The Best American Mystery Stories Part 20

Six years younger was Marya, Del's first. She was the athlete. A lot of us had kids in school, and all through junior high and high school we saw Marya play basketball. She was not just good, she was great. She leaped higher than any other girl we'd seen, and her jump shot floated to the basket. She was pretty, too, tall and lithe, and ambitious. Often when we delivered our children to school in the mornings, Marya had ridden her bike six miles in from the trailer and was at the playground shooting baskets.

The youngest was Carlos, two grades behind Marya. No one understood naming a child Carlos when he wasn't Hispanic, but, as someone said, it's no different from naming a child Danielle or Kurt. The thing about Carlos was - how do you say it about a boy?- he was easy to look at. He had long blond hair, high cheekbones, a perfect nose. His eyes were deep set, shadowed, and such a pale shade of blue that when you saw them in a certain light, they reminded you of sky. Many of us, when we first laid eyes on him, said, "There is the most beautiful boy in the world."

During the school year we heard about Carlos every day. Our children came home saying Carlos this, Carlos that, how good he was at sports, how pretty he was. When he walked by in the hall, apparently everyone, all grades, boys and girls both, stopped whatever they were doing and watched him pa.s.s.

He wasn't a big kid, but he played halfback and ran track, and he was a good student, all A's. The girls loved him, and the boys admired him, too, though they were all a little afraid of him. Because of his beauty, he wasn't one of them.

"He doesn't choose one girl." That's what all our kids said. That's what the parents heard. "He likes everybody," they said. Or, "He barely talks. We can't tell what girl he likes."

"What would you like him to say?" we asked.

The kids didn't know what Carlos should say. Silence was power. It made them uneasy he was so quiet. He went days without saying anything. He wouldn't even answer questions in cla.s.s.

The Olshanskys came from up north, Wyoming or Montana, no one knew for sure. Del was pretty vague on the subject. When we first knew them, they lived on River Street, right downtown, six blocks from the water, in a rented house barely big enough for a couple, let alone a family. At that time, Del did home repair, mowed lawns, worked freelance as an auto mechanic. We all gave him work. When Fred La.r.s.en put a garage on his split-level, he hired Del for the crew, and when Jerry Matuzcek's Blazer broke down, he paid Del to fix it. Del was quiet but personable, and talked if he was spoken to. They lived in that house on River Street for several years, and there was never any trouble. Nedda Saenz owned the house, and she said they were late every month with the rent, but eventually they got the money to her. "I don't know why it wasn't on the first," Nedda said, "but at least they paid."

They weren't first-of-the-month people. They had a way about them that made people unsure. They looked unreliable. Billie Jean, for instance, never looked right at you when she spoke, and she was frequently late to work at the hospital. Once there was a dispute about some missing money. Everyone thought she'd taken it - she never denied it - but it was later proved to be a clerical error. Why wouldn't she have said she was not guilty? And though Del never had enough money for new clothes, he had enough to buy beer. They never saved for another car, or a newer used one, but Del managed to keep their '81 Dodge truck running, even if it wasn't the most efficient vehicle. They weren't shiftless, exactly, but no one would have been surprised if one day the whole family was up and gone. We thought of them as about to disappear.

At first we admired them, reluctantly perhaps, for buying the trailer and settling in. At the same time, it was foolish because the land was glacial moraine, and they had to put in a deep well. They had payments to make every month on the land, and in general it cost more to live out of town. Telephone and trash pickup was more expensive; appliance repairmen and plumbers charged mileage; Billie Jean had to drive farther to work. And you're isolated - that's a hidden cost. There weren't many neighbors if you needed help.

For a few years there, we in town were less attentive to them. Ivo and Frieda Darius and Luther and Sara Warren lived farther west up the gravel road where the creek came out of the mountains, and they saw the Olshanskys more often than anyone else. Sara worked in a dentist's office, and she drove by every morning. She frequently saw the Olshansky kids at the bus stop - the three of them standing alone on the highway. In warmer weather, coming home late in the day, she sometimes saw Del working on the facade of the trailer or Billie Jean digging in the garden. Ivo Darius was older, a rancher, and was frequently laid up with real or imaginary illnesses. He said he had heard gunshots a few times - target practice, he a.s.sumed - out in the arroyo. There was nothing unusual about that. Ivo owned two rifles himself and sometimes shot marauding skunks or coyotes.

The only occasion anyone had close contact with one of the Olshanskys was on a spring morning when Sara Warren saw Carlos running to the bus stop. Carlos was twelve or thirteen then, and the Olshanskys had lived in the trailer more than a year. At the bottom of the hill, the bus was pulling away, and Carlos accepted a lift to school. Sara asked the predictable general questions - how was school? How do you like living out here? What are you doing this summer? But Carlos made no reply beyond a few guttural sounds. Carlos stared straight out the windshield as if he were fixated or drugged, or so focused inward he hadn't heard the questions. Sara said later she wasn't sure Carlos could speak. Sara remembered that particular morning because an eagle had dived down right next to the gravel road into the pinons and killed a fawn, and Carlos never looked.

