If You Could See Me Now Page 18

  “What time was this?”

  “About six. This morning. Maybe earlier.”

  “You were still up at six o’clock?”

  She tilted her head again. “I just got home. From a date. Anyhow, I just waited to see if you were alive, and then Mrs. Sunderson showed up. She went straight to the phone and called the police. She thought you did it on purpose. Tried to kill yourself. She’ll be back tomorrow, she says. If you want her today, you’re supposed to call her up. In the meantime, I told old man Hovre you’d call him when you felt better.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for saving my life, I guess I mean.”

  She shrugged, then smiled. “If anyone did, it was old man Hovre. He was the one who called me. And if I hadn’t found you, Tuta Sunderson would have. Eventually. You weren’t ready to die.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “You were moving all over the place. And making noises. You knew who I was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were saying my name. At least that’s what it sounded like.”

  “Do you really think I tried to kill myself?”

  “No. I really don’t.” She sounded surprised. She stood up and tucked the book beneath her elbow. “I think you’re too smart to do anything like that. Oh. I almost forgot. Zack says thanks for the books. He wants to see you again soon.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you sure you’re okay now?”

  “I’m sure, Alison.”

  At the door she paused and turned toward me. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then decided to speak after all. “I’m really happy you’re okay now.”

  The telephone began to trill again. “Don’t worry about answering the phone,” I said. “Sooner or later I’ll get it. Polar Bears wants to invite me to dinner. And Alison—I’m very happy you were around.”

  —

  “Wait until we’re comfortable before you start asking the serious questions,” said Galen Hovre two nights later, cracking ice cubes from a tray into a bowl. My intuition had been at least partially correct. I was seated in a large overstuffed chair in Polar Bears’ living room, in that part of Arden where I had parked the Nash. Hovre’s was a family house without a family. Newspapers several weeks old were piled on one of the chairs, and the red fabric of the couch had become greasy with age; the coffee table supported a rank of empty beer cans. Polar Bears’ pistol hung in its holster from the wing of an old chair. The green carpet showed several darker patches where he had apparently made half-hearted stabs at washing out stains. On end tables on either side of the couch, two big lamps with stands shaped like wildfowl cast murky yellowish light. The walls were dark brown—Hovre’s wife, whoever she had been, had fought for unconventionality. On them hung two pictures not, I was willing to bet, of her choosing: a framed photograph of Polar Bears in a plaid shirt and fisherman’s hat, holding up a string of trout, and a reproduction of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. “I generally have a little drink after dinner. Do you want bourbon, bourbon or bourbon?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Helps tamp down the grease,” he said, though in fact he had surprised me by being an adequate cook. Pot roast, reasonably well made, may not be notably elegant, but it was not what I had expected from a two hundred and seventy-five pound man in a wrinkled police uniform. Burned venison steaks were more like it, I had thought: virile, but badly executed.

  One reason for the invitation had been immediately clear: Polar Bears was a lonely man, and he kept up a tide of chatter all during the meal. Not a word about my supposed suicide attempt, nor about the girls’ deaths—he had talked about fishing. Tackle and equipment, bait, seawater vs. freshwater fishing, fishing then vs. fishing now, boats and “People on Lake Michigan claim those coho salmon taste pretty good, but give me a river trout any day,” and “ ’Course there’s nothing like dry fly-fishing for sport, but sometimes I like to take my old spinning rod and just sit by the shallows and wait for that wily old grandad down there.” It was the talk of a man deprived by circumstances or profession of normal social conversation and who misses it badly, and I had chewed my way through several slices of juicy beef and a mound of vegetables in thick sauce while he let the tap flow and the pressure decrease.

  I heard him tip a stack of plates into the sink and run water over them; a moment later he came back into the living room carrying a bottle of Wild Turkey under his arm, a porcelain bowl of ice cubes in one hand, and two glasses in the other.

  “Something just occurred to me,” I said as he grunted, bending down over the table, and set down glasses, ice, and then the bottle with a deliberate thump.

