Sinister Shorts

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “She was a flake,” Bell repeated, “and we really don't need this kind of attention.”

  “Why did you call me?” Fleck said. “Why do you think I can step in, when the Berkeley PD can't close it?”

  “You worked there all those years. You know how it is,” Altschuler said. “Other priorities. Drugs, runaways, domestic violence, foreign students getting robbed and killed, political demonstrations, the annual riots on Telegraph, the big murders, the orders to keep a low profile…”

  Bell looked bored. He hauled himself out of the chair, said, “It's in the reports,” looked at his watch. On cue, his phone buzzed. “Take care,” he said. The meeting was over.

  “Call me in a day or two, John,” Altschuler said at the door into the hall. “Where are you going to start?”

  “The Long Walk,” Fleck said. He hefted the file under his arm. “You ever been there, Pete?”

  “Not me,” Altschuler said. His mouth opened in his long mournful face like he was about to say more, but the door closed, and Fleck was shut out.

  ***

  Charisse had never been to the huge amusement park of San Francisco. That night they climbed the Coit Tower hill in a balmy sunset and ate at an Italian restaurant in North Beach. Then they drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and had a few drinks on the outside deck at the Reef, looking back over the dark brilliant water toward the glowing city.

  Some kids leaned too far over the railing, tossing bits of sourdough. A sea lion barked itself hoarse in the shallows below the deck and Charisse ran over to look. Pelicans and gulls circled and dove. Fleck sat there, too big for the flimsy wicker chair, finishing his drink, the sharp aromatic fumes of the brandy blending with the salt tang of the air. He had read the reports. He should not be on this case.

  “So beautiful,” she said, pulling her chair out. Her thin dress with its full skirt poufed around her as she sat down and he caught her perfume. “John-”

  “Um-hmm.” He tossed off the last of his drink.

  “Why'd you leave California?”

  “Because it smells like death to me,” he said. He hadn't meant to say it that way. He didn't want her to be afraid of him. But he wanted her to understand him. She deserved to know what she was getting. It smells like fifteen years of crime scenes, corpses, court, he said to himself, swirling the ice in his glass. Finding the victims in bed, in old abandoned buildings, in the ashes of their homes, in the gutters, on the playgrounds, under the dirt. Always too late to save them. Trying to be satisfied locking up the pathetic killers.

  “Working homicide, every day was the same,” he went on. “Somebody killed somebody. I found out who was dead, and who did the killing. I found out why they did the killing. More and more, there was no reason. You know, some kid would say, he got in my face, he looked at my girl. Or, I needed a few bucks to buy crack. Or, I just exploded, I can't explain why. Everybody dying, and I couldn't stop it. I come back here and it's just the same.”

  Charisse covered his hand with hers, shivering. “You're only here for a little bit, and you and me, we're apart from all that.”

  “ Atlanta 's still got some of that… innocence,” he said. “Like you. Not spoiled.”

  “Maybe you shouldn't have come back so soon, feeling like you do.” She turned his hand over, kissed the palm, her lips a bird's wing brushing his skin.

  “I came back for the money. There's so much money here. Maybe when I go back to Atlanta, I can buy a little house. Get over it.”

  “You wouldn't be leaving… family here?”

  “No. No family. Not anymore. And you? Who do you come with?”

  “Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, dozens of cousins. You should see the party on the Fourth of July.”

  “If I'm in Atlanta,” Fleck said.

  “I hope you will be.” She was bold, but her voice was so gentle it sent a root down into his soul. “Listen, John. Let's fly back right now,” Charisse went on, her voice half-playful, half-serious. “I feel like-this isn't good for you. Our business is in Atlanta.”

  “I'll be fine,” he said. Fifteen, eighteen thousand, he said to himself. Make me worth knowing, maybe. “Tomorrow I have to get up early. I'll be back to take you to dinner.”

  “Are you going to take The Long Walk?”