The Christian school started three years ago. We knew there were splinter sects in our town, groups besides the Episcopalians and the Lutherans and the Catholics. (We don't have many Jews here.) Most of these groups met in people's houses until they got enough members to build a cinder-block church somewhere on cheap land. They were fringe people. They didn't attend city council meetings or the beerfest or the high school football games. They were both secretive and proselytizing. Their churches spread by word of mouth, and none of us knew exactly who these people were.

Warren Nixon started one of these groups, the Church of the Major Prophecy. He was divorced, forty-something, and had a large nose and a crewcut. He sold home, car, health, and life insurance out of a one-man office on First Street. For years he'd been a member of the Presbyterian church across from the Safeway, and one day out of the blue, on the golf course on a Sunday afternoon, he had a vision to start his own church. How he had this vision and what it entailed didn't concern or excite most of us. Who believed in such miracles? But over a couple of years he attracted enough people of like mind to build a church out on the highway. He sold his house in town to do it and rented an apartment above the Gambles' dry-goods store.

None of these developments had anything to do with us, and if we'd thought about it, we'd have a.s.sumed they had nothing much to do with the Olshanskys, either. None of us had ever heard Del mention G.o.d or Jesus Christ, except as swear words. Billie Jean might have been more of a churchgoer - we learned later from her sister she and her ex-husband had been in the Living Springs Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but what difference did that make? She hadn't been in a church here, and she wasn't a member of the Church of the Major Prophecy.

But Del and Billie Jean sent Carlos to the church school. By then Danielle had graduated, and Marya, to pursue her basketball career, was boarding with a family in Colorado Springs. Carlos was in ninth grade, and when he was taken out of the public school, we heard about it. Carlos was the star the other children looked to, the one whose existence made theirs hopeful. He was the boy about whom they would talk the rest of their lives. "I knew this boy once," they'd say, "Carlos Olshansky, who was the most beautiful boy in the world."

And then he was gone.

We all admit that was one of the signs. When he was sent to that school we knew something was wrong, but we couldn't see it clearly. Perhaps we were afraid to look. The social service agencies, the sheriff for all his vigilance, the community volunteers - the people you'd expect to observe such things - didn't notice anything particularly wrong. Carlos went to the church school. It was the Olshanskys' choice. They had the right to send him there.

Of course, there were small details we thought about later - Danielle's missed appointment at the dentist, Billie Jean's not showing up a day here or there at work (though she called in sick each time), Marya's coming home for two weeks in the middle of basketball season. But what should we have read into these things? What did they mean, separately or taken together? A family in chaos, a dissolving of a psyche, a catastrophe about to unfold? Besides, we had our own lives to lead, our own grocery shopping, mortgages to pay, children to raise.

It was the fire through the snow that first caught Frieda Darius's attention out her kitchen window. She was making soup for Ivo, laid up in bed. It was February, a Thursday, early dark. The wind was hurling snowflakes sideways, and when she saw the flames, she thought the pinon trees were on fire. Ivo couldn't get out of bed, so she investigated in her Jeep, getting close enough to see the Olshanskys' trailer burning.

By the time the fire trucks got there - they carried their own water - most of the trailer had melted. There were two bodies burned beyond recognition in the kitchen, and one in the neighboring bedroom. The fire chief said chicken grease had ignited on the propane stove. But when the forensics experts identified the bodies - Billie Jean and Danielle in the kitchen, and Marya in the nearer bedroom - we learned they'd all been shot beforehand.

We couldn't find Del or Carlos. The truck wasn't there, so the first theory was that Del had done it and had taken off with his boy. The sheriff put out an all-points bulletin on Del and the Dodge, but almost before the APB had circulated, Claudia Reese, the rural mailperson, found Del's truck, with Del's body in it, parked in front of the Jeffersons' house on County Road 268. He was slumped against the pa.s.senger door with a single gunshot wound in his forehead.

The sheriff dusted the wheel for fingerprints, but it was cold, and whoever shot Del was probably wearing gloves. The window on the driver's side was open, and snow had blown into the cab. Whatever footprints there might have been were obliterated by snow, and underneath the snow, the ground was frozen rock-hard. Being on the pa.s.senger side, Del could have been shot anywhere and driven there, but of course then there would have had to have been at least two of them, two perpetrators, because they'd have needed another car to get away.

The Jeffersons' ranch house was the only house within a quarter of a mile of the truck, the original homestead on the mesa, where a five-acre subdivision had been recently approved. Emily Jefferson was home that night - Larry was in Pueblo at a seminar on computer programming - but she hadn't seen or heard anything. It had been windy and snowy, and she'd built a fire in the stove.

