A Far Gone Night (5 page)

“If you buy a copy I’ll sign it for you,” she said, the hurt lingering in her eyes. I was suddenly ashamed of myself. No need to be mean.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go down to
Bednarik’s
Books in the morning and pick up a copy, if there are any left.”

“Thank you, Thomas. I do hope you’ll enjoy it. Read for yourself, then, if you must, condemn me, but not from second-hand knowledge.”

“How long are you going to stick around looking for a sensational story to write a book about?” I said, shifting away from the personal, which is unreliable.

“Until I find out, for sure, what happened to that poor
girl.
Maybe get a look at the Medical Examiner’s report. You
do
have a coroner in this town, don’t you?”

I smiled at her thin condescension.

“May I count on you for some help with this story?” Suzanne has beautiful eyes, I noticed again as she pinned me down with her question.

“You may not. You’re on your own, ma’am,” I said. I tried not to squirm as she continued her penetrating eye contact.

“
You
found the body, Thomas, so
you
are already in the story.
Might not hurt to be an asset instead of an ass.
I think we could work together.
Pleasantly.
You just might discover that I’ve toned down my attitude a good bit.”

“Money helps with that, I guess.”

She smiled
an
I
’m-not-getting-anywhere-with-this
smile. Then she dug into her purse, pulled out a business card, and slid it across the table between us. I took the card. It was cream-colored with dark blue writing on it, telling me who she was, that she was a “Writer,” and her email and cell phone number.

“Tasteful,” I said.

And with that, Suzanne
Highsmith
, manipulator of the media, grabbed her purse, slid out of the booth, smiled, and said, “When you step down from your high horse, Thomas, I’d love to get together. I’m warning you that I can be persistent, but without the ‘bitch’ part in my past.”

Then she marched over to the coat rack, tugged on her coat, and rushed out the front door to the parking lot as if she had a million better things to do. I watched through the window as she climbed into her blue Toyota 4Runner, and exited in controlled haste.

While I was watching Suzanne’s leaving, Lunatic Mooning came over to my booth and picked up the barely-touched salad and half-gone Diet Coke.

“Did you say the wrong thing again?” he asked, his face blank, impassive.

“Apparently.”

“She seems like a nice lady. So did the others who thought you were hot.”

“Yes, they were,” I said, thinking of Liv Olson and Ruth
VanderKellen
, both appealing and both beyond my ability to try again with. “I’m beat, Lunatic, so I think I just might mosey along back to the house. Gotcha will be hungry.”

“You know,” he said, “I told you that Gotcha will always be welcome here. If she were with us now, you could stick around, shoot a little pool,
fight
off some more beautiful women who ache to get to know you in a biblical sense. I would feed her good meat back in my office and she would like that.”

“The Board of Health would strip you of your license for having a dog in here, even one as delightful as Gotcha.”

“I’m not sure you really have a dog. You have spoken of her, I have asked you to bring her by any time, and still, nothing. Time passes. Many snows, many moons.”

“Many Indian cliché metaphors.”

“Is she your imaginary friend?”

“She’s not imaginary, and she is a great friend. I’ll bring her with me next time if you’ll give her a beer on the house.”

Lunatic Mooning nodded his head. “I assume she prefers imports?”

“With a few exceptions, yes.
Now, I must adieu,” I said, handing the Ojibwa owner-operator enough to cover both tabs and a hefty tip.

“Miss
Highsmith’s
staying at The
Rockbluff
Motel. She’s always been straight up with me, Thomas. That’s all.”

I left, climbed into my giant F-150, and drove home, Suzanne
Highsmith
on my mind as I pondered two questions: was she
maybe
lonely in her room at the
Rockbluff
Motel; and second, where was she getting her information?

I
must be getting old.
Certainly old-
er
.
Genuine fatigue was shoving its way into my body and mind by the time I started out for my little home in the woods overlooking two rivers. It had grown dark while I hung around The Grain. Now, the dark was deeper.
And colder.
And since I had kept my eyes mostly on the road as I drove past the
Rockbluff
Motel where I noticed Suzanne’s 4Runner parked, all I wanted to do was rest.

I drove on home, parked, and went inside.

But my cell phone rang. My cell phone never rings. It knows I hate it, but it’s a necessary evil. Like dental floss.

I enjoy the idea of ignoring my cell and just waiting for the person to leave a message. Or call back. Or not, which is best of all. Then I can decide what I want to do. I hadn’t even had a moment to mess with Gotcha, or sit down and put up my feet, and there’s that interruption from the first few notes of “Three Blind Mice.”

