Walt

by Russell Wangersky

  It was me the next afternoon before work, alone in a big house making a recipe for four.

  Sun streaming down outside, plenty of blue sky up there and I had the mangos all peeled out of their skins and lying in the bowl and I could smell that odd turpentine smell they have and all I could think is that there’s no way you could look at them and not start thinking about sex. The lustiness of them, fleshy and wet and inviting, and, at the same time, I was thinking that I couldn’t imagine that cilantro was going to work. Because it’s one of those few tastes you can really smell coming — just hold some while you’re cutting it, just get a hint of it in your nose while you’re piling it in the bowl, and your mouth is already getting around the shape of it.

  Smelling it, I felt for a moment like I was almost in someone else’s kitchen, like I could close my eyes and be taken right there, maybe someplace bright like Alisha’s — not that I could ever go back there now. Not now. Somewhere else: somehow, it got into my mind that I was in one of those narrow walk-through kitchens where the cabinets all run down one wall, the fronts of them all panes of glass set in white frames, so you can see every single dish and glass and plate.

  I just kept doing it, drawing it up there in my head. Make a place, put myself in it — just an average place where friends get together, that easy handoff where everyone knows everyone, where everyone fits together and all the work gets done without ever seeming like work.

  In my head, there was a nice narrow counter with two deep white enamel sinks, the old ones that are always stained with iron or just plain hard and regular use, and it actually looks good on them. Narrow enough in the room that I’d always be just squeezing by someone if they’re standing by the sink, familiar if you know them well enough, but with the chance of awkward if you don’t. Close.

  The kind of house where it’s just fine that pieces of the baguette have been torn off the loaf in chunks and left there on the breadboard, salt in a shallow bowl with a single silver spoon instead of in a shaker, a place where there’s a big solid pot of chilli on the back burner of an older-model stove. And the stove doesn’t even look dated: somehow it manages to pull off classic. Empty wine bottles already lining up by the sink and plenty of dishes in the midst of piling up, lots of noise from the living room where people are talking loud — and maybe it’s the smell of the cilantro that’s doing it, but I was trying hard to remember if it was someplace that I had ever actually been.

  Thoughts darted in: something about little kids on the floor and folk art and a guitar was catching at the edges of my memory, and I was almost sure that it was winter in the place I was trying to remember as much as imagine, because even though the kitchen was warm, there was that strange feeling that cold was hanging out there, right there in reach, ready to just come in and hang up its hat, sit on the couch with its feet up while you start to shiver. And it was long enough ago that I was different.

  It was nagging at me, like it was something that I should be able to place absolutely immediately. But I couldn’t remember it clearly, and even though I couldn’t, I started thinking that I missed it keenly: the people, the noise, the being part of it all.

  Being part of something. Being able to fit.

  There was a hard knock on my front door, because the battery’s dead on the cheap doorbell I bought, and by the time anyone figures out that it’s not working — because no one’s coming up the hall to answer it — they’re already pissed off.

  I was right at the very back, in my kitchen in my T-shirt with no belt on, my pants tucked in under the overhang of my belly, and I wasn’t anywhere ready for company. That’s funny, hey? Me. Ready for company.

  No one ever comes to the house to visit except new pairs of Seventh-day Adventists now and then, and they usually manage just one visit before they decide there are greener pastures for missionaries, greener pastures where there’s a heck of a lot less swearing going on and probably a lot better chance of a good clean salvation.

  But there were people at the door for me, all right.

  When I came down the hall, heading toward the glass front door to answer their knocking, I saw they were filling up the whole doorway outright, like they could block every scrap of daylight.

  Solid, square men, and if you’d seen them, you would have been like me, you couldn’t have helped but feel that there was something that made them look like they had popped right out of the exact same womb. Once inside the house, they filled the hall right up, too, one of them looking around like he was taking inventory, sucking it all in like he might need it again later, the other one doing all the talking.

  The police wanted to talk to me again, and I have to say that I wasn’t really surprised about that. They’re just doing their jobs, and this is a job they apparently don’t believe is done yet.

  Two guys stuffed awkwardly into suits like they were on their way to a high school graduation they were actually too old for and probably wouldn’t mind missing. I wondered fleetingly if the whole Criminal Investigation Division bought their suits at the same place, if there was a special police discount or a particular store that guaranteed ill-fitting to match their generally churlish attitudes.

  They asked me to come down to the station for a formal interview. That was new.

  I told them no problem, but I’d drive myself unless they were arresting me or something, because I didn’t want the neighbours looking out the windows and seeing me in the back of one of those all-too-obvious undercover cars. Like the lack of hubcaps is supposed to make the cars go faster or something. It reminds me of the kids who never seem to get past putting sticks in their bike spokes to make more noise.

  Take one look at those cars and you know what they are right away, and I didn’t want the whole neighbourhood whispering back and forth, coming to their own damned conclusions in there behind their windows. There’s enough of that already.

