HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down

by T. J. Brearton

  Liz knew that she was at a fork in the road. She had known it was coming for a few weeks now, had felt it, had dreamt it, but she’d especially experienced the portent of it the other night. Sitting there wrapped in the blanket, overlooking the pond, she’d known. Part of her was dying. It was the part that would be able to think like this, would be able to question, would still yearn for those people to step outside of themselves — not just them, for anyone to step outside of themselves and ask why, and want to know. She could go the other way. She could just blend into it, be taken into it, become it. In a year’s time, maybe more, maybe less, she would be unrecognizable to herself. She would be gone, this Liz would be gone.

  She watched the blood flow out of her and she closed her eyes. She sensed it going. Like nothing else, of all that could be, of all that remained untold.

  Liz reached over and gripped the nurse’s hand, Maddy’s hand. She looked up into Maddy’s eyes and she saw that the nurse was looking down at her, watching her. She had questions to ask, so many questions. She wanted to know all about the little boy, where he came from, who his mother was, why she was here, why her blood was compatible, what sense any of it made, but she couldn’t. She didn’t. Maddy’s eyes brimmed with their own tears, and the woman was smiling. Liz felt, then, if anyone would listen, if anyone would care, it was this woman whose hand she was holding.

  The cop had been in the room for a minute, the investigator, Milliner. He had come in just before things had begun and he had talked with Maddy and she had nodded and then he had left. Now it was just the three of them, Liz, Maddy, and the little boy.

  Within minutes, they were rolling the two of them down the hallway to the surgical unit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tom walked the floors of Fletcher Allen Hospital. He was on the pediatrics level. A young woman was pushing a stroller with a small boy wrapped completely except for his face. Tom said hello and she said hello and he asked how the baby was doing. The young woman said that she had been in the hospital with her child for two months. The baby had been born with some of his intestines on the outside. Tom nodded and listened and then they parted ways.

  There was a room where toys abounded and small chairs were parked around a low table and coloring books were out and Dr. Seuss books lined the shelves. Another woman was there, with a little girl in a blue dress and her hair done up in pigtails. Tom said hello, and admired the room, and made a joke that it was the break room for all of the very short doctors. The woman smiled. Her baby girl had cystic fibrosis, and was undergoing some new form of treatment.

  He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He felt as though he were securing the area, clearing it for his own peace of mind. What Samuel said had been disturbing.

  The defectives were coming. They would come for the child.

  Cruickshand had not answered his phone. Tom decided to go outside and try again, and have a smoke at the same time.

  As he took the elevator down, something occurred to Tom. It wasn’t so much rational thought, or even an image, it was just something that washed over him. As the elevator descended Tom saw all of these children, young “defectives” themselves, born into great physical adversity. He saw the parents, the caregivers. Some with no money, some with money. Some politically conservative, some liberal, some young, some old. There was no one type, not superficially. The type was something else. Somehow, in some manner, these people had been given a gift. A type of strength, or grace, or both. Either they had had it to begin with, or they’d cultivated it, Tom didn’t know. But, he felt, nearing the ground floor, they had been chosen. And then they, themselves, had chosen, too.

  Tom walked out of the set of electric sliding doors and into the cool night. Flakes were falling as the spring evening heeled its way back into colder territory. He lit his Marlboro and dragged and watched the people come and go. Then he flipped open his phone and prepared to dial Jim again.

  That’s when he saw them, standing along the road where the arc-sodium hummed as round, amber balls of light over the sidewalk. Kids — younger than Christopher and Samuel. Eleven, twelve years old. There were dozens of them, standing in a line along the sidewalk. Watching the hospital. Watching him.

  “Jesus,” said Tom, his breath coming out in front of him. “Here we go again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Divers bobbed in the pond. There were people everywhere. Red Rock cops. County deputies. The Sheriff, Johnston, was there. Jim’s fellow state troopers. EMTs. News crews. It was almost midnight, and there were damned news crews here. Didn’t those goddamned people ever sleep? The Sheriff was taking the interviews.

