by Ace Collins
“Stuart’s awake,” Curtis said. “She’s going to make it. Hillman said she didn’t see who attacked her. Just that she had gone down by the creek and had just discovered Old Iron had been swept away. Someone must have come up behind her. Her neck’s bruised and she’s got a lump on the head. She remembers waking up in a moving vehicle. Her head was covered. Must have blacked out again. She didn’t know she had been shot.”
Lord, he had been hoping that she would have at least seen a face. Heard something.
“Diana, did they go down to the river?”
“You mean the team? No.”
“So they don’t know about the railroad tracks? ” He had told her about the tracks on their way back to Salem.
“I didn’t see how they tied in to the case, so I didn’t give Barton that information.”
Lije tried not to smile. He liked knowing something Hillman didn’t. “Thanks. Did Hillman tell you about the bullet information?”
Curtis avoided his eyes. “No, he hasn’t told me anything. But I’m sure the lab tech told him that he gave us the file.”
“I need to go back to Mountain View today, so I’m guessing you’ll be going with me.”
She was almost robotic as she turned and began walking toward the door. “I’m ready.”
“I meant after I finish my peanut butter and syrup sandwich.”
“Is that what that is?”
“Old family recipe. Our breakfast of champions.”
Curtis shook her head. “Go ahead and finish. Then we’ll hit the road. How in the world are you so thin?”
As he ate, she walked out onto the back patio, now shaded by a large maple tree. He watched through the window as she placed her hands on the deck railing and leaned forward. After he had savored the last few bites of his breakfast, he joined her.
“I can understand why your grandfather bought this hill and built his home up here. I can’t believe someplace this tranquil is actually in the city limits.”
“I’ve lived here almost my whole life, and I never get tired of it. Must admit, I’ve wasted a few days doing little more than looking out at this view.”
He turned to look at her. “I finished my breakfast.”
THE SKY BEGAN TO CLOUD OVER AND THE SUN PLAYED hide and seek as the white Crown Victoria pulled through the horde of reporters and media satellite trucks and headed out of Salem. Curtis had cleared a path by flashing her ABI credentials.
“Looks like rain,” Curtis said.
Lije nodded. As they rolled down Arkansas 9 at just under a mile a minute, his mind was not on the road but rather firmly locked onto the image of an old friend. He hadn’t thought of it until he heard about Mikki Stuart’s memory of that night. “Diana, where did Old Iron end up?”
“Actually, the sheriff’s department found it a hundred or so yards downstream. They tell me it’s in pretty good shape too. They’re trying to figure out how to get a crane in there and extract it. From what I hear, that’s going to be a tricky operation.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No. Why?”
“I’d like to take a look at it. We’re almost there. This may sound stupid, but that old bridge was always there, kind of like an old friend. I still can’t fathom any flood being able to knock it down. Guess I just want to see it to believe it.”
“Well, your timing’s good,” Curtis said. She tapped her turn signal and made a left. As she drove down the old road, Lije’s eyes were drawn to the hillside where he and Kaitlyn had tried to elude their attackers. The crime scene tape had been removed and nature had already started to reclaim the area.
His memory was no problem now. He could clearly remember the struggle, Kaitlyn’s screams, her last words, and the cold pain he felt when the bullet tore into his back. A sense of loss flooded his soul and a voice deep inside begged him to cry, to let loose a torrent of tears, to allow himself to grieve. Instead, he forced his eyes back to the road and looked ahead to the place where the bridge had once securely crossed the now docile creek.
After easing the car to a stop, Curtis stepped out into the humid air. Lije followed her to the creek bank. It was all he could do to keep from running down the bank as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.
“They told me it was down this way. I can see where they’ve been walking,” Curtis said.
They silently trudged along the creek, following the path the sheriff’s deputies and county road crew had blazed. They rounded a sharp bend and, like a ghost from another age, Old Iron appeared. It was resting upside down, with one end on the creek bottom and the other rising above the sloping bank.
