A Far Gone Night (2 page)

“Coffee?
Where? Everything’s closed,” I said as we turned and walked up the riverbank together. The sight of the dead girl was stuck in my head. I rubbed my hand across my face to stop the stinging in my eyes and nose. I hate it when that happens. I was just glad it was dark out.

“Coffee’s up at my office. I got a pot just made when Deputy
Doltch
called.”

“Your coffee?
I’d have to be desperate.”

“Which you are.”

“Which I am,” I said. “And I’m not worried about it keeping me awake. There won’t be any sleep for me tonight.”

“Indeed. Me either.”

Sheriff Payne climbed into his cruiser and turned it around and drove back over the bridge. I followed in my pickup truck. I decided the next time I couldn’t sleep, I’d just shoot myself.

I
spent the next couple of hours hanging out at Harmon’s office, drinking bad coffee, discussing my discovery, and swapping bon mots over old murders, suicides, and aggravated assaults from the golden days a while back.

I filled out my statement, signed it and dated it, after checking the calendar on the wall to discover that it was now Wednesday.

Payne poured us each one last mug of coffee, and I threatened him with charges of police brutality if he started another batch. As it was, I had to pour in enough cream and sugar to allow the spoon to stand up unassisted before I could get the fetid brew down my throat. I shoved my statement across his desk and took my cup while he scanned my short paragraph.

As long as I was filling out paperwork, I wondered if I should go ahead and get with it and fill out an “Alienation of Affection” complaint against Sheriff Payne, naming him as the principle since he was now on intimate terms with my Last Chance to Go Steady, Liv Olson, passionate English teacher at
Rockbluff
High School. Liv and I might have had a chance, but she said I was a liar (true) and that scary things happened around me (also true) and there wasn’t much to build on there (debatable).

The good sheriff put my statement aside and took out a pint of Jack Daniel’s from a desk drawer. I nodded and extended my cup. Payne dropped a dollop in each cup. “This might improve the flavor,” he said as he poured. Enough said. I pulled back my cup, held it in both hands, and took a taste. Better.

“You wrote in your report that you were taking a walk because you couldn’t sleep. That right?” Payne asked. He sipped his coffee.

“Correct.”

“Why not?”

“Why couldn’t I sleep?” I drank some of my coffee and held it up to Payne in a silent toast of appreciation for the added Jack.

He looked at me. “That’s what I asked, and it’s not a trick question.”

I said, “Covington.”

“Excellent. That solves everything.”

“I do what I can to cooperate with law enforcement professionals. Citizenship demands candor.”

“Do I have to beat it out of you with a rubber hose? I have one, you know.”

“I am familiar with rubber hose beatings. They’re not so bad as long as one thinks of happy thoughts, like kittens mewing, puppies cavorting, the Red Sox hammering the Yankees.”

“You’ve been beaten with rubber hoses?”

“Just a couple of times.”

Payne looked thoughtful for a moment.
Which made me nervous.
Then he said, “Tell me about Covington.
An old nemesis from your special ops days?
A girlfriend’s vigilant daddy?
A coach who made you run ’til you threw up?”

“I don’t know special ops.”

“Right.
My bad.”

I said, “Covington was the name of the Georgia State Trooper who informed me that my family was dead. His name just popped into my head, unbidden and unwanted. And then a whole lot of other things popped into my head. And then I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I might as well go looking in the dark for bodies in the Whitetail River since there wasn’t anything on television.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push it,” the good sheriff said.

“It’s okay. I can deal.”

“Go home, Thomas. Go to bed,” he said. It was 4:33.

“What are
you
going to do?”

“Probably have another pot of coffee. Think some about that dead girl.”

“Want some company?”

“
Go
, Thomas. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow. And, yes, I’ll share with you what I’ve got, off the record, seeing as how you’re such a stellar amateur cop, and I know I can count on you to not blab.”

“Not even if that comely reporter, Suzanne
Highsmith
of
The Des Moines Chronicle,
shows up and winks at me?” I finished my coffee and felt two kinds of warmth easing into my chest.

“If Miss
Highsmith
winks at me, I’ll tell her everything she wants to know. She was certainly a pleasure to deal with before.”

“Before what?”

“Say goodnight, Thomas.”

I stretched my legs.
Preparation for standing.
And immediately regretted it.
There are few things as rewarding as a good stretch, but the pleasure was offset by my hamstring twinge, a nemesis for the last couple of years. Ah, life. Ah, O’Shea!

So I got up and hobbled a few steps before falling into my manly, assertive, don’t-mess-with-me stride of power and purpose. I drove home, the girl’s face in my mind and the holes in the back of her head still alive on my fingertips. It was nearly five o’clock when I parked on the white gravel area in front of my home and went inside.

I don’t lock the door anymore. It was a decision I made to help me get past the fact that, not all that long ago, two people broke in and tried to kill me.
And
Gotcha, which pissed me off, she being my only living family member. By not locking the door anymore, I am, supposedly, telling myself it’s all in the past, that now is better, and the Hawkeyes will recruit a kid who’ll run for 2,000 yards as a true freshman. The three psych courses I had in college have proven to be instrumental in my need for healing from time to time. And self-healing is the most satisfying kind.
Cheaper than therapy.
I mean, how complicated can it be?

At that weird hour, before it would be light enough for me to go for my daily run, too early for me to do a little carbohydrate loading before taking off, and much too early to go down to The Grain o’ Truth Bar & Grill and harass Lunatic Mooning, I decided to get ahead of the curve and just go ahead and email Ernie Timmons.

