The River Burns (44 page)

A laugh burst from Denny, an involuntary reflex. “That's what Mom used to say about you.”

“Yeah. And that's my way of saying that you're too much like me. You like to fart around—be good, be kind, have fun, and push the boundaries. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. This time you overdid it. Let's face it, Denny. This is serious fucking business. That new girl in town, she's come up with an idea, but you have to make it work.”

“Will this be enough, though? It might help with the town. But what about those hard-ass SQ guys? They'll lynch me if they can find a way.”

Both Val and Denny looked to the family patriarch to see if he could summon any hope where apparently so little remained.

“Here's the thing, Denny. Just between us, and I don't know the details myself—except I'm told that I won't like it—but Ry is saving your ass. He's putting himself on the line for you. That's another reason to come through.”

The news hung in the air awhile, and partly Denny did not speak because he couldn't.

Alex also had trouble finding his voice. “In other words, son, no more farting around. So help me on your mother's grave—”

Denny's lips were quavering and his emotional wreckage was no longer hidden. Valérie caressed his back as he bobbed his chin and dabbed an eye.

In absorbing his dad's comments, he wasn't buying into the whole of the lecture—he was already past getting himself into this sort of muck and mire again—but neither was he going to react against any portion of the commentary. He had this coming. Other people were going to want a piece of him who'd be a lot more harsh than his father, mean and full-on cruel at times. So the part about being patient and wise could begin right now.

Denny nodded in the affirmative.

The three of them did.

Alex said, “Okay, so can a man get a beer in this dump or what?”

Val smiled at him. Alex was embarrassed by her gaze that conveyed so much tenderness. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex said. “It's not my idea anyway. I'm just the messenger.”

“You know,” she said softly, “Mrs. O'Farrell might not even recognize you now. Her river-rat husband, so wise and thoughtful. She'd be damned proud of you, Dad.”

“Just don't tell her, okay? I like to keep her on her toes.” Alex knew that more tears would flow if either of them said another word. So he just wagged his chin a little and gave his cane a wee tap against the carpet.

“Ry's new girl, Tara—let her know, okay?” Denny requested. “Tell her I got the message.” The girl he rescued from the rain after a baseball game—who could guess that that slight act of consideration—but really, he thought she was hot, so did it even count as kindness?—would be returned a hundredfold and then another hundredfold. She was smart, with a good head and a savvy idea. A stranger, imagine that, understood them so well. She hung out with Mrs. McCracken. Maybe some of the old coot rubbed off on her. He stood. “Yeah, big shock wave over here. We got beer.”

■   ■   ■

Peculiar, puzzling, the reaction that
he received from the detectives when he told them he solved their crime, that he was holding their bridge burner in lockup, a confession in hand. They seemed incapable of understanding him. Something was not working and his mind raced to grasp what he might have missed.

Then they told him.

“We have a witness,” Quique Vega revealed.

“What kind of a witness?” Ryan O'Farrell asked.

“The kind of a witness who says your brother did the bridge burning,” Maltais filled in. “We told your brother, he didn't tell you?”

Ryan doubted him.

“He says your brother had help, our witness, but can't name the others.”

“We also have kids who were under the bridge right before the fire,” Vega tacked on. “Chased away, it turns out, by someone they thought was you. Because he said he was you. So maybe it was you. They didn't actually see the person, though. But we've noticed that you and your brother sound alike.”

Ryan was thinking quickly even as he absorbed the blows. “If somebody who scared them off told them that he was me, then they'll think it's true. Doesn't matter what the impostor sounded like, as long as he was male.”

They were in his office, Ryan and Maltais seated, Quique Vega choosing to stand, occasionally pace. Maltais leaned so far forward for a moment that his elbows touched his knees. He knitted his fingers together. “In a court of law, I admit, a lawyer makes that argument and, with most juries, wins it.”

“But in this room,” Vega put forward, indicating that he and his partner discussed these points, to the extent that their thinking freely flowed from one to the other, “we're policemen, we don't need to make that distinction.”

“I'm just saying,” Ryan said.

Quique Vega liked to pick up things. Photos in their frames. An old award won at a high school swim meet. Past mementos. Nothing dramatic, as though Ryan lived a rather tame life.

“Sure. Sure. I know,” Maltais said, as though he felt a need to soothe him. “The sound of the voice is circumstantial at best, maybe unreliable. But we have a witness, you see. Someone who attests to your brother's guilt.”

Ryan nodded. “A witness. Okay. That's significant for sure. But I have a confession. By the person who actually did burn the bridge. Or attests to it, as you say. The confession is being written up and signed as we speak.”

“This is a credible confession?” Maltais asked him.

“The guy's own lawyer is present.”

The two detectives shared a glance.

“Who's the witness?” Ryan asked point-blank. He was guessing that they wouldn't tell him.

“Who's the confessor?” Maltais asked him back.

“His name is Jake Withers. You've seen him. He was the dopehead who sailed that raft down the river, remember?”

“And the first man to the bridge after the fire,” Vega recalled. Ryan noticed that he never put anything back in exactly the same spot. The mementos of his past were being rearranged. So he wasn't a likely or possible friend, as he was doing it to irritate him.

“Did you interview him?”

Vega reported that they did.

“And?”

“He said he didn't burn the bridge. He was adamant about that.”

“That was then. Now he says he did it.”

“Why?”

“We have his fingerprints off glass from a Molotov cocktail from the truck fire. So he has an incendiary background. We found fire-making material in the trunk of his car, including guns and dynamite. Some of those charges will go away as long as he cops to the bridge burning. I gave him that in trade.”

“Which charges go away?” Vega wondered.

“Well,” Ryan said. He shrugged. “Every charge does.” He was glad now that he didn't mention the drugs to them. Not yet.

