Down River (7 page)

“I won’t apologize. You were the last to see her. I had to know if you’d tell me that.”

“Five years ago,” I spat out. “Did you believe me then?”

Her eyes drifted left. “I would not be with you if I thought you’d killed that boy.”

“So, where’s the trust now? Where’s the goddamn faith?”

She saw the rage in me, but didn’t flinch. “It’s what I do, Adam. It’s who I am.”

“Screw that, Robin.”

“Adam—”

“How could you even think it?”

I turned violently away; she raised a hand to stop me, but could not. I tore open the door and was through, into the thick night that held such perfect ruin.

   It was a short drive. I passed the Episcopal church and the old English cemetery. I took a left at the water tower, ignored the once grand homes that had decayed and been cut up into low-rent apartments; then I was into the medical district, among the doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and glass-front stores selling orthopedic shoes and walkers. I parked in the emergency room lot, and headed for the double doors. The entrance was lit, everything else dark. I saw a figure leaning against the wall, the glow of a cigarette. I looked once and glanced away. Jamie’s voice surprised me.

“Hey, bro.”

He took a last drag and flicked the butt into the parking lot. I met him near the door, under one of the many lights.

“Hey, Jamie. How is she?”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Who knows? They won’t let us see her yet. I think that she’s conscious and all, but she’s like, catatonic.”

“Is Dad here?”

“Yeah. And Dolf.”

“What about Miriam and your mom?”

“They’ve been in Charlotte. Flew in from Colorado last night and stayed to shop. They should be here before long. George went in to pick them up.”

“George?” I asked.

“George Tallman.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jamie waved a hand. “It’s a long story. Trust me.”

I nodded. “I’m going in. I need to talk to Dad. How’s Dolf holding up?”

“Everybody’s a mess.”

“You coming?”

His head moved. “I can’t handle it in there.”

“See you in a bit, then.” I turned for the door, and felt his hand on my shoulder.

“Adam, wait.” I turned back, and he looked miserable. “I’m not just out here to have a smoke.”

“I don’t understand.”

He looked up and then to the side, at everything but my face. “It’s not going to be pretty in there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dolf found her, okay. She didn’t come home and he went looking for her. He found her where she’d been dragged off the trail. She was bloody, barely conscious. He carried her home, put her in the car, and drove her here.” He hesitated.

“And?”

“And she talked. She hasn’t said a word since she’s been here—at least not to us—but she talked to Dolf. He told the cops what she said.”

“Which was what?”

“She’s out of it, confused maybe, and she doesn’t remember much, but she told Dolf the last thing she does remember is that you kissed her, then she told you that she hates you, and then she ran away from you.”

His words crashed down on me.

“The cops say that she was attacked maybe a half mile from the dock.” I saw it all on his face. Half a mile. An easy run.

It was happening again.

“They think that I had something to do with it?”

Jamie looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here. He seemed to twist inside his own body. “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it, bro? Nobody has forgotten why you left.”

“I would never hurt Grace.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying, damn it. What’s Dad saying?”

“Not a word, man. He’s gone into some kind of weird shutdown. I’ve never seen anything like it. And Dolf—Jesus—he looks like somebody hit him with a brick. I don’t know. It’s ugly.” He paused. We both knew where this would go. “I’ve been out here for an hour. I just thought you should know… before you walk in there.”

“Thanks, Jamie. I mean it. You didn’t have to.”

“We’re brothers, man.”

“Are the police still here?”

He shook his head. “They hung out for a long time, but it’s like I said, Grace isn’t really talking. I think they’re out at the farm, Robin and some guy named Grantham. He works for the sheriff. He’s the one asking all the questions.”

“The sheriff,” I said, feeling the emotion move into my face: the dislike, the memories. It was the Rowan County sheriff who’d filed the murder charge against me.

Jamie nodded. “Same one.”

“Wait a minute. Why is Robin involved in this? She works for the city.”

“I think she does all the sex cases. Some kind of partnership with the sheriff’s office when it’s out of her normal jurisdiction. She’s always in the paper. That Grantham, though, don’t let him fool you. He’s only been around for a few years, but he’s sharp.”

