Night Relics (37 page)

The sight of the two of them looking around the backyard made her suddenly aware of where she was—of how things had declined
over the last couple of days, and she put her hand to her mouth inadvertently, suddenly weary with shame. Lance came out of
the poolhouse, tying his bathrobe, trying to brush the leaves off it. His hair still looked like he’d combed it with a branch
off a dead tree and he had a horrible fixed grin on his face, worse than any car salesman.

“Freeze,” one of the cops said. “Hold it right there.” Lorna looked at him in surprise. “Put your hands where we can see them.”

She held her hands out in front of her, looking quickly at Lance to make sure he wasn’t too baffled to cooperate.

“Could you please identify yourselves?”

“I’m the one who called you,” Loma said. “This is my husband….”

“Your names?”

“Lance Klein,” Lance said. He looked at Lorna as if she’d committed the ultimate betrayal, as if the whole world were a sudden
fearful mystery.

“I’m Lorna Klein.”

“Do you have any ID?”

“In the house,” she said.

“If you wouldn’t mind my going in with you to get it, ma’am….” the big one said.

He followed her in, and she collected both their driver’s licenses, handing them to him. Then the two of them filed back out
into the night, past the couch made up with blankets, the scotch decanter on the coffee table. Outside he held the photos
under the lamp, stared hard at both of them, and handed them back to her.

“Why don’t you tell us what the trouble is.” He looked at Lorna instead of at Lance. The wind had diminished now, and the
moon was high in the sky. Both of them glanced around the yard again, taking in the overturned furniture and the windblown
mess. She saw then that the chaise longue was in the pool, its wheels hanging on the edge of the deck and its front end, cushion
and all, submerged beneath a solid layer of floating sycamore leaves.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I honestly don’t know.”

They waited for a moment, as if that wasn’t what they expected to hear, then the other one said to Klein, “How about you,
do
you
know?”

He shook his head hard, then managed to say, “A little quarrel, that’s all.”

The big cop nodded his head. “Someone put in a call to 911 and reported an assault in progress. You said that was you, ma’am?”

Lorna nodded. She wasn’t going to lie.

“Then why don’t you start from there? Tell us why you called 911.”

“Because I thought my husband was being assaulted. I woke up and heard a noise, and when I looked out the window I saw a man
with a shovel.”

“A
shovel
?” the cop said.

“This one?” His partner pointed to the old shovel lying near the redwood fence.

She nodded.

“What was he doing with the shovel?”

“He was … he was standing in front of the door there.” She pointed at the poolhouse door, which tried to swing shut just then,
dragging its bottom edge across the floor inside. There was a long gash in the wood, the white paint skived away where the
shovel had bit into it.

“He was beating on the door with the shovel?”

“No. Well, yes. I didn’t
see
him hit the door. I heard it. But by the time I looked out, the door was already open, broken like that.”

“It was mostly the wind,” Lance said, “breaking the door like that.”

The big cop nodded at him, then asked Lorna, “What was he doing? You saw him assault your husband through the open door?”
He sounded tired and there was an edge to his voice, as if he’d already figured out that he wasn’t going to get any straight
answers.

“No, I turned around and ran for the phone.”

“So you didn’t actually see anyone assault anyone?”

She shook her head.

“Were you assaulted, sir?”

“No, sir,” Klein said quickly. “This was all a mistake. I was out here in the wind, you know, trying to get things straightened
out. Wind was blowing the damned lawn furniture into the pool and all. Anyway I go into the poolhouse to switch on a couple
lights, and when I turn around there’s this guy outside the door, like Lorna said, holding the shovel.”

“Just holding it?” the smaller cop asked. “Getting ready to dig a hole or something? Maybe he wanted work.”

Klein shrugged. “Stealing it, I’d guess. People steal any damned thing around here anymore. I guess I surprised him at it.”

“There was some activity out here last night, wasn’t there?” the smaller cop asked. “Somebody put in a call right around this
same time. This related in any way, or just coincidence?”

“Coincidence,” Klein said quickly. “Could have been the same guy, of course—the prowler. Maybe he saw something to steal and
came back after it.”

