Healer

Chapter 1

The rental car sat empty and idling in the desert heat, sunlight glinting off its metallic silver surface while from a distance it seemed waves of mirage water danced around it. It was a shining beacon in a mostly empty parking lot along the main drag of the small Nevada town.

Forgetful was the name of the town and an appropriate one it was. Virtually no one who passed through it remembered it. As Sheriff Benson pulled up next to the car, he thought of going into Mark’s diner for a bottle of real water. Mirages wouldn’t do. He would have considered a beer but he was on duty. Even in a no account hamlet like that one the little stuff mattered.

No one had been in the vehicle for at least four hours and the manager of the diner had started to get nervous. Benson thought about how people got easily spooked. He’d received the call from Mark twenty minutes earlier and knew what the tone of voice meant: something unusual had happened. In a place like Forgetful the unusual could just pack its bags and take the next bus out. It wasn’t welcome. But what was so strange? It was more than an abandoned car, but Mark wouldn’t say what had gotten under his skin; all the lawman knew was that no one was really sure how the car had gotten there.

Benson decided to give the car the old once-over before going into the restaurant and asking official kinds of questions. It was a newer model, he knew that much. One of those hybrids everybody was so crazy over.  From the rear he could see the doors were locked. Something, maybe a light jacket, was slung over the front passenger seat. He stepped closer to have a better look.

Standing next to the passenger side door, he noted the light blue windbreaker jacket over the seat, but that wasn’t what drew his attention. He saw what had probably thrown Mark off kilter. Sitting on the seat was an urn, like the kind people keep the remains of relatives. Benson leaned a little closer.

The urn was white with pale blue flowers and flourishes lacing around its middle. Resting on top of it was what appeared to be a small handwritten note. He couldn’t quite make it out. He lifted his sunglasses and moved toward the front of the idling car. It was virtually silent, so much so that he almost couldn’t detect it was running. In the back of his mind a thought formed but it was gone before he even realized it was there. The thought he wouldn’t remember was, We get too used to things in our surroundings too fast and then forget about them far too quickly. He leaned closer to the note from his new position in front of the side mirror.

I’m so sorry, he spoke the message as he read it. Sorry about what, I wonder? Your friend in the jar, there? Leaving an idling rental car in the middle of the Nevada blaze? All of the above? He took a few backward steps so he could see the entire front end. Nevada plates. He pulled out a note pad from his front pocket and scribbled the number, circling the car slowly.

Not a scratch. No missing hubcaps. No bumper damage. Nothing strange except the deceased stranger in the urn. Sometimes people got nervous if they damaged a rental without buying the insurance and abandoned it or tried to destroy it. That wasn’t what this was. And besides, who forgot Uncle Frank or Aunt Sue’s ashes in the front seat if they were trying to get rid of the evidence of a rental fender bender?

He went back to his own car, retrieved a long, slender strip of metal and returned to the idling rental and began to jimmy the door lock. After a minute or two he heard the victorious click. He pulled the metal strip out, opened the door and looked in. Nothing was out of the ordinary besides the urn. He sat in the driver’s seat and reached for the key to turn off the car. He froze when he looked at the dashboard display. The fuel gauge registered full. He looked at the gauge showing the energy charge and it too registered full.

A car which had been idling for at least four hours, and probably longer, would have used up something...even if it was a hybrid. A few other details flooded the sheriff’s mind. The nearest town, and therefore the nearest gas station, was at least fifty miles away. That would have used up some gas, and he doubted it had the necessary charging service for the hybrid’s electric motor. The gas station in Forgetful, which definitely was not hybrid friendly, had been closed down for the last two days for repairs and this car could only have been in town since that morning or early that afternoon. If it had been around longer he was sure people would have noticed it. He would have noticed it himself.

Maybe there’s a gas canister in the trunk, he thought. He found the trunk release lever, pulled it, heard it release, turned off the car, stepped out and closed the door. He arrived at the back and peered in, half expecting to find a body wrapped in a garbage bag, like on TV. Nothing. He closed the trunk.

