by Paula Boyd
The second layer of pools began to fill and flow, all except the center one. I squinted against the sun, trying to see the problem. From my distant vantage point on the opposite side of the river, it looked like a big log or blob of trash had lodged against the rock edge of the upper pool.
This was not an immediate concern--despite the "Don’t Mess with Texas" campaign--since Styrofoam ice chests, plastic milk jugs, aluminum cans, and glass bottles are still considered important parts of the ecosystem here, homes for fish and such. There are also economic issues and civic duties to consider. If Bubba don’t throw his beer cans out the truck window, them boys in the orange suits won’t have nothing to do and widespread unemployment will wreck the whole economy. Oh, yes.
After a few minutes, enough water had built up behind the impromptu dam to push the blockage up and over the edge. The lumpy brown mass--which was looking bigger by the second--plummeted out and down the falls in one long clump, end over end, bouncing off the rocks and landing with a big splash in the river below us.
I didn’t gasp, but I did mutter an "Oh, shit." Even through the gush and foam of the water, I knew a dead body when I saw one.
Chapter 3
I heard a few mumblings about trash from people around me, but no one else even gasped or screamed. For the most part, everyone seemed content to keep their eyes on the fire hoses and see what happened next. Was I the only one who saw what looked like a wrapped-up corpse come shooting down the falls? Since wild screeching and mass panic hadn’t erupted, I had to assume so. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe it really was only a log. Or trash.
And maybe not.
Mother stared at the falls, still mesmerized by the water show. Thankful she hadn’t noticed anything amiss, I whispered to her that I’d be right back then took off before she had time to object.
I slipped through the crowd as quickly and unsuspiciously as I could, working my way away from the center of the festivities, following the downward flow of the river.
The fire trucks were still power-driving water over the falls, keeping the crowd’s attention and turning the river below into boiling murky rapids. Somebody needed to get the body out before it either sank or wound up in Lake Kickapoo. That somebody wasn’t going to be me, but I’d sure do what I could to help.
On the bright side, the bundle, which looked enough like a floating log to not attract too much notice, was zigging and zagging toward another walking bridge far downstream. Within seconds it would be out of sight of the cheering crowd.
I cut left through some bushes and saw a uniformed cop standing at the edge of the crowd. Oh, this was going to be good. He obviously hadn’t seen the body and I was going to have to tell him about it.
With all the people around, I couldn’t very well jump up and down and shout, "There’s a corpse in the river, follow me," so I hurried up to him and said something like "Emergency. Need your help," then darted back through the bushes.
After a few seconds, I heard him crashing along behind me.
Fairly well out of sight of the crowd, I hopped the decorative railing and scurried down the hill to the edge of the river. The cop came running up behind me, another uniformed officer behind him, and a tall dark-haired guy in boots, jeans, and a short-sleeved cream-colored shirt behind us all.
It took me about a second and a half to figure out the tall guy was Jerry Don Parker.
"There’s a body in the water," I said to the officer who’d finally decided to follow me.
That shook him up, but cop number two--who apparently had seen it for himself--came up and they began discussing what to do. One worried about sirens and confusion, the other about getting the body out before they lost it and had to drag the river.
I didn’t wait to find out what they decided because Jerry had stopped at the second bridge and was motioning me downriver. Best I could tell he was going over to the other side and wanted me to follow the corpse on this side. Fine, but who was going to get the thing out, and how?
Cop number one ran up beside me. "I’ll take it from here. We’ve got a rope coming."
I heard the unspoken "eventually" on the end of his sentence. Where was the patrol car, Montana? Then I remembered seeing several police cars out by the park entrance to channel traffic. That was going to take a while. I jogged along with the officer, wondering what I should do. Clearly, he thought I should get out of the way and wait. Maybe I should. I stopped and let him go on. Standing at the edge of the river, I watched Jerry on the far side and kept an eye on the corpse in the water.
