A Shroud for Aquarius Read Free

not
that
burnt-out an old hippie. Her name’s Malinda. Mal for short.”
    “You’re just saying that.”
    “No—it’s true.”
    “That’s nice. That’s sweet.”
    “You never
really
forgave me, did you, Mal?”
    “For what?”
    “You know.”
    I knew.
    “I tried,” I said.
    “I cut you too deep, didn’t I?”
    “I guess.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I know.”
    “I’m glad I got to see you again.”
    “I am too.”
    “I’m just in Iowa City, you know. We should see each other more often.”
    “We should. Let’s make a point of it.”
    A month later, and she was dead.

The phone rang me awake.
    He must’ve let it ring twenty times or I would have just worked it into my dream and ignored it; but finally I was shuffling out of bed, glancing at the fluorescent hands of the little round clock on my nightstand, heading for the phone, grumbling.
    “Y-yes?” I said. My voice must’ve sounded as thick as my mouth felt.
    “Mallory, sorry to wake you. It’s Sheriff Brennan.”
    “Brennan?”
    “Yeah. Sorry. Look uh—I got a situation, here, and—”
    “It’s three o’clock in the fucking morning!”
    There was a pause, then: “Do you eat with that mouth?”
    I tasted my tongue. “Maybe not, from here on out.” My brain was gradually sending me the signal that Brennan wouldn’t be calling at this hour unless it was an emergency. I waited for him to confirm that suspicion.
    He did: “A friend of yours is dead. Little Ginnie Mullens.”
    The phone sits in a recess in the wall in the nook that joins the bedroom, office, bathroom, and dining room of my small house. By the phone, there’s a chair. I sat in it.
    “Mallory?”
    I sighed. “I heard you.”
    “You don’t seem very—surprised.”
    “I haven’t had time to get around to that yet.”
    “Shot in the head.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “Looks to be a suicide.”
    “Aw, shit.”
    “I thought you’d want to know.”
    “I—I do. Uh. Thank you for calling.”
    “She was a friend of my son’s, you know.”
    Brennan was the father of my late friend John. Who’d died in Vietnam. Who’d been Ginnie’s high school sweetheart.
    “Yeah. I know. Brennan?”
    “Yeah?”
    “This could’ve waited till morning.”
    “Yeah, suppose it could’ve.”
    “I’m not giving you a hard time for calling—I appreciate it and everything. But why didn’t you wait till morning?”
    He cleared his throat. Brennan’s not the type to get nervous; he’s a big man in his fifties who has been sheriff of Port County for as long as I can remember. The kind of sheriff who wears a Stetson hat and gets away with it.
    But he seemed awkward, even nervous, now.
    He said, “Thought you’d rather hear it from me.”
    I smiled. This was no time to be smiling, and maybe that was
my
nerves. But Brennan and I had never gotten along really well; not when John and I were friends in high school, or even when we went to Vietnam on the buddy system together, or especially when I came home and was a long-haired vet actively against the war. Especially not then.
    My hair was shorter now, and I was a respectable citizen. I wrote books. Didn’t make a fortune at it, but was no longer justa scruffy guy living in a trailer on East Hill who talked about wanting to write. I was a clean-shaven “author” who lived in a house. More a bungalow, but anyway not a trailer, though still on East Hill.
    Yeah, I’d arrived. I was straight again, and down on drug use, and up with people, and all the square things Ginnie had made fun of me for when we were drifting apart our senior year in high school.
    “Are you okay, kid?”
    I wasn’t a kid anymore, either, but somehow I liked hearing Brennan call me that—over the phone at least. It was comforting, in some weird way. I wiped the wetness off my face with my hand and wiped my hand on my T-shirt.
    I said, “Let’s not kid each other. You don’t think enough of me to do me any favors, Brennan. What’s this about?”
    There was another