Sleeping Policemen

by Dale Bailey

  Tucker screamed, a short doglike yelp. “He’s still alive! Motherfucker’s still alive!” He wailed, a sound not unlike the sirens Nick had expected to hear earlier.

  “Shut up!” Nick screamed. Tuck fell quiet, glaring at Nick, his body jerking with the sobs he tried to hold in. Nick breathed deeply, collecting himself. Pomeroy farted again, a low, ratcheting sound.

  “What is that?” Finney asked.

  “I don’t know—the body settling, I think. The muscles loosening, giving up.” Nick shrugged. “Saw it on CSI.” The odor was dishearteningly similar to the bile Pomeroy had spewed across his shoes.

  “Finney,” he said, grateful for how calm he sounded. “Go start the car.” He wrapped his arms around Pomeroy’s chest and pushed the body onto the backseat, placing it in a sitting position. He took the legs and swung them to the floorboard. Pomeroy toppled over, his head landing in Tucker’s lap with a wet, smacking sound.

  Tucker shrieked, slapping at Pomeroy’s head as if it were some loathsome spider, and somehow slid beneath the body to the floorboard. Never pausing, moving as if the entire sequence were a single contrived action, he vaulted into the front seat and clutched the dashboard. Finney, already behind the wheel, placed a hand on Tucker’s shoulder and said quietly, “It’s okay, man. Pull yourself together.”

  “Fuck off! Don’t fucking boss me now!” he screamed, flinging Finney’s hand away. His voice was a scratchy shriek and his eyes rolled crazily in his head. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted, resuming his white-knuckled grip on the dash, staring blindly out the cracked windshield.

  Nick pushed Pomeroy farther into the seat and shut the door. As he turned to open the front door, he saw that Sue had pulled in front of them. He gave Main Street a quick, last look. A half-familiar car cruised slowly through the intersection; it was a long sedan, black or navy blue, with a buggy-whip antenna nodding lazily in the air above it. Nick’s mind filled with a view from between slit blinds, through a grimy pane of glass: that enormous state trooper, Evans, settling into his unmarked cruiser and gliding away from the curb. Something cold burst in Nick’s stomach. The car slid behind the First Bank of Ransom. Another car approached the intersection, paused, and then headlights the size of twin moons turned off Main and eased toward them. Nick’s heart froze; his legs turned to noodles. He heard Finney whisper, “Sweet Jesus.” Tucker emitted a long groan.

  The car passed though a pool cast by a streetlight and Nick recognized one of the town’s patrol cars, its blue lights flickering like faraway heat lightning; then the car merged with the darkness and he realized it had been only a reflection of the street light. He slipped into the Cadillac and closed the door softly behind him. Sue had disappeared.

  “Be cool,” he said, as much to himself as to Finney and Tucker.

  The patrol car pulled up beside them and the passenger window slid smoothly down. The interior was black. The only thing Nick could make out was the ember of a cigarette dipping lazily about, a drunken firefly.

  Finney cranked down his window and started to speak when a voice, as smooth as mountain whiskey, said, “You boys having trouble?”

  “No, sir,” Finney said, his voice firm but with the appropriate trace of acquiescence. “On our way home. We—”

  “Y’all up kind of early. Ain’t been up drinking all night, now have y’all?” Nick could just make out the pale blob of a face, as if a cloak shrouded everything else.

  “No, sir,” Finney said. “A friend called us to take him home.” Nick winced. What kind of sense did that make? He thought he heard the cop grunt noncommittally. Then he said, “What’s with the trunk?”

  “Busted lock. Had it tied, but the string broke this afternoon. I’m taking it to a garage tomorrow.” Finney had assumed his Senator stance, all glad-handing and concerned-citizen smarminess.

  There was a long pause, and then the voice said, slowly, “Why don’t you boys head on home.” He paused and the firefly somersaulted. “Now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Finney eased forward. Inside the car, no one moved. Finney watched the rearview mirror, his face grim in the refracted light of street lamps. “He’s gone.”

  Nick expelled a breath he’d been holding since he’d seen the headlights. Tiny stars danced and burst before his eyes. In the backseat, Pomeroy farted enormously.

