Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 661 & 662, September/October 1996

Dead Money by Perry O’Shaughnessy

© 1996 by Pamela and Mary O’Shaughnessy

Although they have so far published only two novels and a half dozen short stories, the O’Shaughnessy sisters are already figures on the world mystery scene. Their first novel, Motion to Suppress, sold in Britain, Holland, Germany, and Israel, and was a featured book club choice in Germany. In August a new book, Invasion of Privacy, was released in the U.S. by Delacorte.

Through his sunglasses, darkly, Tim Breen watched Sunday-morning sun heat the fence outside the sheriff’s office, sending steam streaming off the fence and the roof of the town library next door. It had been raining for a month, but today would be clear.

All around the little Sierra foothill town of Timberlake the forest whistled and cawed, rustled and stirred. The gullies along West Main Street ran like creeks, splashing up water as the muddy cars rolled by. He watched a mallard sail down one, making for the river, sun glistening on its iridescent green head. As it passed, it rasped out some quacks, like an old man laughing at him.

He watched the town come out to dry, thinking, now they’ll bring me all the trouble they’ve been storing up behind their screen doors. He liked it better dull and sleepy in the rain, nobody bothering him. He was burned out, and he knew it, but he hid it behind his lumbering good-natured facade.

Warm yeast smells drifted toward him from the Ponderosa Coffee Shop across the street. At ten-fifteen, more or less, he was usually there, eating donuts and drinking coffee with Bodie Gates, the other deputy assigned to the tiny Timberlake station.

He still had half an hour. He pulled the missing persons report on Roy Ballantine out of his pocket, scanned it again.

Anita Ballantine had been waiting for him at eight when he rode into the parking lot in the patrol car: wound tight from anger or fear; he couldn’t tell which. Inside, while he washed out the coffeepot and settled himself behind his old metal desk, she had told him about Roy Ballantine, who had gone AWOL in the night.

He knew Roy, the local agent for Gibraltar Insurance Company. Roy worked out of a storefront office three doors down and across the street.

Anita said Roy had never stayed out all night before. He had to be at work at eight A.M., and he never missed a day. He had taken the car about ten the night before, saying he was going to the liquor store for beer. The car, a 1992 Honda Prelude, was in good shape, but maybe he’d gone for a drive in the woods, God knows why, broke down, and passed a cold Saturday night out there.

Tim had listened, noticing that Anita had gotten thinner over the winter. Her skin was so white he could see the blue veins in her neck. He had written down the license number and promised to check it out, telling Anita he was sure everything would be all right.

It was probably nothing, but he’d have to do something about it. He stuffed the paper back in his pocket, a little angrily. The duck floated out of view, ruffling its feathers, and he went back into the station.

First he woke up Henry Salas with his phone call. Henry had been on shift at Timberlake Liquors the night before. Roy hadn’t shown up there, for beer or anything else.

Then he drove down the highway and out of town, toward the Feather River Bridge, the tall firs along the road black against the strong sun. Across the bridge, six miles farther south down the highway, at Camden, there was an all-night supermarket that sold Roy’s brand of beer.

As he got on the two-lane bridge, forty feet above the swollen brown torrent below, he saw Roy’s black Prelude parked on the right, smack against the bridge railing. He turned on his lights and parked behind the car.

Nobody inside. On the front seat of the unlocked car, Tim found Roy’s wallet with twenty-six bucks in it. The backseat was covered with suit ties, paper cups, and burger wrappers, quite a few files, some girlie magazines. Like most insurance agents, Roy did a lot of business out of his car.

No blood smears, no sign of violence, but all wrong. Tim looked up ahead, looked back down the road.

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

Back to the Prelude. 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’d 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, said over the roar 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 bank on the west side of the bridge, in the direction of the water flow, and started 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 Ballantine 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’d had no word. Tim told her he’d have to hold on to the Prelude 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’d 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, returned 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 was sitting 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 Tim 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 floppy 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.”

Her voice trailed off, having dumped its emotion.

