Marion looked a little frightened. “I don’t like trespassing on someone else’s property.”
“They trespassed on our property first.”
He glanced down at Cathy. Her eyes were half closed and her face was pearly in the moonlight. He pressed her hand to reassure her that everything was going to be all right and that his anger wasn’t directed at her, but she drew away from him and started down the path that led to the back of the house.
Paul clicked on his flashlight and followed her, moving slowly along the unfamiliar terrain. By the time he turned the corner of the house and reached the patio, Cathy was out of sight.
“Cathy,” he called. “Where are you? Come back here!”
Marion was looking at him accusingly. “You upset her with that silly threat about breaking down the door. She’s probably on her way home through the canyon.”
“I’d better go after her.”
“She’s less likely to get hurt than you are. She knows every inch of the way. Besides, you came here to break down the doors. All right, start breaking.”
But there was no need to break down anything. The back door opened as soon as Paul rapped on it with his knuckles, and he almost fell into the room.
It was empty except for a small girl wearing a blue bathrobe that matched her eyes.
Paul said, “Cathy. Cathy, what are you doing here?”
Marion stood with her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle the scream that was rising in her throat. There were no Smiths. The people in the sports car whom Cathy had waved at were just strangers responding to the friendly greeting of a child—had Cathy seen them before, on a previous trip to town? The television set was no more than a contraption rigged up by Cathy herself—an orange crate and an old mirror that caught and reflected the rays of the moon.
In front of it Cathy was standing, facing her own image. “Hello, Mrs. Smith. Here I am, all ready to go.”
“Cathy,” Marion said in a voice that sounded torn by claws, “what do you see in that mirror?”
“It’s not a mirror. It’s a television set.”
“What—what program are you watching?”
“It’s not a program, silly. It’s real. It’s the Smiths. I’m going away with them to dance and play baseball.”
“There are no Smiths,” Paul bellowed. “Will you get that through your head? There are no Smiths!”
“Yes, there are. I see them.”
Marion knelt on the floor beside the child. “Listen to me, Cathy. This is a mirror—only a mirror. It came from Daddy’s old bureau and I had it put away in the storage room. That’s where you found it, isn’t it? And you brought it here and decided to pretend it was a television set, isn’t that right? But it’s really just a mirror, and the people in it are us—you and Mommy and Daddy.”
But even as she looked at her own reflection, Marion saw it beginning to change. She was growing younger, prettier; her hair was becoming lighter and her cotton suit was changing into a dancing dress. And beside her in the mirror, Paul was turning into a stranger, a laughing-eyed young man wearing a baseball cap.
“I’m ready to go now, Mr. Smith,” Cathy said, and suddenly all three of them, the Smiths and their little girl, began walking away in the mirror. In a few moments they were no bigger than matchsticks—and then the three of them disappeared, and there was only the moonlight in the glass.
“Cathy,” Marion cried. “Come back, Cathy! Please come back!”
Propped up against the door like a dummy, Paul imagined he could hear above his wife’s cries the mocking muted roar of a sports car.
SURF
BY JOSEPH HANSEN
Venice
(Originally published in 1976)
Lieutenant Ken Barker of the L.A.P.D. shared a gray-green office with too many other men, too many gray-green metal desks and file cabinets, too many phones that kept crying for attention like new life in a sad maternity ward. He had a broken nose. Under his eyes were bruises. He wore beard stubble. His teeth were smoky. He scowled across a sprawl of papers and spent styrofoam cups.
He said: “Yes, Robinson was murdered. On the deck of his apartment. In that slum by the sea called Surf. Shot clean through the head. He went over the rail, was dead when he hit the sand. There’s nothing wrong with the case. The DA is happy. What do you want to mess it up for?”
“I don’t.” Dave shed a wet trench coat, hung it over a chairback, sat on another chair. “I just want to know why Robinson made Bruce K. Shevel the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. Didn’t he have a wife, a mother, a girlfriend?”
“He had a boyfriend, and the boyfriend killed him. Edward Earl Lily, by name. With a deer rifle, a thirty-thirty. Probably Robinson’s. He owned one.” Barker blinked. “It’s weird, Dave. I mean, what have you got—an instinct for this kind of case?”
“Coincidence,” Dave said. “What does probably mean—Robinson was ‘probably’ killed with his own gun.”
Barker found a bent cigarette. “Haven’t located it.”
“Where does Lily say it is?”
“Claims he never saw it.” Barker shuffled papers, hunting a match. “But it’ll be in the surf someplace along there. Or buried in the sand. We’re raking for it.” Dave leaned forward and snapped a thin steel gas lighter. Barker said thanks and asked through smoke, “You don’t like it? Why not? What’s wrong with it?”
Dave put the lighter away. “Ten years ago, Bruce K. Shevel jacked up his car on one of those trails in Topanga Canyon to change a tire, and the car rolled over on him and cost him the use of his legs. He was insured with us. We paid. We still pay. Total disability. I’d forgotten him. But I remembered him today when I checked Robinson’s policy. Shevel looked to me like someone who’d tried self-mutilation to collect on his accident policy.”
“Happens, doesn’t it?” Barker said.
“People won’t do anything for money.” Dave’s smile was thin. “But they will hack off a foot or a hand for it. I sized Shevel up for one of those. His business was in trouble. The policy was a fat one. I don’t think paralysis was in his plans. But it paid better. The son of a bitch grinned at me from that hospital bed. He knew I knew and there was no way to prove it.”
“And there still isn’t,” Barker said. “Otherwise you could stop paying and put him in the slams. And it pisses you off that he took you. And now you see a chance to get him.” Barker looked into one of the empty plastic cups, made a face, stood up. “You’d like him to have killed Robinson.”
He edged between desks to a coffee urn at the window end of the room, the glass wall end. Dave followed. Through vertical metal sun slats outside, gray rain showed itself like movie grief. “I’d like Robinson to have died peacefully in bed of advanced old age.” Dave pulled a cup from a chrome tube bolted to a window strut and held the cup while Barker filled it. “And since he didn’t, I’d sure as hell like him to have left his money to someone else.”
“We interviewed Shevel.” Next to the hot plate that held the coffee urn was cream substitute in a widemouth brown bottle and sugar in little cellophane packets. Barker used a yellow plastic spoon to stir some of each into his coffee. “We interviewed everybody in Robinson’s little black book.” He led the way back to his desk, sat down, twisted out his cigarette in a big glass ashtray glutted with butts. “And Shevel is a wheelchair case.”
Dave tasted his coffee. Weak and tepid. “A wheelchair case can shoot a gun.”
Barker snorted. “Have you seen where Robinson lived?”
“I’ll go look. But first tell me about Lily.” Dave sat down, then eyed the desk. “Or do I need to take your time? Shall I just read the file?”