Set This House In Order Part 54

"h.e.l.lo, Chief Bradley," Andrew says, looking over Mouse's shoulder.

"Andrea," says Chief Bradley, his voice flat. "I see you're doing better."

"Yes," Andrew says. Mouse is amazed at how calm he sounds. "Better, but not perfect." He holds up his wounded hand, and a line of blood runs down the inside of his forearm. "Is the ambulance coming?"

"No," Chief Bradley says. "I'm afraid not. I called Seven Lakes EMS, and they said the ambulance is already out on call. The dispatcher was going to try to get another paramedic team out here, but since you're better, I think I'll just run you over to the emergency clinic myself."

"That's OK. You don't have to bother. Penny can drive me."

"No, I'll take you. I'll take both of you. Just wait here a moment. . ."

He stalks off through the living room again. Mouse scrambles to her feet the moment he's out of sight; she gets Andrew up, too, and together they move towards the sliding gla.s.s porch doors. But before they can get out, Chief Bradley reappears, corning through the kitchen this time, heading them off. Mouse sees that he is wearing his gunbelt now.

"Wrap your hand in this," Chief Bradley says brusquely, grabbing a dish-towel off the kitchen counter and tossing it at Andrew. Then he stands back, indicating that they should walk in front of him.

"Let's go."

And so they do, out onto the porch and down into the open yard where the cars are parked.

Mouse, feeling like she's floating, starts to drift towards her Buick, but Chief Bradley calls out sternly: "No!" Mouse stops and turns around; the chief steps to the back of his cruiser, opens the door, and gestures for both Andrew and Mouse to get in.

Andrew starts to comply, but Mouse balks. "No," she says, in a barely audible refusal, "no, I, I'll take my car --"

The chief doesn't contradict her, just shifts his stance, giving her a clearer view of the gun on his hip. Then Andrew, perhaps fearing what could happen if Mouse tries to run, says: "Come on, Penny.

We'll ride in the chief's car."

"Andrew. . ."

"Come on," he says, taking her hand. "It'll be fine."

Mouse shakes her head: Oh no it won't. Andrew, smiling -- how does he stay so calm? -- leans in close enough to whisper.

"Don't be afraid," he tells her. "We have him outnumbered."

After shutting us in the back of the patrol car, Chief Bradley grabbed a radio from the front seat and stood outside talking into it. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I could guess: he was calling the paramedics back, telling them his previous call had been a false alarm, and probably telling his own dispatcher not to try contacting him for a while, that he had some private business to take care of.

I waited impa.s.sively for whatever that business might be. Penny was terrified, which was understandable: unlike me, she hadn't just returned from the dead, and didn't have the feeling of invulnerability such an experience confers. That she also hadn't had as much wine with dinner, that she wasn't bleeding, and that her a.s.sessment of our situation might therefore be more clearheaded than my own -- that didn't occur to me.

Chief Bradley finished talking on the radio. He got in the patrol car, glancing at us in the rearview mirror without saying anything, and started the engine. He drove towards town. As we came around the bend onto Alain Street a few moments later, I saw another patrol car up ahead, in front of the police station. I wondered if it was Officer Cahill, and what, if anything, Chief Bradley would say to him.

But Chief Bradley didn't go that way. He turned off Main Street almost immediately, taking a left just past the firehouse. Three blocks along this cross street, we came to the Seven Lakes Emergency Clinic. It was a small but brightly lit building, with a glowing red cross on the front lawn. Chief Bradley slowed the car as we neared the entrance to the parking lot, and I sat up in surprise, thinking I'd had him wrong after all; but then he stepped on the gas again. Penny watched the red cross go by and made an abortive squeak of protest.

"I think you missed a turn, Chief Bradley," I said.

He kept on driving. The street ended in a T-junction, and Chief Bradley turned right, onto a gently curving road that followed the sh.o.r.eline of yet another lake. Between the bungalows and cabins that cl.u.s.tered along the lakebank, I could see dark water glinting red with the last of the sunset.

From its name, you would think Two Seasons Lake was only full for part of the year, like Thaw Ca.n.a.l back in Autumn Creek. In fact, it is one of the largest and most permanent bodies of water in Seven Lakes; only Greenwater Lake is bigger. The sh.o.r.e around the west end of the lake is well-settled, but the east end, where Hansen's Brook flows in, remains mostly undeveloped except for a few isolated cabins and some hiking trails.

This was where Chief Bradley was taking us. As we continued along the sh.o.r.e road, the houses got fewer and fewer and then disappeared; the road got rougher, and not long after that it appeared to dead-end. But Chief Bradley made a final turn onto an overgrown track; it led straight down to the lake and right on into it. As a warning to drivers of non-amphibious vehicles, a chain with a reflectorized stop sign had been strung across the track just a few yards from the water's edge.

