by Tim Johnston
On the vanity top sat a wooden box with the lid down, a brush and comb set, and a color portrait in a frame of dull silver, but the image that stopped her was the face in the mirror: waxy, pale face of shadows, of cracked lips and black ropes of hair.
Another girl altogether was pictured in the silver frame—a picture she’d seen before on TV and in the newspapers. It was Holly Burke’s high school graduation picture, and she knew that the girl had hated it and would not have placed it here herself. In it she was pretty and honey-skinned, her brushed hair catching the light. Bright-green eyes and a young woman’s mouth of glossed lips and white teeth, and nothing in that face to convey a heart with so much in it, so bursting and hungry and bruised and defiant, so alive!
The brush and comb set were not silver as in her dreams but fake tortoiseshell and when she lifted the brush she saw no hairs and when she put it to her nose it smelled of nothing but the synthetic bristles. Brand-new.
Inside the wooden box was a stash of jewelry: silver and gold and colored stones all in a rich jumble. She chose an antique-looking silver ring and slipped it over her knuckle, admired it against the pale skin, slipped it off again and lowered the box lid without a sound.
The floorboards popped and the door hinges creaked and she stepped into the hallway and stood at the head of the stairs looking down, listening. He would’ve heard the floorboards, the hinges, would’ve come to the stairs and called up to her, or by some other means let her know of his presence, but he did not and she knew she was alone in the house.
The bathroom looked like a bathroom in a hotel: not a thing in it to indicate a man had used it even once. Pale-blue towels folded and stacked largest to smallest on the counter. A new tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush still in its packaging placed beside an empty glass. A pink razor in its packaging next to ladies’ shaving cream. Ladies’ deodorant. New bar of soap in the wire rack under the shower head, matching bottles of shampoo and conditioner.
There was a bolt on the door and it popped cleanly into its socket.
She pulled the flannel shirt over her head like a dress and stripped off the heavy socks and stepped out of the panties and stood looking at the creature in the mirror. White as bones. Thin as bones but for the fat purple club at the end of one arm.
She’d have stood under that showerhead forever, just forever, but she didn’t want to use up his hot water, and at last she shut off the valves and ran the largest towel over her skin and made sure the bottoms of her feet were dry before she stepped on the bath mat. Then, with the towel wrapped around her, she peered into the hallway and listened again—not a sound, not even a light on downstairs that she could see—and then she scooted back to the bedroom, her dirty clothes clutched to her chest, and shut the door behind her.
42
He crossed into Iowa on the 52 and twenty minutes later he found the building on Main Street and there was an open space out front and he took it. It was just 2:15, a cold and gray Wednesday afternoon in Iowa, as it was in Minnesota.
Her fever had broken and she’d opened her eyes long enough to see him sitting there beside the bed, and he’d told her he’d be back in a couple of hours, and she’d nodded and shut her eyes again and was asleep before he’d stood up. He didn’t like leaving her alone in the house like that, but the fever had broken and she was going to be all right and he couldn’t wait any longer.
He went up the steps and opened the glass door and stepped into a large room. There were four wooden desks and only one of them manned—a young deputy on the phone, looking Gordon over and holding his forefinger in the air.
“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said into the handpiece. “I don’t blame you one bit, ma’am.”
Gordon stepped up to the desk.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll let him know the second he gets back. You have a good day, ma’am.” The deputy hung up the phone and shook his head and looked up at Gordon. “Afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?” The ID on his pocket flap said dep. kurt short. Gordon read it twice to be sure.
“I need to speak to the sheriff.”
“All right. I bet I can help you out. Did you want to report something?” He fetched a form and readied his pen.
“No, I just need to speak to the sheriff. Is he here?”
“’Fraid not. He’s out on a call.”
“How long.”
“Sir?”
“How long will he be out.”
The deputy tapped his pen on the form. “Can’t say, sir. How about you give me your name and your trouble and I can pass it on to him when he gets back?”
“What makes you think I’ve got trouble?”
The deputy stopped tapping his pen.
“Sir, either you let me help you out or you let me write something down or you go sit in a chair over there and wait for the sheriff to get back.”
“You forgot one.”
“One what.”
“One option.”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You forgot the one where you call up the sheriff and say Gordon Burke drove down from Minnesota to get Audrey Sutter’s things and he’s standing right here in front of my desk, Sheriff, what do you want me to do.”
Fifteen minutes later he’d loaded the last of it into the back of the van and he was just closing the rear doors when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the spot beside him and Ed Moran stepped out.
“Hey, Gordon.”
“Hey, Sheriff.”
“You get everything all right?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t exactly have a list.”
“Well, whatever the Prices didn’t take, the rest is hers.”
“Then I guess I got it all.”
“Sorry I wasn’t here to help you. I had to go pick up a sick boy from school and find him a sitter.”
“One of yours?”
