Straw Men (16 page)

The Explorer passed through the shadow of a railroad bridge and emerged into bright daylight. Straight ahead, the University of Pittsburgh's forty-two-story Cathedral of Learning loomed like a granite-gray spike in the heart of Oakland. It was one of the world's most impressive symbols of scholarship and knowledge, and he felt privileged to teach there. And yet, at times like this, he realized how little he really knew about the most confounding labyrinth of all, the human mind.

Another familiar symbol caught his eye as he navigated the heavy afternoon traffic along Oakland's hospital row. On the right, about two blocks ahead, a white three-pointed star stood in a royal-blue field atop the sign for Reed Motorcars, the city's preeminent Mercedes-Benz dealership. He changed lanes, moving from the far left to the middle lane without understanding the force that pulled him. He changed lanes again, and by the time he reached the sign he was riding along the right curb, looking for a parking spot. He'd wedged the Explorer into a too-small spot just past the dealership before he was able to focus on a question that had nagged him for a week now.

Among the many contradictions and inconsistencies he found in Teresa Harnett, this was a minor one. But, as his late friend Grady Downing used to say, the devil's in the details. Christensen remembered his mild surprise when Teresa arrived for her first scheduled visit to his private counseling office. He was watching from the window as she wheeled into the parking lot below. He'd never considered what sort of car she might drive, but he never would have pegged her as driving a high-end Mercedes sport-utility. He had no idea what they cost, but were they affordable enough for a household supported by a police officer's income and a monthly disability paycheck?

A mild revulsion swept over Christensen as he stepped through the polished German iron on the car lot, headed for the glassy showroom. A gang of floor salesmen shuffled behind the windows, and he could almost feel their eyes lock onto him as he approached. Soon, one of them would launch himself out the door for a direct assault, trying to act less desperate than he actually was as he lurched toward his monthly quota. Christensen wasn't disappointed. The man who emerged with his hand extended had the same smarmy look as every car salesman he'd ever met, but was better dressed.

“Name's Phil,” he said, enclosing Christensen's hand in a mock-sincere Two-Handed Clintonian. “Think this sun'll last?”

“Let's hope. I'm Jim.”

The salesman inspected Christensen from head to toe, no doubt calculating his net worth by weighing the potential assets of his silver hair and expensive Patagonia jacket against the liabilities of blue jeans and filthy running shoes. Christensen felt as if he were being searched at an airport security station, with Phil scanning for status symbols instead of weapons.

The salesman nodded past him, toward the boxy green Explorer. “So you're thinking about moving up, eh?”

“Maybe.”

“Happy to help any way I can,” Phil said. He nodded back toward the Explorer. “There's a big difference, you know.”

Christensen shook his head. “Between mine and yours?”

“Between any vehicle and ours.” Phil flipped over a business card and held it out. Christensen wondered if he kept them spring-loaded somewhere up his sleeve. “Tell you what. I'll just let you look around a bit. See the difference between what you're driving and what we sell. No pressure. Just do me a favor. Any of the other salesmen approach you, wave this card at them. It's like a crucifix with vampires. It'll keep them away.”

“Thanks.”

“Just holler if you have any questions or want to take one out and see what you've been miss—”

“Actually, I do have a couple questions,” Christensen said.

Phil smiled. “Which model?”

Christensen pointed to a maroon sport-utility behind the showroom glass.

“Ah, the M-class,” Phil said. “So you're looking for another SUV?”

Christensen evaded the question. “I just have a couple questions, real quick ones.”

Phil fixed his smile, but his eyes said “Fuck you.” He turned and led Christensen into the showroom, past the other floor guys whose eyes never stopped scanning the lot's perimeter. They approached the vehicle from the back. Its badge said ML 320. Except for the color, it looked the same as Teresa's ML 430. He asked Phil about the difference.

“The engine,” he said. “The 430 has the V-8. It's an animal.”

“That's it?”