The police car didn't want to obey the sign. When we were still some distance from the chain, Chief Bradley took his foot off the gas, but the car continued to roll forward. The chief let it roll, as if curious to see how far it would go; he let go of the steering wheel too. It looked like we were going to go swimming, but at the last moment Chief Bradley dropped his hand and engaged the parking brake. The police car shuddered to a halt.

Chief Bradley killed the engine but left the headlights on; they shone out over the murky waters. I almost asked the chief what he'd brought us here for, not because I needed to be told, but because I thought the question might shame him into reconsidering. In the end I decided to let him speak first.

Several times he seemed about to say something, only to sigh as if the words had escaped him at the last second.

"Do you know," he finally said, "this is where your father drowned." Penny let out a gasp at the blunt mention of drowning, while I had to think a moment which father he was referring to. "Not here,'"

Chief Bradley added. "Out there, in the deep water. There used to be a wooden raft anch.o.r.ed out there, for diving. Kids would go out there sometimes, night-swimming, sometimes drunk, and occasionally there would be accidents."

"Silas Gage had an accident," I said, managing to bite off the last word: too?

"Not like that." He turned around, facing me through the cage that separated the front and back seats, and I was surprised to see what looked like tears starting in his eyes. "How could you even think.

. ." He trailed off, started to face forward again, then turned back, demanding: "What are you thinking, Andrea? What do you want from me? This morning, when I came into work and found you talking with Jimmy, I thought. . . and then that crazy story you told, how you were worried maybe you killed Horace.

. ." He shook his head. "What is it you're after? Is it blackmail? I've already said I'll give you money for the property, and if you want more. . . Or do you just want to punish me for some reason? If that's it, you're too late. Life has already punished me."

"I don't want to punish you." I fingered the steel cage-mesh, and wondered how long it would take Seferis to break through it. "Tell me what happened to Silas Gage."

"I didn't drown your father, Andrea. He did that on his own."

"You were jealous of him."

Chief Bradley sighed. "Jimmy told you."

"No," I said, "you did. Wanting my mother's house so bad, and before that, arranging her funeral.

. . and her burial. That was you, wasn't it, who had her plot changed?"

"That was just simple decency. I couldn't leave her lying forever next to that man."

"Or with his name. The tombstone said Althea Gage, not Althea Rollins."

He chuckled bitterly. "You have sharp eyes, Andrea."

"I saw the epitaph, too. So it's kind of obvious that you were in love with her."

"Yes," Chief Bradley said. "Yes, I was, and more fool me. . . but I loved your father, too. I could have put your mother's maiden name on that stone, if I'd wanted -- or my own. There was no one to object. I was the last, the only person who still cared about her at the end. Even if she never. . .

"I suppose I was jealous of your father," he went on. "But more than that, I was frustrated by him. I don't know if you can appreciate this, Andrea, but the one thing that is worse than not getting what you want, is seeing someone else get it who doesn't value it the way you do. When we were both courting Althea, Silas worked hard to win her love; but once he had her, in particular once they'd married, it was as if he'd decided he didn't have to try anymore. I would have doted on her. . . and even if I hadn't, even if she weren't special, a woman worth doting on, still. . . when a man takes a wife, starts a family, he's supposed to change. Grow up, for G.o.d's sake! It's what's done. But Silas wouldn't. He was fond of her, and I believe he was faithful, but in other ways he failed to give her the consideration that a wife -- that she, especially -- deserved. And who knows" -- he shrugged -- "who the h.e.l.l knows, maybe she was attracted to that. Maybe that was part of it, maybe she liked being taken for granted. But it made me see red.

"The night he died, I was working, out on patrol; I met up with your father on the road.

Eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night and he's out driving, with a six-pack on the seat right next to him -- and he's not headed for home.

"I asked him where he was going. He told me he'd had a fight with Althea, and she needed some time to cool down, so he'd decided to come out and have some fun. 'Fun?' I said. 'She's five months pregnant, you mean to say you just left her alone? What if something happens?' He told me she'd be fine -- she'd fume for a while, then be asleep by the time he got back. He asked me if I wanted to go swimming with him. I blew up: told him he needed to start acting like an adult, told him, if she was my wife. . . but he laughed. 'She's not your wife,' he said. 'She picked me, remember? Anyway, you should be happy -- if she divorces me for neglect, you'll get another shot at her.'

"I came close to hauling him out of the car for that. If I had, if I'd beaten the h.e.l.l out of him, like he deserved. . . but I didn't. I told him to get out of my sight before I arrested him. I told him, I told him I hoped he drowned his stupid self. . .