“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, with a white cap and 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 come walking 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 out to her hair. “Who knows. If he does turn up, mustn’t hurt his business. Insurance agent, you know, he’s like a preacher 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 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 wouldn’t have confided in her.

She let him go through Roy’s desk. Everything was in order, some 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 answer-phone in case of emergency. Timberlake was too small to justify a 911 service. People were leaving, not arriving. Soon enough they’d have to close the sheriff’s substation there, and he’d 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 strawberry 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 either.

And then he thought, 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, and the moths mated in a flutter of wings around his porchlight, 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, now, 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 good, fair settlement offer. Gibraltar’s insured was at fault. There wasn’t any issue around it. Pete’s got TMJ syndrome, 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 said. “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 answerphone 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 it.

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?

He parked in the mud in front of the store. The young woman who came out to meet him looked familiar, though her hair was longer, a nice brown instead of the yellow he remembered, and the plucked eyebrows and lipstick and earrings were gone. She was plainer than she had been, but she looked better, too, healthier. He remembered that line between her eyebrows too, of chronic puzzlement or discontent.

“You took your time. I suppose you don’t remember me,” she said. “Valerie. From the year after high school, when we were both working at the supermarket in Camden.”

“I knew right away it was you,” he said.

“It’s been a few years.”

“Not so many.”

“Come on in for a minute.” She opened the screen door for him, and as he passed into the cool darkness he smelled her scent, vanilla and roses, seemed to feel her hair brush against him, soft as a spider web. She went around the counter and he sat down on a tall stool.

“This place hasn’t changed in twenty years,” he said, looking around at the old refrigerator unit that held the bait, and the candy bar rack, and the ice cream bin. “I used to ride my bike down here in the summer as a kid, sit out back under the trees and watch the waterfall. The fishermen used to set up nets there and catch the fish just before they went over.”

“My husband and I bought the store and the motel last year,” Valerie said. “The rain’s killed all the business.”

“You look good.” Her mouth, he remembered that too, the taste of lemonade and whiskey.

“You too, I think. It’s hard to tell with those sunglasses on. I’ve seen you drive by in your patrol car. You used to be such a hell-raiser, if you don’t mind my saying so. You were so funny. I guess you must have got ahold of your drinking, becoming a deputy and all.”

“I straightened up about five years ago. A.A. did it. Learned a lot. How about you?”

“I kept on until I hit a bad bottom. Went down to Sacramento for detox. That was two and a half years ago.”

“You had any slips since?” Tim said. She was so different, calm, mature, not the frenetic girl he had known. He didn’t feel inclined to hike down to the foot of the Falls until Bodie got there, anyway.

“Slips? No, I watched my husband start down the tubes where I had been, and I thought for the children I better not give up.”

“Whatever works,” he said, and she smiled. “So you got married. How many kids do you have?”

“Two boys. They’re still little. My mom watches them while I’m working.”

“Where’s your husband now?”

“He just got laid off from his job in Camden. At the water company. Ed Strickland.” She was still looking him over. She said, “You put on weight. You do look older, Tim.”

“Last time I saw you, you were lying in the grass behind the market beating time with a bottle of vodka in your hand, singing every verse of ‘Hotel California.’ ”

“I guess that was a good party,” Valerie said. “I wouldn’t know. I can’t remember much about that year.”

“I know what you mean,” Tim said. He smiled at her, too. What passed between them then was a recognition, hesitant, tenuous. Not like the old days, when the booze dissolved the barriers. They heard the ambulance siren.

“Guess we better go outside,” he said.

“Sure. I’ll take you down there.”

She walked lightly, jumping along the rocks, wearing a long flowered dress and brown hiking boots. Bodie and Doc Ashland and the med tech followed behind her, carrying the stretcher, and Tim brought up the rear.

The Falls dropped about fifty feet onto sharp rocks. It sounded like static, like white noise overpowering everything else. The water went over fearlessly, even joyfully. He felt something inside himself stir in resporise.

