Good Fences
Marshall Crane
Published by Shapato Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Marshall Crane
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Cover art created by Greg Foreman
In the Desert by Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)
This novel is dedicated to all whose lives have touched mine in some small or great way; a part of you is in this story.
Marshall Crane
Spirit Lake, Iowa
Chapter 1
I woke with a gut-empty feeling. It happens when I think of those I have loved and lost. I was thinking about my father. He died years ago. Dad practiced law in a small town in Middle America, a tax and estate specialist. He was beloved in the community, and his charity toward others earned him much business. As a father he was a benevolent dictator, ruling hearth and home with an iron hand of fairness.
I'd loved him and I still missed him.
While tripping and tumbling through my high school years, Dad employed me to clean his office every Wednesday night. I earned fifty bucks a month, and I learned the meaning of a buck. The money was welcome, and there was a side benefit that came with the job. Wednesday night was church night in our little town. I was a teenager and didn't need God on Wednesdays and didn't go to church. My Presbyterian buddies were stuck in church thinking, Shit, Rick Burns is cool.
But back to my father.
He had a rather large office for a one-lawyer business. It was located on the second floor of a two-story building in the middle of a town filled with two-story buildings. Nineteen tiled steps rose up from the street entrance. I washed those nineteen steps once a week. At the top of the stairs, on the left hand, just inside the office door, lay a long and narrow waiting area with eight chairs and two tables mirrored in tight formation against each of two walls, reminding me of a sort of mini-courtroom waiting for the jury to take its place. A small room opposite the door housed a secretary and her desk. To the far left of the entrance, one of two office windows looked in on the head secretary and her desk. These two ladies were Dad's permanent employees. He employed a third and sometimes a fourth during tax season. These "temps" worked out of another room located to the right of the hall door. Two desks, a conference table with four chairs, several gray metal file cabinets and two walls of library shelves filled the space. The shelves held American Law Reviews, and in a special glassed-enclosed area, the state's Law Codes stood at attention, the first volume dating 1848, sequencing to the present. Open the glass front and there was the unmistakable ancient smell of dust and glue binding. The oldest volumes were fragile in their tan-jacketed antiquity.
Dad was proud of this collection of legal history. He once told me, "Son, in order to understand the law, one must understand the evolution of law-making. These codes trace that history. If you ever want to see how our state got to where it is today, read them."
Well, I never did.
Dad's private office door was within yelling distance of the head secretary with the second of the two office windows. A dark chocolate-colored leather couch sat directly under the window, its leather scent meeting each visitor as they came in for consultation. Two paintings hung on the wall; both represented different aspects of foxhounds making a chase through an English countryside with horses and riders in hot pursuit. Two heavy oak chairs parked themselves at a glass-topped mahogany business desk behind which "The Judge" operated from a high-backed tanned leather rocker.
I remember one night after cleaning, I was in a snooping mood. I sat in dad's chair and rolled it up to the desk. An ever-present ashtray sat on top, filled with the residue of packs of cigarettes, the rancid smell of mouth-wetted filters and many days' old tobacco cinders begging for disposal, but there were other important matters to attend to. I checked the lower right hand desk drawer and found a bottle of Glenkinchie Scotch whiskey, two glass tumblers and a carton of Old Gold cigarettes. Dad used to light one cigarette from the nearly spent burning ashes of another. I understood the cigarettes.
One day I asked him about the booze. He told me about Frank Horst.
Frank Horst lived on a Century Farm. Frank had looked into his mortality, and at age seventy-five didn't like what he saw. He wanted the farm to continue in the family after he died, so old Frank sought out Dad. Inheritance taxes could be avoided if the farm wasn't in old Frank's name. Dad prepared him to sign ownership of the family farm over to his boy, Frank, Jr.
Dad liked to talk in parables, and I often wondered where his stories were headed. I was wondering about this story.
Well, Frank, Jr. was a decent son, thirty-five years old, with a pretty wife and a little daughter, and he wanted to stay on the farm. The setup was perfect. The proper documents were readied and old Frank took pen in hand to sign the ownership succession. But instead of signing the document, he sat motionless at that mahogany desk, staring at the papers, hands sweating and shaking. He looked helplessly at my father. Old Frank was simply unable to give away control of the farm. Out came the Scotch and a conversation. An hour later old Frank worked up the courage to do the right thing.
Dad was a pretty smart lawyer. He knew people. This isn't a learned trait; it's part of the DNA. He knew his Scotch, too. I wondered if I had gleaned a scrap of his genetic map.
One time Dad stepped out of his comfort zone when asked to work with the defense team on a criminal trial case. He had worked criminal cases when he'd been County Attorney thirty years before, and admitted he missed the thrill that went along with trial work.
At stake in this particular case was the future of a teenage boy who was being sued for negligent homicide by the parents of a girl who'd died as a result of an auto accident. The boy had been the driver. The dead girl, his girlfriend. The two were coming home together from a ball game one night. There was a head-on crash at the crest of a hill. Someone had crossed the center line. The trial lasted four days. When the jury finished deliberations, Dad called home and asked if I wanted to come to the courthouse to sit in on the announcement of the verdict.
It was tense in the courtroom. Families on both sides feared what could take place. Dad and his partner had bet on which jury member would be chosen foreman. Lawyers do that. It seemed a bizarre diversion at a time like this. After about twenty minutes the jury came back. The verdict, "Not guilty."
The boy's parents were ecstatic. They cried for joy. Their son smiled in relief and he cried, too. The defense lawyers smiled stoically, and I smiled because my father had won the case. But the dead girl's parents? They cried too. They were left alone a second time—the first by the accident, this time by the law of reasonable doubt.
