Down River

  “What the fuck are you doing, Adam?”

  But I was in no mood to talk. “Son of a bitch,” I said, and stung him on the hard bone over his eye. His head snapped back.

  “Goddamn it, Adam.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Jamie?”

  Something moved in his eyes. He started to straighten, and I saw red. He recognized it. “Wait—” he said, but I was already on him, hands lashing out. Quick jabs and crushing blows he couldn’t avoid. He was huge, but I was a fighter.

  And he knew it.

  He backed off, but the third jab opened a cut over his eye, blinded him, and I hammered the ribs. It was like hitting the heavy bag.

  I just hit harder.

  He was backpedaling, saying something, but I’d moved beyond that. I saw Grace, shattered, felt the heat of this fire that was gutting four years of my father’s life. And for what? Because Jamie was a gambler and a coward. A weak-ass son of a bitch that put himself first. Well, fuck that.

  The blows ran together. Any other man and he’d be done. But he wasn’t. He tucked his head, charged, and this time, I wasn’t fast enough. He got those arms around me, bore me down. Our faces were inches apart. Pressure came on my ribs. His voice rose to a scream. My name. He kept yelling my name. Then something else.

  “Zebulon Faith!” he yelled. “Damn it, Adam. It was Zebulon Faith! I almost had him!”

  I felt like I was coming out of tunnel. “What did you say?”

  “Are you going to hit me?”

  “No. We’re done.”

  He rolled off me and climbed to his feet, wiping blood out of his eye. “Faith was heading for the river.” He looked off, into the darkness. “But he’s gone now. We’ll never find him.”

  “Don’t try to confuse me, Jamie. I know about your gambling.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re in the hole for three hundred thousand dollars.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then he lowered his head, condemned by the truth of it.

  “Did you think that burning the vines would force Dad to sell? Was that the plan?”

  His head snapped up. “Of course not. I would never do that. The vineyard was my idea.” He pointed at the flames. “Those are my babies burning.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, brother. You lied about your gambling. You sent me on a wild-goose chase to keep me from finding out about it, but I did. Three hundred thousand dollars and Danny was beaten half to death by the same people for a debt one-tenth that size. Who knows what else you’re involved in. You’re drinking day and night, sullen and unhelpful, all too eager for Dolf to take the fall. For all I know, your name is on that damn petition.”

  “That’s enough, Adam. I told you before, I don’t answer to you.”

  I stepped closer, and had to look up to meet his eyes. “Did you attack Grace?” I asked.

  “That’s enough,” he repeated, angry but shaken.

  “We’ll see,” I said. “We’ll find Zebulon Faith and then we’ll see.”

  Jamie threw up his hands. “Find him?” He looked out at the dark. “We’ll never find him.”

  “Yes, we will.” I stepped closer. “You and me.”

  “How?”

  I jabbed him in the chest. His eyes opened, wide and yellow-bright. “You’d better be right,” I said.

  A sallow dawn threatened the dead-end hollow by the time we parked under the shot-up pie plate. Four hours had passed since I sat up, smelling smoke. Then the fire trucks, my father’s helpless rage, and the battle to save what remained of the vineyard. They dropped a line into the Yadkin and used its mud-choked water to extinguish the flames. That was the one good thing, the proximity of limitless water. Otherwise, the whole thing would have burned. Everything.

  We got out of there before the cops came. I took Jamie by the arm and pulled him into the darkness. Nobody saw us go. Jamie was hard-faced and sullen, his skin the color of ash. Crusted blood made a sharp ridge over his left eye and finger-wide streaks of red smeared his face. We’d barely spoken, but the important words still hung between us, and would do so until this was over.

  Until we found Zebulon Faith, and settled things once and for all.

  He got in the car when I pointed, opened his mouth when I stopped at Dolf’s and came out with the 12 gauge and a box of shells. Once, ten minutes out, he said, “You’re wrong about me.”

  I cut my eyes right, knew my voice was brutal. “We’ll see,” I said.

