I Don’t Think We’ll Come Here Again I hope you’re comfortable, Mr. West. We’ll be here for a bit. I have a story to tell you. Don’t shake your head, Mr. West.  Besides, it’s a love story.  Everyone loves a love story.  I first saw her in the hall at school. She was leaning against the wall and crying. She was a tall girl, with dark hair shading her pale face. She wore a checked skirt and saddle shoes and a man’s cardigan.  I wasn’t the kind of boy to go up to a strange girl and ask if she was okay. So I watched as she took a big breath, sighed, and hurried away.  After school that day I saw her walking home ahead of me, hugging her books and watching her feet skip cracks in the sidewalk. I kept my distance but she seemed to sense me behind her. She turned and waved. Her eyes were a pale wintry blue. Even in that brief glance, I was a little hypnotized by those strange eyes. I stopped and dumbly returned the wave. She turned and walked on but I stayed there, red and gold leaves skittering across the concrete around me, making dusty, dead scratching noises.  Her family had moved into the huge house across the street a week before. I saw her from a distance on the day they moved in. I thought it was odd, this small family moving into the biggest old house in the neighborhood and clearly hauling their own things. Surely that house was expensive, right? And of course that meant these people had money. Why had they not hired movers? I saw her, her mom, her invalid grandmother and her Dad. All of them, save the grandmother, carried their things from truck to house all day. I thought to go over and offer help, but my Dad cut down a tree in the back yard that day and we ended up sawing it apart for firewood.  Two days after they moved in, her Dad woke the block at 6 in the morning, mowing his lawn. I looked out to see the man clothed as if for work, tie, dress pants and dress shoes, pushing an old John Deere in precise rows up and down the big house’s gently sloping lawn.  I didn’t know why at the time, but that really bothered me. I wondered: what kind of man does that in his business attire, much less at this hour of the day?  What kind of man would do that, Mr. West?  She and I nodded at each other in school for a few days before I finally managed to speak to her. I’d learned her name—Laura—and learned that she was already involved in the drama club.  She wanted to be an actress. Her surprise audition for the Fall play, I was told, really impressed our drama teacher, Mr. Giles. Mr. Giles had been on Broadway early in his career and he knew from talent. So Laura was probably pretty good. So that day I left school when she did and I simply said “Hi.” She looked up. “Hi. You’re my neighbor.” I told her my name and not knowing what else to do, held out my hand. She smiled and shook it. “Laura,” she said.  “Where did you move from?” I asked. “Westchester,” she said. She looked away. I realized that line of inquiry wasn’t open.  We chatted about school. As we neared our block, our conversation began to flow freely. Laura was easy to talk to. And her voice… clear and low, it brought to mind a waist-high layer of morning mist over everything, just before the sun burns it away.  We were only 16, Mr. West, so I can be excused for the speed with which I fell for Laura. I think the deal was sealed by the time we reached my house. For me, anyway.  Then we were there, in front of my house, and she looked up across the way at her home and said, “I better go.” Her voice was tight. I asked, “Is something wrong?” She looked at me for a moment, seeming to search my expression. I had gooseflesh on my arms and my mouth was dry. I wanted to touch her, right there and then, pull her to me and turn the whole scene into some stupid 40s movie romance. Instead I was still and lost for a moment in her strange eyes. Then she said, “It’s my Dad. He doesn’t like me talking to boys. Anyone, really.” “Why?”  “He just… he doesn’t.” she said. She turned and crossed the road. She didn’t bother looking both ways. She didn’t look out for oncoming cars, Mr. West. It was another small thing, really, that caught like a burr in a sock inside my brain. She could have been run over. It was as if she didn’t quite care. Or had never been taught to care.   She looked my last name up in the White Pages, matched the street address and phoned my house early that Saturday. I woke to Dad grumbling in the kitchen. He answered the phone then called for me, his voice sandpaper rough. “Hello?” “Hi.” “Laura?” “Yeah.” Her voice was soft, as if she was trying to keep from being heard. I said, “What’s up?” “I wanted to see what you were doing.” I wondered if I was still dreaming. “Um, I’m not doing anything,” I said. Then I looked at my Dad, who had gone from grumpy to grinning. He made a flapping, “go on!” hand gesture.  My Dad was a good man, Mr. West. It was just me and him for most of my life, growing up. He was a cop, you know. An honest cop. He did his job well. So I said, “You want to do something?” She laughed. Her laugh was a tangible thing, sun at the right golden angle on water. “I’d love to,” she said, “Like what? I don’t really know what’s to do around here yet.” I said, “Well, there’s the park. If you go about half a mile down the street you see the entrance. Your house backs up to it.”  “I saw that entrance,” she said, “Yes, let’s do that! A picnic?” My ears were burning. I wished Dad wasn’t in the room. I said, “Yes, that’d be great. I’ll bring sodas, if you want.” “Sure,” she said, “I’ll be over in half an hour.” I got off the phone and turned to see Dad smiling broadly. He turned and refilled his coffee. “Is she pretty?” he asked. I swallowed. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever talked to,” I said. “I need to take a shower.”  