Essence
A deputy—Marsh Coonts by the nameplate over the breast pocket of his jacket—held a hand to his mouth, stifling a laugh as he gazed from Tiny Morris to Alvin Barnes, both stripped to the buff, gagged, and trussed with duct tape, and shamefaced as Morris's wife heckled them.
"Marsh, they pleaded with me to cut 'em free when I came out here to find out why these dumbheads didn't come home last night. I wouldn't do it," Meredith Morris said, punctuating the air with an arthritic finger that pointed someplace between them. "I watch 'Law & Order.' I told 'em I wasn't about to disturb no crime scene until you got out here and seen everything as it was. You got your camera to take pictures, don't you?"
Coonts held up his cell phone.
"Well, go ahead and use it," she said. Meredith plopped herself on the bunk next to her beefy husband. She turned his face to the deputy. "Smile for the man, honey."
Morris's face flushed.
Coonts snapped the photo. Then he took one of Barnes perched on an orange Home Depot bucket.
"Want my knife to cut them loose?" Coonts asked as he moved around the ice-fishing shanty, taking a series of general shots of the interior.
"Got my own," Meredith said. She brought out a mean-looking filleting knife and whisked the blade through the tape on her husband's ankles and wrists. Morris, his hands free, reached for the swatch of tape over his mouth, but Meredith got a hand there first. She snatched hold of a corner of the tape and tore it away.
He screamed.
"Marsh, she ripped off my mustache," Morris bellowed. "You gonna let 'er do that?"
"Tiny, I make it a policy to stay out of family disputes."
Morris, rubbing at his nude upper lip, wrenched a blanket around himself while Meredith sliced Barnes's bindings away. Barnes clamped his hands over his taped mouth before she could grab hold of the silver restraint.
Coonts pressed the send button on his phone, firing the photos to the department a dozen miles away. That done, he pocketed his phone and took out a notepad and the stub of a pencil. "So tell me how you two guys got nekkid."
"Not like we had a choice," Morris said.
Barnes, now wrapped in a sheet, jumped in. "Sheriff—"
"I'm not the sheriff," Coonts said. "I'm a deputy."
"Okay, deputy. I opened the door to go outside an' piss, an' this ski-masked bandit the size of a moose rams a shotgun in my gut. I thought he was gonna blow me in half."
"And did he?"
"Do I look dead? I shit my britches, I'll tell you that."
Coonts printed s-h-i-t m-y b-r-i-t-c-h-e-s. Nobody in the department was gonna believe this.
"He made us strip, and I'll tell you I was glad to get outta my stinkin' shorts."
"The tape?" Coonts asked.
"He found it in my tackle box. Made me tape up Tiny, then the moose, he tapes me up."
"Uh-huh. Can you describe him? This moose?"
"Big sonuvabitch. Wore this ski mask from Farm and Fleet—"
"And you know that how?"
"I'm not blind, deputy. I saw the F and F logo. And he had this shotgun, what would you say, Tiny?"
"Remington four-ten, over-and-under. I got one just like it."
Coonts sucked on his pencil's eraser before he asked. "So what do we have here, a robbery?"
"Dingly-damn right," Morris said.
"What'd he take?"
"Our clothes, our boots, our parkas, money, credit cards, my dad's pocket watch, my gas auger. He even took our tip-ups, an' I'd just hooked me a musky an' he took that, too." Morris gestured in the direction of a bare counter at the end of the fish house. "I had me a little refrigerator there. He took that an' my microwave, all our beer—six cases of Bud—and my TV, my blessed fifty-six-inch TV. I loved that thang."
Morris wept.
"Anything he didn't take?"
"My crappola couch Meredith's sister set out for the Salvation Army."
Coonts glanced up from his scribblings. "If it's any comfort, Tiny, yours isn't the first shanty on the lake cleaned out. Third this week."
Meredith came over. She tapped on Coonts's notepad. "Put down there Tiny's snowmobile and Alvin's. Should be outside, but both are gone."
Morris flung himself down on the bunk. "Oh gawd, not my snow eater. I just bought that new! Twelve thousand dollars."
"A racing machine," Meredith said. She arched an eyebrow.
"I was gonna enter the Fencehoppers' snow-deo Saturday an' whip their fancy asses."
Coonts sat in the cab of his pickup, multi-tasking. He pecked away at his laptop while he gabbed on his cell phone pinched between his shoulder and his ear.
"Sarge," he said, "you've got the pictures. No useful description of the bandit other than he's big. Another sec here and I'll have the list of the stolen stuff for you." He tapped the Send icon. "You've got it."
A voice came back over the cell. "It's on my screen. Ooo, look at the size of that TV. Nothing there the perp wouldn't have fenced already."