  Now, knee-deep in bent grass at the end of the civilized world, Jamie looked scared. His hands spread on the top of my car and he watched me crack the barrel and shove in two thick, red shells. “What is this place?” he asked, and I knew what he saw. The gray light was unforgiving, and the road in was a hard, fast slide to the bottom rung of the human experience.

  “Just a place,” I said.

  He looked around. “Ass end of nowhere.”

  I breathed in the stagnant water smell. “Not everybody was born lucky.”

  “You preaching at me now?”

  “Faith has a trailer just around that bend. If I’m wrong about you, I’ll apologize and I’ll mean it. Meantime, let’s just do this.”

  He came around the car. “What’s the plan?”

  I closed the gun with a metallic click. “No plan,” I said, and started walking.

  He fell in behind me, stiff-legged and clumsy. We came to the bend, the granite shoulder cold and damp under my fingers. We couldn’t see it yet, but dawn bulged on some far horizon. Birds trilled from the deep woods, and color rose in the earth as the cold gray began to die.

  I rounded the corner and the low drone of the diesel generator rolled over me. Lights burned in the trailer, weak yellow and a television flicker. A mud-stained Jeep was parked near the front door. Jamie stumbled behind me, nodded once, and I sidled up to the back of the Jeep. Gasoline cans lined the floor behind the front seats. I pointed with my chin, made sure that Jamie saw them. He raised his eyebrows as if to say, I told you so. But I wasn’t sold yet. Could be diesel for the generator.

  Metal slipped across my hip as I moved. Dried mud crumbled to rubble and fell in the grass. I laid my hand on the hood and found that it still held some engine heat. Jamie felt it, too. I nodded and pointed to the front porch. We crossed the last of the clearing and knelt beneath the windows. Jamie was eager, and started for the steps. I stopped him, remembering how the wood had sagged. We had almost five hundred pounds between the two of us, and I did not want the porch to collapse. “Slowly,” I whispered.

  I went first, stock of the gun against my hip, twin barrels angled in front of me. A night sweat slicked the steps. The generator put a vibration into the structure, so that it thrummed at a cellular level. Rust scaled the siding next to my face. From inside came a dull and rhythmic thump that felt wrong. It was too regular, too hollow.

  The door stood open a crack, screen door closed behind it. Up close, the thumping sound grew louder. I thought that if I put my hand on the wall, I’d probably feel it. We knelt beside the door.

  I stood, looked in the window.

  Zebulon Faith was sprawled across the floor, his back propped against one of the decomposing chairs. Mud darkened his jeans, shoes in a corner. A burn on his forearm glowed with cherry heat. His left hand held a near empty bottle of vodka stuffed with lime wedges. He raised it, wrapped his lips around the neck, and swallowed three huge slugs, choking. Thin tears pushed out from under tight-squeezed lids and he slammed the bottle back down. He opened his mouth and shook his head. The television stained the room with a twilight zone flicker.

  The gun was in his right hand, a black, thick-barreled revolver, probably the same one he’d tried to kill me with at the river. The fingers held it loosely until he shook off the vodka chug and opened his eyes. Then the fingers closed and he started pounding the butt of the pistol against the trailer floor. Up and down, lift and slam, once every five seconds. The thumping sound. Wood and metal on a
sagging floor.

  The room looked the same. Trash, strewn paper, the overwhelming sense of neglect and decay. Faith fit right in. Vomit stained the front of his shirt.

  He stopped pounding the gun on the floor, looked at it, tilted it, then began tapping it against his head. He smoothed it over his cheek, a look of sensual awareness captured in the lines of his open mouth. Then he struck harder, against the temple, strong enough to twist his head sideways. He chugged more vodka and lifted the gun, stared into the muzzle, and then, in a most disturbing manner, reached out a tongue to taste it.

  I ducked down.

  “He’s alone?” Jamie whispered.

  “And fucked-up. Stay behind me.”