Random chance: That was the next predominant theory. A couple of psychos had turned off the highway - that explained the extra car - and the first place they'd come to was the Olshanskys'. They'd wanted money. In what was left of the trailer there were signs of a hurried search. In the back bedroom, drawers had been ripped open, and a purse was opened. But why kill everyone? Why was Del in his truck two miles away? Why had they kidnapped Carlos? Or had they killed him too? We searched for Carlos's body in a half-mile radius around the trailer, but found nothing but deer scat and rabbit tracks in the snow.

So there we were without clues. No insight. Nothing. All that weekend we talked about the Olshanskys - who they were, why they'd come to town, why anyone would want to kill them. So far as we could ascertain, they were ordinary people, like other families everywhere, nothing special.

Del had no relatives we could find, but Billie Jean had mentioned to Agnes Day at the hospital she had a sister in Rapid City, so the sheriff called her. We learned their mother was still alive in a nursing home, and from the way the sister reacted, we understood there were hard feelings between the sisters, apparently because Billie Jean had run off with Del. Billie Jean had married into evil.

Then late Sat.u.r.day it came to light from Wilferd Barkley that Del's truck had been parked at that same turnout several times before. Wilferd was a stonemason who lived farther out the country road in an A-frame built thirty years ago in the hippie days. He kept a few sheep and goats, and he poached deer that wandered into his yard (he'd been fined for it twice). He wasn't the most trustworthy of witnesses - he drank up his disability check every month - but he knew Del's truck, and why would he lie?

After a few inquiries, Emily Jefferson admitted seeing Del, though she denied anything was going on, and Wilferd couldn't contradict her. n.o.body believed it, though. Anyway, a possible motive was established for Larry Jefferson to have killed Del, and, in a rage, perhaps, the whole Olshansky family. So that evening the sheriff drove to Pueblo and hauled Larry out of his seminar. It was obvious right from the start Larry had no idea who Dei Olshansky was. He'd heard of Marya, the basketball star, but that was the only family name he knew. He didn't know Emily was seeing Del, but it didn't surprise him. She was cold as ice to him. He called her a mousy woman with bad teeth.

That threw the situation into the same muddle as before, back to the idea of random chance.

Then on Sunday, another body turned up - Warren Nixon. He hadn't appeared at church, and when his phone was busy for half an hour, Jeff Bates, the a.s.sistant minister, went to look for him. Warren was in his apartment, face-down, bludgeoned with one of his own golf clubs.

In this day and age, with kids shooting other kids in the schools, oil spilling into the oceans, and people flying airplanes into buildings, nothing is bizarre anymore, but for our town this was bizarre. Warren Nixon had photos of boys lying around, a computer full of child p.o.r.nography, movies. All young boys. Beautiful boys like Carlos Olshansky.

Just like that, Carlos became both a victim and a suspect.

That Warren Nixon lived in this community so long and kept his predilection hidden surprised us. We discovered he had gone to Denver, to Chicago, to Los Angeles to gratify his base desires, but here, he must have been tormented because right in front of him, practically handed over, was the most beautiful boy any of us had ever seen. He had to be careful; he had to work slowly, to curry favor. But something had gone wrong.

We imagined this scenario: there was another lover, a visitor, perhaps, with similar perverse tastes. This hypothetical person was in league with Warren Nixon, a disciple, a fringe character none of us noticed. This unknown person fell in love with Carlos, and, in a moment of rage and jealousy (who knew what Carlos felt?) beat Warren to death. The man took Carlos back to the trailer to get Carlos's things, and Billie Jean intervened. There was an argument, and the lover happened to have a pistol and shot everyone. It was at that moment Del drove up in his truck.

Was Carlos involved? Who else but Carlos could have driven the second car? Or was there a second car? Had Carlos acted alone? He might have killed Warren Nixon and then his family, driven his father's truck to Emily Jefferson's, and then walked to the highway, it was less than a mile. He could have hitchhiked from there.

Most of us think Carlos must have been drugged or otherwise coerced into partic.i.p.ating. Perhaps there were two other men, or another couple. Carlos was the innocent casualty of someone else's perversions, the prey. He was frightened and threatened by someone bigger and stronger, a person in a position of power, a church person. Beautiful Carlos, still to be looked for.

Since these events, in their divorce, Emily Jefferson admitted to an affair. She confided to a friend Del insisted on making love every which way - in a chair, against a wall, from behind. Had he abused Carlos? Or had Billie Jean? Or one of the sisters? It came to light Marya had been expelled from her school in Colorado Springs for punching a teammate at practice. Marijuana was found in Danielle's room at the back of the trailer, and her raft company friends said she was a heavy user. Who knew about this family?

