Short Stories

by Lanyon, Josh

  There was a short stack of unopened mail and a couple of reports in Glen’s inbox. A large, opal geode served as a paperweight.

  The desk was organized, files neat, but not obsessively so. The drawers smelled faintly of Old Spice. The ghostly scent made Nash’s chest ache.

  It looked like Glen was caught up on his work — barring what had landed in his inbox over the last couple of days. The light was blinking on his phone. No one had thought to pick up the messages yet.

  On the wall behind Glen’s desk hung a number of framed certificates and awards. All that training and preparing for a job that the fucking city council probably wouldn’t have given him anyway. And not because he was too young.

  The small office was mostly dominated by a large, framed print photograph of a turquoise lake surrounded by blue mountains and pine trees.

  “Where was that taken?” Nash asked Marilyn when she brought him coffee.

  “That’s Bear Lake. Pretty, isn’t it? It’s limestone that gives the water that color.” Her expression was regretful. “Glen used to go fishing down there.”

  Three days and Glen was already past tense.

  “Did Glen take the photo?”

  “Oh no!” Marilyn chuckled at the idea. “Glen wasn’t artistic. Glen was just a normal guy.”

  Chapter Four

  Officer Lon Previn was a big man — and it was all muscle. Except for the mustache, which was formidable enough to have muscles of its own. A muscle mustache.

  “Let’s get something straight,” Previn told Nash when he came in from patrol. “The only reason I’m talking to you now, is Collier told me to humor you. I have no idea where Harlow is. I never laid a hand on him.”

  “I gotta say, you sound pretty damned defensive,” Nash observed.

  “Maybe it’s because you’re going around hinting to everyone that I killed Harlow to keep him from ratting me out to the D.A.”

  “Uh, no. I can guarantee you I never phrased it that way,” Nash said. “But since we’re on the subject, did you?”

  “No. I sure as hell did not.” Previn scowled from beneath his black, curling eyebrows. “But for the record, Harlow was no angel. I could tell you a few stories.”

  “Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

  Previn opened his mouth, then closed it. “Yeah, right.”

  Nash spread his hands. “If you’ve got something, let’s have it. Maybe it’ll shed some light on what happened to Lt. Harlow.”

  “I’ve got news for you, FBI. Everybody here knows what happened to Harlow. They just don’t want to say it out loud.”

  Nash kept his voice even. “What happened to him?”

  “He drove out somewhere and ate his pistol.”

  “I see. And what’s you theory on that? Why, in your opinion, would Lt. Harlow commit suicide?”

  “Because he was a homo. Everybody here knows it.” Previn’s lip curled. “You sure as hell know it.”

  Nash’s gaze drilled into the other man. “And that’s an issue for you?”

  “Don’t try to turn this back on me. You asked, I’m telling you. I think Harlow capped himself. And I don’t blame him.”

  Nash was a seasoned, maybe even hardened, agent of the law. It took a lot to get under his skin. Even so, it had been a long time since he’d confronted this kind of naked prejudice. Not because it didn’t exist in his world, but because Nash was very good at passing for straight. He wasn’t in the closet, it wasn’t that; a neutral personality was the protective camouflage all good field agents instinctively donned, right along with the shades and suits. Keeping his private life private was the first line of defense against the ruthless, crazy, and sometimes terrifyingly intelligent perpetrators of the crimes he investigated.

  But Glen? Glen would have had to put up with these attitudes and comments every single day.

  Nash said, “Did we just walk into a 1950’s flick? I didn’t realize being gay was still considered grounds for suicide.”

  Of course that wasn’t true at all. He’d never seen any suicide statistics on gay officers, but he’d have been willing to bet they were higher than the average — and the average was alarming enough: 91 percent of suicides were by males and, 63 percent of the victims were single.

  “Maybe not where you come from,” Previn said. “But Harlow grew up around here.”

  “Where men are men, and sheep are nervous?”

