The Twilight Swimmer (30 page)

“Brandi, get back!” Dallas yelled as he ran past her. He snatched the flashlight from her hand and moved closer to the Swimmer, directing the beam into his gray eyes. The Swimmer recoiled from the light, but kept a firm grip on Cody’s unmoving form. River water had soaked the child’s clothes, running down the length of his arms and legs, streaming from the toes of his sneakers and from his fingertips like water from a leaky faucet.

Dallas could feel heat coming from the Swimmer. And where the Swimmer’s hands were visible beneath Cody’s body, he saw a light that could not possibly be from the flashlight in his hand. It was blue light, an ethereal blue glow.

“Put him down, dammit! Bring the boy here and put him down!”

The Swimmer looked hard at Dallas, still cringing as the light from the flashlight met his eyes. He turned to look past Dallas, to look at Brandi. She was frozen on the shore, unable to move or even speak. She could not take her eyes from Cody’s expressionless face, from his closed eyes and his mouth, hanging open, from the dangling weight of his head.

“I’m telling you, man, you bring him here right now. Right now!” Dallas took a step into the water, the current driving the river through his legs and threatening to uproot his feet from their precarious purchase. Dallas reached inside his jacket and withdrew a pistol, which he calmly leveled and aimed at the Swimmer. “You bring him here, you hear me? You bring him here right now.”

The Swimmer’s hands began to glow more intensely, until the blue light they emitted was stronger than the beam from the flashlight. The glow illuminated Dallas and the gun in his hand. It illuminated the shoreline behind him, where the water lapped against submerged rocks and shrubs. And it illuminated Brandi, her face twisted in a confused contortion as she remained paralyzed, unable to move toward Dallas and push down his gun hand, unable to race into the water and take Cody in her own arms.

The Swimmer took a step backward, into deeper water. And when he did, Dallas squeezed the trigger on his pistol. A sudden burst of light, and a tight curl of smoke, as the bullet exploded from the barrel. It passed over the Swimmer’s shoulder, but it startled him enough that one arm went slack, and he lost his grip on Cody. He managed to hold onto the boy’s shirt collar as the current lifted him horizontal and threatened to drag him downstream.

“Bring him to shore. Next one goes in your chest.” said Dallas in a calm voice.

“Dallas, no!” yelled Brandi, finally shaken back into reality.

The Swimmer managed to haul Cody back out of the water. He looked at Brandi again, his expression full of pain. Why wasn’t she intervening on his behalf? Why was she allowing this man to threaten him with a gun? He had seen guns before, on distant shores. He had seen them fired at trees for fun, blowing chunks of wood into the air. He had seen them fired into the lurching bodies of large fish hauled onto the decks of fishing boats, to silence the mighty beasts and end their thrashing. Once, on a foggy night, he had seen a gun fired at a man who knelt at the end of a pier, his hands raised as he pleaded for his life. In every case, the Swimmer disliked what he saw.

The Swimmer strode through the water, rising taller as he ascended the gradual slope of the riverbed. Brandi rushed forward to meet the Swimmer at the water’s edge, and helped him lower Cody to the ground. She could see, now, that Cody was still breathing. His face was as pale as the Swimmer’s, and he was unconscious, but he was alive. Dallas peered over her shoulder to get a look at Cody, but was more concerned with the Swimmer.

“I want you to lie down on the ground. Lie down on the ground and put your hands behind your back,” Dallas demanded.

The Swimmer slowly rose to his feet. He was several inches taller than Dallas, looming over him despite the distance between them. There was as much implied danger in the gray eyes he leveled at Dallas as in the gun Dallas leveled at him. Sensing the menace, Dallas backed away a step but kept his gun high.

“Is he breathing?” asked Dallas.

Brandi pressed her palm against Cody’s cheek. She could feel warmth in his skin, as if he had not just come from the icy water. She could see the flutter of a vein in his neck as blood pumped through it. She could hear him draw air, ever so slightly, through his half-parted lips. “He’s alive,” she answered.

“Get him up to the cabin,” said Dallas.