It is hard to inquire after the dead. Only Carlos might tell us the truth. And where is he?

There is one recollection we've wondered about, a story several people have come forward with - Arne Bullard, Donna Snow, Linda Sayles - all of whom have businesses downtown. They remember the day eight years ago, Carlos was five or six, when Danielle and Marya dressed him up as a girl. They had put makeup on him - eyeliner, rouge, and lipstick - that's what Donna Snow recalled. "He was a girly boy," she said, "with his hair curled and fixed up in blue ribbons. He was walking in a pink dress, and so pretty. They paraded him up and down Main Street, past all the shops and stores." Arne remembered it, too, seeing them through his barbershop window. "He was having a good time," Arne said. "He was holding the girls' hands and laughing, not resisting in the least. Of course, what did he know? He was a little kid."

Now there are other things people remember about Carlos, like his teachers at school and the boys on the football team and the girls who watched him in the halls. He was a smart kid, but so quiet, shy, and respectful. Though he was friendly with everyone, he had no girlfriend. He let people come to him.

Maybe Carlos is dead. That would explain why no one has found him in the year since this happened. The town has moved past the killings; people don't talk about it so much. The remains of the Olshanskys' trailer have been removed and the land sold to a developer, though Luther Warren and Ivo and Frieda Darius are protesting the rezoning to one-acre lots. Marya's cla.s.s graduated from the high school, and in another two years, Carlos's will be gone, too, dispersed with their stories. The Church of the Major Prophecy has disbanded and the sign's been taken down. No other church has seen fit to establish itself there, so the cinder-block building is empty, the spire tilted a little to one side. Recently a cabinet company has been interested in the site.

In our town businesses go on, children are born, the old people get sick and die: there's nothing new about that. And in the wider world, the s.p.a.ce shuttle has broken apart, the war in Iraq is past, the suicide bombings continue. No one can change what happens, but the events recede, especially now when we know so much. We are lucky, aren't we, that in the history of our town and our country, in the history of the world even with its wars and famines and plagues, no one has been able to stop time.

DANIEL OROZCO.

Officers Weep.

From Harper's Magazine.

700 Block, First Street. Parking violation. Car blocking driveway. Citation issued. City Tow notified.

5700 Block, Central Boulevard. Public disturbance. Rowdy juveniles on interurban bus. Suspects flee before officers arrive.

400 Block, Sycamore Circle. Barking-dog complaint. Attempts to shush dog unsuccessful. Citation left in owner's mailbox. Animal Control notified.

1300 Block, Harvest Avenue. Suspicious odor. Homeowner returning from extended trip reports a bad odor - a gas leak or "the smell of death." Officers investigate. Odor ascertained to be emanating from a neighbor's mimosa tree in unseasonal bloom. "The smell of life," officer [Shield #647] ponders aloud. Officers nod. Homeowner rolls eyes, nods politely.

3900 Block, Fairview Avenue. Shady Glen Retirement Apartments. Loud-noise complaint. "What kind of noise?" officers ask. Complainant simply says it was "a loud report." "A gunshot?" officers query. "A scream? Explosion? What?" Complainant becomes adamant, shakes walnut cane in fisted hand: "It was a loud report! " Officers mutter, reach for batons, then relent. Officers report report.

700 Block, Sixth Street. Public disturbance. Kleen-Azza-Whistle Cleaners. Two women in fistfight over snakeskin vest. Each declares ownership of claim ticket found on floor by officers. In an inspired Solomonic moment, officer [Shield #647] waves pair of tailor's shears and proposes cutting vest in half. Approaching the contested garment, he slips its coveted skins between the forged blades. And thus is the true mother revealed!

3600 Block, Sunnyside Drive. Vandalism. Handball courts in Phoenix Park defaced. Spray-paint graffiti depicts intimate congress between a male and a female, a panoramic mural of heteros.e.xual coupling that spans the entire length of the courts' front wall, its every detail rendered with a high degree of clinical accuracy. Officers gape. Minutes pa.s.s in slack-jawed silence, until officer [Shield #647] ascertains incipient b.o.n.e.r. Officer horrified, desperately reroutes train of thought, briskly repositions his baton. Second officer [Shield #325] takes down Scene Report, feigns unawareness of her partner's tumescent plight, ponders the small blessings of womanhood. Vandalism reported to Parks & Rec Maintenance.

