Reality Check (2010) (17 page)

time, Bud's nose nudged his shoulder, as though urging him to pick up the pace. Cody picked up the pace, but there'd been less snowmobile traffic here, and once or twice he sank down in the snow. His knee began to hurt. Bud nudged him again.

Bud made a whinnying sound. Cody glanced back, saw he was doing that eye-rolling thing.
"What's on your mind?" Cody held out another sugar cube. Bud took it, relaxed a little. They went on, reached the crossover trail, marked with snowmobile tracks. Cody halted and turned to Bud. "Which way?" he said. "Straight ahead, or do we--" With no warning, Bud neighed--a piercing, wild sound, terrified and terrifying--and rose up on his hind legs, front hooves flailing the air, just missing Cody's head. Cody dropped the reins, leaped back.
"Hey," he said. "What's going on?"
Sergeant Orton stepped out from behind a tree, not ten feet away. "I'll ask you the same question," he said, right hand on the butt of his gun.

step or two and then went still. Without taking his eyes off Cody--or his hand off the gun--Sergeant Orton bent down and grabbed the reins. Three breath clouds rose in the air-- Cody's and Sergeant Orton's, plus Bud's, much bigger--and drifted off in their separate ways. "I asked you a question," the sergeant said.

"I'm, uh, working here now," Cody said. "A job. At the barn."
"That's not what I asked."
"Um, I thought, maybe that Bud would lead me to wherever . . ."
"That was one of the first things we tried," said Sergeant Orton. "You aware of that?"
Cody hesitated, trying to see down the two diverging roads leading away from yes and no
.
He got nowhere.
"Any weapons on you, Cody?" said the sergeant.
"Me?"
"Little popgun, maybe? Knife of some sort?"
"No," said Cody.
"Just keep your hands where I can see them."
Cody kept his hands by his side, exactly where they'd been, but now he was hyperconscious of them.
"Ever been arrested?" the sergeant said.
"Never."
"A snap for me to check," Sergeant Orton said. "That part of the job gets easier every day."
Cody said nothing. He'd had a run-in or two like the one with the cop out at the quarry--pretty common kind of thing for boys in Little Bend--but none had led to arrest, and Sergeant Orton could check all he wanted.
"A bit of a tough guy, huh?" said the sergeant.
Cody did not reply.
"I'm dressed warm and you're not," Sergeant Orton said. "Many many layers."
Cody shrugged.
"Meaning I can wait out here all day."
"For what?" said Cody.
"The answer to my question--were you aware we'd already tried this horse idea?"
Cody gave up trying to see the future. He chose the truth, maybe because it seemed easier, or maybe--he got a sudden glimpse inside himself--because that was his default setting. "I knew," he said. "Mrs. McTeague told me."
Sergeant Orton nodded, a tiny movement, but something about it told Cody that the sergeant had known this bit of information about Mrs. McTeague from the get-go. His hand came off the gun butt. "And she told you the idea came to nothing?"
Cody nodded.
"Raises the obvious question," the sergeant said. Then came a pause, and in that pause Cody tried and failed to figure out any obvious question. "Which is," Sergeant Orton said, "how come you thought you'd do any better?"
"It's just that Bud--the horse--trusts me, and so . . ."
"Any special reason for Bud trusting you?"
Cody felt those probing eyes. Was this another question Sergeant Orton already knew the answer to? Cody took a deep breath, made a decision; right or wrong, he didn't know--all he knew was he started to feel better at that moment. "The thing is," he said, "I'm from Colorado, the same town as Clea."
"Hell, I know that," said the sergeant. "Ran your plates the same hour you first showed up. Or let's maybe delete that
first
for the moment, stick to you just showing up at the barn. The big question is where you were last Wednesday." The feeling-better thing vanished at once. In its place came dizziness, as though Cody had suddenly grown much too tall, his head way too high off the ground, total collapse coming next. "What . . . what are you saying?"
"A simple matter of fact," said the sergeant. "Account for your whereabouts last Wednesday."
"But that's the day she disappeared."
"Go on."
"I was at work."
"Where?"
"Delivering lumber."
"Where?"
"Back home," Cody said. "In Little Bend."
"Can you prove it?"
"But I don't understand," Cody said. "Are you saying something's--"
Sergeant Orton's voice rose over his. "Want me to cuff you? Answer the goddamn question." Bud got nervous, started shifting away. Sergeant Orton gave the reins a sharp tug, strong enough to pull Bud's head down.
Cody didn't like that; it made him combative. "I haven't done anything wrong," he said.
Sergeant Orton's free hand shifted back to the gun. "Five seconds," he said.