  “Yeah. I have to leave San Francisco before dawn and get over to Berkeley. The girl was killed in the morning. I want to check it out at about the same time of day.” He stood up abruptly. “Let's get out of here.”

  While they drove back to the hotel, Charisse rested her hand on his leg. They lay down on the bed as soon as the hotel door closed and kissed for a long time.

  Once more he didn't sleep well. He wasn't used to having a warm solid woman pressed against him.

  He shifted and her arm swept across his bare chest. Damn her. The only sane thing was not to care.

  ***

  In the predawn he heard Charisse rustling around, running water in the bathroom, opening the curtains. He had been deeply asleep for the past hour. He felt like he'd just had his bell rung by Mean Joe Green. He pulled on his khaki pants and T-shirt.

  “You didn't have to get up,” he told her.

  “Do you always bark like that in the morning?”

  “I'm working, that's all. I shouldn't have dragged you here. This is a bad place for me.”

  “I'd like to come with you,” Charisse said. “I could use the exercise.”

  “What? Go on The Walk? Don't be ridiculous,” he said coldly. “I'm not putting you in any danger.”

  “Danger? What danger? It's just a hike.”

  “I can't be responsible,” he said.

  “That all happened months ago. Anyway, baby, don't you know me well enough by now to know that this is exactly the way to make me do what you don't want me to do?”

  The sentence made them laugh, and cleared the air for breakfast at a greasy spoon on the corner. Fleck ate the dripping special, Charisse refused. She would go hungry and she would go with him. So be it.

  By six they were driving the rental car up University Avenue toward the campus. Nobody was around, unless you counted the heaps in the doorways. The sun cast low warm rays down the long street, its asphalt already storing up heat.

  They turned right on Oxford Street and then left on Haste, cruising up the south side of the campus. As they waited for the light at Telegraph, a sharp pain lanced Fleck's stomach. His heart pounded, and his eyes blurred. He said nothing to Charisse, who watched with pity as a ragged human shape slowly pushed a shopping cart across the intersection.

  Fleck had seen the early-morning scene before too many times. Dizzy and angry to be back, somehow he kept driving, parking on Durant near the Greek Theatre two blocks from the stadium. “Just give me a minute,” he said, angling his head back. In a moment he was half-asleep.

  “John?”

  “Yeah.” He roused himself with difficulty. They got out and he locked up.

  Charisse leaned down, tightened her laces, said, “We should have brought a water bottle.”

  “There's safe water at the top. A spring.”

  “Okay. You're not going to bring that thing, are you?”

  He was strapping on his shoulder holster. He looked at it, and at her. A couple of girls bounced past them, jogging toward the trail, chattering. An old man threw a soggy-looking tennis ball across the tall dewy grass by the fence. His dog sniffed around eagerly, nose down in the wetness.

  “I mean, it'll show, and scare people. And you said the trail's been open a month, with no problems.”

  “A precaution,” he mumbled. His eyes had blurred momentarily. He wondered what was wrong with him.

  “Put it away, please, John.”

  Reluctantly, he took the gun and holster and opened the car door, reaching for the glove compartment. Charisse started up the trail, and he followed a moment later, slinging the big telephoto-lens camera case around his neck.

  The Long Walk, a dirt trail about five feet wide, w
ound along the side of the stadium. A jogger pounded past them on the trail, his ponytail flying. They fell in behind a middle-aged couple leaning on walking sticks, arguing in German.

  “Just a hike,” Charisse said again, squeezing his hand. Now that he was moving, Fleck felt better. The temperature must already be over eighty degrees. In March, when Julie Mattei died, it must have been much cooler.

  The trail began to climb and they left the athletic field behind. They passed a few people, and more passed them. Some of them said hi; most ignored them. Representatives of the Berkeley social hodgepodge, graybeards, couples with dogs, and loners hiked the path. Fleck didn't need to read minds to picture the broad fields they ranged: the sane, the crazy, the mild, the wild.

  They all thought they were safe, but they were all walking the death beat every minute of their lives, and he'd given up trying to save them.

