Timothy Johnston - The Current

“I read about that,” she said.

“And the judge read Danny’s letter, too,” he said. “Whether or not it influenced his decision to deny bail, I can’t say, but the result is the same, which is Moran sitting in that jail until trial.”

“But that doesn’t get you any closer to finding my son, does it.”

“No, ma’am, it doesn’t. I’ve got nothing to connect Moran to your son’s disappearance except that letter, and that doesn’t help us find him.”

“And that bullet hole?”

The sheriff glanced at the truck. “Well, like I said on the phone, we couldn’t find a match with Moran, so we’re continuing to run down local registrations, but that’s a lot of rifles and a lot of”—he hesitated—“innocent citizens.”

He’d been about to say dead ends, she knew.

“And it wasn’t Gordon Burke’s,” she said.

“No, ma’am. Not even the right caliber. Far as I know, the only vehicle that rifle ever shot was Moran’s.”

She nodded. She didn’t know what else there was to say. To ask. She would have to sit and wait. Get through each day. Each hour. As she’d been doing since the day he didn’t call.

The sheriff glanced back at his deputy, and the deputy put away his phone and opened the door of the cruiser.

But the sheriff didn’t go. He stood looking down at the gravel, or his boots.

“There’s just one more thing,” he said, and looked up again.

Rachel waited.

“I thought maybe you could shed a little light on something for me,” he said.

“All right.”

“I asked your son about it—I asked Marky—but he didn’t seem to understand what I was asking.”

“What did you ask?”

“I asked him why he put Moran’s cruiser up on the lift like he did. Did you know about that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, he did. He was supposed to just fix the light, but then he got it up on the lift and found a leak in the pan.”

“So?”

“Oh, it’s nothing he did wrong.” The sheriff scratched at his forehead, lifting the hatbrim, dropping it again. “It’s just the thing is, if he hadn’t’ve done that, Moran would’ve been on his way to Iowa, and he might not be sitting on his ass in my jail right now.”

Rachel watched him. The sheriff watching her.

“I’m not sure I understand the question, Sheriff,” she said, and he waved his hand and said, “Well. I’m not sure I do either. I just thought maybe he’d said something to you about it, that’s all.”

Rachel shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sheriff.”

“All right then,” he said, and glanced toward his deputy. “We’d best be on our way. You have my number.”

“I have your number.”

He tipped his hat again like some old cowboy and turned and went back down the drive toward the cruiser, his boots crunching in the gravel.

When they were gone she went to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door—not glancing toward the rear tire, not seeing what was there in the otherwise-clean blue fender—and she stood looking in at the duffels, the cardboard box, the kits of tools all packed away, but not packed as he’d have done it himself. They’d searched through everything, of course, as they’d once searched his room, and this time they’d put it all back together again as best they could but it was not as he’d done it himself; it was not his work she was looking at but only his things, and before she could think too much about that she shut the door again and went back into the house to make the tea she’d been about to make when she’d seen her son’s truck pull into the drive, and a few minutes later she carried the mug up the creaking stairs and there was no dog to follow her or to carry in her arms, or to follow her into his room, wagging his old tail expectantly, as if this time he would be there, surely this time…

The bed gave a squeak when she sat on it. Same little bed the four of them had sat on one night playing cards—the five of them: she and the boys and Katie Goss and Wyatt. Danny and Katie laughing and teasing and so young.

She sat looking around the room: his desk, the bookshelves. His hockey stick and skates in the corner. The bare plaster walls. The window. After a while she got up and set her mug on the desk and went to the window and lifted—and lifted harder until the frame abruptly raised and the sash weights knocked and rang in the wall like dull bells. She’d never gotten the storm windows up in this room and it must’ve been so cold at night, the few winter nights he’d slept here.

She stood leaning on the sill and breathing in the spring and looking down on the backyard, yellow and green with the thaw. The old clothesline post and the brown patch of earth there. Her boys running around the yard and swinging from the clothesline until it had gone crooked and Grammy Olsen asking, What the heck happened to my clothesline post? and Rachel shrugging and saying, I don’t know, Grammy, maybe it was the wind .

She heard something—kids, coming home from school. Their high voices as they spilled from the bus into their yards. And within those cries she heard her own sons’ voices, and Holly’s too, and she saw the girl once more in her purple Easter dress, running through Gordon’s woods, a bright spot of color searching for smaller spots of color, the poorly hidden eggs. Her squeals, her happiness!

But there were no children out this way—or none close enough to hear, unless it was the McVeigh kids, who lived in the house on the other side of the rented field, and unless the wind was just right. Which maybe it was.

She wiped her face with her fingertips and turned back to collect her tea from the desk, and it was then she saw it—the piece of metal on the desktop, next to his Big Dam Mug. It was a bolt. Placed upright on its hexagonal head. Heavy. Not old. Well cleaned but smelling of oil. She stood looking at it a while, her heart knocking dully in her chest, then returned it carefully to the desktop, exactly as she’d found it, so that it would be there when he came home.

SHE FOLLOWED THE county road out of town and it was the same road they’d been on that night and this time the station appeared on her right instead of her left and when she saw it in the early dusk, the bright square of window, the pumps standing in the garish light of the tin shelter, her heart broke freshly and she had to swallow down a sob, Oh, Caroline!

It wasn’t the woman with the soft pink face in the window when she pulled in, but a skinny man who stood bent at the waist and leaning on his elbows, his head hung down below his shoulders like a man in sorrow, and he did not look up. She parked to the side, away from the pumps and next to the only other vehicle in the lot, a white and dented pickup with blisters of rust around the wheelwells. She cut the engine and sat there with the windows down, and she could smell the river, the icy yellow water, the taste of it even. As if it had been this car and not the RAV4 that had gone under the ice and filled with the river and had been fished out again and drained and put back on its wheels again, There you go, miss, good as new, and—

Audrey?

Yes?

What are you doing?

Nothing.

Are you going buggy on me?

No.

Then get your ass in gear, girl. We haven’t got all night .

The skinny man had not moved and as she passed by the window she watched to see would he move at all, and just before she stepped out of view he flipped the page of a magazine and the bill of his cap followed the page and he was still again.

She stepped into the shadows where the shelter lights did not reach and she stood on the concrete as she’d stood that night, and she could smell the ladies’ room through the door to her back but she could not smell the boy. Could not smell the gas on his clothes or the beer and cigarettes on his breath or the grease on his hand when he put it over her mouth. Could not even smell the pepper spray. Beyond the concrete was a coarse terrain, barren but for yellow weeds and a solitary pine tree, and she took a few steps into that meaningless land, but it was hopeless; he could’ve thrown it any direction and he would’ve thrown it far, and would there be anything under its little wooden fingernails anyway, or would it be useless, like her memory?