Timothy Johnston - The Current

On the wall behind him was a framed photograph of the Trevor twins in their high school graduation caps and gowns, their white smiles. They’d gone to a school out east, some big-deal college where they could go on being pretty and mean together.

“He told me to come see you, if this happened,” she said.

“Yes, he told me the same thing—to make sure you came to see me, that is. He wasn’t a man who liked to leave things to chance, was he.”

She watched him—did he know? Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. What did it matter now anyway?

She said, “I guess you know about what he did then.”

“I know what they say he did. News travels fast along certain channels. And if there’s a bigger group of gossips you’d have to prove it to me.”

She looked down at the water bottle the woman had given her. She twisted the cap to break the plastic seal but did not remove it.

“As a father,” the lawyer said, and when he didn’t go on she looked up. Trevor sitting there, not quite looking at her. “As a father, under the same circumstances, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing. Not that I expect that to console you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

Trevor adjusted his glasses. He cleared his throat. “It may be a poor time to ask,” he said, “but have you heard anything more about the investigation?”

She told him about the sheriff coming to see her at the house and showing her the pictures.

“He brought you a photo array?”

“Yes.”

“To your house?”

“Yes.”

Trevor frowned, watching her. “And was he there?”

“Sorry?”

“The boy who attacked you. Was he in the photo array.”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t say. They all looked like the same boy to me.”

“Well, don’t you worry about that. It doesn’t do anybody any good if you’re not one hundred percent certain.”

She looked at him, her heart suddenly thudding. “Like Dad was?” she said.

Trevor sat watching her. “How do you know he wasn’t certain?”

“Because he didn’t find evidence. Hard evidence. He found some boy with scratches on his face.”

“Yes,” said the lawyer. “But how do you know that boy didn’t say something to your father? Didn’t admit to it?”

“At gunpoint?”

Trevor almost smiled. Then he looked off toward a bookshelf that ran floor to ceiling, each shelf jammed tight with law books.

“A professor of mine used to say Justice is blind,” he said, “but she also can’t see worth a shit.” He turned back to her. Adjusted his glasses again.

“I guess I’m not sure what that means,” she said.

“It means,” he began, and stopped. Looking at her more keenly. “It means your dad loved nothing more in this world than you, Audrey. And he knew as well as anyone how the system works, and how it doesn’t work. And the clock was ticking, as you know. The clock was ticking.” He shook his head. “I believe he believed he was doing the best thing he could do as a man. As a father. And in my opinion that’s the only thing you need to remember about that. All right?”

She watched him. Then she nodded. “All right.”

“Good,” he said. “Now let’s get to what you came here for.”

HE READ IT aloud, glancing up to meet her eye from time to time, and when he was finished he folded his hands on top of it and sat looking at her.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to say, or do.

“I don’t think he had any savings,” she said. “I think he used everything to pay the hospital bills.”

“Yes, I suspect you’re right about that.”

“And there’s about ten unopened letters from the bank at home. I think about the mortgage.”

Trevor looked down at his desk and nodded. “There’s just nothing like illness to take everything a man’s got right out from under him. Illness and injury. No one is as ready for it as they think they are, and most aren’t even close to ready.” He looked up again. “Be that as it may, and however things shake out financially, Audrey, clearly nothing was more important to him than you finishing college and getting your degree.”

She nodded.

“And what about that boy,” she said.

“What boy?”

“The one he went down there and shot.”

“What about him?”

“Do you think he could go after the house, or anything like that?”

“You mean as compensation for damages?”

“Yes.”

“Possibly. I’m no expert in Iowa law, but I suppose he could get a judgment down there which could result in a lien against the property.”

“A lien?”

“Yes. Meaning, the amount of the damages would be due at the sale of the house.”

Audrey was silent.

“But I don’t think you need to worry about that, Audrey. He’d have to be one dumb buckaroo to go anywhere near a court of law, under the circumstances.”

“Or innocent.”

The lawyer smiled but said nothing.

She turned her father’s watch on her wrist until the crystal was faceup—its tick-tick sound now synced with the movements of its second hand—but when she let go it all slipped away again in a silvery, top-heavy slump. She’d already taken up too much of the lawyer’s time.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” she said.

“Of course.”

“I was just wondering—” she began. Then began again: “I was just wondering if you were involved with a case of his, from ten years ago.”

Trevor adjusted his glasses. “The Holly Burke case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you mean professionally, as a lawyer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“And he didn’t talk to you about it—my dad?”

“Not that I remember. A lot of people talked about it—everybody talked about it. But not your dad.” Trevor waited. “Why do you ask?”

That yellow hair, that long fine girl’s hair streaming in the fast water, just hanging in the light as Caroline swam against the current, as she fought to get back to the car, back to Audrey…

“Audrey?” said the lawyer, and she looked at him. She shook her head.

Through the door, or the walls, a phone began to chirp and then it stopped chirping and she could hear the woman, the secretary, speaking.

Audrey looked again at the photograph on the wall.

“How are the twins doing?” she said, and he turned to look at the photograph too.

“Costing me a fortune but doing great.” Smiling when he turned back to her, the smile of a father. He got to his feet. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.

HE’D DAMN NEAR missed it—not only the funeral but the news itself, all of it. He hadn’t watched the evening news in years, but for some reason, that Saturday—maybe it was those two girls, the Sutter girl and her friend; maybe there’d been some new development—he’d turned it on, and boom, there it was, the top story: Local ex-sheriff Tom Sutter dead at the age of fifty-one.

Son of a bitch .

He’d thought to call out to someone to come look at this but there was no one to call out to.

Three days later—just six days since he’d talked to Sutter outside the hospital in Rochester—Gordon got out his suit and he worked his tie into a knot at his throat and he wiped the dust from his shoes and he drove the van with its new heater core out to the funeral home and slipped in a few minutes late and took a seat at the back.

Old dusty church smell in the overheated room. Smell of bodies giving off heat, perfume, sweat. Thick smell of flowers. He saw profiles he recognized, backs of heads. Ladies sniffling into tissues. He did not expect to see Rachel Young in the crowd, or her son, and he didn’t.

The coffin was white oak with brass handles, flowers on the curve of the lid. The blown-up photo on the easel was his campaign picture from eight years back, when he’d had to run to keep his job. Before he lost all that weight.