Into This River I Drown (37 page)

Corwin nods. “I think so. I really do. Like I said, no name, wouldn’t give me his phone number, wouldn’t tell me where he was from or how he knew what he knew. Told me he was worried about what would happen to his family if he was found out. He had a son, he told me. Sounded real proud when he said it too.” I close my eyes. “Said he didn’t want to take the risk, but wanted to let me know he had reasons to suspect the good sheriff of Douglas County might not be as clean as he’d led others to believe. Seems said sheriff was actually quite the opposite of clean. And maybe others were involved as well. He didn’t have a whole lot to go on, but he wanted me to send the cavalry out here with guns blazing.”

A tear slips down my cheek. That sounds just like Big Eddie. “But you didn’t, did you,” I say bitterly. “You didn’t do a damn thing.” Cal puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into him. I don’t care if someone has a fucking problem with it in the diner. I take comfort from his heat and the low growl coming from his throat, directed at the man across from us.

“You have to understand, Benji,” Corwin said, looking miserable, “there wasn’t a whole lot I could do, at least not right then. Regardless of the small town it was in, sheriff is still an elected position, and then the mayor’s name was dropped as potentially being involved? It would have been a bureaucratic nightmare to accuse them without any evidence. My superiors would have laughed me out of their offices, and no judge would have granted me a warrant. It was all speculative. All I had were flow charts and the voice on the phone of a man I didn’t know. Hell, I had one of our geeks in the computer lab run satellite searches over the Umpqua National Forest and couldn’t find a damn thing that stuck out. If they
were
doing anything, it’d have to be well hidden.”

“They were talking about moving,” I say suddenly, flashes of conversation running through my head. “They said things were getting too close.”

“Who?” he says excitedly.

“Walken. Griggs. Traynor. A couple of others.”

“How do you know this?”

I hesitate, only because Cal doesn’t know the full story here either. But I’ve already opened my mouth, so I spill the rest of the story about the night I stood under the sheriff’s window. I get to the part about Walken threatening Traynor, and Corwin lets out a low whistle. “That guy’s got some balls if he tries to bully Traynor. That is not a man I would want to fuck with.”

“Tell me about it,” I grumble. Corwin arches an eyebrow at me and I show him my arm, the bruises still identifiable as fingers wrapped around my wrist. Cal lets out another growl as Corwin touches my hand gingerly. Corwin pulls out his phone and says, “May I?” I nod and he snaps some photos, first one side and then the other.

“You didn’t tell me any of this,” Cal says through gritted teeth. “Why couldn’t I see it? The thread? What is going on here?”

“What?” Corwin asks, bewildered.

I panic for a moment and shake my head at Corwin. “We’ll talk about this later,” I say to Cal.

“Planning on it,” he snaps at me.

“You think my father was murdered too, don’t you?” I ask Corwin. It feels odd, this certainty I feel. Having validation, after so long wondering on my own, is surreal.

He sits back against the booth and drums his fingers on the table with one hand, looking at the photo of my wrist on his phone with the other. “I talked to him three more times,” he finally says, “over a period of two months. Tried to trace the number each time he called, but he was smart. The numbers were for disposable cell phones. Couldn’t even ping them on any cell tower. He was quick with the phone calls.”

“I looked at his cell phone records after he died,” I say, wondering just how I missed all of this, how I could have been so blind. My father must have gone to great lengths to keep this hidden from us. I can’t help but feel anger toward him, that he could have kept this to himself, that he was making secret phone calls to the FBI without saying a damn thing about it. “The one for the store phone too. Never found anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. He made sure of that.”

“Hey,” Corwin says with alarm. “That’s not why I’m here, Benji. I’m not trying to dig at old wounds or say anything disparaging against your father. What he did was a brave thing, contacting us like he did. He didn’t have to. He could have kept on going with his life and not said a word. He spoke up.”

“And he died,” I snap. “He fucking
died
for it. What the fuck does that do for me?”

Corwin looks sympathetic when he says, “Sometimes we have to risk everything for the chance to do one thing right. I’d like to think your father knew that.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

His eyes widen. “What?”

