Assumption

~ ~ ~

Ogden’s father would never have approved of his son’s job with the sheriff’s office. He wouldn’t have said it outright, that had never been his way except in Ogden’s dreams, but he would have made it clear that he believed Ogden to somehow be a traitor. A traitor to what would have remained forever unclear, but it would have been tinged with the language of race and social indignation. Ogden never did much like the uniform. He disliked it as much as he had disliked the one he’d worn in the army. His father had been alive for that uniform. It wasn’t that the man hated the idea of his son being a soldier; he hated the idea of his being an American soldier. He’d moved to New Mexico from Maryland because there were fewer people and so, necessarily, fewer white people. He hated white people, but not enough to refrain from marrying one, Ogden’s mother. Ogden’s mother never flinched and always laughed off her husband’s tirades as silly, which they no doubt were, but it was hard for a son to think that his father hated half of him. Perhaps this was why he was willing to care enough about the bigoted white woman who was now missing.

Sheriff Bucky Paz was a big man with a belly round enough that the general belief was that his suspenders not only held up his trousers but kept him from exploding. He didn’t carry a side arm because he figured he was wide enough without one. He had once said to Ogden, “I can’t do anything about my gut, but there’s no reason to look sillier than god intended.” He was sitting now behind his desk, eating carrot sticks and listening to Ogden’s report.

“You get any more out of the neighbors?” Paz asked. “People don’t like to talk in the middle of the night, but you catch them after breakfast and that’s another story.”

“They’re not crazy about talking with full stomachs either,” Ogden said. “Mr. Garcia didn’t see anything. The Hireleses didn’t see anything. Nobody saw anything.” Ogden stood from his chair and walked across the room to lean on the file cabinet. “And I believe them. Though I can’t say any of them are too fond of the old girl.” He peeled down a slat of the blinds and looked out at an insignificant flurry of snow. “They might not say anything even if they had seen something, but I believe them.”

Paz held up the Baggie of carrot sticks and offered some to Ogden. He nodded at the refusal. “My wife packs these for me. Says she’s trying to save my life. You know how many of these you have to eat before you don’t want a doughnut?”

Ogden rubbed his eyes. “How many?”

“Hell if I know. I eat all the carrots she packs for me and then I go get a doughnut.” He dropped the Baggie on the desk. “You say there were no car tracks.”

“Only mine and the mailman’s. The only vehicle on the street was Mr. Hireles’s pickup and it never moved.”

“That vintage blue Ford?”

“That’s the one.”

“I love that truck.”

Ogden nodded.

“Mrs. Bickers.” Paz said the name as if to hear how it sounded. He shook his head. “You know I took this job because nothing happens around here.”

“So, what now?”

“Hell if I know.”

“No escapes from the prison,” Ogden said. “I called. Not for over a year anyway.”

Paz bit the end off a carrot stick and looked up at him. “That’s good to know.”

“Felton!” Paz called out into the duty room.

The lanky Felton came to the door, tugged at his belt buckle, and adjusted his glasses. “Yeah?”

“Call over and see if anybody’s escaped from Santa Fe.”

“No reports of any escapes,” Felton said.

“Call anyway,” Paz barked. Then to Ogden, “Nothing wrong with double-checking. And call the mental hospital, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Felton said and turned away.

Paz studied Ogden. “You look like shit.”

“I’m tired.”

“Yeah, you look tired, too. Son, you’re too young to look old.”

“Right.”

“Have you had anything to eat today?” Paz asked. “You know breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Person can’t go around with his body needing fuel.”

“You sound like my mother.” He started out of the office. “You know, Bucky, it wouldn’t hurt to miss a meal or two.”

“That’ll be the day.”

Ogden left the station and drove to the diner down the street. It was a place run by two young women who opened for the single meal of lunch. Whether they slept late and went to bed early, Ogden didn’t care. He cared only that their lunches were good and not expensive. They were pleasant enough and not flirty and Ogden liked that. He waved to a couple of people at the counter. One of the two owners came to his table, filled his cup with coffee.

“Thanks.”

“How you doin’, Deputy,” she said.

She and her partner didn’t much like the idea of policemen. He understood. He didn’t much like cops either, though he did want to like himself. “It’s okay to dislike the uniform. It’s just a uniform. Under it I’m just like you.”

She studied him for a second and together they realized that he had just uttered a blatant untruth.

“Forget I said anything,” he said.

“What’ll it be?”

“Tuna on whole wheat.”

“Fruit or fries.”

“Fruit,” he said.

She smiled. “And you’re healthy under the uniform as well.”

As he watched her walk back to the kitchen, Manny Archuleta and Rick Gillis slid into the booth opposite him.

“Hey there, Ogden,” Rick said. “Mind a little company?”

Ogden shook his head no, but he didn’t mean it. “How are you guys?”

They nodded.

“Don’t you love this place,” Rick said. “I was telling Manny I think they’re lesbians.”

“Who?” Ogden said.

“The gals that run this place. Mindy and Eloise.”

“So,” Ogden said.

“So, I think that’s hot,” Rick said.

