.

  ***

  When Paul was a cadet at the Academy, he had a Patrol Tactics instructor named Ernie Lambert who used to take a sick glee in telling the cadets what a stupid choice they had made in joining the Department.

  “Three things are gonna happen to you your first year on the job,” he said. Paul and the rest of his cadet class were in the courtyard while this was going on, the rain coming down in buckets on their back while they were knocking out pushups, Lambert walking between them under his umbrella. “Number one: you will buy a new truck. Number two: you will buy a new house. And number three: you will get a divorce. And trust me folks, Sweet Susie Rottencrotch will take everything you worked so hard for. This job is a bitch, gentlemen, and she does not allow you a mistress. Some of you will try to chase tail. Some of you ugly mutts might even catch some. But mind my words, you will find you have become a rocket with the jets burning at both ends. And the part in the middle? Well, that part’s you, and that part just gets crushed. Why did you idiots take this job? Go on—leave! Get out while you can. Pack your shit and leave, you worthless piss ants!”

  At the time Paul had thought the man was an asshole, nothing more. He did his pushups and yelled out his “Yes Sirs!” and “No Sirs!” at all the right times and just let what was said roll off his back like the rain.

  He hadn’t thought of Ernie Lambert since graduation, but this morning Ernie’s three warnings were on his mind. They hummed around in his head like bees trapped in the wall. He had bought Rachel a new truck. They had moved into the new apartment on the second floor of that Craftsmen-style bungalow. That left what, a divorce? A week earlier, the thought never would have entered his mind. But today, walking across the parking lot toward the Oak Meadows Church of God, it suddenly seemed like a very real and very terrifying possibility.

  He looked back over the events of the past few days and he felt like kicking himself for telling Rachel what he had seen. It would have been so much easier to lie. But he had been too naive in his belief tha
t his absolute love for her would equal absolute trust in him on her part.

  And that wasn’t fair. He pictured the situation turned around the other way, him standing in Rachel’s shoes, and he realized that it wasn’t merely a case of him being too simple, or too naive. He had been a first rate asshole. All things considered, the silent treatment she gave him after he spilled his family baggage in her lap was pretty gracious. Probably better treatment than he would have given her.

  He tried to take her hand in his, but she pulled away.

  She wouldn’t look at him, and Paul, not knowing what else to do with his hands, reached into his pocket and rubbed the Barber fifty cent piece, feeling the chips and cracks along its edges that had been worn smooth through years of contact with his fingers.

  “Paul,” Rachel said, “how come everybody else is wearing their long sleeves?”

  He had already noticed that. He had noticed it as soon as he got out of the car. Every policeman he could see, and there had to be thousands of them, was wearing the long-sleeved Class A uniform. Most had the optional clip-on tie attached. Everybody wore their hats. But Paul was in his short-sleeves, the routine patrol utility uniform. It was clean and pressed, the creases in the sleeves sharp enough to cut paper, but it was still the wrong uniform, and Paul suddenly felt sick, like he had been exposed as an outsider, as somebody who didn’t belong in this family, who didn’t share their right to grieve the honored dead.

  “Why didn’t you wear your long sleeves?” Rachel whispered to him.

  Some of the other officers were staring at him. Paul nodded back and tried to look natural.

  “I didn’t know,” he said weakly.

  Paul touched his fingers to the soot-colored mark on his forehead and he groaned. This marks you. You don’t choose this. It chooses you. And you have a charge to keep.

  For a moment, he thought he was going to be sick.

  ***

  They saw Wes and Collins on their way to the church. Collins had a girl with him, a slim, pretty, dark-eyed blonde. Wes was by himself, hands in his pockets, hat cocked to one side. He looked bored.

  Collins gestured at Paul’s uniform. “What the fuck’s that?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  “No, seriously, dude. What the fuck’s that? Where’s your Class A?”

  “I didn’t know we were supposed to wear it,” Paul said. “Nobody told me.”

  Collins looked disgusted.

  “Leave him be,” Wes said.

  “No way, fuck that,” Collins said. “You always wear your Class A to funerals. Always.” He turned to Paul and said, “They should have told you that at the Academy.”

  “Nobody told me. I’m sorry.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Paul reached for his Barber fifty cent piece. Wes patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just pissed about Barris and Seles.”

  “What do you mean?” Paul said.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “They’re getting medals for meritorious conduct.”

  “Really? For what?”

  Collins snorted.

  Wes said, “A couple of weeks back they pulled up on this guy stopped in the middle of an intersection. He’s had some kind of stroke. They pull him out and take turns doing CPR on him until they get a pulse back.”

  “Wow. They saved his life.”

  “Yeah, right,” Collins said. “Dude died ten minutes later in the ambulance. They ought to call it the Nice Fucking Try Award.”

  Paul smiled. He looked at Rachel and saw she wasn’t smiling. She looked uncomfortable, like it was causing her some effort to keep a friendly expression on her face.

  “Rachel,” Paul said, “this is George Collins and Wes Stokes. They work the district next to me and Mike.”

  Rachel smiled. “Hi,” she said.

  Wes and Collins nodded. Collins didn’t bother to introduce his date.

