Bad Things (11 page)

know whether Ellen Robertson was the kind of woman who might

fi nd herself in bars on an afternoon, however, and so I vaguely kept

an eye anyhow.

Or so I told myself. The truth was I had no clue what to do, or

where to go, and no idea of what she looked like. Until Ellen called

me, I was just an idiot sitting on a bench. I stretched the Americano as

long as I could, but as the light began to change it started to get cold

and fi nally I stood up.

As I did so I noticed a young woman walking down the other side

of the street, tall with dark hair and bundled into a black coat, the

effect overall being somewhat like that of a lanky crow. She walked

straight into the tavern without hesitating, revealing a fl ash of pale

cheek and forehead as she reached out for the door.

Was that Ellen? No, probably not.

Just after she’d disappeared, I heard a shout from behind and

turned to see a large man bearing down on me. I froze for a moment,

wondering what was about to happen next.

“For the love of God!” the guy said. “What the hell are
you
doing

here?”

“Well, that’s a sort of a greeting, I guess.”

“Jesus H, John. It’s been . . . You lost weight.”

“Yeah,” I said as I braced myself to submit to one of Bill Raines’s

trademark hugs. Bill sure as hell hadn’t lost any pounds. When I’d

fi rst met him he was big but rangy. There’d always been an even

larger guy waiting to get out, however, and Bill had done his best

to help him. He’d always been this huge, affable guy, who used his

surname to make dumb but disarming jokes about the weather in the

Pacifi c Northwest.

We disengaged. “Well, shit on a brick,” he said. “How the hell

have you been?”

B A D T H I N G S 65

I shrugged.

“Yeah. Carol with you?”

“No. I’m really just passing through.”

We talked for a couple of minutes, establishing that Bill still lived

out the north end of town, still worked at the family law fi rm down in

Yakima, and was on his way to visit a client whose case he was affably

confi dent of losing. I said I was living and working down in Oregon,

without being more specifi c. I didn’t proffer a reason for being here

in town. I asked about his wife, because you do.

“She’s great,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Well, you know Jenny.

Always got something on the boil. Look, shoot, I’m sorry, John—but

I gotta run. Stupid fucking late as it is. You free this evening?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Shoot. That changes, give me a call. Jen’s out of town. We’ll get

wasted like old times, man. It’s been too long. It needs to happen.”

“You got it,” I said.

“Well, okay then,” he said. He seemed becalmed for a moment,

then clapped me on the shoulder. “Shit, I really have to go. Later,

yeah, maybe?”

“Right.”

I watched him hustle across the street to his car, wave, and drive

away. Then I walked back to the motel, climbed in my own vehicle,

and got on with doing what had been in the back of my mind all af-

ternoon, had perhaps even been the real reason I’d been willing to fl y

up here in the fi rst place.

Maybe I’d never make contact with Ms. Robertson, and probably

it didn’t matter anyhow. But there was one thing I could do, and it

was about time.

C H A P T E R 1 0

When I was a hundred yards short of the gate I started to slow

down, and eventually let the car roll to a halt. For the last ten min-

utes of the drive it had felt as if I was shaking, gently and invisibly

at fi rst—but growing in intensity until I had to grip the wheel hard

to stay in control. As soon as the noise of the engine died away, I

was still. When I was sure the shaking wasn’t going to start again, I

opened the door and got out.

I was now fi fteen minutes northeast of Black Ridge. I’d taken the

Sheffer road, climbing gradually higher, then turned off onto the

country road which doubled back up into the mountains. A few miles

from here it all but ran out, narrowing to a perennially muddy track

under the aegis of the forestry management ser vice. I walked up to

the padlocked gate and stood looking over it, up the driveway.

Was this enough?

Over the last two years I had many times imagined being where I

now stood, but in those morbid daydreams the gate had always been

open and I had been there by prior arrangement. I had been pos-

sessed, too, of a keen sense of rightness, of a meaningful deed being

undertaken. As is so often the case, life had failed to mirror fantasy.

B A D T H I N G S 67

I took out my phone. I knew the house number, assuming it had

not been changed. Perhaps. . .

I turned at the sound of a car coming down the road, slowing as

it approached. It was a spruce-looking SUV of the light and elegant

type owned by people who have no genuine need for a rugged vehicle,

but know their lifestyle requires accessorizing.

It stopped a few yards past me and the driver’s-side window

whirred down to reveal a cheerful-looking man in his fi fties.

“Bob let you down?”

“Excuse me?”

The man smiled. “He’s a super Realtor, don’t get me wrong. Sold

us our place—we’re up the road a mile? Moved over from Black Ridge

a year ago and Bob was great with, you know, the process. But time-

keeping really isn’t his core fi eld of excellence.”

“No big deal,” I said. “I’m only here on a whim.”

The man nodded as though he understood all about that kind

of thing, though he looked like someone who last acted on a whim

around fi ve or six years ago, most likely a statistically sound whim

concerning moving noncritical cash reserves from one low-risk port-

folio to another.

“Had a look at that property ourselves, in fact,” he said. “Not

quite big enough for us, but beautiful. Has direct access to Murdo

Pond. But I’m sure Bob told you that already.”

“It’s been on the market that long?”

“You don’t know?” he said, sticking his elbow out of the win-

dow to settle into what he was about to say. He was wearing a thick

black sweater with a roll neck, and looked like he’d never been cold

in his life. “Okay, I’m sure Bob would be getting around to telling

you, he’s very straightforward, but it’s actually been mainly empty a

couple—three years now. There was kind of a thing that happened,

apparently, and some new people moved in for a while, didn’t take

to it, and they’re still trying to shift the place two years later.” He

68 Michael Marshall

winked. “So I’m saying Bob’s likely to have a little wriggle room over

the price—though you didn’t hear that from me.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Pardon me?”