900 Block, Maple Road. Canine-litter violation. Homeowner complains of dog feces on front lawn. Officers investigate, ascertain droppings are fresh, reconnoiter on foot. They walk abreast, eyes asquint and arms akimbo, their hands at rest among the ordnance of their utility belts: radio receiver, pepper spray, ammo pouch, handcuffs, keys and whistles, and change for the meter. Officers jingle like Santas. Their shoulders and hips move with the easy dip and roll of Cla.s.sic Cop Swagger. "That business back there," she says, "with the snakeskin vest?" He grunts in acknowledgment, scanning the scene for untoward canine activity. "I - I liked that." Her voice is hoa.r.s.e, throaty, tentative, as he's never heard before. He nods, purses lips, nods some more. She nervously fingers b.u.t.t of her service revolver. He briskly repositions his baton. A high color pa.s.ses from one steely countenance to the other. Officers blush. Midswagger, elbows graze. And within that scant touch, the zap of a thousand stun guns. Up ahead, another steaming pile, whereupon p.o.o.p trail turns cold. Officers terminate search, notify Animal Control.

9200 Block, Bonny Road. Vehicular burglary. Items stolen from pickup truck: a pair of work boots, a hardhat, safety goggles, and - per victim's description - a cherry-red-enameled Thaesselhaeffer Sidewinder chain saw, with an 8.5-horsepower, two-stroke motor in a t.i.tanium-alloy housing, a four-speed trigger clutch with autoreverse, and the words daddy's sweet b.i.t.c.h stenciled in flaming orange-yellow letters along the length of its thirty-four-inch saw bar. Victim weeps. Officers take Scene Report, refer victim to Crisis Center.

5600 Block, Fairvale Avenue. Traffic stop. Illegal U-turn. Officer [Shield #325] approaches vehicle. Her stride longer than her legs can accommodate, she leans too much into each step, coming-down hard on her heels, as if trudging through sand. As she returns to Patrol Unit, a lock of her hair - thin and drab, a l.u.s.terless mousy brown - slips down and swings timidly across her left eye, across the left lens of her mirrored wraparounds. Officer tucks errant lock behind ear, secures it in place with a readjustment of duty cap. Her gestures are brisk and emphatic, as if she were quelling a desire to linger in the touch of her own hair. Officer [Shield #647] observes entire intimate sequence from his position behind wheel of Patrol Unit. Officer enthralled. Officer ascertains the potential encroachment of love, maybe, into his cautious and lonely life. Officer swallows hard.

700 Block, Willow Court. Dogs running loose. Pack of strays reported scavenging in neighborhood, turning over garbage cans and compost boxes. Worried homeowner reports cat missing, chats up officers, queries if they like cats. "Yes, ma'am," officer [Shield #325] replies. "They are especially flavorful batter-fried." Officers crack up. Levity unappreciated. Officers notify Animal Control, hightail it out of there.

2200 Block, Cherry Orchard Way. Burglary. Three half-gallon cans of chain-saw fuel stolen from open garage.

7800 Block, Frontage Boulevard at Highway 99. Vehicle accident and traffic obstruction. Semitrailer hydroplanes, overturns, spills cargo of Southwestern housewares down Frontage Road West offramp. Officers redirect traffic and clear debris: shattered steer skulls; fleshy cactus chunks; the dung-colored shards of indeterminate earthenware; the mangled sc.r.a.p of copper-plate Kokopellis and dream shamans; and actual, honest-to-G.o.d tumbleweeds, rolling along the blacktop. "Tumbleweeds!" officer [Shield #325] exclaims. "Yee-haw! " Roundup commences, and her face gleams with exertion and sheer joy. Her stern little mouth elongates into goofy smile, teeth glinting like beach gla.s.s in the sun. As they divert traffic, officer ascertains being observed keenly. The watchful and intimate scrutiny makes her feel, for the first time in a long while, yearned for, desired. Officer [Shield #325] gets all goose-b.u.mpy and fl.u.s.tered, and likes it. DPW Units arrive in their orange trucks, unload sundry orange accoutrements, erect signage: CAUTION, SLOW, OBSTRUCTION. Officers secure scene until State Patrol arrives, with their state jurisdiction and their shiny boots and their funny hats.

200 Block, Windjammer Court. Tall Ships Estates. Criminal trespa.s.s. One-armed solicitor selling magazine subscriptions in gated community. Forty-six-year-old suspect is embarra.s.sed, despondent, angry, blames his bad luck on television, on fast food, on "the f.u.c.king Internet." Officers suggest cutting fast food some slack, then issue warning, escort suspect to main gate, buy subscriptions to Firearms Fancier and Enforcement Weekly.

2200 Block, Orange Grove Road. Criminal trespa.s.s and vandalism. Winicki's World of Burlwood. Merchant returns from lunch to find furnishings - burlwood dining tables and wardrobes and credenzas, burlwood salad bowls and CD racks, burlwood tie caddies and napkin rings and cheese boards - ravaged. Officers a.s.sess scene, do math: Burlwood + Chain Saw = Woodcraft Apocalypse.