Benson would have said things didn’t add up, but he didn’t even have anything resembling numbers to add up. This is weird, he thought. He turned his head to look at Mark’s diner and decided to see what the people inside knew. He doubted he’d gain much, but sometimes the smallest detail was enough to open the door for a decent investigation.

The walk across the parking lot was short but hot. It was one of those days with above average temperatures, even for Nevada. Heat seemed to come at him from all directions. It even radiated up at him from the asphalt. The breezeless air held the burn like an older brother held a younger one in a headlock. And now everyone was being punished for it.

The little bell over the door jingled as he opened it. Stepping inside was like walking into a wall. A quick check to the right as he walked in told him that it was only eighty-five degrees in the diner. Heaven on earth. Outside was the other place.

Air conditioning is a beautiful thing on a day like today, Benson commented.

Hey, Stu! called Mark from behind the counter. Glad you could make it on short notice.

Benson turned in the direction of the voice. Forties, overweight from indulging in his own business a bit too much over the years, sweat stains on the plain white t-shirt, Mark bounded from behind the counter waving one hand as if the sheriff would have a hard time picking him out of the three customers and the single waitress in the joint. The man stopped about three inches from his face, all the smells of a truck stop kitchen coming with him. Benson didn’t mind. He’d known the man for years, since grade school, in fact. They weren’t exactly close friends, but they knew each other’s phone numbers and got together with a few other guys once a month to play poker in someone’s basement. He looked more nervous than he sounded on the phone.

What do you think of her, Stu? By ‘her’ Mark meant the car. For some reason cars were always girls with Mark. It might have been because the man never married and for that Stuart Benson never blamed him. There weren’t many options in the sleepy town of Forgetful, Nevada. The sheriff himself had found one but it lasted only two years. That was twelve years ago and only at rare occasions did he think about it anymore.

Well, she’s an abandoned rental car, Mark. Nothing to get bent out of shape over. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but Mark would never be able to tell. It might be something to get bent out of shape over, he just wasn’t sure why yet. But, for Mark’s peace of mind, it was better to play it off as nothing. It wasn’t likely to bring the man any harm. The consequences would be reserved for the person who abandoned the car in the first place.

Why do you think she was left running? the large man asked.

Don’t know. Maybe the renter was in a hurry.

If he was in a hurry don’t you think he would have taken the car to get where he was going? Mark replied.

It made sense, of course, but there were other questions that needed answering before they could be certain about anything.

Well, that all depends on who the driver was, if that person was alone, where they came from and where they were going...among other things. Several different scenarios were rolling through the sheriff’s mind. Maybe there were two or more people. Maybe they had gone out into the desert together for some reason. There were documented cases of one person taking another into the desert to make an illegal deal only for one of the parties to discover it was a set-up. Sometimes one of them was left buried under a few feet of sand while the other drove off with a case of money or drugs or whatever. And that was just one of the options. At this point it could be a lot of different things. But Benson would never mention any of this to Mark.

So, what’s next? Mark asked, wringing his hands.

Next I have to ask some questions. If you’re not too busy I’ll just start with you.

Sure, Mark said. Lunch crowd’s gone. Things will be slow for the next two or three hours.

It shouldn’t take very long. Is there someplace we can go where we can talk in private? Benson didn’t want the other people in the diner hearing the questions he would be asking them after he finished with Mark. It might give them the opportunity to over-think and come up with answers that weren’t honest. A person’s memory was sometimes a fragile thing and influence from someone else could fabricate a memory that never really happened. These false memories always seemed real because they were often things that made sense, whether they were factually remembered or not. And some people just wanted to be heroes and freely made up details they thought might be useful.

Mark had a small office at the back of the kitchen. Benson walked in and Mark came in behind him closing the door. The sheriff retrieved the small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket and started in on his questions.

Who was the first to notice the car?

Mark had to think about it. That would have been Lou. I can’t remember seeing it when I came in this morning, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Lou came in and asked whose new car was in the parking lot. He paused to think again, his eyes squinting a bit. Benson wrote the name ‘Louis Dahl’ in his note book. Lou was Mark’s second string short order cook. He didn’t come in until ten o’clock in the morning most days, including today. It was about two-thirty now.