“What kind of thing happened? Before the current owners bought

the house?”

“Well,” the guy said. He hesitated, perhaps suspecting he’d said

too much and was in danger of compromising his acquaintanceship

with Bob-the-Realtor, with whom he doubtless exchanged banter

once in a while at the grocery market in Sheffer: but also knowing

that he couldn’t back out now without looking rude. “Basically, some-

body died. A kid. A young kid.”

I nodded, not understanding why I’d pushed myself into having

this conversation. “Really.”

“Uh-huh. And, you know, from what I gather . . . nobody’s too

clear on what actually
happened
. I don’t believe anyone in the family got charged with anything, but, well . . . I heard the kid was a strong

swimmer but still somehow drowned, you know, with no one else but

the parents around, and you’ve got to ask questions in those circum-

stances, right?”

“Yeah,” I said tightly. “I guess people do.”

“But it’s three years ago. And a house is a house and that one’s as

close to a solid investment as you’re going to fi nd in this market—

they’re not making any more lakes, after all. And it’s not like you’re

scared of ghosts, right?”

“No,” I said, and smiled broadly.

Something must have been wrong with the way I did it, however,

because the guy pulled his arm back inside the car.

“Little insider information never does any harm,” he said defen-

sively. “But you didn’t—”

“—hear it from you. Got it.”

“Okay, well, nice meeting you.”

B A D T H I N G S 69

“You, too. By the way, one of your taillights is out. You might

want to get that fi xed.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, with a fi nal, curious look at me, and then his

window purred back up.

I stood and watched as he drove away. When he had gone around the

corner and out of sight I walked back to the gate and climbed over it.

I wondered, as I walked up the driveway, whether I’d ever done this

before. You don’t, as a matter of course. You’re driving, naturally,

hence the name. And so I hadn’t noticed the way it went steadily

uphill during the fi ve minutes it took to walk from the gate. When

I turned the fi nal bend, however, the view was abruptly almost too

familiar, like a scene from a dream I’d had only the night before.

Except things were different.

The grass around the house had grown very long indeed, and the

birch trees on the far side seemed to have gotten closer, the alder and

dogwood among them thicker. I walked down the slope to the center

of the lawn, wet grass swishing against my jeans, and then turned

toward the house.

It looked like it was asleep. All the windows had been boarded over,

and had large stickers warning about the alarm system. Assuming the

absent owners had, unlike Ted, kept up the payments, I knew that a

break in the house’s windows, or disturbance to the contacts of any of

the doors, would alert a security company over in Clem Elum. It would

be a long way for vandals to come, anyhow. A long way for anyone.

I stood staring up at the triangular silhouette the house made

against the trees and fading sky, and my chest suddenly hitched, and

my neck tightened, until the tendons stood out like painful cords.

I did not really want to go any closer to the house, but nonetheless

I walked toward the steps on the far side of the encompassing deck.

Having come this way, I did not wish to fi nd myself back in Oregon

70 Michael Marshall

wishing I had gone a few more yards. It was foolish, especially as

we had lived in the house for three months after the event, but as I

trudged up the steps I almost believed I could feel the air move past

me, as a younger man ran down the steps in the other direction, look-

ing for his boy. It was a breeze, of course, and nothing more.

I walked slowly back to the other end of the deck, peering at the

boarded-over windows and doors as I passed. Someone had done a

good job of securing the house, though presumably that made it far

harder to sell. The views from inside were one of its key selling points,

and not everyone has the imagination for that when they’re stand-

ing inside a cathedral-ceilinged coffi n. I wondered at the fi nancial

reserves of a family who could buy a house like this, move out, and

withstand it remaining unsold for a couple of years. Wondered also

why they had not remained here. I had loved this house. Every room

had something about it—its view, shape, or position in relation to the

space where you had just left—that made you content to linger in it.

Perhaps the owners’ problem had not been with the place itself,

but with the locals, who had evidently started to retrofi t a juicy little

scandal over what had taken place, with Scott as their own JonBenét

Ramsey and Carol and me as the unconvicted perpetrators of negli-

gence, if not something far worse. Why they would wish to do that I

had no idea, but it had been as well that the SUV driver had moved on

when he did. A good idea, too, that I not make a nostalgic diversion

to Roslyn or Sheffer on the way back, in case I was recognized and

someone said something they might regret.

I walked all the way around the house and found only one window,

on the far side and at the back, where it looked like someone might

have tried to break in. They’d got as far as levering one corner away

and then given up. On the other side was a small storeroom at the end

of the utility area, and for a moment I remembered it as it had been.

Shelves, lined with produce bought from local markets. Backup sup-

plies of batteries and bottled water—Carol had always seemed quietly

convinced that the collapse of civilization was only a matter of time,

B A D T H I N G S 71

and that it was best to be prepared. The smell of sheets, drying.

When I got back around to the front I paused for a moment at the

spot halfway along the deck where I had been accustomed to stand at

the end of a day’s work, or with my fi rst coffee of the day. The very

position, in fact, where I had asked Carol where Scott had gotten to.

Being there should have felt momentous, or unusually horrible,

but it did not. Just sad. The lawn below was overgrown and forlorn.

The artisan yard furniture was absent, and I couldn’t remember