comes back. I don’t mean it that way, but I’m trying to be honest. I hope you believe that.”
“I do.”
“You know what I really fear?” I asked.
“That she won’t want you back?”
“She won’t. Believe me, we’re through. What I fear is something different. I fear I might swap my obsession from her to you.”
“That wouldn’t be all bad.”
“Obsession and passion are not the same thing,” I said, “as has been recently explained to me by, how shall we say it, events on the ground. Straight up. I’m a mess. I’ve got war baggage. I’ve got Gabby baggage. I have drinking baggage, and some little side bags I’d rather not even discuss.”
“Maybe I can help you carry that luggage, Cason. I’m small, but I am fierce.”
“I believe it,” I said.
Next day things cranked sideways and there were rips in the fabric of what I knew as hometown reality; it was the way I had felt in Iraq, realizing I was slipping through the cracks of reason and that I had my finger on the trigger of a rifle, beading down on a human being, about to cut him in half with a .50 caliber. In those clear moments, just before I sent the projectile hurtling, I could look through all the lies I had been told about nobility and the quest for democracy and know I was nothing more than a living pawn with a weapon and a dead-eye aim, and I was about to snuff out a human life that maybe didn’t deserve to exist, but was it my right to take it?
All the Players in Their Places
26
I got the surprising news Monday morning.
Mrs. Timpson came out of her office and placed her ample ass on my desk corner and looked at me with eyes that had probably seen the first star pop alive in the first night sky.
“Oswald isn’t here today,” she said.
“I noticed that. He isn’t at his desk and has not been all morning. So, I deduced he was not here.”
“Well, that’s goddamn observant of you, Cason.”
“I’m a highly trained and skilled reporter.”
“And because you are so goddamn observant, and a little bit of a smartass, you can put your column on hold for today and do his job. My guess is you have a couple columns in reserve anyway. Am I right?”
“Well…”
“Yeah. I’m right. You still remember how to do a police report, I presume? You have done a police report, am I right?”
“I’ve done a few. Yes. For the Houston paper. It’s a pretty big paper. They even have color funnies on Sunday and a crossword puzzle.”
“That was my guess. Well, the police report is Oswald’s job, and since he isn’t here, today it’s your job. It’s also your job to take Oswald’s job of running down a story off the police report, and there is a story to run down. You still with me?”
“Clinging to your every word like a sloth clinging to a limb.”
I was pushing it, I knew, but I was tired and feeling irritable.
She gave me a hard look and shifted her false teeth in her mouth. “I glanced the report over, and what I want you to do is look at it, and follow up on this murder and kidnapping.”
My ears perked up. I liked being a columnist, but the idea of some real raw news appealed to me.
“There’s been a murder and kidnapping?” I asked.
“Well, I suppose the police who sent the e-mail could just be messing with us, but that’s what the story they gave us says, and they’re sticking to it.”
“I’ll get right on it,” I said.
“There’s two things I can smell quicker than anybody,” she said. “One is shit, and the other is a good news story, and I’m pretty sure what I’m smelling now is a news story, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s related to that girl who went missing sometime back, one you wrote about.”
“Caroline Allison.”
“That’s her. My take is this is related. Mark my words. The only reasoning I have behind that is my reporter’s nose is twitching. I sense a connection. I could just need to pass gas, but I’m going to stand by the connection theory.”
“Probably be more pleasant for all of us if you do,” I said.
“Get on it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I was about to stand up from my desk chair when Timpson leaned forward and gave me the watery eyeball. “Cason, you’ve done a good job on that column. I don’t give out compliments other than to tell the truth and because it seems to make people want to keep doing better, and that makes for a better paper, even if it makes my gums ache to say that crap. But you’ve done well. And you haven’t come in drunk. Those are two things I wanted to congratulate you on.”
“Thank you.”
“But you do seem a little distracted.”
“Nothing serious.”
“I just want you to know that I’m not here for you. I want the paper run right. That’s all I care about. If you got family problems, even if your mother is dying of some terminal cancer problem and it is eating her alive from the asshole out, you got to stay focused. She dies, you go to the funeral, and there’s a hot news story, you better be taking notes with your pad pressed up against her coffin. Understand?”
I started to tell her to go to hell, but since my mother wasn’t sick, I said, “I got you.”
“Just wanted to remind you that you’re always a worker here, and we’re never friends.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. “I mean, sometimes, I think, wouldn’t it be great if you and me could just, you know, hang? Maybe shoot some pool. Take a bike ride. Moon some nuns together, just me and you. But mostly I think I’d rather not.”
“As I’ve told you, I like a little comedy, Cason, but that’s about as little as I like. Understand?”
I nodded.
“Get with it,” she said, and walked away, back to her shadowed foyer in the back, disappeared behind the boxes there, possibly to kick a puppy or cut the head off a child’s teddy bear.
The police reports had been e-mailed, and I read them over at Oswald’s desk on his computer. One of them, the one the old bat had wanted me to look into, hit me like a truck. I felt weak in the knees and my stomach turned queasy.
Ernie was dead and his girlfriend, Tabitha, was missing.
It took me a minute to take in that information and believe it. I thought about calling the police department, asking some questions, but I decided to drive over to Ernie and Tabitha’s place, get things a little more direct.
On my way out I passed Belinda and she looked a question at me, but I just nodded at her and went on.
I drove over to Ernie and Tabitha’s house. The address had been listed on the police report, but of course I knew where it was.
When I got there the police were still working it. There were a lot of cop cars and unmarked cars along the curb. Uniformed cops were running about, and there were people wearing hospital footsies and plastic gloves and little masks pulled down under their chins. My first thought after seeing so many Houston crime scenes was simple. The Camp Rapture yahoos didn’t have a clue what they were doing and if there were any clues in the yard, they
