Perri O'Shaughnessy - Case of Lies

Once she felt she could trust Bob to stay away from the Bronco, she called the police, all the time watching Hitchcock’s liquid eyes, frightened for him and his big wet tongue. Oblivious, just wanting to get with the people he loved, he continued to assault the windows. Nina and Bob walked out of his line of sight so that he would stop.

Within minutes several police cars arrived. Six officers carefully evacuated the restaurant, filing people out one by one, keeping them as far away as possible from the parking lot. People from the restaurant, unable to leave without cars, were joined by a crowd of neighborhood people. Everybody stood bug-eyed behind yellow caution tape, rubbernecking, but still unable to see much.

“Our dog,” Nina said to a policewoman. “Our dog!”

“We’ll try to save him, ma’am.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better, she wondered, succumbing to an anxious gush of tears. Bob, glitter-eyed but too old to cry, patted her on the back.

A bomb squad showed up in a white van. For another hour, they scurried back and forth between the parking lot and van. “What’s going on?” she asked everyone she saw who looked official. “What about our dog?” She imagined him inside, confused by the strangers invading their territory, banging against the window, and although she tried to stop such thoughts, she imagined him dead, in pieces flung all over the parking lot.

In every scenario she had ever seen on TV, the car blew up. In this scenario, the police prodded spectators to move back, back, back. Everyone moved. They all heard the bass boom as the bomb detonated hundreds of yards away on a beach by Lake Tahoe, well away from the parking lot.

They were informed that their vehicle was now “good to go.”

Bob walked up to their car and stuck his hand through an open window so that he could touch Hitchcock. “I guess we won’t be doing any more rooster tails, Mom.”

Back in the restaurant the newly returned, excited patrons plied her with questions, but Nina didn’t know what to say, so she beelined back to their table and tracked down their server. “You saw what happened. Was anyone around here-watching us or anything?”

“There was a guy. He checked out your table after you left. I thought he might be hoping you ran out without your purse or something.” The girl, no more than seventeen, held a steaming platter with at least four plates full of food in one hand.

“What did he look like?”

“About forty. Denim jacket, work boots. Dripping.”

“Was he wearing a ski mask?”

“A floppy hat. Uncool people wear them to golf in, you know? I chased him off.” She eyed the plates she was holding. The food was getting cold.

“Thanks,” Nina said. She pulled a bill out of her wallet and put it in the girl’s free hand.

“Oh, one other thing,” the girl said, tucking the money into a pocket. “He walked funny.”

“How funny? How did he walk?”

“Crooked, like the old guy on the old The Real McCoys show. Remember? Well, that was pretty exaggerated, the way he walked. This guy was bowlegged. Or maybe he just has a bad foot?”

Out in the lot the wind whipped through the trees. She spent some time with the cops. She told them about the ski mask in the Hanna case, and the floppy hat, and the bad leg. The officer did not seem impressed. “Ski mask on the road, no information as to his walk. Then floppy hat, bad leg. Different individual, probably,” he said. “Too bad you didn’t see the guy in the road take a few steps.”

“Look. This was an attempted murder.”

“More likely, ma’am, an attempt to frighten you. There wasn’t enough explosive to kill you inside the passenger compartment. On the other hand, any explosive at all is terrifically dangerous around a gas tank. You were lucky.”

“Please give your reports to Sergeant Cheney. It may be a link to the Hanna case.”

“I will.”

“Who else would try to blow us up? I don’t have any enemies like that.”

“How would this man even know you were in the case? And if he knew, why would he want to kill you?”

“Because-I don’t know why.”

“I’ll talk to Cheney.” They talked about her security system.

Bob waited for her in the truck, petting Hitchcock.

“Did you walk him?” she asked through the window.

“Yeah. He took a good long whiz. Must’ve smelled the explosive. He was heading for the beach.”

“Tell me you didn’t go there!”

“I stayed by the truck. The beach was roped off. They’re still cleaning up.”

She slammed the door and got in. “Whew! It’s evil out there!” She unclipped her keys and they dropped onto the floor.

While she felt around for them, Bob said, “You don’t have to worry anymore, Mom. This car’s safer today than most days.”

Finding them, she reached toward the back seat to give Hitchcock the opportunity to lick her wrist and hand.

“You were right about the bad karma,” Bob said. “He followed us here. It’s like, if you accidentally spill your soda on some kid, of course he turns out to be the meanest psycho kid in school, and waits for you after school, gets you back much worse. Know what I mean?”

“What did the police say to you?”

“‘What’s he look like?’ I told them.”

“Bob, do you remember? Was the man in the parking lot wearing a ski mask? Or a floppy hat?”

Bob shrugged. “He was a ways away.”

“Maybe. Bob-” Bob had his arms around Hitchcock’s damp, furry neck, his eyes closed, his cheek pressed against the dog’s ear. Hair pressed flat to his head, ears standing out, Bob looked a bit like a dog himself as he communed with Hitchcock. Nina caught herself thinking, If anything ever happens to that dog-and she knew she was really thinking about Bob. A sharp pain lanced through her right eye.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“How sure are you that the man by the Bronco was the same as the man in the ski mask on the road?”

“I just thought it must be him. I’m sorry, Mom. I just figured, you know. I couldn’t see the man by the Bronco through the rain.”

“It’s okay, honey. I think you saved our lives.”

“Yeah, Hitchie, we saved you.” Bob hugged the dog some more. He did not seem particularly upset by the whole incident.

Nina said, “The world has-it’s changed. It’s not a safe place.”

“It never was, Mom. That’s why we buy good locks and use ’em.”

That night, as Nina lay in her bed reading, Bob knocked and came in and sat down in the wicker chair. He usually stayed up much later than she did and slept as late as he could in the morning, but he asked her to wake him up if he slept through his alarm.

“But tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“The dump takes hazardous stuff on Sundays. We have some things under the house I need to get rid of. Taylor’s garage is full, too. What are you reading?”

She struggled to remember. “A book about the Big Bang. New theories about what the universe looked like in the first few minutes after the explosion. Speaking of big bangs, is any of the material you have been collecting flammable? Or potentially explosive?”

“Only a little.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Don’t store anything like that under the house!”

“We charge twenty bucks per house to haul away old motor oil, mostly, Mom. We have all the customers we can manage. We’ll put it in the backyard under a tarp if you want.”

“Why do you need money, Bob? You have a new bass. You like your skateboard, and you can’t want new clothes after all the shopping we’ve been doing.”

Bob dropped his eyes to Hitchcock, snoozing on the carpet, and nudged him with his stockinged foot. “I want to take a trip to see my dad.”