The Great Leader

At dinner Diane was perfect as usual. Sunderson overate, mystified by the deliciousness of the roast beef, which Diane had ordered from Chicago. The Burgundy wine was the best he had ever put in his mouth, and the good doctor asked Diane to open a second bottle for which Sunderson was grateful. He was also grateful for the way Mona amused and cheered the man. She was sitting on his right and had him laughing until quite suddenly during dessert he fell asleep. Diane’s eyes flowed with tears.

PART V Chapter 17

In January the cold winnowed him. It stayed near zero during the day and twenty below at night for a week. In order to walk he had to wear an irritating face mask and he went less far in the woods out of timidity. He carried a compass and wood matches in a small aluminum tube, also candles in his vehicle in case it broke down. It did on a country road south of Trenary with a metallic, hacking cough. Two candles plus the afternoon sun kept the interior well above freezing. He dozed, content that he would live through this and remembering his cell phone was on the coffee table in the living room. He had turned on the warning lights and overcame the irksome clicking sound by turning on the NPR station to a rather dreary Haydn piece and mulling recent developments in the case. Mona had shown him an e-mail from King David sent through Carla. “Carla tells me that you’re extorting information from her. You better be careful, kiddo. You’re no longer a law officer.” Sunderson replied, “It is unwise to threaten someone from jail. I need only to send your message to Maui officials to get your sentence extended. However, I want you out of jail so I can get at you.” To Carla he said, “You should behave yourself. I need only to call the prosecutor to begin extradition on you for sexual abuse of a minor.” He wanted Mona to add, “Mona is now willing to testify,” but she refused. She was stirring a short-rib-and-lentil soup at his stove and said, “Carla got me drunk and stoned and ate me out. I can’t say that. I’m a big girl not one of those kids King David is fucking with.”

A logger towed Sunderson to a tavern in Trenary and pointed out the hole in his engine drooling oil. “You’ve thrown a rod,” the logger said. “Your Blazer is shit-canned, buddy.”

He signed the title over to the logger who could use a vehicle for spare parts for the price of a hamburger and a beer. Marion picked him up in an hour. Sunderson got his gear out of the woebegone junker.

“Aren’t you going to say something sentimental?”

“Good-bye, darling,” he said, patting the hood. The hard part was when he found his dead dog’s teddy bear under the backseat.

When they got back to his house Mona was frying a chicken and had also made succotash, one of his favorites.

“I’m being nice so you won’t run away like my dad did.”

He and Marion looked at each other feeling uncomfortable at her frankness. She was wearing a pair of turquoise earrings Marion had bought her on a trip to Albuquerque.

“Carla e-mailed to say that Queenie’s grandma died and she’s going to inherit a lot more money. The cult is definitely moving to Nebraska in April.”

Sunderson exhaled over a whiskey thinking that he would have time to get all of his ducks in a row whatever that meant. He would walk, read, and intermittently hibernate for three months and then, by God, he would somehow close the case.

In the morning he bought a used, gray Subaru with only sixty thousand miles on it, then stopped at Snowbound Books for a copy of Lolita. He had a painful lunch with Diane which she had requested. She talked a lot about her husband’s white corpuscle count and other medical details and barely touched her food which he, typically, finished. He was down fifteen pounds in the nearly three months since retirement, which made him ponder on the scales whether or not he had a fatal disease but then figured it must be the addictive walking. By the end of lunch she was in tears and he was near tears. Outside she hugged him good-bye and he shuddered at their first real physical contact in over three years. Life could be so merciless.