The body had slowed down and was fairly concealed under the surface, at least until it hit a rock or a limb or an unseen undercurrent. Then it either disappeared completely or eerily popped up, head or feet first, like a doll in the hands of a two-year-old at bath time. What I had at first pegged as a tarp was nothing more than brown butcher paper, to use an unfortunate phrase, and it was pretty much all torn away now except where it was caught beneath the wraps of yellow nylon rope.
The river was about fifty feet wide, and odds were good that it was at its deepest here, the stretch that would handle any snafus or flooding from the new falls. Or that was my guess. But how deep was deep? Six feet? Ten? Twenty?
The body bobbed up and down in the muddy swirls, darting this way and that. But not close enough to the bank for anyone to grab it, not that anyone was looking foolish enough to try, except maybe the good-looking dark-haired guy on the far side.
Sheriff Jerry Don Parker was still running downstream, his eyes sweeping the water up ahead and the path of the corpse.
I feared greatly that he was looking for a spot to dive in. I surely hoped not. The body was as stiff as a cottonwood tree, so heroics were not exactly called for at this point, and nobody needed to be gearing up for CPR, unless maybe for Jerry if he decided to dive in and drown himself. I waved my arms and tried to get his attention. "Wait, don’t go in yet. Please! They’ve gone to get a rope."
He hesitated and frowned at me as if he either didn’t hear what I said or didn’t understand its importance. He moved closer to the water.
I had no idea how long it would take the cop to get back, but standing here doing nothing wasn’t going to help anything. Maybe I could find a rope closer than the police cars at the entrance. I turned and raced back up the bank toward the parking lot.
I did not run up the hill nearly as fast as I had run down it, but I did make it up to the asphalt without falling down or having a heart attack.
Panting like the out-of-shape, aerobically challenged slacker I am, I sucked in as much thick air as my burning lungs could take and kept jogging into the lot, looking for a pickup truck. Yes, there were plenty to choose from. I just had to be selective in my hunting. I needed a cowboy truck, one owned by a real live cowboy, not the urban drugstore dude variety. And I had to get lucky.
Then, as if fate had me by the hand, I saw the soles of a pair of boots sticking up out of the bed of a beat-up old white Ford. Either the truck held another dead body or an inebriated cowboy. The way things were going, I figured it could go either way. Nevertheless, I huffed and puffed my way over to take a closer look.
A peek into the bed of the truck confirmed that sometimes my instincts are pretty darn good. The well-worn boots were attached to a guy who had a battered gray hat over his face and was snoring--loudly. And in the bed beside him lay a well-worn saddle, blanket, bridle, and one real live roping rope.
I reached in and snatched up the lariat, then dashed back toward the river. I forgot about breathing and ran through the trees as fast as I could, then slid down the grassy bank across from where Jerry stood.
In the few minutes I’d been gone, several other observant attendees had joined in the follow-the-corpse game, which had apparently hit a snag--literally. The body was stuck in a swirling eddy, spiraling up and down like a jack-in-the-box.
A kid, probably in his mid-twenties, wearing a light green uniform-looking shirt and forest green pants, stood near the bridge, tossin
g a small roll of yellow cord from one hand to the other. He watched the officers, looking like he wanted desperately to help. Behind him, a dark-haired woman who looked a lot like Mrs. Pollock stood wringing her hands. Beside her, a couple of teenage girls in painted-on shorts, crop tops, and Tammy Faye eyes chewed on their fingernails.
None of these people needed to see what was about to dragged out of the river. I didn’t either, but that was beside the point.
The closest police officer was busy holding back the growing swarm of voyeurs and didn’t turn around to take the rope from the boy, which was fine since I had the real thing in hand anyway. Whether I would collapse before I got it to somebody who could use it was another issue. The half-mile sprint up and down the hill had set my legs to quivering and my lungs to gasping, reminding me exactly why it’s against my religion to exercise. It’s no fun--and it hurts.
I stumbled to a stop beside cop number one, who was still near where I’d left him, and tried to catch my breath as I waved the lariat at Jerry.
He looked up from studying the bobbing body situation and nodded, then stepped forward into the water as if he’d been waiting for me to return.