The boy had probably been at fault, but no one could be certain.
Less than a year later, on a summer evening, along the same road where that accident had occurred, this same young man was driving home from work. It was a balmy night. His windows were down to catch the winds off the road. A fully loaded lumber truck he was following let loose a piece of two-by-four-inch pine. The last thing the kid probably saw was that board crashing through his windshield. It sliced his head from his body.
My father never did criminal work again, and he never talked about that boy.
Three years later, Dad gave up his ghost to cancer. A tumor lodged first in his left lung, and surgeons removed part of it. Then the cancer started on his right lung. The surgeons revisited and the chase was on. The cancer decided to go to the brain, detouring first through the lower back for good measure. The surgeons gave up. It wasn't sweet and it wasn't quick . . . not quick like a two-by-four.
The day after Dad's funeral I went to his office, and in the lower right hand drawer of the mahogany desk found seven packs of Old Golds and a half bottle of twelve-year Scotch. I damned the cigarettes to hell and drank the Scotch to empty. But the booze didn't give me the courage to do the right thing when I would sorely need it twenty years later.
Well, anyway, after that, a young lawyer bought my father's business. This young guy worked hard to maintain the practice and keep the clients, and he was successful.
Two years later and a week before Christmas, following a twelve-hour workday, this lawyer closed shop for the night. He was the last out of the office. The secretaries, in the spirit of the season, had purchased a Christmas tree from the local Kiwanis Club and set it in the waiting room, lighting it with colored bulbs.
After flicking off the ceiling lights and crossing the threshold of the office, half in and half out of the room, the lawyer noted that the tree was still lit. As he later told the investigators, he looked at the tree and thought of his wife and their new son and the gifts under his own tree at home, and decided, for the sake of the season, to leave the lights on. He locked the door, walked down the nineteen tiled steps to the street below and happily headed home, whistling "Jingle Bells."
Back up in the darkened office the tree shined for, well, nobody, really. Its nettles had thirsted for water, the lights were old, the wiring frail, and the resulting fire engulfed the entire building, destroying everything: my old man's desk, his high-backed leather chair, the historical state codes for which he had taken such pride. All gone . . . along with any tangible grasp I had of the business side of my father.
What kind of karma does that to a man's memory?
Chapter 2
I was nineteen when my father died. I wanted to be like him. I gave three years to his memory through government and literature studies, until I realized that the practice of law was not my calling. Something in me felt that karma and two-by-four pine boards would be the final judges on most issues. So, instead of a juris doctorate, I walked out of the University of Colorado with a teacher's certificate and a job in Estes Park.
For the past twenty years I've taught literature to seniors: Shakespeare and Dickens, Steinbeck and Hemingway, Robert Burns, Frost and Wordsworth. It's been a mildly fulfilling career.
I've never married. The thought of loving someone "Till a' the seas gang dry" seems a bit too long. Even punishing.
I am not opposed to love, for the sake of love, by definition. It's worthy of study. I've been in love. It used me. It hurt me. I stay away from love. I teach about it for the sake of the paycheck. And that's okay.
Estes Park is a nice town. The rushing sounds of the Big Thompson and Fall River are a constant wherever you walk. Born at twelve thousand feet, they run their courses into Estes Park. Their confluence comes at midtown, becoming then the Big Thompson River. It flows on to Loveland, which lies thirty miles east on US 34 and three thousand vertical feet down from Estes Valley. The Twin Owls, a rock formation to the north, keeps sentinel watch over the river, Lake Estes, and the people of the village.
Estes Park is a resort town which owes much to the tourism dollar. And like other resort towns, a diverse population calls it home. There are some old-timers who sit in coffee shops in the early mornings. They don't embrace diversity. They see diversity as the breakdown of society. They see that diversity changes the way we are and the way we will be. Some grab onto that idea and take it all the way to the grave. I once read somewhere that old men often "confuse their private terminal sensations with that of universal twilight."
I think the town will survive this debate. In fact, embracing diversity might be what actually saves society in the end. But, what the hell do I know?
Estes Park abuts Rocky Mountain National Park, and every fall elk herds take over the city when they come down from the high country to mate in the valleys. At night the city park is home to females and their yearlings. During the day, elk graze the back yards of homes, fairways of golf courses and just about anywhere they are allowed to roam. The elk walk through town in the predawn hours, helping themselves to human food sniffed out of trash receptacles set up along the sidewalks on Elkhorn Avenue. If you rise early, you can go up into Rocky Mountain National Park in any number of valleys and watch the sunrise show. As if on cue, elk herds appear from out the pine and aspen groves, onto the open valley floors. Here bulls seek dominance and rack-to-rack meetings with other bulls. Their piercing call fills the valleys with dreamlike echoes.
The bulls, in want of cows to add to their harem, separate potential mates from an established herd into the new herd, all the while running and dodging and hiding, waiting for the right moment to stake a new female, their ghost breaths exhaling from nostrils in the crisp cold mountain mornings. It is a sight.
It's beautiful here in Colorado. It's close to perfect. I'll love it till I die, if I live that long.
Chapter 3
"Mr. Burns?"
"Jan," I said, deadpanning.
"Mr. Burns. Can I go to my locker?"
"‘May I go to my locker, Mr. Burns'. . . and yes you can."
There you have it. This is teaching. Life is complete. Take me now, Lord.
"Sorry. Ma-a-ay I?"
I nodded.
"Thanks, Mr. Burns."
