100 degrees in the shade and some smart ass reporter’s frying an egg on his car hood. Ordinarily I wouldn’t cite him, but it’s hot—and I’m hot and besides, the reporter has snarled traffic with his stupid prank. The town of Fair Haven pays me to be a police officer, not a martyr—anyway, anger has its privileges in a dog bites cat bites rat kind of way.
Katie bit my head off this morning.
Sure the air conditioner quit and our teenagers were cranky, but still…I couldn’t shake the image of her curly hair plastered to her forehead or the desperate look in her eyes. I left without breakfast—fled to the sanctuary and quiet of the air-conditioned patrol car. I grabbed a coffee and donut on the way in and then proceeded to bite everyone’s head off who got in my way.
It sure is hot.
Waves of heat rise from the pavement and shimmer in the bright morning light. I drive through the downtown, with the young housewives out in force, pushing strollers and arguing with whining kids. It seems everywhere I turn the asphalt is simmering and people along with it. The town has turned into a surrealistic Dali landscape of melting clocks.
It’s getting to me—the blaring horns, the impatient shouts and the incessant crackle of static over the radio band. It’s a delirium like the cacophony of madness—only I’m not mad, just tired and fed up—and my day has just begun.
10-15 Foodland Market Vine and Main
Oh great—I hate those calls.
"1050 on it."
I hit the siren and flashers and accelerate out of the snarled mess. Within minutes, I pull into the supermarket lot and park the cruiser.
Blaine Nitey meets me just inside the doors. I don’t like Blaine—nobody does. I always call him Percy—partly because of his prissy ways and mostly because every second word out of his mouth is per se—a kind of intellectual affectation, or Blaine’s idea of the aforesaid.
Should have been a lawyer rather than run the family business. Who knows what prompts some peoples’ choices.
“What’s up, Blaine?”
“Hey, Jake—we had an altercation—well, it wasn’t an altercation per se—more a kind of blow up.”
“Oh yeah? What’s the problem?”
“A customer and my stock clerk. Seems they were arguing over a pricing error—well, not an error per se—we check our prices everyday and—”
“I get the picture.” I cut him off or I’ll lose it on him. I don’t like prissy and I have no patience for Percy’s verbal tics.
“So, where are they now?”
“The customer’s a woman—she’s in my office—Len went home.”
“You sent Len home?” I frown.
“Well, I didn’t send him exactly…”
I hold up my hand. “Where’s your office?”
“Up there.” He points to a small, glassed-in room up a short flight of stairs.
“Do you want me to come along?”
I can tell him what I want him to do, but I restrain myself.
“No, you wait here. I’ll handle it.”
I turn and quickly walk away wanting no more aggravation or clarified per se’s.
When I open the door, I catch my breath—Irene Cody, the Mayor’s wife is sitting hunched over, quietly weeping. She looks up when she hears me come in.
“Hello, Jake.”
“Irene—I didn’t expect to see you.”
She gives a short, cynical laugh, “I’m sure you didn’t.”
I walk over and pull a wooden chair from behind the desk and sit down beside her.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really.”
Irene and I dated in high school, but when she met Tom, that spelled the end of our brief romance. Tom was already earmarked as most likely to succeed, and succeed he did—he went into politics and eventually became mayor. They married and adopted an older girl and then later had twins. I took a road more traveled and ended up here—sitting beside her—the wife of the mayor.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she says, “I didn’t shoplift or assault anyone.”
“What happened?”
“I really don’t know.” She’s looking somewhere deep inside her as if the answer’s located there.
“You got into an argument with Len?”
“Oh, him—” as in that ass—that’s what she really means to say. If that’s what she means, I have to say, I agree. And I’d probably whup him real good if he got in my way.
“No, it wasn’t that. I just kind of had a meltdown I guess.”
She looks like she’s going to cry again.
“Look,” I say helplessly, fishing in my pockets for a Kleenex.
She reads my intent and reaches into her purse to pull out a tissue and pulls out a photo along with it. It flutters to the floor. I reach down and pick it up. It’s a school portrait of Callie, her oldest, all airbrushed and glossy. When she sees it, she starts to cry again.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, but of course, it isn’t. “Is Callie okay? —I mean, nothing happened to her, did it?”
“She ran away.”
I stare at her forlornly. My arms feel empty and yet tied at the same time. Irene has curled into a fetal position, arms hugging her legs, knees tucked under her chin and is slowly rocking back and forth.
She begins whispering in a voice so low I can barely hear her.
“One day we woke up and she was gone. It’s been two years today, Jake. Two years. Do you understand?”
“She’s only seventeen,” I say stupidly.
She looks at me as if I’m slow.
“I can’t take it any more. I want to die.”
There are no words to tell someone whose daughter has fled.
“C’mon,” I say, “I’ll take you home.”
She shrugs–a look of profound resignation darkening her beautiful features.
She dutifully follows me out to the car.
Tom is waiting for her at home. He nods to me, puts an arm around her and guides her in. I go back to the patrol car and weep.
I don’t ever cry and have no idea what I’m weeping for—maybe Irene, maybe her pain—I don’t know. All I know is I keep seeing this image of my Katie inside my head—damp hair plastered to her forehead and a desperate look in her eyes.
The town of Fair Haven pays me to be a policeman, not a martyr—but it’s 100 degrees in the shade and everything’s coming apart…
Including my world.