ORCHARD PRESS MYSTERIES, SHORT FICTION & POETRY  

January  2007

In the Ravine
a short story
by Sheri Gaia Chapin

Detective John Zorr opened the door to his bungalow that overlooked a narrow canyon northeast of Williams, Arizona. The bomber jacket pulled at his shoulders, but it kept him from shivering, and his former partner used to kid it made him look tough. He clenched his jaws and the scar on his forehead started throbbing. At that moment he heard her call, "Hello, there."

He twisted his neck and peered across the ravine. She stood on the opposite side, waving. Although the gorge between them measured a mere forty feet, he could tell only that she had a thin face and blond hair curling over her shoulders, and that her body seemed small under the bulky red parka.

He returned the wave. He’d waited most of the day, imagining her face. He wished he could vault across the hole and get a closer look. Instead, he dug cold hands into his pockets and watched her cup her hands around her mouth. Listened as she shouted: "I think we know each other. What’s your name? Mine’s Patricia."

He hadn’t expected a husky voice from the small woman. Her tone reminded him of the blues singer he’d listened to while staking out a lounge on Hollywood Blvd. Behind her, the pink brick walls of a new motel wing decorated the cliff like a Disneyland ride. Snow powdered Ponderosa pines on mountain peaks above her head.

"My name’s John," he called. "John Zorr. You might be right about our having met."

"I knew it." She bounded forward and slapped both hands on the iron railing that fenced the ravine. "Los Angeles, right? The industry. Isn’t this place the coolest spot for a motel? I can’t believe I found it. They really should advertise more."

"There’s only a few rooms on your side of the canyon," he shouted back, "for people passing through." He pointed in her direction then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "These bungalows are for residents. There’s five more behind mine."

"So you like living on the edge." She stalled, apparently testing, but he left the bait alone. "So where in LA do we know each other from?" Her elbows plunked on the railing, and she held her face in her hands.

He strained to see details of her features. "LA’s a big place. You meet a lot of people."

"Maybe you do. I’m pretty shy."

He smiled at that. He watched as she stuck one tights-wrapped leg under the railing and wriggled a white, ankle-high boot. "A shy girl wouldn’t show off her leg to a man she doesn’t know," he called. When her foot stopped wriggling, he assumed the remark insulted or pissed her off, and he’d blown his shot. He turned to go inside.

"You’re right," he heard her say.

He whirled around, fast enough to get dizzy from the seven thousand foot altitude.

"But these are new shoes. Versace. Not cheap. And anyway, this shouting is hard on my larynx. I’m a singer, you know. Gotta watch the voice."

"Oh," was all he could think to reply.

"I’m coming over there. Unless you’d rather come here. There’s a coffee maker in my room."

"I have a whole kitchen," he offered.

"Okay. Be over in a sec," and she darted across a footpath that led back to the motel, past a picnic table and into her room.

He lurched into his bungalow and looked around. Clothes dangled off lumpy cushioned chairs; empty McDonald’s wrappers junked the kitchen counter; dirty dishes crowded the sink. He stroked his chin, considering if he had enough time to shave the week’s growth of black stubble before she arrived.

The knock on the doorjamb startled him. Patricia stood backlit in the doorway. About five-four, a hundred and ten pounds, avocado-colored eyes. Up close, her hair looked fresh from the salon, the teeth bleached white. The cashmere sweater showed her off real nice.

"Oh, hi," he said, spotting the empty quart of Wild Turkey he’d left toppled on the coffee table. "You got here pretty fast."

She glanced where he did. "Yeah. They call me that. Men. Fast." She giggled as she walked inside.

He forced a chuckle and apologized for the mess. She said she didn’t mind and plopped on the chair where he’d tossed denim overalls, folding her legs so that she sat on her calves. He snagged a screwdriver off the end table beside her and gripped it.

"You don’t look like a mechanic." Her gaze swept over his body, stopping on the tool in his hand.

"I’m not," he said, feeling his fingers twitch, "a mechanic. Not professionally, anyway. I tinker."

"Tinker with what?"

"Mechanical stuff. Anything with moving parts."

"Great. What do you know about heating systems in Mustangs? Mine’s kablooey. I freeze my butt off every time I drive into town. Can you fix it? I’d pay you. I don’t trust garage guys. Know what I mean?"