Jan would be back in five minutes, right at the bell. Jan was blonde and attractive, intelligent, and didn't smack her gum while chewing. I appreciated her more than she'd ever know. Gum-smackers drive me to distraction. And Jan was predict-able. So were they all predictable.
At some point in this chosen career my attitude toward teaching took a slightly negative turn. I liked the kids, and they demonstrated a respect for their teacher in a sort of hands-offish way. But there was something that lessened my actual desire to teach as time went by. Perhaps it was not caring enough, or maybe it was an awakening that comes to some after years in the occupation. Yet it wasn't really the kids that caused this attitude. It had much to do with the society of education itself.
In spite of all the research spouted by the education noblesse, we never really seem to improve upon that which makes us human learners. Education leaders insist that the human being can be improved, and they insist that teachers center their classroom instruction on that predicate. As appealing as it sounds, there is a flaw in this ideal.
Toward this end education modifies and recycles itself about every seven years. Each cycle creates a new vocabulary to learn, new paperwork to complete, new theories to explore, new research to discuss and the testing . . . oh, the testing of applications to determine what makes a new and improved human being. Those poor politicians and theorists continue to believe that man can be taught into a better being.
It really isn't so complicated: We are what we are. We all have brains which learn at certain capacities. As we age, the brain changes. Cells rearrange themselves, synapses close rank (or not). There is nothing teachers or well-meaning politicians can do to either improve on it, or, thankfully, destroy it. This is the human process. This is biology. It's been this way since Adam and Eve. Since that first fish stood up on two legs.
Abraham Lincoln was a self-made man who learned under the most primitive of physical circumstances. Had he lived today, in this technical world of ours, he would still be the same man, neither any better nor any worse. I have seen little to suggest that we have improved on Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps he could have had better timing in his choice of theatrical performances.
I tired of working through education cycles. Show me a way to improve on the Gettysburg Address and find a human being new and improved over Lincoln. Then we'll talk.
What I have with these kids is this: They know me and I know them, and we get along fairly well. There's no excessive pain on either side. I merely help them adjust to their evolving capacities and challenge that capacity. That's what a good teacher and education itself should aim toward. Some teachers do perform better than others, granted. But we try to leave no one behind.
"So, Pip loves Estella with a passion, but she does not return the favor. Who is responsible for Estella's obvious lack of good taste?" I asked no one in particular.
The class went into evasive action. Some sweated, others shook, and still others slunk down into their seats or ducked behind either their laptops or the person directly in front. They didn't like the question. All of them except Josh Holston, who sat in the back corner, staring at nothing, saying nothing and reacting to nobody. I didn't call on him, and that was okay. Josh was nineteen years old, old by senior standards, which may account for his silence in class. I sensed he would graduate quietly and disappear into the future, quietly.
Josh Holston moved in from Mississippi last year, but he never had any crowd to hang with in school. Again, his age may have been a factor. His hazel eyes reflected little of his thoughts and I'd never really seen him smile. He did, however, demonstrate a level of intelligence that separated him from the ordinary. He made choices from angles the rest of us didn't always understand. When he contributed, he challenged me in ways other students did not.
Josh looked, in all respects, normal. He stood five-foot-eightish with brown, close-cut hair and a diamond stud earring sparkled from his lower left ear lobe. Fifteen pounds over-weight, he was like many other slightly overweight students. Josh dressed like other kids. Today he wore a brownish western-style shirt, the kind with pearl snap buttons, Levi jeans and Tony Lama boots.
A native to Estes Park, Josh's father came back to work hardware in a store on Route 7, south of downtown. His mother was a dental secretary in a practice out on Highland Drive. The family appeared to have settled into Estes Park comfortably. Whatever baggage Josh brought with him to school was secreted away somewhere. None asked and none seemed to care. He was a cipher in the mountain snow . . . a large cipher, a deep snow. There were lots of Joshes in this beat up world. They needed attention but did not often get it. I didn't give Josh attention.
Well, no one wanted to address the question of the moment. It was old Miss Havisham who turned young Estella into a man-eater. She took them by their hearts, tore them up, and spat them out. I knew this. I had lived this. But did Marcus Jermot? He played football and dated Jan. He was a slinker.
"Marcus, sit up! What do you think about Estella?"
Marcus pushed his linebacker frame halfway into position. He'd been watching the sway of Jan's hips as she walked out of the room, his mind no more on Great Expectations than mine was on whether or not he knew the answer.
"Who, me?" he asked.
Marcus chose his words wisely and infrequently.
"Yes, Marcus. Do you see any other Marcus in this room?"
Brilliant. I had Marcus right where I wanted him. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
"Uh, what was the question, Mr. Burns?"
Ah, I was ready for that, too. But Jan spoiled it all by walking back in the room, her hair still blonde, jaw working on Trident, hips swaying, and everyone looking her way. The bell rang.
Marcus, I thought, I'll get you next week. He saw my look. He knew he would be "on the rack" come Monday.
The students filtered out of the room
"Good-bye, Mr. Burns."
"Bye, Amy. Have a great weekend."
"See you, Mr. Burns."
"Monday, Evermore . . . " I pointed my index finger at him.
"Yah, okay," he laughed. "Hey, Mr. Burns, it was Miss Havisham who taught Estella to be a man-eater, right?"
"Atta boy, Bob. Stick with that story."
He laughed out the door. Bob Evermore and Amy Crenshaw were good kids.
It was the weekend, middle of May, one week till summer break, and the kids' minds nestled on spring baseball and track. For myself, I had a Mazda MX5 outside in the parking lot, waiting for me to pop its top and test the curves up in the National Park, a ride I took as often as possible.
"Rick!"
Damn!