“You convinced him to meet with you,” I say coldly. “That’s where he was going that morning. Not to see any friends. He was going to meet with you. He didn’t want to. He told you he didn’t. But you made him go anyway.”

Corwin flinches as if I’ve raised my hand to him. “The last time he called, I told him it was important for my case that he come in and meet me face to face. I told him that unless he was a material witness, nothing he’d told me would mean a damn thing. I couldn’t find enough proof to support the claims. I’d tried to convince him the other times he’d called, but… I pushed him this time. Hard.” Corwin looks away. “I told him to think about his son. Did he want his son to grow up in a place where he could be exposed to this bullshit? What if they found out he was speaking to me? Wouldn’t that put his family in danger?”

“You used us against him? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You have to understand,” Corwin pleads. “I thought I was about to lose this case. I had a witness who wouldn’t even give me his name, and a bunch of loose information that wasn’t connecting. I couldn’t find a damn thing about Walken
or
Griggs to support this. No evidence of money laundering, no embezzlement. The town books were in order. Hell, Roseland was audited in 2005 and passed with flying colors. There was
nothing
.”

“What I understand,” I grind out, “is that you killed my father.”

Corwin closes his eyes. “He finally relented. We set up a meeting. I offered to meet him halfway, but he wanted to come to Eugene. Said he wanted to get as far away as he could before he would meet me. We were supposed to meet at a park. Still wouldn’t tell me his name. Told me he was a big guy. That he’d be wearing a John Deere hat.”

“Oh, God,” I whisper.

I gave
him that hat when I was eight years old. I’d been so proud of myself for saving up money, doing extra chores and not telling anyone why. I wanted it to be a surprise. I’d convinced my mom to take me to the store to buy it, telling her she needed to wait in the car because I wanted to do it on my own. I’d gone in and told the clerk I needed the largest size because my father had the biggest head ever. I’d counted out the crumpled dollars carefully, adding coins when I ran out of paper. The clerk had wrapped the hat (so
green
it was, the words JOHN DEERE in bright yellow, like the sun) in tissue paper before putting it into a brown paper bag. I marched out of that store, feeling high and mighty for thinking of this all on my own. He would love it, I knew. He would think it was the greatest thing in the world.

But that quickly gave way to nerves a day later: Father’s Day, the reason I thought to buy it for him to begin with. I cursed myself as I nervously handed him the paper sack, wondering why I hadn’t saved a bit more money to get wrapping paper. He would hate it, I knew. It was such a dumb present. It was awful. Even as my mother murmured to him that this was all from me, that I’d thought of this all on my own, I felt my face burn. He lifted the tissue paper off as if he was unwrapping the greatest gift in the world. There was such reverence in his eyes, such excitement that I almost couldn’t bear the thought of disappointment taking over, a crushing look that would show how much I had failed. But it never came. He lifted the hat out of the paper, brushing his fingers along the brim gently. His eyes went back and forth as he read over the two words there. His voice was a little rougher than usual when he spoke. “You got this all on your own for me?” he asked, touching the hat again. I nodded at him, unable to speak. “Well, isn’t that… just something,” he said. “Isn’t that just fine. Why, it might be the finest hat I own. You know what we have to do to it, Benji?”

“Crack the brim,” I said, finding my voice, feeling very warm.

“That’s right.” And with that, he took the brim between his two big hands and started to mold it in a semicircle, shaping the green. After, he put it on his head, and it fit just right without him having to undo the snaps on the back. “Very handsome,” my mother said with a smile.

He turned back to me and said, “Well?”

“Looks good, Dad,” I said. But inside, I was screaming with joy, knowing I’d done something right in his eyes. And only a moment later I found myself being pulled upward into a hug that seemed to go on for days.

“Thanks, Benji,” he said, kissing my forehead. “It’s the best present I ever got.”

He wore it almost every day.