As they approached the bridge, Curtis slipped into investigator mode. “Pretty much how I would have expected it to rest. Imagine the force of the water needed not only to tear it from its piers but then to carry it this far! Pretty amazing! I don’t know of a machine in the county that could have accomplished that.”
Lije didn’t reply. Instead he worked his way to the top of the bank and examined the end of the bridge that was most exposed. There it was, the place where he had carved his initials on his tenth birthday. Seized by a childlike urge, he climbed onto the bracing and up to what had once been the bridge’s roadbed. Though the metal framing was still solid, the wooden plank floor was all but ripped away. It was like seeing a friend mangled in a car wreck. He sat down on the base of the bridge and dangled his legs off the edge toward the creek.
This was the bridge where he and Mikki had played as kids. It was the place where they had shared their first kiss. It was the structure that had served as their diving board into the river and the last thing they’d drive over as they left town heading to Thayer for a movie. For hundreds like them, the bridge had been their anchor.
Finding his voice, he said, “When are they going to let folks visit Mikki?”
Curtis looked up from the bank. “Not for a few days. She’s still in ICU. With the meds they have her on, she’s not really aware of much anyway. Maybe when she gets off them she’ll remember more.”
“Sure hope so,” he replied. “Thankful she didn’t give her life for this madness.” Lije thought of Mikki’s kids and her husband, how glad they’d be to have her back. How lucky they all were that she was still alive.
Shaking the horrors of the near past from his head, he glanced back toward the spot where the bridge had been bolted to the concrete supports. Though he was hardly a mechanical engineer, what he saw surprised him.
“I wouldn’t have thought it would have snapped like that,” he said as he slid toward the end. “Did the ABI look at the bridge? ”
“Probably not,” Curtis said. “No reason to. It was just an accident or an act of God. Why, what do you see?”
“Look for yourself.”
Using the rails as if she were a grade-school student on the monkey bars, Curtis scrambled up beside him and looked at the spot where Lije was pointing. She then quickly crawled across the rail to the other side of the bridge. Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved her phone and tapped in one of her most frequently used numbers.
“Eddie, is your crew still in Fulton County? … Good, because our initial crime scene just got larger. The bridge—the one they call Old Iron—I’m sitting on it right now, and it didn’t just get pushed off the supports by the floodwaters…. Right. There are obvious charge marks on the metal. Someone blew this thing off its anchors. I have to get on down to Mountain View, but you and the guys need to take a closer look at this and at the bridge’s original location.”
She paused, then said, “Sounds good. Keep me posted. I’ve got Lije Evans with me. We’ll wait for you here.”
Lije caught her eye. “Did I hear you right?”
“Yep, you did see something strange. This thing was blown off its moorings. I would guess it was a professional job. This wasn’t just a prank. Someone who knew what they were doing took out that bridge for a reason.”
Curtis continued to examine the barely visible scorch marks on the
iron. After looking at one, then scooting back to the other, she nodded. “There’s only one reason I can think of.”
LIJE WAS GLAD CURTIS HAD A THEORY. HE SURE DIDN’T.
“Lije, you said someone forced you off the highway.”
He turned until his eyes met hers. What was she saying? What did he have to do with the bridge? “Yes, they forced me off the highway. Best I can remember, they had stayed behind me until just before we got to Farraday Road. Then they pulled up alongside and started ramming us. I had no choice but to turn.”
“That makes sense. And it fits my theory. Why did you stop on the side of the road and get out?”
“I lost control, slipped in the mud, and skidded over to the right shoulder. Ended up across the ditch. My original plan was to outrun them over the bridge and try to lose them on the other side of the old cemetery. I thought I was going to make it too. They had dropped back quite a long way behind me. I thought they were having trouble getting traction on the muddy road.”