Ernie was our pastor when we lived back down in
Belue
in south-central Georgia. He had baptized our daughters, and his son Matt had dated Annie. He had morphed from pastor to pastor/friend. His wife, Jan, had been a good friend of my wife, Karen.

I knew he would call as soon as the story reached the newspapers. Ernie assiduously scanned
The Des Moines Chronicle
online every day, something he had begun as soon as I left
Belue
. That’s how he found out about the troubles last year. So, rather than have him harass me with a morning email, I decided to let him know first. I typed a succinct, accurate, and matter-of-fact message and hit the “Send” button. Then, since I was already on the computer and it wasn’t beginning to get light out yet, I surfed around a while at some of my favorites:
The Boston Herald
Sports, “Black Heart Gold Pants” (Hawkeyes), and Dorothy Parker quotes. By the time I finished killing time and discovering there weren’t any five-star freshmen running backs (yet) coming to play football for Iowa, it was time to go for my run.

Over the last few months, to go along with pumping iron with a focus and ferocity I did not fully understand, I had extended my morning runs from three miles to five with an occasional day off, an acknowledgement to Father Time. So I changed clothes and took off into a morning where the sun was just now rising, sending fingerlings of blue and pink light into the black, star-filled canopy overhead.
A mile or so into my run, the sky took on a rosier hue and the stars began to fade.

I picked up my pace as I reached the two-and-a-half mile landmark, a twisted crabapple tree that had to be older than ignorance, branches snarled and misshapen, but alive. I turned and started back, pleased that I was still breathing easily enough to carry on a conversation had there been someone running with me, but I run alone.

Covington came to my mind again, but this time I just shrugged it off. The memory had lost its shock value, but I must admit I wondered how bad memories keep showing up like knee pain when you think they are no more. But the irony is that most of the good memories seem to slip away into the fog of forgetting. Sometimes I’d like to give life a two-finger “
doink
” in the eyeballs, like Moe used to do to Curly.

I finished the last fifty yards of my run with an all-out sprint, surprised that my hamstring did not yelp at me. That was a big plus to start a new day. I’ve noticed lately that I don’t heal as quickly as I did a few decades back, so to have the hammy hold up was a gift from God. Not many of those lately, but I’m a patient man.

I walked up my driveway and shouldered aside the front door, still sticking a little since Gunther Schmidt repaired it after the shootout. Maybe I’d give Julie a call and she’d ask him to come out and shave off a thin layer of memory.

Gotcha was thrilled to see me return. She actually opened one eye and looked at me from her position on the recliner she likes to jump into and push against the back until it opens up for her. She is not a morning dog. She is not an afternoon dog. But she likes to join me on the deck in the late afternoons, even as it has grown cooler than normal this early November. Gotcha and I go out on the deck and I knock back a few Three Philosophers. She has a
Fat
Tire poured into her terra cotta bowl that stays out there just for that purpose. And we hang out together. She is good company and only bites really bad people, and even then she just bites once.
And hangs on until I ask her to cool it.

The run felt good, putting an edge on my appetite. It was time to eat, so I asked Gotcha one of her vocabulary words—“Out?”—and she hopped down, eager to get started on her day, or at least the prelude to food. She rumbled over to the front door and stared until I let her out. I had Gunther build a doggie door for her in the back, one with a stiff, fringed plastic curtain she can easily push through for when I was going to be gone long, and a steel sheet when I was home. No
point in having a wandering porcupine or skunk decide
to explore Chez O’Shea. Gotcha prefers to have me let her out and in, but the doggie door is a good backup in case I’m late returning from the opera, or cross-stitch classes at the
Rockbluff
Community Center.

After I let Gotcha out, I set about fixing myself a breakfast fit for a champion. I started an eight-cup Mr. Coffee, serving up Starbuck’s best ground coffee, took down the black bottle of
Baileys
Irish Cream, and set it next to the coffee pot. I watched the coffee brew, enjoying the rich fragrance and finding small comfort in watching something reliable do what it’s supposed to do.
An oddity in my life so far.

I made a quick trip to the front door, let Gotcha in, presented her meds in a spoon of creamy peanut butter, refilled her water dish, and then poured dry dog food into another terra cotta bowl and set both bowls down on her little red eating mat with her name in cursive at the bottom. I watched her suck in her food like a shop
vac
going after debris, wondering if she ever actually tasted anything. But I know that when I toss her M & M’s now and then, she always spits out the yellow ones.

I made myself a six-egg ham and cheese omelet, nuked a couple of slabs of hash browns and slathered butter over them. Realizing how much energy is expended detecting dead girls in the Whitetail River, I microwaved a couple frozen waffles and drowned them in butter and syrup, then poured coffee into my big Harley-Davidson mug and added a serious glug of Baileys. Gotcha joined me on the deck where I sat and worked my way through my training table fare, hand-feeding her bits of hash browns and waffles. Is there anything more glorious than a big breakfast on my deck in northwest Iowa, the chill of the November morning more effective than caffeine, and without the headache? I finished my coffee quickly before the cold air got to it.

Back inside, another cup of Baileys with some coffee added in helped me through a few Psalms and Proverbs, but then I got sleepy, even though the coffee was not decaf, and suddenly I was more tired than I could remember. I set my Bible aside and wondered what God had in store for me. Previously, what He’d had in store for me was to uncover a murder, punch out a couple of bums at
Shlop’s
Roadhouse, toss a man off the bridge downtown, gun down assassins, and get a friend and an innocent high school girl killed. Not to mention being shot myself and having Liv Olson wounded, too.