It was a brass monkey night. I was well fed. Pleasantly lightheaded from the Belgian ale, but a bit too much on my mind to be able to relax and just go to bed. Suzanne.
Dead girl in the water.
The Hawkeyes basketball team at Iowa State.

The phone quit ringing.

I walked from the living room into the kitchen and picked up the cell. The call was Ernie. I hit the button to call him back and he picked up right away.

“Thomas! Why aren’t you down at the river looking for bodies, man? Or is that what you were doing when I called?”

“You got my email, I see.”

“And I read the story in
The Des Moines Chronicle
.” I thought I could hear Ernie chuckling.

“I didn’t read it.
Didn’t realize it was in print already.”
Here we go again.

“Tomorrow’s edition on line.
Says you and violent deaths are, let me see how they put it, oh yeah, you and violent deaths
and
Rockbluff
, Iowa are ‘inextricably, tragically united’.”

“Who wrote the story?” Suspicion lurked.

“It says, just ‘Staff.’”

“Such B.S.,” I said, excoriating journalists in my mind.
Then, “Is that why you called, to harass me about my bad timing ever since I moved up here?”

“No. Not at all,” Ernie said. “I’m calling to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner wherein we provide all the food and you provide all the wine.” He sounded triumphant.

“I’m not sure I can get down there for Thanksgiving, Ernie. That’s just a few days away, and I expect I might need to stick around and answer questions from the coroner or some more from Sheriff Payne. Maybe even a legitimate journalist if there’s one out there somewhere.”

“No problem. We’re inviting you to Thanksgiving dinner at
your
place! Thanks! You are such a wonderful paragon of hospitality, something you picked up in the South, no doubt. And your home is well appointed for entertaining, too. I have heard it is stunning, and the view so breathtaking, well, we couldn’t turn down the opportunity to have you host the feast.”

“Let me talk to Jan.”

“Be like that. Here she is.”

I could hear fumbling and movement and faint voices, then Ernie’s wife, Jan, came on the phone.

“It’s my idea, big boy, so you might as well accept it. It’s been years since you invited us over, and that was here in
Belue
, so we’re going to help you continue to re-assimilate into the wonderful world of the living.”

“You have a point. I’ve been spending much too much time associating with the dead.”

There was brief silence from Jan. “Some of whom you appropriately placed in that category, I must say.
And a good thing, too.
Now,
start shopping for a nice dinner wine and perhaps a fine brandy for after when we sit on the deck or by the fire, depending on the weather, and reminisce about your glory days in
Belue
.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m glad I thought of this.”

“So am I, Thomas.
You have special gifts and talents, and we’ve missed them. We’ll come by the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving. That way we can settle in, get a tour of
Rockbluff
and environs the next morning, including an introduction to that wonderful man, Lunatic Mooning. Then I’ll start cooking. I trust that your kitchen is well-appointed?”

“I have a steel sink, a hand pump, and a Swiss Army Knife.”

“Everything I could ask for,” she said. “Now, I’ll give you back to Ernie. Just remember, Thomas, we love you and miss you. I’m excited just thinking of seeing you again.
And Gotcha, of course.”

Jan Timmons was sniffling when she handed over the phone to Ernie. Italian-American women can be emotional.

He said, “I suspect you’ll have everything wrapped up concerning this girl in the river situation by the time we show up on your doorstep.”

“If not, I know I can count on you to bring a degree of probity to the proceedings,” I said.

“I’ll bring my Bible,” he said. And with that, we hung up after brief good-byes, looking forwards, and stay warms.

I spent most of the next couple days trying to lose myself in my routine.
Morning run, time on the internet, hard workout at the Earthen Vessel Barbell Club and Video Rental, and spending lots of time reading.
Susan Boyer, Mark
Mustian
, and Robert B. Parker mostly.
Some Sheri Reynolds.
And waiting to see what the authorities in
Rockbluff
would come up with regarding the girl in the water. I heard nothing but a mention on the local radio saying, “The investigation of an apparent suicide continues.”

Two days after my Wednesday discovery, I decided to sleep in and skip my morning run to give my aching knees a rest. I started the coffee and walked with Gotcha down my drive to the blacktop county road where the week’s edition of
The
Rockbluff
Recorder
waited in my mailbox. I tucked it under my arm and walked back up to the house, a few sharp pings of pain in my left knee, probably that pesky ACL that got injured on a mission in Jordan. I don’t recommend jumping out of helicopters, even if they are hovering just a few yards from the ground.

Gotcha ambled alongside me except for an occasional foray into the brush to attend to her duties, sniffing and squatting and sneezing.

