Down River

  He shrugged. “I need the job. I hate the boss. This is life.”

  “Did the police search this place?” I was thinking of drugs.

  “They search. They find nothing. They look for Mr. Faith. They find nothing.”

  I waited for more, but he was finished. “You told me that Danny is in Florida. How do you know that?”

  “He sent a postcard.” No hesitation, no sign of dishonesty.

  “Do you still have it?”

  “I think so.” He turned for the back room, came back, and handed me a postcard. I took it by the edges; it was a picture of blue water and white sand. It had the name of a resort in the upper-right corner, and a slogan in pink letters across the bottom: SOMETIMES IT’S JUST RIGHT. “It was on the bulletin board,” Emmanuel told me.

  I looked at the back. In printed letters it read, “Having a blast. Danny.”

  “When did you get this?” I asked.

  Emmanuel scratched at his cheek. “He had the fight with the girl and then he left. Maybe four days after that. Two weeks ago. Two and a half weeks. Something like that.”

  “Did he pack anything?”

  “I did not see him after he hit the girl.”

  I asked a few more questions, but they led nowhere. I debated whether or not to tell him that Danny Faith was dead, but decided against it. It would hit the papers soon enough.

  “Listen, Emmanuel. If the police find Mr. Faith, he may be going away for a while.” I paused, to make sure he was following me. “You might want to start looking for another job.”

  “But Danny—”

  “Danny won’t be running the motel. It will probably close.”

  He looked very troubled. “This is true, what you say?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, stared at the counter for so long I wasn’t sure that he was planning to look up. “The police search everywhere,” he finally said. “But there is a storage unit. It’s by the interstate, the one with the blue doors. There was a maid, Maria. She’s gone now. He made her sign the papers. It is in her name. Number thirty-six.”

  I digested this. “Do you know what’s in that storage unit?” I asked.

  The old man looked ashamed. “Drugs.”

  “How much drugs?”

  “Much, I think.”

  “Were you and Maria together?”

  “Sí. Sometimes.”

  “Why did she leave?” I asked.

  Emmanuel’s face twisted in disgust. “Mr. Faith. Once she signed the documents for him, he threatened her.”

  “Threatened to call INS?”

  “If she told anybody about the storage unit, he would make a call. She was illegal. She got scared. She’s in Georgia now.”

  I held up the postcard.

  “I’d like to keep this.”

  Emmanuel shrugged.

  I called Robin from the parking lot. I still had doubts about her loyalties, but she had information that I wanted, and I thought I might have something to trade. “Are you still at Dolf’s house?”

  “Grantham drove me out of there pretty damn quick. He was pissed.”

  “Do you know the self-storage facility by the interstate; it’s on the feeder road south of exit seventy-six.”

  “I know it.”

  “Meet me there.”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  I drove back into town and stopped at the copy shop two blocks off the square. I copied the postcard, front and back, then asked the clerk for a bag. She brought me a paper one, and I asked if she had anything plastic. She found a Ziploc in a desk drawer. I folded the copy into my back pocket and put the card in the bag, zipped it up. The bright sand looked very white through the plastic and the logo caught my eye.

  SOMETIMES IT’S JUST RIGHT.

  I drove to the storage facility and parked on the dirt verge of the feeder road. I got out and sat on the hood. Cars flew by on the interstate above me; the big trucks rumbled and screamed. I looked over the storage facility, long rows of squat buildings that flashed in the sun. They nestled in a depression beside the interstate. Metal doors painted blue broke the long facades. Grass grew tall along chain-link fencing. Barbed wire leaned out from the top.

  I waited for Robin and watched the day make its long slide into late afternoon. It took her an hour. When she climbed out of the car, the wind took her hair, wrapped it across her face so that she had to flick it away with a finger. The gesture struck me hard and with unexpected force. It reminded me of a windy day we’d spent on the riverbank seven years ago. She was kneeling on a blanket, we’d just made love, and a sudden wind had licked up off the water to bend her hair across her eyes. I’d pushed the hair back, and pulled her down. Her mouth was soft, the smile easy.

  But that was a lifetime ago.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Cop stuff.”

  “Like what?” I slipped off the hood.

  “Salisbury P.D. and the sheriff’s office use the same forensics lab. They’ve worked up the bullet that killed Danny Faith. Chest wound, by the way. They’re just waiting for a comparison sample.” Her eyes were steady. “It won’t be long,” she said.

  “Meaning?”

  “They found Dolf Shepherd’s .38.”

  Although I knew they’d find it, a pit opened up in my stomach. I waited for her to say more. A yellow moth moved above tall grass.

  “Will your friend at ballistics help you out?” I finally asked.

  “He owes me.”

  “Will you let me know what he says?”

  “That depends on what he tells me.”

  “I can give Zebulon Faith to you,” I said, and that stopped her. “I can give him to you on a plate.”

  “If I share my information?”

  “I want to know what Grantham knows.”

  “I can’t make blind promises, Adam.”

  “I need to know. I don’t think I have much time. My prints are on the gun.”

