Michael Marshall - The Straw Men

I stared at him: 'The Delivery Boy?'

'That's what the press called the man we're looking for.'

'Jesus,' I said. 'You're still looking for that guy?'

'And will be until he's dead. Nina, I'm going for a cigarette. Then I suggest we head back to

civilization.'

He got up and walked out of the room.

'He means 'apprehended',' the woman said, quietly, after he was gone. 'Apprehended is what he

meant.'

'Yeah, right,' Bobby said. 'You ask me, that's someone who needs keeping on a very tight lead.'

'What's the deal with these Straw Men?' she said.

'Tell her, Bobby,' I said, standing up.

'Take it very easy,' Bobby said, pointing a finger at me. 'And remember what I just said.'

I left them and walked out into the lobby. I could see the guy in the coat standing a few yards outside

the main doors.

'You got a cigarette?'

He looked at me for a long moment, then reached into his pocket. When I was lit, we stood in silence

for a while.

'You're that cop, aren't you?' I asked eventually. He didn't reply. 'Right?'

'I was a cop,' he said. 'Not any more.

'Maybe so. But I was living in San Diego at the time. I read the news. There was one cop in

particular, someone who was supposed to be a serial killer hotshot. Didn't catch him, then dropped out of sight. That would be you, I'm thinking.'

'Seems like you remember a lot about the case,' he said. 'Sure you don't have a vested interest? Maybe you're looking to see how many fans you got. Checking you're still a celebrity.'

'You thought I was him, we wouldn't be having this conversation. So don't jerk me around.'

He took a last drag of his cigarette, and then flicked it across the lot. 'So what are you doing?'

'I'm looking for the people who killed my parents,' I said.

He looked at me. 'These The Straw Men you mentioned?'

'I think so. What I don't know is if they're connected to the man you're looking for.'

'They're not,' he said, glaring out across the lot. 'This whole thing is bullshit and a waste of time we don't have.'

'Your friend doesn't seem to think so. Frankly, I don't care. But it seems to me that inside that hotel we've got two people who are connected to law enforcement agencies. Who can get things done. On the other hand, we've got you and me, who are currently connected to dick. We can stand outside and piss into each other's tents, or we can see where this leads and try not to get too much in each other's faces.'

He thought a moment. 'Good enough.'

'So what's your name, dude?'

'John Zandt.'

'Ward Hopkins,' I said, and we shook on it, and walked back into the hotel.

At the door to the restaurant my cell phone went off. I waved Zandt on and clucked back into the

lobby. I paused a second before hitting the connect button, trying to work out the right way to sound to an

old guy who was running scared. I couldn't work out how that might be. All I could do was listen to what he had to say. And not shout at him, probably.

I answered the call and listened, but it wasn't him. I had a brief conversation, and then thanked someone. I put my phone away.

When I walked into the restaurant they were all sitting round the table, Zandt more in the loop this time. The woman looked up at me, but it was to Bobby that I spoke.

'Just got a call,' I said.

'Lazy Ed?'

'No. Girl from the hospital.'

'Yeah, and, so?'

'She spent the afternoon yesterday chasing down records.'

'You must have really made an impression.' I didn't reply, so he added: 'You going to tell what she found?'

'She traced both my parents back to their hometowns,' I said. 'Neither of which were the ones I had been given to believe.'

My voice was a little cracked. Zandt turned round to look at me.

'I didn't get as far as this bit,' Bobby said. 'But there's a sibling Ward's parents didn't get around to telling him about.'

'I don't think they really told me much at all. Much that was true, anyhow.' I was aware of the woman's eyes still on me; that, and how Hunter's Rock and everything I had thought I'd known now seemed like a favourite story I had been read, time and time again, but of which I could now remember only the title.

'What is it?' the woman asked.

'My mother couldn't have children.'

'Any more?' Bobby said. 'After you?'

'No. Any at all.'

25

They came with us out to the bar. Young Ed wasn't fulsome in his greeting, and said only that he hadn't seen the old guy and still had no idea where he might be. He continued to say this even after Zandt had taken him to one side. I couldn't hear what the ex-cop was saying, but Ed's body language was enough to convince me that Zandt's conversational style was compelling.

'Your man is very keen to catch this killer,' I observed to Nina.

She looked away. 'You have no idea.'

Zandt eventually turned from the barman, who quickly slipped back behind the safety of his counter.

'We're wasting our time out here,' Zandt said, as we followed him back out into the parking lot. 'No offence to you guys, but I don't see how an old wino is going to help Nina and me in what we're looking for. Maybe it's relevant to you, but it's not getting us any closer to anything and Sarah is getting closer to death with every minute we waste.'

'So what do you want to do, John?' the woman asked. 'Head back to LA and sit on our butts there instead?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'Actually that's exactly what I want to do. I wasn't just pulling my wire at your house. I think…' He shook his head.

She frowned. 'What?'

'I'll tell you on the plane,' he muttered.

'Hey,' I said. 'I'll give you a little privacy.'

I walked away from them to where Bobby was standing, near to our car. 'Think the party's going to

break up,' I said.

'So what's our plan?'

'Walk the streets, check the bars and diners and library and places where people hang out. Do it

professionally. This isn't New York. There's a limit to how many places he can hide.'

'You knew this guy once. You got no clue where he might go?'

'I didn't really know him,' I said, turning to look back at the bar. 'I went in there and drank as a teenager. We passed the time of day and he served me alcohol. That's all.'

I remembered once again the evening my father had come to the bar with me, and the way Ed had given me a beer afterward, and I'd felt a little disloyal. I now realized there could have been some subtext in that night's events, something I'd missed back then. The beer Ed shoved toward me, with rough kindness — it could have just been a generic gesture, but I didn't think so now. Lazy Ed hadn't really been the type. Hadn't he actually been saying, 'Yeah, I know what the guy can be like?' If so, it implied even more strongly that Ed might have been the man running the camera in the first half of the middle section of the video, that he had been the one passed out and used as a candleholder. It also made it even stranger that, confronted with each other over a decade later, they'd given absolutely no indication that they knew each other. Something must have happened in Hunter's Rock, something that broke up a group of friends; but somehow caused three of them to get together again, a thousand miles away, once again pretending to outsiders that there was nothing between them. Nothing old, anyway, nothing in the past.

Even to me they'd made that pretence, but now it was looking as if that made perfect sense. If my mother couldn't have children, then who the hell was I?

Behind the bar the sky was opaque, making the trees look jagged and cold. It may have been that, or the smell of the pine on the cold air, that took me back so clearly to that night. Smells can do that, more so even than sights and sounds, as if the oldest parts of our mind, the ones that lock us in time and memory, still navigate through traces of scent.