Moving along the upside-down structure’s few remaining boards, Curtis plopped down beside him. “And that’s exactly what they wanted you to do. It was supposed to look like an accident. I think they blew the bridge earlier in the day or that evening, followed you from the diner, probably even followed you from the charity event, and then forced you to take Farraday Road. With the bridge out, they were going to chase you into the flooded creek. It would’ve all looked like an accident. Your skid forced them to take a different tactic.”
“We were supposed to drown? The shooting was not in the plan?”
“And no one would’ve ever investigated that accident. As far as hits go, this was about as well planned as I’ve seen. They knew your schedule. They understood the problems the weather was creating. And they knew how to cover their tracks and make it look like a horrible accident. It was really ingenious. But the weather played a trick on them. Caused you to get stuck. At that point they panicked. They had no choice. They had to get rid of you some other way. Probably figured they’d get away with it too until they saw the deputy’s car coming down the road.”
“But why? ” Lije asked.
“Don’t know that … yet. I’m working on it. My guess is that they had gone toward the creek to turn around and, when they saw Stuart’s car approach, they pulled off the road and stayed hidden. Then, when the ambulance left, they waited for Stuart to leave. Just her bad luck that she ran down to check on the bridge. Probably afraid she’d seen their car, they came up behind her, knocked her out, stuffed her in their vehicle, and hightailed it out of there. The backup patrol car couldn’t have missed them by more than a minute or two. Their only real mistake was not killing Stuart. Can’t figure out why they left her in the cave. Still, when they came back into town, they heard you were alive. That’s when they took the shots at us by your house.”
Lije shuddered in disbelief. Why would he and Kaitlyn be targets?Why would anyone go to all that trouble? What had they done? What did they have? And then he knew … Swope’s Ridge. But who was behind all this?
“You may not like it Lije, but this new element with the bridge just slipped the noose tighter around Jameson’s neck.”
“How?”
“She knew your schedule. She could easily set up the people to follow you. She knew that you would come home from the charity event via Arkansas 9. She knew you always stopped at Jim’s Diner. She knew about Farraday Road and the bridge. That you’d cross over into the cemetery. Someone had to be aware of all of those details to create such a perfect plan.”
“I still don’t believe it,” Lije said.
“I think Swope’s Ridge is little more than a diversion to take our focus off the real plan. Jameson doesn’t care about the property. She probably thought of the cave because Kaitlyn and she went there and found it as they toured the place, figured it was a good way to get rid of Stuart. The body’d never be found. Jameson had access to the keys, so it was easy to get in. But I’ll bet money she didn’t know about the Jesse James legend.”
“But the house was turned inside out,” Lije pointed out. “The caves have been thoroughly searched recently. Someone was looking for something, and it had to have something to do with why Micah Dean and Kaitlyn were killed.” There had to be something on Swope’s Ridge that triggered everything. Surely she could see that. It was clear.
“But who was doing the looking on the ridge? ” Curtis asked. “Has it crossed your mind that we may have two different groups here? Jameson admitted during her jail interview with Hillman that she visited Swope’s Ridge with your wife on two occasions. She could’ve told the men she hired, the ones who shot you and your wife and kidnapped Stuart, about the caves on the property, told them to dump the body in one of them. Shot Stuart, left her for dead. The folks who ransacked the house might have been someone else entirely. They could’ve finished their search weeks or even months ago.”
Lije mulled over the theory. Two groups, unrelated. Made no sense. Swope’s Ridge had to be connected to Kaitlyn’s murder. It was the only way things made sense to him.
“Small town crime is usually open and shut,” Curtis said. “Murders in rural areas are often the easiest to solve and have the least intrigue. The guilty party is almost always a relative or a close friend. I think your lawyer is there in the middle of it. She was like family. She fits the usual pattern of rural murders.”
