John Hart - Down River

“Do I know you?” she asked.

Two keys hung on a ring at her waist, the plastic key fob shoved under the elastic of her shorts. I smelled breakfast in the bag and guessed she’d walked to the local barbecue joint for takeout.

“You’re Candace, right?”

Much of the initial fear had left her. It was early morning next to a busy street. Five thousand college kids were no more than a block away. “Candy,” she corrected me.

“I need to talk to you about Danny Faith.”

I expected her face to pinch, but instead, it loosened. Her lips spread to show a single, corrupt tooth on the right side. Tears widened her eyes and her breakfast hit the ground. She clamped her hands over her face, hiding the bright pink rip in her otherwise flawless skin.

She shook, a weeping wreck.

It took her a minute. When the hands came off, her face was splotched white where fingers had pressed too hard. I picked up the warm bag and handed it to her. She fished out a napkin and blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just found out yesterday that he was dead.”

“Do you care?” I asked. “He gave you that scar,” I said. “You filed an assault warrant against him.”

Her head dipped. “It don’t mean that I didn’t love him.” She sniffed, trailed a dry corner of the napkin beneath one eye, then the other. “People fix mistakes all the time. People move on. People get back together.”

“May I ask what you were fighting about?”

“Who are you again?”

“Danny and I were friends.”

She made a damp sound, raised a finger. “You’re Adam Chase,” she said. “He talked about you a lot. Yeah. He said you were friends, said you could never have killed that boy. He said so to anybody that’d listen. He got in fights about it sometimes. He’d get drunk and angry. He’d talk about how great you were and how much he missed you. Then he’d go out and look for people saying things about you. Five times, six times. Maybe more. I can’t remember all the times he came back bloody. A lot. It used to scare me.”

“Blood can have that effect.”

She shook her head. “Blood don’t bother me. I have four brothers. It was what came after.”

“What do you mean?”

“After he calmed down, washed the blood off, he’d sit up late and drink by himself. Just sit in the dark and get all weepy. Not like he was really crying.” She made a face. “It was just kind of pitiful.”

The thought of Danny standing up for me hit hard. After five years of silence, I’d assumed that he’d written off the friendship, moved on with his life. While I tried to bury things, Danny was protecting the memory. It made me feel worse, if possible. I’d interpreted my exile as a mandate. Do whatever it took to get through the hours. Forget your family and your friends. Forget yourself.

I should never have doubted him.

I should have kept the faith.

“He called me,” I said. “You don’t know what he wanted, do you?”

She gave a head shake. “He never mentioned anything.” Her eyes were red, but drying. She sniffed. “Want a cigarette?” she asked. I declined and she pulled a crumpled pack from the back of her shorts. “He has a picture of you in his room. The two of you, I guess I should say. He had his arm around you, but not like he was sweet on you or anything. You were all muddy, laughing.”

“Dirt biking,” I told her. “I remember.”

She took a drag, and the smile died on her face. She shook her head, and there was such meaning in the gesture. I thought that she might cry again.

“What did you and Danny fight about?” I asked.

She dropped the cigarette, crushed it with a green, rubber sandal and I saw how pink polish had chipped away from her toenails. She did not look up. “I always knew he had other girls,” she said. “But when he was with me, he was completely and totally with me. See? Those other girls didn’t matter. I knew I was the one. He told me so. None of them others would last. It’s just the way Danny was. And it’s not like I could blame them.” She laughed wistfully. “There was something about him. Something that made me put up with it. With all of it.”

“All of what?”

“The girls. The drinking. The fights.” She broke down again. “He was worth it. I loved him.”

Her voice fell off and I prompted her. “He hit you?” I asked.

“No.” Weak voice. “He didn’t hit me. That’s just what I said. I was mad.”

“What happened?”

“I wanted to hurt him, but you can’t tell the cops, okay? They asked me the other day, and I told ’em that he had. I was scared to change my story.” She paused. “I just wanted to show him.”

“You were angry.”

When she looked up, I saw the black gulf behind shining, blue eyes. “He tried to break up with me. He said it was over. What happened to my face… That was my fault. Not his.”

“How so?”

“He didn’t hit me, like I told the cops. He was trying to walk away and I was pulling on his arm. He jerked it and I tripped on a stool. I fell into that window.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “He’s gone. The warrant means nothing.”

But she was crying slow, oily tears, her head loose on her neck. “I put the cops on him. I chased him into hiding. Maybe that’s what got him killed.”

“Was he into something illegal?”

She shook her violently, either answering in the negative or refusing to answer at all. I couldn’t tell. I asked her again. No answer.

“Gambling?”

A nod, eyes closed.

“Is that who beat him up four months ago? The people that took his bets?”

“You know about that?”

“Who handled his bets, Candy?”

She choked up. “They beat him so bad-”

“Who?” I pushed.

“I don’t know. Danny said they’d been looking for him. They went to the motel. They went to the farm. He went missing for a while beforehand. I think he was hiding from them. You should ask Jamie. He’s your brother, right?”

“Why should I ask Jamie?”

“He and Danny ran around a bunch. Went to the ball games and the gambling clubs. Dogfights somewhere out in the county. Cockfights. Anything they could bet on. They came home with a new car once, won it from some guy over in Davidson County.” She smiled thinly. “It was a junker. Two days later, they traded it for beer and a moped. They were friends, but Danny said once that he couldn’t trust Jamie the way he trusted you. Said Jamie had a cruel streak in him.” She shrugged. “He really missed you.”

She was still crying a little, and I needed to think about what she’d said. She was the second person to think that Jamie and Danny were mixed-up in gambling together. George Tallman had said basically the same thing. I considered the implications. I gave her a second. The hard question was coming up. “Why was he breaking up with you, Candy?”

She tilted her head so far to the side that I saw nothing but baseball cap and dry hair bleached to the color of soap. When she spoke, I could tell that the words hurt. “He was in love. He wanted to change his life.”

“In love with who?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“No idea?”

She looked up, unforgiving, and the scar twisted when she spoke. “Some whore.”

I called Robin as Candy Kane walked away from me. I heard traffic sounds when she answered. “How’s it going?” I asked.

“Slowly. The good news is that the sheriff’s office has, indeed, been looking for Zebulon Faith. I’ve spoken to some of the same people, covered a lot of the same ground. Bad news is, I’m getting the same answers. Wherever Faith went to ground, it’s out of his name or off the grid.”

“What do you mean?”

“I checked with the utility companies for Rowan and surrounding counties. As far as I can tell, he has no other properties, nothing with a phone or power hookup. I’ve got other irons in the fire. I’ll keep you posted.”