John Hart - Down River

I pictured her swollen face, the tattered lips held together by knotted, black thread. No one who saw her in that hospital room could know how beautiful she truly was. Suspicion flared in me. “Do you know her?” I asked.

Grantham studied me with the stillest eyes I’d ever seen. “It’s a small county, Mr. Chase.”

“May I ask how you know her?”

“That’s hardly relevant.”

“Nevertheless…”

“My son is about her age. Does that satisfy you?” I said nothing, and he continued evenly. “We were talking about a boat. Someone that may have seen her from the river and laid in wait.”

“He’d have to know that she’d walk home that way,” I said.

“Or he could have been coming to her, then met her on the trail. He could have seen you two on the dock and waited. Is that possible?”

“It’s possible,” I said.

“Does D.B. seventy-two mean anything to you?” He slipped the question in, and for a long moment I could not speak.

“Adam?” Robin said.

I stared as something loud and tribal began to thunder in my head. The world turned upside down.

“Adam?”

“You found a ring.” I could barely drive out the words. The effect on Grantham was immediate. He rocked onto the balls of his feet.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

“A gold ring with a garnet stone.”

“How do you know that?”

My words came in some other man’s voice. “Because D.B. seventy-two is engraved on the back of it.”

Grantham shoved his hand into a coat pocket, and when it reappeared it held a rolled-up plastic bag. He allowed it to unfurl from his fingers. It glistened in the hard light, and streaked mud shone on its sides. The ring was there: heavy gold, a garnet stone. “I’d very much like to know what it means,” Grantham said.

“I need a minute.”

“Whatever it is, Mr. Chase, I suggest you tell me.”

“Adam?” Robin sounded hurt, but I couldn’t worry about that. I thought of Grace, and of the man who was supposed to be my friend.

“This can’t be right.” I ran the film in my head, the way it could have been. I knew his face, the shape of him, the sound of him. So I could fill in the blanks, and it was like a watching a movie, a horror show, as my oldest friend raped a woman I’d known from the age of two.

I pointed at the ring in the plastic bag.

“You found that where it happened?” I asked.

“It was at the scene, where Dolf found her.”

I walked away, came back. It could not be true.

But it was.

Five years. Things change.

And there was nothing good left in my voice. “Seventy-two was the number of his football jersey. The ring was a gift from his grandmother.”

“Go on.”

“D.B. stands for his nickname. Danny Boy. Number seventy-two.” Grantham nodded as I finished. “D.B. seventy-two. Danny Faith.”

Robin stood silent; she knew what this was doing to me.

“Are you certain?” Grantham asked.

“Do you remember those fishing cabins I told you about? The ones downriver from Dolf’s house?”

“Yes.”

“The second one down is owned by Zebulon Faith.” They both looked at me. “Danny’s father,” I said.

“How far down from where she was attacked?” Grantham asked.

“Less than two miles.”

“Well, all right.”

“I want to be there when you talk to him,” I said.

“Out of the question.”

“I did not have to tell you. I could have had the conversation myself.”

“This is a police matter. Stay out of it.”

“It’s not your family.”

“It’s not yours either, Mr. Chase.” He stepped closer, and although his voice was measured, the anger spilled over the lines. “When I want something else from you, I’ll tell you about it.”

“You wouldn’t have him without me,” I said.

“Stay out of it, Mr. Chase.”

I left the hospital as a low moon pushed silver through the trees. I drove fast, my head full of blood and grim rage. Danny Faith. Robin was right. He’d changed, crossed the line, and there was no going back. What I’d said to Robin was true.

I could kill him.

When I got to the farm, it felt off: the road too narrow, turns in the wrong places. Fence posts rose up from colorless grass, barbed wire dark and tight between them. I passed the turn for Dolf’s house before I knew it was there. I backed up, hung right onto a long stretch where I’d once taught Grace to drive. She’d been eight years old, and could barely see over the wheel. I could still hear the way she laughed, feel the disappointment when I told her she was going too fast.

Now she was in the hospital, fetal and broken. I saw the stitches in her lips, the thin slivers of blue when she tried to open her eyes.

I slammed my open palm against the wheel, then gripped it with both hands and tried to bend it in half. I pushed hard on the gas, heard the slam and bang of rocks on the undercarriage. One more turn, then over a cattle guard that made the tires thump. I slid to a stop in front of a small, two-story house with white clapboards and a tin roof. My father owned it, but Dolf had lived here for decades. An oak tree spread over the yard, and I saw an old car on blocks in the open barn, its engine in parts on a picnic table under the tree.

I jerked the key out of the ignition, slammed the door, and heard the high whine of mosquitoes, the slap and stutter of bats diving low.

I locked my hands into knots as I crossed the yard. A single light hung above the porch. The knob rattled and the door swung away from me. I turned on lights, went in, and stood in Grace’s room, absorbing the things she loved: posters of fast cars, riding trophies, a picture taken on a beach. There was no clutter. The bed. The desk. A row of utilitarian footwear, like snake boots and hip-waders. There were more pictures on the mirror above the dresser: two of different horses and one of the car I’d seen in the garage-her and Dolf smiling, the car on a flatbed.

The car was for her.

I turned away and pulled the door shut. I brought in my bag and tossed it on the guest-room bed. I stared at a blank spot on the wall and thought for what felt like a very long time. I waited for some kind of calm, but it never came. I asked myself what mattered, and the answer was Grace. So I searched Dolf’s kitchen for a flashlight. I pulled a shotgun from the gun cabinet, cracked it, loaded it, then saw the handgun. It was an ugly, snub-nosed thing that looked about right. I put the long gun back, lifted out a box of.38 caliber shells and extracted six of them. They were fat, heavy, and slipped into the machined holes as if they’d been greased.

I paused at the door, knowing that once I stepped outside, there’d be no stopping. The gun was warming in my hand, heavy. Danny’s betrayal shot dark holes through me, dredged up the kind of rage I’d not felt in years. Was I planning to kill him? Maybe. I really didn’t know. But I’d find him. I’d ask some hard damn questions. And by God, he would answer them.

I went down the hill, across the pasture, and didn’t need the light until I hit the trees. I turned it on and followed the narrow footpath until it intersected the main trail. I put the light on it. Except for the roots that rose above it, it was beaten smooth.

I went to the hard turn in the trail that Grantham had mentioned, saw the broken branches and bruised vegetation. I followed the ground as it sloped to a shallow depression filled with churned leaves and grasping red earth, a snow angel in the mud.

I was close to the spot where my father had pulled Grace from the river all those years ago, and as I stared at the signs of her resistance my finger found its way into the trigger guard.

I passed the boundary of my father’s farm, the river on my left; then the neighboring farm, the first cabin, empty and dark. I kept an eye on it. Nothing. Then I was back in the woods, and the Faith cabin was ahead. A half mile. Fifty yards. And moonlight pushed deeper into the trees.