Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

“How big?”

“Must be a couple of dozen reporters, photographers, camera people. You’d think you were bringing in the Unabomber’s brother. Lot of citizens out there, too. Lining the street and congregating over in the park.”

“Any trouble?”

“Not so far. But a lot of them are young and restless. I keep remembering how the crowds Friday night almost got out of hand.”

“How many people so far? Rough estimate.”

“Counting the media, over a hundred.”

“You send anybody out to keep order?”

“Sherm and Jake. Nobody else here right now but me.”

“Who’s out on patrol?”

“Mary Jo and Jack.”

“Call them in. If you need anybody else, go down the off-duty roster.”

“Right.”

“I’ll have Thayer put some of his deputies on standby alert. And Della, make sure our people keep everything low-key, same as Friday night. The last thing we need is somebody provoking trouble.”

I snuck out and walked down to Municipal Park because I had to see John one more time, even if it’d be from a distance and he’d be in handcuffs on his way to jail. I knew I’d cry when I saw him, and it was what I wanted — to feel even worse than I already did. Sometimes you just have to wallow in your own misery, you know?

I thought maybe Anthony’d be there, too. More reason to feel crappy, seeing him, even if I did feel kind of sorry for him. He must’ve been blown away to find out what a scumbag Mateo really was. Give him a little sympathy, show him I was a better person than he was. Show him I was more miserable than he was. I guess it’s true what they say: Misery loves company.

But Anthony wasn’t there. Home with his people, or else out somewhere getting high. That’s always been his answer to anything wrong or lame — get high, feel good so you didn’t have to think about feeling bad.

Some of the other kids were over by the bandstand, but I didn’t see Selena so I didn’t go over and hang with them. She was about the only one I could’ve stood to hang with tonight. I took a spot by myself under one of the trees near the street, where I could see the front of the police station. All the lights over there were blurry from the mist that was rising off the lake, blowing in in curls and long, ragged streamers. It made the people look sort of blurry, too, like will-o’-the-wisps. Newspaper and TV reporters waiting for John, not because they cared about him but because they thought he was a murderer and murderers are hot news. It was sick and freaky, in a way. If they knew he was innocent and a good person besides, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him, he could drop dead in the street and they wouldn’t even look at him twice. The guilty ones like Mateo, they’d fall all over themselves to get close and stick a microphone in his face and call him Mr. Munoz and feel sorry for him if he said he was a kidnapper and a rapist on account of he’d had a shitty childhood—

“Hello, Trisha.”

Ms. Sixkiller. She’d come right up beside me and I hadn’t even noticed her. Right away I was nervous and wary. But she didn’t start in about John or her boat or anything; she just stood there hunched inside her coat, her arms folded and her breath making puffs in the cold night air.

I could’ve moved away and maybe she wouldn’t’ve followed, but I didn’t. Pretty soon I said, “I, um, heard about what happened last night. I’m real sorry it was you Mateo picked on.”

“So am I. But it’s over now.”

“He’s a pig. Anthony’s not like him at all.” Now, what did I want to defend Anthony for?

“I know he’s not.”

“We broke up. Anthony and me.”

“Because of Mateo?”

“No, it was before that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Um, no.”

“All right. But we do need to talk about John Faith.”

“... Why would I want to talk about him?”

“He’s why you’re here, isn’t he?”

“He’s why everybody’s here. You too, right?”

“Right. You know he saved me from being raped?”

I nodded. “So maybe you don’t think he’s the lowlife everybody else does.”

“That’s right, I don’t.”

“He didn’t kill Mrs. Carey. I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

“Maybe Mateo did it. Did anybody think of that?”

“Yes. If he did, it’ll come out when he’s caught.”

“If he’s ever caught.”

“He will be. Trisha, about John Faith.”

“What about him?”

“I know you helped him. All you did and how you did it.”

Oh, God. I didn’t say anything.

“He tried to convince me otherwise, to protect you. He asked me not to give you away to the police.”

Right. That was the way John was. “So?”

“So I’m not going to. I don’t believe in making trouble for people I like. And I think I understand your reasons.”

“Then you have to believe he’s innocent, too.”

“I do. I also believe it’ll be proven eventually.”

“Not soon enough to keep him out of jail.”

“Life and justice aren’t always fair, Trisha.”

“Tell me about it. I figured that out a long time ago.”

We stood there for a while. Then I said, “I owe you an apology, Ms. Sixkiller,” and saying it was easier than I’d thought it would be. “About your bathroom window and your boat and everything. I feel... you know, wrong about messing with stuff the way I did.”

“Can I count on you to use better judgment in the future?”

“Yeah. I won’t do anything like that again.”

“Then your apology is accepted.”

“I’ll pay for the window and fixing the damage—”

“I don’t want your money,” she said. “Tell you what I would like from you, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Three or four hours of your time next summer. You obviously know how to drive a powerboat, but you can use some lessons in how to dock one. Lessons in general boat safety, too.”

I didn’t laugh or smile and neither did she. We stood quiet again, and when the wind gusted and I shivered she put her arm around my shoulders and kind of hugged me. I didn’t pull away. I guess maybe we both needed somebody to lean on, right then.

When Helen Carter and I arrived at Park Street, quite a crowd had already gathered. There must have been more than a hundred people standing and milling around. No wonder we hadn’t been able to find a parking space any closer than three blocks away. I saw four television vans, and there were reflector lamps and handheld spotlights that turned the mist swirling in off the lake white and shiny, like crystallized smoke, and half a dozen men and women carrying portable microphones and those bulky cameras with lights jutting from their tops — Minicams, I think they’re called. I recognized a roving reporter from Channel 5 in San Francisco, too. Everybody was talking in keyed-up voices, but other than that, the crowd was really very well behaved. I’d been concerned about that, the presence of rowdies looking to start trouble, and there was a noisy group of teenagers by the park bandstand, but uniformed policemen and sheriff’s deputies, bless them, seemed to have everything under control.

Still, it was exciting. That was the word for it. You could actually feel the excitement in the air, like electricity. If it hadn’t been the end of a terrible tragedy, I think I might even have been thrilled.

“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” I told Helen as we made our way to the parking lot on the near side of the station. She agreed. And if Howard doesn’t like it, I thought but didn’t say, well, that’s just too bad. I’d asked him to come along, but he wouldn’t even consider it. He’d been in such a strange and irksome mood lately — critical, even cruel at times. When I first heard that that evil man Faith was still alive and had been arrested, I took the news straight to Howard and he said nastily, “You must be really disappointed he’s not burning in hell.” I was , yes, as any good Christian would be to find out that one of Satan’s own is still among us, but I didn’t appreciate having it flung at me in a tone that made it sound like an accusation. Well, he could sit home and sulk or whatever. Helen was much more pleasant company. Much more agreeable, too. She’s a member of my church and her worldview is a lot closer to mine than Howard’s.