"What do you want me to do, Sarge?"
"You're on overtime, so call it quits and go home. Tonight when you come back on, I want you to drive around the lake every couple hours with your light bar on. If the guy's out there again, that ought to scare him away."
"Wouldn't you rather catch him?"
"Let the detectives work on that. I'd be happy with a little crime prevention."
Trina Coonts looked over from her perch on the passenger seat, her face half lit by the glow from the pickup's instrument panel. "Daddy, I'm glad you let me come along."
"I guess if you've got a class assignment to find out what your old man does," Marsh Coonts said while he steered his truck through the darkness of the overcast night, a moving patch of ice and snow showing in the spread of his headlights. "Sweets, don't you ever let on to anyone about this ride. I'm not supposed to take passengers."
"I won't."
"So what have you learned so far?"
"It's pretty boring."
"Most police work is."
"Then why do you do it?"
"It's a good paycheck. When you're a little older, that'll make sense to you. Incidentally, how old are you?"
"Daddy, you're funning me. You always ask me that."
"Then I guess you remember the rest of the joke."
"Uh-huh. Fathers' brains are Swiss cheese. You're lucky if you can remember how to get home." The girl grabbed her dad's arm. She shook it. "What's that over there?"
"Where?"
"A light. Red. Don't you see it?"
Coonts snapped on his search light. He twisted the beam in the direction Trina pointed and picked up a Suburban driving away from a cluster of fish houses. "Somebody going home, I guess. Let's go over."
He changed course, wheeled his pickup to the left and kept his spotlight on the shanties. Lights burned in the windows of several, but most were dark. Coonts checked his watch. At after one, they should be.
Closing in, he saw the door to one of the fish houses hung like a broken arm, one hinge torn away.
"What is it, Daddy?"
"Hon, we've got a break-in."
Coonts swept his spotlight away. He maneuvered its broad shaft of light over the ice until he picked up the rear of the Suburban in the distance, snow billowing out as the car hauled away at a hefty clip.
Coonts watched the car. I could catch him, but this feels real oozy, and with Trina here—
"He's getting away, Daddy."
Oh, the hell with it. Coonts jammed the accelerator to the floor. The surge of his truck's engine flung Trina into the seatback, and she clung tight to her shoulder belt, as if it were a lifeline.
Coonts scooped up his microphone. He shouted into it, "Marcie, you on?"
"You're guardian angel as ever."
"Where's the sarge?"
"Down the hall, draining his bladder."
"We've got a break-in in Camp Swampy. Tell him I'm after a black or blue GMC or Chevy Suburban—an old sucker. Could use some help here."
"Roger. Stay with me."
The suburban cut around several fish houses and disappeared behind them.
Coonts held his speed. When he shot by the houses, he saw nothing on the horizon, no taillights where they should have been.
"You don't suppose," he said, more to himself than to Trina, and slowed. He swung his truck around and backtracked to the camp. With his spotlight, he illuminated a half-dozen vehicles parked on the ice. "What a nice way to get lost."
"What do you mean, Daddy?"
"Huh? Oh, if I wanted to lose someone, I'd hide my car in a parking lot. There are two Suburbans there, old beasts both of them."
He stopped short of the first framed in his headlights. Coonts gathered up his mic. "Marcie? Got me two Suburbans here. I'm going to check them out."
"Where are you?"
"They call this Howlers Camp."
"Sarge is on his way, Deputy Norton, too. You have your belt radio?"
"Roger that."
"You talk to me."
Coonts turned to his daughter as he pulled a long-barreled flashlight from the junk under his seat. "Sweets, you stay here. I'm gonna check out these cars."
"And if one of them's the one?"
"Help's on the way. We'll wait for them."
Coonts slipped from his truck. He slapped the flashlight against the palm of his gloved hand when the thing refused to yield a beam. A second slap and it came on. Coonts drew his Glock, and he aimed the light along its barrel, directing the beam into the back of the first Suburban. Nothing other than the usual fishing clutter. He aimed through the side window, anticipating this was it. When he got to the front, Coonts stripped off a glove. He patted his bare hand on the hood.
Cold.
He worked his way around the second Suburban, poking his gun and light with great care at each of the windows as he peered in. Nothing. And the touch to the hood yielded the same information as the first.
Coonts squeezed the transmit button on the microphone clipped to his epaulette. "Marcie?"
"Go ahead."
"Both cars have been here all night. They're not him."
"What are you going to do?"
"Drive around, I guess."
"You want Sarge and Norton to break off?"
"No, if our guy's made the road, he's either gonna be going south to Jimmy-town or north to Genoa. If they see him, they can stop him."
