The Truth of the Matter (10 page)

Ellie smiled. “Glad you feel that way, Sheriff.”

“Good for the lake’s reputation. Keeps out the—you know the type I mean.”

“I suppose it does,” Ellie said. “We enjoy the lake a lot.”

Boadeen turned his head, gazing in a half-circle with pale eyes that didn’t change expression. “Don’t wonder you enjoy it here. Beautiful place. One of the prettiest in the country.” He looked again at Roebuck and Ellie. “You folk catch lots of fish now.” He threw them a military half-salute.

“We’ll try, Sheriff,” Roebuck said.

He watched Boadeen turn and walk away, very erect, keys jangling, swinging one arm wide to clear the holstered pistol and nightstick that hung at his hip. The sheriff stopped after a few steps and turned, as if in afterthought.

“By the by, Mr. Watson, I understand there was some shooting up here lately. It ain’t hunting season, you know. We’ve had some trouble, people shooting squirrel from their boats.”

“I was only target shooting,” Roebuck said. “It’s just a .22 pistol. The doctors recommended it, said it would be good for my nerves, keep my reflexes sharp.”

“I trusted that was all it was,” Boadeen said with a smile. He glanced at Ellie. “You folk need me, just run on over to the office and use the phone.” He walked back to them, drew a card from his breast pocket and placed it in Roebuck’s outstretched hand. Then he threw them another half-salute, turned and jangled away.

Roebuck looked at the card after the sheriff’s car had disappeared down the dirt road. It was a white card, with a gold replica of the shield that had been painted on the car door, and at the bottom was the address of Boadeen’s office in Danton and a phone number.

Slipping the card into his pocket, Roebuck turned to Ellie. “I thought we’d had it. I was trying to figure a way to get inside the cabin and get my gun.”

Ellie looked toward the mouth of the road where dust still hung in the air from Boadeen’s departure. “I don’t think he suspects anything. He wouldn’t have been so friendly and all.”

Roebuck spat and kicked at the dirt. “Maybe we should move on, hide out someplace else.”

“I don’t see any reason we should,” Ellie said. “He doesn’t suspect anything—he couldn’t. As far as he knows, we’re just another couple renting a cabin at the lake. He probably pays a visit to everybody who rents a cabin for more than a week.”

“Maybe.”

Ellie walked over and rested her hand on Roebuck’s arm. “No maybes about it. He’s no worry. Every county in the state has got a sheriff.”

“I just hope he doesn’t come back.” Roebuck looked out over the wide lake toward the opposite bank.

“He’s no worry,” Ellie repeated, “but I suspect he’ll drop back here from time to time.”

Boadeen was like a shadow over Roebuck’s world. Days passed as before, the same activity, the same lolling in the sun during the day and making love to Ellie in the cooler hours of evening, but it wasn’t the same as it had been before Sheriff Boadeen’s visit. Roebuck felt again the heaviness in his chest, the furtiveness of the pursued man. Though Boadeen hadn’t shown himself for two days, Roebuck had no doubt about him returning. The delicately balanced world had tumbled; a serpent was in Eden.

Boadeen appeared on the third day. Roebuck and Ellie were sitting in front of the cabin, sipping cool drinks in the dying hours of late afternoon, when they saw a small metal boat making its way slowly across the quiet lake toward them. The gentle throbbing of an outboard motor came to them as the boat neared, and they saw that it contained one man. They sat without speaking, waiting, and as the motor cut to silence and the metal bottom of the boat grounded on the mud bank, Sheriff Boadeen leaped nimbly ashore and secured the boat with a long silver chain and a spiraled stake.

The sheriff was out of uniform. He was wearing a white polo shirt, neatly pressed Bermuda shorts and white tennis shoes that had somehow avoided the mud on the bank. In his right hand was a string of four or five bigger-than-average fish. Even dressed as he was, carrying a string of fish, he might have passed inspection.

Roebuck felt resentment and helpless anger churn inside him. He and Ellie stood as the sheriff approached.

When he was about fifteen feet from them Boadeen’s rigid expression changed abruptly to a smile, as if they were suddenly within range.

“’Lo, there. How you folk doing?”

“Just fine,” Roebuck said.

Ellie put her hands on her hips. “Nice catch you got there, Sheriff.”

Boadeen held the string of fish up so they could examine it more closely. The last fish on the string, a big rainbow trout, had obviously just been caught. It was still flopping, its skewered gills pulsating for breath as it hung beneath Boadeen’s handsome smile.