She was as good as her word, Mr. West. She was at the side door in 30 minutes. She wore jeans, old sneakers and a man’s hooded sweatshirt. Her hair was back in a ponytail. I didn’t breathe for a moment when I saw her, she was so beautiful. So real. Dad was talking with Laura when I entered the kitchen. She turned to me. “There’s a little chill,” she said, “But the radio said it would warm up a lot.” Behind her, Dad flashed a thumbs-up.  The sun was already pushing away the chill as we headed towards the park. We didn’t speak much as we walked, but it didn’t feel awkward. It should have felt that way. But it felt easy, companionable.  She asked about my Dad, having seen his Sam Browne belt by the coat tree in the hall. I told her about how he was an investigator with the State Police and their Inspectors—detectives—still wore uniforms. She asked if I ever worried about him and I said no, he’s not out chasing speeders or giving tickets anymore, so I didn’t worry as much as I once did.  I asked what her father did. “He’s an accountant,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.  A pattern begins to develop, Mr. West. Laura didn’t want to talk about her father. She was scared of him, I could tell.  We entered the park and headed up the main path that led to a pleasant picnic area by the river. We were halfway there, walking up an incline covered in yellow and brown Fall leaves, when she stopped and asked, “Where’s that go?”  She pointed to a side trail that led down into the denser brush, curving around the side of the hill. I’d never noticed it before. “I don’t know.” “Let’s take that,” said Laura. I didn’t argue. We all have moments in life, Mr. West, that sit on a platform above the other moments, permanently enshrined in shimmering yellow light. The curator in our mind’s museum diligently dusts them each day, gives them the real white-glove treatment. We visit those moments at times of stress or when we’re just feeling down and animate them again, bring all the remembered players and the set to life. One of mine is walking with Laura down that narrow side-trail. The trees were first growth and they held up a steadily brightening robin’s egg sky. The leaves came swirling down in fits as we walked, prey to breezes in which you could feel the milk teeth of Winter. Laura was with me, swinging the picnic basket as she walked, and she smelled of pink soap and spearmint gum. And soon the path wound up the wooded hill and opened onto a clearing, and below we could see the river snaking southwards. There were white birds hanging over a swimming area down there Mr. West, flicking little dots, doubtless searching for scraps of bread or carrion caught in the eddies swirling in that little cove. The sun was out and fully free of the horizon and Laura looked at me and for the first time since I’d seen her up close, just days before, she smiled. She changed when she smiled, Mr. West. Mere beauty vanished and something finer, more timeless took over its throne. I had trouble speaking because I was becoming consumed with the showering leaves, the sunlight, the small bite in the breeze and with Laura. Most of all, with Laura. “How about here?” she asked.  I took a deep breath and for a moment I was sure I might say something so stupid or inappropriate she would turn and run back down the path, leaving me dumbfounded in the clearing. “Perfect,” I said. We ate ham and cheese on white bread with plain potato chips. After we finished our cokes she produced two Snickers bars. We stood as we chewed on the Snickers and walked around the clearing, stopping to gaze down into the valley.  “I had no idea this was here,” I said, “I’ve been coming to this park since I was 7.” “I like to explore,” said Laura, “I don’t get too many chances to do it.” She was watching the birds down below. “Are those gulls?” she asked.  “Probably,” I said, “We had a big storm last year that blew them inland.”  She nodded. “When I’m 18,” she said, “I’m going to Manhattan. And I’m never coming back.” “To Broadway?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound teasing. She pushed me gently, smiling. “No, dummy.” She took another bite of candy. “Well,” she said after swallowing the bite, “Maybe.” “What do your parents think of that plan?”  She looked down. “They don’t know,” she said, a firmness creeping into her tone, “And you know what? Once I’m there, I’ll do everything I can to make sure they never know what I’m up to. Where I live.” She crumpled her candy wrapper. “Eighteen can’t come soon enough.” I don’t know why I said what I said, then. Why I asked the question. I’ve been told in the years since I might be a little psychic, but I think that’s bull. I just know it was out of my mouth before I could stop it, out of my mouth and hanging there in the air. “What happened in Westchester?” Laura was looking down at the leaf-covered ground and she raised her ice-blue eyes and for what seemed a very long time she looked into mine. I don’t know what she was looking for, but whatever it was, I think she found it. “We had horses,” she said. Laura told me everything then, Mr. West. She took my hand and led me back to the checked picnic blanket where we’d sat cross-legged and eaten our sandwiches and chips and we sat with our knees touching and she told me. She told me about how they’d had a stable of horses and a huge home and her father had been the president of a bank.  She had a horse named Tristan in Westchester and she had been riding him since she was small, taking lessons and training for riding in shows. Tristan was a beautiful Roan and one of the most important things in the world to her.  One night, the stables burned. Tristan died with several other horses. Horses scream when in distress, Mr. West. Laura heard them that night.  But the screaming had stopped by the time the firemen arrived. The week before the stables burned, Laura’s father lost her job at the bank for ‘suspected improprieties.’ They took insurance money from the fire, sold their home and moved to my neighborhood, where her father planned to start and run his own accounting firm. She couldn’t speak anymore. Tears ran down her cheeks. I felt flushed and unsure. It hit me hard for the first time that day, the fact that I didn’t really know her. The part of me that was my cop father’s son said she could be telling lies. She wasn’t though.  