Allan Retzky - Vanished in the Dunes

He tells himself to stay calm and think. The grave is still undisturbed, so whoever was here failed to find anything.

“Good, good,” he repeats aloud as he jogs back up the hill to the lot, fixated on what he must do next. The sun is higher now, and the lot is already half-washed in light. He pulls the rake from his trunk and returns to smooth over the soil. The work is so easy he nearly laughs until he remembers that a body rests just below his feet. He pushes the pinecones and needles back into some reasonable random pattern. He stops and inverts the rake to pull some clods of wet soil from its tines when his fingers grasp the utterly foreign texture of silver plastic, just like the material in the bag he used to bury Heidi.

Posner stares at the tiny silver flake between his fingers, an indestructible polymer that will survive all normal conditions save fire. He looks again at the ground. Maybe there’s more he thinks, but he soon verifies that his fingers hold the sole confirmation that anything was ever put in this sandy soil. He puts the artifact in his jacket pocket and realizes that it now rests alongside the bit of broken heel. One last look at the site verifies that he has returned it to a semblance of its original state. He walks back to his car. It is nearly seven and the lot is still thankfully empty.

He drives back toward home, yet he doesn’t want to be confined indoors just yet. He pulls into a beach access less than a mile from his house and looks out over a calm ocean. Again he’s alone. It is as if all the people have gone. Except that he knows they haven’t. Wisdom is there and the man in the blue car whom he might as well start calling the doctor. He’s the one who worries Posner far more. Anyone who stalks someone like that could be dangerous. Wisdom didn’t mention any possible danger. Maybe he didn’t want him to worry, but now he’s worried all the same. What if the doctor comes looking for him with a weapon?

Think! Think! He’s got to sort this out.

He opens the door and leaves it ajar as he walks a few steps onto the beach. It’s the same beach that he took Heidi to so many months ago. He pictures her standing there only a few feet away, posing in a pink-and-white dress with the spray of the surf soaring in the background. A vivid image of her posing him for a photo morphs into one of her sitting on his couch, legs spread around a black patch, and then immediately transforms in a flash of color as he imagines her falling in a grotesque cartwheel down the stairs creating a pool of blood. He shudders and gasps until his pulse calms.

He’s almost back at his car when the simplicity of a strategy hits him. There is no reason to believe that the doctor will ever cease his harassment. If he is obsessed with Posner, the stalking can only continue and lead to confrontation. In such conflict only one can win. And to Posner this only means that only one can live.

He drives back to his house in a sudden state of relaxation. As he leaves the car at the top of the driveway, he is engrossed in thought and fails to look around. If he had turned a full circle and had far better eyesight, he might have even seen Dr. Stern peering out from the second floor window of the house down the street and at the far opposite corner. But he neither stops nor turns. His mind is engrossed entirely on the upstairs bedroom closet shelf. Somewhere in the back of that shelf beneath a carton of old sweaters there is a small box. It is a relic from Sara’s brief tenure some years before as a State Supreme Court Justice, compliments of her extensive earlier activities on behalf of the Queens County Democratic Party. In the box lies a revolver. Posner hasn’t seen it in years and it may not even work, but he does remember that Sara has mentioned cleaning it at least once a year, so it should be okay.

He finds it almost immediately and pulls the box down and rests it on the bed beside him.

It’s not locked, yet it still takes time to bring himself to the point where he slides the lid open. When he does, he sees the weapon, a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special that sits on the cushion of a soft hand towel. He remembers that the revolver is compact, which makes it lighter than many handguns. He also recalls that it only carries five rounds. Beyond that he can’t remember much from the one lesson he had years before on loading and firing. He knows it would be a comforting thought to have the gun available if the doctor invades his home, and so he lifts it from the box. He stands and holds the revolver as he had been taught in his right hand with the left hand steadying the right wrist. He pans the room. There is an unmistakable sense of power. At first he thinks he would be afraid to use it, but just holding it allows him to feel like a different person. The only issue now is whether he waits for the doctor to come to him or he seeks him out. He thinks that it would be better to meet him on his own terms, which means here in his home where he could easily claim self-defense against an intruder. As his mind runs through this scenario, he realizes that just the act of holding the gun permits him to no longer fear this man and he decides he is prepared to kill if necessary. No. More than that. If he is to ever have peace again, he will have to kill this man. He replaces the revolver in its case, slides the box closed, and returns it to a lower shelf in a spot that’s easier to reach.

He walks to the door, then stops, turns, and faces the floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows. The shades are open and a concentrated beam of white outside light slashes across the room. “An artist’s light,” people have called it; an indigenous element that runs throughout the East End of Long Island that supposedly attracts creativity in the fine arts. Such enlightenment is not on Posner’s mind at that moment. His eyes follow the shaft of light that arrives and settles on the king-sized bed. He cannot help but imagine for the thousandth time what might have happened if he’d taken her hand and moved into the bedroom instead of allowing her to slip into eternity.

They have sex, but he is far from perfect. Too far. It’s all over in minutes. They dress without speaking in what seems like seconds and the silence continues as he drives her back to the bus stop. She walks from his car without a goodbye and he goes home. End of story.

That is how it might have been. Maybe he would have felt guilty, but that could have passed by now. She might have mocked him, but he would have deserved it and nothing more would have ever developed. No one would have died. His earlier fears about federal crimes would return as his only worry.

He calls Sara to find out her travel plans. This will be her first trip out since that day. She says she’s getting a lift and is already in the car with a neighbor’s family who are coming out for a few days. They’ve left early and traffic is light. She won’t be too long. She’s anxious to see him.

Everything’s changed in the last month. Things between them were still in limbo, trapped somewhere between reconciliation and the edge of collapse, until he arrived unannounced at the apartment one afternoon. He knew he was losing her. Or driving her away. It was all the same. She might even be seeing someone else. He’s thought of that and worried about the possibility. And the jealousy of it all made him want her like he hadn’t in months. So he’d made a decision to surprise her and see where things went. Maybe she wasn’t interested anymore, but he had to find out. When he opened the door, he was half afraid someone else would be there, but she was alone. Even so, her only greeting was a glare. When she spoke her voice was clipped and impersonal.