"What happened," Chief Bradley continued, "what we eventually decided happened, Silas drank most of the six-pack sitting in his car, here, and then he took the last can with him and swam out to the raft. He made a bad dive, hit his head, and lost consciousness. By morning his body had drifted down to the west end of the lake. I got the call around nine A.M."

"So he had an accident," I said. "And then, what, did you and my mother --"

"She came to me, Andrea. I don't know what you must think of me, but I did not see your father's death -- my best friend's death -- as some sort of golden opportunity. No matter what he said, that night. But she came to me. Asking for help. And then how could I say no?

"Do you know I was there, the day you were born? It's true: I drove your mother to the clinic, and stayed at her side. And the cottage, too: I helped her with that. Silas's death benefit, it didn't amount to much, but I helped out, I traded some favors to get her a deal, so you wouldn't have to grow up in a trailer. . ."

"But you didn't do any of this," I said, "for selfish reasons."

His shoulders moved in what might have been a shrug. "Of course I still wanted her," he said. "A man dreams. . . and she seemed to want me too, for a time, though I guess I was wrong about that. But what you have to understand, Andrea, what happened, it wasn't just about wanting -- it was about making sense.

"I suffered terrible guilt over your father's death. No, I wasn't responsible, but I was haunted by the thought of how easily I could have prevented it. If I'd stopped him that night, or if I'd just gone with him. . . I used to have dreams about that, nightmares that I did go with him, that I was there on the raft when he hit his head, and just stood there doing nothing while he drowned.

"So when Althea came to me, when she needed me, that wasn't just a second chance with the woman I loved. It was a chance to justify what happened to Silas. If a man simply dies, that's a senseless tragedy. But if, because he dies, a woman -- a good woman, and her daughter -- end up in the care of another man, one who's not necessarily better than the first, but better for them, then the tragedy acquires meaning, an underlying order, however terrible. . .

"I know that's a self-serving way to think," he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror as if expecting an argument. "I know it, and I have paid for it. But I truly believed it at the time. It's because I believed it that I suffered so badly, snared by my own logic, when the second man, the supposedly better man, turned out not to be me."

"How did the stepfather come into it?" I asked. "Was he another friend of yours?"

"No!" Chief Bradley said, appalled by the suggestion. "No, he was a stranger, an outsider. She met him at her sister's house. . . I'd asked her to marry me. It was too soon, I knew it was, but I'd worked it out in my head by then that this was fate, we were meant to be together. So I proposed, and Althea asked for time to think it over. She was going to visit her sister in Mount Pleasant, and she told me she'd give me her answer when she returned. Of course I agreed -- I thought it was just a formality at that point. She was gone eleven days. She was supposed to be gone for three, but she was gone eleven, and when she came back, the engagement ring she was wearing wasn't mine.

"I got angry with her, of course. I accused her of leading me on, and worse. I was not a happy or a pleasant man. And I never liked Horace, not even after I came to know him -- after I thought I knew him. But when Althea told me straight out that he was the man she really needed, what argument could I raise against that?

"Snared by my own logic. It all had to make sense: but it didn't have to make sense in a way that I liked. And so in time -- not before I'd made a complete a.s.s out of myself in front of Althea -- I was forced to accept it: Horace was the better man. If I couldn't see how, still it had to be so. Reason demanded it.

"For more than twenty-five years I made myself believe that. And then in one day, in one phone call, I found out it wasn't so, after all. Couldn't be so. A drunkard, a violent man, even a cruel man -- he could still, conceivably, in some unfathomable way, be a better husband than, than. . . but a man like that. . . there could be no sense to it. There was no G.o.dd.a.m.ned sense to it. It was like some horrible practical joke."

"So you killed him," I said.

"It was an accident," said Chief Bradley. "I just got so mad, when he denied it. I could see he was lying. And when I thought of him lying to her all those years, about what he was. . ."

"She knew what he was."

"I almost didn't tell her about him," the chief went on, not hearing me. "I shouldn't have. But Althea was so sad for so long after Horace died, that finally I couldn't help myself -- I had to let her know what she was mourning. She didn't believe me, of course. She said I'd made it up, that you had made it up. She told me never to speak to her again. And she never, she never forgave me."

"Chief Bradley," I said.

He looked up, wet-eyed, into the rearview mirror. "What, Andrea?"

"My mother lied to you. She knew all about the stepfather. If she pretended not to believe you, it was only so no one would hold her responsible. But she knew."

"No." He shook his head, slowly at first, then more emphatically. "No, you are mistaken, Andrea.

Your mother would never have condoned that."

"She did."

