Down River (15 page)

And that was that.

My heart broke, the last of my hope for us died, and I got into the car.

I watched my family as Grantham turned the car around. I saw shock and confusion. Then I saw Janice, my stepmother. She stepped onto the porch as the dust rose behind us.

She looked old, like she’d aged twenty years in the past five. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and even at a distance, I saw how it shook.

   They took me into town, past the local college and the shops that surrounded it; then down the main drag with the lawyer’s offices, the courthouse, and the coffee shops. I watched Robin’s condo slide past. People were out beneath a pink sky, shadows stretching out. Nothing had changed. Not in five years; not in a hundred. There were storefronts that dated back to the past century, businesses in the fifth generation of the same family. And here was one other thing that had not changed: Adam Chase, under suspicion.

“Want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.

“I think you know,” Grantham replied.

Robin said nothing. “Detective Alexander?” I asked. Her jaw tightened.

We moved onto a side street that led to the tracks. The Salisbury Police Department was on the second block, a new, two-story brick building with cop cars in the lot and flags on a pole. Grantham parked the car and they led me in through the front. It was all very cordial. No cuffs. No cell. Grantham held the door.

“I thought that this was a county case,” I said. “Why aren’t we at the sheriff’s office?” The sheriff’s office was four blocks away, in the basement under the jail.

Grantham answered. “We thought you might prefer to avoid those particular interrogation rooms… given your previous experience there.”

He was talking about the murder case. They’d picked me up four hours after my father found Gray Wilson’s body, feet in the water, shoes thumping against a slick, black root. I never learned if he was with Janice when she went to the cops. I never had the chance to ask and liked to think he’d been as surprised as I was when the cuffs came out. They transported me in one of the sheriff’s marked cars. Rips in the seat. Face prints and dried spit on the glass divider. They took me to a room under the jail and hammered me for three days, hours at a stretch. I denied it, but they didn’t listen, so I shut up. I never said another word, not once, but I remembered the feel of it, the weight of all those floors above you, all that concrete and steel. A thousand tons, maybe. Enough to squeeze moisture out of the concrete.

“Considerate of you,” I said, and wondered if I was being sarcastic.

“It was my idea.” Robin had still not looked at me.

They took me to a small room with a metal table and a two-way mirror. It may have been in a different building, but it felt the same: small, square, and shrinking by the second. I took a breath. Same air. Warm and moist. I sat where Grantham told me to sit. I disliked the look on his face, and guessed it was habitual when seated on the cop side of bolted-down furniture on the blind side of two-way glass. Robin sat beside him, hands folded tightly on the gray steel.

“First things first, Mr. Chase. You are not under arrest, not in custody. This is a preliminary interview.”

“I can call an attorney?” I asked.

“If you think you need an attorney, I will certainly allow you to call one.” He waited, perfectly still. “Would you like to call an attorney?” he asked.

I looked at Robin, at Detective Alexander. The bright lights put a shine on her hair and hard lines on her face. “Let’s just get this farce over with,” I said.

“Very well.” Grantham turned on a tape recorder and stated the date, time, and names of everyone present. Then he leaned back and said nothing. The silence stretched out. I waited. Eventually, he leaned into me. “We first spoke at the hospital on the night that Grace Shepherd was attacked. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“You had seen Ms. Shepherd earlier that day?”

“Yes.”

“On the dock?”

“That’s right.”

“You kissed her?”

“She kissed me.”

“And then she went south along the trail?”

I knew what he was doing, establishing a pattern of cooperation. Getting me used to it. The repetition. The pacing. The acquiescence on established issues. Harmless issues. Just a couple of guys chewing the fat.

“Can we cut to the chase?” I asked.

His lips compressed when I broke his rhythm; then he shrugged. “Very well. When you told me that Ms. Shepherd ran away from you, I asked you if you chased her and you told me that you did not.”

“Is that a question?”

“Did you pursue Ms. Shepherd after she ran from you?”

I looked at Robin. She looked small in the hard chair. “I did not attack Grace Shepherd.”