“Robin questioned me.” I still could not believe it.

“She had to, man. You know what it took for her to stand by you when everyone and his brother wanted you strung up. She almost got fired for it.” Jamie shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “You need me to go in with you?”

“You offering?”

He didn’t answer, just looked embarrassed. “No problem,” I said, and turned away.

“Hey,” Jamie said. I stopped. “What I said before, about being glad to have a front-row seat… I didn’t mean it. Not like this.”

“It’s cool, Jamie. No sweat.”

I went in through the double doors. Lights hummed. People looked up and then ignored me. I rounded a corner and saw my father first. He sat like a broken man. His head hung loosely and his arms wrapped around his shoulders as if they had too many joints. Dolf sat beside him, very erect, and stared at the wall in utter stillness. The skin beneath his eyes had pulled away in pale, pink crescents, and he, too, looked reduced. He saw me first, and twitched as if caught doing something he should not.

I stepped farther into the waiting area they occupied. “Dolf.” I paused. “Dad.”

Dolf pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his hands on his thighs. My father looked up, and I saw that his face looked shattered, too. He held my eyes and straightened his back as if will alone could reconstitute a broken frame. I thought of what Robin had said, that my father wept when he heard that I’d come back. I saw nothing like that now. His fists were white and hard. Cords stretched the skin of his neck.

“What do you know about this, Adam?”

I’d hoped that this would not happen, that Jamie had been wrong. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t be smart with me, son. What do you know about this?” He raised his voice. “About Grace, goddamn it.”

For an instant I froze, but then I felt the palsy in my hands, the disbelief that made my skin burn. Dolf looked traumatized. My father stepped closer. He was taller than I, still wide through the shoulders. I searched his face for reason to hope and found nothing. So be it.

“I’m not going to have this discussion,” I said.

“Oh, yes, you damn well are. You’re going to talk to us, and you’re going to tell us what happened.”

“I have nothing to say to you about this.”

“You were with her. You kissed her. She ran from you. Don’t deny it. They found her clothes still on the dock.” He’d made up his mind. The calm was a veneer. It wouldn’t last. “The truth, Adam. For once. The truth.”

But I could tell him nothing; so I said the only thing that still mattered to me. Knowing my father and what would come, I said it.

“I want to see her.”

He lunged for me. He caught me by the shirt and slammed me against the hard hospital wall. Every detail of his face was plain, but mostly I saw the stranger in him, the pure and crushing hatred as the last of his faith in me fell away. “If you did this,” he said, “I will fucking kill you.”

I didn’t fight back. I let him hold me against the wall until the hatred shrank into something less total. Like pain and loss. Like something in him just died.

“You should not have to ask me,” I said, removing his hands from my shirt. “And I should not have to answer.”

He turned away. “You are not my son,” he said.

He showed me his back, and Dolf could not meet my eyes; but I refused to be made small. Not now. Not again. So I fought the overwhelming urge to explain. I stood my ground and, when my father turned, I held his eyes until he looked away. I sat on one side of the waiting area and my father sat on the other. At one point, Dolf made as if to cross the room to speak with me.

“Sit down, Dolf,” my father said.

Dolf sat.

Eventually, my father climbed to his feet. “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “I need some unspoiled air.” When the sound of his feet faded away, Dolf came to sit beside me. He was just over sixty, a hardworking man with massive hands and iron hair. Dolf had been around for as long as I could remember. My entire life. He’d started on the farm as a young man, and when my father inherited the place, he’d kept Dolf on as the number two man. They were like brothers, inseparable. It had always been my belief, in fact, that without Dolf, neither my father nor I would have survived my mother’s suicide. He’d held us together, and I could still remember the weight of his hand on my narrow shoulder in the hard days after the world vanished in a flash of smoke and thunder.

I studied his uneven face, the small blue eyes and the eyebrows dusted with white. He patted my knee and leaned his head against the wall. In profile, he looked like he’d been carved from a hunk of dried beef.