“What about him?” asked Brandi, looking at the Swimmer.

“Let me worry about him,” said Dallas, trying to keep his voice steady. “He won’t hurt your brother any more. He won’t hurt you.”

“Dallas, I don’t think he—”

“Get him up to the cabin, Brandi! Get him inside!”

Brandi wrapped her arms around Cody and struggled to stand while supporting his weight. Her knees wobbled, and her footing was unstable, but she had him up and was determined not to set him down again. She labored up the slope toward the cabin’s door, sure she could make it. But halfway there one foot sunk in a patch of soft earth and she found herself unable to pull it out. She slumped to the ground, Cody lying in her lap.

Dallas reluctantly took his eyes off the Swimmer and hustled up the hill to help her with Cody. When he reached her, he had no choice but to return his gun to its holster to free up both hands. He looked back at the water to make sure the Swimmer would not make a run at him, but the Swimmer was gone. There was only a ripple in the water where he had slipped gracefully below the surface.

“The water is so cold,” said Dallas. “He wasn’t even shivering.”

“Help me with Cody,” pleaded Brandi, breathless.

“He wasn’t even shivering.”

Dallas lifted Cody without Brandi’s help and carried him swiftly to the cabin door. Brandi ran up behind him to throw the door open and usher them inside.

“I’ll go back to the fairgrounds to tell your dad where we are,” said Dallas as he lowered Cody to the floor. He slipped off his vest and draped it across Cody’s torso, then began to rub Cody’s legs with strong hands to get his blood flowing again.

Brandi shook her head. “It’ll take too long.” She hustled around the side of the cabin and grabbed Cody’s abandoned backpack. She pulled out one of the flares she remembered spotting a few minutes earlier. She stood just outside the cabin door with the flare in her fist, looking in at Dallas. When he spotted the flare, he opened his mouth as if to protest. But Brandi had already scanned the foliage overhead for a wide enough gap and had launched the flare skyward. The light was a brilliant red, and Brandi covered her eyes with her arm to shield them. She launched a second flare through the same gap in the foliage, then entered the cabin to help Dallas with Cody. Her brother was stirring now, moaning softly as they vigorously rubbed his limbs.

“They’re coming, Cody. Dad will see the flares.”

Conrad didn’t see the first flare, but other fairgoers had remained after closing to search for Cody and several had spotted the bright patch of color over the tree line. Several voices called Conrad by name to get his attention, and his eyes were pointing the right direction when the second flare tore a hole in the colorless night sky. He had a terrific sense of direction, and knew immediately where the flare had originated: the cabin. Sherri was sitting at one of the picnic tables, virtually catatonic. As he raced past her to reach his cruiser, he asked one of Sherri’s friends to take her home. The kindhearted woman nodded her promise to do exactly that.

When Conrad reached the cabin, kicking up dirt as his tires ripped apart the forest road, he found Dallas standing outside with his hands in his pockets.

“They’re inside. Cody’s fine,” he said before Conrad could ask. Conrad glared at his young officer as he strode up to the door, but didn’t say a word. “You saw the note on my windshield, didn’t you? I left you a note,” Dallas added in the hope of exonerating himself for disappearing from the fairgrounds with Brandi.

Conrad wasn’t interested. He shouldered past Dallas and into the cabin.

They had a fire crackling in the brick and mortar fireplace Conrad himself had built more than a decade ago. The flue was choked with years of use and, at the beginning of every spring, he had promised himself that this was the year he would clean it out. He never kept that promise to himself, and so half the smoke from the fire spilled back into the cabin and turned the air cloudy and gray. Brandi and Cody were on the couch, set against the wall farthest from the fireplace with the broken window in between. Cody was awake, but lying with his head in his sister’s lap and sucking on his thumb. Conrad hadn’t seen the boy looking so young and helpless for several years, and was almost brought to tears by the sight.

“He’s okay,” said Brandi. “Just wants to go home.”

Conrad looked around the cabin, shocked to see the disarray left by the Swimmer. He looked hard at his daughter, but she only looked away.

