Phantoms

Frank Autry was lean, sinewy, with neatly trimmed salt and-pepper hair. His features were sharp and economical, as if God hadn't been in the mood to waste anything the day that He had edited Frank's genetic file: hazel eyes under a finely chiseled brow; a narrow, patrician nose; a mouth that was neither too parsimonious nor too generous; small, nearly lobeless ears tucked flat against the head. His mustache was most carefully groomed.

He wore his uniform precisely the way the service manual said he should: black boots polished to a mirrored shine, brown slacks with a knife-edge crease, leather belt and hoister kept bright and supple with lanolin, brown shirt crisp and fresh.

“It isn't fucking fair,” Stu Wargle said.

“Commanding officers don't always have to be fair — just right,” Frank said.

“What commanding officer?” Wargle asked querulously.

“Sheriff Hammond. Isn't that who you mean?”

“I don't think of him as no commanding officer.”

“Well, that's what he is,” Frank said.

“He'd like to break my ass,” Wargle said, “The bastard.”

Frank said nothing.

Before signing up with the county constabulary, Frank Autly had been a career military officer. He had retired from the United States Army at the age of forty-four, after twenty-five years of distinguished service, and had moved back to Santa Mira, the town in which he'd been born and raised. He had intended to open a small business of some kind in order to supplement his pension and to keep himself occupied, but he hadn't been able to find anything that looked interesting. Gradually, he had come to realize that, for him at least, a job without a uniform and without a chain of command and without an element of physical risk and without a sense of public service was just not a job worth having. Three years ago, at the age of forty-six, he had signed up with the sheriff's department, and in spite of the demotion from major, which was the rank he'd held in the service, he had been happy ever since.

That is, he had been happy except for those occasions, usually one week a month, when he'd been partnered with Stu Wargle. Wargle was insufferable. Frank tolerated the man only as a test of his own self- discipline.

Wargle was a slob. His hair often needed washing. He always missed a patch of bristles when he shaved. His uniform was wrinkled, and his boots were never shined. He was too big in the gut, too big in the hips, too big in the butt.

Wargle was a bore. He had absolutely no sense of humor. He read nothing, knew nothing — yet he had strong opinions about every current social and political issue.

Wargle was a creep. He was forty-five years old, and he still picked His nose in public. He belched and farted with aplomb.

Still slumped against the passenger-side door, Wargle said, “I'm supposed to go off duty at ten o'clock. Ten goddamned o'clock! It's not fair for Hammond to pull me for this Snowfield crap. And me with a hot number all lined up.”

Frank didn't take the bait. He didn't ask who Wargle had a date with. He just drove the car and kept his eyes on the road and hoped that Wargle wouldn't tell him who this “hot number” was.

“She's a waitress over at Spanky's Diner,” Wargle said. “Maybe you seen her. Blond broad. Name's Beatrice; they call her Bea.”

“I seldom stop at Spanky's,” Frank said.

“Oh. Well, she don't have a half-bad face, see. One hell of a set of knockers. She's got a few extra pounds on her, not much, but she thinks she looks worse than she does. Insecurity, see? So if you play her right, if you kind of work on her doubts about herself, see, and then if you say you want her, anyway, in spite of the fact that she's let herself get a little pudgy why, hell, she'll do any damned thing you want. Anything.”

The slob laughed as if he had said something unbearably funny.

Frank wanted to punch him in the face. Didn't.

Wargle was a woman-hater. He spoke of women as if they were members of another, lesser species. The idea of a man happily sharing his life and innermost thoughts with a woman, the idea that a woman could be loved, cherished, admired, respected, valued for her wisdom and insight and humor — that was an utterly alien concept to Stu Wargle.

Frank Autry, on the other hand, had been married to his lovely Ruth for twenty-six years. He adored her. Although he knew it was a selfish thought, he sometimes prayed that he would be the first to die, so that he wouldn't have to handle life without Ruth.

“That fuckin' Hammond wants my ass nailed to a wall. He's always needling me.”

“About what?”

“Everything. He don't like the way I keep my uniform. He don't like the way I write up my reports. He told me I should try to improve my attitude. Christ, my attitude! He wants my ass, but he won't get it. I'll hang in five more years, see, so I can get my thirty-year pension. That bastard won't squeeze me out of my pension.”

Almost two years ago, voters in the city of Santa Mira approved a ballot initiative that dissolved the metropolitan police, putting law enforcement for the city into the hands of the county sheriff's department. It was a vote of confidence in Bryce Hammond, who had built the county department, but one provision of the initiative required that no city officers lose their jobs or pensions because of the transfer of power. Thus, Bryce Hammond was stuck with Stewart Wargle.

They reached the Snowfield turnoff.

Frank glanced in the mirror mirror and saw the third patrol car pull out of the three-car train. As planned, it swung across the entrance to Snowfield road, setting up a blockade.

Sheriff Hammond's car continued on toward Snowfield, and Frank followed it.

“Why the hell did we have to bring water?” Wargle asked.

Three five-gallon bottles of water stood on the floor in the back of the car. Frank said, “The water in Snowfield might be contaminated.”

“And all that food we loaded into the trunk?”

“We can't trust the food up there, either.”

“I don't believe they're all dead.”

“The sheriff couldn't raise Paul Henderson at the substation.”

“So what? Henderson's a jerk-off.”

“The doctor up there said Henderson's dead, along with—”

“Christ, the doctor's off her nut or drunk. Who the hell would go to a woman doctor, anyway? She probably screwed her way through medical school.”

“What?”

“No broad has what it takes to earn a degree like that!”

“Wargle, you never cease to amaze me.”

“What's eating you?” Wargle asked.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

Wargle belched. “Well, I don't believe they're all dead.”

Another problem with Stu Wargle was that he didn't have any imagination. “What a lot of crap. And me lined up with a hot number.”

Frank Autry, on the other hand, had a very good imagination. Perhaps too good. As he drove higher into the mountains, as he passed a sign that read SNO 3 MILES, his imagination was humming like a well-lubricated machine. He had the disturbing feeling — Premonition? Hunch? — that they were driving straight into Hell.

* * *

The firehouse siren screamed.

The church bell tolled faster, faster.

A deafening cacophony clattered through the town.

“Jenny!” Lisa shouted.

“Keep your eyes open! Look for movement!”