The River King (23 page)

“Never,” Carlin said. “I already told Mr. Pierce, Gus would have left me a note. Even if it was just to make me feel worse, he would have written something down.”

Of course, Abe knew that not everyone discussed such plans. You could live with someone in the very next room and have no idea what he might be capable of. As for Carlin, she appreciated the fact that Abe hadn't tried to comfort her the way most people would have. He was honest, and his doubts matched her own. He took a notepad from his pocket and jotted down his phone number.

“Call me if you hear anything about your friend. If he ate corned beef hash on the night when he died, I want to know. Any detail, no matter how unimportant it seems, I'd like to hear about it. These things can add up when you put them all together. You'd be surprised.”

“Okay.” Carlin had discovered that she didn't feel quite as vicious anymore. Her wet hair was freezing into disorderly strands and the black coat coiled around her legs as she walked with Abe across campus.

When St. Anne's came into view, Abe could see what was surely Betsy Chase's window. In all probability, Betsy had not thought to lock her windows, not here in Haddan, where the nights were so safe. For an instant, Abe thought he saw her, but it was only Miss Davis out on the porch, trying to fill her bird feeder with seed.

“I'd better go,” Carlin said. “I work for her.”

In the settling darkness, the thicket of quince beside Miss Davis's door trembled as the nesting finches fluttered with anticipation. Abe could tell that Helen Davis was ill; it wasn't her age that gave her away, but how carefully she lifted each handful of seed, as if such things were too heavy for flesh and blood to manage.

“Sorry I'm late,” Carlin called. She would hardly have time to fix the cheese pudding and fruit salad she'd intended to serve; Miss Davis would have to make do with sliced cantaloupe and cottage cheese.

Helen peered through the darkness. “Of course you're late if you're spending all your time wandering around with strange men.” She may have been speaking to Carlin, but it was Abe she was staring at.

“He's with the police,” Carlin informed Helen Davis as she went inside to get supper on the table. “I was safe the whole time.”

Right away, Abe noticed there were no locks on Miss Davis's windows. He went to appraise her door. Exactly as he thought, one of those useless hook and eyes any six-year-old could get past. “Your security is practically nonexistent.”

“Are you always such a worrywart?” Helen Davis was intrigued. Ridiculous, but she was actually quite breathless in this man's presence.

“No, ma'am,” Abe said. “I was the guy breaking in.”

“Were you?” Helen tilted her head, the better to see him through the shadows. “You don't have to worry about me. No one would dare bother me. I've scared everyone off.” Helen had finished with the bird feeder, she should have gone in and had her supper, but she could not remember when such a handsome man had appeared on her back porch.

Abe laughed at Miss Davis's remarks. He liked to be surprised by people and Helen Davis had surprised him. He'd expected some snooty sourpuss, but clearly he'd been wrong.

“If anyone broke in, they'd get nothing for their efforts,” Helen assured Abe.

Beyond the thicket of quince, a motionless creature lay in wait below the bird feeder.

“What do you know.” Abe whistled, then turned back to Helen. “There's my cat.”

“That's Midnight,” Helen corrected him. “My cat.”

“It looks a hell of a lot like mine. Hey you,” Abe called.

The cat turned to him disdainfully and glared. A nasty disposition and one yellow eye. No mistake about it.

“Yep,” Abe said. “That's my cat.”

“I can see how he recognizes you. He's practically jumping for joy. He is a he, for your information.”

The cat had begun to wash its paws, exactly as it did every day upon arriving home. “He lives with me,” Abe insisted. “Sheds all over my furniture.”

“Highly doubtful. I've had him for twelve years. I think I know my own cat.”

