Perri O'Shaughnessy - Sinister Shorts

As he got on the two-lane bridge, forty feet above the swollen brown torrent below, he saw Roy's black Accord parked on the right, smack against the bridge railing. He turned on his flashing lights and parked behind the car.

Nobody inside. On the front seat of the unlocked car, Tim found Roy 's wallet with twenty-six bucks in it. The back seat was covered with suit ties, paper cups, and burger wrappers, quite a few files, some girlie magazines. Like most insurance agents, Roy did a lot of business out of his car.

No blood smears, no sign of violence, but all wrong. Tim looked up ahead, looked back down the road.

Looked over the metal rail, about four feet high, coated with corroded green paint and bird guano, and down, to where the river poured by.

Back to the Accord. He searched it thoroughly this time. No note in the glove compartment, current registration above the driver's side visor. Keys in the ignition, shit. He got in and started it up, using his handkerchief. The engine roared. No breakdown here.

He called Bodie from his car radio and asked for backup and binoculars. Then he drove slowly the rest of the way across the bridge, searching with his eyes, and all the way to the Camden supermarket. The manager there made some calls. None of the night clerks had seen Roy. He had never made it that far.

When Tim got back to the bridge, Bodie was leaning over the rail, his hand shading his eyes. “Some good-sized trout down there,” he said. His uniform hung on him. Still a growing boy, six feet four and rising, he weighed a hundred sixty pounds after dinner and cake.

Tim handed him the report from Anita, and said over the roar from below, “Roy Ballantine. He may be a jumper. But there's no note.”

“I see the car keys,” Bodie said. “I brought a couple pairs of fishing boots like you said.”

“Let's get started, then.” The two deputies climbed down the slick, weedy, muddy banks on the west side of the bridge, in the direction of the water flow, poking through the underbrush every few feet.

By noon they had covered both sides up to a half-mile down. They had found the carcass of a dog, about a million beer cans, and somebody's bra, and they were half-blind from the reflections off the river, but Roy hadn't turned up.

They went back to town, changed clothes, ate at the diner down the street, and called in a local construction crew to search the remaining half-mile stretch down to the falls. Anita called in and said she had had no word. Tim told her he'd have to hold on to the Accord for a while, and told her not to worry, but she was a smart girl. A few minutes later, he saw her in her old Mercedes heading toward the bridge.

The foreman of the crew came in at five to report that his men had searched the full mile down to the portage camp above Timberlake Falls, then hiked down around and had a look at the dense foliage at the bottom, where the rocks were. “Nothing,” he said. “You're gonna have to bring in a diver. Why would Ballantine jump anyway? He was lookin' happy last Saturday night at the Elks, real happy. He won at least two hundred bucks playin' poker.”

Tim said, “Thanks, buddy. Send me the bill,” and then he went out on the front porch of the sheriff's office, where he had set up a folding chair, and thought.

The spring sun cast sharp shadows down the street, filtered here and there by the trees. He half-expected to see Roy come meandering down the sidewalk, returning from some backwoods bacchanalia, dirty and beat. But Roy didn't oblige.

Aside from the Elks Club and the Episcopal Church, the Ballantines kept to themselves. They had two kids in the elementary school. Roy and Anita had problems, but Tim had never received one of those late-night, help-he's-trying-to-kill-me calls. They had moved to Timberlake five years before, when Roy transferred in from San Francisco. Anita missed the big city. She still visited family there about once a month.

He left Bodie on the phone to his girlfriend. He felt tired, and he wanted to go home and hide like he'd been doing for a long time, but he had to talk to Anita again.

In the big white rambling Cape Cod on the edge of town, Anita sat in the dark dining room, curtains drawn, a bottle of expensive Chardonnay mostly empty on the table, a glass in her hand. She was usually careful about makeup and hair, but tonight she had pulled her long red hair into a ponytail and let the freckles show, and she was wearing one of Roy's old flannel shirts.

She jumped up when he came in, said, “Did you find him?” breathlessly, and when he had to tell her no, she sat back down with a thump and put her face in her hands while he told her about the search.

After a minute or two she stirred and said in a hostess voice, “I'm forgetting my manners. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”

“Water or a soda would be fine,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “You're off duty now. I heard you can drink the whole town under the table.”

“I don't do that anymore.”

“Oh,” she said. “You got religion. How trendy. How middle-aged.” She shuffled into the kitchen in her floopy slippers, came back with ice water.

“Ginny's out back,” she said. “ Roy rigged up a tree house for her and Kyle. Would you like to see it?”

“Some other time.”

“I told them Roy had to go out of town. I didn't think I ought to-you know. Yet.”

He had put it off as long as he could. “I'm not much good in the tact department, Anita. I hope you'll take this right. I need to know, has Roy been talking about suicide? Did he have any problems that were getting him down? Sleepless nights, signs of depression? Secrets?”

Anita said, “I've been sitting here all day, thinking about his car on the bridge. I suppose that's what Roy 's done, committed suicide. I thought you came here to tell me you found his body.”

“Did he give you any indication…” Anita cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, smiled brightly.

“Indication? No, he was actually quite specific. How he didn't love me anymore. How he hated this stupid town and all you rednecks riding around in your pickups. How if he never saw another tree it would be fine with him. He applied for a transfer, but the company's cutting back, and he was lucky to have this job. So he smiled and schmoozed all day and lay awake at night staring up toward the ceiling.”

Having dumped its emotion, her voice trailed off.

“Funny. I thought he liked it here,” Tim said.

“He was bored,” Anita said. “Bored with me and the kids. Roy never wanted to sell insurance. He wanted to be sailing a yacht in the Aegean wearing a white cap with his arm around a teenager's waist. Then Ginny came. And Kyle the next year. How interesting. We're both talking about him in the past tense. He's probably going to walk through the front door any minute, pissing and moaning about his dinner being late.”

“Was he a good swimmer?”

“What do you mean by that? He was trying to kill himself, so he wouldn't be swimming hard to save himself. Would he? And the water's freezing, how could he survive? He's dead, Mr. Deputy. Go find him.”

“Keep your spirits up,” Tim said.

“Actually, I'm drinking 'em down,” Anita said, waving the wine bottle. She stopped herself after a second, and set the bottle carefully back on the table. “Whether he comes back or not, Timothy Breen, I don't want you telling anybody what I just said. About my marriage. About how Roy felt. I talked too much. Under the circumstances.” She straightened up in the chair, put her hand to her hair. “Who knows. If he does turn up, mustn't hurt his business. Insurance agent, you know, he's like a minister or funeral director. You know, stable, good marr-marriage… Elks.”

“If he's dead, that won't matter, Anita.”