Shorts - Sinister Shorts (7 page)

Looked over the metal rail, about four feet high, coated with corroded green paint and bird guano, and down, to where the river poured by.

Back to the Accord. He searched it thoroughly this time. No note in the glove compartment, current registration above the driver's side visor. Keys in the ignition, shit. He got in and started it up, using his handkerchief. The engine roared. No breakdown here.

He called Bodie from his car radio and asked for backup and binoculars. Then he drove slowly the rest of the way across the bridge, searching with his eyes, and all the way to the Camden supermarket. The manager there made some calls. None of the night clerks had seen Roy. He had never made it that far.

When Tim got back to the bridge, Bodie was leaning over the rail, his hand shading his eyes. “Some good-sized trout down there,” he said. His uniform hung on him. Still a growing boy, six feet four and rising, he weighed a hundred sixty pounds after dinner and cake.

Tim handed him the report from Anita, and said over the roar from below, “Roy Ballantine. He may be a jumper. But there's no note.”

“I see the car keys,” Bodie said. “I brought a couple pairs of fishing boots like you said.”

“Let's get started, then.” The two deputies climbed down the slick, weedy, muddy banks on the west side of the bridge, in the direction of the water flow, poking through the underbrush every few feet.

By noon they had covered both sides up to a half-mile down. They had found the carcass of a dog, about a million beer cans, and somebody's bra, and they were half-blind from the reflections off the river, but Roy hadn't turned up.

They went back to town, changed clothes, ate at the diner down the street, and called in a local construction crew to search the remaining half-mile stretch down to the falls. Anita called in and said she had had no word. Tim told her he'd have to hold on to the Accord for a while, and told her not to worry, but she was a smart girl. A few minutes later, he saw her in her old Mercedes heading toward the bridge.

The foreman of the crew came in at five to report that his men had searched the full mile down to the portage camp above Timberlake Falls, then hiked down around and had a look at the dense foliage at the bottom, where the rocks were. “Nothing,” he said. “You're gonna have to bring in a diver. Why would Ballantine jump anyway? He was lookin' happy last Saturday night at the Elks, real happy. He won at least two hundred bucks playin' poker.”

Tim said, “Thanks, buddy. Send me the bill,” and then he went out on the front porch of the sheriff's office, where he had set up a folding chair, and thought.

The spring sun cast sharp shadows down the street, filtered here and there by the trees. He half-expected to see Roy come meandering down the sidewalk, returning from some backwoods bacchanalia, dirty and beat. But Roy didn't oblige.

Aside from the Elks Club and the Episcopal Church, the Ballantines kept to themselves. They had two kids in the elementary school. Roy and Anita had problems, but Tim had never received one of those late-night, help-he's-trying-to-kill-me calls. They had moved to Timberlake five years before, when Roy transferred in from San Francisco. Anita missed the big city. She still visited family there about once a month.

He left Bodie on the phone to his girlfriend. He felt tired, and he wanted to go home and hide like he'd been doing for a long time, but he had to talk to Anita again.

In the big white rambling Cape Cod on the edge of town, Anita sat in the dark dining room, curtains drawn, a bottle of expensive Chardonnay mostly empty on the table, a glass in her hand. She was usually careful about makeup and hair, but tonight she had pulled her long red hair into a ponytail and let the freckles show, and she was wearing one of Roy's old flannel shirts.

She jumped up when he came in, said, “Did you find him?” breathlessly, and when he had to tell her no, she sat back down with a thump and put her face in her hands while he told her about the search.

After a minute or two she stirred and said in a hostess voice, “I'm forgetting my manners. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”

“Water or a soda would be fine,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “You're off duty now. I heard you can drink the whole town under the table.”

“I don't do that anymore.”

“Oh,” she said. “You got religion. How trendy. How middle-aged.” She shuffled into the kitchen in her floopy slippers, came back with ice water.

“Ginny's out back,” she said. “ Roy rigged up a tree house for her and Kyle. Would you like to see it?”

“Some other time.”

“I told them Roy had to go out of town. I didn't think I ought to-you know. Yet.”