They scrambled down the steep hill, following the water, out into the brush. “I was running my dog,” she said breathlessly. “Over there, by the rocks. The river’s so high it’s flooded the trail, so we were bushwhacking. And I saw — that black foot sticking out. See it? I didn’t go any closer. I just ran up the hill and called.”

Tim just barely saw it, a shadow against other shadows. Valerie had sharp eyes. “You go back up, now,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“He’s dead. He went over the Falls. I don’t want to see the rest of him,” she said. “Okay, then.”

Roy Ballantine’s body lay face down in the mud, legs spread and knees drawn up. “In that wet suit, he looks like a big drowned frog,” Bodie said. While the medicos moved around the body, Tim and Bodie took pictures and hunted around in the bush. An hour later, they helped load the body on a stretcher. Black-bottomed clouds moved over the sun as the temperature dropped. They were covered with mud. “Let’s go up to the store, see if Valerie’ll give us some coffee,” Tim said.

She did better, finding them chairs to sit on and letting them wash up, too. She had lit the stove, and they sat around it.

“More rain,” Doc Ashland said. “It’s a record year.”

Tim told them about the money and said, “He botched his fake suicide, I’d say. He jumped off the bridge. He was going to climb out of the river downstream, peel off the wetsuit, take the money, and leave town.” He felt warm and comfortable. Valerie was behind him, but he could feel her eyes pressing, like soft, curious blue daggers in his back.

“I’ve never seen the river this high,” Bodie said. “He got carried down the stream and went over. I almost feel sorry for him. He had it worked out pretty well.”

“He got bashed up bad going over, so I can’t be positive, but I’m thinking all the injuries are consistent with the wet ride he took,” Doc Ashland said. “I’ll do a complete autopsy tonight. Idiot, thinking he could use the river.”

“Good concept, poor execution,” Tim said.

“The Great Escape,” the doc said. “I thought about it myself back when I was about to get drafted for the Vietnam War. Disappear, start over.”

“We didn’t find much around him or on him,” Bodie said. “No money. If he had a pack strapped to him, it might be downriver. We’ll start looking right away.”

“He’d need transport once he got out,” Tim said. “Bodie, you look hard for a car or motorcycle out there in the trees, too.” He got up. “I’m going to have to go tell Anita. You coming, Bodie?”

The crew came back and searched the banks of the river for three days in pouring rain, but they didn’t turn up a thing. Doc Ashland finished the autopsy, saying all he could add was that Roy didn’t have any alcohol or drugs in his system. And that the cause of death looked like drowning, though Roy was so beat up from the Falls he might have died anyway.

The fourth day, a man in a gray suit came driving up to the sheriff’s substation in a brand-new Jeep Cherokee. Tim came out to meet him. “James Burdick, Gibraltar Insurance,” he said, shaking hands. “I thought you might have some sun this high up.” Burdick was short and solid. He smelled of cigars.

“It’ll be back,” Tim said.

“I read your report. You sure your men have searched that river high and low for the money?”

“It’s not there.”

“Because if it doesn’t turn up soon, I’m going to have to issue the old man another check. He’s hired a lawyer this time and he’s making a fearful racket. I don’t work directly with the agents, so I didn’t know Roy Ballantine. Did you ever think he’d do a thing like this?”

“I’d heard he was gambling, getting into debt. Maybe I should have paid more attention.”

“If we do pay that geezer Bayle off again, we’re going to try to recover from Ballantine’s estate.”

“Anita’s going to need money. I doubt she’ll be getting any of the life insurance he was loaded up with.”

“She can always file bankruptcy,” the Gibraltar man said breezily. “Can we go inside? It’s freezing out here.”

Anita came in to see him the next day. She had fixed herself up, but the old spark had been replaced by something just old. Events like losing a husband could make a woman cross the line into age in one night. Tim had seen it before.

“Let’s talk frankly, Anita,” he said. Her eyes burned at him for a minute, then extinguished again. “I’ve been listening to the gossip. I heard some things I need to check out with you.”

“Like what?”