Not really thinking about what I was doing, I touched her face then, thumbing away the tears. She reached out and pulled me to her. We kissed.  We lay on that picnic blanket for a long time, as the day grew warm around us. There’s no need to tell you everything that happened, Mr. West. A gentleman doesn’t tell.  The light had shifted and the day was drawing down towards night when we packed up the picnic supplies and prepared to leave. She took my hand and led me back to the brow of the hill. The slanting light clothed the river below in gold. The white birds had ceased worrying the swimming cove for whatever they thought was there and were flying west, towards the sun. Laura said, “I don’t think we’ll come here again.” I felt a chill and turned her to face me. “Why? Why do you think that?” “I don’t know,” she said, “I just do.” She kissed me again. And again. This is where we move things along, Mr. West. Because we—you and I—we have business to do. We made it back before sundown and as far as I know, she didn’t get in trouble that time.  Then we were going steady, as boys and girls do. It was the best three weeks of my life. There was strangeness in her clearly hiding it from her family, of course, taking weirdly circuitous routes up the block and down a connecting gravel drive-thru just to knock at my kitchen door, which was out of sight of her house. But for a while I could put that aside and just enjoy each moment we had together. My father adored her. She called him ‘Officer’ as a joke.  Then came that Friday she had a late rehearsal. She was so happy to do a show at school and I guess her burbling about it as we headed home distracted us both from our normal caution. We also didn’t notice the heavy front of blue-gray clouds sliding over until we were in her yard, still holding hands. Then it thundered and a gust of wind broadcast its warning of the coming storm.  She took her hand from mine. “I don’t know if he saw,” she said, “His office is up there,” she pointed at a bay window that overlooked the walk up the front door of the house, “I don’t see him there.”  “Let’s not take a chance,” I said, “Call me if you can.” I turned to go. “Wait,” said Laura. “What?” It was fully dark and the wind was steady. A gust brought the thick smell of a coming heavy rain. The streetlamp in front of my house across the street flickered on, an hour too early.  She took both my hands. “I love you,” she said, “I just want you to know that.” Inside I felt something break and swell and before I was conscious of my intentions, I said, “I love you too.”  It began to rain. Fat, quarter-sized splats, cold and stinging.  Behind her the front door opened. Her father stood there, a tall, slightly stooped shadow. His high, thin voice barked over the storm: “LAURA! INSIDE. NOW.” The rain had begun to soak through our clothes, but she didn’t let go of my hands. I was growing cold and would be shivering by the time I made it back to my house but for a moment I was trapped inside her strange and beautiful eyes, which were so clear but still hid so much. I’d been with her almost every day for a good part of the day for close to a month, just exchanged words of love and I realized I still didn’t really know her the way you should know a girl. I had no real idea of what went on in that house, for since telling me of the burned stables and her dead horse Tristan, Laura had studiously avoided talk of her home life, as if it was a bruise that healed on the surface but still caused deeper pain whenever it was touched. “LAURA.” She let go of my hands and turned and ran inside, without looking back. The next day she didn’t go to school. She was absent the day after that as well. This is where we get to the heart of the matter, Mr. West. Laura was absent for a week. She didn’t call me. She didn’t show at some secret hour in the afternoon the next Saturday to reassure me. My father asked after her and I said I didn’t know what was wrong. He suggested I just go across the street to check. I told him about her dad then, and how he didn’t want her talking to others. I told him I was kind of afraid of her dad. Then I told my father the deepest truth, and began to cry. I was afraid something had happened to Laura. The family’s large, old-model Ford was still in the drive and there were lights on in some upstairs rooms each night, but there was no motion at her house. I knew this because I’d sat up several nights watching, wondering. I’d even gone out and gotten as far as the steps up to the door of the house before turning away.  I was a coward, Mr. West, and I told my father so.  He could be really tough, my old man, but I guess he hadn’t seen me cry in years and he was just my Dad then, sympathetic, wanting to make me feel better. Like any good Dad might be. He pulled me gently up from my seat at the table there in our breakfast nook and said, “Let’s me and you go over there and see what’s up.” So he was both cop and Dad then, Mr. West. I don’t know that I ever loved the old man more than I did at that moment.  He got his service revolver. He saw my eyes grow big and he said, “Well, you’re worried something happened, right?” and I nodded. He tucked it in his waistband. We crossed the street. It was twilight and getting cold. I glanced up and saw the sunset was particularly beautiful that night. Laura would have loved it. Then we were at the door to the house, Dad using his authoritative cop’s knock, not the polite neighbor tap. No one answered. Dad turned the knob.  The door was unlocked.  We entered a dimly lit house that mostly appeared uninhabited. The ceilings were high and in the foyer, there were water stains on wallpaper that was probably original to the structure. Light from the dying day outside washed down the stairs, revealing a chipped and pitted banister and missing newel.  