"No. I understand you being bitter, but if you're going to blame someone for not protecting you, blame me. If I'd listened to you more carefully that time --"

"You know you can't do that, Chief Bradley. You can't say you killed the stepfather by accident and then apologize for not murdering him sooner. Besides, you didn't do it for my sake -- or for hers."

"Maybe not," the chief said hotly. "Maybe not. But --"

"And another thing. I can't claim to understand my mother's motivations any better than you did, but one thing I've figured out about her is that she didn't give her love to anyone who really needed it. So even if you'd gotten rid of the stepfather years earlier, it still wouldn't have gotten you what you wanted.

She never would have picked you. Not if you'd killed a hundred stepfathers."

"Well. . ." Chief Bradley said. "I suppose that's a moot point, now."

"It is," I agreed. "So there's no reason to talk about it anymore. I appreciate you telling me the story, but my hand hurts, and I'd like to go to the emergency clinic now."

"Andrea. . ."

"You can drive us there if you want, or you can just unlock these doors. I'm sure Penny wouldn't mind walking."

He stared out the front windshield at the lake, both hands gripping the steering wheel. "You still haven't answered my question, Andrea," he said. "About why you came back here."

"It wasn't to hurt you, or get you in trouble," I told him. "But it's not my place to excuse what you did, either. Now if you want to tell your story to a judge, maybe --"

"A.judge?" He laughed, a high bleak sound. "A judge. . . so you did come back to punish me."

"No, Chief Bradley."

"You know no one would believe you, if you told them. A troubled girl who's spent time in a mental inst.i.tution." He shook his head. "You probably make up all kinds of stories. . . but no one would believe it, without proof."

"Then there's nothing for you to be afraid of. You can let us go."

There was a long silence. When he spoke again, his tone was regretful but resolved, and though he addressed me by name, I could tell he was really talking to himself. "I'm sorry, Andrea. I never intended to harm anyone. I only ever meant to be a good and just man. . ."

"You still can be, Chief Bradley."

". . . but I loused up almost everything. I lost my best friend, and the woman I loved. . . even the woman I didn't love. My name and reputation in this town, they are all I have left now, and if I were to lose them too, that would be the end. I can't risk that. I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, but I can't." His left hand came off the steering wheel and dropped out of view. Adam cried an urgent warning from the pulpit, but there was no need.

"I'm sorry too, Chief Bradley," I said. Then, preparing myself: "Seferis. Get us out of here."

When the moment comes, Mouse is on the verge of blacking out. Ever since Chief Bradley drove past the medical clinic without stopping, she has been trying, unsuccessfully, to melt through the floorboards of the car and escape. Unable to bend the laws of physics, she's been forced to listen with steadily mounting terror to the dialogue between Chief Bradley and Andrew. Chief Bradley's every statement -- even the most self-pitying -- is freighted with menace, but it's Andrew's side of the conversation that really sets her on edge. Rather than watch what he says, the way you do when someone has you at their mercy, Andrew is recklessly free-spoken, and at points seems almost to be trying to goad Chief Bradley into losing his temper. Shut up, Mouse wants to yell at him, shut up, and Maledicta, in the cave mouth, does more than just think about yelling it.

Finally they reach a critical juncture, the dialogue becoming a monologue as Chief Bradley readies himself to do something very bad. Up in the cave mouth, Maledicta is chanting "Oh f.u.c.k, oh f.u.c.k, oh f.u.c.k, oh f.u.c.k," and Mouse feels her grip on time begin to give, blackness looming, and she welcomes it, not wanting to be present at her own murder.

And then Andrew beside her says "I'm sorry too, Chief Bradley," in a loud clear voice that makes her turn her head. She sees him change, his posture shifting in a way that makes him seem to bulk up in his seat, as if he were physically expanding. He raises his right arm and places his elbow against his car-door window; his arm jerks, and the window bursts outward. Before Mouse can even gape at this feat, he dives through the opening.

"Andrea!" Chief Bradley bellows. From outside, Mouse hears footsteps pounding, circling the car; they reach the driver's side just as the chief gets his door open and steps out. There is a loud grunt, and sounds of a scuffle; something heavy clatters across the front hood.

Then Mouse's door is wrenched open and Andrew leans in. "Come on, Penny," he says -- -- and they are outside. Andrew tugs at Mouse's arm, trying to get her to keep moving, but she hesitates, seeing Chief Bradley staggering dazed in the glow of the police car's headlights. The chief appears to stumble and drops out of sight, but just as quickly he pops back up, clutching his gun.

Andrew tugs at Mouse's arm again -- -- and they are crashing through dense underbrush in the dark. Invisible branches smack Mouse repeatedly in the face, but Andrew's arm is around her waist, bearing her up and carrying her along.