Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

“You did what? I haven’t asked you to-” Claire stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her now, and Eric stuttered for just a moment, interrupted by her return. It was all the gap Paul needed to plunge ahead.

“I thought it was imperative that you know who hired this man before you made any decisions on how to act, so I pointed out that their client might be protected by his attorneys but that they had to disclose said attorneys, if nothing else. If anyone was going to stonewall, it had to be the law firm. They didn’t like that but I mentioned a district attorney friend who’d be happy to call them and clarify the issue and possible repercussions, and they gave me the name of the firm: Clemens and Cooper.”

“Terrific,” Eric said. “But if all they’re going to do is keep up the secrecy-”

“Well, the thing is, I have a few friends at Clemens and Cooper. I put in a call to one and said, without any explanation, that I understood they represented a man named Campbell Bradford and I needed to know which partner handled his interests. He just called me back this morning to tell me I was wrong-they don’t represent Campbell, but they do represent his son.”

His son. Alyssa’s husband.

“His full name,” Paul said, “is Lucas Granger Bradford. Does that mean anything to you?”

Claire was at Eric’s side now, her hand on his arm. Her touch seemed hot on his skin, a cold shiver rippling through him.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it does.”

“He’s married to the woman who hired you, correct?”

“Yeah,” Eric said, but that wasn’t the point of interest-the first and middle names were far, far more fascinating.

“Okay. Well, I called Lucas this morning. He told me you had called him last night and threatened him?”

“What? Paul, that’s insane. I’ve never spoken to the man. And Claire was with me, she was here the whole-”

“I believe you, son. Of course, I believe you. I told Lucas he had some issues he was going to need to respond to, explained the criminal charges that could be brought his way if any withholdings put you or my daughter in jeopardy or sent undue police pressure your way. He was resistant. I was persistent.”

Eric almost grinned despite himself. About damn time Paul’s abrasive personality worked for him instead of against him.

“Did he tell you anything?”

“Not much. But he did say that the reason he hired a detective involved a letter written by his father, who is now deceased. The letter made some unusual claims, and he wanted to have it checked out before it hit the legal system. Evidently, the old man wanted this letter attached to his will, part of his estate order.”

“What did it say?”

“He won’t disclose that. He just said that he was sure the letter was the ravings of senility and that’s what he intended to prove with the detective. He told me that he had not informed his wife of the situation, and he was unaware of her hiring you. When he found out she had, he asked his investigator to call you off.”

“There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that,” Eric said. “He didn’t try to call me off, he tried to pay me off. It’s not so innocent, Paul.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. This is all that I’ve got so far, though. I’m trying to help.”

“You have helped,” Eric said. “Paul, you absolutely have helped.”

Lucas Granger Bradford.

Yes, this was help, indeed. Paul was still talking, but Eric could no longer focus on his words. He was carrying on about the need for an attorney and people he could recommend, and Eric cut him off.

“Look, Claire really would like to talk to you. I’m going to pass the phone over to her. But Paul… I appreciate this. Okay? I want you to know that I appreciate this.”

“Of course,” Paul said, and there was a sense of genuine surprise in his voice, like he didn’t understand why he’d be thanked, like he’d forgotten the conflict that had existed between the two of them for years. He and Claire were good at that sort of thing.

Eric passed the phone over to his wife and then got to his feet and went into the bathroom, closing the door to mute the sound of her voice. The headache was nudging around again, and enough nausea that he had no appetite, but right now those things didn’t matter. He’d been given a gift, a piece of understanding. He used his cell phone to call Kellen.

“I was right,” he said. “We were right. The old man in Chicago who was calling himself Campbell Bradford was actually named Lucas. And he was the nephew of the moonshiner, Thomas Granger.”

“How’d you determine that?”

“My father-in-law just called. He found out that the PI firm was retained by my client’s husband and gave me his name. It’s Lucas Granger Bradford. He gave his son his own real name, and that middle name was his uncle’s last name. You think we can find the spot where he lived?”

“We’re damn sure going to try,” Kellen said.

ANNE McKINNEY WOKE EARLY, as was her custom the last few years. Her body just didn’t tolerate long stretches of sleep anymore. For three seasons of the year that wasn’t such a problem, but the winter mornings, when darkness lingered long after she rose, were a burden on the heart.

She stayed in bed longer than she ordinarily would, let the clock pass seven and carry on till eight and then she sighed and got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She washed and dressed and came out into a living room filled with strange gray light. Not the light of predawn but the light of a cloud-riddled sky. It was long past sunrise but still the house was painted with shadows and silhouettes. Stormy.

There was no rain now, but it had evidently come down hard throughout the night, because her yard was filled with puddles and the tree branches hung heavy. The wind had not fallen off in the way that it typically did after a front passed through, but continued to blow, the porch a choir of chimes as she moved toward the front door. She felt the force of it as soon as she got the door open, an unusually warm wet wind for dawn. Where was all that wind coming from? She put it at just below twenty miles an hour.

She was wrong. According to the wind gauges, it was blowing twenty-two, this after the storm had finished its work. The barometer was still falling, but the temperature had risen overnight. That and the wet, rain-soaked earth would give this new front lots to work with. There’d be storms aplenty today, and some of them might be fierce.

Down at the end of the porch a flash of white caught her eye, and she took a few shuffling steps and leaned over the rail and stared into her own backyard. Way down by the tree line, parked close to the woods but carefully positioned behind her house, was an old pickup truck. Now, who in the world could that belong to? It had come in during the night, clearly, but there was no one behind the wheel.

“Get the license and call the police,” she said softly, but the truck was a long way off across the muddy yard, and suddenly she didn’t feel like being exposed out there, wanted to get back inside with the doors locked and the phone in her hand.

Her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, and the yard was noisy with the wind and the chimes, but still the man must have moved silent as a deer because she was absolutely unaware of his presence until she turned back to face the door. He was standing in front of it with a shotgun hooked over his forearm. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him just yet. She gave a start, as anyone would, took a small step backward. He gave a cold smile, and it was then that she recognized him.

Josiah Bradford.

A local ne’er-do-well, not one she’d have troubled her mind over in the past, but he was more than that to her today. He was Campbell’s last descendant, and something mighty strange was going on with Campbell.