Oliver Chase answered my call on LinkedIn for a blog tour. He graciously excerpted A Walking Shadow by Deborah Fezelle and Sherry Yanow. In the spirit of the blog tour, I am honored to excerpt his latest novel as well. Marsh Island is a mystery thriller and first in a two book series.
A few miles south of the city on East Russell, I exited and continued on the Boulder Highway. A couple miles outside of Henderson at a truck stop, I bought a tall cup of very bad coffee. The adrenalin crash wasn’t far off and drugs would be the only way to make a five-hour drive. With the last of the big lights far behind, I left the highway.
Searchlight, Nevada was home to the motel where my ex-wife and I spent the infamous end to our honeymoon and the first really good fight. I wondered if the dilapidated place was still there and what the she was doing these days. Maybe she’d gone home. That had always been the threat. Marla was French but didn’t like France. She didn’t like me, either. Maybe she stayed in the US and citizenship was really all she’d ever wanted. I dismissed those dismal thoughts as fast as they came. I didn’t want to think about her. She didn’t really deserve the animus that I’d bring to a reminiscence on the high desert. Life takes two people to ruin it and I had screwed up more than my share. Instead, I sipped at the top of the terrible coffee and cranked the radio up as loud as the night could stand it. A Jimmy Buffet sing along rocked an AM station so I left the top up and smiled while I drank pretty satisfied with myself.
In a while, the desert night took me. The twinkle that was the city’s essence disappeared in the elevation. Light from a time before God came unfiltered and sublime. Ancestors made stories in the caves about a light such as this. They couldn’t have known anything about the true nature of stars but I wondered if we really knew any more today. The business of explaining the unexplainable was the work of scientists. Are we any different from the bone rollers of old? Maybe we simply had more theories and gadgets. People needed to make a living. Sort of like me. Charlatans, all.
Tonight, the sky reminded me that Bernice Trimble was dying. Lisa Calendar and Howard Trimble were already dead and Gordon Cooper was having fun with me. Heather Price was an enigma. The vast, empty overhead asked far more questions than it offered answers.
I pulled into a mountain overlook to stretch my legs and rid myself of the coffee. A sliver of the moon’s bright orb slowly crept above the distant, Eastern plateaus. I hated my memories of the Iranian desert and the Blackhawk crash that broke my back. Yet, I loved my American desert. Sometimes, the past crept too close, like tonight. I had to stand back and let the thoughts have their way. After a while, I’d go on with my life. Each time took more of me with it. Killing a little piece at a time, as if the fluke that saved me was coming and never really left.
When the horizon finally released the full brightness of the moon, many stars disappeared. I dropped the top and cranked up the radio once more. Buffet was gone but Moe Bandy’s guitar was not. Death remained in the wings and that was fine with me. Instead of taking the road to Kingman as my GPS voice demanded, I stayed on old ninety-five. Through that long night, I drifted through the rust-iron hills of California’s forgotten corner. Abandoned little towns lay in someone else’s memories, keeping them awake at night. Tiny homes with broken glass or boarded up windows rotted with the ghosts of dreams failed. They offered me company, gave me comfort, and marked my way to the interstate.
The old convertible bounced up Maff’s driveway about an hour after dawn. With the hot, Arizona sun already on my face, I stretched and tried to work the kink from under a tight shoulder blade. The PPD lab van was parked behind Maff’s ragged VW Fox. The red-orange paint was faded in large swaths of peeling clear coat and the hood was hanger-wired closed. Hence, the oil was never changed. I wondered if this was the last Fox alive on the planet. The little car’s interior was awash in cellophane wrappers, departmental papers, and soda cans of every description. The Department van was pristine.
I knocked until Dennis roused from the living room couch. He had no bed. He was a mess with bags under his eyes and sleep hair stiffened to attention. “You know, buddy, I can’t understand why you ever bought a house.” I pushed my way past him into the cool interior. “Why don’t you ever use the bedroom?”
Maffessanti yawned and shrugged, running scarecrow fingers across his scalp. He owned a little, three-bedroom bungalow in a corner of modest, family housing. A thousand kids in his block alone overran a little city park with artificially green and watered grass − red, yellow, and blue slides and park toys, and interconnecting walkways for moms pushing baby carriages.