  “A gun that may or may not be the murder weapon.”

  “Grantham knows I spoke to Danny right before he died. It’s enough for an arrest warrant. He’ll bring me in and hammer me. Just like the last time.”

  “You were in New York when Danny was killed. You’ll have alibis, witnesses that can put you there at the time of death.”

  I shook my head.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “No alibi,” I said. “No witness.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It had been five years, Robin. That’s what you have to understand first. I’d buried this place so deep I couldn’t see it anymore. It’s how I got through the days. I forgot. I made an art of forgetting. That changed after Danny called. It was like he’d put a demon in my head. It wouldn’t shut up. It wanted me to go home. It told me that it was time. If I tried to think, I heard the voice. When I closed my eyes, I saw this place. It made me insane, Robin. Day after day. I thought of you, of my father. I thought of Grace and of the trial. That dead kid and the way that this town just chewed me up and spit me out.

  “Suddenly, I couldn’t stand my life. It was so empty, such a goddamn sham, and Danny’s voice tore down everything I’d built. I didn’t go to work. I stopped seeing friends. I locked myself away. It just ate at me until I found myself on the road.”

  I lifted my hands, let them drop. “No one saw me, Robin.”

  “Demons in the head and no alibi is not something you should ever say again. Grantham has already put in a request with N.Y.P.D. They’ll check up on you. They’ll be thorough. They’ll find where you worked. They’ll find out that you quit and when you quit. You need to think hard about that alibi. Grantham’s going to wonder if you didn’t drive down here and kill Danny. He’ll hold your feet to the fire. He’ll roast you if he can.”

  I held her gaze. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Why are you home, Adam?”

  I heard the answer in my head. Because everything that I love is here. Because you refused to come with me.

  I
didn’t say it, though. I pointed at the bright, aluminum buildings and told her what Emmanuel had said about Zebulon Faith and the drugs. “Number thirty-six. He’ll give you all the probable cause you need.”

  Her voice was empty. “Good information.”

  “He may have cleaned it out. He’s had time.”

  “Maybe.” She looked away, and the wind stirred dust on the road. When she looked back, she’d gone soft around the edges. “There’s something else I need to tell you, Adam. It’s important.”

  “Okay.”

  “The phone call looks bad. The timing makes it worse. Prints on the gun. All the violence and coincidence. No alibi . . .” She trailed off, looked suddenly fragile. “You may be right about the warrant . . .”

  “Go on.”

  “You said I had to make a choice. You or the job.” Wind licked at her hair again. She looked uncertain and her voice fell. “I took myself off the case,” she said. “I’ve never dropped a case before. Not ever.”

  “You did that because Grantham’s coming after me?”

  “Because you were right when you said I had to make a choice.” For an instant, she looked proud, then her features collapsed. I knew that something was happening, but I was slow and confused. Her shoulders rolled inward and something wet moved on her face. When she looked up, her eyes were silver bright, and I saw that she was crying. Her voice broke into a sob. “I’ve really missed you, Adam.”

  She stood on the roadside, breaking, and I finally understood the depths of her conflict. Two things mattered to her: the person she’d become and the thing she’d thought was lost. Being a cop. And us. She’d tried to keep them both, tried to walk the line, but the truth had finally caught up with her: there comes a time to choose.

  So she did.

  And she chose me.

  She was naked in the cold and I knew that she would not say another word without some sign from me. I didn’t have to think about it, not even for a second. I opened my arms, and she slipped into that space as if she’d never left it.

  I drove us to her place, and this time it was different, like the apartment was too small to hold us. We were in one room, then another, clothes on the floor behind us as we slammed through doors and into walls. Old emotions burned through us, new ones raged.

  And memories of a thousand other times.

  I held her against the wall and her legs found my waist, wrapped me up. She kissed me so hard I thought I might bleed, but didn’t care. Then she gripped my hair and pulled me back. I looked at her swollen lips, stared into those kaleidoscope eyes. She was breathing hard, trembling. Her words came in a fierce whisper.

  “What I said before, about it being gone, about me being done. . . .” Her eyes slid to my chest, back up. “That was a lie.”

  “I know.”

  “Just tell me this is real.”

  I told her, and when we found the bed, it could have been the floor or the kitchen table. It didn’t matter. She was on her back, her fingers twisted into the sheets when I saw that she was crying again.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Make me forget.”

  She meant the loneliness, I knew, the five-year stretch of nothing. I rose to my knees and ran my eyes down the length of her; she was lean and hard, a broken fighter. I kissed her damp cheeks, traced her body with my hands, and felt the tension in her collapse. Her arms came up from the bed and there was no strength in them, just lightness and heat that seemed to mirror some desperate part of her. I slipped one arm beneath the small of her back and crushed her against me as if I could drive the demons out by sheer, brute force. She was light and small, but she found her rhythm and the strength to rise beneath me.