Sue Richy came walking down the hallway from her class-room. Sue was a fellow teacher. She taught accounting and coached girls' track. She was an attractive woman, soft blue eyes and skin to match, high cheekbones and a proud stature. Sue had the look you see in pictures of ancient Egyptian queens, long and elegant, tall and slender. Auburn hair fell to her shoulders. She was wearing a blue cotton boat-necked Gap sweater which hung easily outside straight-legged jeans above Nike runners. It all fit her well, like a catalog picture. Sue had the body of an athlete, a four-hundred-meter hurdler who'd represented the University of Alabama at the summer Olympic tryouts eight years earlier. She was single and eight years my junior and I was not interested except as a critical observer. She wanted someone to help her with field events. I knew this. I had other plans.
"Hi Sue. Say, I have a four o'clock appointment with Steve Shields, insurance stuff, you know," I lied. "Can't make it to-night."
"It's alright," she said. "I actually came to tell you that Dan and Maggie are here to help out with high jump and discus, and the shot-putters are working on technique with Shirley. Don't need you tonight. Take care. Have a great weekend. My best to Steve, Mr. Burns."
She was heavy on the "mister." That was sarcasm.
Sue waved, turned and walked away.
I watched her go through the side door, opening on to the track. She had a nice sway to her hips. Interesting. But, shit, never waste a lie if you can help it.
Hell, now I had to talk to Steve about weaving tangled webs.
Chapter 4
Slipping behind the wheel of a Mazda MX5 comes with ease, if you're five-foot-five and weigh 150 pounds. I touch on six feet and tip out at 215. So, it's butt first and legs close behind. The fit was snug and that's just fine by me. The leather seats accepted my weight and the six-speed manual was poised. A turbo-charged engine, with high octane in its belly, itched to take the familiar, high winding road to Deer Ridge Junction and on to Trail Ridge Road.
Running to 12,000 feet on Highway 34, Trail Ridge Road was the highest continuous road in the U.S. It passed the continental divide and fell down on its windward side to Grand Lake, a quiet and peaceful village, a little more removed from the madding crowd that was Estes Park.
The winter snows had been above normal by Colorado standards and the road was closed at the nine thousand-foot level. The two snowplows especially created for these mountain roads and their drivers were both a little outgunned by wet spring snowfalls. The goal was to open by Memorial Day. It might not be until the first week of June that Trail Ridge would be completely opened this year.
The afternoon sun was working to get to 65 degrees, but this car would be open-aired in a few seconds. I unhooked the two fasteners on either side of the windshield, released and lifted the black cloth top over my head to rest behind the front seats into the roof well. The engine had a starting sound that awakened the kid in me, a low rumbling soft purr at 900 rpms. There was no hurry. I clutched into first gear to 10 mph, second to 20 and out the school parking lot. I avoided looking straight on at the practicing track team, but the peripheral eye caught a waving Sue Richy (shit), and I moved third gear to 30, fourth to 45, past the Stanley Hotel on my right, fifth to 60, the engine hitting 3,500 rpms. Sixth gear would release the tension on the engine, but I wanted to keep tension there, for later use on the uphill curves ahead. Toyo racing tires hugged the middle of the road along 34, Fall River cutting through the mountains on the left, below the road, and rock cliffs rising on my right. The Miata stayed to the road like a train on the track. Inertia pushed me to the side at the curves; my confidence in this car was a proven.
The air was just this side of too cool, even with my green long-sleeved shirt. I had an Old Navy dark blue sweatshirt in the trunk of my car. It was an old thing, shredded at the cuffs and around the collar, but the sleeves were long, and it had been with me for ten years. I stopped the car and retrieved the sweatshirt. It fit loosely and comfortably over my frame.
Rocky Mountain National Park, past Fall River Entrance, lay ahead. The anticipation of the drive gave way to a mental and physical release of tensions, which was important to the male of the species. It was a good escape.
I drove to the first overlook of Horseshoe Park, and moved to the curb, settling in neatly between white-painted parking stripes. I enjoyed coming up here. From this vantage point I watched for Rocky Mountain sheep that come down from higher up to graze the grasses and drink from Sheep Lakes. These lakes, ponds actually, contained mineral salts that the sheep desired. They needed to come down to the valley for this water. I kept a pair of Bushnell 10 x 24 binoculars in my glove box for such occasions, to get up close and personal for the show.
It was already colder here than in Estes Park. I had come up about fifteen hundred feet in altitude from the school. I grabbed my gray Early Winters stocking hat. Its Gore-Tex kept the head warm. The hat was fifteen years older than my sweater and was made in the USA. Imagine that.
I was the only soul parked at the overlook. I kept the engine at idle, allowing the turbo to cool off before shutting down. There wasn't much time before the sun disappeared over the peaks, but there was time to enjoy what remained of the day. I looked out at the mountains: Mummy Range to the northwest; Mounts Chapin and Chiquita; Ypsilon Mountain rising to thirteen thousand feet. I turned my eyes to the valley below and shut the ignition. The silence was sudden and nearly alarming. The scene was worthy of Bierstadt's brush strokes. As majestic as the mountains were, the valley below, with Fall River swinging lazily through grasses before its plunge toward sea level, was equally awe-inspiring.
I got out of the car and held the glass prisms for a view. Over toward the ponds and up the mountainside there was no activity yet. There was no guarantee the sheep would show simply because I was there to observe. They worked to their own will, not mine. One needed to appreciate that about Nature. Her theater opened on its own timetable, at times when we most expect it, at times rarely, or not at all. And herein was the beauty, when you are haply there to witness.
Not everybody approached the mountains as they should be approached, which is slowly.