“More stuff, of course. Lot of real-estate people drive that one. Maybe that's what you need in your line of work. What is it you do, anyway?”

“More stuff. You mean options?” Christensen asked.

“Your 430 has full leather, standard. Same with the heated seats, privacy glass, running boards, better stereo. You know, top-of-the-line
stuff.
”

“More expensive?”

Phil shrugged. “So price is a consideration?”

Christensen moved around to the driver's side, where the sticker was pasted to the rear window. He traced a finger down the list of standard equipment to the bottom line. MSRP on this lower-end model was $34,950 plus $595 for transportation and handling, tax not included.

“Ouch,” he said.

Phil checked his watch. “Anything else?”

Christensen peered through the vehicle's window. The difference between this model and Teresa's were obvious. This one had cloth upholstery, no CD, no sunroof. The wheels were aluminum alloy. Teresa's were polished chrome.

“I saw one once, a 430, all tricked out, the whole package,” Christensen said. “Leather, CD player, sunroof, custom wheels. What would something like that cost?”

“More,” Phil said.

“But how much more?”

The salesman sighed. “Model like this has everything you need, just not top-end. That brings the price way down.”

Christensen waited.

“So you're talking a loaded 430 out the door?” Phil asked.

Christensen nodded. “Tax, license, the whole shebang.”

“Between fifty and sixty.”

“Double ouch,” Christensen said, looking at his wrist-watch. He'd told the kids three o'clock for bowling, and he was already half an hour late. He noticed Phil calculating the value of the gold timepiece he'd put on after his morning workout.

“Nice,” Phil said. “Rolex?”

Christensen shook his head. “Timex.”

Phil forced another smile and backed away. “Jim, you take care now.”

For years without fail, at least in the years before she was attacked, she followed the same New Year's Day ritual. At the start of each calendar year, she filled a shoe-box with items that represented all of her significant worries from the year just ended. Report cards, photographs, souvenirs of good and bad dates, letters, old appointment books—reminders of events and crises that, in retrospect, seemed insignificant. That was the power of a worry box. Start each year fresh. Put old worries away. Look forward, not back.

The boxes were stacked three high on the closet's top shelf. She counted fifteen, each with a torn strip of packing tape around the outside that had kept the lid sealed, each with a year inscribed in black marker on the panel facing out. Her rule was to seal those worries away for­ever, but she'd broken the rule eight years before as she struggled to rebuild her past. David had brought her worry boxes to the hospital, hoping the bric-a-brac inside would help bridge the gaps between the fragments of her memory. Sometimes it did; more often she puzzled over the significance of torn movie ticket stubs, dried flowers, photographs of people she didn't recognize, and a once-worrisome collection of newspaper clippings, term papers, job evaluations, and office memos.

Quietly, so as not to wake David, she pulled a desk chair across the room and stepped up. It felt odd. Whenever she'd done so before, it had been to put another year's worries on the shelf. This time, she intended to pull a box down. She scanned the years, looking for 1991.

She moved the stacked boxes from 1988, 1989, and 1990, but found nothing behind them on the foot-deep shelf. She did the same with the others. Where was 1991? It was the year before she was attacked, and she could think of no reason why she wouldn't have put one together at the year's end. But where was it? The question was barely formed when an image flashed behind her eyes—UGG boots.

And a memory blinked back on.

She'd needed a bigger box to hold 1991's accumulated anxieties. It was the year her marriage began to unravel. No ordinary shoebox could contain her worries that year, so she'd chosen a bigger box that once contained her winter boots. Teresa stepped back and surveyed the neat rows of boxes above her. Even if she'd wanted to put 1991 with the others, the bigger box wouldn't have fit on the narrow shelf. So where had she put it?