“I go fishing a lot up here on my days off,” Boadeen said. “I found myself near here and decided to drop by and see you.” He looked at Ellie. “Thought maybe we could fry up some of these beauties for dinner.”

Ellie was taken partly by surprise. “That’s nice of you, Sheriff….”

“Now, don’t say no, Ellie.” There was a touch of shyness in his voice. “You don’t mind if I call you folk Ellie and Lou, do you?”

“’Course not, Sheriff,” Ellie said quickly.

“The fact is,” Roebuck said, “that neither of us cares too much for fish. We like to catch them, but we usually give them away or throw them back.”

Boadeen protruded his lower lip and nodded approval. “Why, that’s sportsman-like conduct, Lou. I like to see that in a man.” He grinned at Ellie. “And in a woman.”

“I don’t know if it’s sportsman-like,” Ellie said. “It’s just that we’re both steak and potato fans.”

“I surely don’t blame you for that.” Boadeen ran a hand over carefully combed hair that seemed to fall back perfectly in place as soon as his fingers had disarranged it. “Say, though, I got an idea! There’s a place in Danton called Angus House—best steak you’ll ever eat. How about you folk running in there with me tonight and I’ll treat? Least I can do after offering you a meal of something you don’t like.”

“Really, Sheriff,” Ellie said, “we appreciate you asking but we can’t go. Lou’s doctor made him promise to stay completely isolated for at least a month. He’s got to get well a hundred percent or he’ll never fly again.”

Roebuck waited now to see if Boadeen would have the nerve to ask him if he could escort Ellie into town for dinner alone.

The sheriff wasn’t ready to go quite that far.

“I’ll tell you,” he said amiably, “I got some connections with the fellow who owns Angus House. He was in trouble once and I helped him out, if you get my meaning. I can pick up some of his best steaks and bring them up here and we can let Ellie broil them right here in the cabin.”

“I don’t know,” Roebuck said.

“Why not, Lou?” Ellie gave him her secret smile. “I don’t mind cooking. It’ll feel good to whip up a big meal again for more than two people.”

“If the sheriff’s furnishing the steaks,” Roebuck said, shrugging, “how can we say no?”

“Fine,” Boadeen said. “Settled, then! I’ll turn up here tomorrow evening about this time with the juiciest sirloins you ever saw.” He held his string of fish away from his body and looked at them. “I better be getting back and cleaning these.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow, then, Sheriff,” Roebuck said.

They watched Boadeen get into his boat and push off into the lake. He jerked once on the starting cord and the outboard motor sputtered to life, spinning the boat in a slow half-circle to head for the opposite bank. Boadeen looked back over his wake and gave them his little half-salute half-wave.

“He’s got a hell of a nerve,” Roebuck said.

Ellie sighed. “We had to let him come tomorrow night. He might have started to get suspicious if we’d told him no.”

“Maybe we should leave here,” Roebuck said. “I feel like things are closing in again.”

Ellie shook her head. “The worst thing we could do is leave real suddenly. He might get so suspicious, he’d start digging and find out who we are.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I sure as hell don’t like him.”

“So who does? But we have to be nice to him if he likes us. That’s the safest thing we can do.”

“That might be, but I don’t want to be so nice to him that he starts hanging around here.”

“Would you rather have him hanging around his office by one of those teletypes, or listening to his police radio?”

“He’ll hear about us sooner or later anyway,” Roebuck said with dismay. “He’s got to.”

“But he won’t know who we are, Lou. We look like any other couple on a fishing trip. They didn’t get a good description of me when we were spotted in Collinsville, and you don’t have any distinguishing marks or anything.”

“Just my eagle tattoo,” Roebuck said, “and I won’t let him see that.”

“The only way he could suspect us is because of the car,” Ellie said. “And there are thousands of station wagons that color. We just have to make sure he doesn’t get a look at the license plate.”

“He’s not likely to. He’d have to scrape the mud off it.”

“You got him outsmarted before he’s even started to think,” Ellie said, and she smiled invitingly with her generous mouth.

Roebuck smiled with her, smiling the uneasiness from himself as they walked into the cabin.

Sheriff Boadeen arrived the next evening just as Roebuck and Ellie were returning from a luckless day’s fishing on the lake. Roebuck watched as Boadeen braked the sheriff’s car to a halt in exactly the same place before the cabin as he had the first time he’d visited them, as if invisible markings designated a parking space there.

