Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“Seems to me should doesn’t have much to do with it.”

He had a point. “Okay, I can see that. I don’t think I’ve noticed anything. Just a lot of people acting queer, afraid. Some of them hostile. I met one strange kid, but…” The “but” was that I did not want to say anything that would bring suspicion on Zack or Alison. Zack was just a nutty theorist. Polar Bears lifted his eyebrows in a gesture of uninvolved patient anticipation. “But he was just a kid. I don’t even want to name him. I don’t know what I could say that would help.”

“Not yet, maybe. But you might remember something. Just keep it in mind, will you, old buddy?”

I nodded.

“Yeah. We could have this all on a plate by the twenty-first, so don’t do any unnecessary worrying. Now I got a few other little points to bring up with you.” He put on a pair of thick black glasses, making himself look like a scholarly bald bull of melancholy temperament, and took a sheet of paper off a messy pile. “I guess you got into a little trouble over in Plainview a while ago. I got a report on it just yesterday. A fellow named Frank Drum took the number of your car.”

“Jesus,” I said, thinking of the slinking little clerk who had been dispatched out of the diner.

“This was after an incident in Grace’s Restaurant over there. Do you remember it?”

“Of course I remember. They were like your gang of happy hooligans who tried to beat in my head with bats.”

“Who chased you.” He looked sharply up from the paper.

“It’s the same thing. What happened was ridiculous. I saw these guys listening to a radio and they looked like some trouble had happened and I asked what it was. They didn’t like my face. They didn’t like my coming from New York. So they threw me out after they took my license number. That was all. It was around one of the day somebody found the first girl.”

“Just for the record, do you know where you spent the previous night?”

“Somewhere. In a motel somewhere. I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a receipt or a check stub?”

“It was in a crummy little dive off the freeway. I paid with cash. What the hell do you want to know for?”

“I don’t want to know. There’s a cop named Larabee over there who wanted me to ask, that’s all.”

“Well, tell Larabee to shove it up his ass. I was in a crummy motel in Ohio.”

“Just fine, Miles, that’s fine. Real good. No need to get lathered up all over again. How did you hurt that hand of yours?”

I looked in surprise down at my bandaged hand. The tape was filthy and beginning to unravel. Loose wispy trails of dirty gauze leaked from beneath the tape. I had nearly forgotten about Duane’s bandage. “I had an accident with my car. On my car. I cut myself.”

“Dave Lokken can fix you up with a new bandage before you leave. He’s real proud of his first aid skills. When did that accident happen?”

“That same day. After I left the diner.”

“According to another fellow in that restaurant, a fellow named Al Service — he’s the official weedcutter in that part of the county — you made a funny remark before you left. According to Service, you said you hoped another girl would be killed.”

“I didn’t mean that. I was angry. I didn’t even know anyone had been killed then. I just said something like, ‘Whatever it was, you deserve to have it happen again.’ Then I ran like hell.”

He took off the glasses. He rested one jowl in his meaty hand. “I guess that makes sense, Miles. They got you riled. It happens to everybody. Why, you even got old Margaret Kastad worked up, I hear.”

“Old who?”

“Andy’s wife. She gave me a call after you left the store. Said you were writing pornography and I should run you off.”

“I won’t waste time talking about that,” I said. “She holds a few ancient mistakes against me. I’m a different person now.”

“All of us are, I guess. Guess it doesn’t mean we can’t help each other out. You could do something for me right now, and write out what happened in that restaurant and date it and sign it so’s I can have a copy sent to Larabee. It’s for your own good.” He fished around on his desk and pushed a sheet of paper and a pen across the surface. “Just in general terms, Miles. It doesn’t have to be long.”

“If I have to.” I took the paper and wrote down what had happened. I returned the paper to him.

“You’ll give me a call whenever you remember or notice anything?”

I put my hand in my pocket and felt folded paper. “Wait. Just wait a second. Here’s something you can help me with. Who do you think sent this to me? There was a blank sheet of paper inside it.” I took out the envelope and smoothed it on his desk. My hands were shaking. “It’s the second one. The first was addressed to me.”

The glasses went back on, and he bent over the desk to take the envelope. When he saw the name, he glanced up at me. It was the first genuine response I’d had from him. “You got another one of these?”

“Addressed to me. With a blank sheet of paper in it.”

“Would you let me keep this?”

“No. I want it. What you can do is tell me who sent it.” I had the sense of taking a great risk, of making a huge error. It was strong enough to weaken my knees.

“I hate to say this, but it looks like your writing, Miles.”

“What?”

He held up my statement alongside the envelope and then turned them so I could see them together. There was a certain superficial similarity. “It’s not my writing, Polar Bears.”

“Not many people around here remember this particular name any more.”

“All it takes is one,” I said. “Just give me the envelope back.”

“Whatever you say. Only experts can really tell about these handwriting things anyhow. Dave!” He was bellowing at the door. “Get in here with your first aid kit! Pronto!”

“I heard you callin’ him Polar Bears. Not many does that any more.”

Lokken and I were walking down Main Street in the late humid darkness. The few streetlights had come on; I could again hear the buzz of neon signs. Lights burned in the windows of the Angler’s, spilling a rectangle of yellow onto the sidewalk. My hand was encased in gleaming white.

“We’re old friends.”

“You’d have to be. That name Polar Bears just drives him up the wall. Where’s your car at, anyhow? I think you’d be safe now.”

“I’m not taking the chance. He said for you to walk me to my car, and that’s what I want you to do.”

“Shit, there’s nothing to be ascairt of. There ain’t nobody out.”

“That’s what I thought last time. If you don’t call him Polar Bears, what do you call him?”

“Me?” Lokken guffawed. “I call him Sir.”

“What does Larabee call him?”

“Who?”

“Larabee. The chief over in Plainview.”

“Excuse me, but you musta lost some of your marbles, Mr. Teagarden. There ain’t nobody named Larabee over there in Plainview and even if there was he wouldn’t be chief because Plainview ain’t even got a Chief of Police. They got a sheriff named Larson, and he’s my second cousin. Chief Hovre calls in there once or twice a week. It’s his jurisdiction, like all these little towns roundabout, Centerville, Liberty, Blundell. He’s chief of it all. Where’s your car at, now?”

I was standing motionless in the middle of the wide dark street, looking at the VW and trying to assimilate what Lokken had said. The condition of my car made it difficult.

Lokken said, “My God, that’s not yours, is it?”

I nodded, my throat too dry to form words.

The windows were smashed, the top and hood bent and battered. One of the headlights protruded like an eyeball on a thin stalk. I ran to look at the front tires, and then went around in back. They were untouched, but the rear window had been smashed in.