Meter Maids Eat Their Young (3 page)

Back in the parking lot, the CSI van was gone, as were most of the cops and Harrison's body. There was a crew replacing the melted meters. Life goes on. I was about to turn away when I spotted a familiar figure standing at the edge of the parking lot. From where I stood I could almost see the sharp creases in his freshly-pressed uniform. He stood like a flagpole, hands on his hips, his hat perfectly settled on his head as he surveyed the scene. I walked down the hill and ducked under the yellow tape.

“Marion,” I said.

“Like a bad penny,” he said, turning to face me. “I knew you'd turn up sooner or later.”

“It's what I do, Marion,” I said. “Was it the Mangler?”

He looked at me with those hard blue eyes, the kind of stare that makes your heart feel like it is being squeezed.

“Harrison wasn't killed here,” he said. “CSI boys confirmed that. No blood splatter. Not much blood at all. Whoever did it tried to make it look like a mugging. Took his wallet but left that pinkie ring of his.”

“The one his mom left him, with the emerald surrounded by diamonds? That was sloppy.”

“Yeah.” He turned back to survey the scene.

“Prelim coroner's report confirms what the CSI boys found,” he continued after a long silence. “I'll have the full autopsy report tomorrow. But there's no doubt he was killed somewhere else, sometime late last night and his body dumped here. Probably before your Mangler showed up.”

“Is that on the record or off?” I said.

“If you don't use it, someone else will.”

I thought about the story Skeeter had told me, about the car that cruised the parking lot before the meters went up like Roman candles. Shocked as I was to have the thought, I decided to tell Marion what I knew.

“That checks with what I've heard,” I said.

He swiveled around so fast I could feel the wind muss my hair. “You found a witness?”

“Of sorts,” I said. “Not terribly reliable. She's a meth-head, pretty tweaked when it went down. Her name is Skeeter. She hangs in the Dazzler Donut doorway most nights. Claims she saw the whole thing. Saw a car, an SUV she claims, no make, model or color other than dark; but she did say the right front fender was crumpled and one headlight was dimmer than the other.”

I considered giving him the description of the SUV that had pulled up alongside me but I wasn't yet sure there was a connection.

“Says it circled the lot,” I continued.  “Stopped for a couple of minutes and then sped off. Roughly an hour later she saw the Mangler arrive and a few moments after that the meters went off; she heard the coins dropping and came down to collect her share and split when the cops came.”

“Where can I find her now?”

“Hard to say. You know that old construction site over on Pine? She was there half an hour ago. She may well be gone by now.”

He pulled the radio from his Sam Browne belt, spoke a few sharp words and clipped it back. He gave me that cold stare again and I stepped back.

“Why aren't you stonewalling me on this, Teller?” he said.

“Why are you being so forthcoming with the facts?”

He turned away again and stared out across the parking lot. “He was my friend, Teller.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. He was mine, too.”

They call me Teller.

That's my name and that's my byline. I am never Charles, my first name, and never, ever, Charlie, a moniker I despise. Chuck makes me wince as though a dentist were at my teeth. Few people even know my middle name, Anderson, so I rarely have to deal with it or any variation like Andy. Years ago, there were those who called me Cat, but it's only on those rare occasions when I run into one of the old gang that I hear that sobriquet.

There was a time when Marion and I were tight, as close as two boys could be without being joined at the hip. It was an odd pairing: Marion so serious, so forward directed, me the practical joke on my parents and the practical joker in life. Every action Marion made was focused on growing up while I embraced a Peter Pan philosophy of wanting always to remain a boy.

When Harrison moved in across the street, he folded into our twosome as if he'd been born to it, bridging the gap between us; as much a practical joker as me and as driven to grow up as Marion. We wreaked havoc with our parents, our teachers, our fellow classmates, gladly paying the price of groundings, after-school detentions and fisticuffs amongst our peers.

Marion's father, a bomber pilot, had been shot down and captured by the communists early in the Korean conflict. Tortured for two years in a North Korea prison camp, he and several other Air Force personnel had been trotted out near the end of the conflict and filmed, confessing to the use of biological warfare, apologizing to the North Korean people, and denouncing the United States. This film ended up making the newsreel rounds of movie theaters all over America.

Few understand what torture can do to a person, to their psyche, their soul. He came home a broken man, to the ostracization and ridicule of his former friends and neighbors. Long after the town moved on to other things, other prejudices and fears, other things to ostracize and ridicule, he fought the nightmares of his imprisonment, the loneliness of rejection, crawling further and further into an endless line of bottles until one day, shortly after Marion's tenth birthday, he hanged himself in the basement of his home.

Marion's mother, shy and withdrawn to begin with, never recovered. She retreated deep within herself, letting go of all the things that make one human, letting them slide from her like water off greased glass. She would often be found naked in the back yard of her home, hanging up clothes that hadn't been washed, or wandering about town, dressed in nightgown and slippers, calling for her husband or discussing world events with people no one else could see. Shortly before Marion's fourteenth birthday, the state had her committed to the asylum at Eloise.

It was during this period that our threesome began to fall apart. The seriousness Marion had wrapped himself in became a life preserver he clung to like a drowning man. When his mother was committed and he was placed in foster care, it widened the gap between us even more.