  Tuesday, 6:50 to 7:15 AM

  Minutes later—the dash clock read 5:24—they passed the city limit sign and headed into the darkness of the mountains. Just outside of town Sue pulled up behind them; the Mercedes’s lights flashed twice.

  “How far?” Nick asked.

  “A couple miles, probably less.” He slowed and turned onto Jonestown Road.

  The Cadillac ate the road, balding tires singing a one-note aria over the asphalt. The Mercedes’s headlights gave the interior a ghostly aura. Appropriate, Nick thought—this car is filled with ghosts. Beside him, Tucker clung to the dashboard. His lips moved in fervent recitation, but Nick couldn’t hear him over the roar of the engine.

  Soon the grade rose and the road turned serpentine, twisting up the mountainside. On a narrow straightway, Finney slowed and signaled Sue around.

  “Not sure where the turnoff is,” he said.

  Nick watched Sue pass. As she pulled into the far lane, coming into sight around the bouncing trunk lid, the high beams popped on, the eyes of some predatory creature coming alert, the scent of blood filling its head. Nick turned away, peering out his window at the dark forest sliding by. With nothing to busy it—like the lifting and hauling of dead—

  —murdered—

  —private eyes—his mind cataloged the week’s deaths: the Aryan, Casey Nicole Barrett, Pomeroy. His mind recited them in the innocent voice of the old Nick, the long-ago voice of a boy incorruptible.

  Panic like a black wave washed over him, assaulting him with a battery of broken images: the photo of a crumpled fender; Pomeroy’s yellowed teeth, an incisor chipped; black bondage masks floating toward him as though underwater, their movements languorous and heavy.

  His hands shaking, Nick popped open the glove compartment, filling his mind with a needless task. A shower of fast food wrappers and poorly folded roadmaps fell out. In the back Nick found a small box of bullets, half-empty.

  “Give me those,” Finney said, reaching for the box. He studied it briefly by the dashboard light, then put them in his jacket pocket. “Might need these.” Nick closed the glove compartment.

  Up ahead, Sue slowed and turned off Jonestown. Finney followed. The road was little more than a pair of rutted tracks leading into the wilderness. Branches whipped across the windshield and scraped along the flanks of the Cadillac as it bounced through the underbrush. Several times they drove over saplings growing in the middle of the track. Once, in a sharp bend, the Cadillac’s back tires bogged. Finney gunned the engine and the backend slipped slowly sideways before the tires discovered firmer ground. The car lurched forward and Finney had to fight the wheel to guide the behemoth back onto the trail.

  As Nick jostled between Tucker and the door, he studied the woods, a black, formless mass, blocking the ghosts from his mind. As he watched, the darkness began to cohere, at first into blocks of shape, and then, slowly, into entire trees, deadfalls, and outcroppings of stone; bundles of writhing snakes became interlacings of branches and vines, hirsute beasts transformed into thatches of thistle and rhododendron.

  Nick glanced at the dash clock. Only 5:31. Light shouldn’t come for another hour at least. The long, bony finger of panic caressed his shoulder, the nape of his neck. Time is everything. He stared at the clock, mesmerized, watching its flame-red second hand sweep through the minutes. He could hear the seconds crashing past, a jarring click that reverberated through his ears and deep into his head. Everything is time.

  “Finney,” he said, his voice a gasp. “It’s getting light.”

  “I can see.”

  “It’s only 5:33, what’s—”

  “The dash clock’s wrong.” He gl
anced at the Rolex bound to his wrist; it flashed golden in the dash light. “It’s a couple minutes after seven.”

  Nick sunk back into the stiff leather of the seat, a loose spring jabbing him between the shoulder blades. We’ll never make it, he thought. Everything is time.

  The woods fell back abruptly and the two cars entered a small clearing. At the far end was a small knoll; beyond it Nick could see only emptiness. Sue pulled to one side and Finney drove the Cadillac up the incline. The car nosed into the sky—Nick saw that the east was a dull scroll of gray, the color of the Gulf on a cold day—and then banked sharply downward. The quarry opened before them, a pit of still water the shade of the eastern sky. The color reminded Nick of dead flesh, of Pomeroy’s waxen pallor. Nick stared at the tarnished waters and wondered what might be entrenched in the silty bottoms.

  Another dead body?