800 Block, Clearvale Street. Possible illegal entry. Complainant "senses a presence" upon returning home from yoga cla.s.s. Officers investigate, ascertain opportunity to practice Cop Swagger, to kick things up a bit. Officer [Shield #325] pulls shoulders back, adds inch to height. Officer [Shield #647] sucks gut in, pulls oblique muscle. Search of premises yields nothing. "That's OK," complainant says. "It's gone now." Officers mutter, blame yoga.

300 Block, Galleon Court. Tall Ships Estates. Criminal trespa.s.s and public disturbance. One-armed magazine salesman kicking doors and threatening residents. Scuffle ensues. Officers sit on suspect, call for backup, ponder a cop koan: How do you cuff a one-armed man?

2600 Block, Bloom Road. Public disturbance. Two men in shouting match at Eugene's Tamale Temple. Customer complains of insect in refried beans. Employee claims it's parsley. Officers investigate. Dead spider ascertained in frijoles. "Well, it's not an insect," officer [Shield #325] declares. "Spiders are arachnids, you know." "They're also high in protein," officer [Shield #647] adds. Customer not amused. Argument escalates. Scuffle ensues. Officers take thirty-two-year-old male customer into custody, and - compliments of a grateful and politic Eugene - two Cha Cha Chicken Chimichangas and a Mucho Macho Nacho Plate to go.

6700 Block, Coast Highway. Officers go to beach. They park Patrol Unit at overlook, dig into chimichangas, chew thoughtfully, ponder view. The sky above is heavy and gray, a slab of concrete. The ocean chops fretfully beneath it, muddy green, frothy as old soup. Officer [Shield #647] loves how the two of them can be quiet together. There is some small talk: the upcoming POA ballots; Tasers, yea or nay; the K-9 Unit's dog-fighting scandal. But mostly there is only the tick of the cooling engine, the distant whump of surf against sh.o.r.e, the radio crackling like a comfy fire. Officers sigh. Officer [Shield #647] gestures with chimichanga at vista before them. "There's a saying," he says. "How's it go - ?

Blue skies all day, officers gay.

If skies gray and clouds creep, officers weep."

Officer [Shield #325] chews, nods, furrows her brow. "It's an old saying," he adds. "You know. Happy gay Not gay gay." She laughs. He laughs, too. Relief fills Patrol Unit. A weight is lifted. A door eases itself open and swings wide. His right hand slips from steering wheel and alights, trembling, upon her left knee. Her breath catches, then begins again - steady, resolute. Officers swallow, park chimichangas carefully on dash. Officers turn one to the other. Suspect in back seat asks if they're done with those chimis, complains he's hungry, too, you know, complains that somebody in Patrol Unit didn't get to eat his combo plate and can they guess who? Officers terminate break, split Mucho Macho Nachos three ways, transport suspect to Division for booking.

400 Block, Glenhaven Road. Criminal trespa.s.s and vandalism at construction site. Four pallets of eight-foot framing two-by-fours chainsawed into a grand a.s.sortment of useless two- and four-foot one-by-fours. Officers walk scene, sniff air. Sawdust, gas fumes, chain oil. It is a pungent mix, complex and heady. Officers inhale deeply, go all woozy.

2600 Block, Frontage Boulevard at Flighway 99. Injury accident. Soil subduction collapses shoulder of 44th Street on-ramp. Three vehicles roll down embankment. Officers notify EMT and DOT Units, a.s.sist injured, secure scene. State Patrol pulls up, kills engine, emerges from Patrol Unit like starlet at movie premiere. State Patrol is starch-crisp and preternaturally perspiration-free. State Patrol thanks officers for their a.s.sistance, flashes horsey smile, tips dopey hat. Officers sit slouched on Patrol Unit, watch State Patrol strut about. "Prince of Freeways," officer [Shield #647] mutters. "Lord of Turnpikes," he says. Partner suggests that a more collegial relationship with State Patrol is called for. "King of the Road," he continues. "Ayatollah of the Asphalt." Officers giggle, get all silly, love that they can be silly. DPW Units swing by, offer wide range of orange gear and signage: SLOW, CAUTION, choice of SOIL SUBDUCTION or SUBDUCTED SHOULDER.

2200 Block, Felicity Court. Domestic disturbance. Man with golf club pounds on washing machine in garage. Woman in lawn chair applauds his every blow, whistles, barks like dog. Dogs next door whipped into frenzy by noise, bark like woman in lawn chair. Soapy water jets in jugular arcs from innards of crippled washer, streams down driveway, gurgles into gutter. Officers linger in Patrol Unit, a.s.sess scene, swiftly reach unspoken agreement, gun engine, high-tail it out of there.

