Just then Raymer heard his name being called and saw Miller hurrying toward him excitedly. “Guess what?” he said.
“You found the wheel boots?”
“In the maintenance shed. Right where you said they’d be. How’d you know, Chief?”
“You can stop calling me that. I just resigned.”
Miller looked genuinely terrified at this news, as if it meant he himself would now be given the position. Which probably would happen in the fullness of time. It had happened to Raymer, after all. “You can’t resign, Chief.”
“That’s what I just told him,” Gus said, and Miller nodded eagerly, happy to have his judgment confirmed by someone in authority.
“Just watch me,” Raymer said.
Roger was now wincing like people do at a horror movie whose plot involves a chain saw.
“What?” Raymer said.
“Stop scratching it!” the other man screamed.
—
YOU SHOULD THINK about it, said Dougie.
What?
Going on TV.
No chance.
Just let me do the talking.
Yeah, right.
It was tempting, though. Not that he considered himself a hero. But it did buoy his spirits to think that Gus was willing to pretend he was one on live television. They wouldn’t be telling any outright lies. If Joe Gaghan survived his injuries, then Raymer had, in fact, saved a life. By all accounts the life of a complete fucking asshole, but still. At least his mother would be happy. It was also true that he really had done some solid police work in locating William Smith. Okay, he hadn’t, as Gus suggested, pulled it off single-handedly. It was Dougie who’d led him, practically by the nose, from evidence to inference to hypothesis to solution, by asking all the right questions. And when Raymer had been paralyzed by the sight of the serpent, it was Dougie who’d snatched it and put it back in the box. Still, he’d used Raymer’s hand, so that was something.
We’re a team, said Dougie, who as usual was eavesdropping. That’s how you should think of it. As a partnership.
Except you don’t exist, Raymer replied. You’re an electrical charge, and as soon as I finish here I’m heading to Gert’s and drinking beer for the rest of the afternoon and evening. And every time I go to the head I’m going to piss a little bit of you onto the urinal cakes. That’s how you should think of it.
Where are we going? Dougie wanted to know.
You know where.
Yeah, but why?
Fuck off, Raymer barked, surprised that his voice sounded more like Dougie’s than his own. Leave us alone.
Becka’s grave looked different now. The rose petals that had blanketed the ground last night had mostly blown away, the few remaining now brown and curling in the sun, along with the denuded, thorny stems. Farther down the row, under a hedge, Raymer spotted the plastic cone that had held the roses her boyfriend had left there. Always, Peter Sullivan had written. Why not name him? Raymer had made the identical pledge to the same woman before God and family and friends, both he and Becka swearing I do, only to discover a few short years later that they didn’t. With her death Always had transitioned to Nevermore for all three of them.
The sky above was a deep, reassuring cloudless blue that Raymer found gratifying. In the unlikely event that Ghost Becka actually existed, if she was still intent on frying him, she’d have a hell of a time manufacturing a charge out of such benign atmospherics. Best not to taunt her, though, so he just said, “It’s me, Becka. I’m back. How about that, right? Two visits in twenty-four hours after none for…” He paused here, deciding on a new tack. “I’ve been doing some soul-searching, and I just wanted you to know…” But this thought trailed away as well.
What did he want her to know? That he forgave her? (He wasn’t sure about this.) That he understood? (Did he?) And did he even know for a fact that she’d fallen for Sully’s son because he was smart and good looking and educated and could talk about all the things Becka had been so hungry to discuss? Maybe it was none of that. Maybe it was just hot sex. Also, he didn’t have any evidence that it was Peter Sullivan. Better to stick to what he did know.
“I just wanted to tell you I risked my life today. Apprehended a criminal. Also saved somebody’s life, or so they tell me. Oh, and I figured out where Sully stashed those wheel clamps. I told you it was him. Anyway, for once you would’ve been proud of me.”
Silence. He half expected a little sarcasm from Dougie, but none was forthcoming.
“I don’t think I ever made you proud back when you were alive. I feel bad about that. Maybe you wouldn’t have been all that proud of me even today. Because mostly, I admit, I’m still the same, well, the same guy you married. I still make a mess of things. I just wanted you to know that — for me? — this has been a pretty good day. The first really good one since you died. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m through blaming you for finding somebody…better. So I think it’s time, you and me, we made a deal.”
He gave her time to…what? Provide some kind of sign?
“Because I think I finally figured out what you want, and why you’ve been so upset with me. I think you want your privacy. Is that it, Becka? You want me to not know what was in your heart? You want to keep that secret.”
He paused here, again giving her time to consider.
“Anyhow, that’s my deal. If you’re interested. You get to keep your secret and I get to figure out what comes next. Would that work for you? I think maybe I know who the man is. But I won’t bother him, I promise. I won’t ask him how it happened. Which one of you it was. Because, you’re right, it’s none of my business. So…what do you say?”
There was the smallest breath of breeze just then, gently lifting Raymer’s hair as it had on Charice’s porch. He felt himself smile.
“Chief Raymer?”
The voice was so near that he assumed it must be Dougie doing a weird impression, but he turned and saw it was Rub Squeers. He was holding something, and it took Raymer a moment to realize what it was.
“I fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-found this yesterday—” said Rub, perspiring with the effort of speech. “At the buh-buh-buh-buh—”
“Bottom of the grave?”
“Bottom of the grave,” Rub agreed, clearly relieved to be understood.
Raymer took the remote from him.
When the other man was gone, Raymer stood with his back to Becka’s grave, turning the device over in his hands. Once again the breeze lifted his hair.
But when he turned around again, it was Dougie who spoke in a voice that sounded just like Raymer’s own, No deal, toots.
After all, it wasn’t like he and Becka had shook on it.
Charade
HAVING SLEPT THROUGH most of the day, Carl Roebuck awoke with a start at two-thirty in the afternoon with his hand in his boxers. Sadly, such lunacy was becoming the new normal. Unable to fall asleep most nights until it was nearly time to get up, he arrived on the job a sleepwalker, blinking, addled, unable to focus. A triple espresso wouldn’t have kept him awake, not that there was anyplace in Bath where you could get one of those. When his crew broke for lunch Carl usually went home with the idea of taking a catnap on the couch, but once there he’d fall into a sleep so profound that even his brand-new cellular telephone, placed a few feet away on the coffee table, its ringer on high, couldn’t rouse him. Quitting time was five-thirty, and he usually made it back to the job site in time to check on the day’s progress, assess new hazards and prioritize, with the help of his job foreman, tomorrow’s challenges, which, like today’s, would likely go unmet.