  CHAPTER 18

  I fell asleep with Robin’s head on my chest. It felt familiar and warm and right, and those things scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want to lose her again. Maybe that’s why I dreamed of another woman. I stood at a window, looking down on Sarah Yates and moonlit grass. She was walking, and carried her shoes in one hand. A white dress stirred around her legs, and her skin flashed silver as she looked up once and raised a hand as if she held a penny on her palm.

  I woke in gray silence. “Are you awake?” I whispered.

  Her head moved on the pillow. “Thinking,” she said.

  “About?”

  “Grantham.”

  I shook off the dream. “He’s coming after me, isn’t he?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.” She was trying to convince herself that it was that simple, but we both knew better. Innocent men go down all the time.

  “Nobody likes to believe in rich man’s justice, but that’s what people see. They want payback.”

  “It won’t happen like that.”

  “I’m convenient,” I said.

  She shifted beside me, the hard curve of her thigh pressing against mine. This time she did not contradict me. Her words slipped into the air between us. “Did you think about me?” she asked. “All those years in New York.”

  I considered, and then gave her the painful truth. “At first, all of the time. Then I tried not to. It took a while. But it’s like I said, I buried this place. You had to go, too. It was the only way.”

  “You should have called. Maybe I’d changed my mind about coming with you.” She rolled onto her side. The covers slipped off her shoulder.

  “Robin . . .”

  “Do you still love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then love me.”

  She laid her lips against my neck, reached down, and I felt the light touch of her hand. We started slowly, in the shadow of those words, and the looming gray of a tentative dawn.

  At ten o’clock I took Robin back to her car. Her fingers squeezed mine and she pressed against me. She looked strangely vulnerable and I knew that she probably was.

  “I don’t take half measures, Adam. Not on things that matter. Not on us. Not on you.” She laid her palm on my face. “I’m on your side. Whatever it takes.”

  “I can’t commit to Rowan County, Robin. Not until I see where things go with my father. I need things to be right with him. I don’t know how to get there.”

  She kissed me. “You can consider my choice made. Whatever it takes.”

  “I’ll be at the hospital,” I said, and watched her go.

  I found Miriam in the waiting area. She was alone, eyes closed. Her clothing rustled as she made small movements. When I sat, she grew still and showed me half of her face.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded. “How about you?”

  Miriam had grown into a beautiful woman, but you had to look carefully to see it. She seemed smaller, in all things, than she actually was. But I understood. Life, for some, was just hard.

  “I’m glad to see you,” I told her. She nodded, her hair swinging forward. “You really doing okay?” I asked.

  “Don’t I look it?”

  “You look fine. Is someone with Grace?”

  “Dad. He thought that it might help Grace to have me here. I’ve been in once already.”

  “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  “She screams in her sleep.”

  “How about Dad?”

  “He’s like a woman.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Look, Adam, I’m sorry that we haven’t talked much. I’ve wanted to. It’s just been . . .”

  “Yeah. Weird. You told me.”

  She smoothed her hands across her thighs, pushed herself straighter, so that her back was bent into less of a question mark. “I am happy to see you again. George told me that you thought maybe I wasn’t. I’d hate for you to think that.”

  “He’s grown into a good man,” I said.

  She lifted her shoulders, gestured down the hall with a bitten fingernail. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Me, too.”

  I put my hand on her forearm and sh
e twitched, jerked it away, then looked sheepish.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You startled me.”

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “This family is coming apart.” She closed her eyes. “There’re cracks all over the place.”

  When my father came out of Grace’s room, he moved slowly and nodded at me as he sat. “Hello, Adam.” He turned to Miriam. “Will you sit with her for a while?”

  She looked at me once and then disappeared down the hall. My father patted me on the knee.

  “Thanks for being here.”

  “Where’s Dolf?”

  “We’re taking turns.”

  We settled back against the wall. I gestured after Miriam. “Is she doing all right? She seems . . .”

  “Dark.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Dark. She’s been like that since Gray Wilson’s death. He was a bit older, a bit rougher, but they were close, ran with the same group in school. When you were tried for his murder the group cut her off. She’s been very alone since then. She couldn’t handle college. Came back from Harvard after one semester. But that just made it worse. Grace tried once or twice to bring her out of it. Hell, we all did. She’s just . . .”

  “Dark.”

  “And sad.”

  A nurse passed us. A tall man rolled a gurney down the hall.

  “Do you have any idea who might have killed Danny?” I asked.

  “No clue.”

  “He was heavy into gambling. His father is a drug dealer.”

  “I don’t like seeing it that way.”

  “Who is Sarah Yates?” I asked.

  He went rigid, and the words came slowly. “Why do you ask me that?”

  “Grace was talking to her shortly before the attack. They looked like they might be friends.”

  He relaxed marginally. “Friends? I doubt it.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “No one really knows Sarah Yates.”

  “That’s pretty vague.”

  “She lives on the fringe. Always has. She can be warm one day, mean as a snake the next. As far as I can tell, there’s not much that Sarah Yates cares about.”

  “So, you do know her.”

  He faced me, lips tight. “I know that I don’t want to talk about her.”