“Condemned to real life,” she said, laughing a little. “Forced to grow up.”
“I could love you now,” he said. “We've both been through it.”
“Quit kidding yourself,” she said. “You could have loved me years ago, when we were kids and drunk all the time, but not now. You can't fall in love unless you can get out of your head.”
“Normal people do it.”
“They're just born insensitive. Born lucky. So we sobered up, and you turned into a depressed cop. And I turned into an unhappy housewife. We're big successes now.”
“There was something brave about what we were doing,” Tim said. “You know? And now we don't even have that.”
“We are the driest of dry drunks,” Valerie said. She got up and came around the table to him. She took his big head in her hands and drew him to her breast, and his arms went around her little waist. “Maybe this will help,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“We could give it a try, anyway. Even if it only lasts a minute.”
“Count on it lasting a little longer than that.”
“Sobriety sucks, it really does,” she said.
“Yeah. The whole situation. Take your panties off, okay?”
Tim put Bodie on Ed Strickland for the next couple of days. Bodie reported that Strickland sat in on three or four regular floating poker games at Camden and at Timberlake. He seemed content to hang around town, like he was waiting for something to happen.
After the second day, Tim got another search warrant, and he and Bodie tore up Strickland's room at the Placer Hotel. But they didn't find anything. The Strickland bank account contained about enough money for next week's groceries.
The Gibraltar man called. “Are you closing the investigation after the inquest tomorrow?” he said. “I need a final report for the records, so I can issue another check for Bayle and get this thing over with.”
“You're going to give up on finding the money?”
“Let me put it to you this way,” Burdick said. “You're Joe Schmoe with a mortgage, fishing along the riverbanks, and what do you snag but a bag full of a fortune in cash? What do you do with it?”
“You tell me.”
“You dry out the bills on an inside clothesline. You wait a few months, and you start spending it slowly and carefully, and you thank your lucky fucking stars,” Burdick said with a laugh. “We call it dead money. Now and then it slips through the cracks. You're never going to find it.”
At the inquest the next day, nothing came out that Tim hadn't heard before. He gave his testimony, and they all called it a day and sloshed over to the hotel for lunch. The coroner's verdict was accidental death in the course of committing a crime, and Tim had no evidence to the contrary, except they still hadn't found the money.
He went back to the office, took care of other business, locked up, went home, and looked in the freezer. Burritos. One of those supermarket pizzas that tasted like paper.
He looked around the place. Something was missing. Oh yeah, Becky and little Dave. They had moved to Illinois. She had filed for divorce a month later.
He was sick of being struck with that thought ten times a day. Something was stinging his eyes. He was damn bored and damn lonely, and he was sick and tired of being bored and lonely, of listening to the forest outside and not being a part of anything.
Next thing he knew, he was on the phone to Valerie. “Can I come over for a while?” he said.
“Wait until nine or so,” she said. “I'll get the kids to bed early.”
He couldn't bring wine, so he stopped and bought her some flowers at the hotel. She opened the door, holding her finger to her lips, and led him directly into the bedroom. The sheets and pillowcases smelled like vanilla and roses, like her. She comforted him, and he did what he could for her.
Sometime later he woke out of a doze, to the clicking of a key being inserted into the kitchen door. Valerie woke up, too. He got up quickly, pulling his service revolver out of the holster hung on the bedpost. Valerie tiptoed behind him as he walked down the hall.
Ed Strickland had his head in the refrigerator. When he saw them, his bloodshot eyes went wide and he let out a strangled yell. “You been sleeping with him!” he said. “I'll fix you-”
“Shut up, you prick,” Valerie said. “I'll sleep with him if I want. Get out.”
“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 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.