  Jim wondered where Assistant DA Sarah Locke was. Maybe she slept. Probably she was sleeping next to someone or other. Sarah was another looker. A smoker, Jim and his buddies called her. He’d asked her out before; she was a divorcee, but she’d been a stuck up bitch about it, saying she didn’t date cops. What a fucking line. Jim thought, as he had more than once, about writing and publishing a book. He’d call it, simply, “Cunts,” and he’d write all about women like Sarah Locke, and about their bullshit lines, their bullshit lives. Then he’d write about taking them anyway, giving them a good solid fucking that they’d never forget, handcuffs and all.

  Jim blinked. He swayed on his feet. What the hell was he thinking?

  The activity surrounding the Kingston place was unlike any he’d seen in his twenty-four years as a trooper, save for the manhunt for Chad Rowe and Billy Preston, two escapees from Red Rock Falls Correctional some three years ago, and the search for the boy who’d disappeared from the convenience store after calling 911 — that’d been quite an undertaking: a hundred people sweeping the woods, flashlights, dogs. Something out of this world, Jim had thought, all those people organized and searching for one little boy. They’d never found the poor son of a bitch, though. Never found him. It had been too cold, anyway, Jim had always thought, and the kid had probably frozen to death the first night. Probably they’d never found a body because it had been dragged off by coyotes, maybe a bear. Tommy Milliner had never forgiven himself, either.

  There was a time, Jim thought, when mountain lions roamed the Adirondack forests. When there was real danger from the animals. You still got a call about a bear in someone’s back yard, raccoons tearing up a garbage shed, coyotes coming around and nabbing a few chickens, sure, but that was nothing. That marked the death of the true animal way, anyhow, when they came around the humans and started to feed on their refuse and take easy prey. Human beings were dumbing down the animals. Robbing them of their instincts and resourcefulness. Making them just as sick and lazy as the humans were. Maybe that was why some stupid loon had been splashing around in the pond when its instincts should have had it finding cover.

  Jim spat to the side. He stood on the edge of the Kingston lawn, the land steep in front of him, dropping down and away to the pond at a sharp angle. He watched the divers, their facemasks and slick wetsuits shining with pond water and rain. Jim watched them, his hands on his gun belt, wad of Honeycutt Special in his lower lip, and waited for them to pull a young girl’s body out from the rain-pocked water.

  Jim wondered where the other girls were. He turned and walked toward the house and then around it and made his way through the gaggle of people amid the twirling red and blue lights, flashing purple against the surrounding evergreens. The air smelled of exhaust and oil.

  In the back of a Red Rock County car was the Kingston boy, Jared. Jim batted away a reporter with a microphone and opened the passenger door to the car and got in. Officer Branch was in the driver’s seat, taking a statement. Jim interrupted her.

  “Who else were you working with?”

  The kid looked scared, tired. He was dirty and wet. “Nobody,” he said. “I was hunting a coyote. They came around last night. A whole pack of them. I put the ones I killed in the shed . . .”

  “Bullshit,” said Jim, grabbing the mesh between them. He leaned in. “You had girls in there,
you son of a bitch. I saw them. I saw them myself. You must’ve had someone else haul them out. Who?”

  “Jim,” said Michelle.

  “Shut up,” he said to her. “What about the guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “The one your girlfriend mentioned, smartass. Before she got hauled out of here this morning, she called us, said there was a guy.”

  “There was a guy here? Who?”

  Jim banged out of the patrol car. “Alright,” he said. He opened the back door to the vehicle, reached in and grabbed Jared Kingston by his clothes, attracting the attention of other officers, neighbors who’d come around, and the media. He shoved Kingston up against the side of the car, paying the onlookers no mind. “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Jim was inches from the Kingston boy’s face. He could smell the kid’s sour breath, traces of alcohol, sweat, bile. He released his grip. Branch had gotten out, too, and was standing on the other side of the car, watching. Jim started to walk away and then spun around and got back in Jared’s face. “I know you,” he said to the kid, his voice almost a growl, his lips curled back. “I know you,” he said again, and grabbed the kid, and shook him once, and let him go.