  “What’s that?”

  “That we’re all men alone—single men. The four of us that used to know each other. Duane, Paul Kant, you and me. You were married once, weren’t you?” The furnishings and the brown walls made it obvious, even the ducks mounting up one of the side walls; Polar Bears’ house existed, it occurred to me, in symmetry with Paul’s, except that Polar Bears’ bore the traces of a younger woman’s taste, a wife, not a mother.

  “I was,” he said, and poured bourbon over ice and leaned back on the couch and put his feet on the coffee table. “Like you. She ran off a long time ago. Left me with a kid. Our son.”

  “I didn’t know you had a son, Polar Bears.”

  “Oh, yeah. Raised him myself. He lives here in Arden.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Round about twenty. His mother left when he was just a little runt. She was no good. My boy never had much education, but he’s smart and he works around town on a kind of handyman basis. Got his own place too. I’d like him to join the police, but he’s got his own ideas. Good kid, though. He believes in the law, not like some of them now.”

  “Why didn’t you or Duane remarry?” I helped myself to a good dose of bourbon.

  “You could say I learned my lesson. Police work is hard on a wife. You never really stop working, if you see what I mean. And then, I never found another woman I could trust. As for good old Du-ane, I don’t think he ever really did like women. He’s got his girl to cook and keep house, and I reckon that’s about all he wants.”

  I recognized that Polar Bears was making me feel very relaxed, giving me the spurious sense that this was nothing more than a casual evening between two old friends, and I looked at him from my chair. Light silvered the thick flesh on the top of his head. His eyes were half closed.

  “I think you’re right. I think he hates women. Maybe he’s your killer.”

  Polar Bears gave a genuine laugh. “Ah, Miles, Miles. Well, he didn’t always hate women. There was one that got to him, once upon a time.”

  “That Polish girl.”

  “Not quite. Why do you think his daughter’s got that name of hers?”

  I gaped at him, and found that his slitted eyes were watching me anything but sleepily.

  “Truth,” he said. “I think he even lost his cherry to that little Alison Greening. You weren’t around every summer she was, you know. He was stuck on her, and I mean stuck. ’Course she mighta gone to bed with him, or done it standing up beside a haystack more likely, but she was too young for that to be public, and she treated him like shit most of the time anyhow. She just tore him up. I always thought that’s why he went and engaged himself to that Polish girl.”

  The shock was still ringing in my chest. “You said he lost his virginity to Alison?”

  “Yep. He told me himself.”

  “But she could have been no older than thirteen.”

  “That’s right. He said she knew a lot more about it than he did.”

  I remembered the art teacher. “I don’t believe it. He was lying. She used to laugh at him.”

  “That’s true too. He was real burned up by the way she preferred you to him whenever you were around. Jealous. Crazy jealous.” He bent forward over his belly and poured more bourbon into his glass, not bothering to add ice cubes. “So you can see why you shouldn’t go tossing that name aro
und. Du-ane might think you was deliberately rubbing salt in his wounds. Not to mention that you oughta think about protecting yourself. I hate to act like a spiritual adviser, Miles, but I think you might even try goin’ to that church in the valley. People might let up on you if they see you acting more like them. Sit and absorb a little of Bertilsson’s wisdom. Funny how all these Norskies took to that little Swedish rat. I can’t see him for horse piss, but the farmers all love him. He gave me some story about your stealing out of Zumgo’s. A book, he said.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “So I told him. What’s your side of this suicide business, anyhow, Miles? I don’t suppose there’s any truth in it.”

  “None. Either it was an accident, or someone was trying to kill me. Or warn me off.” I was still mentally struggling to sit up.

  “Warn you off what? You ain’t on anything. I’m glad it didn’t have anything to do with our talk yesterday.”

  “Polar Bears,” I said, “did your father ever find out who called him, that night my cousin drowned?”

  He shook his head, unhappy with me. “Get all that out of your head, Miles. Get it out of your system. We’re talking about now, not twenty years ago.”