“For example, that you were getting ready to leave Roy, take Ginny and Kyle.”

“So what if I was?” she said. “So you’ve been listening to the women in this town, stabbing you in the back when your husband’s just died...” She started crying, lightly and easily, like the rain falling outside the door. “He’d gambled away our savings. He didn’t care about me anymore. Yes, I was thinking about leaving while I still had some self-respect. Of course, he’s taken even that away from me now.” But the lift of her chin into the air said, he can take everything else, but he won’t take my pride.

“Did you know he was going to steal the money?”

“Of course not—”

“Marriage is an odd state. We let another person come so close, they can read our minds,” Tim said. “I think you knew.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this. You’re accusing me of killing him so I could have the money, like I dressed him in a wetsuit and tossed him over the bridge? He weighed over two hundred pounds. I don’t have to listen to this. I’m going home.”

“You might want to wait another few minutes,” Tim said.

“Wh-why?”

“Because Bodie’s out there searching your house and yard. I’m sorry, we have to be sure.” He handed her a copy of the search warrant.

“That woman is so broke, all we found was letters to her sister asking for loans,” Bodie said later. “We dug around the backyard, knocked holes in the walls, tossed the garage. Found a family of skunks. There’s no money there.”

“We had to try,” Tim said. “You want to eat over at the hotel restaurant tonight? My treat.”

“My grampa’s in town,” Bodie said. “My mom’s making a turkey. You’re more than welcome...”

“No, you go on. I’ve got my heart set on a piece of apple pie from the restaurant,” Tim said.

He locked up at five. It was a warm clear night, and the street was lined with the cars of the isolated cabin owners from miles around who didn’t get into town that often. He saw some loggers from Camden he knew, said hello, walked up the wooden steps to the Placer Hotel Restaurant.

After dinner he was trying to make up his mind whether to drive to Camden for a movie or go home when he saw Valerie’s husband out front, careening toward his car. He hustled over and took his arm, saying, “Oh no you don’t.”

“Leggo,” Ed Strickland said. He was a strong boy, but Tim got him over to the sheriff’s-station porch and half threw him into his chair.

“Stay there while I call a taxi. You can’t drive like that,” he said. Strickland’s disheveled blond hair fell across his eyes and he blew out cheap Scotch vapors.

“I’ll just go back to the hotel if you’re gonna make a federal case out of me having a few,” he said.

“You need to go home.”

“The hotel is my home, Mr. Deputy, sir,” Strickland said. “I moved there recently.”

“Valerie and you...”

“It’s all her fault,” Strickland said. “She wanted to buy the damn place. Then the tourists stayed away because of the rain. I got laid off. Then she threw me out because I couldn’t find any other work. It’s not my fault. She’s a hard-hearted b—”

“Watch your mouth,” Tim said. “If you don’t have any money, how are you paying to live at the Placer Hotel?”

Strickland gave him a sly look from under the hair. “You ever played poker with me? I have had one humongous streak lately. Best of all, she hasn’t got any paycheck stub to look at, so she can’t come after me for some of it. Can I go now?” He got up and wove across the street, waving away the traffic. Tim sat down, watching.

The next morning, early, he drove back to the portage point. Gray fog seeped around the dripping trees. Valerie opened the door to the motel office, looking surprised and maybe pleased to see him. She still wore her robe, a long blue silky thing. Her hair was wet from the shower. She hastily took off the specs she was wearing, invited him in.

“The kids just left for school,” she said. “They left some eggs in the pan.”

“Sounds good,” Tim said. While he ate in the warm little kitchen, she washed the dishes. Finally, she sat down across the table from him with her coffee. She said, “I know you have some business or you wouldn’t have come. So go right ahead.”

“It’s about Ed,” Tim said.

“Ed? Did he do something?”

“I don’t know. He says you and he have split up.”

“Trust Ed to tell everybody in town,” Valerie said.

“When did this happen?”

“Oh, I guess it was the day after I found Roy. Ed and I, we never were suited for each other. We were party pals, you know what I mean? When I sobered up, I found out there was nothing else between us.”

