Sinister Shorts

“You look good.” Her mouth, he remembered that, too, the taste of lemonade and whiskey.

“You, too, I think. It's hard to tell with those sunglasses on. I've seen you drive by in your patrol car. You used to be such a hellraiser, if you don't mind my saying so. You were so fu

“I straightened up about five years ago. AA did it. Learned a lot. How about you?”

“I kept on until I hit a bad bottom. Went down to Sacramento for detox. That was two and a half years ago.”

“You had any slips since?” Tim said. She was so different, calm, mature, not the frenetic girl he had known. He didn't feel inclined to hike down to the foot of the falls until Bodie got there, anyway.

“Slips? No, I watched my husband start down the tubes where I had been, and I thought for the children I better not give up.”

“Whatever works,” he said, and she smiled. “So you got married. How many kids do you have?”

“Two boys. They're little. My mom watches them while I'm working.”

“Where's your husband now?”

“He just got laid off from his job in Camden. At the water company. Ed Strickland.” She was still looking him over. She said. “You put on weight. You do look older, Tim.”

“Last time I saw you, you were lying in the grass behind the market beating time with a bottle of vodka in your hand, singing every verse of ‘Hotel California.'”

“I guess that was a good party,” Valerie said. “I wouldn't know. I can't remember much about that year.”

“I know what you mean,” Tim said. He smiled at her, too. What passed between them then was a recognition, hesitant, tenuous. Not like the old days, when the booze dissolved the barriers. They heard the ambulance siren.

“Guess we better go outside,” he said.

“Sure. I'll take you down there.”

She walked lightly, jumping along the rocks, wearing a long flowered dress and brown hiking boots. Bodie and Doc Ashland and the med techs followed behind her, carrying the stretcher, and Tim brought up the rear.

The falls dropped about fifty feet onto sharp rocks. It sounded like static, white noise overpowering everything else. The water went over fearlessly, even joyfully. He felt something inside himself stir in response.

They scrambled down the steep hill, following the water, out into the brush. “I was ru

Tim just barely saw it, a shadow against other shadows. Valerie had sharp eyes. “You go back up, now,” he said. “I'll talk to you later.”

“He's dead. He went over the falls. I don't want to see the rest of him,” she said. “Okay, then.”

Roy Ballantine's body lay facedown in the mud, legs spread and knees drawn up. “In that wet suit, he looks like a big drowned frog,” Bodie said. While the medics moved around the body, Tim and Bodie took pictures and hunted around in the bush. An hour later, they helped load the body on a stretcher. Black-bottomed clouds moved over the sun as the temperature dropped. They were covered with mud. “Let's go up to the store, see if Valerie'll give us some coffee,” Tim said.

She did better, finding them chairs to sit on and letting them wash up, too. She had lit the stove, and they sat around it.

“More rain,” Doc Ashland said. “It's a record year.”

Tim told them about the money and said, “He botched his fake suicide, I'd say. He jumped off the bridge. He was going to climb out of the river downstream, peel off the wet suit, take the money, and leave town.” He felt warm and comfortable. Valerie was behind him, but he could feel her eyes pressing, like soft curious blue daggers in his back.

“I've never seen the river this high,” Bodie said. “He got carried down the stream and went over. I almost feel sorry for him. He had it worked out pretty well.”

“He got bashed up bad going over, so I can't be positive, but I'm thinking all the injuries are consistent with the wet ride he took,” Doc Ashland said. “I'll do a complete autopsy tonight. Idiot, thinking he could use the river.”

“Good concept, poor execution,” Tim said.

“The Great Escape,” the doc said. “I thought about it myself, back when I was about to get drafted for the Vietnam War. Disappear, start over.”

“We didn't find much around him or on him,” Bodie said. “No money. If he had a pack strapped to him, it might be downriver. We'll start looking right away.”

“He'd need transport once he got out,” Tim said. “Bodie, you look hard for a car or motorcycle out there in the trees, too.” He got up. “I'm going to have to go tell Anita. You coming, Bodie?”

The crew came back and searched the banks of the river for three days in pouring rain, but they didn't turn up a thing. Doc Ashland finished the autopsy, saying all he could add was that Roy didn't have any alcohol or drugs in his system. And that the cause of death looked like drowning, though Roy was so beat up from the falls he might have died anyway.

The fourth day, a man in a gray suit came driving up to the sheriff's substation in a brand-new Jeep Cherokee. Tim came out to meet him. “James Burdick, Gibraltar Insurance,” he said, shaking hands. “I thought you might have some sun this high up.” Burdick was short and solid. He smelled of cigars.

“It'll be back,” Tim said.

“I read your report. You sure your men have searched that river high and low for the money?”

“It's not there.”

“Because if it doesn't turn up soon, I'm going to have to issue the old man another check. He's hired a lawyer this time and he's making a fearful racket. I don't work directly with the agents, so I didn't know Roy Ballantine. Did you ever think he'd do a thing like this?”

“I'd heard he was gambling, getting into debt. Maybe I should have paid more attention.”

“If we do pay that geezer Bayle off again, we're going to try to recover from Ballantine's estate.”

“Anita's going to need money. I doubt she'll be getting any of the life insurance he was loaded up with.”

“She can always file bankruptcy,” the Gibraltar man said breezily. “Can we go inside? It's freezing out here.”

Anita came to see him the next day. She had fixed herself up, but the old spark had been replaced by something just old. Events like losing a husband could make a woman cross the line into age in one night. Tim had seen it before.

“Let's talk frankly, Anita,” he said. Her eyes burned at him for a minute, then extinguished again. “I've been listening to the gossip. I heard some things I need to check out with you.”

“Like what?”

“For example, that you were getting ready to leave Roy, take Gi

“So what if I was?” she said. “So you've been listening to the women in this town, stabbing you in the back when your husband's just died…” She started crying, lightly and easily, like the rain falling outside the door. “He'd gambled away our savings. He didn't care about me anymore. Yes, I was thinking about leaving while I still had some self-respect. Of course, he's taken even that away from me now.” But the lift of her chin into the air said, he can take everything else, but he won't take my pride.

“Did you know he was going to steal the money?”

“Of course not-”

“Marriage is an odd state. We let another person come so close, they can read our minds,” Tim said. “I think you knew.”

“I can't believe you're saying this. You're accusing me of killing him so I could have the money, like I dressed him in a wet suit and tossed him over the bridge? He weighed over two hundred pounds. I don't have to listen to this. I'm going home.”