Somewhere near,
she thought. She stooped to the closet floor and dug through an assortment of plastic bags filled with old shoes and clothes bound for Goodwill and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. No luck. Where else? With some effort, she knelt beside the bed and lifted the duvet. As soon as she saw the squarish shape near the bed's headboard, she knew. She reached into the darkness, her nose tingling from the accumulated dust, and grasped a cardboard corner. Pulling it out, she was surprised by its weight.
A
heavy year,
she thought.
No doubt about that.
As she tugged the box into the murky bedroom light, she noticed something else, too. Unlike the others, the packing tape was not broken.

Teresa set the box on the bed. It seemed to pulse. Had David searched for it back then? Or did he assume she'd skipped her annual ritual because of their marital chaos that year? For whatever reason, the 1991 box was untouched.

The packing tape was brittle. It broke as she tried to slice it with her fingernail, its snap like a tiny gunshot in the late-night silence of the house. She waited to make sure the sound didn't wake her husband, then continued. The tape disintegrated as she pulled it from the box, and she collected the pieces and tucked them in the pocket of her robe. David might wonder if he found them on the floor.

Her filing system, if you could call it that, was chronological. She began each year with a new box, and she placed her worries inside as they occurred. The items on the bottom were worries from the beginning of the year, and they accumulated in layers right up until New Year's Day, when she would seal the box, shelve the year's troubles, and begin again.

Teresa lifted the lid on 1991 and came face to face with her old self, unscarred and whole, standing as one of only six women among dozens of freshly minted officers in a black-and-white police academy class photo. She checked the year on the box again. She'd graduated from the academy in 1988, three years before. Why was the photo among her top worries at the close of 1991? She lifted the glossy from the box and scanned dozens of faces, so young and fresh. On the back, she found a typewritten list of her seventy-three classmates' names, ordered from the top left to the bottom right.

She looked closer at the list of names. Beside the names of Patrick Boyle and Gregory Vance, in pencil, she'd handwritten a grim notation: “KIA '91.” Killed in action. She turned the picture face up and found Boyle and Vance among the rows of new officers, but recognized neither. She had no idea how they died, but their deaths had obviously affected her at the time. Probably the first casualties from her academy class. That's something that would have worried her.

The next item in the box was a neatly folded front page from the
Press.
She opened it and recognized the same two faces, this time in individual head shots placed side by side on the page. Beside them, the lead story's headline: “Two police officers die in Bloomfield ambush.” She checked the paper's date—January 1, 1992—and started to read.

Teresa read on, but the rest of the story was mostly biographical information about the two dead officers. It confirmed that the men were police academy classmates the year she graduated, and noted that each had two young children. Boyle's wife was pregnant with their third. The story also quoted several of their stunned colleagues, who recounted the brief but exemplary careers of Boyle and Vance. As Teresa read, she felt a sour clench, a gut reaction to what seemed every cop's worst-case scenario. Poor bastards. Died with their guns still holstered.

Something for the worry box, indeed.

Teresa set the photo and story aside and picked up a blurry color snapshot, the next worry on the pile. That one she remembered, and she knew exactly why she'd saved it. It was taken at the Fraternal Order of Police Christmas dance that year and showed David chatting idly with one of the department's sluttiest clerks, the one she and other women in the department had assigned the brutally accurate nickname “Curb Service Carrie.” Teresa felt a wave of nausea, just as she had the night she took the picture. That was the moment she finally recognized her husband as a serial adulterer. No man chatted idly with Carrie unless he had a history with her, or wanted one. Why she'd decided to preserve the moment on film, she couldn't say. A reminder, maybe? For resolve?

The erratic TV in Teresa's head suddenly blinked on again. In a split second, somewhere in her damaged brain, the memory of that moment caromed from synapse to synapse, ending finally with another memory entirely. An argument with David, bitter and accusing. Hurtful words, angry defiance.

Teresa tried to retrace the memory's path. What was the connection? She closed her eyes. Carrie? She focused on her roiling emotions, trying to snatch details from the murk. The fight. What was it about? She needed a handle, something that might help her pull the full memory from the swirling emotional fog. Christmas dance. Argument. Hostility. Carrie. David. Accusations. A slamming door.