“He’s got a fancy room at the Placer Hotel,” Tim said. “How does he pay for it?”

“Well, I can tell you he doesn’t pay on credit. We have no credit,” Valerie said. “He isn’t working around here, or I’d know it. I suppose he’s having a winning streak.”

Her robe softened the hard planes of her face. Her damp hair shone like satin. He wanted to touch it. He drank some more coffee and said, “I didn’t know there really were such things.”

“You stop believing in all that nonsense when the drinking stops,” she said. “Yeah. He might be winning this week, but next week is another thing entirely. He doesn’t think that way, though.”

“Not like us,” Tim said. “Upright and sober. I’m thinking maybe Ed found the body with the money before you got out there, picked a fight with you, and left.”

Valerie’s jaw dropped. She shook her head. “You mean he might have two hundred fifty thousand dollars socked away somewhere? I can’t believe it. He could never keep it a secret. He’d just have to brag about it.”

“Now that you think about it, did you notice anything in his behavior that day, you know, going outside for a long time, anything like that?”

“Just the usual foul mood when he has a hangover,” Valerie said. “I slept late that morning and didn’t go out with Ginger for her walk until ten. But I still—”

“I hate being sober,” Tim said. He rubbed his jaw, wondering what brought that comment on. She would understand, that was it. He could talk to her, and she would understand. “You ever feel that way?”

She stayed right with him, as if he hadn’t suddenly changed the subject. “I know what you mean,” she said. “It’s like, you went to the optometrist, and he fit you with powerful glasses, and the whole world springs into this vivid focus. And it’s the same old ugly world you drank to escape from, and you can see every dirty crevice again...” She looked around the shabby kitchen, at the cracked linoleum and the broken highchair in the corner.

“Yeah. Like you used to love riding the Ferris wheel, and now all you notice is the operator’s tired and mean, hates his job, and doesn’t like you,” Tim said.

Valerie nodded. “I look back, and it’s like we used to live in the night, under those romantic hazy-colored lights, and now it’s daylight. It’s too sharp and bright, isn’t it?”

He sat there looking at her. She had that ironic, crooked smile he’d seen on so many drunks at so many meetings. “Yeah. They keep trying to convince you it’s better,” he said. “It’s worse, but you can’t escape anymore. You’re gonna die if you keep boozing, shooting up, whatever you’re doing.”

“Condemned to real life,” she said, laughing a little. “Forced to grow up.”

“I could love you now,” he said. “We’ve both been through it.”

“Quit kidding yourself,” she said. “You could have loved me years ago, when we were kids and drunk all the time, but not now. You can’t fall in love unless you can get out of your head.”

“Normal people do it.”

“They’re just born insensitive. Born lucky. So we sobered up, and you turned into a depressed cop. And I turned into an unhappy housewife. We’re big successes now.”

“There was something brave about what we were doing,” Tim said. “You know? And now we don’t even have that.”

“We are the driest of dry drunks,” Valerie said. She got up and came around the table to him. She took his big head in her hands and drew him to her breast, and his arms went around her little waist. “Maybe this will help,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“We could give it a try anyway. Even if it only lasts a minute.”

“Count on it lasting a little longer than that.”

“Sobriety sucks, it really does,” she said.

“Yeah. The whole situation. Take your pants off, okay?”

Tim put Bodie on Ed Strickland for the next couple of days. Bodie reported that Strickland sat in on three or four regular floating poker games at Camden and at Timberlake. He seemed content to hang around town, like he was waiting for something to happen.

After the second day, Tim got another search warrant, and he and Bodie tore up Strickland’s room at the Placer Hotel. But they didn’t find anything. The Strickland bank account contained about enough money for next week’s groceries.

The Gibraltar man called. “Are you closing the investigation after the inquest tomorrow?” he said. “I need a final report for the records so I can issue another check for Bayle and get this thing over with.”

“You’re going to give up on finding the money?”

