999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [182]
“It’s almost one in the morning. Why are you coming home so late?”
Romero told his wife about the shoes.
“Shoes? Are you crazy?”
“Haven’t you ever been curious about something?”
“Yeah, right now I’m curious why you think I’m stupid enough to believe you’re coming home so late because of some old shoes you found on the road. Have you got a girlfriend, is that it?”
“You don’t look so good,” his sergeant said.
Romero shrugged despondently.
“You been out all night, partying?” the sergeant joked.
“Don’t I wish.”
The sergeant became serious. “What is it? More trouble at home?”
Romero almost told him the whole story, but remembering the sergeant’s indifference when he’d earlier been told about the shoes, Romero knew he wouldn’t get much sympathy. Maybe the opposite. “Yeah, more trouble at home.”
After all, what he’d done last night was, he had to admit, a little strange. Using his free time to sit in a car for three hours, waiting for … If a practical joker wanted to keep tossing shoes on the road, so what? Let the guy waste his time. Why waste my own time trying to catch him? There were too many real crimes to be investigated. What am I going to charge the guy with? Littering?
Throughout his shift, Romero made a determined effort not to go near Old Pecos Trail. A couple of times during a busy day of interviewing witnesses about an assault, a break-in, another purse snatching, and a near-fatal car accident on Paseo de Peralta, he was close enough to have swung past Old Pecos Trail on his way from one incident to another, but he deliberately chose an alternate route. Time to change patterns, he told himself. Time to concentrate on what’s important.
At the end of his shift, his lack of sleep the previous night caught up to him. He left work exhausted. Hoping for a quiet evening at home, he followed congested traffic through the dust of the eternal construction project on Cerrillos Road, reached Interstate 25, and headed north. Sunset on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains tinted them the blood color for which the early Spanish colonists had named them. In a half hour, I’ll have my feet up and be drinking a beer, he thought. He passed the exit to St. Francis Drive. A sign told him that the next exit, the one for Old Pecos Trail, was two miles ahead. He blocked it from his mind, continued to admire the sunset, imagined the beer he was going to drink, and turned on the radio. A weather report told him that the high for the day had been seventy-five, typical for mid-May, but that a cold front was coming in and that the night temperature could drop as much as forty degrees, with a threat of frost in low-lying areas. The announcer suggested covering any recently purchased tender plants. The average frost-free day was May 15, but …
Romero took the Old Pecos Trail exit.
Just for the hell of it, he thought. Just to have a look and settle my curiosity. What can it hurt? As he crested the hill, he was surprised to notice that his heart was beating a little faster. Do I really expect to find more shoes? he asked himself. Is it going to annoy me that they were here all day and I didn’t come over to check? Pressure built in his chest as that section came into view. He breathed deeply …
And exhaled when he saw that there wasn’t anything on the road. There, he told himself. It was worth the detour. I proved that I’d have wasted my time if I drove over here during my shift. I can go home now without being bugged that I didn’t satisfy my curiosity.
But all the time he and his wife sat watching television while they ate Kentucky Fried Chicken (their son was out with friends), Romero felt restless. He couldn’t stop thinking that whoever was dumping the shoes would do so again. The bastard will think he’s outsmarted me. You? What are you talking about? He doesn’t have the faintest idea who you are. Well, he’ll think he’s outsmarted whoever’s picking up the shoes. The difference is the same.
The beer that Romero had been looking forward to tasted like water.
And of course the next morning, damn it, there was a pair