Sinister Shorts

“I like that flowered dress. I bet Roy liked it, too. That's the dress you were wearing the day you found his body.”

“Is it?” she said.

“He called you four times in the two weeks before he died. Now, why would he do that?”

“Who?”

“Ballantine. Roy.”

“No, he didn't call me. Do you have some kind of phone record? Maybe he called Ed. They were both gamblers.”

“You're so beautiful. So harsh and so beautiful,” Tim said. “How could he resist?”

“Me and Roy? Don't be ridiculous.”

“He would jump over the bridge, and you would catch him at the narrows just before the falls and pull him out. He'd strip off the wet suit and you'd drive out to the airport with him and fly away from all the bad things.”

“No!”

“That's what Roy thought, anyway. Was he willing to take your kids? Then when Roy was gone, were you worried that Ed would stay on your case, figure it out eventually? You remember old Ed, don't you? You called him at the hotel and asked him to come to the house. The clerk told me.”

“No!” Valerie said, backing away. “You're crazy, Tim. Just because I won't have you after what happened- Calm down, let me make you a cup of coffee. Let's talk…” She reached up into the high cabinet and Tim caught a glimpse of the gun.

“Don't touch it,” he said. “You think I'd come here unarmed? We searched this place. I knew you'd have it somewhere handy. Close the cabinet. Come toward me with your hands up.”

“Tim-”

“No more bullshit.”

Her shoulders slumped. She seemed about to fall. He brought her over to the table and made her sit, sat down across from her. Cracked linoleum; greasy stove, one soft flowing flowered dress to wear… “Valerie,” he couldn't help saying, “I loved you.”

She raised her head, and he caught something ancient and inhuman behind her eyes. It was the thing that had made her drink, still alive inside there. He had to look away.

“You were supposed to catch him at the narrow spot, weren't you?” he said.

She shrugged and said, “It would have been a very small risk. I knew how to use the net. Yeah. Catch him, and then we'd leave with the money. That was his plan.”

“Did you try? You lost your grip, he went on by?”

“No.”

He had to breathe a minute, hard, before he could say, “You let him go by, over the falls?”

“I let him go.” Her mouth, that had kissed him so tenderly, saying those things-

“What did he do to you, that you would let him die like that?”

“It was what he would do to me someday. I thought it over. I just wanted to be alone.”

She was alone, she would always be alone. “Why didn't you strip off the wet suit? I might have bought the suicide.”

She backed away, saying in a hopeless, hostile voice, “I pla

“You had it made.”

“You know how it is, Tim. At the last minute, you sabotage yourself. You realize you're a loser, you don't have the strength to carry it off. Maybe if you'd been with me-but I wanted to be alone. That's all I wanted-”

“I'll have to take the money back,” Tim said, interrupting.

“I don't have it.” She had realized he wouldn't help her. Her mouth tightened, turned bitter.

“Of course you have it. He wouldn't risk floating down the river with it. No reason to. You were holding it. Go and get it.”

“I tell you, I don't have it.”

Tim said gently, “Write it off. It's dead money for you now. If you don't give it to me, I'll have to tear your house apart, dig up your land. If you tell me now, I'll say I found it somewhere else.”

She said without any shame or guilt, “All I did was not save him when he was floating down the river. It's not a crime, is it?”

“I don't know. But stealing the money would be a crime, and I can't let you do that. And then, look what you made me do to poor old Ed.”

“It's in the fireplace, above the flue. Get it yourself.”

He made her walk into the small living room with him. He could hear the TV through the kids' door. “Is this all?”

“All except the back bills I paid. Are you going to tell on me? If you do, I'll just go on over the falls like he did.”

“No. I'm not going to tell.”

She stood in the doorway, glaring as he drove away. “Good-bye, then, you cold bastard,” she yelled after him.

When he came to the bridge, where he needed to take a left to go into Timberlake, he took a right instead, and drove to the county airport, his right hand caressing the sooty bag. The Southwest Airlines plane bound for San Francisco was circling above, preparing to land. Through the open car windows, rustles and rushings and sighs drifted in on the wind.

He went into the dark airport bar and sat at a small candlelit table overlooking the runway. He placed the bag carefully on the table. “Drink?” the waitress said.

“A double Jack Daniel's, straight up.”

He picked it up, savored the fumes-

Liquor, money, blurry romance, some faraway place-all he had to do was drink it down, have another, buy a ticket, and drop a postcard in the mailbox resigning as deputy sheriff-

“It's such a beautiful night, isn't it?” the waitress said. “I guess you're not ready for another.”

Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars-

But it was dead money. He'd be alone like Valerie, resurrecting that presence in the back of his mind that made him drink-

He wasn't completely finished. He wasn't extinguished like Valerie; he could still love somebody. She had taught him that by making a fool out of him.

He was looking down at the table, staring at the little flame guttering in its holder. “Even the candlelight hurts tonight,” he said. His voice sounded husky and strange.

She leaned down, put her hands on the table as she looked at the candle. “Blow it out, then, honey,” she said. “Then the moonlight can come in from outside.” She had a strong definite tone of voice and hair sprayed to stand firm against anything.

“You can take this drink away,” he said.

“You're not going to have it?” Surprise lit her face.

“Not this time.”

“Where you headed?” she said curiously. “ San Francisco?”

“Not this time,” he said again. As he climbed back into the patrol car and headed back to Timberlake, he glanced out the window.

Outside, the plane was landing, its red lights twinkling off the wet tarmac in the soft haze of evening.

O'Shay's Special Case

After they finished some initial paperwork, the interview proceeded in the usual fashion, starting with facts, ending up with emotional content, but something about the client made Patrick O'Shay uncomfortable, and it took a lot to shake him after all his years in the business. “You say you have good coverage?” O'Shay asked.

“Thirty years I've been their slave.” Jeff Colby worked for Dunkirk Enterprises, a construction company that specialized in huge real estate developments. “Typical profit-driven corporation,” he said, voice full of loathing. “Nobody gives a damn how the job gets done, long as it's done. I take the blame if anything upsets their damn schedule.”

“You feel you aren't treated well?”

“Nothing to do with feeling,” he said, angry. He looked around the rumpled, file-filled space, possibly wishing for something slicker. O'Shay's office didn't intimidate; its comfortable shabbiness welcomed workers from the farms ringing Salinas and the central valley. “They treat me worse than dirt.”

O'Shay sat back in his chair. A big man with deep-set, piercing blue eyes women loved and men found scary or trustworthy, depending upon their personalities, he was larger than life, inches over six feet and well over the recommended healthy weight for a man his size, although much of it was sheer muscle. “Tell me about your injury.”