He chewed the inside of his cheek. "Yet you trust me--a stranger who invites you to his bungalow with hardly an introduction."

She nudged the overalls until they dropped on the floor. "I’m not worried."

Her cool matched her rap sheet. He set the screwdriver on the couch out of her reach, recalling the incidents of escalating violence since her mother’s suicide. "I think I do remember where I’ve seen you before."

"Duh." She hopped off the chair and trotted to the front window and pulled back the drapes, letting sun shaft onto the worn carpet. "You gawk at me from behind these curtains, at night, when I’m coming back to my motel room after a partying binge. Did you forget to turn off the light? Or was piquing my interest the plan all along?" She sashayed back across the living room toward the kitchen. "You’ve got great eyes, dark, intense. I’m a pushover for wolf eyes. Really, your only unattractive trait is taking the long way around a short point. Girls prefer the straightforward approach."

He thought, Let her think she’s in control. He said, "You’re right. How about a drink?"

She showed him an expression too flat to read. "What kind of drink?"

"Let’s see what I have." He walked to the refrigerator, feeling her stare lick his neck. "I have Cherry Coke or Arizona Iced Tea or beer--Moosehead. Then there’s coffee, but I ran out of milk."

She leaned over the counter that separated living room from kitchen and gawked into the fridge. "What about your girlfriend?" she said.

"Who?" He grabbed two beers, remembering Selena’s face--the face of an angel, the face he fell for in one big lump.

"Does your girlfriend know her honey’s a peeper?"

"I don’t have a girlfriend."

"Maybe not any more."

He stared into the fridge, visualizing the parking lot off Mulholland Drive where Selena had thrown open the door of her Cadillac and shot her pointy-toed stilettos onto the asphalt, and set off the kind of mental alarm only a cop could hear.

"She was like me, I bet." Patricia stretched her torso farther across the counter like an uncoiling snake. "I mean she looked like me, right? That’s why you give me the roving eyeball every chance you get. You’re nursing a broken heart."

He shut the fridge door. "Okay. You got me."

"I thought so." She jumped up and bounced around the counter and stood too close. "I can smell a man with a heartache across an entire state." She slid the back of her hand across his stubble. "And they always need a shave."

Her perfume had a turn-a-man’s legs-to-Jell-O, -his-mind-to-mush effect...like the brand Selena wore. He stepped back before the scent knocked him over. "That’s why I left LA. Lousy actor. The heart I wear on my sleeve feels safer here."

"I wouldn’t call a thousand foot drop outside your front door safe."

"It’s a matter of perspective and accommodating needs." He handed her a beer. "This time of year is perfect down there: not hot, not cold, beautiful, another world. You’d like it."

"Sorry, handsome, I’m not the hiking boots type."

She shifted from foot to foot and modeled the ankle-hugging shoes he’d observed from a distance. They were soft white leather with black accents and ruby-colored gems he assumed were fake forming V-shapes on the shoes’ outer flanks.

"I found a way down," he said, holding his gaze on her footwear. "An easy way."

"Yeah, straight down." She chugged some beer, then set the bottle on the counter. "See, honey, no wings. This model doesn’t come equipped with propellers."

He glanced at her breasts. The image of gold windmills spinning from them flipped across his brain.

She slapped his cheek playfully. "You have a dirty mind. I like men with thick stubble and naughty thoughts."

"You won’t like me," he said.

"Oooo. Ominous. I like that too."

He’d given her a chance to change her mind. He knew she wouldn’t. She was headstrong and arrogant and angry, a combination that produced a criminal more bent on taking what she wanted than considering the risk to herself. "I say we have a little fun."

"Yeah?" Her shoulders shimmied. "What kind of fun? I bet your sheets are as dirty as your mind."

"My sheets are clean."

"Shall we go dirty them then?"

"I just want to take you into the ravine."

Her eyebrows arched. "I think I’m insulted. Maybe you missed the part where I offered you a hot date."

"I’ll carry you down...piggyback."

"Are you for real?"

"Absolutely. In fact, I yelp when pinched."

At that, she laughed so hard birds perched on the railing outside flew off. He stood frozen, waiting, hardly breathing, as she sprinted out his front door and around the nearby mouth of the ravine to her motel room.