“I gave
him that hat,” I mutter to Corwin. “Years ago. It was found floating in the cab of the truck when he was pulled out of the river. Have it back at the house with some other things.” Things that were his, things that I keep away from everyone else. The hat, given to me by an officer whose name I couldn’t remember. A shell casing. A photo of him and me, sitting side by side up in the mountains on a dirt road on a hunting trip when I was four or five, him feeding me a piece of jerky. A yellowed note that says,
Benji, make sure you rake the leaves today after school. Just get around Little House and I’ll help you with the rest this weekend. Love, Pops.
Things that would have meant absolutely nothing to anyone else, but meant everything to me.

“He was a great man,” Cal whispers in my ear. “You know this.”

Corwin nods at my words, looking slightly ill. “I waited,” he says. “I waited at the park for hours. No one ever showed. I wondered if he’d gotten scared and flaked on me. It never crossed my mind that something happened to him. I just thought he’d worked himself up too much to actually show. It’s happened before. So many times.

“I went back to Eugene and never heard from the guy again. Eventually, it was made clear by the Agent in Charge that my time would be better spent on projects of merit rather than ones that had nothing to support them. I was told in no uncertain terms to drop it, that obviously it was going nowhere, and I had a witness who no longer wanted to play ball.” He smiles sadly at me. “I saw the news story about your father. About his accident. I figured it was him. The timing was a bit off, though. We were supposed to meet at two, and he’d apparently crashed in the early morning. It would have been too early for him to leave to meet me. But then they showed a video of him speaking at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, and that voice… I knew it was him.”

“Why didn’t you do anything then?” I ask, wiping my eyes.

“It all comes down to proof, Benji. There was no proof of foul play. The official police report listed it as a single-vehicle accident. There was no evidence of a second vehicle involved. Nothing on the coroner’s report to suggest foul play. The timing wasn’t right. The Old Forest Highway ends at I-10, yeah, but even if he was going to I-10, who’s to say he was driving to Eugene?”

“I know. I’ve read all the reports. I’ve thought of all these scenarios. Probably many more times than you ever have.”

He nods, like he expected that. “Then you should know there’s nothing there. It was officially ruled as a single-vehicle accident possibly precipitated by speed and the road conditions due to the rain. The report was signed off by Griggs.”

I eye him carefully. “But you don’t believe it, do you? Not now. You think something happened.”

“Yes,” Corwin says, and I sigh. “I think somehow, someone found out your father was speaking to me and decided to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. I think your dad was run off the road and left in the river to drown. I came here a few weeks ago because of that dead file. I was told it was done. I almost
believed
it was done. But….” He shook his head. “There was
something
there, I know it. It can’t just all be coincidence. It just can’t.”

“What do you want me to do?” I ask, suddenly unsure about all of this. It’s one thing to be on the phone with the man, and it’s another to hear confirmation of what I’ve long suspected. Now that it’s at hand, I feel small and weak. Uncertain and indecisive.

“Nothing,” Corwin says, a stern edge to his voice. “Especially now that Traynor is involved. Benji, the things that man has done would curdle your stomach. It’s best to keep your distance, as much and as far as you can. I’m going to be sniffing around town a bit. This is officially off the record, at least for the moment. The wife thinks I’m out of town on some work training, and work thinks I’m on vacation. I’m going to take a few days and just look around and see what I can see. Griggs is in on this, I’m sure of it. Walken too. If what your father told me is correct, they could be supplying methamphetamines up and down the West Coast.”

“Arthur Davis,” I say, his name coming out of nowhere. “You might want to check into Arthur Davis.”

He opens his phone and types something into it. “Why him?”

I tell him the story of the attempted robbery, how Arthur dropped Traynor’s name and how the attempted robbery ended in the gunman’s supposed suicide. By the time I finish, Corwin is shaking his head, his jaw set. “Jesus,” he says. “I mean it, Benji. You need to keep your fucking distance. These people are animals. You need to keep yourself safe. If anything comes from this, we have bias intimidation of a witness and assault and battery against Traynor. Don’t suppose you called the cops after he left.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m sure Griggs would have loved to take that report.”

Cal growls at him again. “You don’t need to worry about him. It is not your job. It is
my
job. And I am more than ready to do what is asked of me.”