The Twilight Swimmer (34 page)

Outside, the sun had set and the night was cold. She could see each panicked breath as it left her mouth.

She kept running.

She had never been to Dallas’s house before, but she knew where it was. He rented a cottage on the outskirts of town, the south edge. It was as far from the town center as anyone could live and still be considered a local. She wasn’t sure why he had chosen to live so far from everyone else, but the long run out of town had given her time to collect herself. She was still very upset, but had managed to stop crying and return her erratic heart rate to a steady, aerobic thumping.

She had been at the school with the Swimmer for much longer than it seemed. It was now closer to dawn than to midnight. Her parents would have noticed that she never returned from her walk. Her father might be driving around town looking for her. He may have recruited Dallas to help in the search.

But no. Dallas’s cruiser was parked in his driveway. His pickup truck was beside the cruiser, the trailer for his fishing boat gleaming in the moonlight. She’d never seen the truck before, but she knew he’d had one since high school. His kitchen window was illuminated from within. He was home, and he was awake. She ran up to the kitchen window, panting, and rapped on the glass. She waited several minutes, shivering in the early morning cold. Her underwear was still damp under her clothes, and the sun had been below the horizon for far too long to leave any warmth in the air.

Finally, she rapped on the glass again. And this time, Dallas appeared behind it in matter of seconds. His eyes were half closed, and his hair matted. He had obviously been sleeping, despite the light inside the kitchen. When he saw Brandi, however, his sleepy eyes went wide with surprise. He waved her toward the front door of the cottage.

As far as Brandi knew, Dallas had lived here for almost two years, since he graduated from high school and began working for her father. She was surprised to see that the interior of the cottage looked as though he had only moved in days before. There was no furniture in the living room but a single armchair and a television set propped up precariously on an overturned moving box. The walls were bare, with nothing more decorative than a few gray squares where the last resident had hung various items. There were dirty dishes on the floor against the wall, and empty food cartons from at least a dozen fast food restaurants.

“When’s the last time you had company?” Brandi asked.

“I know, it’s pretty bad. If I knew you were coming—”

“It’s like four in the morning. I’m a jerk for just showing up like this.”

“No, not at all.”

“And it’s not bad. Typical bachelor pad, right?”

Dallas chuckled uneasily. He was dressed in pajama pants and a white tee shirt, both of which looked a lot fresher than the house itself. At least he did his laundry on a regular basis, she thought. For a guy who just woke up, he looked about the same as he always did.

“What’s wrong?” Dallas asked. “You’re shivering. Did something happen?”

Brandi burst into tears. She was at least as surprised by the sudden emotion as Dallas. She thought she had gotten it all out of her system on the long run to his house, but the tears came fast and hot. Her cheeks were already flushed from the run, but flushed all the more as she sobbed.

Dallas led her to his couch and urged her to sit. He sat on the floor beneath her, one arm lying on the couch cushion, his hand almost touching hers.

“You can talk to me, Brandi. You can tell me anything.”

“I know I can.”

“Does your Dad know you’re here? Should I call him?”

“He doesn’t know. And please, don’t call him. Not yet.”

Dallas nodded his understanding, and allowed his fingers to inch closer to Brandi’s. When they made contact, he didn’t pull his hand away. Instead, he laced his fingers with hers and climbed onto the couch beside her. She felt his thumb caressing the back of her hand, and before long her cries faded to little more than an occasional sniffle.

“I was so wrong.”

“What happened?”

“I was so wrong about
him
.”

Dallas emitted a low growl, squeezing her hand more firmly. “Who is that bastard? The man from the water.”

“He
is
from the water,” Brandi insisted.

“I know. That night, your brother—”

“No Dallas, that’s not what I mean. I’m telling that he’s
from the water
. I’m telling you that he isn’t a man.”

Dallas involuntarily released his grip on Brandi’s hand. He sat in silence, staring first at Brandi to study her expression for any hint of deception or mockery, then past her, at the wall, when he realized she was entirely serious.

“You saw him that night,” said Brandi. “The water was freezing, but not for him. You saw his hand.”

“He was holding some kind of blue light.”

“No, Dallas. He wasn’t.” Brandi covered her mouth with her hand, working up the courage to say what she had to say next. “He killed Jenny. He killed my sister.”

Dallas rose slowly from the couch and started pacing. Brandi remained on the couch, watching him work through whatever he was thinking. When he glanced at her, then marched off into the next room, she waited patiently for him to return. He did return a minute later, now fully dressed in his police uniform. At his hip, his holster. Inside the holster, his pistol.

“What are you doing?”
              “I have to find him, don’t I? This man, this thing, I have to find him.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Exactly. That’s why I have to find the bastard, right now.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“I’ll find him. I’ll call your father, and we’ll find this monster. We’ll find him!”

Brandi rose to her feet and placed calming hands on Dallas’s shoulders. “He told me he was ready to leave, to head for warmer waters. He could be gone already. He’s probably gone already.”

“Not good enough, Brandi. We have to be sure.” He gently removed her hands from his shoulders and brought them down to her hips. But he didn’t let go. Instead, he inched closer and lowered his chin to the top of her head. He brushed aside her hair to expose her ear. “For Jenny,” he whispered.

Tears welling up again, Brandi finally nodded. “I feel ill,” she said. “Can I lie down?

“Of course you can,” said Dallas. “My room is right through there.” He pointed to the other side of the living room, and gently ushered Brandi that direction. Then he picked up his phone from its place on top of the television.

“Don’t call my father. Not yet. Wait until dawn, at least.”

