James Siegel - Deceit

I put out my hand and he shook it, a surprisingly firm grip from someone eighty or so. He went to leave, then turned back around.

“I wouldn’t stay too long out here.” He tapped his forehead. “Sunstroke can be murder. Remember, I am a doctor.”

“Thank you; I won’t.”

I watched as he made his way back to his car. I heard the engine rev, then softly idle for a while, before he finally pulled out from behind the splintered steel column.

He drove off, leaving the place deathly quiet again.

My headache had reached DEFCON 3; I felt nauseated as I walked back to my car. I opened the front door and collapsed into the front seat.

It felt better than out there in the sun, but I was dizzy enough to close my eyes.

I put the seat back and thought it might be nice to rest for a few minutes.

After a while, I was walking around Littleton Flats again.

The town was alive with people. The water tower was right there on Main Street. The men all wore old-fashioned fedoras. I could smell the aroma of blueberry pancakes and maple syrup wafting over from the Littleton Flats Cafe.

When I walked inside, the pretty waitress, the one my father left us for- Lillian , her name was-smiled at me. I blushed when she brought me a fresh place mat with connect-the-dots on it.

I began drawing lines from one dot to another, and now and then I thought I could see a picture in there, but when I held it up to show my father, it was blank.

I felt this awful frustration, an excruciating embarrassment as I kept drawing and attempting to show my father and Lillian something in the dots, but every time I tried it would vanish. Poof . I could sense my father’s growing disappointment, Lillian’s boredom, and I finally drew my own picture, just ignored the dots entirely and drew a picture of a woman and child sitting on a bench.

When I opened my eyes again, it was dark and I was covered in cold sweat.

I wondered if the army doctor had been part of the dream.

Marv was right.

My Miata did look like the Beverly Hillbillies’ jalopy. He’d hammered out the dents, but the metal was as wrinkled as used aluminum foil. He’d replaced my front bumper with one from another car-evidently not a Miata-that was lopsided and several inches too wide.

The engine seemed pretty much intact.

I was currently doing a respectable seventy miles an hour on the Pacific Coast Highway, on my way north to see John Wren.

He’d called me back a few days later.

He’d looked for his notes. Just as he’d alluded to, there were some interesting things in there. He’d weighed his distaste for me against his belief in the story. The story won. There was a catch: if I wanted his notes, I’d have to come get them. He didn’t own a fax machine, and the nearest one was a good forty miles away, as he’d retired to a deserted fishing camp on a remote lake.

My impression was he’d holed himself up somewhere , Anna had told me. Apparently, he’d turned recluse in earnest.

I told Hinch I was taking a few days off.

I didn’t tell him what I was really doing, because I was afraid he might laugh at me. Then fire me on the spot.

I suppose I could’ve taken a plane, but money was tight, and like Herman Wentworth, I was looking forward to a change in scenery.

When you drive the PCH North, you experience several of them.

The million-dollar beach cottages, ratty surfer motels, volleyball nets, and honky-tonk piers disappear. The coastline becomes steeper, craggier, and altogether more spectacular, as if California has been sanded down in a southerly direction. Past San Francisco, towering pines actually blot out the surf, but you can hear its steady roar even above the traffic.

I stopped only once, at a motel in Big Sur, where I was given a key to the last room available, the one closest to the road. It had its own natural stereo system-engines on one side, ocean on the other-an audio surf and turf that created a stereophonic balance capable of rocking me into a semblance of sleep. I had noisy dreams filled with vivid colors-none of which I remembered when I woke to a gray light filtering in through the loosely drawn blinds. The mattress was soaked through from the sea air.

I needed two coffees to shake the cobwebs out of my brain.

I’d never been this far north in California. States take on each other’s characteristics the closer you get to their borders. I might’ve technically been in California-it felt more like Oregon. It was almost July, but I could feel a raw chill in the air. The surrounding vegetation was lush and tangled and reeked of decay.

I’d meticulously plotted out the route to Wren’s front door.

I still got lost. Went past the correct exit and didn’t discover my mistake till I’d gone twenty miles out of the way. One section of forest looked pretty much like another-I had the sensation of being inside one of those topiary mazes, turning left and right and back and forth but getting nowhere fast, continuously coming up against another impenetrable wall of green.

Eventually I retraced my route and got it right.

I followed the sign to Bluemount Lake.

Soon I glimpsed slivers of cool blue through the pines. Only the one-lane road seemed to circle the lake forever, offering no way in.

Then after twenty minutes or so, another sign: Bluemount Fishing Camp-turnoff 20 yards.

I slowed, peering ahead for the actual turnoff, which wasn’t easy because the light was rapidly leaving and the thick pines put everything in shadow.

It was hardly there.

Just a bare indentation in the crawling ferns.

I stopped, finally made out the crudely drawn sign nailed to a tree-a black arrow pointing thataway .

My Miata wasn’t meant for offroad exploring. Even when it was new, a status symbol emblematic of its riding-high owner, it wouldn’t have negotiated the twisting, bumpy terrain much better than it did now.

But now its shocks were pretty much moribund.

Every yard gained was accompanied by a bone-jarring jolt. Strange sounds emanated from the undercarriage-creaks, squeals, and sick-sounding moans. It sounded like my muffler was dragging directly on the ground. At one point, I considered just leaving the car where it was and hoofing it the rest of the way. But the forest seemed less inviting outside the car than in it. Besides, the lake was getting closer; I could smell it.

I made a twisting turn around a thick ancient oak, and suddenly I was staring at a row of log cabins perched on the shore of Bluemount Lake. No longer blue exactly-more mottled purple in the evening light.

One cabin had smoke billowing out of its chimney.

I drove up to the side of the cabin, my tires spitting gravel, and stopped.

When I got out, no one came out of the door to greet me.

Odd.

My beat-up Miata must’ve made a terrible racket, especially out here where the loudest sounds probably came from hungry loons.

“John?” I called out, for some reason uneasy about just walking up and knocking on his door.

No response.

I called his name again. Still nothing.

I walked up to the cabin, negotiated the three steps up to the porch, and gave a good knock at the door.

No answer.

I rapped again. “Mr. Wren, it’s Tom Valle. Are you in there?”

After waiting awhile, I pushed against the door-there was no doorknob, just a plank of rough wood nailed to the door.

It trickled open.

A real mess. A pack rat’s lair, reminding me of the way my basement looked when I’d first taken over the house. Mounds of clutter spread over a bed, couch, table, even the floor. A cast-iron stove radiated a bare modicum of heat.