“What about you, Manny?” Ogden sipped his coffee while he looked at Manny.

“I don’t know. It don’t matter none to me.”

“Me, either.” Ogden shifted his focus to Rick.

“Listen, don’t make me out to be no pervert,” Rick said.

“How’s Carla?” Ogden asked Manny.

“She left his ass,” Rick said.

Manny slapped his friend’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “She’s gone to visit relatives.”

“Yeah, right,” Rick laughed. “That’s why she took everything she owns with her.”

Manny called for Mindy or Eloise to bring them some coffee.

Rick leaned back in his seat. “Hey, Ogden, we’re trying to get some guys together for a poker game this weekend. You interested?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“You’ve got enough,” Manny said.

“I don’t think so. I told my mother I’d fix a few things, and I was hoping to get in a little fishing.” Ogden looked at his watch. “Don’t you two work for a living anymore?”

“Break,” Manny said. “Man’s got to have a break now and then to remain productive. That’s what memo 9374 says.”

Ogden looked over at Huddie’s Lumber Company where Manny and Rick worked, had worked since high school, probably would work until they stopped working for good.

“It’s slow right now,” Rick said.

Ogden nodded.

Mindy or Eloise brought food to Ogden and coffee to his friends. She didn’t give them much of a look and even less of a greeting.

“She doesn’t like you guys,” Ogden said.

Rick smiled. “She likes us.”

“Listen, fellas, I’ve got to eat so I can make my rounds. You mind?”

Rick held his palms out as if pressing against an invisible wall. “Pardon the hell out of us. We wouldn’t want to interfere with Wyatt Earp making his rounds.”

“Give me a break, guys.”

They did. The two men left in a bit of a huff. Ogden watched them walk across the street and back toward the lumberyard. He felt bad for having shut them down. He finished his meal.

The old road up to the defunct ski area was just that, old. The lodge had burned to the ground fifteen years ago and now the only people who went up there were teenagers. They kissed each other, tore around on the occasional snowmobile, or spray-painted what they thought were offensive words on the remaining five feet of the lodge’s north wall. It being a weekday and during school hours, the place was deserted, the dry snow blowing across the meadow beyond the parking area. Ogden got out and walked to where the doors had once been, then he moved around and along the wall to see the new graffiti. In the summer, people who called themselves Gypsies would come park their motor homes and squat for a while. Nobody minded much. He recalled the past summer when he had to pick up a Gypsy man accused of stealing a watch from a tourist. Ogden knew as soon as he began talking to the man that he wasn’t guilty of stealing the watch, but oddly he also knew that the man, given the opportunity, would have taken the watch in a heartbeat. He went back to the tourist and helped the man retrace his steps. They found the watch in the man’s car trunk.

Ogden felt bad for having tied the dead cat up in a plastic bag to be taken to the lab in Santa Fe. He imagined that the old woman would have wanted the cat buried. He walked back to his rig and radioed in.

“Anything?” he asked Felton.

“No escapes from no place,” Felton said. “Checked the pen and the hospitals and the animal shelter. Everybody’s present and accounted for. Well, except the mental hospital. They want to know when you’re coming back.”

“Thanks.”

“They said your brain will be ready on Wednesday.”

“Thanks, again.”

“What’s your twenty?”

“I’m up here at the old lodge.”

“Don’t freeze up there.”

Ogden hung up the handset. He looked at the field of white against the backdrop of the slope of aspens, spindly and naked.

It was afternoon when Ogden received the call to go to Mrs. Bickers’s house. Bucky Paz’s car and two other rigs were already parked in front. Neighbors were hanging about on their porches and Ogden took this as a bad sign. Inside he found Paz just hanging up the telephone. He paused at the look on the big man’s face.

“I got a notion to come here and look around,” he said. He looked away and coughed into his fist.

Ogden didn’t speak. He waited.

“Well, I figured out why no one saw anything.”

“Why is that?”

Paz asked Ogden to follow him out of the parlor and across the hall to the room with the television. The rug was pulled back. Ogden stopped to observe the trapdoor in the floor.

Ogden hummed.

“I came in and found the rug turned back like that.” He paused and put a cigarette in his mouth. “The old lady’s still down there.”

Ogden felt his stomach turn a little.

“Just like the cat,” Paz said.

“Christ,” Ogden said.

“Christ ain’t got nothing to do with this, son.” Paz stomped his foot down on boards of the trapdoor. He took a slow breath and leveled his eyes on Ogden. “She knew whoever it was.”

“How do you know that?”

“The killer knew the house. At least that much is true. She sure as hell didn’t tell him about her trapdoor.”

That sounded reasonable to Ogden.

“Ogden, after we run through this place, I want you to go through her closets, drawers, desk, papers, everything.”

“Okay.” He wanted to climb down and look at the dead woman’s body.

“You okay?” Paz asked.

“Fine.”

“You want to see?”

Ogden nodded.