It was coming now, taking shape in her mind. Teresa pressed her eyelids tighter together, as if light might blur the scene unspooling in her head. The argument. A slamming door. Their door. The front door. Suddenly, she saw the place. Their living room. An argument in their living room. She felt the anger all over again. Carrie. David. Accusations. She saw herself reaching, reaching. For something to throw. Now she saw it in her hand as she cocked her arm back. Small and white, the size of a baseball. But painted and irregular. Ceramic.

Then it was airborne, sailing across their living room. David ducking, an instinctive flinch. A spray of ceramic shrapnel as the thing hit their door. Then silence. She'd thrown something at David during an argument in their living room. She'd missed. Silence. Hostile stares. A slamming door.

He'd walked out.

It wasn't the only time. That was the pattern. She'd call him on some infidelity, he'd deny until proven guilty, then walk out defiantly until he crawled back a day or two later full of apologies and good intentions.

Teresa opened her eyes, her heart still racing, breathing hard with fresh anger more than eight years later. She looked around the spare bedroom and found it comforting. That was a long time ago. Things were different now. Very different. But some wounds never heal. She looked down, and something in the worry box caught her eye. A lumpy white envelope. It had slid off the worry pile and was wedged in the corner of the box, down beside the spiral-bound appointment book she'd kept that year. She lifted the envelope out and tore off one end.

A shattered piece of ceramic tumbled out, a tiny head. Hand-painted eyes and eyebrows, a bright red and beatific smile. Black plastic hair combed into a pompadour. Suddenly, she saw it whole. Round-tummied and kitschy, a pink-nippled dime-store Buddha, but one that had been customized with a jet-black pompadour for the gag-gift crowd. The Elvis Buddha. The size of a baseball.

Teresa closed her eyes again and reassembled that long-ago moment. During an argument in their living room, probably about Carrie or one of David's other casual affairs, she'd grabbed the Elvis Buddha and hurled it at her husband. It shattered against their front door, and he'd walked out. Why else would she have saved the snapshot from the Christmas dance? Why else would the Elvis Buddha's head be in her worry box? Had to be. Had to be.

She knit together what she knew. The chronology of her worry box suggested the argument must have happened between the Christmas dance and New Year's Day, when she'd clipped the news story about her classmates' deaths, made her grim amendment to the class photograph, sealed the box, and put it all away. Obviously, 1991 ended on some very low notes—friends dying in the streets, David gone, their marriage shattered like the Buddha whose head she now rolled in her hand.

How alone she must have felt at that year's end.

Another memory emerged from the fog. New Year's Eve. Serious funk. She'd locked her service piece in their fireproof safe and given the key to a neighbor for the night. She took the phone off the hook and tried to dull her aching loneliness with a fifth of Southern Comfort. She'd welcomed the dawn of 1992 alone and crusted with vomit.

But David came back, at least for a while. He must have, because she remembered their “final” break coming months later, about three weeks before she was attacked. And she remembered that vividly—how Buster hopped up into David's car; the puppy's bright brown eyes as he watched her from the car's rear window. She'd watched from their driveway until they were out of sight, then vowed to move on. No more pain. No more lies. No more … shaving. She let her pubic hair start growing that day. As she thought of it now, she caught herself scratching a phantom itch.

Just then, the bedroom door creaked. Teresa tensed as the door swung slowly open. There, in the dark frame, stood … no one. The door creaked again, opening wider. Then a sound:
Whap-whap-whap.

Buster.

The black dog moved into the room, his roto-tail thumping the door and dresser as he passed, and found her perched on the edge of the bed. He sat at her feet, on her feet actually, and sighed, smelling like an old dog now. She scratched a muzzle that long ago had turned from black to silver, thinking of her husband sleeping down the hall, about how much had changed from those sad days to this.

Buster's ears were soft and warm, and Teresa rubbed them until her hammering heart slowed to normal.