Last summer on the Bear Lake hiking trail I'd run into a visiting family. They were going at a brisk pace, and it was obvious the father was in a rush to see as much of the scenery as possible in as short a time as he could work it. They plowed ahead on the trail around the lake, below Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain. They were all hurry, hurry, hurry. He saw me. He was huffing and wheezing. I was sitting on a large boulder that reached out into the north end of Bear Lake, soaking up sun.
He'd wheezed and asked, "Is there anything on ahead?"
I looked at him a little longer than was necessary and replied, "Well, have you seen anything yet, buddy?"
"Asshole," he'd spat/wheezed, and off they went, circling the lake, like clowns running round a circus ring.
Mountains take time . . . and shallow breathing.
Chapter 5
Darkness came, and so did the cold, but not the sheep. I went back to the car. The top went back up, and I started the engine, turned the heater to low but didn't leave the parking lot. I sat and thought. When I sat and thought, my mind sometimes became undisciplined and wandered to places I didn't want to visit. But whenever I caught myself doing that, it was already too late.
That place was Sara Reese. It was an old hurt. It was from a long time ago, from the days when my heart still leapt up at rainbows in the sky.
Sara had come to Colorado by way of San Diego. From my country boy point of view, she was The Beach Boys' California Girl in the flesh: straight blonde, waist-length hair on a five-foot nine-inch frame, supported by long and perfectly shaped legs. Her eyes were emerald green, lips promising, and her breasts invited attention. Sara's presence commanded the scene wherever she happened to be. Guys and gals alike looked to her for acceptance and she fed on the attention.
Sara was a drama and music major at CU. I was the lawyer wannabe. I had a sense of humor and unquestioned good looks, of course. And I obeyed. Where she went, I went. When she dined, I dined, when she slept, I slept with her. Watching her move and listening to her sing sent my soul to heaven. Loving her was drama itself. I watched her on stage. And at every curtain rise I fell in love with her all over again—Sandy in Grease, Desdemona in Othello, and Laurey in Oklahoma! I fell in love with her, curtain call after curtain call.
Our lovemaking was gentle and fierce. Obviously it came time to marry this woman. The ring was purchased, the proposal made, the irony followed.
Sara wanted to experience it all. Rick Burns was a part, a bit part as it turned out, on her road to fame. Sara Reese had doors to open. And that meant some doors would close. I stood behind just such a closing door, in an empty room, watching the light from the other side fade away from me, narrower and narrower the light, till there was only a sliver of Sara remaining, till there was nothing. And I was alone, in the dark, holding a ring and a broken heart.
As every man will tell you, when your heart is broken you go to your car and drive. I drove to Central City to gamble and drink beer. I was as true as my word. I gambled. I drank beer. The ring exited my car around 10:30 that night somewhere along Route 279, just outside Central City. A few minutes down the road I discovered I was not finished with the drinking. I found myself in the Black Forest Inn, testing the quality of German ales. The bartender and I decided on Reissdorf Kolsch. It was smooth. So was the waiter's accordion rendition of "Edelweiss." Everything after midnight that night was a blur, including the ride back to Boulder.
Sara Reese was the first woman I'd ever loved. The memory of her lives and breathes in the pit of me, surfaces when I find myself alone and wandering, whenever a timber loosens in the fence I built around me after she left long ago, whenever I fool myself with thoughts of peace.
Shit. Double shit.
Chapter 6
My cell phone broke the scene. It was a relief, really. I picked it up, checked the caller ID, and said, "Hey Steve."
"Rick!"
"Yes I am, buddy"
"Rick, where are you?"
There was urgency in his voice, not usual for my insurance man.
"I'm up in the Park. What's wrong?"
"Okay, you need to get back to town now. Something has happened, and Jesus H. Christ, it's bad! Jesus!"
"Slow down, Steve," I said. "What's happened?"
"Just get to my office."
"Hold on a minute." I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat, shifted to reverse, backed out of the parking lot and raced the gears to six toward Estes Park. I picked up the phone and continued with Steve.
"Now, buddy, what is going on here?"
"When will you get here?"
"I'm driving through Horseshoe Valley as we speak. Give me a few minutes."
"Shit . . ." he said, and the connection broke off.
Steve was a good friend and too young a widower made. Her name had been Debbie. She'd been a wonderful blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman. They were married ten years ago in Jamaica at the Half Moon Resort near Montego Bay. I was the best man, standing beside a very nervous insurance agent under a cabana at the end of a peninsular arm of land stretch-ing into the Caribbean Sea, as we watched Debbie walk on air down the path toward her lover and husband-to-be. It'd been a fine time, a happy time. They'd settled in Estes Park till death did they part.
Three years ago Debbie drove down to Denver for a meeting of the Young Democrats. After the meeting, while driving back to Estes Park, she'd stopped the car to call Steve. She didn't know where she was on the road. She knew she was going home but couldn't remember how to get there. This was a road Debbie knew blindfolded. Steve had her stay where she was and drove I-25 till he found her.
She was scared. She had reason to be. It was a tumor, a fast-growing and terrible tumor. Three weeks later, Debbie died. Steve clung to me and I supported him.
Until this phone call, I hadn't sensed him so upset since that day he watched his wife lose her short battle with Mr. Death.
It was this urgency in his voice that made me understand a bad thing had happened.
Steve's office was in a small suite of rooms in a log-framed two-story building set next to the Pizza Hut by the city green space, right off Alpine Street. It was nearly dark when I got there. His Tahoe was parked in front. The window in his office was the only light coming from the building. Town traffic was not heavy yet. It was early in the season. In two weeks Elkhorn Avenue would be a mess.