And there was an odor. Dad whipped around and looked at me as soon as he smelled it. “What?” I asked, “What is it?” “Maybe it’s the garbage,” he said. I knew later he was still, in his way trying to save me some pain. Dad had been at his job for 17 years then; he knew exactly what he was smelling.  We heard music. It was a church hymn, echoing from a room near the rear of the house, just off the kitchen, which was dark and silent.  Passing boxes stacked against the stained walls, stacks of books, we reached the entrance to the large room. Dad told me later it had been a ballroom when the house was new and the builder and owner flush with money. Subsequent residents had either left it empty save for big parties or not used it at all. As we entered the only light was from tattered drapes over the windows along the east wall. In the dim there were no shapes of furniture. In here the music echoed loudly. Dad said, “Stand still,” and broke away from me, to the right. I heard him feeling along the wall.  Then he found the light switch. The bodies were arranged in a neat little row in the center of the room, atop an unzipped sleeping bag. An elderly woman, a woman my Dad’s age, and Laura.  Their eyes were all closed. Had I unfocused my eyes at that moment I might have believed they were sleeping. But they weren’t sleeping. They were dead. Each had been shot in the forehead.  Laura’s mother, according to the autopsy reports, had been shot once and died immediately. Laura’s grandmother, her father’s mother, had been shot in the head then strangled. Laura was shot 5 times, twice in the head, three times in the back. Crime scene investigators said there was evidence she fought with her assailant. The coroner could only guess at time of death for all three victims, as their killer had cranked down the household thermostat as low as it would go, ensuring their remains decayed slowly. His guess put Laura’s death—she was the last to die—very close to the last time I saw her. I vomited right there, Mr. West. Like a little kid vomits. I just heaved where I stood as the church hymn on the radio beside the bodies concluded and a soothing announcer’s basso profundo came on, intoning a prayer. Dad hustled me out and ran across the street to call his colleagues to come handle the scene, as I sat there dazed and shocked on the front steps.  Laura’s dad was not in the house and investigation revealed he had killed his wife, mother and daughter then taken a rented car down to Newark. From there he flew to points unknown.  He had confessed, Mr. West, in a neatly-printed letter addressed “To The Authorities.” His reasons were many, but the chief reasons were financial problems and “the corrupting influence of this world on my daughter.”  I always took that to mean me, specifically.  So, Mr. West. I kind of went on with my life. The house across the way burned to the ground three months after we found Laura, her mom and her grandmother. Dad convinced the other cops there was no way I did it, but I think he always suspected me. And of course, I did burn the damned place to the ground, because I couldn’t sleep as long as it hulked there every night, a prison for her pale-eyed ghost. Hell, at one point I even contemplated burning the school and then, for good measure, the studios of that damned religious radio station that had been playing as Laura and the women in her family lay in that room, decaying. I can tell you this, Mr. West. I can tell you things, in part because I want to. In part because I need to get them off my chest.  I went to college but later dropped out and enlisted with the Staties. Became a cop, like Dad.  I’ve been a cop now for 22 years, Mr. West.  It’s pretty obvious by now that you’ve been my chief project.  I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m not in uniform. Why we’re not at the station house.  This is the clearing where Laura and I had the picnic, Mr. West. I’m still surprised you lived close enough for me to just drive you up here after I found you. I mean, you lived in Oregon all those years; why move back? Anyway, that’s how I found you—that one time you slipped up and used your real social security number, not the one you took from some dead guy—I caught that. Kind of surprised no one had before, but I have been the only guy working your case for the last 5 years. Computer technology, databases, guess they all had to catch up.  If you still don’t understand what’s going on, Mr. West, just know this: I never got married. Sure, I dated plenty of girls, plenty of women. But in the end, none of them could gather up the ragged ends of whatever broke inside me when Laura died and knit them together again. Forty-three and I don’t have kids. At the moment, I don’t even have a girlfriend.  See, when a woman leaves my room in the dark, to go back to her place or even just go to the bathroom, Laura is running through the halls of my memory, past those stained walls, and falling dead from the bullets in her father’s gun in that big, dim ballroom. Makes it hard, Mr. West. Hard to really live the life I probably should have lived. I’m sure that’s a failing, but at least I’ve done some good. I’ve put a lot of bad guys away, Mr. West. I believe that counts for something. Now, you. You don’t deserve any fairness, Mr. West, but I’ll at least let you know what’s going to happen. This is a 6 shot Winchester revolver. It was my father’s. It was his drop gun, what he figured he’d use if some jackoff ever disarmed him. Dad was lucky, though—never had to draw on anyone and died in bed two weeks after I graduated from the Academy. Heart attack. This gun isn’t traceable. So even if forensics one day has bullets from it, they won’t help. I’m going to shoot you five times. Legs, arms, then head. Then I’m going to toss the gun and go back to my life. And I want you to know that this is for Laura’s mother, grandmother and for Laura herself. Goodbye, Mr. West. This is for Laura West. This is for your daughter. 