Benson moved on to his next question. Did anyone see the driver?

I don’t think so, but I didn’t ask.

It went on like this for another five to ten minutes and as Benson suspected, Mark didn’t have much to tell. There was a lot of basic information the sheriff had already deduced on his own, and after the brief examination Benson had performed in the parking lot, there were many things Benson knew that Mark didn’t.

Next, he interviewed Lou, the cook. No, I didn’t see nobody, Lou said. Then with a hushed and nervous curiosity asked, Did you look inside? The sheriff could tell from the way he asked the question that Lou already knew what was on the front passenger seat. Mark had let Benson know that the short order cook had ventured out to the car to inspect it before Stu had arrived, so none of this was a surprise. There was no harm done in that, the sheriff knew, because the vehicle had been locked.

Yes, he replied, then asked, You?

That thing in the front seat...is it what I think it is? There was a kind of fascinated trepidation about the man as he asked this.

Benson weighed his response options, not wanting to feed the small town paranoia and rumor mill. In the end, however, he decided a simple and straightforward answer would be best. The urn? I think so.

The waitress, Stacie, was even less helpful than Lou. She was college age but not college educated. Her training for life was of the brand one received from growing up in a second rate trailer park and her professors were sitcoms and soap operas. This, Benson knew, wasn’t something to be held against her, as not all of what was needed for life could be found in libraries, study halls, and dorm parties. In the sheriff’s view, the Stacies of the world made up a better part of the population and mattered as much as the elite upper crust of society.

Have you seen the car up close? Benson asked.

No way, she said while rubbing her arms as if chilled in the manufactured mid-eighties temperature. It gives me the creeps. She fell silent as the sheriff scribbled his notes. Before he could ask his next question, she leaned forward and in a tone that communicated the sharing of a confidence she said, Lou told me what was in it.

He didn’t allow the inconsequential revelation to interrupt his duty. He merely looked up at her, nodded his head in acknowledgment and gave an audible affirmation of the statement. Mm-hm. Is there anything else you noticed?

Just that it’s one of them city cars, she said matter-of-factly. ‘City car’ was local code for any car that was less than a decade old and therefore only affordable to someone who lived in one of the larger cities. Benson wrote down the phrase on his pad and underlined it.

The last interview was with Ed, one of the regular patrons, who came up with pretty much the same story as Mark, Lou, and Stacie, although he had a few more colorful thoughts on what had happened. Ed, in his late fifties and showing by his weight that he spent a lot of time in Mark’s greasy spoon diner, was saying, I don’t think so. Nothing much to notice about her other than she ain’t from around here. He hesitated for a moment and looked like he wanted to say something but was afraid to. Courage triumphed over nervousness and Ed said, Hey Sheriff?

Attentive, Benson responded, Yeah, Ed?

You don’t think it’s them aliens, do you?

Unable to stifle his chuckling, the sheriff said, What?

Keeping a completely straight face, Ed continued, You know, little green men come here from beyond to probe your...

Benson, still trying to suppress his laughter, interrupted saying, Boy, I hope not Ed. That would sure ruin my day.

Soon thereafter, the interviews were over and the obvious parts of the story were laid out for the sheriff. There was an abandoned and idling car which seemed to come from nowhere and about which there was a generally creepy feeling. He had all he was going to get for the time being.

He stepped out of the air conditioning into the sweltering heat and inwardly yearned for a cold front. The asphalt of the lot beneath him seemed to pull at his feet as he walked back to his patrol car. He got in, started the car, pulled away from the diner, and headed back to the station. On the ride back, his mind was plagued with the question of how the car might have come to its place at the diner. Who had the driver been? What possible motive could he have had for leaving it? What was the bigger story here?

He radioed the station to set up a time for the car to be towed and impounded. It would be sometime after dinner and he planned to be there when it did. Something else was tugging at his mind for attention but it had no form, nothing Benson could identify at least. If he gave it space it would eventually come to him. It always did.

Chapter 2

When Benson pulled into the station he turned off the car and sat for a few minutes so he could have