“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.”