  Julie, just like these young women looking so arrogant and confident this morning, had walked past this clump of manzanita three months ago, directly into the path of a truck. No. He shook his head to clear it. That was the kid in Atlanta, the one with a loving mom standing by to change his history.

  Charisse looked out of place in tailored shorts and pristine white shoes rising above the dust. He must, too. These hills attracted white, except for a group of Asian boys they passed, sitting on rocks loading their cameras, and one other black girl who passed them with a wave, tall and broad-shouldered as a basketball player. They watched the girl's muscular calves disappear around the curve.

  The walkers thinned out after the first mile. Fleck and Charisse walked along a ridge, the golden underbrush on their left climbing the hillside, poison oak the only green, fresh and glistening everywhere. They passed more stands of sharp-branched manzanita. Now and then they got into culverts and flats where looming eucalyptus trees cast shapes across the path, their acorns littering the ground, releasing a dry pungency that made his stomach churn.

  He was sweating. The sun reflected off the ground and speared his eyes under the sunglasses. So Altschuler and Julie had an affair. Fleck wondered if that started before or after she helped break up his own marriage.

  Charisse stopped and reached out to pick a solitary purple flower on the slope. Fleck pulled her back, said, “Drop it.”

  “Why?” She held on stubbornly.

  “The whole hillside's infested. Poison oak. Don't touch any of the plants.”

  “Hoo, boy.” She withdrew her hand, rubbing it on her pants. “Do you think the senior partner killed her?”

  “Altschuler? No.” She didn't ask why, just sat down on a rock and looked at him with interest.

  “How about the guy who called you? Bell.”

  He said nothing.

  “You said the firm was small. Bell had to know her.”

  “I walked into his office one night after hours. Just opened the door. It was like a TV comedy skit. He had her over the desk. She pulled her skirt down and turned her back to me. He never mentioned it after that. He never mentioned it to the police, either.” Fleck had sat down beside her. “Damn, I am thirsty.”

  Charisse said, “It was one of them.”

  Fleck said, “No,” again.

  “How can you be so sure?” She looked exasperated.

  He turned away. “I've done it for so many years. Pete Altschuler, he's a city boy. He wouldn't climb up here to do it. Too worried about his health.”

  “He could have hired a hit man. A hit man in hiking boots.” She smiled, inviting him to join her, but he wasn't in the mood.

  “He's not that ruthless,” Fleck said as she got up, smoothing her shorts. “He cared for her.”

  They wound around another corner, through another dry canyon. The sun blazed down. Fleck stumbled and would have fallen if she had not caught hold of his arm.

  “John, you're sick. Shouldn't we go down?” Charisse said.

  “I'll take a rest on top. You were right about the water bottle.”

  She let go of him, gave him a playful shove. “Okay, Macho Man,” she said. “Why not Bell?”

  “He might get her fired. He might poison her. He might even shoot her,” Fleck said. “But he'd never get actual blood on his hands.”

  “But he was hiding the fact he was seeing her!”

  “They all hide everything. It's second nature for lawyers.”

  “Then who did it?”

  Voices carried down the hillside. Three kids, two girls and a boy, descended around the switchback ahead. They were all dressed alike, in jeans torn out at the knees and tank tops, hair tied back with bandannas. “Hot today,” the boy offered as he walked by. His nose was peeling under his enigmatic shades. A buck knife sheathed in leather looped through his belt. The girls passed by without a word.

  “Nobody murders another person for no reason,” Charisse went on. “It's just that the reason isn't obvious-like if it's not money, or power, or revenge-everything else gets lumped under general craziness.”

  He trudged forward, irritated, watching his big feet move up a steep place, step by step.

  “For instance, a woman kills her child for what seems like no reason. She's been neglected her whole life, and this is the only way anybody will pay her any attention. So they say she's nuts. They put her in an asylum, but she had her reasons, didn't she?”

  “I'm talking about a random crime, not somebody's baby,” Fleck said.