  “Say, you guys seen Mike out here anywhere?”

  “Yeah,” said Collins, “he’s over there.”

  “Cool. I’m gonna introduce Rachel to Mike. I’ll talk to you guys later, okay?”

  Paul put his hand on the small of Rachel’s back and they walked off to where Mike was standing, talking with Garwin and two other sergeants that Paul didn’t recognize.

  Rachel said, “Well, they were, uh, nice.”

  Paul laughed. “Yeah, well, Collins can be a little rough around the edges.”

  “Yeah,” Rachel said.

  They walked through the crowd, and Paul felt some of the hurt and anxiety leaving him. Her little show of affection towards him, letting him leave his hand there on her back, her warm smile as they walked together, had made him think that maybe they weren’t as far apart as he’d feared. He smiled at her and then let his gaze wander over the crowd. There were a few faces he recognized, but not many. He nodded to the people he knew and to a few of the ones he didn’t who made eye contact with him, and he started to relax.

  And that’s when he saw her, his mother.

  She was standing still in a crowd of moving people. Officers and wives walked right by her, nobody noticing the rail skinny woman in the potato sack of a yellow dress with the haze of dust obscuring her face.

  She was looking right at him, and that was what made Paul stop in his tracks. He could see her through the constantly shifting gaps in the crowd, and though he couldn’t see her face, he knew who it was.

  “Momma?”

  She was trying to speak. Through the cloud of dust he could see her mouth moving, her body shaking with the effort to reach out to him. A group of sergeants stepped in front of him, blocking his view, and he half-stepped, half-pushed his way around them.

  “Excuse me,” the sergeant said, and gave Paul an irritated look, but Paul ignored him.

  He walked towards his mother.

  “Paul?”

  Rachel had stopped. She was looking back at him now, and she looked confused. “Paul, where are you going?”

  Paul’s gaze was locked on his mother, trying to see her face behind that veil of dust. She looked so small, so cold, standing there with her pipe-cleaner arms hugging her chest. A strand of her long brown hair fell across her face and was lost in the swirling dust of her face.

  Paul walked forward, and he might have been sleepwalking, or drugged, for all the attention he paid the crowd moving past him. She was speaking to him, her voice like a hiss of static, the words lost behind the blur, and at the sound of that familiar voice he felt some vital part of him going numb.

  Whatever it was she was trying to say, she wasn’t coming through. Paul could sense the effort, the desperate effort to push through the dust haze over her face. And then her head tilted forward and her whole body went into a stoop, like the effort was just too much and now she had nothing left.

  “Momma,” he said, and didn’t bother to notice the officers around him cock their heads back in surprise. “Momma, no.” But even as he closed in on her the crowds continued to cross in front of him, and when at last another gap opened, his mother was gone. Paul stood there, looking at the spot where she had been, and swallowed the lump in his throat.

  What in the hell is going on?

  “Paul?”

  He turned away, feeling out of synch, like the world was moving too fast.

  Rachel put a hand on his bicep. “Paul? You okay, baby?”

  He blinked at her. She was looking into his eyes now, clearly worried.

  “Why did you go off like that? Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and did the best smile he could muster. “Yeah, I’m fine now.”

  ***

  Later, after the service, Paul and Rachel were walking across the lawn towards the patrol car they’d been assigned for motorcade to the cemetery. Paul had taken his Barber from his pocket and was rolling it over the back of his knuckles. He was still thinking about his mother, how small and sad she looked, how she could even be
there at all, and that numb feeling that had first started to spread inside him when he saw her in the crowd was still there. Was there something wrong with him? He wondered about it, and the Barber flashed back and forth across his knuckles.

  They ran into Mike in the parking lot. He was talking and laughing with a few other guys. The bill of his peaked Patrol cap was pushed high up on his forehead, and he was wearing sunglasses. The glasses made his face look thinner, not as boyish-looking as Paul was used to seeing him, but the Class A uniform and black tie he wore couldn’t obscure the width of his shoulders or the muscles in his arms. He still looked like a brown-haired tank.

  Paul introduced him to Rachel and they shook hands all around.

  Mike said, “Paul’s told me a lot about you, Rachel. He said there’s one and a half brains in your marriage, and he’s got the half.”

  Rachel smiled and glanced at Paul, who was making an effort to look like everything was fine. He’d put up the Barber, at least.

  “Paul’s told me a lot about you, too,” she said. “He says you’re some kind of master practical joker.”

  “I disavow all knowledge of any practical jokes,” he said. “Here at the San Antonio Police Department, we take this shit seriously.”

  “Spoken like a real public service announcement.”

  Mike slapped Paul on the shoulder and said, “Hey, she’s good.”

  Paul nodded. He glanced at Rachel and saw her smile, and it was almost enough to put him at ease. She was truly beautiful. There were moments when he looked at her and was shocked at how beautiful she was. Her smiles were like finding money on the ground.

  Mike said, “Hey, did you hear about Barris and Seles?”

  “I heard they were getting a medal for meritorious conduct for doing CPR on somebody. Collins called it the Nice Try Award.”

  “Yeah, that about sums it up. Hey, listen, you mind if I ride with you guys to the cemetery.”