I Don’t Think We’ll Come Here Again

I hope you’re comfortable, Mr. West. We’ll be here for a bit. I have a story to tell you.

Don’t shake your head, Mr. West. 

Besides, it’s a love story. 

Everyone loves a love story. 

I first saw her in the hall at school. She was leaning against the wall and crying. She was a tall girl, with dark hair shading her pale face. She wore a checked skirt and saddle shoes and a man’s cardigan. 

I wasn’t the kind of boy to go up to a strange girl and ask if she was okay. So I watched as she took a big breath, sighed, and hurried away. 

After school that day I saw her walking home ahead of me, hugging her books and watching her feet skip cracks in the sidewalk. I kept my distance but she seemed to sense me behind her. She turned and waved. Her eyes were a pale wintry blue. Even in that brief glance, I was a little hypnotized by those strange eyes. I stopped and dumbly returned the wave. She turned and walked on but I stayed there, red and gold leaves skittering across the concrete around me, making dusty, dead scratching noises. 

Her family had moved into the huge house across the street a week before. I saw her from a distance on the day they moved in. I thought it was odd, this small family moving into the biggest old house in the neighborhood and clearly hauling their own things. Surely that house was expensive, right? And of course that meant these people had money. Why had they not hired movers?

I saw her, her mom, her invalid grandmother and her Dad. All of them, save the grandmother, carried their things from truck to house all day. I thought to go over and offer help, but my Dad cut down a tree in the back yard that day and we ended up sawing it apart for firewood. 

Two days after they moved in, her Dad woke the block at 6 in the morning, mowing his lawn. I looked out to see the man clothed as if for work, tie, dress pants and dress shoes, pushing an old John Deere in precise rows up and down the big house’s gently sloping lawn. 

I didn’t know why at the time, but that really bothered me. I wondered: what kind of man does that in his business attire, much less at this hour of the day? 

What kind of man would do that, Mr. West? 

She and I nodded at each other in school for a few days before I finally managed to speak to her. I’d learned her name—Laura—and learned that she was already involved in the drama club. 

She wanted to be an actress. Her surprise audition for the Fall play, I was told, really impressed our drama teacher, Mr. Giles. Mr. Giles had been on Broadway early in his career and he knew from talent. So Laura was probably pretty good.

So that day I left school when she did and I simply said “Hi.”

She looked up. “Hi. You’re my neighbor.”

I told her my name and not knowing what else to do, held out my hand.

She smiled and shook it. “Laura,” she said. 

“Where did you move from?” I asked.

“Westchester,” she said. She looked away. I realized that line of inquiry wasn’t open. 

We chatted about school. As we neared our block, our conversation began to flow freely. Laura was easy to talk to. And her voice… clear and low, it brought to mind a waist-high layer of morning mist over everything, just before the sun burns it away. 

We were only 16, Mr. West, so I can be excused for the speed with which I fell for Laura. I think the deal was sealed by the time we reached my house. For me, anyway. 

Then we were there, in front of my house, and she looked up across the way at her home and said, “I better go.”

Her voice was tight. I asked, “Is something wrong?”

She looked at me for a moment, seeming to search my expression. I had gooseflesh on my arms and my mouth was dry. I wanted to touch her, right there and then, pull her to me and turn the whole scene into some stupid 40s movie romance. Instead I was still and lost for a moment in her strange eyes. Then she said, “It’s my Dad. He doesn’t like me talking to boys. Anyone, really.”

“Why?” 

“He just… he doesn’t.” she said. She turned and crossed the road. She didn’t bother looking both ways.

She didn’t look out for oncoming cars, Mr. West. It was another small thing, really, that caught like a burr in a sock inside my brain. She could have been run over. It was as if she didn’t quite care. Or had never been taught to care.  

She looked my last name up in the White Pages, matched the street address and phoned my house early that Saturday. I woke to Dad grumbling in the kitchen. He answered the phone then called for me, his voice sandpaper rough.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Laura?”

“Yeah.”

Her voice was soft, as if she was trying to keep from being heard. I said, “What’s up?”

“I wanted to see what you were doing.”

I wondered if I was still dreaming. “Um, I’m not doing anything,” I said. Then I looked at my Dad, who had gone from grumpy to grinning. He made a flapping, “go on!” hand gesture. 

My Dad was a good man, Mr. West. It was just me and him for most of my life, growing up. He was a cop, you know. An honest cop. He did his job well.

So I said, “You want to do something?”

She laughed. Her laugh was a tangible thing, sun at the right golden angle on water. “I’d love to,” she said, “Like what? I don’t really know what’s to do around here yet.”

I said, “Well, there’s the park. If you go about half a mile down the street you see the entrance. Your house backs up to it.” 

“I saw that entrance,” she said, “Yes, let’s do that! A picnic?”

My ears were burning. I wished Dad wasn’t in the room. I said, “Yes, that’d be great. I’ll bring sodas, if you want.”

“Sure,” she said, “I’ll be over in half an hour.”

I got off the phone and turned to see Dad smiling broadly. He turned and refilled his coffee. “Is she pretty?” he asked.

I swallowed. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever talked to,” I said. “I need to take a shower.” 