“So what did you and the missus have a quarrel about?”

“What?” Klein asked.

“You said you had a quarrel. That’s what all the uproar was about.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, that was before. Hell, I don’t want to get into personal stuff, but I guess I was pretty teed off when I
came out here. And anyway, when I saw that this guy was in the yard, I started yelling. Anybody would have. I guess he thought
I was going to take a shot at him or something and he started waving the damned shovel around. Then he dropped it and took
off.”

“What do you mean ‘take a shot’?” the big cop asked. “Did you have a gun with you?”

“No! Christ, no!” Klein said. “Hell, I meant
hit
him, take a punch.”

Lorna almost told them about the gun. If someone heard the shot and reported it, then it was worse to lie, then the whole
story would look like a lie. But she waited, and the cop went on, talking in a voice that made it clear that the whole story
already looked like a lie.

“Uh-huh.” He nodded, looking hard at Lance. “So what we’ve got is that this stranger was stealing that shovel. Maybe it’s
some kind of antique?” He grinned.

“Well, yeah,” Klein said. “You could say that. It’s
old
anyway. Maybe, like I said, he picked it up to break down
the door. Probably he wanted to steal something out of the poolhouse.”

“I thought you were already inside the poolhouse,” the smaller cop said. “Wasn’t the door already open?”

“I guess the wind blew it shut.”

Both cops looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, neither one bothering to ask him anything more. Then the big one said to
Lorna, “Do you have anything to add to that?”

“Only that he jumped over the fence,” she said, nodding at Beth’s yard. “He threw down the shovel and jumped the fence.”

The smaller cop walked over and looked down at the shovel, then walked over to the fence, jumped up, and grabbed the top,
and easily pulled himself high enough to rest his elbows on the top. He looked around Beth’s backyard for a moment before
kicking himself back and away again. He looked at his partner and shook his head, as if to say that there was nothing to see.

The big cop looked at both of them for a moment, as if sizing them up. To Lorna he said, “Ma’am, maybe you could get things
straight next time before calling 911. We respond to assault calls with what’s called a code three. It doesn’t make us happy
when we have to draw our weapons for no good reason.”

She breathed deeply, trying to keep her temper, telling herself even then that it wasn’t the cop’s fault. She had to keep
a lid on it, get it over with. Get out of there and breathe a little, out of the wind. But damn it, she saw what she saw—a
stranger in her own backyard. And the phone call. She couldn’t mention that without really tearing things up, but she was
damned if she was going to pretend that this was going to be about a lunatic stealing a rusty shovel and her being some kind
of panicky nut.

“It didn’t look like a man stealing anything to me,” she said, stony voiced. “I honest-to-God thought he was going to attack
my husband, and
that’s
why I dialed 911. Whoever he was, he shouldn’t have been in our backyard. That’s trespassing
at the very least, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the big cop said politely.

“Well …” She wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t like that. I …” She found that she was crying all of a sudden. All of it hit
her, just like that—the phone call, the gun, the woman running away up the hillside, Lance stark naked, hiding behind a sofa
cushion on the poolroom floor, his hair all full of leaves. She turned away, closing her eyes, the wind blowing softly into
her face. She felt a hand on her shoulder and jerked away. Lance could put his hand on someone else’s shoulder from now on.
This was it, the last humiliation.

She heard the police say something to Lance, but she couldn’t make out what and didn’t care. Then one of them said, “Why don’t
you two call it a night. Close up and go to bed. Call us if something more happens.”

She stood there looking out at the blowing grass, listening to the wind as Lance showed them out through the house.

T
HE CLOTHES DRYER SLID BACKWARD AN INCH, JAMMING
against the wall, and Beth nearly stumbled sideways, frantic, thinking,
Shoot through the window.
And then, as he ran into the circle of porch light, he threw his head back, reached forward, launched himself up the few
stairs, and hammered on the door.