"Roger that."
Coonts made his way back to his truck, and, out of idle curiosity, he went beyond it, away from his headlights. He played his beam over the snow and stopped when the light fell on a pair of tire tracks. Coonts knelt. He studied the tread ridges and the spray of snow to the sides. They showed fresh, and the distance of the spray said the vehicle was traveling at a hell of a speed.
Toward where?
In that direction lay Somy's Inlet. There was a tavern there and a boat landing, both closed in the winter. A township road ran from the tavern off into the woods to the west and, to the east, to the county highway. No one lived on the township road, so the county never plowed it. But a Suburban could bull through.
Coonts squeezed his transmit button. "Sarge, you on?"
"Go ahead."
"Would you hide at Somy's?"
"It's deserted from Thanksgiving through March. I'd consider it."
"I've got tire tracks going that way. Gonna follow 'em."
"I can be there in ten minutes."
"Then I'll go slow."
Coonts went back to his pickup. He turned it in the new direction and set off at a leisurely pace. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he drove, the light bar over the truck's cab pumping out a rhythmic blue and red as it had since Coonts had come out on the ice.
"Daddy?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Where're we going?"
"Remember Somy's? Took you and Mommy there couple summers ago for Friday fish."
"Yeah, so?"
"I found tire tracks going that way."
A blast of light came from the side. Trina screamed and Coonts's eyes widened to the size of melons. A bang and the pickup spun like a top. More bangs – air bags bursting from their envelopes. They filled the cab, blinding Coonts to the world beyond.
Pain shot through his nose. After some seconds, he felt the spinning slow and halt, and the bags fell away.
All became silent and still, the truck engine dead. Only the light bar showed life, pumping out its alternating blue and red flashes.
Coonts wiped at the blood leaking from his nose, then felt for his daughter. "Sweets, you all right?"
"My arm hurts. What happened?"
"Something hit us. I can't get my door open. Can you get out?"
He heard the rattling of a door latch and his daughter's words, "It's stuck."
"Snicklefritz."
"You can say shitfire if you want to."
"Where did you hear that?"
"At school."
"Remind me to talk to your teacher."
Coonts rolled onto his back on the seat. He pulled his legs up until his knees touched his chest, then kicked for all he was worth. His boots burst through the glass.
"There's always a way," Coonts said as he rolled up on his butt. He rescued a checkered blanket from behind the seat and wrapped his daughter. "It's gonna get cold in here before the sarge comes, so you keep warm. I'm gonna get out."
"Daddy, your nose—it's bleeding."
"I know. Air bag must've busted my beak. Your mom's gonna be mad about that."
He hauled himself out through the shattered window and fell to the ice. When he righted himself and came up, his eyes went large as he saw a shotgun silhouetted in the light from the moon showing through a slash in the overcast.
"Always wanted to get me a cop," a voice said, a demonic glee to it.
And the gun roared.
"Where in creation am I?"
A voice—soft, masculine—answered. "It is like the sign in the mall of your world says: 'You are here.'"
"Where?"
"Here."
"Who's that?"
"Me."
"Whoever you are, I can't see you."
"Perhaps you should wish for light."
Strange request, but why not? Coonts gave it a try. He concentrated on light—the light in his basement workshop—but nothing came. He tried again, this time with greater effort, and a luminescence glimmered up from somewhere beyond his reach. The glow grew in intensity with his increased concentration and revealed a crystalline table that had neither a hint of dust on its surface nor a smudge from a careless finger. On the table rested a rock, shaped like a painted turtle. The rock pulsed a pinkish white.
Coonts gazed around the warmth. He turned as he did so with a grace that was not his, whispering as he turned, "Where the hell am I?"
"You have already asked that question."
"I didn't get an answer."
"You are not there, where you were."
"Am I—"
"May I suggest you wish for a mirror?"
Curious, yet Coonts did, and, as if he had mastered the technique, a gilded-framed mirror the length of a man emerged from the light. Coonts peered at the image in the glass, blood on his jacket, his badge torn away. His hand went to his face, a waxy gray—a third of his head gone—and his fingers eased along the ragged edge of what remained.
"Am I?"
"Dead? If by that you mean that you are no longer in your world, then, yes, you have passed over."
"Over what?"
"The barrier that separates the world which you knew from a new world that shall be of your own making."
"Who's talking to me?"
"I am. Here on the table."
"The only thing on the table is a stone."
The stone pulsed blue. "That is me. The stone of all knowledge. Now if you will but wish for a chair—"
Why not? Coonts pictured his favorite and found himself easing back into a rocking chair like the one on his front porch, complete with butt and back pads, both worn from long use.
