Phantoms

it’s so hard… so very, very hard for me.” His face appeared to cave in, and the tremor in his voice became more pronounced. “I mean, for God’s sake, I’ve lost my family. My wife… my son… both gone.”
    Bryce Hammond said, “I’m sorry if you think I’ve treated you unfairly, Mr. Kale. I only try to do what I think is best. Sometimes, I’m right. Maybe I’m wrong this time.”
    Apparently deciding that he wasn’t in too much trouble after all, and that he could afford to be magnanimous now, Fletcher Kale dabbed at the tears on his face, sat up straighter in his chair, and said, “Yeah… well, uh… I guess I can see your position, Sheriff.”
    Kale was underestimating Bryce Hammond.
    Bob Robine knew the sheriff better than his client did. He frowned, glanced at Tal, then stared hard at Bryce.
    In Tal Whitman’s experience, most people who dealt with the sheriff underestimated him, just as Fletcher Kale had done. It was an easy thing to do. Bryce didn’t look impressive. He was thirty-nine, but he seemed a lot younger than that. His thick sandy hair fell across his forehead, giving him a mussed, boyish appearance. He had a pug nose with a spatter of freckles across the bridge of it and across both cheeks. His blue eyes were clear and sharp, but they were hooded with heavy lids that made him seem bored, sleepy, maybe even a little bit dull-witted. His voice was misleading, too. It was soft, melodic, gentle. Furthermore, he spoke slowly at times, and always with measured deliberation, and some people took his careful speech to mean that he had difficulty forming his thoughts. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Bryce Hammond was acutely aware of how others perceived him, and when it was to his advantage, he reinforced their misconceptions with an ingratiating manner, with an almost witless smile, and with a further softening of speech that made him seem like the classic hayseed cop.
    Only one thing kept Tal from fully enjoying this confrontation: He knew the Kale investigation had affected Bryce Hammond on a deep, personal level. Bryce was hurting, sick at heart about the pointless deaths of Joanna and Danny Kale, because in a curious way this case echoed events in his own life. Like Fletcher Kale, the sheriff had lost a wife and a son, although the circumstances of his loss were considerably different from Kale’s.
    A year ago, Ellen Hammond had died instantly in a car crash. Seven-year-old Timmy, sitting on the front seat beside his mother, had suffered serious head injuries and had been in a coma for the past twelve months. The doctors didn’t give Timmy much chance of regaining consciousness.
    Bryce had nearly been destroyed by the tragedy. Only recently had Tal Whitman begun to feel that his friend was moving away from the abyss of despair.
    The Kale case had opened Bryce Hammond’s wounds again, but he hadn’t allowed grief to dull his senses; it hadn’t caused him to overlook anything. Tal Whitman had known the precise moment, last Thursday evening, when Bryce had begun to suspect that Fletcher Kale was guilty of two premeditated murders, for suddenly something cold and implacable had come into Bryce’s heavy-lidded eyes.
    Now, doodling on a yellow note pad as if only half his mind was on the interrogation, the sheriff said, “Mr. Kale, rather than ask you a lot of questions that you’ve already answered a dozen times, why don’t I summarize what you’ve told us? If my summary sounds pretty much right to you, then we can get on with these new items I’d like to ask you about.”
    “Sure. Let’s get it over with and get out of here,” Kale said.
    “Okay then,” Bryce said. “Mr. Kale, according to your testimony, your wife, Joanna, felt she was trapped by marriage and motherhood, that she was too young to have so much responsibility. She felt she had made a terrible mistake and was going to have to pay for it for the rest of her life. She wanted some kicks, a way to escape, so she turned to dope. Would you say that’s how you’ve described her state of mind?”
    “Yes,” Kale said. “Exactly.”
    “Good,” Bryce said. “So she started smoking pot. Before long, she was stoned almost continuously. For two and a half years, you lived with a pothead, all the while hoping you could change her. Then a week ago she went berserk, broke a lot of dishes and threw some food around the kitchen, and you had hell’s own time calming her down. That was when you