It had been a very long time since Helen had noticed how blue a man's eyes were, but she noticed now. Talking to a stranger on her back porch went against her nature, but she had done all manner of strange things since she'd learned she was ill. Since that time, she had melted somehow. Things she had hitherto ignored she now felt hugely; time and again, she was engulfed in waves of emotion. When she walked onto her back porch, the scent of grass could make her weep. She could see a handsome man like Abel Grey and be overwhelmed by longing. The sting of cold air was delicious. The appearance of the first star in the eastern corner of the sky was just cause for celebration. Tonight, for instance, she had observed the three bright stars of Orion rising as daylight was fading. She'd never in her life noticed such occurrences before.

The heat wave was through, the temperature was dropping, and although Helen should have been concerned about her own poor constitution, it was Midnight she worried about on nights like this. Abel Grey was also eyeing her pet with concern, as though he had equal rights to worry and fuss.

“My cat,” Helen reminded him. “And I've got the vet bills to prove it. When he lost that eye the doctor said he'd had a fight with another cat, but I think it was done with malice. Whenever he sees a teenaged boy he runs, so what does that tell you?”

“That he's highly intelligent?”

Helen laughed, delighted. “Malice. Believe you me.”

“There is a lot of that in the world.”

There was still a stretch of blue in the dark sky and the lights around the quad had switched on to form a circle of yellow globes, like fireflies in the dark.

“Think what you'd like,” Helen said, as they said good night, “but he's not your cat.”

“Fine,” Abe conceded as he set out for his parked car. He waved as he crossed the green. “You tell him.”

* * *

WHEN FRIDAY CAME AROUND AND THE WEEK-END stretched out ahead without plans or responsibilities, Abe was not among those who headed to the Millstone to get hammered in order to forget that Monday was only two days away. He wasn't fit company, that much was obvious, and even Russell Carter, the mildest among their group of friends, had noted Abe's bad temper when they'd gotten together to play basketball at the elementary school gym the previous night.

“I don't know.” Russell had shaken his head. Abe was cursing every missed layup. “You're not yourself tonight, Abe.”

“Yeah, well, who am I?”

“Maybe you're Teddy Humphrey, man of a thousand altercations. No offense,” Russell had added.

Whoever he was, Abe had stopped off at the mini-mart attached to the gas station after work on Friday, where he bought a six-pack of Samuel Adams beer. His plan was to study the autopsy report on the Pierce kid, then go out and get some dinner. He was alive and well, happy enough to have a free evening with one beer started and five more waiting, but the more he looked over the report, the more the details troubled him. The contusions on the boy's forehead and along his back had been assessed as injuries incurred while traveling with the river's current. His health had been excellent, although his toxicology report had been positive for THC, noting that he had smoked marijuana within forty-eight hours of his death.

There was a sense of certainty to such official reports that irked Abe; facts always gave him pause, as so much depended on who the fact finder was and what his point of view happened to be. One detail in particular bothered him all the way through his second beer, so much so that he took the rest of the six-pack into the kitchen and telephoned his father down in Florida. Ernest Grey knew the Haddan River as well as anyone, he was the sort of man whose friends liked to joke would one day have to be surgically separated from his fly rod. In Florida he had bought himself a boat, much to Abe's mother's dismay, and had begun fishing for marlin. Still, there was no substitute for trout and Ernest continued to miss the Haddan River. One year, when he wasn't much more than a boy, Ernest had reeled in the biggest silver trout ever recorded in the county, a catch that had been mounted and was still displayed in town hall, right over the doorway that leads into traffic court.

Abe first spoke with his mother, Margaret, always the far easier task, for when his father took the receiver there was inevitably an uncomfortable silence between them. But the strained tenor of the conversation changed as soon as Abe mentioned that a boy from the Haddan School had drowned.

“That's a terrible situation,” Ernest said. “What bothers me most is that they found fecal matter in the lungs.”

“Are you saying it's human waste?” Ernest was really interested now.

“Human as can be.”

Abe started in on his third beer. He felt he was entitled to that at least; it was Friday and he was alone. Soon enough, the cat would arrive at the back door, clawing at the screen, happy as hell to be home, in spite of what Helen Davis believed.