“We’ve spoken with every worker on your father’s farm. One of them is prepared to swear that you did, in fact, chase Ms. Shepherd after she ran from the dock. He is quite certain. She ran, you followed. I want to know why you lied to us about that.”

The question was no surprise. I’d always known that someone might have seen. “I didn’t lie. You asked me if I chased her and I said that it wasn’t that kind of running away. You filled in the blanks yourself.”

“I have no patience for word games.”

I shrugged. “I was unhappy with how our conversation ended. She was distraught. I wanted to speak further. I caught up with her a hundred feet into the trees.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that?” Robin asked. It was her first question.

I met her eyes. “Because you would ask about the conversation.” I thought of the last words that Grace had given to me, the way she shook under the shade of the low branches. “And that’s nobody’s business,” I said.

“I’m asking,” Grantham said.

“It’s personal.”

“You lied to me.” Angry now. “I want to know what you said.”

I spoke slowly, so that he would not miss a single word. “No fucking way.”

Grantham rose from his seat. “Ms. Shepherd was assaulted a half mile from that spot, and you misinformed us about your actions at the time. Since you’ve been back, you’ve also put two men in the hospital and been implicated, at least peripherally, in arson, a methamphetamine lab, and the discharge of a firearm. We just retrieved a corpse from your father’s farm, a body that you, coincidentally, discovered. Things like this happen infrequently in Rowan County. To say that I am intrigued by you would be a massive understatement, Mr. Chase. A massive understatement.”

“You said that I’m not in custody. Is that right?”

“That is correct.”

“Then here is my answer.” I held up one hand, middle finger extended.

Grantham sat back down. “What do you do in New York, Mr. Chase?”

“That is none of your business,” I said.

“If I contact the authorities in New York, what will they tell me about you?”

I looked away.

“What brings you back to Rowan County?”

“None of your business,” I said. “The answer to every question you ask, except may we call you a cab, is ‘none of your business.’ ”

“You’re not helping yourself, Mr. Chase.”

“You should be investigating the people that want my father to sell, the ones making threats. That’s what Grace’s assault is really about. Why, in the name of God, are you wasting your time with me?”

Grantham flicked a glance at Robin. His lips drew down. “I was not aware that you knew about that,” he said.

Robin spoke quickly. “It was my call,” she said. “They had a right to know.”

Grantham pinned Robin with those washed-out eyes, and his anger was unmistakable. She’d stepped over a line, but refused to waver. Her head was up, eyes unblinking. He returned his attention to me, but I knew that the matter was not closed. “Can I assume that everyone has this information now?” he asked.

“You can assume whatever you want,” I said.

We stared at each other until Robin broke the silence. She spoke softly. “If there is anything else that you want to tell us, Adam, this is the time.”

I thought of my reasons for returning and of the things that Grace had said to me. Then I thought of Robin, and of the passion we’d known such a short time ago; her face above me in the half-light, the lie in her voice when she told me that it meant nothing; and I saw her at the farm, when she’d asked me to please step to the car, the way that she’d pushed our past down deep and draped herself in cop.

“My father was right,” I said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I stood up.

“Adam…” she said

But I walked out, walked to the hospital. I slipped past the nurse’s station and found Grace’s room. I was not supposed to be there, but sometimes you just know what’s right. So I passed through the dark crack of her door and pulled a chair close to her bed. She opened her eyes when I took her hand, and she returned the pressure that I gave her. I kissed her forehead, told her that I would stay the night; and when sleep reclaimed her, it left a trace of comfort on her face.

   I woke at five and saw light glinting in her eyes. When she smiled, I could tell that it hurt. “Don’t,” I said, and leaned closer. A tear welled out of one eye. “Don’t be sad.”

She shook her head, the smallest movement. Her voice broke. “I’m not sad. I thought I was alone.”

“No.”

“I was crying because I was scared.” She went rigid under the sheets. “I’ve never been scared to be alone.”

“Grace…”

“I’m scared, Adam.”

I stood and put my arms around her. She smelled of antiseptic, hospital detergent, and fear. Muscles clenched in her back, long hard straps; and her arms had strength that surprised me. She was so small under the sheet.