  Nick shook off the thought as he climbed out of the car. He walked to the top of the rise; Sue joined him there and stood silently beside him. Finney cut the engine and emerged from the Cadillac, Tucker coming behind him. Like Jonah from the whale, Nick thought.

  The quarry was the size of a small lake; several monolithic forms rose from the water, columns of stone the gravel-seekers had gnawed around, abandoning them to become diving and picnicking platforms. In the semi-darkness they looked like prehistoric sentries brooding over a deserted empire. Nick looked back at the sky. The horizon ran from a dull gray to the color of old nickels. Behind them a smattering of birds began to chirp. Farther back, something large lumbered through the undergrowth, paused, then moved on.

  “We need to hustle,” Finney said. Tucker shook his head and moved down the knoll, stopping at the water’s edge. Nick walked back to the car and cupped his face to the back window. Pomeroy had rolled to the other side of the back seat, his head propped on an outstretched arm.

  Nick opened the door and crawled in. Finney leaned in from his side. They exchanged a quick look and together heaved Pomeroy up, rolling him—first his upper body, then his legs—over the seats. The body felt stiffer but not solid. Nick wondered how long it took for rigor mortis to set in. The head and shoulders fell onto the passenger side floorboard, the snakeskin boots jamming between the steering wheel and leather seat. Pomeroy’s ass stuck awkwardly into the air. Hunched into that confining space, he looked like a dwarf jammed into a box.

  Nick backed out of the Cadillac, scooping up the Stetson and dropping it into the front. Finney retrieved his monogrammed handkerchief and rapidly wiped down the back seat. He leaned over the seats and, dodging the body, wiped down the front—the dash, the steering wheel, both doors. He was meticulous, wiping even the horn and the dash clock, things Nick knew none of them had touched.

  Finney climbed out and shut the door firmly. He wiped the handle down. He walked around the back, cleaning the trunk and passenger doors. Then he wrapped the handkerchief around his hand and opened the front door. He pushed one of Pomeroy’s boots aside and, with the same hand, cranked the engine. It chugged reluctantly to life. Backing out, he grabbed the gearshift. Nick watched him close his eyes. His lips moved silently—a prayer? a plea?—then he yanked the shaft down into drive and scrambled quickly away from the Cadillac, slamming the door behind him.

  Nothing happened at first, the world as still as a snow scene trapped within a crystal ball. Then gravity wrapped her slender fingers around the Cadillac and pulled it slowly, inexorably forward. It moved at first like a drugged elephant, lugubrious and dazed, then, gaining the momentum of the incline, picked up speed. Small branches and pebbles popped and cracked under the wheels, the sound of tiny bones snapping.

  It hit the water with a loud splash, the dark waters parting stubbornly before it. The surface of the quarry boiled as the hood submerged, every nook and hollow of the engine filling with the tainted water. The Cadillac hissed angrily and steam rose in small tendrils above the roiling waters. The headlights continued to glow, stabbing through the brackish quarry in two thin streams of light. They flickered, underwater lightning, then blinked out with a muffled pop. And still, the Cadillac plowed forward.

  The waterline crept over the windshield wipers, past the door handles. It gushed through cracks and seams, gurgling into the interior. Nick imagined it soaking the leather seats, the threadbare carpet, filling Pomeroy’s boots, saturating his Wranglers, turning the Stetson the color of sour milk. In his mind he watched as the water lapped past the detective’s chin, sluiced into his yawning mouth, engulfed him entirely, the thin wisps of his hair undulating like seaweed. He imagined the caddy spiraling into the quarry’s depths, nosing at last into the ancient sludge. Years fled. Algae carpeted the Cadillac, the corpse. The muddy waters sloughed the skin and muscle from Pomeroy’s body, transforming him into a grinning skull, a skeleton trapped within a skeleton.

  “Sink, damn you, sink.”

  Finney’s voice brought Nick back into time. The Cadillac still moved, but sluggishly, painfully. It leaned heavily to the right side, as if the shocks on that side had given way. The waterline reached halfway up the windshield and front windows, a quarter way up the back windows. The trunk—the lid ever bobbing—was fully exposed.

  The Cadillac ground to a halt; the water stilled. None of them made a sound for a full minute, all staring unbelievingly, helplessly at the car, a beached leviathan.