That hadn’t been the idea at all. I sure hoped he wasn’t thinking the rope I held would provide any security for him, particularly in my hands. I could maybe throw the stiff coils to him like a Frisbee, but if he wanted me to hang on to one end and throw the other to him like a calf roper we were in big trouble.
I took a step closer to the river and lifted the rope, intending to hand it to my new officer friend, cop number one. A firm hand caught my wrist and I jerked around.
An older man, probably in his sixties, wearing a sweat-stained gray cowboy hat on his head and weathered wrinkles on his face, had me in his grip. He didn’t smile or frown, just nodded and released my arm. He pulled on a pair of work gloves and plucked the lariat from my hand. "If you don’t mind, ma’am."
Before I could protest his theft of my stolen rope, he was swinging the thing in widening loops above his head.
Jerry was taking it slow wading into the river and had only made it in about thigh-deep.
Gathering a few of my wits, I said, "That guy in the water is a sheriff. You could throw him the rope."
The old cowboy didn’t say a word, just tossed a perfect circle at the bobbing body in the water. He caught the corpse around the neck on the first try, snugged the rope and started reeling it in. "This way’s easier."
Well, yeah.
He took the slack out, looping it up as he got the body to the bank. "And I get to keep my rope."
I fleetingly wondered if I’d committed some heinous cowboy crime that I didn’t know about. Surely rope stealing wasn’t a hanging offense. Then again, we’d just had a dead man over the falls so my little unsanctioned loan seemed rather insignificant. Besides, Cowboy had his special rope back and was now a hero of sorts.
Cop number two ran up with a canvas bag of something just as Cowboy got the corpse to shore.
I glanced across and saw that Jerry was out of the water and heading back upstream for the last bridge. Knowing he’d appear in a few minutes, my eyes involuntarily went back to the body and the nice big bullet hole in his forehead.
My stomach lurched upward and kind of hung in my throat. Distance. I needed distance between me and reality. I could turn away and run or I could do the mental thing and focus on pedantic details instead of murder. Since I felt frozen to the spot, I blinked away my dumbfounded stare and tried to see past the bullet hole.
Male, probably in his forties, eyes half closed, wearing black dress slacks and a mud-red dress shirt that had probably been white before he went into the river, and no tie. Scrapes and gouges marred his face, but something about him looked faintly familiar. I was certain I knew this man--or had at some point. I don’t know how long I stared, but the warm grip of a hand on my shoulder brought me out of my daze.
Jerry stood beside me. "It’s Calvin Holt," he said, guiding me away from the riverbank and the body.
As we turned I noticed a swarm of uniformed officers and emergency personnel had materialized around us. Paramedics had even arrived with a stretcher, as if there were a point to that.
"Remember him?" Jerry asked.
As we walked toward a big cottonwood away from the crowd, the name began to register. "From our class?"
Jerry nodded, and I mentally thumbed through my high school memories to place the man.
Calvin Holt had sat in front of me in every alphabetized classroom we’d shared. A skinny guy with brown hair and Coke-bottle glasses, but no particularly distinguishing features. Not a brainiac type that I recalled, just nerdy, one of those people who were kind of invisible.
No sooner had the thought registered than I felt a stab of remorse for thinking about the dead man that way--both now and then. The unpleasant feeling sank its claws a little deeper in my gut when I realized that I never really knew Calvin Holt--and there hadn’t been but maybe sixty kids in our entire graduating class.
Feeling lower and lower by the second, I decided to see if Jerry wanted to ride along on my guilt trip. "Did you know him?"
He shook his head. "No, not really."
"Ever talk to him?" I asked, hoping the answer would be no and we could commiserate on what lousy human beings we had been at age seventeen. I had a fleeting thought that I wasn’t doing so very great in the human issues department at forty-three, but I needed to assuage the old guilt before I started on the new.
"Sure," Jerry said, "I talked to him. Nothing special. Hi, got your homework, going to the game, that kind of stuff."
I sighed heavily. "I don’t think I ever even talked to the guy."
