Doug Allyn: v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“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 gonna call Ballantine tomorrow, kick him in the ass.”

“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 said. “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 gonna do?”

“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 answerphone 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 it.

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 spider web. 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 in the summer as a kid, sit out back under the trees and watch the waterfall. The fishermen 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.”

“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 hell-raiser, if you don’t mind my saying so. You were so funny. I guess you must have got ahold of your drinking, becoming a deputy and all.”

“I straightened up about five years ago. A.A. 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 still 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 tech 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, like white noise overpowering everything else. The water went over fearlessly, even joyfully. He felt something inside himself stir in resporise.

They scrambled down the steep hill, following the water, out into the brush. “I was running my dog,” she said breathlessly. “Over there, by the rocks. The river’s so high it’s flooded the trail, so we were bushwhacking. And I saw — that black foot sticking out. See it? I didn’t go any closer. I just ran up the hill and called.”

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 face down in the mud, legs spread and knees drawn up. “In that wet suit, he looks like a big drowned frog,” Bodie said. While the medicos 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 wetsuit, 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.