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.