Lije stared back down at the creek. The experts seemed to be gathering more and more evidence against a woman he knew was innocent. It now appeared he was Heather’s worst enemy. The more he did to try to give Heather hope, the stronger the case against her seemed to grow, as far as Curtis and the ABI were concerned. And what if they were right? If Heather was behind all of this, he didn’t know what he’d do.
THE SIGN READ, “WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN VIEW, HOME of the Arkansas Folk Festival.”
“What’s that? ” Curtis asked as she drove into the city.
“A sign,” Lije replied.
She glared at him. “You know what I mean.”
“The Arkansas Folk Festival is a music festival. This is a hopping little town. Everyone plays an instrument, and they often gather to have bluegrass jam sessions. They actually make handmade fiddles, guitars, and banjos here.”
“Sounds like fun.”
They pulled into a parking spot and got out of the vehicle. They stepped up onto the sidewalk and headed toward the police station. Curtis looked over at the man she’d been assigned to protect. This was not proper procedure, reopening a case like this. It bothered her. But not enough to stop. Like Lije, she needed to find out something. Had her boss compromised the truth? What was he trying to hide? Had she become an unknowing party to his agenda? And if he had done it this time, had he done it on other cases?
She followed Lije into the quaint small-town police station. He introduced himself to the receptionist and they were promptly ushered into the chief’s office. Curtis allowed all of this to happen even though she knew they were in way over their heads.
“Chief Hall? ” Lije said.
A wiry man not more than five-foot-eight greeted the two with a warm smile and firm handshakes. “I know you. You’re Diana Curtis from the ABI. Pleasure to have you here. I met you once at the ABI offices. And I know you, Lije Evans. I knew your father very well. A wonderful man. Of course, Mr. Evans, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am about your wife. I understand it was your partner was responsible. That makes it doubly tragic. Come on in, sit down.”
The chief continued, nonstop. “In fact, the National Enquirer has a cover story on the woman this week. I never read those things, but I picked one up last night at the Town and Country grocery. I also saw a piece about her and the problems that led her to commit this crime on one of the major cable news networks last night.”
Why didn’t Lije cut him off? Curtis wondered. This kind of talk was going to dig deep and just might set him off. Even if it was the truth, he didn’t need to hear it, not now, not yet. Yet Hal
l’s mouth just kept moving.
“You know, we in small Arkansas towns constantly fight for publicity and then someone from outside the area moves in and places us in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Mr. Evans, this coverage must make things doubly difficult on you. Once again, my heartfelt condolences. Why in the world would she do this? She must be a real animal.”
Lije said nothing. His only movement was a casual glance at the cover of the Intruder resting on the chief’s desk.
“Miss Curtis,” the chief began, his brown eyes afire with excitement.
“Please, call me Diana.”
“And you call me Luke. I insist on it.” He took his place behind the desk and leaned back in his chair. “Can you tell me what brings the ABI here?”
She glanced over at Lije, feeling nervous. He seemed to want her to take the lead. Though she knew what he was after, she wasn’t ready to reveal information that would throw this case wide open. She had broken a host of rules just by coming here. Now she’d have to fake her way through an off-the-books visit while making it look official. The hole she was already standing in was going to get much deeper.
With no real exit, she made like a professional, smiled, and tried to act as casual as possible. “Chief Hall—excuse me, I mean Luke—I’m also working on the case in Salem, so I need to do this as quickly as possible. If I decide there’s something here, then we’ll send in a full CSI team. Anyway, this is going to take you back a couple of years. I need a little background on a Mr. Michael Rivers.”
“Wow, that does take me back. Hadn’t thought about him in a while. This important?”
“I don’t know. It might have relevance to a cold case. If it does pan out, then you’d look like a big hero in Little Rock.” Appeal to his ego. Nice job, Curtis.
“Well for starters, everyone around here just knew him as Moony. He was in his late thirties, kind of strange, I guess disabled in some ways. I mean physically he was fine, but”—Hall pointed to his forehead—“upstairs he was a bit off center, if you know what I mean.”