“My youngest, Eli. Sick as a dog.”
“It’s going around.”
“So I hear. How’s she doing?”
“Her fever broke, anyway.”
“That’s good.”
“So I thought I’d run down here and get her stuff.”
Moran nodded. Hands on his hips. “Can I ask you something, though?”
“Go ahead.”
“How the heck did she end up at your house in the first place?”
Gordon told him about the firewood, the girl burning up with fever, the ice-cold house, and Moran shook his head.
“Like she hasn’t been through enough as it is,” he said.
Gordon watched the sheriff’s face in the shadow of his wide hatbrim. He looked like he might have another question on his mind, but if he did he didn’t ask it. Gordon said, “You made any progress on any of that?”
“Not as much as I’d like. County attorney says we’re about one eyewitness shy of a case.”
“She told me you showed her some pictures—the girl did.”
“She tell you what her old man did down here?”
“Told me that too.”
Moran shook his head again. He squinted up at the blue winter sky. “Well, I guess I best get back to work here.”
“I don’t suppose you care to have a cup of coffee, Sheriff.”
Moran looked at him.
“On me,” Gordon said.
Moran slid back his jacket sleeve to check his watch.
“Yeah, I might could use a cup,” he said. “Why don’t you go on ahead to the Blue Plate just down the street here—it’s that blue sign, you can see it from here—and I’ll come along soon as I check in with the boys.”
“Boy,” said Gordon.
“How’s that?”
“There’s just one boy in there.”
The waitress told him to sit wherever he liked and he took the booth in the far corner with his back to the wall. The lunch hour was over and the place was empty but for one old man at the counter, the old man stirring his spoon round and round in a white china mug. From where Gordon sat he could see the plug of skin-colored pla
stic fitted into the old man’s ear.
The waitress came over and said, “What can I getcha, hon?” and Gordon ordered a coffee.
“That’s it?”
His eyes went to the patch of bright pink on her neck—burn scar, or birthmark maybe—and back to her face. “That’s it for now, thanks.”
“All right. I’m gonna brew you some fresh—how’s that sound?”
“That sounds jim-dandy.”
“Ha,” she said, “‘jim-dandy,’ I like that,” and went away again.
The tabletop was striped with lighter bands of laminate and after a while he connected the stripes to the window slats to his left, and he put his hands into the light to see it bend around them. He’d not slept and his own mind seemed feverish to him, jammed full of voices and images, some of them real and some of them having come some other way into his head in the long hours since the boy showed up in his driveway, when was that—yesterday. And now here he sat in a diner in Iowa waiting on a man who was sheriff now but who back then was just another half-wit deputy pawing through her dresser drawers, lifting up her mattress, digging his fingers into her jewelry box—
The white china mug that dropped suddenly into his vision made him jump, and the waitress put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Oh gosh, sorry there, hon—maybe I should of brought you decaf!”
“Maybe so.”
“You sure you don’t want nothin else?”
Moran appeared at her side. “This man giving you trouble, Rhonda?”
“Oh no, Sheriff. I just snuck up on him and scared him.”
“Well, how about you scare me up a cup of what he’s having, hey?”
She went away again, and Moran got out of his jacket and tossed it on the booth seat opposite Gordon, tossed his hat on top of that and sat down. He set his phone on the table, off to the side, and slid his napkin and silverware over there too. The two men were silent, looking around the diner, until the waitress returned with a second mug and the pot of coffee.
“There you go, Sheriff. How about you, hon, can I top you off?”
“No, thanks.”
“Anything to eat, Sheriff?”
“No, dear, that’s all,” Moran said, and she went away again.
Moran raised his mug and sipped and set it down again. He sat watching Gordon. Then he said, “Well, Gordon. I’m gonna go ahead and guess you’ve got something on your mind here.”
Gordon was looking down into his own mug. The oily surface of the coffee, the wisps of steam in the bands of light. He rocked the mug a bit to see the liquid move.
“I’m trying to pick someplace to begin,” he said.
“The beginning generally gets the job done, in my experience.”
“The beginning goes a long ways back, Sheriff.”
“Then you best get started.”
The old man at the counter sat watching them over his shoulder. Gordon stared at him until the old man faced forward again.
“Don’t mind old Harold there,” Moran said. “He couldn’t hear a firecracker in a football helmet.”
Gordon placed one hand over the other on the tabletop and looked at the sheriff. “A man told me a story yesterday.”
“Who was the man?”
“Danny Young.”
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. “I had a feeling you were gonna say that name. I had a little talk with that SOB not two days ago. Told me somebody took a potshot at him. You’d think he might’ve gotten the hint.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“I didn’t say it was. Could have been any number of people. Did he think it was you?”
“I believe it crossed his mind.”
“Did you uncross it?”
“Tried to.”
Moran lifted his mug. Gordon watched him.
