C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

“You should have seen him in there,” I said. “I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

Cody looked around. The street was dark and lifeless. “Let’s get out of here, Jack.”

I turned toward my Jeep.

“Jack,” Cody called after me. I looked over my shoulder. “Until to night, it’s been another really good day.”

I DROVE WEST TOWARD home on I-70 with the radio on KOA for sound but not hearing a word. I checked my rearview mirror every few minutes, expecting to see a squad car with wigwag lights flashing. My speed varied from forty to eighty, I couldn’t concentrate. I set the cruise control at sixty-five so at least I wouldn’t need to worry about that.

I felt dead inside, and my head was in a fog. Only then did I wonder what Cody meant when he said he’d had another good day. Had he meant with Brian’s call log?

The scene at the Appaloosa replayed over and over like a loop of tape.

Did Garrett see me? Did he know why Jeter was there? Would he go to the police to tell them what he’d seen, or would he play it like he did with Luis-with silence?

Could the blonde ID my face? What about the two bikers? Did they get a good enough look? Would Cody get pulled over driving up to the mountains with his dead uncle in his trunk?

God.

I found myself drifting off the highway and nearly overcorrected into a pickup in the next lane. I tried to concentrate.

I didn’t hear the first part of the report on the radio, maybe because I’d learned over the years to tune out much of what was on the radio. I caught it midway through. … The police spokesman says there was a qua druple homicide to night at a Zuni Street tavern… gang-related…

Gang-related.

I WAVED at the new deputy in his black-and-white across the street from our house, and he waved back.

Inside, Melissa came down the stairs in her nightgown.

“Why didn’t you call?”

I shook my head.

“Honey, are you okay?”

“No,” I said. “No, I’m not.”

“Did Garrett sign the papers?”

I FINALLY DRIFTED INTO an unforgiving sleep around four in the morning and when I woke up Melissa was standing over me with tears in her eyes. I expected her to say, “The police are here.”

Instead, she said, “It’s Thanksgiving Day, Jack. I forgot. Can you believe that?”

“I can,” I said, rubbing sleep from my eyes, “because I forgot, too.”

“How can a person forget it’s Thanksgiving?” she said, and burst out crying.

I stood and held her. She seemed to dissolve into my arms, and I could feel her hot tears on my shoulder. I knew she wasn’t truly crying about forgetting Thanksgiving.

IT WAS COLD and overcast. The mountains had no tops, and milky tendrils extended down into the valleys like cold fingers. Winter had won again and was reclaiming lost territory, I thought. It was snowing hard in the high country. I thought of Cody having to drive up there somewhere, and hoped he’d made it back okay. I blew in my hands as I walked across the street to the sheriff’s department black-and-white. Billy Sanders was back. His motor was running so he’d have heat. This time, he didn’t caution me to keep my distance.

He lowered his window, and I bent over into it. I could feel a breath of warm air come out as well as the fake-cheese smell of Doritos. The bag was on his lap, and I could see several crumpled soft-drink cans on the floor. The morning Denver Post was beside him on the passenger seat. The headline shouted MASSACRE IN NORTH DENVER.

Man, oh man.

“Are you okay?” Sanders asked me. “You don’t look so good.” He closed one eye in puzzlement. “My replacement said you weren’t out all that late.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, and changed the subject. “So you have to work on a holiday, huh?”

Sanders nodded. There was a line of orange powder from the Doritos on his upper lip, and his fingertips were orange. “Yeah, kind of a bummer but that’s part of the deal.”

“I’m going to King Soopers to get groceries,” I said. “My wife suggested we invite you in for a Thanksgiving meal. We won’t have turkey and all the trimmings because we both forgot what day it was, but we’ll have plenty of something else. I was thinking I’d bring back some roasted chickens and I need to know how many will be at the table. What do you say?”

He looked at me with suspicion for a moment. “Your wife really wants to invite me in?”

“She sent me out here to ask.”

Melissa had surprised me with the suggestion. She’d said, “Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving unless we can share it with others. Since all our family is out-of-state, well, let’s invite our watchers.”

Sanders said, “What about Morales?”

“Melissa is out back talking to him now.”

He shook his head and looked genuinely touched. “Man, that would be great. I was thinking I’d be sitting here all day feeling sorry for myself, and I guess technically we’d still be on the job since we’ll be keeping an eye on you. Maybe we can even forget about those rules about drinking on duty just this once. Can we pitch in on dinner?”

“Sure, if you want. Why don’t you call Morales, and the three of us can go to the store together?”

He laughed and reached for his mike. After talking to his partner, he called dispatch and asked for another car to watch our house while he and Morales “followed the suspect.” After receiving a confirmation, he looked up at me, and said, “Sorry; we can’t risk your wife taking off on us with that little girl while we’re gone.”

THE TWO DEPUTIES and I cruised the aisles of the grocery store like giddy teenage boys planning a camping trip. I pushed the cart, and they dropped items in it-canned cranberries, sweet potatoes, packaged mashed potatoes, jars of cream and brown gravy, a jar of CheezWhiz (Sanders!), two six-packs of beer, a couple more six-packs of beer. The aisles were empty except for a few desperate shoppers getting last-minute items. But no one was as desperate as the three of us because none of us had planned or shopped for a last-minute Thanksgiving meal before. There were four roasted chickens in the deli section. I didn’t ask when they’d been roasted, and I bought them all.

“Better to get too much than not enough,” I said.

“This is great.” Billy Sanders laughed. “What about these dinner rolls? They look pretty good.”

“Throw ’em in,” I said.

“You are really nice people,” Morales said, as we rung up. “I’ve never had my surveillance targets invite me in for dinner before.”

I thought, We used to be good, too.

THE DEPUTIES WERE AS inept in the kitchen as I was, so the three of us let Melissa shoo us out so we could drink beer and watch football. “Just one,” Morales said, and so did Sanders. Just one turned into a lot more. Melissa didn’t seem to mind doing everything herself. I heard her as she cooked and hummed happily. The smells coming from the kitchen were delicious. Angelina crawled between the three of us, offering up toys that we’d take and pretend to hide. She was once again a charmer and had both deputies giggling and mugging for her.

As I sat and watched them, the events of the evening before came rushing back, and I tried hard to steer them away. I jumped when my cell phone rang. Cody.

“Excuse me,” I said to the deputies, who paid no attention to me. I took the phone into the kitchen and surprised Melissa, who quickly shoved something behind the microwave.

“Hey,” I said into the phone.

His voice was grim. “Are you all right?”