“So he has an incentive to be our bridge burner,” Maltais said, and after that the two men simply stared at each other awhile and the silence between them felt fertile and rife. “And as we know, you have an incentive to make it so.”

“I brought you in,” Ryan reminded him.

“Sometimes I wonder why.”

Ryan didn't want to push him on that, didn't what to know what he might have deduced. “Who's your witness?”

“Willis Howard.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” Ryan stormed.

“What? He's a credible witness. A respected member of this community. A businessman. What's your problem?”

“He's a notorious prick!” Ryan fired back. “And—”

He wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say.

“And what?” the one he liked, but less so lately, Quique, asked him.

Ryan studied the man. Time to be convincing. “He's hated my family since he emerged from the womb. Plus he hates, he despises, loggers. The whole industry. Ask anybody. He wants the industry shut down so that we can become a tourist outpost with no big business, the whole district impoverished while he rakes in the cash. Seriously, ask anybody. Of course he wants to hang the bridge fire on a logger! He hates loggers and he hates the forestry industry and he hates my family in particular.”

“So you said. Why your family?”

“Because we represent— My dad— Except for me, we're loggers. Famous ones, even.”

“Loggers can be famous now? Like rock stars? I never heard that.”

“Around here, my dad, he's like a legend. Mythic, even.”

“Mythic,” Maltais repeated, his mockery subtle.

“Find out something new,” Vega said, and shrugged.

“Mr. Howard's home is well situated with an excellent view of the bridge,” Maltais pointed out. “The former bridge.”

“So why didn't he come forward sooner if he had such an excellent view?”

This time they hesitated, and Ryan knew then that they already asked that question without receiving a satisfactory reply.

Quique Vega finally sat. Detective Maltais gently rubbed the knuckles of one hand in the palm of the other, thinking. Ryan clutched the forward portion of the arms on his chair, and the three men looked at one another in turn.

“I guess,” Maltais broke the impasse, “we should interview your guy.”

“Any objections if I talk to your witness?”

The visiting officers mulled it over silently. Ryan wanted to chide them for being telepathic, but this was no time to make light. “I guess that'll be fine,” the senior detective decided. “It's your town. Your people. Just don't, you know, threaten him, or bribe him. Nothing like that.”

What was meant to be a joke didn't sound like one.

Vega smiled, an attempt to dispel the obvious erosion of trust.

He detected barely perceptible eye communication between Maltais and Vega, giving him permission to add something. Ryan folded his hands, waited.

“The thing is,” Quique Vega stated, “you've got a confession, but we have to ask ourselves, did your guy have time to do the crime?”

Ryan didn't want to answer, for the simple reason that he did not know why the question was being asked. “I don't see why not. He could have taken his sweet time as far as I can tell.”

“Not really,” Vega informed him. “We interviewed your officer.”

“Henri,” Maltais recalled.

“Henri,” Vega repeated. “Now, he was outside a late-night bar, waiting to see if any drunks came out and got behind a wheel. He followed your guy.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, he did. He says so. But he gave up on him. Your guy was driving straight as an arrow within the speed limit. So he broke off his tail. He says it was only a minute or two later that he heard a car horn blaring away and right after that he spotted the fire. So your guy didn't have much time, did he?”

He was reeling. God, he hated lying, and forced himself to keep his eyes on one cop or the other. “Well,” he mulled, “I'll want to ask my guy about that. See what his timing was. See if he was in the car that Henri was following.”

“Only car there.”

“I know. But he's got legs. He could have walked.”

“His car. If somebody else drove it there, who's the accomplice?”

“No, no, like you, I think he drove the car,” Ryan cut in. “I'm not saying he didn't. Molotov cocktails. That's his thing. He'd have them in the trunk, just like he did when I picked him up. Throw a few of those, takes seconds, and that old wood, a hundred years old, after a hot summer, those old slats and timbers go up like a tinderbox. In no time flat. The evidence, the glass and all that, sails down the river.”

“Is that what he says?”

“I want to go read his confession.”

The officers again exchanged a silent communication, evaluating him.

“Why don't we all go read it?” Maltais put to him.

Ryan fought hard not to squirm. He paused while his thoughts raced and the collective dust in the room settled. The others could tell that something was forming in his quick mind. “How about,” he proposed, “if I go read my guy's confession, probe some more, see how his story stacks up? Do that first. He's my witness right now on unrelated charges. I want to make sure he's solid before I pass him over. I'm giving up other charges, after all, I can't let him go unless the case is solid. You've given me some doubts, so let me go over it once again. In the meantime, you guys can revisit your witness. See where he's at. See if he doesn't want to revise his view of the world. Then we switch.”

The three men mulled the idea for a few silent ticks.

“Why?” Maltais asked finally.

“Like I said, I need to make sure he's signed that confession, that it makes sense and it's a good one,” Ryan explained. “If it's not valid, then I have to bring back the other charges on him. So I got to make sure he's crossed his
t
's, dotted those
i
's. Push him about the timing, see if he can't nail that down.”

“Because you know, I wouldn't want you filling in the blanks for him. Nothing like that,” Maltais said.

They squared off in combative attitudes, but Ryan broke from the posture quickly. That was a dark gopher hole, nothing to be gained going down it. Instead, he opened his top desk drawer. “Let me show you something. You interviewed him, you probably think he's a straightforward young man.”

“We do. Maybe not too bright,” was Vega's assessment. “But he did look like hell that day on the raft. Not too straightforward then. Going down through the rapids, though, anyone would look as though they just took a stroll through a car wash.” Maltais reached over and accepted the small envelope Ryan passed to him. He opened it, checked the photographs inside, showed them to Vega.

“This the same guy?” Vega asked.

“Same guy.”

“Where'd you get these?”

“Out of his wallet. That's his truck-burning costume, apparently.”