Timothy Johnston - The Current

“So, I’ve gotten to know him,” she went on, “and he’s told me a little about… back then. About Holly. And I know how bad my father felt about that case. I know how much it bothered him.”

“It bothered all of us.”

“Yes, sir. Well, all of this got me thinking back to that time, and how it wasn’t long after the Holly Burke case that Deputy Moran quit the department and went down to Iowa”—she looked to the sheriff to confirm the timeline and the sheriff nodded—“and I remember asking my dad why he was leaving, why Deputy Moran was leaving, and my dad saying it wasn’t any of my concern.”

Halsey said nothing. Waiting to hear something that required his response.

“Which of course it wasn’t,” she said. “But now, after going in the river, after Caroline, and after—” She stopped, hearing the struggle in her own voice, the distress of it. A kind of choking, childhood feeling. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right,” said Halsey. “Do you want some water?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.” And after a moment she was: her heart no longer racing, her lungs working again.

“After everything,” she said, “I guess I just wanted to know what it was. What he wouldn’t talk to me about.”

Halsey picked up his pen and tapped it once on the desk on its ballpoint and then once on the other end, and set it down again.

“Did your dad generally talk to you about his work? About the goings-on of law enforcement?”

“Yes, sir.” She’d been his deputy herself, she wanted to remind him, but she couldn’t say that.

“And his deputies? He talked about us too?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Not about you, though.”

“No, of course not.” He picked up the pen again and gave it a click with his thumb. He leaned back in her father’s old chair and regarded her from that new distance. “And so you’ve come here hoping I could tell you something your father wouldn’t. About Sheriff Moran. Do I have that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded. “All right.” He clicked the pen. “And why would I do that? I mean, even if I knew what he didn’t want to talk to you about, why would I talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess because that was ten years ago. I guess because what does it matter now?”

“That sounds like my argument. What does it matter now? What good can it possibly do you?”

She held his eyes. “I can’t explain it. Maybe after you tell me I can, but otherwise…” She sat watching him. The sheriff watching her.

“And what if I have nothing to tell you?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that when we get there.”

He looked at her a long while, saying nothing. Then he leaned forward again and put his forearms on the desk and sat turning the pen between his fingers, frowning at it. Her father’s watch was ticking away on her wrist. Finally the sheriff looked up and said, “I just can’t imagine what good it can do anyone to rehash any of it, but if you want to know did Deputy Moran leave because of anything having to do with the Holly Burke case, then I can tell you unequivocally and categorically no. As to whatever it was your dad didn’t want to talk to you about, I find his own words entirely… adequate. None of your concern. I don’t mean to be harsh about it, but I don’t know what else to tell you.”

He paused, watching her, but she had nothing to say, and after a moment he said, “Ed Moran by all accounts has been a fine sheriff. And I’ll say further that I sympathize with the man’s frustration in your own case down there. Under the circumstances.”

She watched him, and seeing that he’d finished she nodded and thanked him and began to stand.

“Now hold on there a second.”

She sat again.

“You said you’d think on things once we got there, and now we’ve got there.”

“Yes, sir. Well. I guess I can’t think what good it would do to tell you anything more right now myself. I guess we need to go some other route.”

“Some other route?”

“Yes, sir.”

He watched her. “Young lady, I sure hope you’re not getting mixed up in something here.”

She stood and he watched her stand. He didn’t get up. Then he got up and came around the desk and reached in front of her for the doorknob.

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“You take care,” Halsey said. He watched her pass through the outer office toward the glass doors and he was standing there yet, holding the edge of the door to his own office after she’d gone.

GLORIA STOOD AT the bottom of the steps in her overcoat, and when Audrey came down the steps the older woman smiled and held up a cigarette and said, “Nasty old habit.” The cigarette was just-lit, and there was a whiff of butane in the air.

“Not so nasty,” Audrey said.

“Oh, did you want one?”

“No, thank you.”

“Good for you. Ginny, my daughter, started nagging me to quit when she was nine and has never stopped.” She looked at Audrey, standing there in the canvas jacket. “Your dad,” she said, “he’d say, ‘You need to quit those things, Gloria,’ and I’d say, ‘I will if you will, Sheriff,’ and he’d say, ‘That’s a deal.’ And then we’d both finish our smokes and get back to work.” Her eyes shone behind the lenses, and Audrey looked down at the concrete.

When she raised her head again Gloria was still looking at her.

“Well,” said Audrey, “it was nice to see you, Gloria.” But before she could turn away, the woman reached with her free hand and took hold of Audrey’s sleeve. She glanced back up at the glass doors, then leaned in so close that Audrey could smell her cigarette breath.

“I don’t want you to think I was eavesdropping, but sweetie I hear every word that man says in there, since day one. Sometimes I have to remind him to lower his voice but he just doesn’t seem capable of it.”

Audrey didn’t know what to say to that.

Gloria said, “Well, I heard enough and I’m sorry I heard and I don’t want to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong but I’m gonna tell you one thing, so long as you promise me you never heard it from me, all right?”

Audrey nodded. “I promise.”

The woman took a fast drag on her cigarette and glanced once more at the glass doors and blew the smoke from the side of her mouth and said, “Katie Goss.”

“Katie Goss.” Audrey knew that name but didn’t know how. Then she did: Katie Goss had been Danny Young’s girlfriend, all those years ago.

“Katie Goss,” said Gloria. “She’s up in Rochester now. She works at the nursing home up there, Green Fields or green something.”

Audrey looked at the woman. The eyes behind the big lenses watery but bright.

“All right?” Gloria said.

“All right.”

“Good.” She dropped her cigarette on the concrete and mashed it under her tennis shoe and left it lying there. “Tell you one more thing,” she said.

Audrey waited, looking into those eyes.

“She wasn’t the only one,” Gloria said.

IT WAS CALLED Green Meadows, not Green Fields, and the woman who answered the phone put her on hold and she sat in the sedan with the phone to her ear listening to recorded music. The sun was going down, and from where she was parked she could see a stoplight turning green, yellow, red… green, yellow, red. At last the music ended and another woman said, “Hello?”

“Katie Goss?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Audrey Sutter. I’m so sorry to call you at work but—”

“Audrey Sutter?”

“Yes. I couldn’t find any other number for you, I’m sorry…”

There was a silence that went on. Audrey could hear the other woman breathing. She could hear people talking in the background. From a distance someone yelled as if he’d just been stabbed.