Timothy Johnston - The Current

He turned to Radner, but Radner was looking out the ragged hole Sutter had scraped, and Sutter looked too: the flat, undisturbed snow of the lot, the dark old building. The snow that fell on everything with no prejudice and no sound whatsoever.

Sutter got out of the truck and walked around with his eyes on Radner and opened the passenger door. “Get out.”

Radner stared at him. The smirk gone from his lips. His face shining. Then he looked away. As if not seeing Sutter was the same as Sutter not being there.

Sutter took him by the arm and pulled him stumbling from the cab. He walked him a few steps and turned him around again.

“Get on your knees.”

Radner did not. He said, “Sheriff, I’m not putting up any kind of resistance here.”

Sutter stepped behind him and put his boot to the backs of Radner’s knees, and down he went. He swatted the billcap from Radner’s head and took the cuffs in his hands and jerked up on them and leaned over until his face was near Radner’s right ear.

“Do you remember where you were three nights ago?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Three nights ago—?”

“Tuesday night.”

Radner shook his head. “I got no idea. I swear. I coulda been anywhere.”

“You weren’t anywhere, you were at the Shell station on County Road F24 and you were assaulting two young women with your buddy.”

“Hell I was.”

“How’d you get those scratches on your face?”

“At work. A tire blew up in my face.”

“You are full of shit.”

Radner shook his head again. “Swear to God, Sheriff. Ask any of them at work. Ask Toby, he was standing right there.”

Sutter’s heart was banging. He saw his own ragged breaths bursting white into the air. The empty lot, the old machine shop, the falling snow, all seemed to be turning in some sickly way. You can still drop this. Right now. You can get into that sedan and just drive away. Go talk to Toby…

“You watch the news?” he said.

“What?”

“Do you watch the news.”

“Yeah, sometimes.” Radner groaned. “Please, Sheriff, you are breakin my arms.”

“Do you know what happened to those two girls, after you ran them off the road down the riverbank?”

“I never did. I never ran nobody down no riverbank.”

“One died, Ryan, and the other one almost did. So guess where that leaves you and your buddy.”

“You got the wrong man, Sheriff. You got the wrong man.”

“Assault, attempted rape, attempted murder on two counts, murder on one count.”

“All right,” Radner said, “so take me in. Haul me in, man. Let me talk to a real sheriff. Let me talk to a—” He howled. Sutter had raised the cuffs.

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“You know what.”

He shook his head. “I swear I don’t.”

“The backscratcher, Radner. Where is it?”

Radner craned his neck to look at him. Fear and pain in those dark eyes.

“You’re crazy,” Radner said. “You’re just plain crazy. You better let me go before this gets any worse. I won’t say nothin. People make mistakes, I get that. I won’t go to the sheriff or nothin. You just go your way and I’ll go mine, how about that, huh? What’ve you got to lose?”

Sutter was silent. His breaths smoking. His heart slamming. He looked up at the sky. Slow tumble of flakes, landing cold on his face and melting. Faintly there was the fishy, muddy smell of a river… but any river would be frozen and you wouldn’t smell it, and then he understood that the smell came from Holly Burke—from her wet hair, from the air trapped in the white bag and escaping like breath when they unzipped it, and—

Tom , she said. Sutter…

Something buzzed at his side, and he heard the muted tune, and with his free hand he reached into his jacket pocket and fetched up the phone and along with it a louder rendition of the same tune that sounded in the emptiness of the lot like some tiny and maniacal bugler.

“Let me answer it,” Radner said. “Let me talk to someone.”

Sutter read the name on the screen, mary anne, and with his thumb ended the tune, and with another press of his thumb shut the phone down. He returned it to his pocket, then raised his watch and looked at it. Like a man of appointments and schedules. Like a man who needed to be somewhere else and had been here too long. He stared at the watchface and he saw the three hands and he saw the time markers, but however he moved the watch it seemed to float in a blind spot in his vision and he couldn’t read it, and this was somehow the most frightening thing, the thing that made him sick at heart.

He felt out the key in the clutter of his pocket and fitted it into the cuffs and pulled them away, and Radner pitched forward onto his palms in the snow and there he remained, like a man heaved up ashore.

Sutter stepped around him and stood where Radner could see his boots.

“Look up here.”

Radner looked up. Sutter standing against the flecks of snow, the gray sky. Radner got up on his knees, rubbing at his wrists. He’d not been told to stay on his knees but he stayed on them just the same.

“Do you believe in God?” Sutter said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Radner looked at him as if he’d never really seen him before.

“You ain’t no sheriff. What are you?”

“Answer my question.”

Radner hung his head and shook it. “God,” he said. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“That’s a good question, but it’s no answer.”

Radner looked up again. Sutter watched his eyes. He could see that the boy was seeing last things, wondering at the coldness, the meaninglessness of it all. The unfairness—in a parking lot, in the snow? As a young girl might’ve looked up at pine trees, at the cold moon, as she was carried, or dragged, toward the river.

“Yes, sir,” Radner said. “Yes sir I do believe in God. And Jesus too.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I swear to God it is, Sheriff.”

“Good,” said Sutter. “In about thirty seconds I’m driving away from here and this never happened and you never saw me.”

Sutter saw hope enter the young man’s eyes like some drug.

“I never saw you,” Radner said. “This never happened.”

“But on one condition.”

“Name it, Sheriff.”

“I want you to raise your right hand and swear to God you had nothing to do with what happened to those two girls that night. At the gas station and at the river.”

Radner raised his right hand, the palm clean and pink but the fingers stained with oil and grease—this stinking hand on his little girl’s face—and he said gravely, “I swear it, Sheriff. I swear it to God and Jesus. I swear it on my mother’s soul.” And as the young man said these words Sutter pulled the other gun, Radner’s .45, from his pocket and thumbed off the safety and took one step forward—

“Don’t,” said Radner.

—and put the barrel to the center of the raised hand and pulled the trigger and saw the hand whip away. Saw the pink cloud and thought he saw small bones from the center of the hand fly off into the snow and he knew that that hand would never again hold a wrench, or any other thing.

The gunshot rang off the back of the machine shop and flew from building to building until it became a volley of gunfire, a sudden shoot-out in the night. Radner’s howls and curses followed but Sutter didn’t hear them. He’d pulled a mechanic’s rag from the benchseat and he was wiping down the steering wheel, the gear lever, the handles inside and out and he even wiped down the keys. Lastly he wiped the empty .45 and set it on the benchseat and shut the door.

Radner remained on his knees in the snow, folded over his hand and still cursing but quieter now, like a man in argument with himself.