“Brandi—“

“Please, Dallas. Let me sleep first. Let me think.”

Reluctantly, Dallas put down his phone. “Okay. But no matter what you want to do at dawn, that’s as long as I wait. I’m calling the sheriff.”

Brandi wiped her eyes dry, nodded, and headed into Dallas’s bedroom.

The room was as barren as the rest of the cottage, with only a queen size mattress on a box spring. The sheets were in a heap at the foot of the bed, spilling off onto the floor. Brandi didn’t care. She was so exhausted after her long night that she would gladly sleep on a pile of dirty dishes, if that was the only option on offer. After she flopped down on the bed and closed her eyes, she realized that the chill from her cross-town travels hadn’t left her body. She was still shivering. The sheets she pulled up to cover herself weren’t enough to stop her shivering, but there was no blanket in sight. She noticed the closet across the room and slipped off the mattress to investigate, sliding open the door.

What she saw inside the closet was so surprising, she could not process it. She could only stare.

There were no clothes hanging on the bar that ran across the back of the closet. No hangars either. There were no shoes on the ground, no hamper on the ground for dirty clothes. There was nothing at all that one might expect to find in a bedroom closet.

But the closet wasn’t empty. Far from it.

The back wall was covered. Mostly newspaper clippings, but photographs as well. The light in the room was poor at this late hour, but enough moonlight passed through the bedroom window to make the clippings readable.

They were about Jenny. Headlines about Jenny. About her death.

Local teen dies in tragic drowning.

High school student found dead on beach.

Family mourns loss of eldest girl.

Community torn apart by tragedy.

The clippings came from a number of regional papers. Most of them were small community publications, but there were several stories from larger papers as well, extending across the region from Boston to Bangor. There was even one clipping from a newspaper in Syracuse, New York that included Jenny’s drowning among a number of teenage deaths linked, theoretically, by the antidepressant medication that all of the teens had been taking at the time of their deaths. All of those deaths were ruled suicides. Jenny’s had been ruled an accidental drowning, but the journalist who authored the article openly speculated that many such “accidents” are designed to look that way by clever teens who believe their families will suffer their loss less if their deaths are not intentional and, therefore, not preventable.

The collection of articles, all of them but the Syracuse expose featuring a photograph of Jenny taken from her high school yearbook, was both baffling and startling enough. But the other photos that accompanied the articles were far more unnerving.

They were amateur photographs, taken by an inexperienced photographer and with unimpressive, off-the-shelf equipment. Most of them had been taken from a distance, and from unusual angles. All of them featured Jenny.

Seeing the photos all at once felt, to Brandi, like having the last year of Jenny’s life flash before her eyes. She saw haircuts she remembered her sister trying, and outfits she remembered her sister buying. She saw her sister’s friends. She even saw pictures of her family, of her mother and father, of her brother Cody. In some of the photos, she saw herself.

Her shivering quickly intensified and became an uncontrollable shuddering. Her shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell. She felt her throat tightening and her tongue going dry in her mouth. Outside, the night was breaking. The first morning light pushed through the bedroom window, bringing the deeper corners of the closet into view. And now Brandi saw that she appeared in more photos.

She appeared in photos all by herself. Photos taken in the last year. Photos taken in the last months, and weeks and even days.

She saw one photo taken that very afternoon. A photo of her and of Conrad, walking through their neighborhood, the colorful trees lining the street on both sides. She saw a photo of her, sitting against a car, while her father took a radio call from Sally, framed by the orange, dying foliage of a sycamore.

She had felt that someone was following her.

The bedroom door creaked open behind her.

“You weren’t supposed to look in the closet,” said Dallas as he closed the bedroom door behind him.

Brandi screamed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Swimmer remained at the recreation center pool for hours after Brandi ran out. He wanted to chase after her, but she was obviously afraid of him. If he gave chase, she would only be more frightened. He hoped that if he stayed where she left him, she would change her mind and come back. He would muster all of his words, all of the language he had worked so hard to learn, and try to explain to her what had happened the night he laid Jenny on the beach.

That night. That night.

His travels had taken him all around the world, from the icy waters of the Siberian coast to the tropical waters of Fiji, from the beaches of Sumatra to the giant swells of Antarctica where gray-backed whales breached for the sheer joy of spewing geysers skyward. He had traveled with his own kind for some of the journey, pulling astride a group of swimmers whenever they crossed paths. For a while, their company pleased him. But inevitably, he would allow himself to fall behind, or would veer off to less traveled water. He would continue his journey alone. Always alone.

And he would study the upright creatures on shore that looked so much like him, and communicated with each other with such beautiful sounds. Sounds that he had learned to interpret. Sounds that were, to him, every bit the beacon that the fiery crown of a lighthouse was to ships crashing through storms toward dark and unforgiving shorelines. The allure of language, of the spoken word, kept the Swimmer close to land.

And he was close to land that night.

The moon was largely concealed by a wall of black cloud, thick like smoke from a pipe. He could see well enough, despite the poor light. And when the boat slid into the water from the rocky beach, he could see that there were two people on board.

A girl, young but nearing womanhood. And a boy, fully grown. The boy was at the oars, his shoulders working efficiently to push the vessel across the calm water. They were quiet as he rowed them out, sharing few words. But they were laughing softly, leaning toward each other. The girl placed her hand on the boy’s knee as he manipulated the oars, as if daring him to remove his hands from his labor and attend to her instead. The boy, for his part, kept pulling and rolling and dropping, pulling and rolling and dropping.