She was as good as her word, Mr. West. She was at the side door in 30 minutes. She wore jeans, old sneakers and a man’s hooded sweatshirt. Her hair was back in a ponytail. I didn’t breathe for a moment when I saw her, she was so beautiful. So real.

Dad was talking with Laura when I entered the kitchen. She turned to me. “There’s a little chill,” she said, “But the radio said it would warm up a lot.”

Behind her, Dad flashed a thumbs-up. 

The sun was already pushing away the chill as we headed towards the park. We didn’t speak much as we walked, but it didn’t feel awkward. It should have felt that way. But it felt easy, companionable. 

She asked about my Dad, having seen his Sam Browne belt by the coat tree in the hall. I told her about how he was an investigator with the State Police and their Inspectors—detectives—still wore uniforms. She asked if I ever worried about him and I said no, he’s not out chasing speeders or giving tickets anymore, so I didn’t worry as much as I once did. 

I asked what her father did. “He’s an accountant,” she said. She didn’t elaborate. 

A pattern begins to develop, Mr. West. Laura didn’t want to talk about her father. She was scared of him, I could tell. 

We entered the park and headed up the main path that led to a pleasant picnic area by the river. We were halfway there, walking up an incline covered in yellow and brown Fall leaves, when she stopped and asked, “Where’s that go?” 

She pointed to a side trail that led down into the denser brush, curving around the side of the hill. I’d never noticed it before. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s take that,” said Laura.

I didn’t argue.

We all have moments in life, Mr. West, that sit on a platform above the other moments, permanently enshrined in shimmering yellow light. The curator in our mind’s museum diligently dusts them each day, gives them the real white-glove treatment. We visit those moments at times of stress or when we’re just feeling down and animate them again, bring all the remembered players and the set to life. One of mine is walking with Laura down that narrow side-trail. The trees were first growth and they held up a steadily brightening robin’s egg sky. The leaves came swirling down in fits as we walked, prey to breezes in which you could feel the milk teeth of Winter. Laura was with me, swinging the picnic basket as she walked, and she smelled of pink soap and spearmint gum. And soon the path wound up the wooded hill and opened onto a clearing, and below we could see the river snaking southwards. There were white birds hanging over a swimming area down there Mr. West, flicking little dots, doubtless searching for scraps of bread or carrion caught in the eddies swirling in that little cove. The sun was out and fully free of the horizon and Laura looked at me and for the first time since I’d seen her up close, just days before, she smiled. She changed when she smiled, Mr. West. Mere beauty vanished and something finer, more timeless took over its throne. I had trouble speaking because I was becoming consumed with the showering leaves, the sunlight, the small bite in the breeze and with Laura. Most of all, with Laura.

“How about here?” she asked. 

I took a deep breath and for a moment I was sure I might say something so stupid or inappropriate she would turn and run back down the path, leaving me dumbfounded in the clearing.

“Perfect,” I said.

We ate ham and cheese on white bread with plain potato chips. After we finished our cokes she produced two Snickers bars. We stood as we chewed on the Snickers and walked around the clearing, stopping to gaze down into the valley. 

“I had no idea this was here,” I said, “I’ve been coming to this park since I was 7.”

“I like to explore,” said Laura, “I don’t get too many chances to do it.”

She was watching the birds down below. “Are those gulls?” she asked. 

“Probably,” I said, “We had a big storm last year that blew them inland.” 

She nodded. “When I’m 18,” she said, “I’m going to Manhattan. And I’m never coming back.”

“To Broadway?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound teasing.

She pushed me gently, smiling. “No, dummy.” She took another bite of candy. “Well,” she said after swallowing the bite, “Maybe.”

“What do your parents think of that plan?” 

She looked down. “They don’t know,” she said, a firmness creeping into her tone, “And you know what? Once I’m there, I’ll do everything I can to make sure they never know what I’m up to. Where I live.” She crumpled her candy wrapper. “Eighteen can’t come soon enough.”

I don’t know why I said what I said, then. Why I asked the question. I’ve been told in the years since I might be a little psychic, but I think that’s bull. I just know it was out of my mouth before I could stop it, out of my mouth and hanging there in the air. “What happened in Westchester?”

Laura was looking down at the leaf-covered ground and she raised her ice-blue eyes and for what seemed a very long time she looked into mine. I don’t know what she was looking for, but whatever it was, I think she found it. “We had horses,” she said.

Laura told me everything then, Mr. West. She took my hand and led me back to the checked picnic blanket where we’d sat cross-legged and eaten our sandwiches and chips and we sat with our knees touching and she told me.

She told me about how they’d had a stable of horses and a huge home and her father had been the president of a bank. 

She had a horse named Tristan in Westchester and she had been riding him since she was small, taking lessons and training for riding in shows. Tristan was a beautiful Roan and one of the most important things in the world to her. 

One night, the stables burned. Tristan died with several other horses.

Horses scream when in distress, Mr. West. Laura heard them that night. 

But the screaming had stopped by the time the firemen arrived.

The week before the stables burned, Laura’s father lost her job at the bank for ‘suspected improprieties.’

They took insurance money from the fire, sold their home and moved to my neighborhood, where her father planned to start and run his own accounting firm.

