John Hart - Down River

“I hope that you’re looking hard.”

“We’re looking.” He leaned on the car. “I’ve been going over your file. You hurt a lot of people over the years, put some in the hospital. I missed that, somehow.” He leveled a gaze at me. “I’ve also been reading up on what happened to your mother. Losing someone that you love, well, that can make a person crazy. All that anger and nowhere to put it.” He paused. “Any idea why she did it?”

“That is none of your damn business.”

“Grieving never ends for some folks, anger either.”

I felt the blood stir, the hot flush in my veins. He saw it, smiled as if he’d figured something out. “Apologies,” he said. “Sincere apologies.” He looked like he meant it, but I knew that I’d been played. The detective wondered about my temper. Now he knew.

“What do you want, Grantham?”

“I understand that you were at the Register of Deeds this morning. Mind if I ask why?”

I didn’t answer. If he knew that I was checking on his theories of motive, then he’d also know where I got the information.

“Mr. Chase?”

“I was looking at maps,” I said. “Maybe I’ll buy some land.”

“I know exactly what you looked at, Mr. Chase, and I’ve already discussed the matter with the Salisbury City police chief. You can rest assured that Robin Alexander will be excluded from every stage of this investigation from now on.”

“She’s already off the case,” I said.

“She stepped over the line. I’ve asked for her suspension.”

“Is there a purpose to this visit, Detective?”

He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. A sudden wind cut channels through tall grass in the fields beyond the barbed wire. Trees bent, then the wind vanished. Heat pressed down.

“I am a rational man, Mr. Chase. I believe that most things follow their own logic. It’s just a matter of figuring out what that logic might be. Even insanity has a logic, if you look deeply enough and in the right places. The sheriff is happy with Mr. Shepherd, happy with the confession.”

Grantham shrugged, left the rest unsaid. I finished for him.

“But you’re not.”

“The sheriff dislikes all of you. I assume that it has something to do with what happened five years ago, but I don’t know why and I don’t really care. What I do know is that Mr. Shepherd has been unable to provide any discernible motive.”

“Maybe he didn’t kill him,” I said. “Did you talk to Danny’s old girlfriend? She filed an assault warrant against him. She’d be the logical person to investigate.”

“You forget that Mr. Shepherd’s gun was used in the murder.”

“He never locks his house.”

He gave me the same unforgiving look I’d seen before. Then he changed the subject. “Judge Rathburn called the sheriff right after you left his office. He felt threatened.”

“Ah.”

“The sheriff called me.”

“Did you come out here to warn me to stay away from the judge?”

“Did you threaten him?”

“No.”

“Is your father home?” The shift was sudden, and it made me nervous.

“He’s unavailable,” I said.

Grantham’s gaze slid across my father’s truck, then up to the house. “Mind if I see for myself?” He started for the door, and I pictured my father in his state of fractured dismay. A sense of protectiveness filled me up. A bell started ringing in the back of my mind.

“I do mind,” I said, stepping in front of him. “This has been difficult for him. He’s in distress. Now is not a good time.”

Grantham stopped and his mouth compressed. “They’re close, aren’t they? Your father and Mr. Shepherd?”

“Like brothers.”

“He’d do anything for your father.”

I saw it now, the way it could play. Cold infused my voice. “My father is no killer.”

Grantham said nothing, kept those washed-out eyes right on me.

“What possible reason could my father have for wanting Danny Faith dead?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Grantham replied. “What reason do you think he could have?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Is that right?” He waited, but I said nothing. “Your father and Zebulon Faith go back a ways, decades. They both own land out here. Both are strong men, and capable, I think, of violence. One wants the deal to go through. The other doesn’t. Danny Faith worked for your father. He was caught in the middle. Frayed tempers. Money on the table. Anything could have happened.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Your father owns no handguns, but has access to Mr. Shepherd’s house.”

I stared at him.

“Mr. Shepherd refuses to take a polygraph. I find it odd that he would confess to a murder and then refuse a simple test that could corroborate his story. It forces me to re-evaluate the confession. It leaves me no choice but to consider other possibilities.”

I stepped closer. “My father is no killer.”

Grantham looked to the sky, then off to the distant trees. “Mr. Shepherd has cancer.” He looked back at me. “Are you aware of that?”

“What’s your point?”

The detective ignored my question. “I spent twenty years as a homicide detective in Charlotte. There were so many murders toward the end, that I could barely keep track of them. I had murder files on my bedside table, believe it or not. Hard to process that much senseless death. Hard to maintain focus. Eventually, I got one wrong and sent an innocent man to prison. He was shanked in the yard three days before the real killer confessed.” He paused and looked hard at me. “I came up here because murder is still somewhat unusual in Rowan County. I have time to dedicate to the victims. Time to get it right.”

He took off the glasses, leaned closer. “I take the job very seriously, and I don’t necessarily care what my boss has to say about it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’ve seen a father take the heat for a son, a husband go down for a wife and vice versa. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one friend take a murder rap for another, but I’m sure it could happen if the friendship is strong enough.”

“That’s enough,” I said.

“Especially if the one going down is dying of cancer and has nothing to lose.”

“I think you should leave now.”

He opened the door to his car. “One last thing, Mr. Chase. Dolf Shepherd was put on suicide watch this morning.”

“What?”

“He’s dying. I don’t want him killing himself before I get to the bottom of this.” He put his glasses back on. “Tell your father that I’d like to speak with him when he feels better.”

Then he turned and was gone, lost behind a window that reflected high yellow clouds and the deep blue of a windless sky. I watched him go, and thought of my father’s dismay and of the words he’d spoken with such conviction.

Strange things can happen in the human heart, Adam. There’s power there to break a man.

I still did not know what he was talking about, but suddenly I was worried. I looked from the rear of Grantham’s car to the second-floor window of my father’s room. It was barely open, no more than an inch at the bottom. At first, there was nothing, then the curtains moved slightly, as if in a breeze.

That’s what I told myself.

A breeze.

I wanted to talk to Dolf. Needed to. Nothing made sense: not Dolf’s confession, not Grantham’s suspicions. The only thing that made less sense than Dolf Shepherd killing Danny was the idea that my father had. So I went to the detention center, where I was denied visitation. Visitors are allowed, but only during certain hours and only if your name was on the list, which my name was not. Up to the prisoner, I was informed.