One of Those Faces

My mother has one of those faces. Those faces that advertise to strangers that you are open to hearing their life story. She is always being mistaken for someone's elementary school teacher or long-lost aunt. She is a repository of strangers' stories, and they always tell the truth.

She passed the gift on to me.

I was thinking about all of this as I sat on a bus coming down the mountains to Denver. It was snowing. It had been snowing off and on for days, and the snow had passed the point of beauty. Around the crowded bus station it was all grey slush, mixed in with road salt and highway gravel. The sinking sun reflected off the quartz in the asphalt. And when I say crowded, there wasn't a single seat left open and the driver was grumpy.

I was there on a case investigation. Because of my mother's gift, I had a knack for interrogations, and frequently subcontracted to other departments. When they had a tough suspect they couldn't crack, they called me.

Most people were there on skiing or snowboarding vacations. The kind of people who can afford to vacation in Aspen in the winter, but who cannot afford to fly out of the tiny airport on private planes. So the undercarriage of the bus was packed with skis, snowboards, and a mountain bike or two who's owners were concerned with flying stones and road salt if they were mounted on the front of the bus like they were supposed to be. I helped someone load one of them. The bus driver groused about this. He had a schedule to keep.

Perhaps because I helped load the bike, the only row left with any open seats when I boarded the bus was the very last one. It seated four, and I was next to a vacationing Patagonia-wearing couple with one seat between me and them.

At the next stop, they got off and I thought I'd gotten lucky. But it turned out they had only gotten off to get some snacks. The driver was upset about having to wait.

“I’m not running a taxi service here! You can get dinner in Denver!”

By the time they got to the back of the bus again, the lady was red in the face and threw her chips in the seat.

We made it a few more stops down the mountain before the bus filled all the way up. A man got on, about the same age as me. He locked eyes with me all the way from the front of the bus.

Oh no, I thought. Here it comes.

I was tired. Plagued by malaise and ennui. I had put in forty years at my own precinct in Atlanta and had put countless criminals away. But the black void of retirement was calling. The many murderers I had helped convict were household names. They had Netflix specials, Wikipedia pages and nicknames. They received mountains of fan mail, for some god-forsaken reason. I had a two bedroom house with a leaky roof and very few friends.

He came all the way to the back and sat down next to me. He stuck out because unlike everyone else in their Patagonia and North Face jackets, or even me in my raggedy Carhartt three sizes too big, this guy was not wearing a coat. It was January in Colorado and snowing. The average high temperature that time of year is 28° Fahrenheit. It was conspicuous.

He did not speak right away. The snow fell faster outside the bus as I tried to make myself small between him and the yuppie couple. Other than the lack of a coat, he was just wearing sweatpants with some kind of dark stain on them. I knew that shade of brown. It used to be red.

I don't remember how the conversation started. When you have one of those faces, they just start. Maybe he saw me eyeing the stain on his pants suspiciously.

From what I could gather, he had been in a car crash. I don't know if you know, but when in the mountains of Colorado, it is illegal to drive without snow chains or 4x4 in the winter, due to the liability of crashing in the snow, and the inconvenience to highway patrol. That's mainly why I was on the bus. The departments that needed my help oh so desperately were always too cheap to get me a suitable rental car, much less a flight to the correct damn city. I'd spent too many years living out of a suitcase in smoking motels, listening to couples fight in the next rooms.

He showed me pictures of his car on his phone. It was unclear how it happened, but the car had gone off the road and rolled four or five times down an embankment. It looked lucky he was even alive, honestly. Maybe that's why he had blood on his pants. Still, he didn't have any on his shirt and you'd think there would be if he'd gotten a bloody nose. Whose blood was this? The Patagonia couple was definitely listening in. He wanted to know where he should get off the bus once we got to Denver. I had to get off at the end of the line, so my main prerogative was that he didn't get off with me. He seemed harmless enough, but--bloody pants. I had my service weapon in my pocket, of course, but the paperwork alone--

I wasn't from Denver. But I had helped convict the Gunnison Gang back in '04 and I knew my way around. I told him he could get off at Central station, which is right downtown, and there's hotels nearby.

When I got to my stop I sat in the bus station for a long, long time, watching the snow keep coming down. One of the bus station attendants came up and asked if I needed help. I lied and said no. I listen to strangers’ stories all day, but they aren't entitled to mine. She told me she was waiting to get off work so she could travel for her father's funeral the next day. He fought in Vietnam and passed of cancer, if you wanted to know. They cremated him.

After about two hours I got up and started walking. My revolver made my coat hang to one side as I walked. I didn't intend to end up at Central Station. But it is central and that is where I found myself.

The coatless man was still there. Still conspicuous. Amateur, I thought. You can't hang around the scene waiting for the flashing red and blue. That's how they get you and you end up in a windowless room talking to someone like me.

He didn't see me. The snow muffled my steps as I came up behind him. He was in the light of a street lamp. I wasn't.

The snow also muffled the sound of my revolver, and he sunk down into the snow, his blood pooling into the gutter. It mixed with the gray slush and fresher snow. I always liked that red/black/white color scheme. Striking. Eventually his blood would dry and turn the same nasty brown as what was on his pants, but for now it was a beautiful red.

I didn't say anything when I did it.

I walked away on the sidewalks too muddied by traffic to leave any discernible footprints. They would catch up to me eventually, of course.

Then I would tell my story. Maybe I would get a Netflix special.