1000 Block, Clearview Terrace. Traffic obstruction. Sinkhole reported in street, measuring twenty-five feet across by four feet deep. Officers peer down hole, whistle. DPW Units flush restraint down c.r.a.pper, go whole hog in establishing perimeter - orange barricades and flashers, orange arrowboards and signage, orange-garbed personnel braiding Reflect-O-Tape throughout scene like carnival light-strings. Sinkhole perimeter is now a secure and festive perimeter. Officers clash with tableau, sent off to disperse rubberneckers: "Move along, folks, nothing to see here, move along."

2200 Block, Oak Street. Public intoxication and urination. Outside Ye Olde Liquor Shoppe. Sixty-four-year-old male taken into custody. During transport to Division, officer [Shield #325] confesses: "I've always wanted to say that. You know: 'Move along, nothing to see here.'"

5500 Block, Pleasant Avenue. Vandalism. Eighteen mailboxes destroyed along roadside, lopped neatly off their posts in a bout of mailbox baseball, but with chain saw instead of baseball bat. "Mailbox lumberjack," officer [Shield #325] muses aloud. Shot at whimsy misses mark. "Har-dee-har," complainant says. "Ha-f.u.c.king-ha." Officer [Shield #647] wonders aloud if somebody maybe put their crabby pants on today. Officer [Shield #325] adds that maybe they OD'd on their potty-mouth pills, too. Argument escalates. Scuffle ensues. Fifty-five-year-old male complainant taken into custody.

2200 Block, Felicity Court. Domestic disturbance. Woman wielding shovel hacks at wide-screen television set in driveway. Under canopy of tree in front yard, shirtless man sits on case of beer, pounding brewskies, watching woman, offering profane commentary. Above him, slung into limbs and branches, wet laundry drips heavily - hanged men left in the rain. Dogs next door yowl and bay. Officers cruise by, tap brakes, a.s.sess scene, nod a.s.sent, hightail it out of there.

2500 Block, Fairmount Street. Criminal trespa.s.s and vandalism. Spivak's House of Wicker. Wicker chewed and chopped chain-saw style. Officers move silently into gray wicker haze, powdered with wicker dust, in awe of the sheer totality of wicker havoc.

1900 Block, Cypress Avenue. Illegal a.s.sembly. Demonstrators blocking access to public health clinic, refuse order to disperse. All available units dispatched for crowd control. Officers gathered at staging area, briefed on use-of-force policy, on arrest and intake procedures, then sicced on crowd. Officers stoked, fired up, ready to rumba. Hand-to-hand maneuvers seemingly long forgotten - arm locks and chokeholds, the supple ch.o.r.eography of baton work- all return facilely to muscle memory. Crowd control progresses smoothly. Officer [Shield #325] musses hair clobbering balky demonstrator. A scrawny little hank slips loose, nestles against her right cheek, framing the side of her face like an open parenthesis. A semaph.o.r.e of possibility, officer [Shield #647] muses, spotting her while clobbering his balky demonstrator. Amid the tussle and heat of arrest and intake, she looks up, seeks him out, finds him. She smiles, waves shyly. From across the tactical field, he smiles, waves back, sticks out tongue. She is suddenly overcome, startled at how the sight of him affects her. It is not just love, or desire, but something profoundly less complex, as unadorned and simple as the Vehicle Code. Officer laughs, cries. Tearful and giddy, she whales on her demonstrator with joy in her heart. Demonstrators cuffed, processed, loaded onto County Transport Units. a.s.sembly dispersed. Scene secured. Officers spent, pink and damp in the afterglow of crowd control. Cop camaraderie ensues. Shirttails tucked, batons wiped down, cigarettes shared. Backs and b.u.t.ts slapped all around.

6700 Block, Coast Highway. Officers go to beach, park at overlook. Officers p.o.o.ped, reposed. They do not speak. They sip double lattes, ponder view. A gash in the bruise-colored sky bleeds yellow. Sunshine leaks into the ocean, stains its surface with shimmering light. He looks over at her, notices a discoloration, a swelling on her left cheekbone. His hand reaches out, his fingers touch the wound, touch her. "You're hurt," he says. She smiles, whispers, "You should see the other guy." They park their double lattes on dash, slip off their sungla.s.ses, avert their eyes. They screw their faces against the jagged harshness of an unpolarized world, slip sungla.s.ses back on. His hands reach for hers; their fingers clasp and enmesh, roil and swarm at the fourth finger of her left hand. Officers tug and pull, remove and park ring on clash. He reaches for her. She leans toward him; it is like falling. Officers fall. Afterward, they linger over their coffee. Wedding ring on dash glints in the shifting light, harmless as a bottle cap or a shiny old b.u.t.ton, something a bird might s.n.a.t.c.h up. Officers watch a ball of sunlight flare up at earth's edge like a direct hit. Officers a.s.sess scene, ascertain world to be beautiful.