“Your father is a passionate man, Adam. He acts in the moment, but usually calms down and sees things differently. Gray Wilson was murdered and Janice saw what she saw. Now you’re back and someone’s done this to Grace. He’s worked up. He’ll get over it.”

“Do you really think words can make this right?”

“I don’t think you did anything wrong, Adam. And if your father was thinking straight, he’d see it that way, too. You need to understand that when Grace came to me, I had no idea what to do. My wife left when my own daughter was young. I knew nothing about nothing. Your father helped me. He feels responsible.” He spread his palms. “He’s a proud man, and prideful men don’t show their hurt. They lash out. They do things they eventually regret.”

“That changes nothing.”

Dolf shook his head again. “We all have regrets. You do. I do. But the older we get, the more there are to carry around. That much weight can break a man. That’s all I’m saying. Give your old man a chance. He never believed you killed that boy, but he couldn’t just ignore the things his own wife said.”

“He threw me out.”

“And he’s wanted to make it right. I can’t count the times he wanted to call you, or write you. He even asked me once if I’d drive to New York with him. He said there were things to say, and not all things should be trusted to paper.”

“Wanting is not the same as doing.”

“That’s true.”

I thought of the blank page I’d found on my father’s desk. “What stopped him?”

“Pride. And your stepmother.”

“Janice.” The name came with difficulty.

“She’s a decent woman, Adam. A loving mother. Good for your father. In spite of everything, I still believe that, just as she believes what she saw that night. I can promise that these five years have not been easy on her, either. It’s not like she had a choice. We all act on what we believe.”

“You want me to forgive him?” I asked.

“I want you to give him a chance.”

“His loyalty should be to me.”

Dolf sighed. “You’re not his only family, Adam.”

“I was his first.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Your mother was beautiful and he adored her. But things changed when she died. You changed most of all.”

“I had my reasons.”

A sudden brightness moved into Dolf’s eyes. The manner of her death hit us all hard. “He loved your mother, Adam. Marrying again was not something he did lightly. Gray Wilson’s death put him in a difficult place. He had to choose between believing you and believing his wife. Do you think that could be easy or anything but dangerous? Try to see it like that.”

“There’s no conflict today. What about now?”

“Now is… complicated. There’s the timing. The things Grace said.”

“What about you, then? Is today complicated for you?”

Dolf turned in his seat. He faced me with blunt features and a level gaze. “I believe what Grace told me, but I know you, too. So, while I don’t know what, exactly, to believe, I do think that this will all be sorted out in time.” He looked away. “Sinners usually pay for their sins.”

I studied his raw face, the chapped lips and the drooping eyes that ill-concealed the grief. “You honestly believe that?” I asked.

He looked up at the humming lights, so that a bright, gray sheen seemed to cover his eyes. His voice drifted, and was pale as smoke.

“I do,” he said. “I absolutely do.”

   Ten minutes later, the cops materialized in the door. Robin appeared subdued, while the other cop made small, eager movements. Tall and round-shouldered, he was somewhere north of fifty, in faded jeans and a red jacket. Brown hair spread thinly over a narrow forehead and sharp nose. A badge hung on his belt and small, round glasses flashed over washed-out eyes.

“Can we talk outside?” Robin asked.

Dolf sat up straighter, but said nothing. I got up and followed them out. Jamie was nowhere to be seen. The other cop held out a hand. “I’m Detective Grantham,” he said. We shook hands. “I work for the sheriff, so don’t let the clothes fool you.”

His smile broadened, but I knew better than to trust it. No smile could be real tonight. “Adam Chase,” I said.

His face went flat. “I know who you are, Mr. Chase—I’ve read the file—and I will make every effort to keep that knowledge from coloring my objectivity.”

I kept my calm, but it took some effort. No one knew a thing about me in New York. I’d grown used to it. “Are you capable of that?” I asked.

“I never knew the boy that was killed. I know he was liked, that he was football hero and all that; that he had a lot of family around here. I know that they made a lot of noise about rich men’s justice. But that was all before my time. You’re just like anybody else to me, Mr. Chase. No preconceptions.”