Carrying rods and tackle box, Roebuck and Ellie walked up the mud bank toward the car. As they drew near and Boadeen opened the door and got out, Roebuck glimpsed a walnut stocked shotgun mounted with chrome brackets on the dashboard. The sheriff himself was resplendent in a powder blue uniform crisscrossed with black leather and displaying a formidable-looking gold badge.

“No luck, I see,” Boadeen said as he shut the door behind him with that stiff, backward motion of his arm. “Or did you throw them back?”

“We threw them back,” Ellie said, “’cause they weren’t worth keeping, anyway.”

“Well, here’s something worth keeping.” Boadeen opened the package of butcher paper he was carrying to show them the steaks from Angus House. “Those are surely the reddest, juiciest cuts you’ll ever see.”

“I’ve never seen any better,” Roebuck said, “except when I worked as a cowboy in Wyoming. But that’s been a long time ago.”

Boadeen raised an eyebrow and looked at him with an intensity that made Roebuck uneasy. “Now you mention it, you look like you ought’a be a cowboy. Something about you…”

“John Wayne,” Roebuck said. “I was his double in a few movies.”

“By gosh, you do resemble him. What kind of doubling did you do?”

“Stunt man,” Roebuck said modestly. “Falls and things.”

The sheriff clucked his tongue. “Learn something interesting about you folk every time I come up here.”

“Those steaks’ll spoil if we stand here much longer,” Ellie said. “Why don’t we go in and I’ll put them on the broiler and make up a salad.”

“Best idea yet,” Boadeen said, winking at her.

They entered the cabin and Roebuck sat in a folding chair across from Boadeen while Ellie prepared dinner in the cabin’s small kitchen. As he studied the stiff, authoritarian figure of Sheriff Boadeen, Roebuck wondered how such irony had happened. Here he was, running for his life from the law, and here sat the law across from him, waiting to exchange pleasant small talk.

“I noticed you carry a shotgun in your car,” Roebuck said, trying to get comfortable in the webbed chair.

“Riot gun,” Boadeen corrected. “I saw you admiring it when I got out of the cruiser. It’s a twelve gauge automatic with an extra long barrel, and I have my own shells made up special, big pellets that’ll stop a man in his tracks if just one or two hits him.”

“Ever had to use it?”

Boadeen smiled. “Not yet.”

Ellie came in from the kitchen and handed them each a can of beer. “The steaks are on.”

Boadeen looked at her, his smile lingering. “I can smell ’em cooking.”

“Why don’t you build a fire so it can get going while we’re eating,” Ellie called to Roebuck as she walked back into the kitchen.

Roebuck balanced his beer on the metal arm of his chair and went to the fireplace. He put in some tinder from the stack of wood alongside the stonework; then he placed a large log on top of it.

Boadeen noisily crumpled a piece of old newspaper that had been lying on the sofa and tossed it to Roebuck.

“This’ll make it easier.”

Without answering, Roebuck wadded the newspaper and wedged it under the log. He touched his lighter to the paper and stood, gazing down at the tiny but voracious flame.

“A bit hot for a fire, ain’t it?” Boadeen asked behind him.

“Ellie likes them,” Roebuck answered, still staring at the growing flame. “She likes to sit in front of a fire in the evenings.”

“Sounds like a real little homebody.” Was there a knowing sarcasm in Boadeen’s voice?

Roebuck turned away from the flame. “She is,” he said. “We have a fireplace at home and during the winter you can’t pry her away from it.”

“Good to have a wife who likes to keep a fire burning.” Boadeen laughed sharply at some inner joke. “Home fire, that is.” He pulled on his beer and squinted at Roebuck over the uptilted can. “No offense, Lou, but it strikes me that you seem kind of old to be a flyer.”

“Old?” Roebuck leaned casually on the mantel. “I am too old to fly combat, but for a test pilot they want a more mature flyer, one who’s been through everything. That’s why nerve and know-how are more important than reflexes. You have to be able to think while the wings are coming off.”

“Sounds like a dangerous job.”

“It is,” Roebuck said, “but it pays well.”

Ellie’s voice came from the kitchen. “How do you like your steak, Sheriff Boadeen?”

“Rare and bloody!” He rested an arm on the back of the sofa and looked past Roebuck into the fireplace where the flames were licking at the base of the big log. “Looks like she’s going to start,” he said. “There surely is something about a fire that holds you, the way it turns and dances, always rising. You can see what you want in a fire, if you get my meaning.”