  Bad enough that the police rig had been parked out there for half an hour, the two of them standing in the front hallway until they finally got around to telling me they want me to come to the station. Maybe they were thinking that they were getting my wind up, but really, it’s a lot simpler than that: the reason I kept looking around is that I was wondering just exactly what I was supposed to do with the peeled mangos. Could they stay on the counter, or should they be in the fridge? Maybe that’s a stupid thing to be worrying about when the police are at your door, when you should be thinking about who the best possible lawyer is, just in case.

  Sunny outside, early fall, but it was like everything had changed around lately, like the seasons got confused somewhere. Spring here goes on and on now, a forced march designed to break your heart, but fall just can’t make up its mind, flipping back and forth. Summer one day, cold rain the next, and it’s never really clear day to day just what you’re going to get. September, and there are raspberry plants shooting up high and throwing out brand new flowers all over again when they should be getting ready to die back.

  They’re the neighbour’s raspberries: she planted them and then they came through the back of her yard into mine, claiming any freshly turned soil. She cut hers down, said they didn’t bear enough fruit, and she asked did I want her to come over and cut down the ones in my yard as well?

  I told her no, because the fact is I kind of like how they just keep trying to force their way along, new shoots marching out every year trying to take over a little more terrain. They’ll cover every piece of open ground fast. Sometime, the runners are going to meet the maple seedlings in the middle of the yard, and there’s going to be some kind of plant battle, stem to stem, at least until I wheel out the mower again and cut them all down so no one wins but me. And then the war’s going to be postponed for another year.

  When I got out to my car, they were sitting in front of me in their rig, their heads silhouetted against the back window, and I could see that those big lunkheads perched on their shoulders were just about
exactly the same size — and maybe the one driving was looking at me in the mirror. Or maybe he wasn’t, it was hard to tell, but the fact was that neither of their heads moved even an inch when their car pulled out and away. No signal, but I used mine.

  When they got me in the interview room, the lunkhead twins left and it was two other guys. Guys I’ve seen before. One round, one tall. Scoville and Hill. Again.

  Hill says I’m not being charged with anything and thanks me for coming in, “just a few questions for you and you can be on your way,” all of it spilling out flatly like he’s said it twenty thousand times before. Probably he has, for everything from drug cases to stolen bikes.

  Hill tells me to call him Dean and do I want a cup of coffee and what do I take in it? Maybe a ginger ale? I’ve seen him lots before, a couple of times away from the force at one of the rinks, on skates with a hockey stick in his hands, no nonsense and standing straight up at the blue line in a not-very-friendly recreational hockey game, giving off an air of “just give it a try” the way some guys seem to do with absolutely no effort at all. He’s also been around to talk to me plenty before; he’s the one they pick to do the nice “take a little friendly advice, would ya?” line.

  It was like they had no idea that anyone watched television or anything, or else just figured that we’re all so hopelessly lame and eager to please that we’re going to fall for it anyway. A nice clean glass of water right there on the table, as clean as if it was polished, not a mark on it, but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of having me touch it and leave marks for them to do whatever with.

  Scoville hadn’t offered his first name, hadn’t said much of anything, and he was sitting with his back against the wall right there by the door like he could move half an inch and that would be all it would take to stop you from going anywhere. Like there wouldn’t even have to be a closed door in the place, just him and his chair and his chin and haircut. He had his arms crossed across his chest, and I couldn’t help but think that he was pretty much a cartoon character, and that inside his head, he must be telling himself to keep that stern look on his mug for as long as he possibly could, because that’s exactly what the book says to do.

  Then Dean came back with the coffee I didn’t really want in a paper cup, and he said he was sorry that there wasn’t any creamer left, but he put some whitener in if that’s all right. There was one of those brown plastic stir-sticks angling up out of the coffee, and I could see he’d really stirred it, because the stir-stick was slowly bouncing around the inside rim of the coffee cup in the fading whirlpool like it was trying to get away but didn’t really have anywhere to run to.

  They had a lot of questions.

  It was a small room, no distractions, not much in there to put your eyes on to take you away from exactly where you were, and it occurred to me that it was meant to be exactly that, that the person being interviewed was the only thing that’s supposed to get any attention at all. It was all beige and the walls had fabric on them. Like carpet, almost, and it sucked in the sound. Like it was supposed to suck the words right out of you, too, make them come streaming out like you’re some kind of magician and they’ve got a hold of your magic scarves and just won’t stop pulling. Three chairs, one table, one empty wastebasket. I checked the wastebasket the minute I came in.

  They had questions about a girl who went missing years ago, a girl named Lisa, and then some more about Alisha, whose house has been empty for two weeks now — “You’re surrounded by women no one has heard from,” the short one, Scoville, said. And most of the questions were about Mary at first, and they didn’t seem to have a heck of a lot of interest in listening to the answers I was giving them. I was telling the whole thing, telling them what I could — about Mary leaving and about how I know Alisha by sight because she comes around the store sometimes but nothing more than that. Stuff they could pretty much prove anyway, stuff they probably knew already if they had all their ducks in a row.

