Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson Page A

shuddering. I dropped my hands to my sides, and she turned and pushed open the door of the cell.
    I know they locked that door. They gave it an extra rattle when they slammed it shut. But she pushed it open and walked through and stood in the hall looking back at me. I took a step; the door of the cell was still open. I swung it back and forth. Where are you going, I said. She walked into the dark end of the hall and I waited, looking at my fingers which had on them the blood from her arms that was not quite dry. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I was in a cell in Los Angeles or in a cell in Bell Pen somewhere in the ice of the north continent. At that moment it didn’t matter to me whether Ben Jarry had been hanged or whether my indiscretion had hanged him. I would have traded Ben Jarry a hundred times to have her pressed against me again. I looked at the shadow where she had vanished; I knew she wasn’t a ghost. I’d held her and she had opened the door and it was still open, and she had been too tired and afraid and suffering to be a ghost. The door at the other end of the hall opened and I looked, and there were Wade and Mallory. Wade was looking at me calmly. Mallory saw me standing in the open door of the cell and his face went white. Through the window was coming the last light of dusk, and the fire in the puddles all over the floor was gone.
    I stared at my bloody fingers. “Inspector,” Mallory said to Wade, swallowing hard, “I swear to you we locked that cell.”
    Wade was still calm. He looked as though half of him were receding into the night, as though he were disappearing by the moment. His clothes hung on him and his face was sunken. He blinked at me. “How did you open the cell, Cale,” he said. I could barely hear him.
    “She opened it,” I told him.
    Mallory was still swallowing. He exhaled and said, “There was a girl, Inspector.” He worked up the nerve to look at the side of Wade’s face and said, “She was in there a few minutes ago, I swear it. She had black hair and looked Mex maybe, or—” Wade turned to him. Shut up Mallory, he said quietly. He turned back to me.
    I showed him my hands. “Well this isn’t my blood,” I said, “and I think you know it wasn’t on me when we came in last night.” Wade had his back to me before I finished talking. He was walking to the door at the end of the hall, and when he got there he pivoted imperceptibly and said to Mallory, Bring him along. He drifted out the door as though the ground were moving him. Nothing he did seemed of his own volition, not what he saw or what he said or did. Mallory gave me an utterly baffled look and motioned me on ahead of him. We followed Wade toward the front of the building and into his office. There were a few guys sitting around at their desks drinking coffee.
    In his office Wade walked behind the desk and, not even looking at me, said, “I’m putting you under house arrest. You won’t be leaving the library except under exceptional circumstances. We’ll have your food prepared for you and bring you those supplies you need” He said all this so softly I could barely hear him. He looked five or ten years older than the night before, he looked like someone who had seen some-thing amazing and inexplicable. I noticed something else. I had to listen for it and then I had to figure out what it was. I realized it was the sound of the buildings: the sound had changed again. I tried to remember if I had feIt the rumble of the ground; I thought of the pools of fire on the floor of the jail.
    “Am I still under arrest for murder?” I said to him.
    “No,” he answered. “If you were under arrest for murder you would be in jail. You’re under arrest for violating conditions of your parole.”
    I smiled. “It was Jarry wasn’t it,” I said.
    Wade let out a deep breath.
    “It was Jarry,” I said, “and you can’t arrest me for the murder of a man who’s already dead. That’s it, isn’t it?” I was angry.