“Let me put it to you this way,” Burdick said. “You’re Joe Schmoe with a mortgage, fishing along the riverbanks, and what do you snag but a bag full of a fortune in cash? What do you do with it?”

“You tell me.”

“You dry out the bills on an inside clothesline. You wait a few months, and you start spending it slowly and carefully, and you thank your lucky frigging stars,” Burdick said with a laugh. “We call it dead money. Now and then it slips through the cracks. You’re never going to find it.”

At the inquest the next day, nothing came out that Tim hadn’t heard before. He gave his testimony, and they all called it a day and sloshed over to the hotel for lunch. The coroner’s verdict was accidental death in the course of committing a crime, and Tim had no evidence to the contrary, except they still hadn’t found the money.

He went back to the office, took care of other business, locked up, went home, and looked in the freezer. Burritos. One of those supermarket pizzas that tasted like paper.

He looked around the place. Something was missing. Oh yeah, Becky and little Dave. They had moved to Illinois. His ex-wife had some kind of restraining order.

He was sick of being struck with that thought ten times a day. Something was stinging his eyes. He was damn bored and damn lonely, and he was sick and tired of being bored and lonely, of listening to the forest outside and not being a part of anything.

Next thing he knew, he was on the phone to Valerie. “Can I come over for a while?” he said.

“Wait until nine or so,” she said. “I’ll get the kids to bed early.”

He couldn’t bring wine, so he stopped and bought her some flowers at the florist shop at the hotel. She opened the door, holding her finger to her lips, and led him directly into the bedroom. The sheets and pillowcases smelled like vanilla and roses, like her. She comforted him, and he did what he could for her.

Sometime later he woke out of a doze, to the clicking of a key being inserted into the kitchen door. Valerie woke up too. He got up quickly, pulling his service revolver out of the holster hung on the bedpost. Valerie tiptoed behind him as he walked down the hall.

Ed Strickland had his head in the refrigerator. When he saw them, his bloodshot eyes went wide and he let out a strangled yell. “You been sleeping with him!” he said. “I’ll fix you—”

“Shut up, you prick,” Valerie said. “I’ll sleep with him if I want. Get out.”

“This is my house,” he yelled, stumbling toward them, his fists up.

“Get away, Ed. Go on, leave,” Tim said. He kept the gun down, but Strickland charged him, still yelling, grabbing for it. They locked in a furious embrace, Tim trying to keep the gun off him. Valerie ran over by the stove. Strickland smashed him in the face, a big dangerous drunk. They wrestled for the gun—

Tim heard the explosion, saw Strickland’s head bloom out red on one side, and then Strickland crumpled on the ground and the kids were standing in the doorway holding each other and screaming—

The sheriff, Bud Ames, came thirty miles from the county seat for the investigation. They took Tim’s badge. Valerie backed him up all the way. The coroner called it an accident, and he got his badge back. But he knew that when the time came for layoffs of county staff, he’d be right up there on the list.

About a week after the Strickland inquest he went back to Valerie’s. Her kids acted afraid of him. Valerie said maybe they shouldn’t see each other anymore. The pain he felt when she said that shocked him. He hadn’t known he was in love with her.

He went back to his routine.

April passed. The sun came out, the dazzling mountain sun that the tourists loved. He arrested drunks, rode patrol, issued citations, played dead. Or maybe he was dead.

He kept seeing the two deer when he drove home at dusk. They must have a nest under one of the trees not far from the cabin. As the weather warmed, the birds had returned to raise hell at dawn.

On another Saturday night, he had just finished his dinner at the Placer Hotel when the desk clerk came over, the mayor’s other daughter, the smart one. “I guess I shouldn’t say this, but I hope you don’t feel too bad about what happened,” she said. “Strickland used to sit up in his room and drink, and then he’d lurch down the stairs looking for trouble. If you hadn’t killed him, he might have killed somebody else, like his wife.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Tim said. He sipped his decaf, thinking about Strickland’s face when he turned around and saw Tim there in the house.