2200 Block, Felicity Court. Domestic disturbance. Officers pull up, kill engine. They dawdle in Patrol Unit, fiddling with the mirrors and the radio, double-checking the parking brake. Officers sigh heavily, climb out, and a.s.sess scene. Garage door closed. Curtains in windows of home drawn. Officers walk up driveway, pick their way through the detritus of television set ancl washing machine. They knock on door, ring bell. No answer. Neighborhood quiet. Dogs next door quiet. Birds quiet. Everything, in fact, is quiet. The quiet of earplugs, of morgue duty, and of corridors at 3 AM. The quiet before an alarm clock goes off. Officers backtrack down driveway, approach west side of house, move toward a gate in the fence that leads to backyard. They move gingerly across a saturated lawn, squishy beneath their feet. Soapy water oozes into the tracks they leave. Up ahead, against an exterior wall of house, a pile of freshly cut wood comes into view - one-by-four posts and whitewashed flatboards painted with black block letters, LIFE one of them reads, MURDER reads another. Chain-sawed picket signs. Officers' napes p.r.i.c.kle, b.u.t.ts clench in autonomic response. They thumb the release tabs on their holsters, move toward gate. They lift latch, ease gate open. Above them, the sky clears and the sun breaks. The shadow of a distant airplane skims over them, glides across the lawn, disappears. Officers enter backyard. The back fence sags forward. Trellises and plant stakes list at crazy angles. A brick barbecue sits crumpled atop its sunken hearthslab. The deck along the west side of the house is a corrugation of collapsed planking. It is as if the earth here simply gave up, shrugged, and dropped six feet. Officers move along periphery of sinkhole, toward the sliding patio doors that open onto deck. Their panes are shattered. The ground glitters with pebbles of safety gla.s.s. From within, cool air drifts out. And then they are hit, bowled over by a surge of vapors foul and thick - the redolence of mimosa, clawing at their eyes and throats, like some monstrous blossoming from somewhere inside the house. And then the noises. First, a loud m.u.f.fled report - the only way to describe it. Then, rising from the bas.e.m.e.nt - or from someplace deeper still - the robust glissandi of a chain saw, its motor throttling up and down, laboring mightily. And within this an indeterminate overtone - the cadence of voices, urgent and shrill. Shouting, or laughing. Or screaming. Officers unholster service revolvers, position themselves at either side of patio entry. They slip off their sungla.s.ses, take this moment to let their eyes adjust to the dark inside. They look at each other. His eyes are dark brown, like coffee, or good soil. Hers are gray, flat as lead except for the glint of a pearly chip in one iris. They do not speak. They love that they don't have to say anything. Instead they reach down, check ammo pouches for extra clips, wipe palms on duty trousers. Eyes adjusted, they draw and shoulder their weapons. They brace their wrists, release their safeties, silently count three, and take a breath. Whereupon officers cross threshold, enter home.

DAVID RACHEL.

The Last Man I Killed.

From Eureka Literary Magazine.

THE DREAM is ALWAYS THE SAME. Of the last man I killed. I had the dream again the night after Dr. Schofield told us he was leaving the department. This was back in 1965. The dream always wakes me. I keep a copy of von Clausewitz's On War beside my bed to read until I fall asleep again.

Dr. Schofield was not only leaving the Department of German Studies; he was leaving O'Connell State University and the Midwest and returning to Georgia, where he would take up a position as dean of arts at his alma mater. He made the announcement at the end of the monthly department meeting. Warm applause followed his statement. He was well liked, and the department had run smoothly under his direction. He might have preferred the news of his departure to be greeted by cries of anguish, but he accepted our congratulations with a good grace.

I left the meeting with John Duncan. "Let's have a beer," he suggested. "Mulroney's in half an hour?"

"Going to try for it, Tomas? I'll nominate you," Duncan offered as soon as we sat down. He was born in the U.S., like half the department. The other half, including myself, were German-born. Duncan was overweight, and hadn't published for ten years. He saw himself as a fixer.

"h.e.l.l, no," I said. "Thanks for asking, John. I don't want to compete against Anna. She's earned it."

Anna Scheinberg and her late husband had befriended me when I first arrived at O'Connell State, and I had gotten to know her quite well. But it was not loyalty that prevented me from competing with her for the headship. I'd already figured out the voting, and I knew she would beat me easily.

"You're the only alternative. Everyone else is either too near retirement or too young or just plain incompetent." Duncan himself was approaching retirement.

"She's the obvious choice," I said. "a.s.suming we go internal."

"The president will insist on internal. It will save one salary. Sure you don't want to run? If you're going to move up, now's the time. You're what, Tomas, forty?"

"Thirty-seven," I corrected him. We were sitting at a table in one of the booths. The bar was quiet, furnished in dark wood with a lot of black leather. "Right now, my work on Clausewitz demands all my time. It'll be a good way for Anna to end her career. She's a people person first and foremost."