  Did I like fishing? “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Cape Shore. Southern Shore. I move around.”

  “Got a cabin anywhere?”

  That’s a little too close. “No.”

  I was thinking, the thing to do is to stay as close to the truth as you can, but don’t give them stuff that will make them head off in new directions. Don’t give them any of the stuff you have trouble explaining to yourself, the stuff they can railroad you with. Because they like to solve stuff, and they don’t care if they’ve got the right guy or not. As long as they’ve got someone.

  Had I ever been in Alisha’s house? That stopped me for a second. I weighed it real quick, thought there would be too much explaining: “No.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Don’t even know where she lives.”

  Scoville piped up, changed direction. “You keep grocery notes for years,” at the same time making his eyes big like saucers in a way that means he thinks I’m a nut job, and then he started talking about Mary’s note. “You said right from the start she left a note, and you didn’t keep it? You keep grocery notes for years — boxes of ’em, we’ve seen them all — but you expect us to believe that you didn’t keep that one?”

  I shrugged.

  “And you think we should believe you when you say you can’t remember just what day your wife left?”

  He let that question hang there in the air, and I was skittering it around inside my head like there had to be a reasonable answer hiding in there somewhere, like maybe he’s right and the answer should just pop to the surface like a cork. But it didn’t.

  “Well, I don’t,” I finally said, and even to me, that didn’t sound sensible. It sounded petulant, like I should have been sticking my lower lip out when I said it, and that’s not what I wanted it to seem like at all. The tall one, Hill, it was clear that he didn’t like that answer at all, his mouth pursed up a bit like he’d tasted something sour.

  Doesn’t matter now: it was what it was.

  It’s like they were only hanging on to the words they wanted to hang on to anyway — anything else was just going to get tossed out.

  He shrugged, and his arms were still right there over his chest, and even Dean was throwing off an air then like he didn’t believe me, though he was pretending to want to.

  “Tell you what I think,” Scoville said. “I think you know a lot more than you’re saying. What do you think of that?”

  The questions just battering back and forth from different directions. First about one thing, then about another. Try to get me off balance, I guess. And I could see where it was going, the two of them willing to keep talking all day, trying to push me along. Willing to just sit there, if that’s what it took, leaving the room filled up with empty space where no one’s saying anything at all so that you feel like you have to start talking, just so everyone will have something to listen to.

  Scoville threw other questions out, too.

  Dean looked down sometimes, like he was embarrassed the other guy was so blunt.

  “What was it? What started it?” Scoville said. “I know guys like you. She wouldn’t do what you wanted?”

  Waited after that. Didn’t say anything else for a while. Like at any moment, I’m supposed to start filling in the big old empty space with words.

  “You’re a strange one, Walt. You know it, I know it.” He looked at his fingertips, looked back across at me. “Everybody knows it. You’ve got some former neighbours who think you could be up to just about anything.”

  I shrugged. Carefully.

  Later, Scoville started going over old ground. “So your missus left you.”

  He said it really flat, like it was hardly worth saying, let alone believing. Looked at me, and then he was paying attention. Sharp.

  “Betcha were mad about that,” he said, and he was staring right into my eyes. “How mad were you, Walt?”

&n
bsp; Said my name like it was a swear word, spitting it out of his mouth like he expected to be able to look down and see it lying there on the floor in a little web of mucousy letters. I didn’t know just how he managed to do that, but he did. Push, push. He just kept pushing.

  Backwards, forwards, backwards again. Running right over my answers, starting another cycle of the same questions.

  I don’t get mad, I tell them, but that rolls right off. The room’s warmer all the time, and I wonder whether it’s our combined body heat, or whether they’ve turned up the thermostat, too. And then I drop Patterson’s name again, but it runs right off them like they don’t even hear me saying it.

  At the end of it, I’ve got nothing left to say, what’s there is all laid out, and you can see from their eyes that they’re not convinced, that they’ve got some completely different idea of what happened. Like they’re playing pin-the-tail, and I’m always going to be the donkey.

  Then it goes sideways. The tall one, Dean, he puts a picture of Joy Martin’s place on Signal Hill Road on the table in front of me.

  “Know that place, Walt?” he asks, and I’m trying not to freeze up, trying to keep my face the same.

  “No,” I say.

  “How about here?”

  Another photo. A wide-angle shot of the cabin, all burned.

  “No,” I say again, keeping my voice level, wondering how they got there — how they connected it to me.

  “Right,” Dean says.

  Then Alisha’s house, front and back. Her bedroom window, from a very familiar angle.

  “Don’t know the place,” I say, but I can tell I’m going to start sweating soon.

  Then I realize none of it can be concrete. They don’t have bones or witnesses or anything, or I’d be charged already.

  So I tell them straight out, “You want to go on with this, go ahead. I guess I’ll have to take my chances in court.”