On the drive from the cabin to the Vine house, Brandi was pressed between Conrad and Dallas, with Cody in her lap. It was a tight fit, and very uncomfortable. But Brandi was more concerned with the tension in the vehicle. She knew it was only a matter of time before Dallas mentioned the Swimmer, and she knew that her father would immediately cast blame for everything Cody had done on her. It was Brandi who had been sneaking off to see the Swimmer. It was Brandi who had helped the Swimmer escape from the medical clinic. If Cody hadn’t gotten his hair-brained scheme from Brandi, where had he gotten it? Brandi could almost hear the range of accusations she would soon be subjected to, as soon as Dallas started talking.

To her amazement, he said nothing until Conrad spoke up.

“Thank you, Dallas. For helping to get him back.”

“It was Brandi more than me. She knew where to find him.”

Conrad glanced at his daughter, suspicion in his eyes. Brandi pretended she couldn’t see that he was looking at her, attentively rubbing Cody’s hands between her own even though he had long since been warmed.

When they reached the Vine home, Conrad took Cody from Brandi and carried him up to the house. Sherri was waiting at the doorstep, a pair of her friends standing beside her with mugs of coffee steaming in their hands. Sherri pushed past them and ran to meet Conrad, wrapping her arms around her husband and son and sobbing.

Brandi lingered at the cruiser with Dallas. She turned to him, ready to extend thanks of her own for keeping quiet about the Swimmer. It was Dallas, however, who spoke first.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” he uttered under his breath.

“What do you mean?”

“If your dad knew I was carrying a pistol, that’d be bad enough. If he knew I fired a warning shot at an unarmed man, that’d be the end of my career.”

Brandi understood, now, why Dallas hadn’t mentioned the Swimmer.

“I know every face in this town, and darn near every name. But that man, that man in the water, I don’t know him. But
you
did. So I’m asking, because I’m concerned. I’m asking. Who was that man, Brandi?”

Brandi shook her head as if to say she had no idea, but she couldn’t meet Dallas’s eyes. He sighed audibly and waited for her to look up again.

“He’s the patient from the hospital, isn’t he? I never saw his face that day, but that must be him. You don’t have to say so. I can see it in your eyes that I’m right.” Dallas shook his head slowly. He lowered his voice. “There are dangerous people out there. People who wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage, or even hurt, a nice girl like you. If there’s something you need to talk about, if you need to talk about
him
—”

“You were wonderful tonight,” said Brandi, cutting him off. She reached for Dallas’s hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “And thank you. If I do need to talk to someone, I know now that I can trust you.”

“It’s more than that.”

“I know. I wish I was capable of responding the way I ought to when you say something so sweet to me. I wish I could give you the response you want, the response you deserve. You’ve been good to me, and to my family and you deserve... I’m kind of a mess. More than kind of. And I all I can say, even though it’s pitiful, is thank you.”

She let go of Dallas’s hand and jogged up the driveway, disappearing inside the house without looking back.

Brandi stood with her ear pressed against Cody’s bedroom door, eavesdropping. She couldn’t make out most of his soft, muffled words, but she could hear both of her parents clearly. Her mother’s voice was high and panicked, despite having Cody back safe. Her father’s voice seemed, to Brandi, to have dropped an octave lower than its already low timbre.

“Why did you run away from the fair, Cody?” asked Sherri. “Why did you think that was a good idea? Why did you think that was okay? To do that to your family, to your mother and father who love you and were so very, very frightened when you disappeared?

A muffled response from Cody, Perhaps two words.

“Your mother isn’t angry with you. She just wants to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” added Conrad.

“Don’t tell him I’m not angry. I
am
angry. I haven’t been so scared, so absolutely terrified, since…” Sherri trailed off, unwilling to say the name of the daughter she lost a year earlier. Unable to say the name.

“You had a lot of supplies in your backpack,” said Conrad. He continued with a series of slow, measured questions. “What were you planning? Were you going to stay at the cabin? You wanted to stay there alone? How long have you been planning to go out there? Why did you pick tonight? Why didn’t you just ask me to take you on a camping trip?”