Timothy Johnston - The Current

“You stay put,” he said and got out, hatless, and shut the door behind him. She watched him walk up the road with his eyes on the pavement. He looked at the place where Moran’s cruiser had sat, then he got down into a squat, then stood again and crossed the road toward the river. He stepped through the pines wide of where she and Moran had walked and he stopped at the bank and stood looking out at the ice. He looked again at the snow at his feet, then squatted again and looked more closely. After a while he stood and came back across the road.

The cruiser rocked with his weight and the door whumped shut and there was the smell of the pines and the snow on him. He looked at her and said, “Are you sure you’re OK? There’s blood in the snow.”

“It’s his,” she said, and raised the cast to remind him.

He looked at the cast. Then he turned and looked at the river again. Drumming the wheel with his fingertips.

“It’s gotta be a quarter mile from here to that spillway,” he said.

He turned to look at her, and she held his eyes. Either he believed her or he didn’t. She saw the ducks again, rising into the sky. She’d frightened them by coming up alive, and if she hadn’t been alive, if she hadn’t been able to swim, she’d have gone over the spillway maybe and continued on, under the ice again, all the way to the concrete bridge where Holly Burke had come to rest, and from there all the way down to Iowa and the other bridge where Caroline had gone under… all way to the Mississippi, all the way to the ocean.

“—and you didn’t get their last names?” the sheriff was saying. “Either one of them?”

It took her a moment. “No, sir, it never occurred to me. Hannah and Eric, that’s all I know.”

“And none of you thought to call 911.”

“I asked them not to. I asked them to take me home. They were just kids.”

“And why’d you do that? Why’d you ask them not to call 911?”

“Because a cop just tried to kill me.”

Halsey stared at her.

“And because I thought I’d killed him,” she said.

“You thought you’d killed him.”

“Yes, sir. He didn’t look too great, last time I saw him.”

The sheriff turned to look at the ice again. As if watching the scene play out before him. “Why wouldn’t he just let you drown, or freeze to death on your own? Why would he go on out there?” He turned back to her.

“I guess he wanted to make sure.”

“You guess. Based on what?”

She was out on the ice again, in that hole—Moran crawling on his belly, reaching for her, grabbing at her, grunting, trying to dislodge her from the ice.

“He wasn’t trying to help me, Sheriff.”

He sat watching her. Her eyes. Then he turned back to the river once again. Drumming the wheel again.

“Where do you think my car went?” she said.

“Oh, I expect it got towed,” he said. “There’s a mess of tracks out here.”

She watched him, the back of his head. The furrow of his sweatband in the thick hair. Then he stopped drumming the wheel and took his phone from the breast pocket of his jacket, worked it with his thumb and put it to his ear.

“Gloria, it’s me. Two—no, three things. Want you to have Deputy Moser stop whatever he’s doing and come out to Henry Sibley Park and find me. I’m about halfway in here, by the river. Then I want you to check with impound and see if they’ve got a white Ford Taurus, two thousand—” He glanced at Audrey and she said, “Five,” and he repeated it. “But first I want you to connect me to the Pawnee County Sheriff’s Department. Yes, in Iowa. Yes, I can hold.”

He turned to Audrey. “If he’s there, I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to the man.” He looked away again and said, “Thanks, Gloria.” And waited. Another few seconds passed before he said, “Good morning, Deputy Short,” and identified himself, and asked if the sheriff was in. He listened and said, “Not all morning? All right. Well, yes, I’d call it urgent. Why don’t you have him call me as soon as he can.” He confirmed the number and hung up and sat holding the phone.

“I have his card,” Audrey said.

“His what?”

“His card. At home. With his numbers.”

Halsey nodded. “We’ll just wait here a minute for the deputy.” He looked toward the river again. His fingers were quiet on the wheel.

“Can I ask you something, Sheriff?”

“You can.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it? When I came to see you before.”

He turned to her. “Tell you about what?”

“About Moran and Katie Goss.”

He stared at her. “What could I tell you?”

“You could’ve told me my dad went up to see her. To ask her about it.”

“I could’ve. But you wouldn’t have known any more than your dad knew. Or I knew.”

“So you knew about it—back then. About him going to see Katie Goss.”

“I knew about it. We all knew. Moran knew.”

“Moran knew?”

“Your dad asked him about that girl to his face. Confronted him with it.”

Audrey’s heart was rolling in her chest, rolling and pounding. “Were you there?”

“No, I was not. He did it in private. Then he told me about it later, also in private.”

“What did he say?”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

Halsey looked away, up the road. He shook his head, and she didn’t think he would tell her. But then he did. “He said he didn’t want to tell me what he was about to tell me, but he didn’t know what else to do. Said he needed my opinion on the matter. Then he told me what he’d asked Moran: Did he talk that girl into… whatever he called it so as to make it seem less than it was. So as to get an admission.”

Audrey waited. Watching him.

“That didn’t work, obviously,” Halsey said. “Moran said it was just a couple of high school girls telling stories to excite themselves. Said he’d swear to that in a court of law.”

The sheriff turned to her again.

“His word against hers,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

They sat watching each other, a long silence.

“And what did you say?” Audrey said finally.

“Told him what he already knew. Here was a girl, a young woman, who didn’t report it when it happened, allegedly, and who did not care to report it now. And here was his own deputy who flat-out denied it. Wasn’t much of a choice to make.”

“So he let him go.”

“That’s not how I would put it. Your dad made it, let’s say, difficult for Moran to stick around. And the man wasn’t so stupid or stubborn not to take the hint.”

She saw Moran again on the ice, on his elbows, the wounded-dog look in his eyes, a creature holding on to old pains, old betrayals.

“Why didn’t he—” she began. “Why didn’t my dad…”

Halsey waited. “Why didn’t he what?”

“Why didn’t he say something to the sheriff down in Iowa?”

“Same reason I didn’t,” said Halsey, and as he said it, the way he said it, the look in his eyes, she understood.

“Because he was a deputy,” she said. “Because he was one of you.”

Halsey said nothing. He seemed to study the back of his hand where it gripped the wheel, turning the rubbery padding in his fist. Audrey watching him, and with such intensity that his profile began to change, reshaping itself bone by bone—brow, nose, chin—and it was her father’s face pushing through, taking over Halsey’s face. She could smell him now too, the smoke of his last cigarette, the fuel of his Zippo lighter. But the voice, when he spoke again, was not his, and it all vanished.

“A story,” said Sheriff Halsey. “No witness, no corroboration whatsoever. Do you ruin a man’s life based on that? A man who’s had your back and whose back you’ve had? What if the tables were turned? What if it was you the story was about?” He turned to her. “What if it was your dad?”