Ultraviolet. Nancy Bush
Roland’s widow, and Renee Hatchmere, Roland’s first wife, asking each of them in turn to call me back. To date, neither of them had responded. At another impasse, I wrote up my billable hours for Violet and temporarily dusted my hands of the case.
Friday evening I joined Chuck and Officer Josh Newell for a ride-along expecting the evening to be an uneventful waste of time. I was right about the uneventful part; wrong about the waste of time. While I rode around in the police car I watched the reactions of the people who noticed our vehicle. It broke down pretty evenly: twenty-five percent looked stricken, as if they’d been caught in some nefarious act; twenty-five percent pretended they didn’t see us—like, oh, sure, that’s gonna help; twenty-five percent reacted as if the police were their good buddy-buddy, waving frantically and smiling and generally being the kind of brownnosing suck-ups that drive me crazy; and twenty-five percent acted cool and hard-eyed and tough, mostly teenagers whose smoldering demeanors were for their friends’ benefits and caused Officer Newell to chuckle low in his throat.
For my part, I’m sure I would fall in the looking stricken category. I always feel guilty when dealing with the authorities. I kept quiet in the backseat while Chuck prattled on about how he’d always thought he was going to be a police officer but could never quite break away from his daddy’s business, which, from the hints he broadly threw out, appeared to be quite lucrative and given Daddy’s nearness to the brink of death, could be Chuck’s business soon.
Listening to him, I congratulated myself in forcing a change of plans: I’d boged out of dinner. Yes, he’d offered free food at Foster’s on the Lake, my most favorite restaurant around, but…again…it would be dinner with Chuck. I hadn’t been able to picture myself enjoying a meal with him, with or without Julie and Jenny, as every impression I’d garnered of the man was that he was overbearing, loud and deaf to anything but his own plan. Sometimes a free meal isn’t…well…free. I hadn’t figured out how to squirm out of the ride-along, however, so I met him at the police station parking lot instead of Foster’s. Chuck hadn’t liked the idea but I’d been firm. Either skip dinner, or I was out altogether. Grudgingly, he’d agreed to the plan, so I’d parked my Volvo in the station lot next to various black-and-whites, feeling vaguely uneasy, as if I were in the middle of a criminal act. What does it say about me that merely being around police cars—even when they’re parked in their own lot—makes me uncomfortable?
Anyway, I’d begged off dinner, saying I had to be somewhere later and though Chuck had pressed me, I’d managed to get things the way I wanted them. I was still planning to meet Jenny and Julie at Foster’s, but much later. Chuck just didn’t have to know.
“Hey, Jane,” Chuck hollered now over his shoulder. “So, I was reading on AOL that sausages can be good for you. Ease stress.” He leered through the grate that divided my seat from his and Josh’s. “I can think how they ease stress. How about you?” His laughter came from behind his nose, a dirty, snorting toot.
Chuck is enough of an Oregon Duck fan to only wear green and yellow—a virulent combination that should be outlawed if it isn’t game day. I realized, belatedly, that I only tolerate Chuck because he frequents the Coffee Nook. This is definitely not enough to form a friendship on. I thought about several responses, chief among them being “Shut up, asshole,” and decided to smile tightly and keep my own counsel. If you can’t think of something clever to say, don’t say anything at all.
I’d read that article, too, as it happens, and it was about the sound of sizzling sausages being something comforting as we headed into winter with all its bleakness and cold. But I kept that information to myself, deciding I could play passive/aggressive with the big boys.
“You still meeting Jenny and Julie at Foster’s?” Chuck tossed into the silence.
You would have to torture me for hours to make me give up that information to Chuck. I reminded him, “I’ve got business to take care of later. Can’t meet them.” Before he could press the issue, I said to Josh, “Somebody told me that their sister smashed her car into a tree, and the tree savior people arrived before the ambulance.”
“Was your friend all right?” Josh asked.
“Concussion, I think. Tree had extensive damage. Might have had to be put down.”
Josh said mildly, “I take it you don’t agree with the city’s tree ordinance.”
“I just struggle with people who use the tree ordinance to further their own political agenda.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Chuck asked.
“Like that neighborhood association that tried to stop the guy building that huge house on the lake? They tried everything to stop him. Used the tree ordinance as one means to delay. Had nothing to do with the trees themselves.”
Chuck said, “Who cares? Let’s go hang around the bars, see if we can give somebody a DUI.”
“It’s a little early,” I pointed out.
“Hey, my friend Sonny got picked up at nine-thirty. Jesus, he blew like a .16. Shit hit the fan, I’ll tell ya. Wife kicked him out and now he’s got all these crappy classes where he has to say he’s got a problem. My day, the cops caught you, they just drove you home.”
I gazed at the back of Chuck’s head. “You wanna bust somebody for DUI, but you’re grousing about your friend’s luck?”
“Sonny’s a good guy.”
Josh said to me, “Have you thought about joining your own neighborhood association? Then you’d have some say in the decisions. You could make a difference.” He looked at me through the rearview mirror and I hoped my horror didn’t show on my face.
“I may be moving,” I said. Like, oh, sure. Me in the neighborhood association. I had a mental image of do-gooders of all ages, earnestness oozing from their pores. “And I’m a renter.”
Chuck singsonged, “Bor—ing.”
I decided that Chuck was right and changed the subject. But Josh regarded me thoughtfully in his rearview for the rest of our trip. I found this unnerving. It was lucky Chuck was so all about himself that he neglected to bring up that I was a private investigator. Somehow I didn’t think that would go over well with Josh. Unless his sister Cheryl had already spilled the beans, which was highly probable the more I thought about it.
I said good-bye to them both at the Lake Chinook Police Station. Josh headed inside the building and I gazed after him. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to know someone on the force, but he struck me as one of those by-the-book, ultra-sincere types that never seem to get me.
Chuck ambled over to his car, an even older Volvo than my wagon, a sedan in pretty decent condition. I’d just about written Chuck off, but now I thought I might have to reevaluate. Volvo drivers feel absurdly like kin to me. I might have to give him a second chance, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.
After Chuck drove away, I ignored my own car and walked from the police station, which is on A Street to Foster’s, which is on State, the street that runs parallel to the Willamette River. There’s terminally difficult parking near Foster’s, so I figured I wouldn’t bother. It’s not a long walk, but it was windy and chilly and I was shivering like a plague victim by the time I blew into the front bar. The back patio’s closed this time of year, for obvious reasons, so I entered the low-ceilinged front room with its bloodred Naugahyde booths, cozy tables with flickering, votive candles and sunken bar at the west end. Patrons sit at room height around the bar, while the bartender and servers are working several steps below. This is because the bar is street height and the restaurant slopes down a half-level toward the rear dining room and patio, which are lake height. In February 1996 the greater Portland area flooded from a massive amount of rain. The Willamette River crested at the top of its banks, and Lake Chinook, which is fed by the Tualatin River, ran more than a few feet beyond its highest point, spilling water through the businesses that lined State Street and running across the road to damn near meet up with the river. Sandbags around the buildings saved them from devastating ruin, but from all accounts, it was one massive mess. Fortunately, Foster’s was