“Why’d she call him?” the clerk said. “If I was separated from him, I would have left well enough alone.”

“Valerie called him? At the hotel?”

“She called him that night,” the clerk said. “You know, the night he... died. They didn’t talk long, but he didn’t look upset or anything when he came down. He left right after.”

“Excuse me,” Tim said. He picked up the check with trembling hands and took it to the cashier.

“You okay?” she said.

“Fine. Do me a favor, call Anita Ballantine and tell her I’ll be over to see her in about ten minutes.” He drove carefully out to the Ballantine house.

“Hello, Timothy,” Anita said. “Do you have some more bad news for me?” She was haggard, her body lost in the heavy sweater.

He said, “Anita, did you get your March phone bill?” When she nodded, he said, “Go get it. Please.”

When she came back, he unfolded it and stood there reading the numbers in the lamplight. “What is it?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just something I had to check.”

“You took your shades off,” she said.

“I lost them,” he said.

He drove out River Road to the portage point. The rain had finally stopped, but the roads were still slick. The motel sign was lit, and he could see she had a good crowd. He parked along the road and walked into the forest, toward the river, avoiding the motel.

The moon floated behind thin cirrus that veiled the stars, but he could see well enough. The pines were thick enough here that not much brush grew under them. He walked on, pushing away the wet boughs, his throat dry and something pressing on his chest, until he came to the clearing at the top of the Falls.

Just before the drop-off, the riverbank rocks narrowed the river down to twelve or so feet across. He got down next to the narrows, felt around in the wet dirt.

The metal anchor in the ground was still there. He remembered how, as a kid, he had watched some of the men net-fishing one summer. They had stretched netting across the river at the narrows, tying it firmly to the metal anchors on either side.

Those nets were strong, to catch many fish in a very fast current.

For quite a long time he stared out over the river. Moonlight fell heavily on it, but it rushed ahead, dark and unstoppable.

He turned slowly and walked over to the motel that backed onto the clearing.

Valerie answered the door. She stepped back when she saw him and sent the kids off into the other room. The kitchen table was piled high with magazines. Tim went over and looked at the covers.

“Next time, please call first if you need to see me,” she said. “I already told you—”

“The Bahamas,” Tim said. “I read those travel magazines, too. I see myself on a green mountainous island, sitting on the sand, looking out at turquoise water, with a pitcher of ice-cold daiquiris right next to me.”

“What do you want?” she said.

“I like that flowered dress. I bet Roy liked it too. That’s the dress you were wearing the day you found his body.”

“Is it?” she said.

“He called you four times in the two weeks before he died. Now, why would he do that?”

“Who?”

“Ballantine. Roy.”

“No, he didn’t call me. Do you have some kind of phone record? Maybe he called Ed. They were both gamblers.”

“You’re so beautiful. So harsh and so beautiful,” Tim said. “How could he resist?”

“Me and Roy? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He would jump over the bridge, and you would catch him at the narrows just before the Falls and pull him out. He’d strip off the wetsuit and you’d drive out to the airport with him and fly away from all the bad things.”

“No!”

“That’s what Roy thought, anyway. Was he willing to take your kids? Then when Roy was gone, were you worried that Ed would stay on your case, figure it out eventually? You remember old Ed, don’t you? You called him at the hotel and asked him to come to the house. The clerk told me.”

“No!” Valerie said, backing away. “You’re crazy, Tim. Just because I won’t have you after what happened — calm down, let me make you a cup of coffee. Let’s talk—” She reached up into the high cabinet and Tim caught a glimpse of the gun.

“Don’t touch it,” he said. “You think I’d come here unarmed? We searched this place. I knew you’d have it somewhere handy. Close the cabinet. Come toward me with your hands up.”

“Tim—”

“No more bullshit.”

Her shoulders slumped. She seemed about to fall. He brought her over to the table and made her sit, sat down across from her. Cracked linoleum, greasy stove, one soft flowing flowered dress to wear — “Valerie,” he couldn’t help saying, “I loved you.”