  “No! Nooooo!” Tucker screamed. “No! No! Nooooo!” He charged into the icy water, high-stepping the few feet to the Cadillac—the water churning about him as though it were boiling—and slamming into the trunk.

  “Sink, motherfucker!” he shrieked, shoving against the bumper, urging the Cadillac deeper. His feet slipped in the quarry slime and he plunged into the water, rising immediately, sputtering, screaming, a primal yodeling of rage.

  Finney ran down the embankment, stopping at the water’s edge, and shouted, “Tuck! Get back! Get out of there!”

  Nick looked at Sue, her green eyes like emeralds in the coming day, and shook his head. “Aw, Jesus,” he said. She took his hand and squeezed. How could things have gone so horribly wrong? He felt as if he’d been torn asunder, as if the pieces of himself had been strewn about the world. Gone was any sense of victory, of might, of right.

  His hand returned to the tight lump in his jacket. He knew that when he fingered them, the bills would be hot to the touch, that he would feel heat radiating from them, worming into his chest. But when he did grasp the roll, the bills were as crisp and cool as the leaves of an ancient tome.

  Tucker continued to lash at the hump of the Cadillac, rooted into the quarry bottom. Nick squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and in the darkness he saw his life imploding.

  He looked to the sky again, spellbound by the dissipation of time. The gray light faded to a dull white, the far horizon tinted with—

  —blood—

  —the rose of the rising sun. Day had arrived. Nick glanced at his wrist, at the watch not there, a force of habit, like brushing your teeth before bed, wiping your shoes on a doormat, hiding your victims at dark. He looked nervously toward the woods. Park rangers could be anywhere. Hell, they found the Aryan’s body in the middle of nowhere in less than twelve hours. And what about Evans? Had that been his patrol car he’d seen snaking through Ransom at dawn? Unbidden, an image rose up to claim Nick: the cockroach scooting over the greasy plaster, that hand whistling down upon it. What had Pomeroy said? The guy’s a fucking lunatic, he eats kids like you for breakfast—

  It was time to retreat, time to run, time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

  “Finney! Get him out of there!”

  Tucker still wailed at the Cadillac, flailing against the sunken weight of its carcass. Finney, in the quarry up to his knees, looked back at Nick and shouted, his voice a barely contained fury, “Get your ass down here and help me! I’m not going to—”

  Tucker screamed, a kicked-dog yelp of fear. He whirled away from the car and bolted for the shore, splashing through the water. He tripped, going down to his knees. Nev
er slowing, he regained his footing, already running again. All the while, he screamed, hardly seeming to pause for breath. He collapsed at the shoreline, falling face first into the embankment, only half out of the water. He fell quiet, the scream knocked out of him. Steam rose from his wet clothing. Finney grabbed a wad of his sweatshirt and dragged him out of the water. Tucker rolled over, lying full length in one of the Cadillac’s tire tracks, his breath coming in wet heaves.

  “H-h-hear—” he sputtered, his face pale, his lips tinged with blue. “H-h-h—”

  “Calm down, Tuck,” Finney said, going down on one knee beside him, patting his chest. “Get your breath, calm down.”

  Tucker closed his eyes for several seconds, then said, almost calmly, “I heard something. Down there, inside the car.”

  “Heard something?” Nick said, standing over them. “Like what? Water?”

  “No, you asshole,” Tucker said, sitting up. He hawked deeply and spat out a thick wad of phlegm. “Like a thump, a knocking—like someone moving around in there, like fucking Pomeroy trying to get out.”

  Finney looked up at Nick. “Could have been the car settling.”

  “Or something floating around inside Tuck’s head.”

  “Believe what you want,” Tucker said, getting up. “I heard something. A thump. Like a fist on glass.” He gave the half-sunken car a final, fearful look and pushed past them, heading for the Mercedes. “I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “What do you think, Nicky? Go back in there and check it out?”

  Nick looked at the Cadillac and then back at the woods. A thin fog floated through the trees like phantoms. How long before someone discovered the car? A day? An hour?

  For the first time in his adult life, Nick wanted to cry, to surrender. To lay down, stare at the quickening sky, and let sobs wrack through him, let everything wash out of him in a great caterwaul of tears. To surrender all of it—

  —the fist-sized wad of money—

  —Sue—

  —to concede.