For four of them, Cody considered the idea of bolting away through the woods. On the fifth, he said, "I can prove it."
"How?"
"Ms. Beezon. She can tell you."
"That's your boss?"
"Kind of. At Beezon Lumber."
"You don't go to school?"
"I don't have to," Cody said. "I'm almost seventeen."
"I know how old you are." Sergeant Orton reached into an inside pocket, took out a cell phone. "Call her."
"Don't know the number," Cody said.
"That meant to be funny?" said the sergeant. "Don't know the number of your employer?"
"It's not meant to be funny," Cody said.
Sergeant Orton punched some numbers on his phone, then paused, index finger curled over the keypad. "This Ms. Beezon know you're here?" he said.
"No."
"Who does?"
"From Little Bend? I guess nobody."
"What about your parents?"
"There's just my d--my father. He thinks I'm looking for work, but not this far away."
Sergeant Orton gave him a long look. Then his finger pressed the last number. "Beezon Lumber, Little Bend, Colorado." He waited, the phone to his ear, his eyes on Cody. Cody tried to remember some previous time he'd told Sergeant Orton his age and couldn't. "Ms. Beezon, please," said the sergeant. "Ms. Beezon, I'm with statistics, Department of Education. Just checking to see if you can confirm an employee, recent dropout name of Laredo, first name Cody." Sergeant Orton listened, nodded, then said, "Did he work last week?" More listening. "Monday to Friday?" The sergeant nodded again. "And what were the hours?" He listened some more, said, "Much obliged," clicked off. Then his eyes were back on Cody.
Cody thought:
No way to trust a guy like this, not ever.
Up above, the wind was stirring, rattling the upper branches.
"Ever been in North Dover before?" said Sergeant Orton.
"No."
"Have any relatives here, any friends?"
"No," said Cody, then added, "except for Clea."
"I hear she was your girlfriend."
"Who told you that?"
"The way this works," said the sergeant, "is I ask and you answer. Was Clea Weston your girlfriend?"
Cody nodded.
"I also hear you broke up before she came to the academy. What can you tell me about the circumstances?"
"We broke up."
"And how did you feel about that?"
Cody shrugged.
"Losing such a bright, beautiful girl, my guess is it got inside you, twisted around, riled you up."
"Riled me up?"
"Made you a bit crazy--a possible plea down the line, if you play your cards right, meaning tell the truth."
"I don't understand a word you're saying," Cody said, but all at once he felt the cold, through and through.
"It 's actually kind of common," said Sergeant Orton. "A syndrome, you might say. Some guys get this idea in their heads and can't shake it. All they hear in their minds is this same one thing, over and over--if I can't have her, then no one can."
Cody didn't think. He just hit Sergeant Orton in the mouth as hard as he could.
Maybe not quite in the mouth. Sergeant Orton turned out to be pretty quick for an overweight, middle-aged guy. He shifted his head, just enough to change the angle of the blow, diminish it a little. At almost the same time he drew his gun, started to raise it. But Bud, maybe scared, was moving too. He reared up again, and again flailed the air with his front hooves. One of them came down on Sergeant Orton's hand, knocking the gun loose. Cody wheeled around and took off down the crossover trail.
"Halt!" Sergeant Orton shouted.
Cody didn't halt. He kept running, but so slow, like an underwater runner, his feet sinking a few inches into the snow with every stride.
"Halt or I'll shoot."
Cody didn't believe that, not for a second. He kept running, a vague plan forming in his mind, a plan based on getting to Route 7, flagging down a--
Crack!
Crack of a gunshot, sharp and clear in the woods. At just about the same instant came a second cracking sound, and something invisible splintered the bark of a tree a few feet ahead of him. A tiny cloud of sawdust spurted from the trunk. Cody stopped running.
"Hands up high."
Cody raised his hands.
"Turn around real slow."
Cody turned.
Sergeant Orton came trudging up the trail, gun raised. Bud stood quietly behind him, as if he, too, had been ordered to halt. The sergeant spat; a red glob landed in the snow. "The type that makes everything harder than it has to be, aren't you?" he said.
Cody didn't know what to say about that. He was going to be arrested. He had rights, didn't he? On
Cops
--Junior's favorite show--no one ever seemed to know about their rights, blabbed everything. Cody knew he had the right to remain silent. On the other hand, he hadn't done anything wrong--except for that one punch. And what was there to say about that? The punch was undeniable--hit someone in the mouth and both of you remember it forever--but also not wrong, not in this case, and Cody didn't regret it.
Sergeant Orton came right up to Cody, the gun still up, pointed at Cody's chest. The sergeant's bushy gray mustache was tinged with red. He spat again, spattering more red on the snow at Cody's feet. "Assaulting a police officer," he said. "Any idea of the future, you get charged with something like that?"