  I got my feet under me, clicked the safety off the 12, and went through the door smooth and fast. He didn’t even notice. One second I was on the porch and then I was on the vinyl floor of his kitchen, maybe ten feet between us. I had the gun up and he was still oblivious. I watched the revolver. His eyes were wrinkled shut, the television pure snow.

  Jamie crowded in behind me. The trailer shifted under his weight and Faith opened his eyes. The gun didn’t move. I stepped forward and to the side, squaring up my line of fire. He smiled the most hateful smile I’d ever seen, like I didn’t know a smile could be. The hate filled him up, then drained away. In its place rose a deep, liquid hopelessness like I’d seen only once before.

  And the gun began to rise.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  He hesitated, took a last mighty suck on the vodka bottle. Then his eyes glazed as if he was already gone. I leaned into the stock, finger so tight on the trigger I felt it creak.

  But deep down, I knew.

  The gun came up, straight and smooth and unstoppable. The hard round mouth settled against the bellow of flesh beneath the old man’s chin.

  “Don’t,” I said again, but not very loudly.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Painted the ceiling with red mist.

  Sound crashed through the tight space, and Jamie staggered back, collapsed into a kitchen chair. He was in shock, mouth open, eyes wide and dilated. “Why’d you wait?” he finally asked, voice uneven. “He could have shot us.”

  I propped the shotgun against the wall, looked down on the crumpled ruin of a man I’d known for most of my life. “No,” I said. “He couldn’t have.”

  Jamie stared. “I’ve never seen so much blood.”

  I took my eyes off Faith, looked hard at my brother.

  “I have,” I said, and walked outside.

  When Jamie came out, he held onto the loose rail like he might bend over it and hurl. “You didn’t touch anything?” I asked.

  “Hell, no.”

  I waited until he looked at me. “Faith had soot all over him, a nasty burn on his arm. The whole room stank of gasoline.” Jamie saw where I was going. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I owe you an apology,” I said.

  He waved a hand, but did not speak.

  “I’m serious, Jamie. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

  “The gambling is my problem,” he said. “Not anybody else’s. I’m not proud of it, and I have no idea what I’m going to do about it, but I would never do anything to hurt Dad or Grace or anybody else.” He paused. “It’s my problem. I’ll fix it.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “You’re my brother and I owe you. But right now we’ve got to figure out what to do.”

  “Do? We get the hell out of here. That’s what we do. He’s just a crazy old drunk that killed himself. Nobody’s even got to know we were here.”

  I shook my head. “No good. I was here yesterday, asking questions. Prints in the house, probably. And even though the windows we passed on the way in were dark, I guarantee we didn’t come this far in unseen. This place knows a stranger. We’ll have to call it in.”

  “Damn, Adam. How’s that going to look? The two of us here at the crack of dawn. In his house with a 12 gauge.”

  I allowed myself a small smile. “Nobody has to know about the 12.” I stepped into the trailer and retrieved the gun. “Why don’t you go lock this in the trunk. I’m going to look around.”

  “Trunk. Good idea.”

  I caught him by the arm. “We had our suspicions about the fire. We came out here to ask a few friendly questions. We knocked on the door and walked in just as he killed himself. Nothing different from what happened. Just no gun.”

  I went back inside and studied the scene. The old man was on his side, the top of his head opened up. I crossed the last few feet, careful of where I stepped. His face was largely clean of blood. Except for a slight lengthening, it looked the same.

  I left the TV on. Vodka soaked into the ratty carpet. The newspaper was on the floor beside him: a picture of his son on page one.

  The story of his murder.

  Jamie came back into the trailer. “Check the other rooms,” I said.

  It did not take him long. “Nothing,” he said. “Just a bunch of junk.”

  I pointed at the paper, saw the photograph register on Jamie’s face. “He’s been holed up here for days. I’m guessing he got the paper tonight.”

  Jamie stood over the body. “I don’t see him doing this over Danny. He was a shitty father. Selfish. Self-absorbed.”

