Alex Barclay - The Drowning Child

‘Sit beside me,’ said Paul, smoothing out the sofa cushion.

Clyde came back in. ‘I feel like I should offer you some coffee.’

Feel away. ‘There’s no need,’ said Ren. We’re happy with our current gut flora. She stood up. ‘Sorry, Clyde – I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Ren Bryce, I’m on the CARD team with Paul.’

Clyde sat down on an armchair, nodded without looking up. ‘You’re a beautiful lady.’

Ren laughed. ‘Thank you.’ Blind drunk already.

‘We wanted to talk to you about why you came to the press conference,’ said Ren, ‘and what you were saying about the lake, your concerns about Caleb.’

Clyde’s eyes went wide, but his gaze stayed on the floor. He was kneading something between his thumb and forefinger. He held up an opaque white stone.

Ooh – moonstone. ‘That’s beautiful,’ said Ren.

He held it out to her.

Cooties!

She took it in her hand. ‘It’s really beautiful.’ Hand sanitizer, hand sanitizer.

He beamed. She handed it back to him. ‘Thank you. Did you get that in Gemstones in town?’

Are you connected to Teddy Veir?

Clyde shook his head. ‘No, no...’ He kept shaking his head.

‘Where did you get it?’ said Ren.

He shrugged. ‘Been such a long time, I can’t remember.’

Ren nodded. ‘So,’ she said. ‘The lake... what can you tell me?’

There was a haunted look in his eye. ‘Aaron was a strong swimmer.’

Aaron? She and Paul exchanged glances.

‘He’d lived by that lake for seven years,’ said Clyde. ‘I was so shocked...’ He trailed off.

‘That he drowned?’ said Paul.

Ren could see Clyde’s hand shaking. His foot started to tap the floor.

‘Clyde,’ said Ren. ‘You can trust us. I promise. What is it?’

‘The lake...’

Ren leaned into him. ‘Are you... afraid of the lake?’

He thought about it, brought his gaze a little higher, his eyes pale, watery, flickering with questions.

‘I’m afraid of Gil Wiley.’

The what now? ‘Wiley?’ said Ren.

‘Wiley...’ said Clyde, ‘is going to kill me.’

‘ Why do you think that?’ said Ren.

‘Cos I drive him crazy – that’s why. That’s why I’m always trying to get past him to Pete. But Wiley stands in my way the whole time.’

Always? How many times do you come forward with shit?

‘He’s a dismissive man,’ said Clyde. ‘Very dismissive.’

‘ What do you feel he’s dismissing?’ said Paul.

‘What I’ve been trying to tell him,’ said Clyde. ‘About Aaron Fuller.’

He lowered his head, then brought his wide, fearful eyes for the first time to meet Ren’s. ‘I don’t think it was an accident,’ said Clyde. ‘Or maybe it was. I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘But something else definitely happened to Aaron. I think... maybe he had been hurt before he went into the water.’

Ren’s heart was pounding. She nodded calmly.

Let’s not freak him out.

Let’s not hang on his every word, either.

Reliability level? Blood alcohol level?

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘Talk us through why you think that. We’re listening.’

Clyde nodded. ‘Thank you. OK, so when you get a bruise, you break capillaries and blood leaks out, but it could take ten or twelve hours for the bruise to come up. If you die, your heart stops, the blood’s not pumping around any more, so the bruise might never appear. Aaron was found floating in the lake – lucky to be found, too. If he didn’t go in somewhere shallow, he wouldn’t have been.’

‘It would have been spring before the body surfaced,’ said Ren.

‘Exactly.’

‘At autopsy,’ said Clyde, ‘the ME figured he drowned – that’s what the evidence pointed to. But, you know, an ME will only resect the back tissue if it’s an abuse case, or he suspects abuse and therefore hidden bruising. But, otherwise, if the back looks fine, he would have no reason to do that.’

Ren nodded.

‘How it works is, embalming fluid replaces blood in the vascular system,’ said Clyde. ‘It makes any blood that’s in the tissue stand out better...’

It’s so weird listening to words like that coming out of a man like him. He loves this. And it’s been taken away from him.

‘When that happened with Aaron,’ said Clyde. ‘I saw a large bruise at the center of his back...’

Ren’s heart rate shot up.

‘That bruise could have been because he was hurt before he died,’ said Clyde. ‘Or... because someone was holding him under the water.’ He shifted forward in his seat. ‘That could’ve been the mark of a knee in his back is what I’m trying to say.’ He shrugged. ‘At the very least, though, I think he suffered an injury of some kind.’

Holy shit. ‘Absolutely,’ said Ren.

Clyde’s face was flooded with relief.

And now for the awful part. ‘I have to ask,’ said Ren. ‘I’m aware that you lost your job that day—’

‘I was stone-cold sober when I worked on Aaron,’ said Clyde.

‘Please look at me,’ said Ren.

Clyde shook his head, his lips pursed.

Ren reached out and squeezed his forearm. ‘We’re not here to judge you, not in any way. We just need you to tell us the truth. I can’t stress to you enough how important this is. We need the absolute truth, here, OK? Whatever that is. Because we can do something about it, once we know...’

Tears filled Clyde’s eyes. He wiped at them with his sleeve. ‘I’m a goddamn mess, I’m a mess...’

‘No, you’re not,’ said Ren. ‘That was a difficult job for you. Embalming a child, the child of someone you knew...’

‘Yes!’ said Clyde. ‘It was terrible.’

Ren waited. She could hear his breathing, growly, uneven. She looked at his fingers and noticed, for the first time, the nicotine stains. She imagined his hands before they spent most of their time gripping a bottle of liquor, younger, paler hands, years from being gnarled and ruddy, and yellowed.

All that alcohol flowing through your veins. Then embalming fluid.

I’m a terrible human being… . who loves alcohol flowing through her veins.

‘I may have had one drink...’ said Clyde.

Fuck. ‘One?’ said Ren.

He kept his eyes on his hands.

‘Look at me,’ said Ren. He didn’t .

‘It was only... it... it... took a lot out of me,’ said Clyde. ‘Brought back some bad, bad memories. This boy, only a boy, laid out, his life over, only eleven years old. Do you remember being eleven? I do. I was having the time of my life, it was all ahead of me. You never for a second think anything bad’s going to happen to you, you just think that whatever dreams you have will come true. And...’ He shrugged. ‘You never know when your life is going to be taken – gone, up in smoke. I know that, after I left the job, a seven-year-old kid was brought in – choked on a sandwich. Gone. Just like that...’

‘Pete mentioned that to us,’ said Ren. She paused. ‘What bad memories did Aaron’s death bring back for you?’

‘I... my sister,’ said Clyde. ‘My sister, Lizzie, died. She was only ten years old. She fell through a rotted deck at Lake Verny. No one listened to me... I... was the custodian there. It was a summer job when I was in high school, but I took it seriously. But, I guess, no one took me seriously.’

Ren nodded. ‘That must have been very hard for you. But your sister’s accident wasn’t your fault.’

He looked up at her. ‘I should have pushed harder. I should have ignored the owners when they said not to fix the deck yet.’