Cody remained silent.
"Charged as an adult, I'm talking about, which I'll make goddamn sure is what happens? State pen, three-year minimum, record or no record."
Cody came close to hitting him again, stopped only by that gun, unwavering in the sergeant's hand.
"That how you want this to play out, boy?"
At that moment, Cody remembered his last conversation with Mr. Lorrie, his English teacher and faculty adviser.
Have you ever thought about what you'll be doing, say three years from now?
Although he couldn't see much similarity between the two men, Cody realized that conversation with Mr. Lorrie resembled this one, almost a practice version, like running through the plays with no pads on; or maybe like touch football compared to the real thing. That time, with Mr. Lorrie, he'd ended up quitting school.
Three years.
Cody shook his head, a tiny movement, barely made at all.
But Sergeant Orton caught it. He lowered the gun. "That's smart," he said. "You wouldn't do so good behind bars. No one does, actually. Even the ones that are already ruined get ruined more." He dabbed at his mouth with the back of his sleeve. The temperature was falling. Cody could feel it in his feet, hands, ears; and could see it in Sergeant Orton's mustache, where the ends of the hairs had frozen, looked like tiny sprinkles of red glass. "What you're going to do now--you want any chance of coming out of this undamaged for life--is come clean. No lies, no halfway lies, no bullshit." Sergeant Orton's face was close to Cody's now. Cody could smell his breath, not good.
"Come clean about what?" Cody said.
"And no stalling."
"I'm not stalling. I don't--"
Sergeant Orton cut him off. "Start with how come you hid who you really were, let folks go on thinking you were local?"
Cody just stood there. The real reason was quite simple, simple and stupid at the same time: Clea had a new boyfriend, making him, the ex-boyfriend, look like a pathetic loser, no better than a gawker at some wreck on the highway. Maybe not quite so simple: How did breaking up with Clea, pretending he didn't care anymore--supposedly a noble gesture, supposedly for her own good--how did that factor in, especially given how quickly she'd moved on to someone else? For one thing, it made him a fool, a fool as well as a loser.
"Haven't got all day," said the sergeant. "Haven't got more than a minute."
Cody just couldn't bring himself to confess the truth. Sergeant Orton reached around his belt. Cody heard a cold, metallic clink, handcuffs for sure; even then, he couldn't do it. But at the last moment, he found words that at least had some truth in them. "These people," he said. "They're all very different from me."
"So?"
"I couldn't . . . if they'd known where I really, you know, came from, then . . ."
"Spit it out," said Sergeant Orton.
"There'd have been a lot of questions," Cody said. "About you?"
"Yeah. But none of that would have helped find Clea." The sergeant gave Cody one of those deep, probing looks. "You obsessed with her, is that it?"
Obsessed? Obsession had sickness in it, and there was nothing sick about Clea's place in his mind. "No."
"Then how would you put it?"
"I love her," Cody said, without hesitation--it just came right out, very natural--and also without the slightest feeling of being a loser or a fool.
The expression in Sergeant Orton's eyes grew distant, as though he'd been struck by a thought. "This business of holding back who you really were, avoiding questions--anything else to it?"
"I told you--it wouldn't help finding her."
"Yeah," said the sergeant. "I can remember back that far. Any more to it than that?"
"Like what?" Cody said.
Sergeant Orton laughed. A big surprise for Cody, almost as unsettling as the moment when he'd stepped out from behind the tree. "You tell me," the sergeant said.
Any more to it than that?
Sergeant Orton had an answer waiting in his mind, and somehow Cody knew it had nothing to do with all that fool and loser stuff. Something else; not just something else, but something
more.
How could hiding his true self be about
more
than the fact that revealing it would only be a distraction, wouldn't help find her? Deep in the silent woods, Bud motionless, temperature falling, wind rising, this cop right in front of him, gun in hand, and his own lips going numb, Cody took a guess. "Maybe nobody knowing about me would actually help find her." The thinking seemed logical; the words sounded right; the implications completely escaped him.
"Yup," said Sergeant Orton. "What took you so long? I'm freezing my ass off."
Cody was a little lost. They looked at each other. Cody couldn't read the sergeant's mind at all. "Am I under arrest?"
For a second or two the sergeant seemed about to laugh again, but no laugh came. "Stay away from questions like that," he said. "Some people might miss your charm." He smiled and gave Cody three taps on the cheek with his open hand, friendly taps except for the last, which was more like a slap. Yes, a slap. Cody felt the sting. Sergeant Orton's smile got bigger. Something had amused him, but Cody had no idea what it was.