  “Or think about it. A man goes into his old office with an assault rifle and starts shooting. It's terrible. He didn't even know some of the people he killed. But he could explain it, John. He'd call it a payback. The people represented something to him, something he had to kill.”

  “Some reasons can't be called reasons.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and he wasn't even sure she'd heard him. He didn't want to talk anymore. He just wanted to get up the hill.

  They had been climbing hard. After a long time, long enough for Fleck to remember everything about his life in California, his wife's face, Julie's, all the dead faces he had looked into all those years, wanting to say I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I failed you, they came to an area where the Oakland fire had passed through. The dirt turned black, and all around them stood skinned-looking fire-seared trees. Across the canyon, on top of the next hill over, distant but clear, they saw bare burned land, a stone chimney still standing guard in the middle of nothing at all.

  Fleck said, “Suppose a man's wife leaves him. He blames the woman he was sleeping with… is that a reason to kill her? Shouldn't that man have blamed himself?”

  Charisse didn't answer. She was watching a tarantula skitter across the path, hairy legs moving much faster than they should. She pointed, excited, her hand with the long nails and sparkling rings incongruous in the dirt and heat and stillness. Fleck kicked dirt after the spider. “This is what I think,” he went on, repressing the moan the pain in his stomach had started. “Julie Mattei hiked up into someone's hate zone. If she hadn't shown up, the next walker would have been killed. Simple as that.”

  “I don't believe it,” Charisse said. “They have their reasons.” She left it at that.

  Another rest. The pain had settled in his gut, cramping him, making him stop and bend over now and then till the worst of it passed. Charisse was tired, too; she had slowed down and she walked with a slight limp. No one had passed them for some time. He was burning with thirst.

  This walk was acting on him, replacing the forgetting with awful, fresh memory. Why had he returned?

  “John, did your work make you start to think that life is senseless, too? Random and meaningless like you keep talking about?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “Because if it is, then you could do anything to another human being. I mean, what kind of morality would be left?”

  “There you go,” he said quietly, so quietly she didn't even hear him.

  “Just think of her up here, on an overcast day. A spring day, everything blooming… she was thinking about making love the night before, maybe. Or about c
hicken tarragon for dinner. Then, like this”-she snapped her fingers-“she's gone.”

  He had stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat off his face. Gnats floated around their heads. “If they get too bad, walk with your hands raised above your head for a while,” he said. “They circle the highest point.”

  “Did you ever meet her?” When he didn't answer, she wiped her forehead and repeated the question.

  “We went out a few times,” Fleck said. The trail had narrowed between two boulders. They were hidden there. You could bury something here easily, he thought. An earthquake right now would bury them together.

  If his words had surprised her, she didn't show it. “When did you move to Atlanta?”

  Fleck ignored the question. “Doesn't this place scare you, Charisse? A woman died here and all.”

  Now it was her turn to remain silent.

  “I wish you hadn't come today,” he said. She stepped back, her spine pressing against the rock.

  “You moved to Atlanta at the end of March. Right after Julie Mattei was killed,” she said, her voice low.

  “That's right. And you've only known me for two weeks, that's right, too.” His head swam; he licked his dry lips. The camera case banging against his chest had been beating him up rhythmically with each step. “You look a little like Julie,” he said to her. “She was a glamorpuss like you.”

  He was leaning over her, both hands against the rock above her head. Charisse said levelly, “You're trying to scare me. Why?”

  Some tension in him went back into hiding at her words. He moved back from her and said, “You're too trusting.”

  “Don't play games like that, John. I'm not like you. I'm not afraid of the world like you.”

  “You should be,” he said. They went on, back into another patch of blinding sun.

  “We're almost there,” he said. “Up another quarter mile, past that stand of pine.”

  Charisse had stopped again. “What?” he said, then remembered he'd told her that morning he'd never been on The Long Walk. “I forgot,” he said. “That's all. I did hike this trail once, a long time ago. Come on, Charisse, don't look at me like that.”