  “Keep laughing. You wouldn’t last a year out here.”

  “I might surprise you.”

  “You haven’t so far.”

  “So that’s your theory? Lt. Harlow drove off and shot himself because he was gay? If that’s the case, how come he didn’t leave a note? And why choose that moment?”

  Previn gave him a long, contemptuous look before turning away. He said over his shoulder, “I guess you could answer that better than anyone.”

  Glen’s bank records yielded nothing. There was no activity on his debit or credit cards, no checks had been cashed. He had a healthy balance in both his checking and savings, so it was unlikely money troubles were a factor in his disappearance.

  “Did anyone check Bear Lake?” Nash asked Ryan Walker when he returned from dinner that evening.

  “I drove out there myself Monday morning,” Walker said. “But there’s no way Glen would have driven that far out of his way.”

  “Why? He had a couple of hours before he was supposed to be on duty.”

  “You’re not a fisherman, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Just…take it from me. There wasn’t time before Glen’s shift to go fishing.”

  Nash never “just took it” from anyone. He gazed at Walker with dissatisfaction. What was he missing here? Walker was getting at something, but what?

  Walker’s eyes were hollow and red-rimmed, his face sallow. He looked exhausted. He looked like the image Nash had seen staring hopelessly back from the mirror in the washroom a few minutes ago. In fact, he and Walker were similar physical types. Tall, athletic build, clean-shaven, blond, blue eyes.

  Nash said slowly, “How is it that you answered the phone at Glen’s house Sunday night?”

  A tinge of color crept into Walker’s face. “I drove over there when he didn’t show up for his shift.” He added defensively, “It wasn’t like him. I thought maybe he’d been taken ill.”

  There must have been a short in the wiring because it had certainly taken a while for the lightbulb to go on. “Why you?” Nash persisted.

  “Why not me?” Walker’s face was flushed now, his blue eyes bright with an emotion that looked a lot like defiance. He seemed to wage an inner battle before blurting out, “I had a key.”

  “You…”

  The words were fairly innocuous. Maybe Walker meant only that he was the one who watered Glen’s houseplants when he went camping. But even if the words could have been interpreted a number of ways, Walker’s expression meant one thing and one thing only.

  It rocked Nash. He hadn’t seen it coming. There had been nothing in the week he’d spent with Glen to indicate there was another man in Glen’s life.

  “That’s right,” Walker was saying with quiet, fierce satisfaction. “I had a key.”

  He had been wrong. He had been wrong from the start, wrong about every single thing. There was nothing special or unique in what had happened between Glen and him. What had happened between Glen and him was the usual thing that happened when two single, horny guys were attracted to each other. Sex. That’s all it was. All it ever was going to be.

  But then Nash thought of Glen’s face at the airport. Thought of Glen’s hand gripping his that final time. “Did Glen know you still had a key?”

  Walker’s eyes widened. The defiance drained from his face. “No,” he admitted.

  “Nice.”

  “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong. Glen wouldn’t have cared. We still saw each other some nights.”

  Nash had to wrestle down that surge of unproductive and pointless jealousy. “What
happened between you?”

  “Glen decided —”

  “No. The day Glen disappeared,” Nash interrupted.

  “Nothing. I never saw him.” Walker said roughly, “I was on duty all afternoon, ask anybody. Chief Collier called me and told me Glen had never shown up. That’s when I went over to his place. There’s no way I’d have ever hurt Glen.”

  “Too bad we can’t ask him,” Nash said.

  * * * * *

  First thing Thursday morning the phone company was able to narrow the radius of Glen’s cell phone to a tower in northeastern Utah. By lunchtime Glen’s vehicle had been located in the parking lot of the Greyhound bus station in Tremonton. State Troopers found Glen’s cell phone beneath the passenger seat. Glen’s keys were in the ignition. There was no sign of Glen.

