The River Is Dark (8 page)

CHAPTER 8

They didn’t talk very much on the drive back to town.

Liam turned the truck’s heater on high, but it didn’t fully warm him through his soaking clothes. He didn’t know if he just needed to get dry or if the chill he felt had to do with what he saw at the Shevlins’. Several times he glanced at Dani, but she didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she stared out the windshield at the rain-slicked road, her fingers playing with the edge of her T-shirt.

When they reached town, he began to turn the truck in the direction of her hotel, but she put a hand on his arm as he did.

“Could we go to your hotel instead?”

He nodded and headed for the south end of town, the darkened eyes of shop windows watching them as they passed by.

When they reached his room, he offered her a pair of his sweatpants and a clean T-shirt. She thanked him and headed for the bathroom. After a few minutes, he heard the shower start, the patter of water matching the din of rain on the roof above. Twenty minutes later, Dani emerged from the bathroom just as he shut the door and walked past her carrying an almost-scalding pizza box.

“What’s that?” she asked, following him to where he set the pizza on the desk beside the bed.

“This is a pizza,” he said, grinning over his shoulder. She swatted at him, and he dodged it, nodding toward a bin of ice containing a six-pack of beer. “Thought you might need one of those,” he said, pulling a piece of sausage pizza onto a paper plate for her.

When he looked up, he saw Dani’s eyes focused on him, a strange look on her face. “What?” he asked, holding out her plate.

“How did you know this is what I needed?”

Liam smiled. “I didn’t. I just like pizza and beer.”

She laughed and sat on the bed as he cracked two of the bottles open and handed one to her.

He sat on the floor while they ate with relish, and he surprised himself by how many slices he consumed. He hadn’t felt this full or satisfied by food in a long time. He began to trace through his memory for a better-tasting meal and stopped, content to enjoy the moment.

“You know, if it wasn’t for a crazed lunatic running free, this town would probably be okay,” Liam said, finishing off the last bite of his pizza. He waited and looked at Dani out of the corner of his eye.

A begrudging smile played at the corners of her mouth, and when she saw him looking at her, she shook her head.

“That’s a little dark,” she said.

“The best humor always is.”

“Terrible.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“I’m not,” Dani said, smiling.

“Okay, just saying,” Liam said, holding up his hands. Their eyes locked for a split second, and his stomach fluttered like he was on a roller coaster. Dani looked away, her face darkening. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re fine and this is great,” she said, motioning to the pizza box and beer. “It’s just . . .” She paused, searching for words or courage; he didn’t know which. “I’ve never been as scared as I was tonight at that house. When you went outside, I didn’t know what was going to happen or if you’d come back, and I . . . I don’t know . . .” Her voice trailed off as she took another sip of beer, looking away.

He saw the glistening of tears and reached out to touch her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you there. I got caught up in the moment and reacted.”

Dani nodded, pulling her hand away from his to swipe at her tears. She was quiet for a long time, then she turned to him again.

“Who do you think it was out there?”

“Truthfully?”

“Yeah.”

“The killer,” he said, waiting for her to cringe. She only nodded.

“What do you think he was doing?”

“I’m not sure. That’s what I’ve been going over in my head. I don’t know if he saw me or if he was just on a little reminiscent tour or what.”

“That’s so creepy.”

“If it’s any consolation, I was scared out of my mind too.”

“Yeah, it gives me great confidence that the guy with the gun was just as terrified as I was.” Dani’s eyes sparkled, and in that moment he couldn’t think of anything more beautiful.

“Listen here, I was just saying that to make you feel better. I wasn’t actually scared at all,” Liam said, sniffing and turning his eyes to the ceiling.

“Umm-hmm,” Dani said with a mocking nod. She shifted on the bed and turned toward him a little more. “Why do you have a gun with you if you aren’t a cop anymore?”

“I asked myself the same thing when I grabbed it to bring with me,” Liam said. “Call it a premonition, I don’t know. I just brought it out of instinct.”

“Well, I’m glad you had it tonight.”

“Me too.”

He felt his eyelids growing heavy, the crushing exhaustion no longer held back by adrenaline or his frantic thoughts. He yawned, stifling it with the back of his hand. Dani finished her beer and stood, setting the empty bottle on the table nearby.

“I should go,” she said, glancing at the digital clock. “It’s almost ten.”

He nodded, wanting anything but to agree. “If you want, you can stay here.”

The words came out before he had time to think, and he nearly clapped a hand over his mouth. Dani didn’t move from the foot of the bed and gazed at him through a few locks of damp hair.