I hurried inside the building. His office was a comfortable room, done up in Bob Timberlake fashion with painted hangings of mountain themes on the pine walls and large overstuffed red-brown leather chairs on either side of Steve's desk, his own chair a rocker throne. The floors were wood floors. Real wood; man wood. Steve was not sitting. He was pacing, but he was not alone. Sue Richy was there, and when I came in the room, her eyes reached out to me. They were water-reddened and she looked completely broken. Steve saw me at the same time. I didn't know who to comfort first because Steve was as broken as Sue.
"Steve," I said. "What the hell is happening?"
"Rick, there's . . . there's . . . uh . . . oh, shit. There are two dead kids. Amy Crenshaw and Bob Evermore. Josh Holston killed them. He shot them. They're dead, Rick. I was there. I saw it all."
"Oh," I said half dazed, looking about the room for Bob and Amy to jump out and yell Gotcha! They didn't. "I mean . . . what? Where?"
"Over at Dempsy's." Steve's voice was full of anger and fear and desperation.
Dempsy's is a convenience store/gas station east of town, at the corner of Saddle Road and 34. It was a hangout for the kids, after school and on weekends.
"Where's Josh?"
"The cops have him. He was sitting on the curb by the entrance to Dempsy's. He used a shotgun. He was sitting there, with earphones on, listening to some iPod shit. Rick, he blew the faces off those kids and then he went and sat on the curb like it was Sunday at the playground. I was in the store when it happened, but thank God Tim Cavern was there."
Tim Cavern was a part-time deputy with Larimer County. He was reliable, young and a credit to his town. I worked with Tim during the summers. We were both part-timers with the police department.
"Tim was pumping gas when the Crenshaw gal and Evermore drove up to the store." Here Steve broke into the story Tim shared with police and confirmed by Steve and other witnesses. "The Holston kid was sitting in his car off to the side of the store. You know how kids park down there and just sit and talk with friends? He was sitting there like any normal kid, but when that gal and Evermore got out of their car, Holston got out of his car. Cavern said he watched the nut kid walk up toward Amy. She was closest to Holston. That's when Tim saw that Josh was holding something along his side and then he saw it was a shotgun, and Holston raised the gun as he neared Amy. She didn't even see him till she turned away from the car toward the front of the store. She was face-to-face with the nut, and he shot her in the head. He blew her head off!
"I was standing at the check-out and I saw it. Cavern fell to the ground behind his pick-up, slid over to the back of the truck bed and looked up in time to see Holston aim the gun toward Evermore. Evermore turned away and went down to the ground. It was all slow motion, Rick. Holston walked around the front of Bob's Chevy, adjusted his aim, and shot Evermore in the back of the head. That poor kid's face . . . all over the parking lot.
"Cavern was like thirty feet away and he didn't have his gun with him he told me later, but he had his cell phone and he called Jim Harris at the station. After the call, Tim looked over to see where Holston was. That's when he saw him sitting on the curb of the walkway right by the front door, the shotgun lying next to him while he adjusted his earphones. Tim ran around his truck and threw himself into Holston like a Bronco linebacker. Some of us who were inside the store and closest to the door, ran out and helped Tim hold Holston down while he grabbed the shotgun. But there was no fight in the crazy son-of-a-bitch."
I was dazed. "Anyone else hurt?"
Steve looked to Sue and back to me, shaking his head. "Uh, no, I don't think so."
I turned to Sue. "Are you okay?"
"Oh, Rick," she said. And with that Sue, who had sat down while Steve told the story, rose, put her arms around me, pushed her face into my shoulder and wept.
At the moment I had two free arms with no place to go. So, I held Sue. She seemed small and fragile. But when she brought her face away from my shoulder, there was a questioning look in her eyes.
"Why, Rick? Why didn't we see this coming? What do we not know about kids like Josh until it's too late?"
"I don't know, Sue." I turned to Steve. "What else happ-ened?"
"Well." Steve sat down, leaning forward at his desk, elbows on top. "Jim Harris got there within five minutes. Tim had called the ambulance and they were there a few minutes after Jim. Jim cuffed Holston, spoke briefly with Tim, and looked at the scene in front of him. He read Holston his rights and took him to jail. The department was in full mode by then. More cars came and the area was secured. Those of us there gave our home addresses and phone numbers and were told to go. We were told that statements would be taken later. That's when I went back to my office and called you."
I turned to Sue. "How did you get here?"
"I was working with the runners at track and Jennie Brens' cell phone rang. It was her mother. She was at Dempsey's when it happened. I remembered you said you were going to Steve's and I called the office. He told me you were on your way."
I sat down and breathed deeply, head in my hands. Sue and Steve consoled.
My mind swam with thoughts of two-by-four pine boards and Scotch Whiskey and the total lack of good sense to do what I knew I should have done. Josh Holston needed help a long time ago. I'd paid him no attention, and why? Because I'd lacked the moral courage to extend myself to him. This was part of the answer Sue was searching for.
And it was a terrible truth.
Chapter7
I looked at Sue.
She seemed to read my mind. "Rick, there's nothing we can do now. It's done. The kids need us now. Superintendent Rowles was on the radio and called all teachers to school tomorrow morning. He'll open up the doors to the community."
"It's a good idea. It's the right thing to do, but right now I want to go to the chief's office," I said, getting up and heading for the door.
"Wait, Rick. May I come along?" Sue had placed herself between me and the door. Her eyes were red and her hair pulled back and knotted. Her face was determined. There was no arguing the point.
"Okay."
We looked at Steve.