  I shrugged, took another look at the body, thinking of Grace. I expected to feel something. Satisfaction. Relief. But standing over a broken old man in a dump trailer at the shit end of the universe, what I felt was empty. None of it should have happened.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jamie said.

  “In a minute.”

  There was a message here somewhere, something about life and the living of it. I bent to take one last look at the face of a man I’d known since I was a kid. He died twisted and bitter. I felt something turn in my chest, and looked deep, but there was no forgiveness in me. Jamie was right. He was a shitty father, a bad man, and I doubted that he would have killed himself over the murder of his only son. There had to be more.

  I found it in his left hand.

  It was squeezed into his palm, a wad of newsprint, crumpled and damp. He’d been holding it between his hand and the vodka bottle. I pulled it from spread fingers and twisted it toward the light.

  “What is it?”

  I met Jamie’s eyes. “A notice of foreclosure.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s for the land he bought on the river.” I riffled through the newspaper on the floor, found where he’d ripped it out. I checked the date, then balled the scrap back up, and replaced it in his hand. “Looks like his gamble didn’t pay off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I took a last look at the crumpled husk of Zebulon Faith. “He just lost everything.”

  CHAPTER 29

  We spent the next six hours slapping bugs and talking to stone-eyed men. Local cops responded first, then Grantham and Robin, in separate cars. They had no jurisdiction, but the locals let them stay when they learned about all the reasons they had an interest: murder, assault, arson, methamphetamines. That was real crime, hard-core stuff. But they would not let them talk to us. The locals had a body, here, now; so, the locals came first, and Grantham didn’t like it. He argued and he threatened, but it was not his jurisdiction. I felt his rage from across the clearing. This was the second body I’d called in. First the son, now the father. Grantham sensed something big, and he wanted me.

  He wanted me now.

  He cornered the lead investigator on three different occasions. He raised his voice and made violent arm movements. He threatened to make calls. Once, when it looked like the locals might back off, Robin intervened. I could not hear what was said, but Grantham’s color deepened, and when he spoke to her, there was little movement in him. The obvious frustration had been tamped down, contained, but I could feel the tension, the resentment, and his gaze was sharp on her back as she walked away.

  The locals asked their questions and I gave my answe
rs. We knocked. We opened the door. Bang. End of story.

  Simple.

  Drug enforcement rolled up just before noon. They looked sharp in matching jackets and would have been there sooner, but they got lost. Robin could hide neither her contempt nor her amusement. Nor could she hide her feelings toward me. She was angry, too. I saw it in her eyes, the line of her mouth, her stance. Everywhere. But it was a different kind of emotion, more personal, laced with hurt. As far as she was concerned, I’d crossed a line, and it had nothing to do with the law or the things I did. This was about the things I did not do. I did not call her. Did not trust her. And again, I had to face the dangers of that two-way street.

  She’d made her choice. Now she had to wonder about mine.

  So I watched Grantham stew as the sun rose higher and the locals ran the investigation as they saw fit. Cops moved in and out of the trailer. The medical examiner made his appearance, and the morning faded into heat and damp. They carried Zebulon Faith out in a dull, black body bag. I watched the long car disappear, and the day stretched on. None of the people who lived on the loop showed themselves. No bystanders. No flipped curtains. They kept their heads down and hid like squatters. I couldn’t blame them. Cops did not do community outreach in places like this. When they showed up, it was for a reason, and none of them were good.

  The hard questions came in due course, and they came from Grantham. The rage in him had died to a colorless implacability, and he was pure professional by the time the locals gave him the nod to talk to us. I watched him approach, and knew what was coming. He’d separate us and hammer for weak spots. Zebulon Faith was dead. So was his son. I had a history with each of them and had been the first on scene with both bodies. He doubted Dolf’s confession, and was ready to tear into me with a saw. But he’d be cagey. I knew something about cops and cop questions, so he’d try to be subtle. I was sure of it.

  But he surprised me.

  He walked straight up to me and spoke before he stopped. “I want to see what’s in your trunk,” he said.