“I’m okay,” she finally said.

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

I sat back down. “Can I get you anything?”

“Just talk to me.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

She moved her head on the pillow. “Just the sense of somebody stepping out from behind a tree; and something swinging at my face—a board, a club, something wooden. I remember falling through some bushes then being on the ground. A shape standing over me. Some kind of mask. The wood coming down again.” She lifted her arms as if protecting her face, and I saw matching contusions on her forearms. Defensive wounds.

“Do you remember anything else?”

“A little bit of being carried home, of Dolf’s face in the porch light, his voice. Being cold. A few minutes at the hospital. Seeing you there.”

Her voice trailed away, and I knew where her mind had gone. “Tell me something good, Adam.”

“It’s over,” I said, and she shook her head.

“That’s just the absence of bad.”

What could I tell her? What good had I seen since my return?

“I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

“Tell me something else. Anything.”

I hesitated. “I saw a deer yesterday morning.”

“Is that a good thing?”

The deer had been in my head all day. White ones were rare, exceptionally so. What were the odds of seeing two? Or of seeing the same one twice?

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I used to see a huge one,” Grace said. “It was after the trial. I’d see him at night, on the lawn outside of my window.”

“Was it white?” I asked.

“White?”

“Never mind.” I was suddenly at a loss, back in time. “Thanks for coming to the trial,” I said. She’d been there every day, a sunburned child in faded clothes. At first, my father had refused her the right to be there. Not proper, he’d said. And so she’d walked. Thirteen miles. After that, he’d surrendered.

“How could I not be there?” More tears. “Tell me something else good,” she said.

I searched for something to give her. “You’re all grown up,” I finally said. “You’re beautiful.”

“Not that it matters,” she said blackly, and I knew that she was thinking of what had happened between us at the river, after she’d run from the dock. I could still hear her words:
I’m not as young as you think I am.

“You took me by surprise,” I said. “That’s all.”

“Boys are so stupid,” she said.

“I’m a grown man, Grace.”

“And I’m not a child.” Her voice was sharp, as if she’d cut me with it if she could.

“I just didn’t know.”

She rolled onto her side, showed me her back. And I saw it again, saw how badly I’d handled it.

She was barely into the trees before I knew that I had to go after her. She owned a corner of my soul that I’d learned to shy from; a locked place. Why? Because I’d left her. Knowing how it would hurt, I’d gone to a distant place and sent letters.
Empty words.
But I was here now. She was hurting now.
So I ran after her. For a few hard seconds she continued to fly, and the soles of her feet winked brown and pink, then dark red as the trail dipped and she hit damp clay. When she stopped, it was sudden. The bank dropped away beside her, and for an instant it looked like she might take to the river, like she might step left and drop away. But she did not, and the hunted-animal look faded from her eyes in seconds.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“For you to not hate me.”
“Fine. I don’t hate you.”
“I want you to mean it.”
She laughed and it cut, so that when she turned to leave, my hand settled on her shoulder. It was hard and hot, and she stopped when I touched her. She froze, then spun back to me, pressed into me like she could own me. Her hands found the back of my head and she kissed me hard, rocked her body against mine. Her bathing suit was still wet, and the water trapped in it had warmed; I felt it soaking into me.
I took her shoulders, pushed her back. Her face was full of defiance and of something else.
“I’m not as young as you think I am,” she said.
I was undone yet again. “It’s not age,” I told her.
“I knew that you’d come back. If I loved you enough, you’d come back.”
“You don’t love me, Grace. Not like that.”
“I’ve loved you my whole life. All I needed was the courage to tell you. Well, I’m not scared anymore. I’m not scared of anything.”
“Grace—”
Her hands settled on my belt.
“I can show you, Adam.”
I grabbed her hands, grabbed hard and pulled them away. It was all wrong. The words she’d said, the look growing on her face as my rejection sank into her. She tried one more time and I stopped her. She stumbled back. I watched her features collapse. She flung up a hand, then turned and ran, her feet flashing red, as if she was running over broken glass.