She couldn’t speak anymore. Tears ran down her cheeks. I felt flushed and unsure. It hit me hard for the first time that day, the fact that I didn’t really know her. The part of me that was my cop father’s son said she could be telling lies. She wasn’t though. 

Not really thinking about what I was doing, I touched her face then, thumbing away the tears. She reached out and pulled me to her. We kissed. 

We lay on that picnic blanket for a long time, as the day grew warm around us.

There’s no need to tell you everything that happened, Mr. West. A gentleman doesn’t tell. 

The light had shifted and the day was drawing down towards night when we packed up the picnic supplies and prepared to leave.

She took my hand and led me back to the brow of the hill. The slanting light clothed the river below in gold. The white birds had ceased worrying the swimming cove for whatever they thought was there and were flying west, towards the sun.

Laura said, “I don’t think we’ll come here again.”

I felt a chill and turned her to face me. “Why? Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I just do.”

She kissed me again. And again.

This is where we move things along, Mr. West. Because we—you and I—we have business to do.

We made it back before sundown and as far as I know, she didn’t get in trouble that time. 

Then we were going steady, as boys and girls do. It was the best three weeks of my life. There was strangeness in her clearly hiding it from her family, of course, taking weirdly circuitous routes up the block and down a connecting gravel drive-thru just to knock at my kitchen door, which was out of sight of her house. But for a while I could put that aside and just enjoy each moment we had together.

My father adored her. She called him ‘Officer’ as a joke. 

Then came that Friday she had a late rehearsal. She was so happy to do a show at school and I guess her burbling about it as we headed home distracted us both from our normal caution. We also didn’t notice the heavy front of blue-gray clouds sliding over until we were in her yard, still holding hands. Then it thundered and a gust of wind broadcast its warning of the coming storm. 

She took her hand from mine. “I don’t know if he saw,” she said, “His office is up there,” she pointed at a bay window that overlooked the walk up the front door of the house, “I don’t see him there.” 

“Let’s not take a chance,” I said, “Call me if you can.” I turned to go.

“Wait,” said Laura.

“What?”

It was fully dark and the wind was steady. A gust brought the thick smell of a coming heavy rain. The streetlamp in front of my house across the street flickered on, an hour too early. 

She took both my hands. “I love you,” she said, “I just want you to know that.”

Inside I felt something break and swell and before I was conscious of my intentions, I said, “I love you too.” 

It began to rain. Fat, quarter-sized splats, cold and stinging. 

Behind her the front door opened. Her father stood there, a tall, slightly stooped shadow. His high, thin voice barked over the storm: “LAURA! INSIDE. NOW.”

The rain had begun to soak through our clothes, but she didn’t let go of my hands. I was growing cold and would be shivering by the time I made it back to my house but for a moment I was trapped inside her strange and beautiful eyes, which were so clear but still hid so much. I’d been with her almost every day for a good part of the day for close to a month, just exchanged words of love and I realized I still didn’t really know her the way you should know a girl. I had no real idea of what went on in that house, for since telling me of the burned stables and her dead horse Tristan, Laura had studiously avoided talk of her home life, as if it was a bruise that healed on the surface but still caused deeper pain whenever it was touched.

“LAURA.”

She let go of my hands and turned and ran inside, without looking back.

The next day she didn’t go to school. She was absent the day after that as well.

This is where we get to the heart of the matter, Mr. West. Laura was absent for a week. She didn’t call me. She didn’t show at some secret hour in the afternoon the next Saturday to reassure me. My father asked after her and I said I didn’t know what was wrong. He suggested I just go across the street to check. I told him about her dad then, and how he didn’t want her talking to others. I told him I was kind of afraid of her dad.

Then I told my father the deepest truth, and began to cry. I was afraid something had happened to Laura. The family’s large, old-model Ford was still in the drive and there were lights on in some upstairs rooms each night, but there was no motion at her house. I knew this because I’d sat up several nights watching, wondering. I’d even gone out and gotten as far as the steps up to the door of the house before turning away. 

I was a coward, Mr. West, and I told my father so. 

He could be really tough, my old man, but I guess he hadn’t seen me cry in years and he was just my Dad then, sympathetic, wanting to make me feel better. Like any good Dad might be. He pulled me gently up from my seat at the table there in our breakfast nook and said, “Let’s me and you go over there and see what’s up.”

So he was both cop and Dad then, Mr. West. I don’t know that I ever loved the old man more than I did at that moment. 

He got his service revolver. He saw my eyes grow big and he said, “Well, you’re worried something happened, right?” and I nodded. He tucked it in his waistband. We crossed the street.

It was twilight and getting cold. I glanced up and saw the sunset was particularly beautiful that night. Laura would have loved it. Then we were at the door to the house, Dad using his authoritative cop’s knock, not the polite neighbor tap.

No one answered. Dad turned the knob. 

The door was unlocked. 

We entered a dimly lit house that mostly appeared uninhabited. The ceilings were high and in the foyer, there were water stains on wallpaper that was probably original to the structure. Light from the dying day outside washed down the stairs, revealing a chipped and pitted banister and missing newel. 