“I don’t know,” he said, good-naturedly wandering back into the unlighted living room. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
His achingly thin frame and gaunt face stretched in a second, satisfying yawn as he clanged two coffee cups together, looking for a little instant. He hadn’t asked if I wanted coffee. We were beyond that sort of inquiry. That might seem strange to an outsider but we were more like a couple of friendly − even mutually dependent − siblings, who knew what the other thought before it was spoken aloud. I was the only friend he had, as far as I knew. I felt a little bad about that but never knew what I could do to help him become more likeable. I liked him just fine. The others in the department and the Army considered him a strange and distant duck. Like me, I contemplated. What the heck? Birds of a feather. We needed each other. What’s wrong with that?
“I’ve got a couple of ideas,” mumbled Dennis, “on that star thingy you called about last night.”
I smiled. Thingy? Maff with his 180 plus IQ. “Great,” I said aloud. “I could use some help on my star thingy…”
Maff chuckled at himself, aware that he was a social klutz. He was also aware this ineptitude meant little to me. I’d never seen Maff angry or vengeful, even when the young lieutenant bozos in Aberdeen made their snide, knowing remarks or left him out of lunch plans. His life was an even keel with an ethical compass firmly rooted and unchangeable. And sometimes, for me, unfathomable. Then again, that was me and frankly, though I would never have the chance to tell him, Maff was sort of my hero.
“You’re a little too early for a finished product, Phil. I haven’t quite worked it out in my head.” He handed me a cupful of dreadful, tepid, brown liquid. “You don’t want sugar or anything, do you?”
I did but knew he had neither. The cup was one of two that he owned. This time I scored the one with the thumbnail-sized chip and blue vertical stripes. It was my favorite. “Nah,” I replied. “I’m cutting down on sweets. Lay what you got on me. Half of an idea is better than what I’ve come up with so far.”
He shook his head no and I recognized the gesture. He rarely pondered out loud and was immovable once he made up his scientist mind. So, instead of arguing, I gave him my speculation from my five-hour drive in the night desert. The little kitchen was soon filled with the morning light and papers strewn from coffee table, to floor, to dining room table.
I quickly reached my ambiguous theorem on Trimble, M35, and the stars in general. Maff worked the space between his eyebrows with a thoughtful, index finger. He did not look at me. Instead, his brown eyes stared through the walls of the small house and off into the enigmatic mind that was Maff.
I said nothing and poured a bit more water into my cup. Instead of coffee, I drank the water down and waited silently. I’d always wondered at this trait. What was going on inside his brain? Where did he go? Was it like an Excel spreadsheet with the biological computer running the numbers? I didn’t know. Many of the others that had passed in my life simply let their mouths fill the silence. Somehow, they’d been afraid that they’d lose momentum if their useless words were not the dominant life force of the moment. Not Maff. He was content with his brain working the problem. After a moment, I drank and rinsed my cup.
Finally, Maff straightened and cleared his throat. “Okay. One thing at a time. First, the stars. M35, right?”
“Zodiac,” I announced bluntly and retook my seat. “Gemini. Trimble leaves on the signs, meets some bimbo with a compatible astrology and embarks on an adventure.” I paused. “M6 doesn’t fit, but what the heck?”
I watched my young friend, watching me.
“Baloney,” pronounced Maff. “You don’t believe that for a moment.”
I smiled. “True, but I thought I’d try you out. What would you say if I told you the mob grabbed me last night?”
“Lucky to be alive?”
Olive Chase Bio
Oliver Chase grew up on military bases throughout the U.S. enjoying convertibles, beaches, and drive-ins. With Herb, his best friend, he joined a college program for the Marines. A few years later with Smith Corona in hand, Oliver landed in the same war and not far from the spot where Herb died. With thirty other young men, he flew day and night with the intent to make it home alive. Several did not. Over a thousand missions later, the typewriter moved to the Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico where busy days and long nights healed the soul.
The years and venue changed, yet the writing never stopped. The Smith was traded for a Zenith, Mac, and a PC as The Hirebomber Crime series – Marsh Island and Blind Marsh were born.
Today, Ollie lives along the Gulf of Mexico with free roaming farm animals and friendly dogs. He flies a Grumman Tiger and swims to regenerate a fertile mind. Soon, he will put the finishing touches on Levant Mirage, a story of the world’s survival in the face of extremism. The first draft of The Joshua Tree, about politicians and the temptation they face will complete next spring.
Marsh Island can be found on Amazon.com. Follow Oliver on Twitter too