As he had done with our disparate personalities, Harrison was able to bridge the gap of our separation, something I was never able to do. At seventeen, Marion went off to a different war while Harrison and I took a kiddie cruise on a Navy ship. We came back with our Vietnam era service patch. Marion came back with two purple hearts, the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor.

After college, Harrison went into politics while I began working at the newspaper. Marion hopped on the fast track at the police department. Though Harrison continued to buddy with both of us, the separation between Marion and me grew into antagonism.

As a reporter, I was always coming into contact with the police and, over time, I found myself constantly yanking Marion's chain. Maybe I was pissed at him for the abandonment I felt. Maybe hurt as well that he continued his friendship with Harrison while forsaking me. Whatever the case that antagonism grew, until it was a barrier neither of us could surmount.

A month past my thirty-second birthday, I saved Marion's life by putting all six rounds from his .44 into a guy named Willy T, a man determined to kill us both for a past transgression which only Marion and I knew the nature of. Marion was never comfortable with that fact, nor has he ever thanked me; more fuel on the fire that separated us. Two years after that went down I left this town; nightmares, incredible migraine headaches, and the burden of a broken love affair following in my wake like bad weather.

Leaving Marion to his solitary vigil, I circled the parking lot, interviewed a couple of cops, some of the guys replacing the meters, and the few remaining homeless, which yielded nothing for my efforts. Frustrated, I walked off into the thick woods and down to the river's edge, found a sandy clearing and sat down. I had less than a half page of notes and it was a tiny notebook. I tried to think of how I would fill the column space with what little I had. I was soon lost in watching the greenish-brown water pass. Water spiders were skimming across the surface close to the shore. The air was damp and cool and smelled of mud and fish.

Robyn and I had spent many an hour walking the trails that followed the winding river. We may well have made love in this very spot. That was back when all this was more woods than park, tangled and overgrown and littered with broken glass and old condoms. The idea of a gigantic park complete with concession stands, playing fields, monuments no one knew the meaning of, an elaborate fountain, and a monorail system connecting the whole thing from downtown out to the hot springs, hadn't even been a dim thought in some council member's mind.

As I stared at the water, lost in thought, a beer bottle, three-quarters submerged, floated by, the sun glinting like sharp knives off the green glass, cutting open that hole in my chest again.  I could hear Buster whispering in my ear, telling me how good one would feel, cold and deliquescing in my hand, the sharp, hoppy taste of it biting my tongue. I tore my eyes away, blew air from my lungs, cursing Buster for his persistence.  Looking up at the bright blue sky, I began to recite the Serenity Prayer.

What the hell was I doing back in this town? Was it only because HL had asked me to come back to the paper? When I had first left town, he had called periodically, partly out of friendship, partly to inquire if I wanted my old job back. I had always found some excuse to refuse his offer. I'd had a good job in Seattle. True, being newly sober in a town where everyone I knew was a drunk had its rough moments, but I was hanging in there.

Over the years, the number of calls remained the same but the reminders that my old job was still available stopped. Until six months ago, when they started up again. Had he been more insistent with these last requests? There were moments when it felt as if he were pleading with me to return.

Or maybe it was just my being sober after so many years that made me read it that way. Sober made the world look different. It was brighter, for one thing, the thoughts clearer. Ambition returned. Desire. Maybe even hope. But, in many ways, it was also a more dangerous place to be.

All the anxiety dampened by the alcohol returned. Feelings long submerged in amber began to stretch and make their presence known. Ambition, desire, hope: These are double edged swords which cut deeply if not handled well.

His last call had coincided with the death of my Uncle Burt. Offering his condolences he had also, once again, offered me my old job and at a salary any sane man would have grabbed in a heartbeat. My uncle had left me his house: A house free and clear of mortgage payments. Add to that a salary double what I was earning and the temptation was all but overwhelming. Yet still I'd hesitated.

I knew the lawyer for the estate would gladly have put the house on the market for a small percentage without me ever coming within a thousand miles of this town. I could have lived on that money for a couple of years, maybe quit my job, or taken leave of absence, finish the damn novel. Something.

In the end, I had accepted his offer. Seattle, once a town of magic for me, had grown cold and lonely once the amber dreams had cleared away. And so I returned to this place, where every move I made had me running smack into some memory I didn't want to face. In too many ways, this was worse than being in a town full of drunks.

I stood up, shook my head, slipped the notebook into my pocket and began trudging back up the hill to my car. A little voice in my head was telling me I was long overdue for a meeting. It sounded chipper and bright that voice. Not at all condescending or pushy; as if going to a meeting was the equivalent of winning the Pulitzer.

I hated that voice. Hated it for being so cheerful and encouraging.

Hated it for being right.

As I crested the hill, I spotted another figure from my past. Old Morris was sitting on a bench, rolling a ball toward a scrolled, ornate wooden box. Hard to believe he was still alive. I shivered a bit, watching him wave his hand limply, his lips moving. I knew he was talking to his dog. Just as I knew the ashes of that dog, and all the ones that had preceded it, were contained in that box.