"I'm dead?" he asked. "And I'm talking to a rock? I'm a Baptist. If I'm dead, I should be in Heaven."
"You could wish this to be a heaven or however you imagine a heaven to be."
"Are you serious?"
"Of course. I am the stone of all knowledge." It pulsed magenta.
"I sure don't want anyone to see me this way."
"Then wish for a new shell, a new exterior."
"I can have a different body? Is that what you're saying?"
"Rise and look into the mirror. And please do not say 'mirror, mirror on the wall.' I have heard that one more times than there are hairs on the back of your hand."
Coonts pushed himself up. He stepped in front of the mirror, and a Sherlock Holmes stared back at him, not the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes of his father's time, but the Jeremy Brett Holmes of his time. Holmes faded to Philip Marlowe—the Robert Mitchum look from Farewell, My Lovely. And Marlowe to Vincent D'Onofrio's Detective Robert Goren.
"No," Coonts said, waving a hand, and the Goren image vanished, replaced by a younger version of Coonts in sheriff's tans, a star pinned to his shirt, and a weathered Stetson on his head. But this image possessed a droopy mustache.
Coonts polished the star with his sleeve. "If I can look like anyone, I guess I choose my father. He was one handsome fella."
He turned to the stone. "What happened to my daughter?"
"Injured, a broken arm. She is still in the cab of—what do you call it—your pickup truck?"
"Will they find her?"
"I do not know." The stone pulsed a somber red.
"I thought you said you were the stone of all knowledge."
"All knowledge past, not all knowledge future."
"I have to go back. I have to take care of her."
"The rule book states that you cannot pass back over, not as you are now nor as you were."
"I hear some wiggle room there."
"I cannot affirm that."
"All right, a new question, then. Who killed me?"
"You do not know?"
"All I saw were headlights, a gun, and a muzzle flash." Coonts moved around behind his chair. He rested his arms on the back. "We had reports of fish houses being stripped bare, snowmobiles being stolen, so I drove out on the lake after midnight. My little girl begged to come along and, since I didn't expect to come on anything, I let her. I never should have."
"You cannot change the past."
"He's gonna run now."
"Wish for a window."
"Why would I do that?"
"You need something that will allow you to see into the world from which you departed."
"Something—like a television screen?"
"That will work."
Coonts leaned down, his forehead on his arms. What must Tiny Morris's TV have been like? Fifty-six inches? When he peered up, gone was the mirror and, in its place, the widest of wide-screen televisions. He went to it, touched the screen and light rippled out from his touch, light that coalesced into a cool blue moonlight on snow.
"I did that?" Coonts asked. He gazed at the tip of his finger, fascinated.
"You have abilities you never imagined."
A black Suburban drove in from the lower corner of the picture. Coonts gestured at it, asking the stone, "May I?"
"This is your world."
He drew a swoosh in front of the car. That changed the perspective. It put Coonts some distance in front of the windshield. "I can't see him."
"He is wearing a mask."
"How do you know?"
"I am—"
"I forgot, the stone of all knowledge. Can I stop him?"
"How do you think you would do that?"
"How should I know?"
Coonts studied the car racing across the frozen lake. He drew a curve across the screen, amazed at how it changed the perspective a second time. It put him behind the vehicle, and he saw precisely what the driver saw. Coonts reached around behind the screen. He rammed his finger into it.
A shaft of ice exploded up through the snow, and Coonts watched the car swerve and skid.
He punched the back of the screen again and again and again. Each punch produced a new eruption of ice. The final one rammed up under the Suburban's rear bumper and somersaulted the vehicle. A door flung open and out spilled the driver. He came down on his back, rolled, forced himself up on his knees, fell, and crawled.
"He'll get away, won't he?"
"Not necessarily. You see the power you have in your finger? You could kill him."
"Just by punching the screen?"
"By wishing."
"No, I won't do that. Killing him would make me no better than he is. If I could just go back."
"All right, since it is for a good cause, I am permitted tell you."
"Tell me what?"
"You may project your essence into another being."
"What the heck does that mean?"
"Your essence, that which makes you you, you may project that, you may wish that into another being."
"Another human?"
"I am sorry. That the rules do not permit."
"You're saying I have to wish myself into an animal?"
The ugliest of ugly bulldogs—an ear torn and a ragged scar across its muzzle—trotted in from a corner of the screen, trotted to the ski-masked man struggling to stand. The dog butted him and, when the man tumbled over, the dog sat on the man's head, holding it to the ice.
I wouldn't mind biting him, the dog thought, but then I'd have that gawd-awful human taste to get rid of.
© Jerry Peterson.