“I mean, you can stay if you want. I’ll sleep on the floor. I don’t sleep very well anyway. I just thought you might not want to be alone. I didn’t mean—”

Dani smiled at his discomfort. “Thank you. I would like to stay, if it’s really okay with you.”

“It’s fine, yeah, absolutely,” Liam said. “Let me just rearrange a little.”

He busied himself arranging a few blankets and a pillow on the floor while Dani went to the bathroom. When she returned, he was already on his makeshift bed. She moved across the room and shut the last lamp off, throwing everything into shadow, cut only by the faint glow of the single parking lot light behind the hotel. He heard the soft swishing of her clothes against the blankets as she climbed into the queen-sized bed. He lay with one arm crooked behind his head, listening to her even breathing. They were quiet for a long time, and just when he thought she might be asleep, she spoke.

“Liam?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you sleep up here with me? I’m not coming on to you, but . . .” Her voice trailed off into silence.

He rose from his place on the floor, snagging a blanket and pillow as he went. Dani lay on the far side of the bed, her face turned toward him, although he couldn’t make out her eyes.

“Sure, I’ll sleep on top of the covers.”

He lay down and threw the blanket over himself, making sure to keep a polite distance between them. The last thing he wanted was her thinking he was taking advantage of her unwillingness to be alone. After he settled and all was quiet again, he waited for the weight of sleep to fall upon him, praying he wouldn’t have an attack now. How would he explain it to her? The thought of telling her made his insides squirm. He would just breathe and wait. Maybe he would be calm enough in a few hours to get some sleep.

Dani moved beside him, and he heard her hand slide across the space between them. Her fingers touched his bicep and carefully traced down his arm to find his hand. The grazing sensation of her delicate fingers on his skin sent a wave of goose bumps across him, wholly unlike the earlier prickling of his skin at the Shevlins’. He grasped her hand and heard her sigh, a small sound, content in a way that thrilled him.

He lay savoring the softness of her hand and resisted the urge to caress it. She needed comfort, nothing else. His muscles began to relax, and to his surprise, a wave of serenity spread over him, a blanket that smothered the tension his body had held all day without his full awareness.

Liam yawned again, apprehension attempting to blossom in his guts, but no vision appeared behind his eyelids when he shut them. And without knowing it, he fell into a dreamless sleep.

The cell phone vibrated beside his head, and his eyes snapped open in the dark of the room. Reluctantly he let Dani’s hand go, both their palms now covered in sweat, and snatched the phone off the bedside table. The screen showed a number he didn’t know and the time:
2:17
. Liam hit the answer button and pressed the phone to his ear, standing from the bed.

“Hello?”

Panicked breathing met his ear, along with a hoarse curse. “Hello?” Liam asked again, moving toward the bathroom, not wanting to wake Dani.

“Liam?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Nut. God, man, there’s been another one!”

“What? Another murder?”

“Yes! Oh Lord, I think I’m gonna pass out.”

“Nut, slow down. What happened?” Liam stepped into the bathroom and swung the door shut.

The other man sounded as though he were having a conniption. “God, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!”

“Nut, calm down, start from the beginning.” Liam set an edge to his voice, the tone gentle but commanding. It was the voice he’d used when interviewing suspects or getting a statement from someone shaken by a recent crime.

“Okay, Lord, okay. I was . . . I was on my way to Lenny’s place on the south end of town. He’s got a little nook out of the weather, and he told me to stop by sometime tonight. I was on my way and took the boardwalk by the river, past the park, since it’s the fastest route. I fucking stumbled on him, right there on the rocks!”

“Who? Who did you stumble on?”

“I can’t be sure, but it looks like that big shot from Colton.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“God, yes! He’s . . . he’s . . .” Nut made a choking sound. “You just have to come see.”

Liam straightened in the darkness of the bathroom, indecision tilting him one way and then another.

“Where are you?”

CHAPTER 9

The headlights of the Chevy shone off the wet blacktop, turning the road into a glazed onyx river.

Liam drove fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t spot the parking lot he searched for. Soon, he came to the turn and swung off the deserted street, pulling into a space at the rear of the machine shop’s lot. He reached into the glove box and grabbed the small flashlight from where Dani deposited it the night before. He turned in his seat, searching for any other signs of life before exiting the truck.

Apprehension wormed through him, and he nearly stopped in his tracks after only a few steps. This was the worst possible scenario he could put himself in at the moment. He was already on the BCA’s radar, the sheriff had entrusted him with sensitive information, and now he was going to investigate a murder scene before notifying the authorities. If someone saw him here—he didn’t even want to consider it.