  A crime scene team was going over the vehicle, inch by inch, but on initial examination it looked clean. No signs of violence, anyway. They had found trace amounts of marajuna.

  No one at the bus station remembered seeing the XTerra arrive or knew how long it had been sitting in the parking lot. The security camera showed nothing, indicating the footage of the XTerra’s arrival had already been recorded over — meaning the vehicle had been sitting in the lot for over 56 hours.

  On Thursday evening, Chief Collier summoned Nash to his office. “We appreciate all your help, Agent West, but I don’t think there’s much more you can do here.”

  “I don’t believe Glen just climbed on a Greyhound bus and rode off into the sunset.”

  “It’s pretty hard to believe,” agreed Collier. “But then again, stranger things have happened. We both know people do sometimes choose to disappear.”

  “He wasn’t the type.”

  “I’ve known Glen a lot longer than you, Agent Nash, and I can’t rule out the possibility that Glen walked away of his own volition.”

  You knew him longer, but I knew him better. That’s Nash wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure it was true. One thing he did know for sure, no one ever really knew anybody. Not entirely.

  That wasn’t to say you couldn’t know the important things about them. He believed he knew the important things about Glen. “I suppose your theory is he hopped that bus after smoking a joint?”

  “I don’t know about the pot. I agree that doesn’t sound anything like Glen. But Forensics hasn’t found any sign of foul play. The keys are there, his cell phone is there –”

  “So that’s it? You’re just going to give up?” Nash could feel a vein throbbing in his forehead. He was probably going to blow a blood vessel from the strain of controlling his fear and anger for days on end.

  “Hell no, we’re not giving up,” Collier snapped, his own nerves frayed. “But clearly this case isn’t going to come to a quick resolution, and I don’t think you hanging around here harassing my officers is going to be helpful.”

  “Harassing them?” Heat prickled beneath Nash’s collar. “Is that what they say I’m doing?”

  Collier caught back whatever he started to say, and flattened his hands on the desktop. He said almost kindly, “Look, Nash, I know this case is personal. I know you’ve done your best to help, maybe you even have helped. But the fact is, we’re not any closer to finding Glen than we were Sunday night. So unless you’re planning to move to Bear Lake and take up searching fulltime…I think you need to start making plans to head home.”

  Nash was so tired he couldn’t think straight. When was the last time he’d really slept? Back before he’d met Glen. Another lifetime ago.

  He stared at Collier. He could see a mix of sympathy and uncomfortable awareness in Collier’s dark gaze.

  There was so much Nash wanted to say to him, to explain, to persuade, to convince him that they had to keep looking, couldn’t give up… It was almost funny. How many times had he sat right where Collier was now? How many times had he confronted some desperate, grieving, terrified loved one who wasn’t ready to face what everyone else already knew?

  He didn’t need to say a word to Collier, because Collier already knew everything he wanted to say.

  Nash nodded.

  Chapter Five

  There was an old movie Nash liked. It was about a detective who, through the course of his investigation, fell in love with a murder victim. The movie was called Laura. Of course, being Hollywood, it all turned out to be a case of mistaken identity and the detetective got to live happily ever after with Laura.

  Laura had lived in one of those swanky, sophisticated Hollywood sets. Glen lived in a redwood and stone house on Valley View Drive. Four bedrooms and three baths seemed a lot of house for a guy living on his own.

  “He got a great deal on it,” Officer Walker said, unlocking the door and letting Nash inside.

  It was a nice enough house. Wood floors and skylights. Granite countertops, a wood-burning stove, all the mod cons. There was a great view of the mountains from the bedroom balcony.

  Nash and Glen’s rinsed breakfast dishes were still sitting in the sink. Nash’s toothbrush was lying on the glass shelf in the master bath. He stared at it for a long time; he couldn’t ever remember leaving his toothbrush anywhere. It was the first thing anybody packed, right?

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Walker said from behind him.

  “It’s not a crime scene,” Nash replied, as though he didn’t know perfectly well why they should not be there.