He had put it off as long as he could. “I'm not much good in the tact department, Anita. I hope you'll take this right. I need to know, has Roy been talking about suicide? Did he have any problems that were getting him down? Sleepless nights, signs of depression? Secrets?”

Anita said, “I've been sitting here all day, thinking about his car on the bridge. I suppose that's what Roy 's done, committed suicide. I thought you came here to tell me you found his body.”

“Did he give you any indication…” Anita cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, smiled brightly.

“Indication? No, he was actually quite specific. How he didn't love me anymore. How he hated this stupid town and all you rednecks riding around in your pickups. How if he never saw another tree it would be fine with him. He applied for a transfer, but the company's cutting back, and he was lucky to have this job. So he smiled and schmoozed all day and lay awake at night staring up toward the ceiling.”

Having dumped its emotion, her voice trailed off.

“Funny. I thought he liked it here,” Tim said.

“He was bored,” Anita said. “Bored with me and the kids. Roy never wanted to sell insurance. He wanted to be sailing a yacht in the Aegean wearing a white cap with his arm around a teenager's waist. Then Ginny came. And Kyle the next year. How interesting. We're both talking about him in the past tense. He's probably going to walk through the front door any minute, pissing and moaning about his dinner being late.”

“Was he a good swimmer?”

“What do you mean by that? He was trying to kill himself, so he wouldn't be swimming hard to save himself. Would he? And the water's freezing, how could he survive? He's dead, Mr. Deputy. Go find him.”

“Keep your spirits up,” Tim said.

“Actually, I'm drinking 'em down,” Anita said, waving the wine bottle. She stopped herself after a second, and set the bottle carefully back on the table. “Whether he comes back or not, Timothy Breen, I don't want you telling anybody what I just said. About my marriage. About how Roy felt. I talked too much. Under the circumstances.” She straightened up in the chair, put her hand to her hair. “Who knows. If he does turn up, mustn't hurt his business. Insurance agent, you know, he's like a minister or funeral director. You know, stable, good marr-marriage… Elks.”

“If he's dead, that won't matter, Anita.”

“It matters to me.”

“I can't promise, Anita. But I sure won't hurt you unnecessarily.”

She smiled humorlessly, put her elbows on the table and her head back in her hands. “All you care about is your stinkin' self,” she said. “Gonna use my weakness against me.”

He let it pass. She was talking to Roy, he knew that.

Just before six, back in town, he stopped into Gibraltar Insurance and talked to Roy 's secretary, Kelly Durtz, the daughter of the mayor. Though she was eighteen, she looked about fourteen years old and had the brains of a pigeon. Roy would not have confided in her.

She let him go through Roy 's desk. Everything was in order, more files on the desk, a pen set from his wife, certificates and family photos on the walls. No note, no private desperate musings stuck away in a corner of a drawer. Kelly locked up and left with him, walked toward home two blocks away.

Tim locked up, too, leaving his home number on the answering machine in case of emergency. Timberlake was too small to justify a 911 service. People were leaving, not arriving. Soon enough they would have to close the sheriff's substation there, and he would have to move somewhere or take up a new trade.

He drove home, five minutes away, off the highway and down two hundred feet of gravel road, startling a buck and doe browsing in the brush at the turnoff.

He really should get a dog. He turned on the lamp in the main room of his cabin, went into the kitchen, and microwaved three burritos. After setting them on his kitchen table, breathing in their beany aroma, he got the big bottle of orange Gatorade out of the fridge, not bothering with a glass.

He ate, watched TV, had a shower, got into bed with the old Ross Macdonald he was reading, keeping half an ear open for the sound of the phone or tires crunching in the driveway, but nothing happened. Nothing much ever did happen.

Right before he turned out the light, he thought to himself, I thought he liked it here. He hadn't really known Roy. No one had really known Roy, and no one really knew Tim.

And then he thought, if no body turned up, you have to wonder, what if Roy faked it? He lay there on the lumpy bed that gave him backaches and chewed on that thought for a long time.

As usual, he slept badly. Outside, the crickets built their wall of sound, the moths mated in a flutter of wings around his porch light, and a bullfrog raised his nightly ruckus down by the river, but Tim pulled the covers over his head, because he didn't want to hear it. The forest made him crazy, he didn't know why.