“What that autopsy's telling you is impossible,” Ernest said with complete certainty. “You won't find anything like that in the Haddan. We had an environmental study done back when the trout stopped running. That was when the town passed the strictest sewage laws in the Commonwealth.” Neither man mentioned what else had happened that year, how their lives fell apart for reasons they still didn't understand, how the universe had exploded right under their roof. “A couple of folks over on Main Street had to install completely new septic systems,” Ernest went on. “Cost a fortune and they weren't too happy about it. Paul Jeremy was on his last legs then and he raised holy hell, but we went ahead with it for the sake of the river and it's been running clean ever since. So don't tell me there's human shit in the Haddan, because there's not.”

Abe thought this information over, then he called Joey, asking him to meet him at the pharmacy, pronto.

“This better be good,” Joey said when he got there. He ordered coffee and two jelly doughnuts without bothering to take off his coat. He didn't have time to make himself comfortable; he wasn't staying. “Mary Beth and I were supposed to spend a little quality time together once the kids were in bed. She's so pissed at me for never being home that I'm not even allowed in the doghouse anymore. ”

The dog was a little terrier Joey hated, a present for Emily's last birthday, and it lived, not in the yard or in a doghouse, but on Joey's favorite chair.

“What if something was wrong with the autopsy report?” Abe said, his voice low.

“Such as?”

“What if he hadn't drowned in the Haddan River?”

“You just need one thing to convince me,” Joey said. “Proof.”

“I don't quite have that, yet.”

“What do you have, buddy? Nothing?”

Abe placed the photograph of Gus on the counter.

“What's this supposed to be?” Joey asked.

“I don't know. A ghost?”

Joey laughed so hard they could hear him over in the notions aisle. “Yeah, right.” He slid the photo back across the counter. “And I'm the reincarnation of John F. Kennedy.” He bit into a jelly doughnut. “Junior.”

“Okay. What do you think it is?”

“I think it's a damn bad photograph. I think you'd better hope that gal over at the school you've got your eye on is better in bed than she is with a camera.”

“Maybe the image on that photograph is caused by a field of energy left behind by the deceased.” Abe was refusing to let this go. He remembered old-timers down at the station insisting that murdered men could get stuck somewhere between this world and the next. They were probably just trying to scare Abe when they told him that whenever the wind came up it was one of these dead men, rattling at the doors, stranded here among the living.

“You're kidding, right?” Joey said. “Tell me you don't believe in this crap.”

“You don't seem to have a better explanation.”

“That's because there is none, Abe. You want to believe that someone who dies lives on in some way, I understand that—hell, I've lost people, too. But if you want to convince me of something, give me proof. Something I can see, touch, feel. Not ghosts.”

Joey had had the very same reaction back in the old days when Abe told him he heard Frank's voice. As soon as he had seen the look on Joey's face, Abe had known he'd better shut up. He was feeling that same way now.

Joey still had time to stop at the mini-mart, pick up a bottle of wine, and try to get back in Mary Beth's good graces, so he said his good-byes, leaving Abe to get the tab. After he'd gone, Abe had another cup of coffee, while Pete Bycrs looked in the back room for one of the sterilized jars that customers used to bring urine samples to the health center in Hamilton. Abe had had too much to drink and now his head was aching. That pounding in his skull, however, didn't stop him from setting off once he had the glass jar from Pete. It was a blustery night, with fast-moving clouds illuminated by moonlight. On nights like this Frank could never sit still. People said he was restless, he had too much energy, but in recent years Abe had wondered if it might have been something more: a fear of the dark, and of himself, and whatever it was that was going on inside his head. When they were kids playing hide-and-seek, Frank had always carried a flashlight and he never ventured far into the woods. Once, Abe had come upon his brother in the backyard, looking up at the thousands of stars in the sky as though he were already lost among them, without any hope of finding his way back home. Never had Abe seen such loneliness, even though Frank was only steps from their own back door.