  Trooper Jim then strode to his own vehicle, got in, and fired it up. He blared the horn at the other cars and trucks and the news van blocking the road. People promptly got in and moved out of his way.

  * * *

  Michelle Branch resettled Jared in the back of her vehicle. Investigator Blaine, from the next county, came over and Michelle rolled down the window.

  “What was that all about?”

  Jared blurted out, “What guy? What guy was here?”

  Blaine looked at him and then back at Michelle Branch.

  Michelle put the vehicle in drive. “I’m taking him in. See you at the station.”

  Blaine nodded and stepped back as the patrol vehicle rolled out. He turned and looked at the Kingston house sitting there in the dark.

  The activity was mainly on the other side of the house, at the pond. Blaine headed in that direction, pulling out his Nikon and snapping pictures here and there, of the shed, of the porch, the woods around it, the trail leading around to the back and to the pond. He watched the divers, listening to the sounds of splashing, the water that was as black as oil, skimmed with darting bugs.

  The pond felt like a thing to Blaine, something other than a body of water, something with a kind of awareness. He put the camera to his eye and snapped a picture.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Where is his mother?”

  Elizabeth was coming to. She licked her lips, which felt waxy and swollen. Her tongue was fat in her mouth. She had been dreaming about the pond, and in the dream it had been daytime, and yet the pond had been as black as night itself, and full of stars. She had been sitting in the Adirondack chair.

  This nurse nearby was not the buxom nurse, Matty or Matilda or whatever her name was. It was a young woman with auburn hair and thick-rimmed black glasses on and a white coat. She wasn’t a nurse, after all.

  “Hello. I’m Sophie. I’m a resident here.”

  Liz wasn’t quite sure what the young woman was talking about. She tried to sit up, pushing herself to her elbows, at least, and looked over to the bed beside her. It was empty.

  “Where did he go?”

  “He’s fine,” said Sophie. “How are you feeling?”

  “Where is his mother? Why isn’t she here?” Liz was still looking at the bed and when she looked back to Sophie, the “resident,” with the clipboard and binder held together against her flat chest, Liz saw concern on her face. “What?” asked Liz. “Did everything go okay?”

  “Everything went very well,” said Sophie, but she remained pensive, conciliatory.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? Where’s Maddy?” That was her name. Maddy.

  “Ms. Kruger is getting some rest. So should you. You’ve had a busy night.”

  Liz looked down at herself. There was still the IV coming out of the top of her hand with a piece of gauze tape over the needle. Around the place where the IV went in was a yellow, sour looking spot. Liz was wearing the silly gown that hospital inpatients wore, only she couldn’t remember changing out of her clothes.

  “I don’t want to rest. I want to get up. I want to see the baby. The little boy. Where is he?”

  “He’s down in pediatrics. If it makes you feel better, a police officer is down there with him.”

  “Why is there a police officer with him? What’s the matter?” Liz stretched further up in the bed so that she was sitting, still resting on her elbows. It made her dizzy, and she shut her eyes.

  “You should lie down.” Sophie stepped closer to the bed and put a hand on Liz’s head, and attempted to ease her back. Liz moved her head away.

  “Sorry,” said Liz.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s the officer that came with you. The one in the red-checked jacket. He’s not there for any sinister reason. I think he’s resting too. Keeping our little friend company.”

  Sophie’s face transformed from the wrinkled, concerned look into a bright smile. She was much more attractive with a smile, Liz thought. A skinny young woman, maybe around thirty. Bookish, a librarian type. She reminded her of Finna. Liz started to feel very alone, very lost. She hated the feeling.

  “I don’t understand where the baby’s parents are,” Liz said, still sitting, blinking away the quicksilver of dizziness. “Why they aren’t here.”