He moved down the sidewalk, the business fronts giving him accusing looks as he passed by. He stayed in the shadows until he saw the sign for the turnoff to the park. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he bolted through the pools of light from the streetlamps and into the welcoming night of the unlit walking path leading to the river.

The air smelled fresh and clean, the rain having washed all other competing scents from it. He could still see the occasional flicker of lightning in the eastern sky, the retreating bank of clouds a swollen form of condensed darkness. The reality of what he was about to do made his stomach flop, but he pushed on, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, he would lose his chance to inspect the body and crime scene.

He moved as quietly as possible down the path, his ears hypersensitive to any sounds besides his own heartbeat and the soft rasp of his shoes on the tar. The open space of the park widened before him, and he stopped, raking the darkness with his eyes. He could hear the river now, a soft shush of flowing water straight ahead. He moved in that direction, still following the path, trying to position in his mind the area that Nut described over the phone. Soon the path began to curve, the river on his right, its waters swollen between the shoulders of the banks. Liam stopped and turned to the left, stepping onto the large chunks of rock embedded in the ground between the path and the grassy hills of the park. A shadow unfolded itself from a sitting position and he froze, his hand going to the handle of the Sig at his back.

“Nut?” he whispered.

“Yes, God Almighty, who else do you think it would be?”

Liam moved across the rocks, their uneven surfaces trying to throw him off balance in the dark. “Where?”

The vagrant’s face was drawn and constricted, and a faint smell of booze hung in the air around him. The older man raised one arm and pointed to a small depression a dozen yards from where they stood. “He’s there. I went to cut across the stones and meet up with the path where it curves again, and fucking almost tripped over him.”

Liam said nothing and moved past him, being careful not to fall and skin a knee; he didn’t need his DNA discovered at a murder scene. As they reached the bowl in the ground, Liam began to make out the lines of a body.

“You didn’t touch anything, did you?” Liam asked.

“Uh, no, like I said, I almost stepped on him. Took me a second to get my bearings, but then I called you.”

Glancing once more around the area, Liam bent his knees and flicked on the flashlight. Nut cursed under his breath, and Liam blinked, taking the scene in.

The body lay spread-eagle, its chest as well as its feet bare. A thin pair of sweatpants covered its legs. The skin was white, all of the blood that wasn’t splashed on the stones surrounding it having pooled at the lowest point. Liam played the light from the corpse’s feet to its thickly muscled chest, noting several puncture wounds in the abdomen, and stopped where its face should be.

The man’s head was crushed flat beneath a large stone.

Gore and graying brain matter lay on the rocks around the body’s ruined skull like splattered mud. The stone that sat amidst the shattered mess was nearly a foot wide, resembling a rough triangle. Liam could make out no features of the man’s head. From the chin up, everything was pulverized. He moved the light lower until it shone on the corpse’s right arm, wrist bones glistening in the glow, the hand missing.

Liam stood and circled the body, careful to avoid any blood spatters and loose rocks. Kneeling next to the dead man’s other side, he examined the amputated wrist more closely. A deep groove ran around the arm’s circumference before the bloody stump, a white rut still indented from earlier pressure.

“They cut off his hand before they brought him here,” Liam murmured. “Tied a tourniquet around the stump so he wouldn’t bleed to death.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” Nut asked in a hushed voice.

“So they could torture him.” Liam shifted the light to the deep holes gored in the dead man’s stomach. “They wanted something from him,” Liam said, more to himself than to Nut. “And I bet they got it.”

“If they attacked him at his house, why the hell did they bring him all the way down here?” Nut asked. “The place he was rentin’ has to be almost a half mile upriver.”

Liam stood and swept the light in a little circle, and then snapped it off. “To send a message. This is a display.”

“Well, it got through to me. Don’t go out at night anymore, that’s the message I got.”

Liam moved around the perimeter of the corpse’s outstretched limbs, looking for anything that might have been dropped or left behind. A sound that raised the hair on the back of his neck met his ears, and he looked up, searching for its source.

A car pulled into the park and cruised down the drive toward them.

“Go toward the path. Don’t hurry and don’t fall,” Liam said.

Nut cursed again and moved away, a quiet clack of rocks marking his retreat. Liam stood for another ten seconds, studying the shape of the car, before he followed. He saw no light bar above the cab, and he doubted a small town like Tallston would have an unmarked cruiser. Longing to stay and investigate the area, Liam hurried away from the approaching vehicle and managed to stay clear of its sweeping headlights. Nut waited on the opposite side of the path, crouching low and watching the car, with wide eyes.

“Listen to me,” Liam whispered. “You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. In a few hours, if the body hasn’t been discovered, I’ll call it in anonymously. I’ll contact you later.”

