David Morrell - NightScape

This time, he had everything under control. No more large Cokes and coffees, although he did keep his plastic jug, just in case. He made sure to bring a jacket, although the frost danger had finally passed and the night temperature was warmer. He was trying to eat better, too, munching on a burrito grande con polio from Felipe's, the best Mexican take-out in town. He settled back and listened to the radio call-in show on the Walkman. The program was still on the environmental theme: "Hey, man, I used to be able to swim in the rivers when I was a kid. I used to be able to eat the fish I caught in them. I'd be nuts to do that now."

It was just after dark. The headlights of a car went past. No shoes. No problem. Romero was ready to be patient. He was in a rhythm. Nothing would probably happen until it usually did – after eleven. The Walkman's earphones pinched his head. He took them off and readjusted them as headlights sped past, heading to the right, out of town. Simultaneously, a different pair of headlights rushed past, heading to the left, into town. Romero's window was down. Despite the sound of the engines, he heard a distinct thunk, then another. The vehicles were gone, and he gaped at two hiking boots on the road.

Holy…

Move! He twisted the ignition key and yanked the gearshift into drive. Breathless, he urged the car forward, its rear tires spewing stones and dirt, but as he reached Old Pecos Trail, he faced a hurried decision. Which driver had dropped the shoes? Which car? Right or left?

He didn't have any jurisdiction out of town. Left! His tires squealing on the pavement, he sped toward the receding taillights. The road dipped, then rose toward the stoplight at Cordova, which was red and which Romero hoped would stay that way, but as he sped closer to what he now saw was a pickup truck, the light changed to green, and the truck drove through the intersection.

Shit.

Romero had an emergency light on the passenger seat. Shaped like a dome, it was plugged into the cigarette lighter. He thrust it out the window and onto the roof, where its magnetic base held it in place. Turning it on, seeing the reflection of its flashing red light, he pressed harder on the accelerator. He sped through the intersection, rushed up behind the pickup truck, blared his horn, and nodded when the truck went slower, angling toward the side of the road.

Romero wasn't in uniform, but he did have his 9 mm Beretta in a holster on his belt. He made sure that his badge was clipped onto the breast pocket of his denim jacket. He aimed his flashlight toward a load of rocks in the back of the truck, then carefully approached the driver. "License and registration, please."

"What seems to be the trouble, Officer?" The driver was Anglo, young, about 23. Thin. With short sandy hair. Wearing a red-and-brown-checked work shirt. Even sitting, he was tall.

"You were going awfully fast coming over that hill by the church."

The young man glanced back, as if to remind himself that there'd been a hill.

"License and registration," Romero repeated.

"I'm sure I wasn't going more than the speed limit," the young man said. "It's forty there, isn't it?" He handed over his license and pulled the registration from a pouch on the sun visor above his head.

Romero read the name. "Luke Parsons."

"Yes, sir." The young man's voice was reedy, with a gentle politeness.

"P.O. Box 25, Dillon, New Mexico?" Romero asked.

"Yes, sir. That's about fifty miles north. Up past Espanola and Embudo and – "

"I know where Dillon is. What brings you down here?"

"Selling moss rocks at the roadside stand off the Interstate."

Romero nodded. The rocks in the back of the truck were valued locally for their use in landscaping. The lichen-like moss that speckled them turned pleasant muted colors after a rain. Hardscrabble vendors gathered them in the mountains and sold them, along with homemade bird houses, self-planed roof-support beams, firewood, and vegetables in season, at a clearing off a country road that paralleled the Interstate.

"Awful far from Dillon to be selling moss rocks," Romero said.

"Have to go where the customers are. Really, what's this all a – "

"You're selling after dark?"

" I wait until dusk in case folks coming out of Harry's Road House or the steak house farther along decide to stop and buy something. Then I go over to Harry's and get something to eat. Love his barbecued vegetables."

This wasn't how Romero had expected the conversation to go. He'd anticipated that the driver would look uneasy because he'd lost the game. But the young man's politeness was disarming.

"I want to talk to you about those shoes you threw out of the car. There's a heavy fine for – "

"Shoes?"

"You've been doing it for several days. I want to know why – "

"Officer, honestly, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"The shoes I saw you throw onto the road."

"Believe me, whatever you saw happen, it wasn't me doing it. Why would I throw shoes on the road?"

The young man's blue eyes were direct, his candid look disarming. Damn it, Romero thought, I went after the wrong car.

Inwardly, he sighed.

He gave back the license and registration. "Sorry to bother you."

"No problem, Officer. I know you have to do your job."

"Going all the way back to Dillon tonight?"

"Yes, sir."

"As I said, it's a long way to travel to sell moss rocks."

"Well, we do what we have to do."

"That's for sure," Romero said. "Drive safely."

"I always do, Officer. Good night."

"Goodnight."

Romero drove back to the top of the hill, picked up the hiking shoes, and put them in the trunk of his car. It was about that time, a little before ten, that his son was killed.

He passed the crash site on the way home to Pecos. Seeing the flashing lights and the silhouettes of two ambulances and three police cars on the opposite section of the Interstate, grimacing at the twisted wrecks of two vehicles, he couldn't help thinking, poor bastards. God help them. But God didn't, and by the time Romero got home, the medical examiner was showing the state police the wallet that he'd taken from the mutilated body of what seemed to be a young Hispanic male.

Romero and his wife were arguing about his late hours when the phone rang.

"Answer it!" she yelled. "It's probably you're damned girlfriend."

"I keep telling you I don't have a – " The phone rang again. "Yeah, hello."

"Gabe? This is Ray Becker with the state police. Sit down, would you?"

As Romero listened, he felt a cold ball grow inside him. He had never felt so numb, not even when he'd been told about the deaths of his parents.

His wife saw his stunned look. "What is it?"

Trembling, he managed to overcome his numbness enough to tell her. She screamed. She never stopped screaming until she collapsed.

Two weeks later, after the funeral, after Romero's wife went to visit her sister in Denver, after Romero tried going back to work (his sergeant advised against it, but Romero knew he'd go crazy just sitting around home), the dispatcher sent him on a call that forced him to drive up Old Pecos Trail by the Baptist church. Bitterly, he remembered how fixated he had been on this spot not long ago. Instead of screwing around wondering about those shoes, I should have stayed home and paid attention to my son, he thought. Maybe I could have prevented what happened.

There weren't any shoes on the road.

There weren't any shoes on the road the next day or the day after that.

Romero's wife never came back from Denver.

"You have to get out more," his sergeant told him.

It was three months later, the middle Saturday of August. As a part of the impending divorce settlement and as a way of trying to stifle memories, Romero had sold the house in Pecos. With his share of the proceeds, he'd moved to Santa Fe and risked a down payment on a modest house in the El Dorado subdivision. It didn't make a difference. He still had the sense of carrying a weight on his back.