Jerry smiled. "Yeah, you did. I think it was the week before homecoming of our senior year. He went around red-faced and glowing for three days. Funny, I hadn’t thought about that until just now."
I groaned. Obviously I hadn’t even thought about it at the time--or noticed any glowing geeks in the hall. I did another run-through of the time and place, trying to determine what evil motivations I might have had for speaking to the poor guy. I suppose it was within the realm of possibilities that I was just being nice, but I didn’t think that highly of myself at the moment. "I was kind of hoping you’d convince me I’m not the slime of the universe."
He frowned. "Why would you think that, Jolene? You were always nice to everybody. Except maybe Rhonda."
Oh, yes, let’s not forget Rhonda. Sweet little "I’m gonna fucking kill you" Rhonda. She just loved saying that to me, but only when there were no witnesses. Even now Jerry wouldn’t see her for the evil witch she was--and no doubt still is, regardless of what Russell said. If she’d taken a dive off the new falls, it wouldn’t have dismayed me even a little. In a pinch, I’d have even given her a leg up and a friendly slap on the back for smooth sailing. Adios and good riddance.
A little voice in the back of my head chanted bad karma, bad karma. Okay, fine. I know better, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. In the general scheme of things I make a good effort to be a better human being, really I do. I own a library of self-help books, including audio versions by Deepak Chopra and Caroline Myss, which I've listened to so many times that I now actually like their voices. I’ve bought videos on yoga and tai chi, pulled a muscle trying to assume the lotus position and regressed myself back to a past life where I was burned at the stake as a witch. Big surprise there. I also toyed with Buddhism for a while, but the odds of ever quieting my mind or embracing that pacifist thing were about as good as winning the lottery, and you can just buy tickets for that. Yes, I do realize I’m not getting it.
Speaking of which, "Funny you should mention Rhonda," I said, very nicely, although my thoughts had slipped back to the dark side. "I heard she's here and I'm sure she'll be thrilled to see you. I need to be going anyway, but first tell me, how are the kids? And Amy?" No, I wasn't being sarcastic, really.
Jerry raised an eyebrow, looking half amused or maybe half annoy
ed. "Ben and Rachel are with Amy visiting her folks in Dallas. They’re all doing fine. The whole situation is just fine. And really, Jolene, you know I don’t care anything at all about seeing Rhonda."
Well, okay, I guess maybe I did, but it was good to hear him confirm it anyway. Rhonda’s vicious lies had incinerated my relationship with Jerry once before and I needed to know if she was in a position to do it again. I’m not playing that game again--ever.
And yes, I’ll also admit to being glad he didn’t have to rush off and take care of his kids--or his ex-wife, who I actually kind of liked. I think his kids are great, too, but they do present complications, or would, I guess, if we ever got to the point of having a real adult relationship.
"Here’s Rick," Jerry said, nodding toward a black-suited figure with blond hair and a scowl.
I am fairly good at finding things to distract myself with, but that was all about to come to a halt as Redwater Falls Detective Richard Rankin--aka Surfer Dude--headed toward us with a highly un-Rick-like glower.
Detective Rankin wore his standard double-breasted suit, but his hair was cut shorter than it had been in July, with only a few wavy gold locks left on top. The new do compromised his carefree beach boy look and the deep-creased frown on his face made him look older, maybe even old enough for me, not that I was actually thinking about such things.
Surfer Dude had kind of liked me back in July when we first met, which I would have known even if he hadn’t admitted it. I was flattered to be sure, but once he figured out the thing with me and Jerry--if it indeed can be called a "thing"--it sort of became an inside joke between us. From the grim look on his face now, however, I knew he wasn’t headed over for a round of playful flirting.
Rick stopped in front of us and nodded, acting all formal and uptight. "Jerry, Jolene." Considering the circumstances, I answered him with a fairly perky "Hi, Rick," but he seemed not to notice. He just stared at me for several more long uncomfortable seconds then turned to Jerry. "This is starting to feel like July all over again, Sheriff."