Sinister Shorts

Tim locked up, too, leaving his home number on the answering machine in case of emergency. Timberlake was too small to justify a 911 service. People were leaving, not arriving. Soon enough they would have to close the sheriff's substation there, and he would have to move somewhere or take up a new trade.

He drove home, five minutes away, off the highway and down two hundred feet of gravel road, startling a buck and doe browsing in the brush at the turnoff.

He really should get a dog. He turned on the lamp in the main room of his cabin, went into the kitchen, and microwaved three burritos. After setting them on his kitchen table, breathing in their beany aroma, he got the big bottle of orange Gatorade out of the fridge, not bothering with a glass.

He ate, watched TV, had a shower, got into bed with the old Ross Macdonald he was reading, keeping half an ear open for the sound of the phone or tires crunching in the driveway, but nothing happened. Nothing much ever did happen.

Right before he turned out the light, he thought to himself, I thought he liked it here. He hadn't really known Roy. No one had really known Roy, and no one really knew Tim.

And then he thought, if no body turned up, you have to wonder, what if Roy faked it? He lay there on the lumpy bed that gave him backaches and chewed on that thought for a long time.

As usual, he slept badly. Outside, the crickets built their wall of sound, the moths mated in a flutter of wings around his porch light, and a bullfrog raised his nightly ruckus down by the river, but Tim pulled the covers over his head, because he didn't want to hear it. The forest made him crazy, he didn't know why.

The next morning when Angel Ramirez opened up at the bank, Tim was there, and he got Angel to look up Roy 's accounts without a warrant. Angel had that bad habit of driving to neighboring towns late at night and peeking into windows when the urge got too strong. Tim had helped him into a diversion program the year before, and Angel still saw Doc Ashland every week. If he was still peeping, he had gotten too discreet for Tim to hear a whisper of it.

“He has the individual checking account, in his name only, a joint checking account with his wife's name on it, too, a business account, and a trust account,” Angel said. “Here're the last month's statements on each of the four.”

Inflow, outflow, some bounced checks on the individual accounts. Like everybody, Roy and Anita spent more than they took in.

The trust account showed a big check being cashed for a client ten days before. “I'd like to see this one,” he told Angel.

Made out to Roy Ballantine, as a Gibraltar agent, and Peter Bayle, jointly, the check was for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Gibraltar Insurance had already cleared it.

“Settlement check,” Angel explained.

“Why put Roy 's name on it?”

“The company always puts both names on it so the agent can make sure he's got a signed release before the client can cash it. There'll be a release of liability form back at Roy 's office.”

“They both have to sign?” Tim said. He looked at the back. Two signatures all right, Royal F. Ballantine, as agent, and Pete Bayle. Different handwriting, the Bayle signature small and crabbed, like old man Bayle himself. “Who brought it in? I assume you cashed out a check this size yourself.”

“ Roy brought it in. Pete was holed up at home, nursing the broke jaw that got him all this big money,” Angel said. “Broke jaw, bruised ribs, lost his spleen.”

“He didn't have a lawyer?”

“Let some shyster take one-third of it? Pete's not that stupid. Roy took care of it,” Angel said. “He made Pete a fair settlement offer. Gibraltar 's insured was at fault. There wasn't any issue around it. Pete's got TMJ, has to have an operation on his jaw, and he's still go

“What's Pete's number?” Tim said. When the old man picked up, Tim asked, “Pete, you get your check from Gibraltar yet?”

“No, and I ain't paid my rent in two months. I'm go

“You come to town and see me instead,” Tim said. “In the morning.” He turned the check over again, looking at the signatures. “Angel,” he said, “Don't you ever do that again. Make sure both signatories are present.”

“Well, I'll be lassoed and laid down,” Angel said, his bug eyes through the thick glasses gentle and astonished. “When did Roy turn into a crook? He looked right in my eyes, asked me about the kids-I said to him, where's Pete going to take all that cash, over to the Wells Fargo Bank? And I offered to set Pete up for free checking, but Roy said, no, Pete's buying a hundred acres in Humboldt County, he's moving on-”

“Cash,” Tim interrupted. “Two hundred fifty thousand. Roy stole it, and already spent it, and he killed himself when he couldn't pay back the trust account. Or else he faked a suicide. If he did, he's gone with the money, and his body won't turn up.”

“What are you go

“Have a donut,” Tim said. He looked at his watch, and ambled across the street to the Ponderosa.

After a chocolate one and the kind with powdered sugar and two cups of coffee, he was ready to go back to the office. The sun had burned off the early mist, and he could see the plank floor needed a mop job. The red message light on the phone was blinking.

“This is Valerie at the store at the portage point. I found a… corpse down at the foot of the falls. I just left it, but I don't want any kids finding it, it's all beat up, so please come and-” The answering machine had cut out, but he'd heard enough.

On the car radio, Tim called Bodie and said, “Bring Doc Ashland and call Camden to send an ambulance.” The donuts had reconstituted to hard round lumps in his stomach.

He had to admit, he was a little disappointed. A part of him that he didn't let anyone see had been rooting for Roy to make a clean getaway.

He turned right after the bridge and headed down River Road. Downstream about a mile south, a cluster of cabins sidled along the river, near the top of Timberlake Falls, and there was a store with fishing bait and supplies.

As he drove, he seemed to rush down the road at about the same speed as the flow of the river. He'd never seen it so high or so brown, so brimming with energy. What had made Roy jump in?

He parked in the mud in front of the store. The young woman who came out to meet him looked familiar, though her hair was longer, a nice brown instead of the yellow he remembered, and the plucked eyebrows and lipstick and earrings were gone. She was plainer than she had been, but she looked better, too, healthier. He remembered that line between her eyebrows, too, of chronic puzzlement or discontent.

“You took your time. I suppose you don't remember me,” she said. “Valerie. From the year after high school, when we were both working at the supermarket in Camden.”

“I knew right away it was you,” he said.

“It's been a few years.”

“Not so many.”

“Come on in for a minute.” She opened the screen door for him, and as he passed into the cool darkness he smelled her scent, vanilla and roses, seemed to feel her hair brush against him, soft as a spiderweb. She went around the counter and he sat down on a tall stool.

“This place hasn't changed in twenty years,” he said, looking around at the old refrigerator unit that held the bait, and the candy bar rack, and the ice cream bin. “I used to ride my bike down here as a kid in the summer, sit out back under the trees and watch the waterfall. The fisherman used to set up nets there and catch the fish just before they went over.”

“My husband and I bought the store and the motel last year,” Valerie said. “The rain's killed all the business.”