Nut jerked his head up and down, his wild mane bouncing with the movement. Liam watched him turn and scurry away down the path until it met a grove of trees, where the vagrant veered off and vanished into the shadows.

Liam moved in the same direction, his eyes locked on the car that was now parked in the lot before the playground. The dome light inside the car flared as the headlights went out, and Liam saw two teenagers inside. The driver was a boy wearing a dark coat, and the girl was blond, a giggle splitting her mouth into a grin as they opened their doors and stepped into the night.

“It’ll be fun,” the boy said.

“Danny, we can just do it in the backseat, we don’t have to go down by the river,” the girl chided.

“I don’t want your dad catching us again, he’s crazy.”

“But that’s what makes it exciting.”

Liam lost their conversation as he left the path and felt a solid coating of dew soak his shoes. He glanced over his shoulder as he headed in the direction of his truck and saw the two teenagers making their way across the playground with what looked like a blanket draped over the boy’s shoulder.

Liam crossed the street and could just make out the shape of his truck when he heard the girl scream at the top of her lungs, and he knew he wouldn’t have to call in the murder after all.

Liam eased onto the bed beside Dani and studied her face in the dim light of the room. Her hair fell in tangles across her cheek, and he could hear the light breaths that she pulled in between her parted lips. He lay there, imagining a life that wasn’t his, of early mornings just like this, listening to her breathing, knowing that when she woke he could make her breakfast in their kitchen. He saw the morning light playing off her face and her eyes coming open with the touch of his hand. Her smile. He imagined not looking at the closet where his gun rested, not thinking thoughts of darkness that clouded his days gray. He thought of happiness.

And then her face came back to him.

She was pretty and young, and had dark hair that curled near her shoulders. She stepped out of the doorway, and for an instant he saw a smile on her lips before she turned her head, her hand resting on the curve of her belly.

He sighed and forced the image away, the fantasy of Dani crushed beneath a reality already in place. It was his; he owned it and he had to carry it. Happiness was a foreign concept meant for others, not him. Not him.

Hours later, Dani stirred. She smacked her lips and slid a hand out from beneath the covers to rub her sleep-stained eyes. Liam stopped staring at the ceiling and sat up, his face impassive as she looked at him and blinked.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Were you able to sleep?”

“A little.”

“Was I snoring?” The disgust in her voice made him smile.

“No, but there’s been a development.”

Dani propped herself up on an elbow and studied his face. He began to speak, telling her of his dealings with Nut and the call he received during the night. As he told her the details of the murder scene, her face became quizzical and she began to bite at her lower lip. When he finished, he waited, glancing every so often at the brightening window behind her.

“That was a huge risk,” she said.

“I know.”

“Someone could have seen you.”

“I know.”

“Do you think you can trust a drunk hobo?”

“I have to since he’s my only other source of information besides the sheriff.”

“And you don’t think Nut had anything to do with it?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’ve interrogated hundreds of suspects. I know when someone’s lying. Nut’s a fool and a drunk, but he’s telling the truth.”

Dani pursed her lips. “Forgive me if I’m not a hundred percent convinced.”

Liam smiled. “You’re forgiven.”

“Just don’t put too much faith in him, okay? You don’t know him at all.”

“Noted.”

Dani ran her tongue over her teeth and grimaced. “Pizza-and-beer breath.”

“Mmm, my favorite,” Liam said.

She shot him a look of dismay and got out of bed. He liked how she looked in his clothes, small but strong in her own way. She caught him staring at her, and he dropped his eyes to his socked feet and began to pull at a loose string near his ankle.

“So what do you think it means?” Dani asked, looking out the window.

“The murder?”

She nodded without looking at him.

“I think somehow everything’s connected to the Colton project across the river. There’s too much coincidence with Jerry Shevlin and the company rep being murdered. It’s obvious that someone doesn’t want the project to go through.”

Dani turned to him and leaned against the table beneath the window. “But killing someone to stop an industrial project? Isn’t that extreme and, overall, not very effective? I mean, won’t they just get someone else to head up the development?”

“You’re right, but I’m thinking that the person or persons we’re dealing with aren’t thinking lucidly.”

“Really?” Dani said, raising her eyebrows.

“I mean, they’re obviously psychopaths, but this isn’t the way to stop Colton from proceeding if that’s what they’re trying to accomplish. Nut told me there was a group opposing the project in town. I want to speak to them at some point today, but there’s something else I want to do first,” he said, rising from the bed to look past Dani out the window.

“What’s that?”

“I want to go across the river.”