Paz took his foot off the door and stepped back. Ogden reached down and pried his fingers into the crack and pulled up the panel. Mrs. Bickers was lying right below, her pale skin easy to see against the dark ground. A spider crawled along her thigh. Her dress was hiked up, exposing her underwear. She was there, dirt-covered, faceup, eyes open and death-gazing, pupils finding different lines, her throat bruised. He let the door back down.

“Shouldn’t we pull her out?” Ogden asked.

“Pictures first. Coroner’s on his way.”

The men waited.

Morning. Ogden rolled over to answer his phone. It was his mother and she’d just heard about Mrs. Bickers. He agreed with her that it was terrible thing and how it just wasn’t safe to go out of your house anymore or even stay in. “I’ll be right over,” he said to her. He dressed and also packed a bag. His mother was frightened and rightly so, an old woman alone. He would stay with her for a few days.

Eva Walker had the door open before he was out of his truck. “You didn’t sleep,” she said.

“I slept. I didn’t sleep well, but I slept.” He followed her into the house and took off his jacket. He glanced over at the woodstove and saw the red glow behind the glass panel.

“But you didn’t eat.”

“You’ve got me there. I didn’t eat. Can you help me out?” He walked behind her into the kitchen.

“Isn’t it awful?” she said.

“It is that.”

“How could such a thing happen?” She pulled down the skillet and placed it on the stove. “Why?”

Ogden shrugged. He watched as she took eggs from the refrigerator, and sausage. “It’s a cruel world out there?”

“Any leads?” she asked.

“What?”

“Leads.” She dropped the sausages into the pan.

“You’ve been watching Columbo again. No, not yet. No leads.”

“Well, it’s just awful.”

“We believe Mrs. Bickers knew whoever mur—killed her.”

“Killed doesn’t sound any better than murdered,” his mother said. “No fingerprints?”

“Plenty. Including mine. Prints seldom help. At least that’s what they tell me.”

“All I know is what I see on the television.”

“Well, anyway,” he said. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

She turned the meat over.

“But I will sleep here for a couple of nights, if you don’t mind. It’ll save me a little driving.”

She beat the eggs. “I don’t need you here. I wish somebody would try to break in here. I’d pop him with this skillet and poke him with this fork and pour hot grease on him and then I’d get mad.” She tended the food in the pan. “I didn’t know her very well. Just to say hello. Not that I ever wanted to say hello to her.”

Ogden nodded.

“Did she suffer?”

“I don’t think so, Ma,” he lied.

She removed the meat and poured the eggs into the pan. She plugged in the toaster and grabbed a loaf of whole-wheat bread. “You do want toast.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Such good manners. I wonder who trained you.”

“Some crazy woman,” he said.

Eva put the food in front of her son, poured them both some coffee, and sat down to watch him eat. “What’s wrong, son?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Something’s bothering you. Tell me what’s on your mind. It’s been eating at you for a while now.”

“Nothing really,” he said. He sipped his coffee.

“That’s not fair. You come in here all the time and I can see the sadness on your face and I’m just supposed to ignore it? It’s not right. Either you talk about it or you learn to pretend you’re happy.”

Ogden put down his fork. She was right; it wasn’t fair and he told her that. He then said, “I just wonder what I’m doing. Am I wasting my time here? I don’t mean in this house. I mean in this town.”

“I know what you mean,” his mother said. “And, yes, you are.”

He looked at her.

“You really think that.”

“Yep.”

“What would Dad think?”

“He’d think the same thing. But, like me, he’d be proud of you.”

“For what? For hanging around here playing deputy? Not even that.”

Ogden’s mother leaned back and studied his face, smiled. “If you need to get out and live somewhere else, that’s fine. Son, that’s normal. But don’t think your father wouldn’t be proud of the man you are. He would be damn proud. I know that. You’re a good man, Ogden. There are not a lot of good men around.”

Ogden nodded. “Thanks, Ma.”

He finished his meal and then the two of them watched television. Ogden had to wake his mother and tell her to go to bed. Once she was off, he went into what had been his father’s tying room, where the man had made trout flies for the last twenty years of his life. His mother had kept it clean but pretty much as it had been when his father was alive. He sat at the desk and switched on the lamp. He put a number 12 down-eye hook in the vise and began to wrap it with black thread. He would make something easy, some zug bugs. He tied on a little lead and imagined the nymph skipping the bottom of a riffle. His father had loved to catch trout, but for Ogden to simply have a trout take notice of his fly was reward enough. He wrapped the peacock herl around the hook and watched the bug take shape.

In the dream, ten cutthroat trout were facing upstream in a row in the Rio Grande. They were spaced evenly across the river just after its confluence with Arroyo Hondo. Their dorsal fins were exaggerated in size and stuck up over the rushing water. Ogden was in chest waders, standing in the middle of the Grande. The river up to his chin and his waders were full of water, but he felt stable, foot-sure, and steady. The current wasn’t pushing him at all. He was casting the largest stonefly nymph he’d ever seen at the end of crazily long tippet. The wind was whipping but didn’t affect his casts in the least. The big fly landed perfectly on the water, no splash at all, no drag from the line. The fly would just drift past the nose of a trout. And the fish would ignore it, almost with disdain.