John Hart - Down River

“Who’s on the list for Dolf Shepherd?” I asked.

Grace was the only name.

I turned for the door, then stopped. The guard looked bored. “There must be a way,” I said.

He regarded me evenly. “Nope.”

Frustrated, I went to the hospital. My father had told Grace about Dolf and I could only guess at her thoughts and feelings. In her room, I found an unmade bed and today’s newspaper. Dolf’s arrest was page one news. They ran his picture under a headline that read: MURDER NUMBER TWO AT RED WATER FARM.

The facts on Danny’s death were slim, but the descriptions were lurid. Partially skeletonized remains were hauled out of a deep crack in the earth on a bright, blue day. Dolf’s confession was more certain. Although the sheriff had scheduled a news conference for the following day, reliable sources were apparently talking. And speculation was rampant. Five years since another young man was killed on the same farm.

My picture was on page two.

No wonder my father was drunk.

I closed Grace’s door behind me and sought out the nurse’s station. Behind the counter was an attractive woman who told me, in clipped tones, that Grace had been discharged from the hospital less than an hour earlier.

“On whose authority?” I demanded.

“On her own.”

“She’s not ready to leave the hospital,” I said. “I’d like to speak to her doctor.”

“I’m going to ask you to lower your voice, sir. The doctor would not have allowed her to leave unless he felt that she was fit to do so. You are welcome to speak with him, but he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Damn it,” I said, and left. I found her sitting on the curb outside of the detention center, a bag of clothing clutched in her lap, her head bent. Hair hung limply over her face and she was rocking gently as cars blew past less than five feet away. I parked as close as I could and got out. She did not look up, not even when I sat down next to her. So I looked at the sky, watched the cars. I’d been here less than an hour ago. We must have just missed each other.

“They wouldn’t let me see him,” she said.

“You’re on the list, Grace. You’re the only one he wanted to see.”

She shook her head, and her voice was all but gone. “He’s on suicide watch.”

“Grace…”

“Suicide watch.” Her voice gave out, she started rocking again, and I cursed Grantham for the hundredth time. She wanted to see Dolf and he wanted to see her. She could ask the questions that I could not; but Grantham had put him on suicide watch. No visitors allowed. I suspected that Grantham’s decision had as much to do with keeping Dolf isolated as it did with keeping him alive. It was smart. And it was cold.

The bastard.

I took Grace’s hand; it was limp and dry. I felt slickness at her wrist and saw that she had not even taken off the hospital bracelet. The swelling was down in her face, the bruises gone yellow at the edges. “Do you know that he has cancer?”

She flinched. “He didn’t talk about it much, but it was always there, like another person in the house. He tried to prepare me.”

I had a sudden revelation. “That’s why you’re not at college.”

Tears threatened and she dashed a hand across her eyes before they could spill out. “All we have is each other.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let me take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” she said. “I need to do something. Anything.”

“You can’t stay here.” She lifted her face and I saw the grief. “There’s nothing you can do.”

I took her back to Dolf’s house. The whole time, she held herself as if some deep part of her was frozen. Occasionally, she shuddered. I tried to speak once, but she shut me down. “Just leave me alone, Adam. You can’t make this right.”

It was pretty much the same thing I’d said to Dolf after my father threatened to kill me.

She allowed me to lead her inside and sit her on the edge of her bed. The bag she’d been carrying fell to the floor, and her hands turned palms up on the bed beside her. I switched on the lamp and sat next to her. Her tan was washed-out, her eyelids heavy. The stitches looked especially cruel on her dry, passive lips. “Can I get you some water?” I asked.

She shook her head, and I saw that some of her hair had gone white, long strands that gleamed as hard as stretched wire. I put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her head.

“I yelled at your father,” she said. “He came to the hospital and told me. He wanted to stay with me after he broke the news. He told me I couldn’t leave the hospital, that he wouldn’t allow it. I said some pretty awful things.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “He understands.”

“How can I make this go away?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know why he’s doing it, Grace. What I do know is that you should go to bed.”

She rose to her feet. “I can’t do anything useful in bed. There has to be something to do.” She paced three quick turns, then stopped, and stood still. “There’s nothing I can do,” she said, looking stricken.

I pulled on her hand, drew her back down to the bed. “Can you think of anyone else that might want Danny Faith dead? Anything at all and I’ll check it out.”

She raised her head, and her eyes held such pain. “You don’t understand,” she said.

“What do I not understand?”

Her hands tightened on mine and her eyes turned mirror bright once again. “I think that maybe he did it.”

“What?”

She stood abruptly and took hard steps to the far corner of the room. “I should not have said that. Forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Grace, you can trust me. What’s going on?”

When she turned, the line of her mouth was unforgiving. “I don’t know you anymore, Adam. I don’t know if I can trust you or not.”

I stood, opened my mouth but she rode over my words.

“You’re in love with a cop.”

“That’s not-”

“Don’t deny it!”

“I wasn’t going to deny it. I was going to say that it’s not relevant. I would never put Dolf in harm’s way.” Grace backed into the far corner of the room. Her shoulders drew up, as if to protect the vital parts of her neck. Her fists clenched. “I’m not your enemy, Grace. And I’m not Dolf’s. I need to know what’s happening. I can help.”

“I can’t tell you.”

I stepped toward her.

“You stay right there!” she said, and I saw how close she was to truly breaking. “I need to figure this out. I need to think.”

“Okay. Just calm down. Let’s talk about this.”

She lowered her hands, and the shoulders came down, too. Resolution moved in her. “You need to leave,” she said.

“Grace-”

“Get out, Adam.”

“We’re not done here.”

“Get out!”

I moved for the door and stopped with my hand on the frame. “Think hard, Grace. This is me, and I love Dolf, too.”

“You can’t help me, Adam. And you can’t help Dolf.”

I did not want to leave. Things still needed to be said. But she slammed the door in my face, leaving me to stare at thin, blue paint. I wanted to beat the door down. I wanted to shake sense into a frightened woman that should know better. But she was like the paint, so thin in places that I could see raw wood beneath. I slid my hand down the door, and paint flaked away. I blew bits of it from my fingertips.

Things were in motion that I could not begin to understand. Things had changed, people, too; and my father was right about one thing.

Five years was a long time, and I knew nothing about nothing.

I called Robin. She was at the scene of some domestic disturbance and told me that she could not speak for long. In the background, I heard a woman screaming obscenities and a man repeating the words, “Shut up,” over and over.