And there was an odor. Dad whipped around and looked at me as soon as he smelled it. “What?” I asked, “What is it?”

“Maybe it’s the garbage,” he said. I knew later he was still, in his way trying to save me some pain. Dad had been at his job for 17 years then; he knew exactly what he was smelling. 

We heard music. It was a church hymn, echoing from a room near the rear of the house, just off the kitchen, which was dark and silent. 

Passing boxes stacked against the stained walls, stacks of books, we reached the entrance to the large room. Dad told me later it had been a ballroom when the house was new and the builder and owner flush with money. Subsequent residents had either left it empty save for big parties or not used it at all. As we entered the only light was from tattered drapes over the windows along the east wall. In the dim there were no shapes of furniture. In here the music echoed loudly. Dad said, “Stand still,” and broke away from me, to the right. I heard him feeling along the wall. 

Then he found the light switch.

The bodies were arranged in a neat little row in the center of the room, atop an unzipped sleeping bag. An elderly woman, a woman my Dad’s age, and Laura. 

Their eyes were all closed. Had I unfocused my eyes at that moment I might have believed they were sleeping. But they weren’t sleeping. They were dead. Each had been shot in the forehead. 

Laura’s mother, according to the autopsy reports, had been shot once and died immediately. Laura’s grandmother, her father’s mother, had been shot in the head then strangled.

Laura was shot 5 times, twice in the head, three times in the back. Crime scene investigators said there was evidence she fought with her assailant. The coroner could only guess at time of death for all three victims, as their killer had cranked down the household thermostat as low as it would go, ensuring their remains decayed slowly. His guess put Laura’s death—she was the last to die—very close to the last time I saw her.

I vomited right there, Mr. West. Like a little kid vomits. I just heaved where I stood as the church hymn on the radio beside the bodies concluded and a soothing announcer’s basso profundo came on, intoning a prayer. Dad hustled me out and ran across the street to call his colleagues to come handle the scene, as I sat there dazed and shocked on the front steps. 

Laura’s dad was not in the house and investigation revealed he had killed his wife, mother and daughter then taken a rented car down to Newark. From there he flew to points unknown. 

He had confessed, Mr. West, in a neatly-printed letter addressed “To The Authorities.” His reasons were many, but the chief reasons were financial problems and “the corrupting influence of this world on my daughter.” 

I always took that to mean me, specifically. 

So, Mr. West. I kind of went on with my life. The house across the way burned to the ground three months after we found Laura, her mom and her grandmother. Dad convinced the other cops there was no way I did it, but I think he always suspected me. And of course, I did burn the damned place to the ground, because I couldn’t sleep as long as it hulked there every night, a prison for her pale-eyed ghost. Hell, at one point I even contemplated burning the school and then, for good measure, the studios of that damned religious radio station that had been playing as Laura and the women in her family lay in that room, decaying.

I can tell you this, Mr. West. I can tell you things, in part because I want to. In part because I need to get them off my chest. 

I went to college but later dropped out and enlisted with the Staties. Became a cop, like Dad. 

I’ve been a cop now for 22 years, Mr. West. 

It’s pretty obvious by now that you’ve been my chief project. 

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m not in uniform. Why we’re not at the station house. 

This is the clearing where Laura and I had the picnic, Mr. West. I’m still surprised you lived close enough for me to just drive you up here after I found you. I mean, you lived in Oregon all those years; why move back? Anyway, that’s how I found you—that one time you slipped up and used your real social security number, not the one you took from some dead guy—I caught that. Kind of surprised no one had before, but I have been the only guy working your case for the last 5 years. Computer technology, databases, guess they all had to catch up. 

If you still don’t understand what’s going on, Mr. West, just know this: I never got married. Sure, I dated plenty of girls, plenty of women. But in the end, none of them could gather up the ragged ends of whatever broke inside me when Laura died and knit them together again. Forty-three and I don’t have kids. At the moment, I don’t even have a girlfriend. 

See, when a woman leaves my room in the dark, to go back to her place or even just go to the bathroom, Laura is running through the halls of my memory, past those stained walls, and falling dead from the bullets in her father’s gun in that big, dim ballroom. Makes it hard, Mr. West. Hard to really live the life I probably should have lived.

I’m sure that’s a failing, but at least I’ve done some good. I’ve put a lot of bad guys away, Mr. West. I believe that counts for something.

Now, you.

You don’t deserve any fairness, Mr. West, but I’ll at least let you know what’s going to happen.

This is a 6 shot Winchester revolver. It was my father’s. It was his drop gun, what he figured he’d use if some jackoff ever disarmed him. Dad was lucky, though—never had to draw on anyone and died in bed two weeks after I graduated from the Academy. Heart attack.

This gun isn’t traceable. So even if forensics one day has bullets from it, they won’t help.

I’m going to shoot you five times. Legs, arms, then head.

Then I’m going to toss the gun and go back to my life.

And I want you to know that this is for Laura’s mother, grandmother and for Laura herself.

Goodbye, Mr. West.

This is for Laura West.

This is for your daughter. 

Tags: fiction