He watched her open the door and go inside, recalling the motel manager’s reluctant murmur when, at Detective Zorr’s request, he posted the No Vacancy sign and went to town, leaving John stationed outside his bungalow, impatient for the motel’s lone guest, Patricia, to wake up and stroll outside.

She returned quickly.

Her boots had changed. These were chocolate brown and laced up along her shins. She looked great in the tight jeans. The padded denim vest seemed mismatched with the cashmere but suited for firearms concealment. He detected the holster bulge under her left arm.

"Well, who’s carrying who?" she said, tossing her hair. She grabbed his hand and turned on her heels and pulled him outside toward the mouth of the ravine.

He coaxed her in the opposite direction, along the railing toward steps that led down the canyon’s shallow grade. He peered over the slope, to the bottom, where the riverbed remained dry no matter how much rain tried to fill it, remembering Valley traffic below Mulholland Drive, the hiss that continued no matter how late the hour.

"Why didn’t you tell me there were stairs carved into the wall?" she asked. "Did Indians build them? One of those tribes that used to live around here? I love Native American jewelry--turquoise and silver. Were they cliff-dwelling Indians or squat-on-the-canyon-floor type?"

Without waiting for his reply, she trotted down to find out. He trailed behind her. They hiked a half mile through little stabs of red, orange, yellow, and purple sprinkled across the canyon floor. Rock formations curved, spiked, arched, and protruded from the walls. He caught up to her just as she spun around. Her tongue, red as a cherry, slid across her lips like a windshield wiper, causing twinges between his legs he’d suppressed a long time.

"Where is it?" she said.

"Where is what?"

"I think you know."

He shrugged.

"You wanted me down here for a reason."

"Yeah. I wanted to share this beauty with someone."

"You think I just fell off the turnip truck?" She lunged forward with a jolt. "Born, raised and trained in LA, not the pretty part. I know a deceiver when I see one."

He held his ground. "Hey, wait, what happened to trust?"

"I’ve seen you, handsome, snooping around down here, digging big holes with your toy shovel. Prowling like a thief."

He had to hold on. Had to silence the banging in his chest and the shouting in his mind and stick to the plan. He dug his hands into his pockets, every muscle gripping, tighter and tighter, until his teeth began to rattle, and he blurted: "Not me. It’s you. You’re the thief. You’re the small-time burglar looking for easy money."

She sank into a hip, stroking her top lip with that cherry tongue. "Sneaking in and swiping valuables and escaping like a ghost? Not likely. Burglary is for dilettantes too sensitive to spend time in the slammer. Armed robbery. That’s an X-rated profession. Adults only. Grown-ups with the guts to grab what they want in front of witnesses they’re willing to take out."

"You watch too many James Cagney films."

She laughed through her nose. "You think I’m not insulted yet amused that a washout robbery cop would believe he could capture a gem?"

"Yet here you are, caught in my web."

"I caught you, buddy."

He stood ready, letting her shove her hand at that lump inside her vest. She hauled out a snub-nose .38 revolver. Seeing the gun twisted his gut. He swallowed hard as breakfast churned up his throat and fear like maggots rooted around his chest. Not because of his imminent death, but because of the bullet in Selena’s head. The bullet she took to save him on Mulholland Drive.

He remembered how Selena had pressed the muzzle of her own pistol against his forehead. He had stood frozen, inhaling the perfume on her wrist, numb and confused, as she twisted the muzzle’s opening away from his head and shifted her body in a way that concealed the position of the pistol while it exposed her to a takedown shot from his partner--his backup--hidden in the bushes. Selena had whispered, It’s better this way, just before the rifle round cracked, and a car alarm screeched, and she collapsed into his embrace, her body, heavy and gangly as a bundle of wet sheets. He’d tasted his own blood as it streamed down the side of his nose and into his mouth. Felt the burn where the bullet from Selena’s pistol had grazed his forehead at the same time a round from his partner’s sniper rifle penetrated her skull.

Three years later, the scar still throbbed every time he pictured Selena’s face.

Like now, of course, since Patricia inherited her mother’s smile.

"Are you deaf?" Patricia was shouting. "Grab the shovel from behind that rock where you stashed it. Start digging."

"Where do you want me to dig?"

