Timothy Johnston - The Current

And had she seen them too? Ten, fifteen minutes earlier, that night—those same lights coming up behind her as she walked near the river. The colored lights that said Stop walking now, just stay where you are. Just do what I say .

Gordon went through his motions and watched himself going through them, moving through space so slowly and at the same time so surely, so expectedly, as if watching a memory of himself… keeping his hatbrim low and lifting his hand in a friendly wave and then stooping back into the car like he had some trouble to attend to there, such as haywire equipment, such as spilled coffee, and from that vantage he saw Moran step out of the cruiser and put on his sheriff’s hat and make his way forward in his own headlights. Not reaching for his sidearm but moving just the same like a man who would not be caught off guard.

What are you doing out here, young lady?

Nothing, Officer. Just walking .

You know the park is closed after dark .

It is?

You know it is. Come on, get in. I’ll take you home .

From within the Crown Vic he heard Moran call out, “Davis—? Is that you? It had goddam better be, or else I’d better see hands in the air and I mean right now.”

Gordon stood up out of the car with the rifle and leveled it, and Moran stopped midstep and put his hand to his pistol grip and Gordon said, “Don’t do that,” and Moran held still.

“Get your hand off that pistol, you son of a bitch. Right now.”

Moran stood with his hand on the pistol and Gordon stood with the stock to his shoulder and his eye to the sights. He’d known it would be close range and he’d removed the scope before he put the gun in the duffel bag. The end of the barrel was steady, the sights dead-centered on the backlit shape of Moran’s neck.

“Gordon?” said Moran. “Is that you?”

“Hand off the gun or I pull this trigger right now, no discussion.”

Moran hesitated, then raised both hands chest-high, palms forward.

“Take it easy, Gordon. Christ, I thought you were a goddam off-duty cop. Where’d you get that Crown Vic?” He cocked his head to look past Gordon. “Is that Dave Wabash’s?”

Gordon watched him.

Moran shook his head. He might’ve smiled but the lights were behind him and his face was dark under the hatbrim. “Cop car… sheriff’s hat. You got a badge now too, Gordon?”

“Shut up.”

“Christ,” Moran said again. He looked slowly from side to side, then up into the trestles, then back to Gordon. His breaths coloring in the lights. “Put the rifle down, Gordon, before you accidentally shoot me.”

“Won’t be accidental.”

“Well, at least take your finger off the trigger till you’re ready. I’d hate for you to shoot before you had a chance to tell me just what the fuck you think you’re doing.”

Gordon flexed his fingers on the forward stock and reset the butt to his shoulder.

Moran shook his head again. “I blame myself, Gordon. I should’ve seen this coming at the café. Should’ve got you some help right then.”

Gordon said nothing. The rifle barrel steady. He saw something in the cruiser, and his heart went cold: someone in the passenger seat. A small person. A little girl. But when he looked directly into those headlights the little girl—or that shape of her—vanished.

“Put the rifle down and let’s talk it over,” Moran said. “I can help you, Gordon. There won’t be any charges.”

“You got that right.”

“Gordon.” Moran took a step and Gordon shifted the gun and shot into the near headlight of the SUV and immediately chambered another round and leveled the gun at Moran again. The report replayed in the trestlework and died away. The headlight had been in his eyes and now it wasn’t. There was no one in the passenger seat. That daughter was home, she was safe…

Moran stood looking at the darkened headlight, his profile lit up now by the Crown Vic’s taillights. He looked like a man in red face paint. Or one so angered his face had begun to glow.

“You’ve just made this situation a whole lot harder to walk away from, Gordon.”

“I can see your eyes now. I can put the next bullet in either one of them.”

“I expect you could, if you were ready to shoot a sheriff.”

“Wouldn’t be shooting a sheriff. I’d be shooting a liar and a rapist and a killer.”

The red and glowing face did not change.

“I don’t think you’re thinking clearly, Gordon. If you’re so sure about this, why don’t you go to Sheriff Halsey and tell him?”

“Because it doesn’t matter what anybody says. Nobody knows the truth but you and my daughter.”

“And you, Gordon. You’re so sure, you’re ready to shoot a man in cold blood. And then what?”

“And then what doesn’t concern you. You won’t be here.”

“What if you’re wrong, though, Gordon? What if you shoot an innocent man?” He turned his palms in a way that changed him from a man at gunpoint to a man in conversation. A man just asking the obvious and reasonable. But he kept them raised, and Gordon considered putting a bullet through one of them, as Sutter had done for his own daughter. And for Caroline Price. And for Holly too. All of them one daughter finally, and their fathers were all the same man with just one desire in him, one purpose.

“I’m just not sure you’ve thought this through, Gordon,” Moran said, and Gordon shook his head to clear it.

“Keep saying my name, you son of a bitch. It won’t make me not pull this trigger.”

“Just take it easy, all right? I’m trying to help you here. Can you just lower the gun barrel, at least?”

“How many.”

“What?”

“How many women. Young women. Girls. How many.”

“I don’t understand the question, Gordon.”

“Hell you don’t.”

“Lower the rifle, Gordon.”

“Think I don’t know about Katie Goss?”

“Katie Goss? Am I supposed to know that name?”

“You ought to since you raped her.”

“Raped her?” Moran cocked his head. “Where in the hell are you getting your information, Gordon?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter, as I’d like to know who’s spreading lies about me.”

“Katie Goss said it herself.”

“To you?”

Gordon said nothing.

“No, not to you. Why in the hell would she be talking to you?”

“My daughter—” Gordon said, but the words choked him. He saw the gun barrel waver. The colored lights blurred. “She told you no,” he said. “She told you no and you killed her. Say it. Say it, you son of a bitch. Say you ran her down and threw her in the river to drown. Say it before I kill you.”

“You aren’t going to kill me, Gordon.” Moran took a step forward, his hands still raised.

“Take one more step and find out.”

“You aren’t going to shoot me, Gordon, because you’re not sure you’re right. You’ve heard a lot of talk, and you’ve talked yourself into one version of things, but you don’t know for sure, and the moment you kill me you’ll never know for sure, because if I’m the one who did it, like you say, then I’m the only one who can tell you the truth. I’m the only man who can put your mind at ease. And I won’t do that, Gordon, because it would be a lie, and afterwards you would still not know the truth. Kill me, Gordon, and you will still be in exactly the same place, won’t you. You still won’t know for sure. You will never know, even when you are in prison for the rest of your life. Or dead yourself. You’ll die never knowing for sure if you killed an innocent man, a sheriff, a father of two little children himself, Gordon…”

Somehow he’d walked nearly to the barrel. The colored lights filled Gordon’s vision, Moran just a shape in the glistening pulsing lights, like a figure underwater.