  Why were they there? Nash wasn’t really sure. Taking a final goodbye? Probably not, since he had every intention of flying to Salt Lake City and driving out to Tremonton to follow up on the investigation of Glen’s abandoned vehicle.

  He could hear Walker opening and closing closet doors in the bedroom. Nash stared at his face in the mirror. He looked like hell. He looked like he felt. He looked like everybody looked in his situation.

  I’m going to find — and kill— whoever hurt you.

  He grinned ferociously at his reflection.

  Scary.

  “We should probably get rid of these.” Officer Walker had appeared behind him again. He was holding a stack of OUT magazines.

  “Leave them.”

  “Think of his mom.”

  If Nash started laughing, he would never stop. He clipped out, “Officer Walker, you know better. Do not disturb anything.”

  “Are you leaving your toothbrush?” Walker shot back.

  Nash stared at his his toothbrush. Innocuous green stripes on white. His DNA splattered all over every bristle. “You’re damn right I’m leaving my toothbrush.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Walker remarked, before vanishing back into the bedroom.

  He was probably right.

  Nash returned to the bedroom. A painting of Bear Lake hung above the neatly made bed — he had helped Glen make the bed — and he didn’t have to close his eyes to see himself and Glen lying there, smiling at each other. He could still feel Glen’s touch, still hear his voice, still remember the taste of his mouth, the scent of his hair.

  Part of what had always touched him about Laura was how vulnerable the dead were once they could no longer protect their secrets. That was the truth. There were no secrets in a murder investigation. Which Glen would have understood. But what did Glen have to feel embarrassed about? He was gay. He was lonely. He had dry skin. That was about the extent of it. Okay, a taste for vinegar and salt potato chips, a fortune in fishing lures, an unnatural love for Linda Ronstadt.

  Nash didn’t know anything about Glen. Didn’t know his favorite food, his favorite song, his favorite movie, his favorite color…. Was he Democrat or Republican? Did he believe in God? Did he want kids one day? Did he prefer the left or right side of the bed? Did he shave before or after showering? In the end, weren’t they all about equally important? If you wanted it to work, needed it to work, couldn’t you make it work?

  He kept coming back to this. In the end, hadn’t he known everything that mattered? Hadn’t he known enough?

  That was the painful part. That too late he recognized that Glen had been t
he guy for him. He had learned nothing this week he hadn’t already known about Glen. Glen was a decent, intelligent, hard-working guy. Every day he got up and did his very best to make the world a better place.

  What the hell more could you ask of someone?

  Okay, in fairness, unlike the detective in Laura, Nash had spent enough time with Glen to know he had felt more relaxed and at peace in Glen’s company than he could remember feeling with another guy…maybe ever. Glen had made him laugh. Glen had made his heart ache. Glen had cooked the best scrambled eggs this side of the Rockies.

  “We should go,” Walker called from the front room.

  The wall in the hallway was lined with framed photos. A bridal couple from the Sixties, a couple of skinny tow-headed kids in cowboy hats and sheriff badges, a photo of Glen in police uniform looking young and solemn—

  “We gotta go, Agent West,” Walker insisted from down the hall. “Maybe you don’t care about your job, but I sure as hell do.”

  He stared when Nash joined him. “So is that it? Now what? What will you do now?”

  “Is there anything left to do?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Walker looked relieved.

  On the way out, Nash paused before yet another photo of aqua marine water and pine trees. “This is Bear Lake?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?”

  “On the lake.”

  “I can see that. Where on the lake?”

  “Nowhere in particular.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nash asked impatiently. “It’s a place. It’s got a specific longitude and latitude. How could it not be somewhere in particular?”

  Walker’s face reddened. “It could be anywhere, that’s all I mean.” Meeting Nash’s disbelieving gaze, he repeated, “It could be anywhere. That lake has an area over one hundred square miles. It all looks the same.”