She raised her head, and he saw something ancient and inhuman behind her eyes. It was the thing that had made her drink, still alive inside there. He had to look away.

“You were supposed to catch him at the narrow spot, weren’t you?” he said.

She shrugged and said, “It would have been a very small risk. I knew how to use the net. Yeah. Catch him, and then we’d leave with the money. That was his plan.”

“Did you try? You lost your grip, he went on by?”

“No.”

He had to breathe a minute, hard, before he could say, “You let him go by, over the Falls?”

“I let him go.” Her mouth, that had kissed him so tenderly, saying those things—

“What did he do to you, that you would let him die like that?”

“It was what he would do to me someday. I thought it over. I just wanted to be alone.”

She was alone, she would always be alone. “Why didn’t you strip off the wetsuit? I might have bought the suicide.”

She backed away, saying in a hopeless, hostile voice, “I planned to. But when I saw him, the... injuries, I couldn’t stand to touch him.”

“You had it made.”

“You know how it is, Tim. At the last minute, you sabotage yourself. You realize you’re a loser, you don’t have the strength to carry it off. Maybe if you’d been with me — but I wanted to be alone. That’s all I wanted—”

“I’ll have to take the money back,” Tim said, interrupting.

“I don’t have it.” She had realized he wouldn’t help her. Her mouth tightened, turned bitter.

“Of course you have it. He wouldn’t risk floating down the river with it. No reason to. You were holding it. Go and get it.”

“I tell you, I don’t have it.”

Tim said gently, “Write it off. It’s dead money for you now. If you don’t give it to me I’ll have to tear your house apart, dig up your land. If you tell me now, I’ll say I found it somewhere else.”

She said without any shame or guilt, “All I did was not save him when he was floating down the river. It’s not a crime, is it?”

“I don’t know. But stealing the money would be a crime, and I can’t let you do that. And then, look what you made me do to poor old Ed.”

“It’s in the fireplace, above the flue. Get it yourself.”

He made her walk into the small living room with him. He could hear the TV through the kids’ door. “Is this all?”

“All except the back bills I paid. Are you going to tell on me? If you do, I’ll just go on over the Falls like he did.”

“No. I’m not going to tell.”

She stood in the doorway, glaring as he drove away. “Goodbye, then, you cold bastard,” she yelled after him.

When he came to the bridge, where he needed to take a left to go into Timberlake, he took a right instead and drove to the county airport, his right hand caressing the sooty bag. The Southwest Airlines plane bound for San Francisco was circling above, preparing to land. Through the open car windows, rustles and rushings and sighs drifted in on the wind.

He went into the dark airport bar and sat at a small candlelit table overlooking the runway. He placed the bag carefully on the table. “Drink?” the waitress said.

“A double Jack Daniels, straight up.”

He picked it up, savored the fumes—

Liquor, money, blurry romance, some faraway place — all he had to do was drink it down, have another, buy a ticket, and drop a postcard in the mailbox resigning as deputy sheriff—

“It’s such a beautiful night, isn’t it?” the waitress said. “I guess you’re not ready for another.”

Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars—

But it was dead money. He’d be alone like Valerie, resurrecting that presence in the back of his mind that made him drink—

He wasn’t completely finished. He wasn’t extinguished like Valerie; he could still love somebody. She had taught him that by making a fool out of him.

He was looking down at the table, staring at the little flame guttering in its holder. “Even the candlelight hurts tonight,” Tim said. His voice sounded husky and strange.

She leaned down, put her hands on the table as she looked at the candle. “Blow it out, then, honey,” she said. “Then the moonlight can come in from outside.” She had a strong definite tone of voice and hair sprayed to stand firm against anything.

“You can take this drink away,” he said.

“You’re not going to have it?” Surprise lit her face.

“Not this time.”

“Where you headed?” she said curiously. “San Francisco?”

“Not this time,” he said again. As he climbed back into the patrol car, he glanced out the window.

Outside, the plane was landing, its red lights twinkling off the wet tarmac in the soft haze of evening.