"I have to call company headquarters," he said. "I hold insurance policies for the Evermore family. That's why I came here first. Herb Evermore had a small policy taken out on Bob. It was a policy meant to serve as a savings account till Bob reached eighteen. The policy was then convertible to cash for college. There was a life benefit attached in case something happened. These things are just not meant to be. Damn!" He reached for his phone.
I opened the office door, and Sue and I left.
Outside, the streets were dark and the lights showed shadowy. I looked at Sue, trying to see into her eyes.
"I need to find out why," I said.
"Alright, Rick," she said. She was looking at me and I hoped she couldn't see the utter hopelessness I felt, the guilt and shame.
"Anything of Josh's would be confiscated," I said. "Computer, cell phones, notebooks, diary, clothing—any sign that would predicate violence. Jim will have all that in hand by now. You and I can offer our assistance. We're two teachers who've known Josh and we should know these kids as well as anyone. Josh's parents might not be in any shape to help. Maybe we can offer somewhat objective eyes."
"It makes sense, Rick," she said.
"Do you still want to come?" I asked.
"Yes . . . sure."
I wanted to ask her why, because I sensed there was some-thing more she wanted to say.
The sheriff's office was less than a block away, so we walked. It was a silent walk. There'd be no good in what we might find. It was a quiet and thoughtful walk.
Jim Harris was a good cop who had worked for the state patrol for fifteen years. He'd paid his dues out on the highways and byways of Colorado. He spent ten years on I-25 between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. His last stop as a highway patrolman was a caravan of in-transit cars, speeding their way south. He stopped the group north of Denver. Jim clocked them on radar at high speeds. He threw his lights on as the first car, a Cadillac, was within range of sight. The whole crew pulled over. There were seven vehicles, all Cadillacs, Fleetwood models, large and fast and all white.
Jim called the stop in to dispatch right away, and moved to the first vehicle. The window came down and, as Jim leaned to the driver, a .357 Magnum greeted him with a blast to the chest.
Jim was knocked across the road and into the median. He never saw the cars leave the scene.
Luckily, Jim had been one of the first law officers to wear the new Honeywell GoldFlex body armor. It was a type II-rated armor, thinner and more resistant then Kevlar, and rated to take a .357 Magnum bullet. The jacket proved its worth that day, but the Colorado State patrol hadn't prepared for Diane Harris, Jim's wife of twenty years. She had waited for her husband to come home every night for the last fifteen of those twenty years. When she received the call on her husband, he was in an ambulance, and she was on the way, with intent.
Jim woke up in St. Anthony Central Hospital in Denver with one hell of a sore chest and Diane by his side. He sub-mitted his resignation the next day, was heralded a hero and went into local affairs in Estes Park, along with Diane and their son, Zach, both living a more secure life with a chief of police for husband and father.
Two days after that shooting, fourteen elderly men were found by hikers, tied and gagged and locked in an old miner's cabin about five miles off I-25 up by Fort Collins. The men had been driving the Cadillacs to auction in Denver from Sheridan, Wyoming when they stopped at a rest area. A black man approached the lead driver, put a gun to his backside and other black men came up to the other drivers. They were put into the cars and taken to the cabin, tied and gagged. Ten empty husks of Cadillac Fleetwoods were discovered three weeks later on an empty dirt road near Nogales, Arizona. And that was that.
Sue and I saw Jim through the window of his office and walked in. Jim looked up and showed us a tired face. To him, we were two more questions to answer to and he was not taking questions.
"Hello, Jim." My weak attempt at innocent conversation.
"Rick . . . Sue. What can I do for you? I'm very busy. This is a real mess."
Jim's office was Spartan. His desk was an old oak teachers' style with a drawer in the middle and three deep pull-out drawers on either side of the chair well. His chair was an oak rocker set on four roller coasters with a butt pillow covering the seat. On the top sat a Dell Inspiron and a John Deere coffee cup filled with pens and pencils. A printer sat on a tray table abutting his desk, papers strewn across its surface. A square card table sat against the north wall and on it was a black ten-cup Krups coffee maker, its decanter half empty with what appeared to be very black coffee. A Folgers tin and a tower of white Styrofoam cups sat next to the maker. A couple of spoons lay by a stack of napkins and packets of sugar and creamers filled a green plastic order-out basket. Jim held a Styrofoam cup in his right hand.
"Jim," I said, "I'll get right to the point. Sue and I want to help you in any way we can."
He looked at us with no particular interest.
"We know these kids," I continued. "Amy, Bob and Josh have been in our classrooms. We've learned something about them. If there's any clue as to why this happened, we might catch it somewhere in the children's personal effects."
I looked at Jim and his face relaxed a microfiber.
"Okay," he said. "I didn't want you here when I saw you come in. Sorry Rick . . . maybe you can help. I don't mean to sound ungracious. You've been a good deputy for me during the summers when it gets hectic around here. You were a big help when it came to dealing with the kids uptown or out in the county. I remember that time we had to break up a little beer party in Glen Haven. There were over 150 kids there. You talked with a few of them, and what could have been a messy situation with kids running all over hell to escape arrest, because of you, turned out to be a rather peaceful walk-away. I owe you. Plus, you know how the system works."
He sighed, and looked at the mess of papers spread across his desk.
"We have the kids' computers and cell phones in the back room of the station," he went on. "They're tagged, hooked up, charged up and ready to go. I can appoint you and Sue as examiners under my supervision, and you could begin to try and connect the dots."
"Has Josh said anything?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not a word. He hasn't said anything to anybody. He's closed down completely. We have him in a holding cell with the standard twenty-four-hour suicide watch to be safe. It's routine."