“How was it you came to have a talk with him?” Gordon said.
“How’s that?”
“Said you had a little talk with him not two days ago.”
Moran drew his thumb and forefinger down the corners of his mouth. “I had some business up there anyhow, with the Sutter case—those two girls—and a man told me he’d seen him in town so I swung by the house for a chat. Was that part of his story?”
“No, that wasn’t part of it.”
“Well,” said Moran. “You’ve got my attention, Gordon.”
“He said you pulled him over that night.”
“That night?”
“In the park. Ten years ago. Said you pulled him over as he was coming out of the park.”
Moran was silent. He raised a hand to scratch at the side of his nose and lowered the hand again. “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yes, sir. Because, the thing is, I don’t remember that ever coming up before.”
Moran looked off through the window slats to his right. “Well, that was ten years ago, Gordon.”
“I’d of remembered that. No way I’d of forgot that.”
Moran turned back to him. “Not sure what fish you’re after here, Gordon.”
“I’m just asking you, Sheriff. Did you pull the boy over that night?”
Moran held his eyes. Did not look away or blink. “I pulled him over, Gordon. He’d been in the park and I gave him a warning and let him go.”
“And then you told Sutter about it. After my daughter . . . You told Sutter about pulling the boy over?”
“Of course I told him.”
“Then why wasn’t it on the record? Why wasn’t it in the report?”
“I have no idea. You’d have to ask Sheriff Sutter about that.”
Gordon stared at him. Moran staring back. Finally the sheriff looked at his watch. “Was that all you wanted to know, Gordon?”
“No. The boy said something else.”
Moran waited. He opened his hands. “What else did he say?”
“Not so much what he said as what he showed me.”
“What did he show you?”
“Showed me the pocket from the shirt she was wearing that night. The blouse she was wearing.”
The waitress came by and put her fingers on the tabletop. “You boys all right here?”
Moran looked away from Gordon and gave her a smile. “We’re good, Rhonda. Thank you.” She moved on and he watched her go, or seemed to. Then slowly turned back to Gordon.
“The pocket from her blouse,” Moran said. “And what makes you think it was the pocket from her blouse?”
“Well, I had a long night, Sheriff. I had plenty of time to think things through. And one thing I thought was, what would even give him the idea to bring a fake? How would he even know about it?”
“Unless he was the one ripped it off her blouse. I’m sorry to be blunt about it.”
“Unless he was the one,” said Gordon. “And in that case, why bring it at all? And why now?”
“Those are good questions. Did you get the answers?”
“I got his answers.”
“What were they?”
“As to the why, he believes that pocket was put on his truck, on the license plate, by somebody else, and there wasn’t nobody else could of done that between the park and when he found it but one man, and that was the man who pulled him over.”
“Unless it happened before the park. At the bar, for instance.”
“I thought about that too. But nobody said anything happened at the bar. Nobody said anything about a torn blouse when she left there.”
Moran raised his coffee and sipped and set it down again. “And why now?”
“How’s that?”
“Why did the boy wait till now.”
“Well, to hear him say it, he just didn’t know what to do when he was a kid. He was confused. Now he’s older and he’s tired of being blamed, I guess, so here he’s got something he’s held on to all these years and it’s something only a crazy person would show now, so either he’s crazy or he’s telling the truth, and he’s hoping I’ll think one thing and not the other.”
“To what end?”<
br />
“How’s that?”
“To what end. What does he expect you to do?”
“God damned if I know. Stop blaming him, for one thing.”
Moran sat there. He rubbed at something on the lip of his mug.
“Have you got it with you?” he said. “The pocket?”
“No. He kept it.”
“Ah.” Moran frowned into his mug. “I wish you’d held on to it, Gordon. That’s evidence of a crime. If he panics, or runs, we might never see it again.”
“Is he crazy?” Gordon said.
“What?”
“Is he crazy, or is he telling the truth?”
Moran looked at him with sadness in his eyes. Sorrow even. “The fact that you’d even ask is discouraging,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m asking that much, Sheriff. A man . . .” he began. “A man just wants to know the truth, that’s all.”
“I understand. But you’ve already put me on a level playing field with that son of a bitch and that just doesn’t sit too great, I have to say.”
“I wouldn’t say level. I wouldn’t say level by a long shot.”
Moran stared at him. Then he picked up his phone and lit up its face and stared at that, then set it down again, facedown, on the tabletop.
“Something else just occurred to me here, Gordon.”
“What’s that.”
“It’s that for you to even consider his story might be true, you’d have to think some other man—this man who pulled him over—had that pocket on him for one reason only. You realize that?”
“I realize that.”
Moran sat searching his eyes. The color had come up in the sheriff’s face. A light in his eyes that had not been there before.
“Well, I just don’t even know what to say to that, Gordon. I truly don’t. You come on down here, into my town. Walk into my office. All the while thinking this.”
