John Hart - Down River

“I named you Adam because I didn’t think that I could love anything more, because I was as proud on the day you were born as the good Lord must have been when he looked down on Adam himself. You are all that I have left of your mother, and you are my son. You will always be my son.”

I looked the old man in the eyes, found a hard place in my heart that all but destroyed me.

“God cast Adam out,” I said. “He never came back to the garden.”

Then I turned and let myself into my father’s truck. I looked at him through the open window. “How about that drink?” I asked.

We drank bourbon in the study. Dolf and my father took it with water and sugar. I drank it neat. In spite of all that had happened, no one knew what to say. There was too much. Grace, Danny, the turbulence of my return. Harm seemed to lurk around every corner, and we spoke little, as if we all knew that it could still get worse. It was like a taint in the air, and even Jamie, who joined us ten minutes after the bourbon was poured, sniffed as if he could smell it.

After careful consideration, I told them what Robin had said about Grace. I had to repeat myself. “She was not raped,” I said again, and explained the nature of Grantham’s deception. My words dropped into the room with enough weight to take the floor from beneath us. My father’s glass exploded in the fireplace. Dolf covered his face. Jamie went rigid.

Then I told them about the note. “Tell the old man to sell.”

That sucked the air out of the room.

“This is intolerable,” my father said. “All of it. Every damn piece of it. What in God’s name is happening here?”

There were no answers, not yet, and in the painful silence I carried my glass to the sideboard for another drink. I tipped two fingers’ worth into my glass and patted Jamie on the shoulder. “How you doin’, Jamie?”

“Pour me another,” he said. I filled his glass, and was almost back to my seat when Miriam appeared in the door.

“Robin Alexander is here,” she said. “She wants to talk to Adam.”

My father spoke. “By God, I’d like to talk to her as well.” There was no mistaking the metal of his anger.

“She wants to talk to him outside. She says it’s a police matter.”

We found Robin in the yard. She looked unhappy to see all of us there. Once upon a time she had been a part of this family in every way that mattered.

“Robin.” I stopped on the edge of the porch.

“May I speak with you in private?” she asked.

My father answered before I could. “Anything you want to say to Adam, you can say to all of us. And I’d appreciate the truth this time.”

Robin knew that I’d told, that was clear in the way that she looked at the group of us, as if she was assessing a possible threat. “This would be easier if it was just the two of us.”

“Where’s Grantham?” I asked.

She gestured at her car, and I could see the silhouette of a man. “I thought that this might go better if it was just me,” she said.

My father stepped past me, down onto the grass, and he towered over Robin. “Anything that you have to say regarding Grace Shepherd or events that happened on my property you will, by God, say in my presence. I’ve known you a long time, and I am not scared to say how disappointed I am in you. Your parents would be ashamed.”

She eyed him calmly, and did not flinch. “My parents have been dead for some time, Mr. Chase.”

“May as well say it here,” I said.

No one moved or spoke. I was pretty sure what she wanted to talk about.

Then a car door slammed, and Grantham appeared around Robin’s shoulder. “Enough is enough,” he said. “We’ll do this at the station.”

“Am I under arrest?” I asked.

“I am prepared to take that step,” Grantham said.

“On what grounds?” Dolf demanded, and my father raised a hand, silencing him.

“Just what the hell is going on?” my father asked.

“Your son lied to me, Mr. Chase. I don’t take well to lies or to liars. I’m going to talk to him about that.”

“Come on, Adam,” Robin said. “Let’s go to the station. Just a few questions. A few discrepancies. It won’t take long.”

I ignored everyone else. Grantham disappeared, as did my father. The communication between Robin and me was complete; she understood that, too. “This is the line,” I said. “Right here.”

Her determination wavered, then firmed. “Would you step to the car, please.”

And that was that.

My heart broke, the last of my hope for us died, and I got into the car.

I watched my family as Grantham turned the car around. I saw shock and confusion. Then I saw Janice, my stepmother. She stepped onto the porch as the dust rose behind us.

She looked old, like she’d aged twenty years in the past five. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and even at a distance, I saw how it shook.

They took me into town, past the local college and the shops that surrounded it; then down the main drag with the lawyer’s offices, the courthouse, and the coffee shops. I watched Robin’s condo slide past. People were out beneath a pink sky, shadows stretching out. Nothing had changed. Not in five years; not in a hundred. There were storefronts that dated back to the past century, businesses in the fifth generation of the same family. And here was one other thing that had not changed: Adam Chase, under suspicion.

“Want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.

“I think you know,” Grantham replied.

Robin said nothing. “Detective Alexander?” I asked. Her jaw tightened.

We moved onto a side street that led to the tracks. The Salisbury Police Department was on the second block, a new, two-story brick building with cop cars in the lot and flags on a pole. Grantham parked the car and they led me in through the front. It was all very cordial. No cuffs. No cell. Grantham held the door.

“I thought that this was a county case,” I said. “Why aren’t we at the sheriff’s office?” The sheriff’s office was four blocks away, in the basement under the jail.

Grantham answered. “We thought you might prefer to avoid those particular interrogation rooms… given your previous experience there.”

He was talking about the murder case. They’d picked me up four hours after my father found Gray Wilson’s body, feet in the water, shoes thumping against a slick, black root. I never learned if he was with Janice when she went to the cops. I never had the chance to ask and liked to think he’d been as surprised as I was when the cuffs came out. They transported me in one of the sheriff’s marked cars. Rips in the seat. Face prints and dried spit on the glass divider. They took me to a room under the jail and hammered me for three days, hours at a stretch. I denied it, but they didn’t listen, so I shut up. I never said another word, not once, but I remembered the feel of it, the weight of all those floors above you, all that concrete and steel. A thousand tons, maybe. Enough to squeeze moisture out of the concrete.

“Considerate of you,” I said, and wondered if I was being sarcastic.

“It was my idea.” Robin had still not looked at me.

They took me to a small room with a metal table and a two-way mirror. It may have been in a different building, but it felt the same: small, square, and shrinking by the second. I took a breath. Same air. Warm and moist. I sat where Grantham told me to sit. I disliked the look on his face, and guessed it was habitual when seated on the cop side of bolted-down furniture on the blind side of two-way glass. Robin sat beside him, hands folded tightly on the gray steel.

“First things first, Mr. Chase. You are not under arrest, not in custody. This is a preliminary interview.”