It was Peter. Lunging forward, she threw the dead bolt and swung the door open, flipping on the inside light again.
His face was bleeding, and he was breathing so hard that he was almost wheezing. Immediately he reached past her and turned
the light back off, and right then she heard Bobby’s voice from what must have been the living room. “Mom?” he said, sounding
scared. The police siren was winding out now, coming up the hill.

“In here!” Beth shouted. Peter looked like … she couldn’t say what he looked like. His face and clothes were dirty, his jeans
filthy to the knees, like he’d waded through the creek a couple of times and then kicked dirt all over himself. The blood
on his face was mostly dried, smeared across a ragged cut, dripped and smeared down the front of his shirt, which was torn
open at the sleeve and with a blood smear there, too. His eyes were haunted, confused.

She twisted the dead bolt again, locking the door, and said, “Wait here,” then opened the dryer door, set the gun inside,
and shut it again. Heading back into the kitchen, she met Bobby coming around the corner, sleepy looking and mussed up. She
put an arm around his shoulder and turned him back into the living room, looking back to see whether Peter was following.
He stood in the shadows, waiting. The police siren stopped abruptly, and through the curtains on the front window she could
see the revolving blue light.

“What was that noise?” Bobby asked.

“Nothing,” she said. It sounded stupid to her.

“I heard someone banging. And a siren.”

“There was something going on at the Kleins’ house,” she said. “I don’t know what, but that’s where the police were going.
See, there’s the light on top of the police car, through the curtains. See it?”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Can I look out?”

“One look and then back to bed,” she said to him, steering him toward the window. The police were already out of the car,
moving up the Kleins’ driveway. “Doesn’t look like much is going on,” she said. “I think maybe it was some animal got into
his backyard—coyotes, probably.”

“That’s because of his fence,” Bobby said.

“I bet that’s it. He needs one like ours. Now, time for bed.”

“But I heard someone, like, knocking on the back door or something.”

“That was just Peter.”

“Peter? He’s over?”

“Yeah. He stopped by for a little bit to find out about Sheba.”

Bobby scooted away from her, straight into the kitchen, Beth following, trying to think what to say, wondering whether to
grab him.

Peter was standing nonchalantly by the service porch sink, rubbing his hands with a dish towel out of the clothes hamper.
The light over his head was still off, but there was kitchen light shining in, and she could see that his face was clean and
his hair was wet and smoothed back. He didn’t look happy, but the look of crazy confusion was gone from his face.

“Hey, man,” he said, holding his hand out, palm up.

“Hey,” Bobby said, slapping his hand. Then he said, “Man, your jeans are
dirty
!”

“I worked hard to get these jeans dirty like this. That’s the style now. You don’t like them?” He edged toward the kitchen,
positioning himself so that he couldn’t be seen through any of the windows.

“Sure,” Bobby said. “I don’t like wearing jeans. What happened to your face?”

“Walked right into a tree limb. You ever do that?”

“I had three stitches once from broken glass.”

“That’s worse than a tree limb,” Peter said. “This is just a scratch.”

“What are you looking at? The Kleins’?” Bobby boosted himself up on the washer and looked out through the side window. “You
see better with the light out, huh?”

Beth looked past him. The two policemen stood in the Kleins’ backyard, one of them gesturing toward the fence. Klein and Lorna
were both in bathrobes, and the door to
their poolhouse was hanging crazily, the paint scarred off in a long slash. She almost looked at Peter, but didn’t. He needed
time to get around to telling her about it. She felt cold, though. Something had gone out of control tonight. She had half
prepared herself to deal with a prowler, but this was something beyond her. She glanced at him, and he smiled and shrugged
and shook his head slightly. She took the dish towel from him and dabbed the line of fresh blood on his cheek.

Bobby drummed his feet on the front of the washer and then hopped down. “Where did the coyotes go?” he asked Peter.

“What coyotes?”

“The ones that were in the Kleins’ backyard,” Beth said to him. “We think that maybe they got in through the bars of the fence.
I was thinking that it was a good idea we didn’t have bars. They can’t get into our yard.”

“That’s right,” Peter said. “There were a couple of them, I think. Probably they went back out through the fence. They aren’t
going to hurt anybody anyway, unless you’re a cat.”