  “Well, did he?”

  “Goddam it, Miles.” He poured what was left of his drink down his throat and bent forward, grunting, to make another. “Didn’t I tell you to leave that alone? No. He never did. That good enough for you? So you say this gas business was an accident. Right?”

  I nodded, wondering what this conversation was really about. I had to talk to Duane.

  “Well now, you see that’s what I thought. I wish we could have kept Tuta Sunderson out of it, because she’s bound to go around telling people what she thinks, and her version is a little hard on you. And right now, we’ve gotta take attention off of you. Aren’t you gonna have any more of this good booze?”

  My glass was empty.

  “Come on. Keep me company. I gotta have a few drinks at night in order to get to sleep. If Lokken arrests you for drunken driving, I’ll tear up your ticket.” His big seamed face split into a smile.

  I poured two inches into my glass and added a handful of ice cubes. The bourbon appeared to have as much effect on Polar Bears as Coca-Cola.

  “You see,” he said, “I’m tryin’ my darnedest to keep you out of trouble. I like talking to you, Miles. We go back a long way. And I can’t allow one of our good citizens of Arden to come in and sit here and see his police chief get sloshed, can I? We’ve got a good little understanding going. You forgive me for the Larabee business, and I’ll listen to anything you have to tell me. I forgive you for boosting a book out of Zumgo’s. You probably had a lot of things on your mind.”

  “Like getting anonymous blank letters.”

  “Like that. Uh-huh. Real good. And like your wife dying. And right now, we got another problem here. One that means you gotta keep a low profile, old buddy.”

  “Another problem.”

  He sipped at his drink, and slid his eyes toward mine over the rim like a card player. “It’s what I was tryin’ to talk to you about two nights ago, old buddy. A new wrinkle. Are you startin’ to shake, Miles? What for?”

  “Just go on,” I said. I felt as cold as in the old Updahl kitchen. “This is what you’ve been leading up to all night.”

  “That’s not entirely fair, Miles. I’m just a cop trying to see all around a case. Trouble is, it keeps on growing.”

  “There’s another one,” I said. “Another girl.”

  “Maybe. Now you’re mighty clever to get that out of me, because we’re trying to keep it quiet for the time being. It isn’t like the other ones. We don’t have a body.” He made a fist and coughed into it, stringing out the suspense. “We don’t even know there is a body. A girl named Candace Michalski, good-looker, seventeen years old, just disappeared the other evening. Two-three hours after I dropped you off at the Nash a couple blocks from here. She told her parents she was going bowling down at the Bowl-A-Rama—we passed it going out of town, remember—and she never came back. Never even made it to the Bowl-A-Rama.”

  “Maybe she ran away.” My hands were shaking, and I sat on them.

  “Out of character. She was an honors student. Member of the Future Teachers of America. Had a scholarship to River Falls next year. That’s part of the state university system now, you know. I took some extension courses in police science there some years back. A good girl, Miles, not the kind that lights out.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. “It’s funny how the past keeps up with us. We were just talking about Alison Greening, who is still, ah…on my mind a lot, and you and Duane and I all knew her, and people are all remembering about her death—”

  “You and Duane were a lot closer to her than I was.” He laughed. “But you gotta take your mind off her, Miles.”

  My body gave a tremor. “And an Arden girl with a Polish name leaves town or disappears, like that girl of Duane’s…”

  “And you make a museum out of your grandmaw’s house,” he said almost brutally. “Yeah, but I don’t exactly see where that gets us. Now here’s my thinking. I talked to the Michalskis, who are all shook up, naturally, and upset, and I said that they should keep quiet. They won’t tell anyone about Candy. They’ll say she went visiting her aunt in Sparta—or anything like that. I want to keep the lid on it for as long as possible. Maybe the girl will write them a postcard from a nudist colony in California. Huh? Maybe we’ll find her body. If she’s dead, maybe we can smoke out her killer before anybody gets the chance to get all hysterical. I’d like a nice clean arrest, and I guess the killer would prefer that too. With the sane part of his mind, anyhow.” He levered himself off the couch and put his hands in the small of his back and stretched. He looked like a tired old bear that had just missed a fish. “Why did you want to go and steal from Zumgo’s, anyhow? That was shit-stupid. Anyone would think you were asking to be put away.”