The morning was crisp and cold, 21 degrees according to the thermometer outside my kitchen window I had glanced at first thing, a habit from childhood and inherited from my mother. All Iowans are required to have thermometers outside their kitchen windows. I liked it, the air so sharp and brittle that one could almost break off a shard and save it for July, and I found myself enjoying the simple beauty of what’s left of my life. I have significant resources, good health, a beautiful place to live, and a few friends I’ve made over the last year or so.

And I continue to sleep alone.
Unless you count Gotcha on the foot of the bed, or on her
tuffet
on the floor at the foot of the bed.
Snoring.
I guess for me Romance has become a vagrant on the town.

But I have nothing I really have to
do
. To some, that would be a good thing, and for me for a while, it was. Lately, however, I found myself considering adding something to my predictable routine of eating, sleeping, working out, running, and hanging out at The Grain. Of watching sports on my giant TV and movies I rent from
Mulehoff’s
.

That need to expand my horizons was probably just one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep a few nights ago.
Probably God getting me ready for craziness.
Like finding a murdered girl in the river one night when I went for a walk because I couldn’t sleep because I had nothing important to do and God was pulling me into another set of “troubles.” God saying, “Here, Thomas, you wanted something to
do
? Try this!”

I am strong, rested, and pretty much recovered from the
Soderstrom
situation eighteen months back. Why shouldn’t I tiptoe into some more
yuckiness
?

The only problem is that every episode of trouble and pain brings with it, long after everything has been sorted out, a kind of residue of regret that the disasters leave behind. My family gone from me, all those people dead in
Rockbluff
because I moved up here, and now this murdered child.

I was curious to see if the “suicide” made it to our local newspaper. Apparently
The Des Moines Chronicle
mentioned something about it. Might even be a coroner’s statement by now. I doubt if there was anything else on the agenda of Dr.
Jarlsson
, County Coroner.
Small town.
Quiet place.

Back up at the house, I let Gotcha in, dipped a soupspoon into a jar of creamy peanut butter, placed her meds in the middle of the goop and held the spoon low for her. I watched in amusement as she worked through the peanut butter sticking to the various caverns inside her mouth and chops. Once that was accomplished, she went to work on her food as I filled her water bowl and set it down beside her food dish. I made coffee.

Satisfied that my best bud was taken care of, I pulled out two tubes of hot sausage from the refrigerator, opened them up, dumped them into a big Teflon frying pan, and began browning them, pushing the meat around with a wooden spoon, breaking it into smaller pieces. While that was happening, I stepped away and reached up on top of the refrigerator and pulled down a box of powdered doughnuts and ate three while waiting for the meat to cook. I got out the Baileys and set it beside my big coffee mug and coffee maker, then returned to the sausage. When it was ready, I turned the pan at an angle over the sink and pressed my spatula on the meat and squeezed out as much grease as I could, running hot water all the while to keep it from coagulating in the pipes leading to my septic tank.

Next, I poured the meat onto a big platter, withdrew a big jug of ketchup from the refrigerator, and set the platter on the small kitchen table. The coffee was ready, so I filled a hefty mug, dumped in enough Baileys to make the liquid a toffee color, and sat down. After a brief prayer of thanksgiving, I dribbled ketchup over the meat and began eating, unrolling the newspaper that caters to
Rockbluff
County High School news, yard sales, Help Wanted ads, auctions, bake sales, church bazaars, free kittens to a good home, and blocks of advertising.

But this morning I was looking for news about the girl in the river. And there it was. I took in a forkful of browned sausage chunks and fully opened the paper, then folded it down to the relevant story.

The headline read, “Suicide in the Whitetail.” And it went on to state that the nude body of an unidentified, white female of about fourteen years of age had been pulled from the Whitetail River.
By Thomas O’Shea.
That would be me. It went on to state that, according to Dr. Prentice
Jarlsson
,
Rockbluff
County Coroner, there was “no evidence of foul play,” and cause of death was drowning.
A suicide.
The writer of the story asked that anyone with any information about the identity of the girl, or any other details about the suicide, to please contact Sheriff Harmon Payne.

The other front page stories included warning of an unusually-cold winter and a report on two farmers whose feeder pigs had been stolen during the night. Hog rustlers! Bad weather!
And a suicide.

I should not be surprised by surprises, but I am. I had assumed Dr.
Jarlsson
would discover the bullet wounds in the back of the head during a routine examination of the body. I mean, if I could accidentally find them, wouldn’t he find them under the scrutiny of a bank of powerful lights that expose everything? Had he no training? No medical degree? No experience?