The next morning when Angel Ramirez opened up at the bank, Tim was there, and he got Angel to look up Roy 's accounts without a warrant. Angel had that bad habit of driving to neighboring towns late at night and peeking into windows when the urge got too strong. Tim had helped him into a diversion program the year before, and Angel still saw Doc Ashland every week. If he was still peeping, he had gotten too discreet for Tim to hear a whisper of it.

“He has the individual checking account, in his name only, a joint checking account with his wife's name on it, too, a business account, and a trust account,” Angel said. “Here're the last month's statements on each of the four.”

Inflow, outflow, some bounced checks on the individual accounts. Like everybody, Roy and Anita spent more than they took in.

The trust account showed a big check being cashed for a client ten days before. “I'd like to see this one,” he told Angel.

Made out to Roy Ballantine, as a Gibraltar agent, and Peter Bayle, jointly, the check was for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Gibraltar Insurance had already cleared it.

“Settlement check,” Angel explained.

“Why put Roy 's name on it?”

“The company always puts both names on it so the agent can make sure he's got a signed release before the client can cash it. There'll be a release of liability form back at Roy 's office.”

“They both have to sign?” Tim said. He looked at the back. Two signatures all right, Royal F. Ballantine, as agent, and Pete Bayle. Different handwriting, the Bayle signature small and crabbed, like old man Bayle himself. “Who brought it in? I assume you cashed out a check this size yourself.”

“ Roy brought it in. Pete was holed up at home, nursing the broke jaw that got him all this big money,” Angel said. “Broke jaw, bruised ribs, lost his spleen.”

“He didn't have a lawyer?”

“Let some shyster take one-third of it? Pete's not that stupid. Roy took care of it,” Angel said. “He made Pete a fair settlement offer. Gibraltar 's insured was at fault. There wasn't any issue around it. Pete's got TMJ, has to have an operation on his jaw, and he's still gonna look a little sideways from head-on, even after the operation.”

“What's Pete's number?” Tim said. When the old man picked up, Tim asked, “Pete, you get your check from Gibraltar yet?”

“No, and I ain't paid my rent in two months. I'm gonna call Ballantine tomorrow, kick him in the ass.”

“You come to town and see me instead,” Tim said. “In the morning.” He turned the check over again, looking at the signatures. “Angel,” he said, “Don't you ever do that again. Make sure both signatories are present.”

“Well, I'll be lassoed and laid down,” Angel said, his bug eyes through the thick glasses gentle and astonished. “When did Roy turn into a crook? He looked right in my eyes, asked me about the kids-I said to him, where's Pete going to take all that cash, over to the Wells Fargo Bank? And I offered to set Pete up for free checking, but Roy said, no, Pete's buying a hundred acres in Humboldt County, he's moving on-”

“Cash,” Tim interrupted. “Two hundred fifty thousand. Roy stole it, and already spent it, and he killed himself when he couldn't pay back the trust account. Or else he faked a suicide. If he did, he's gone with the money, and his body won't turn up.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Have a donut,” Tim said. He looked at his watch, and ambled across the street to the Ponderosa.

After a chocolate one and the kind with powdered sugar and two cups of coffee, he was ready to go back to the office. The sun had burned off the early mist, and he could see the plank floor needed a mop job. The red message light on the phone was blinking.

“This is Valerie at the store at the portage point. I found a… corpse down at the foot of the falls. I just left it, but I don't want any kids finding it, it's all beat up, so please come and-” The answering machine had cut out, but he'd heard enough.

On the car radio, Tim called Bodie and said, “Bring Doc Ashland and call Camden to send an ambulance.” The donuts had reconstituted to hard round lumps in his stomach.

He had to admit, he was a little disappointed. A part of him that he didn't let anyone see had been rooting for Roy to make a clean getaway.

***

He turned right after the bridge and headed down River Road. Downstream about a mile south, a cluster of cabins sidled along the river, near the top of Timberlake Falls, and there was a store with fishing bait and supplies.

As he drove, he seemed to rush down the road at about the same speed as the flow of the river. He'd never seen it so high or so brown, so brimming with energy. What had made Roy jump in?