  I shook my head. “Bertilsson is wrong. I didn’t steal anything.”

  “I’ll confess to you, I wish that boy would come up to me and say, I did it, now get it over with. He wants to. He wants me to get him. He’d love to be sitting right where you are, Miles. He’s all screwed up inside. He’s about ready to snap. He can’t get me out of his mind. Maybe he killed that Michalski girl. Maybe he’s got her hid away someplace. Maybe he doesn’t know what to do now that he’s got her. He’s in a bad spot. I feel sorry for the bastard, Miles, honest I do. If we do get a suicide, I’ll say, that was him. I missed him, dammit. But he missed me too. What time is it?”

  I looked at my watch. Polar Bears moved over to his front window and stood leaning against the glass, looking out into night. “Two.”

  “I never get to sleep until four or five. I’m screwed up nearly as bad as him.” The gunpowder odor seemed particularly strong, along with the smell of unwashed skin. I wondered if Polar Bears ever changed his uniform. “How’s that project you mentioned? Comin’ along okay?”

  “Sure. I guess so.”

  “What is it, anyhow?”

  “Historical research.”

  “Real good. I still need your help, though. I hope you’ll stay with us until this is all cleared up.”

  He was watching my reflection in the window glass. I glanced at his revolver hanging in its holster from the side wing of a chair.

  I said, “What did you mean the other day when you said something about the killer’s not just being an ordinary rapist? That he might be impotent?”

  “Well, you take rape, Miles,” Polar Bears said, moving heavily across the room to lean on the back of the couch. “I can understand rape. It’s always been with us. I’ll tell you what I couldn’t say to a woman. These cases didn’t have anything to do with rape. These things were done by somebody with a bad head problem. Rape isn’t perverted, the way I look at it—it’s almost a normal thing. A girl gets a fellow all heated up so he can’t control himself, and then she hollers rape. The way these girls dress is alm
ost incitement to rape. Hell, the way some girls look is an incitement to rape. A fellow might misunderstand what some bottom-swinging little critter is all about, what she wants. He gets all steamed up and can’t help himself. Fault? Both parties! That’s not exactly a popular point of view these days, but it’s sure enough the truth. I’ve been a cop long enough to see a hundred cases of it. Power, they say. Of course it’s about power. All life is about power. But these cases now weren’t done by any normal man. See Miles, these girls didn’t have any form of intercourse at all—the examiner at the state hospital in Blundell, Dr. Hampton, didn’t find any traces of semen. They were violated by other means.”

  “Other means?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to hear any more.

  “A bottle. A Coke bottle. We found one smashed up beside both Gwen Olson and Jenny Strand. On Strand, something else was used too. A broom handle, something like that. We’re still looking for it in the field off 93. Then there was some knife work. And they were both beaten up pretty badly before the real fun started.”

  “Christ,” I said.

  “So it might even be a woman, but that’s pretty far-fetched. It’s hard to see a woman being strong enough, for one thing, and it doesn’t really sound like a woman, does it? Well.” He smiled at me from his position behind the couch, leaning forward on his arms. “Now you know as much as we do.”

  “You don’t really think Paul Kant did these things, do you? That’s impossible.”

  “What’s impossible, Miles? Maybe I did it. Maybe you did, or Du-ane. Paul’s all right as long as he stays inside and keeps out of trouble.” He pushed himself off the couch and went into the kitchen. I heard an explosive bubbling sound and realized that he was gargling. When he came back into the living room his blue uniform shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a sleeveless undershirt straining over his immense belly. “You want some sleep, Miles. Take care you don’t run off the road on your way home. It was a nice evening. We know each other better. Now scat.”