  “Well,” said Sophie, and the smile was gone and the pinched, overthinky look appeared again. Liz thought she was hiding something.

  “Maddy told me about them. A really young girl. An addict. Is she dead? Why wouldn’t she be with her baby?”

  “We’re still trying to figure a few things out.”

  “About what? About where she is?”

  “About who she is.”

  “You don’t know who she is?”

  “Well,” said Sophie again, and she turned her head. A man Liz had not seen before was standing in the doorway, also with a white coat on. He wore a blue shirt underneath and a golden and amber tie with diagonal stripes. Liz thought he was handsome. Maybe a few years older than Sophie. He had tight curly hair, short against his head. Even across the room Liz could see the gray around his temples, above his ears. His nose twitched and he rubbed it with a finger. He carried a clipboard of his own in his other hand.

  “Hello,” the man said. “How are you feeling?”

  Oh boy, thought Liz, here we go. The man walked across the room slowly, his head at a slight angle, smiling at her. Liz had seen that look before; too many times. The last guy that looked at her like this was bringing her first breakfast after her detox. “I’m Dr. Simpson.”

  He reached the foot of the bed. He didn’t look at Sophie, only at Liz. His eyes were cobalt; in their center hard pieces of coal, the color of his hair. He reminded her, in a way, of an older Christopher.

  “I’m feeling okay.”

  “Good. Good to hear. Have you gotten any rest?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Thanks to the drugs, thanks to this fuck-circus of a day. A day that began with me shooting my ex-boyfriend, who, only the night before, had peed a barrel’s worth all over my floor, a day where I got hauled away from my house in some redneck detective’s car, wanted to kill myself, lost the ability to speak or move, got taken to a hospital where they told me that I was the best candidate for a baby’s blood transfusion, and then, after the lights went out in the goddamned hospital, rode in the back of an ambulance for two hours to come here, undergo the strange, somehow clandestine operation, get sedated and awake to find you all staring at me like I’m mentally retarded and spit-bubbling at the mouth. Yes, I’m rested.

  “Elizabeth, I need to ask you some very personal questions, okay?”

  Liz just looked at him. She looked at Sophie, who offered a wan smile. I
t was tough to hold her concentration, as if something was deliberately trying to keep her just off-center, floating out on tangential clouds instead of grounded to the here and now.

  “Is there anyone you’d like to have here with you? Can we call anyone?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Liz, “you mean a lawyer? Does this have to do with this morning?”

  Sophie was shaking her head. “It has nothing to do with this morning, honey,” she said. Honeydoll, thought Liz, honeybaby. “We’ve spoken with Officer Milliner, and he’s told us not to worry about any of that; you’re fine, okay?”

  Liz just looked at her, thinking that Sophie could use some lip gloss, and some conditioner wouldn’t hurt those split ends, either. Thinking that Sophie must be crazy if she thought there were no charges against Liz, who probably could have still smelled the gunpowder on her fingertips if it weren’t for all the antiseptic. Jared had said — what had he said? Trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry.

  “Can I get something to drink?”

  Sophie pulled a clear plastic cup of water from somewhere outside of Liz’s peripheral vision and handed it to her. Liz drank. “Slow,” said Sophie. “Slow. There you go.” She held her hand underneath the cup and Liz’s chin as if Liz were going to dribble it or drop the cup.

  Liz finished the paltry contents and licked her lips and handed the cup back, looking at Sophie with her best put-on smile and said, “Thank you.” She then returned her attention to curly-headed Simpson. “What sort of questions did you want to ask me?”

  Dr. Soap Opera walked around the bed and sat half on it next to Liz. He put one of his hands over hers. His touch was smooth, cool. The way he looked at her was making Liz start to feel uneasy. Like she was some sort of protozoan he was glaring at under a microscope.

  “Do you have any children?”

  The question made her forget, temporarily, her urge to flee. She forgot about where she was and what the circumstances were. For some reason, the question felt loaded. As if they knew something regardless of what she said.