Sue looked away and wept quietly. There was nothing gratifying about any of this mess. Two lives lost and three families pretty much destroyed, and sitting in a jail cell, the one who could give answers but wouldn't. Maybe Josh simply couldn't give the answers we all needed to hear.
"Okay, we'll get busy." I looked at Sue. She nodded. "If there's an Internet link among the three, we'll find it," I said. "Sue, let's check personal web sites, blogging history, e-mail, music and video downloads."
Jim actually looked relieved. "Thanks, you two. Write down whatever looks suspicious, mark it and we'll review it when you're finished. I'll take you to the screening room."
Chapter 8
He rose and led us out into the hallway, turned right, and at the third door stopped, reached into his pocket for a key, and opened the door.
"We need to keep the chain of evidence in order," he said. "The computers are locked in to us and only we or those appointed by us, with supervision, can have access to them. So, Phil here will be with you at all times."
"Hi, Phil," I said, lifting a hand in greeting. "Haven't seen you around for a while."
Jim said, "I'll be in my office working on reports. Good luck to you two." He turned and walked back down the hallway.
Phil led us to the room along a darkened hallway lit by a single, bared 60-watt bulb.
Phil was a former student at Estes Park, having graduated three years earlier, and he'd entered the Colorado Law Enforcement Training Academy in Spring Valley as soon as he turned twenty-one. His dad had been a retired copper who'd worked security for Brinks and was killed in an armed robbery attempt when Phil was eighteen years old. The tragedy put Phil and his mother into becoming self-providers. It was difficult, but they'd survived. Phil had come back to Estes Park to be with his mom and his friends.
"Hi, Mr. Burns. Hey, Miss Richy," he said. "I feel terrible for what happened. I mean, it's just like I never thought anything like this would happen here. Stuff like this happens in other places . . ." His voice faded away.
"I only wish, Phil," I said.
Sue said, "How's your mom, Phil?"
"Oh, Mom's fine. It's been kinda tough. That first year was hard on both of us. Mom gets out and works full time now down at Wranglers Clothier, ya know. She really likes it there."
Phil unlocked the door and we went into the screening room. It was a barren room with a long table and two chairs. On the table were three computers, each marked with the names of the three kids.
Phil said, "I'll be right outside the door if you need me."
Sue and I looked at one another. Without a word, we sat at the table. I had Josh's and Bob's computers, Sue had Amy's. Finding the passwords proved to be easy. Passwords are usually written down on paper found in the general area of the computers. We found Amy's and Bob's passwords taped to the backs of their computers. Josh's was taped under his keyboard.
We began to cross-reference any link that might bring the lives of these kids onto common ground. The work was tedious. Amy's interests lay in Abercrombie and Fitch, Bob's in sports, and Josh's in hunting.
Their cell phones showed no cross-reference to one another, no twittering and no shared contacts. In fact, Josh had no contact list at all.
We worked into the night hours but found no evidence of communication between any two or among the three.
Amy and Bob were dating, so there was the obvious linkage there, but with respect to Josh and Amy and Bob . . . nothing. No e-mails and no blog sharing, no Facebook entries and no messaging. Not a hint to show these three had any communication of any sort, nor for that matter, even any similar likes or dislikes.
Josh's e-mails were limited. He had no real friends and his mailbox showed that, but there was nothing Sue or I deemed suspicious.
God, was this a random act, a killing for sport? There must have been intent on the part of Holston. He'd meant to kill. It'd been premeditated. He'd had the gun. But had he intended on targeting just Bob and Amy? Were they random? Like when a young kid takes his twenty-two out to shoot at birds. His intent is to shoot birds, but no birds in particular, only those birds that are nearby and convenient to his position. Is that what Holston had done? How does one define those intentions? But most important, why? Why kill two people like they were birds? And why these two? It defied reason, and Josh Holston wasn't speaking.
Sue looked to me. "Rick, I don't know where to go from here. It's like chasing a shadow. His mind works at a level I don't understand."
That's when something clicked in me. I recalled a brief conversation I'd had with Josh one day a few weeks ago. I had asked him about a paper that was due the following week, and he'd said to me something like, "Finished tasks need finishing, right Mr. Burns?"
"Right, Josh," I'd said. I remembered thinking that this was not a clear-headed response to the inquiry.
Now, the way he'd said the phrase, "Finished tasks need finishing," sounded almost like a philosophical exclamation.
"Sue, I have an idea. Stay with me a minute will you?"
She moved beside me and looked over my shoulder.
I typed, "Finished tasks need finishing," and clicked search.
Up popped ten million responses. This was no good. So I deep-webbed, "Philosophy, finished tasks need finishing," and up came something I certainly had not expected.
Chapter 9
"What is that?" asked Sue.
"I really don't know for sure."
On the screen were the words "Finished Tasks Need Finishing, The New World Order," in large red lettering on a black background. Dripping in red were tears of blood beneath the lower-case letters "i" in the words "finished" and "finishing."
There was no other link on the page. No audio, no other words showed on the screen, just this.
I went back and entered, "Finished tasks need finishing, The New World Order," adding to it and entering these other words: blood, dripping, school, kill, guns, black, red, power, bible, demons, books, hate, and murder. Nothing came up that would lead us to anything worthwhile.
"I need to talk with Josh Holston," I said.
Sue looked at me. "But he's not talking, Rick."
"He'll talk sometime. And he may talk with me."
I got up. Sue was close behind.
Outside the door, Phil was sitting in a folding chair, reading The Rocky Mountain News. He folded the paper, then stood, straightening his shirt. "Can I help you?"