A sly smirk played at Patricia’s mouth. "Where would you like to fall?" She stretched her fingers and re-curled them around the revolver’s grips. "I know firearms upset you. You haven’t held a gun since you killed her...in cold blood."

"I only watched." John pictured the bullet bursting Selena’s medulla oblongata, snatching her life in an instant. "I watched her set herself up. I watched helplessly while she ruined her chance at the happy life she deserved."

"Stop talking about my mother like you understood her," Patricia shouted. "Stop pretending nothing is your fault. Don’t you even wonder why she did it?"

His partner’s words echoed in his mind: I told that slut she’d ruin your life. John said to Patricia, "I wonder why every day."

"Because she was a decent person." Patricia’s tone hardened like a gun-moll in one of those Cagney flicks. "Because she was a good woman spurred by a loser father and a selfish mother and a teenage pregnancy and a jerk husband thirty years her senior to survive any way she could. My mother was a peerless burglar who could heist a Van Gogh from an upscale museum and, except for the empty space on the wall, leave no clue she’d ever been there. A smart woman, but lonely enough to make two huge mistakes: First, she let herself go all soap opera romance over you. Second, she believed you were a better person than she was. But we know the truth."

He didn’t argue. Instead, he let his eyelids droop. He visualized his body decomposing peacefully in this picturesque ravine. He heard Patricia say, "You broke her heart, scum," and then the pop.

The bullet felt like a bee sting under his ribcage, and then nothing. He wondered...had Patricia bungled his execution? Or had death taken him so fast he missed the transition? He let his eyes open. A curl of smoke drifted from the gun in Patricia’s hand. He teetered before he dropped. Patricia’s boots crushed the dirt, and then she stood over him like a tower.

"My mother buried it here for me, her life-savings you presumed I’d let you steal."

"Want you to have it," he managed to wheeze.

"Liar," she cried, punching her thigh with her fist. She stooped and leaned into his face. "You have fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before you bleed out. Why don’t you admit it. Tell me the truth so you can die more honestly than you lived. Tell me you planned from the start to betray her."

"Did plan." Blood spat out with the words. His chest tightened, but he was determined to keep talking long enough to explain. "Planned together...she’d surrender on Mulholland...my partner a witness...I’d take her in...but on the way...a crash...staged...charred remains...unidentifiable...except for my badge...we’d drop off the radar...start a new life. We could’ve been happy."

"But you got greedy."

"Not that." John heaved his body off the ground and slumped against a boulder. "My partner...saw me with your mother...went behind my back...convinced her to leave me...she knew I’d find her...went where I couldn’t follow...but I found a way..."

He watched Patricia’s eyes change from bland to burning as she realized John had used her greed and lust for revenge to send him to his lover. She trained the gun on his forehead, and the scar started throbbing. Maybe it was easier for her to stick with her belief that he lied. She must’ve decided the lie deserved a slow death rather than a fast one. She laughed and put the gun away. He focused past her toward the cliff.

Many nights he had teetered on the edge. Tears like acid had burned his face as he read and reread Selena’s last letter under a moon so huge he wanted to leap up and catch a ride into the sky where he imagined she waited. He’d visualized his dive into the hole, his broken body splattered across the marl at the bottom. He couldn’t do it. Maybe because an ex-cop’s sense of survival was too strong. Maybe the man was too weak.

He remembered Selena’s ivory skin sprinkled with pink freckles, her tired eyes shining with hope as she sat up in their bed and confessed: I’m not just an industry executive. I’m a burglar. The burglar you can stop searching for now.

Her confession had affected John like a kick in the head. He had jumped off the bed, but she’d clung to him, tears carving her face, her voice choppy as she pleaded with him to accept that she would abandon her life of crime and they could run away together, live long and happy with the money she’d buried in a narrow ravine near Williams, Arizona.

He wound his neck toward the boulder she’d described. Patricia tossed the shovel into a fresh hole behind it. She heaved a duffel over her shoulder and hiked toward the stone steps, tipping an imaginary hat as she passed. Remorseless as he’d anticipated.

Still, he wanted Patricia to have her mother’s letter. He owed her that. He dug into his pocket and snagged the folded paper. He tried to call after her. But all he could utter was a hushed "Oh" when Selena appeared, reaching to him from a light in the sky.

Contact the Author - sgaiachapin@bellsouth.net

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