So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “I think it’s true.”

  “Is this Eric Shaw? You better believe I’m calling the police to report this.”

  Eric Shaw? Now what the hell was that supposed to mean? Shaw was working for the guy… unless the story he’d told Edgar about working for a woman in Chicago had been true. But then who was the woman?

  “The police will be called—”

  “Really?” Josiah said. “That’s what you’d like? Because I have some interesting documents in my possession, Lucas. And your detective, he had some interesting things to say before he died.”

  That last bit was improvisation, but it silenced the prick’s tirade, seemed to take a little of his heat away.

  “I’m not worried about that,” he said, but there was no strength in his voice.

  “Here’s what I understand,” Josiah said. “Some funds have been authorized to resolve what you perceive as a crisis. One hundred thousand dollars, I believe.”

  “If you think you’re getting that now, you are out of your mind.”

  “I’ll get what’s owed to me.”

  “There’s nothing owed to you.”

  “I disagree, Lucas. I firmly and vehemently disagree.”

  As he heard the words leaving his mouth, Josiah frowned. Danny was right—he was starting to talk funny. Not like himself, at all. That probably wasn’t a bad thing on a call like this, though. A disguise of sorts, albeit unintentional.

  “I’m not interested in the hundred grand,” he said. “I don’t find that sum to be satisfactory. In fact, I haven’t determined what will be satisfactory. I’m still considering.”

  “If you think we’re in a negotiation, you’re mistaken. I know my wife had no idea what she was doing when she hired you, but she regrets it now, and any further contact you have with this family will be done through attorneys. I encourage you to find a good one. My recommendation is that it be one with criminal defense experience, too.”

  When my wife hired you? This was interesting. This was different.

  “Never call this house again,” Lucas Bradford said.

  “Now, Lucas,” Josiah began, but the line had clicked and gone dead. He switched to the other cell phone and called Danny.

  “What happened?” Danny said, his voice choked with either alcohol or sleep or both. Hell of a guy to have working for you on a stakeout. “What’s going on?”

  “I think you best get your eyes open,” Josiah said. “I do believe there may be a police appearance at the hotel shortly.”

  “Why? What are you talking about?”

  “Eric Shaw should be getting some visitors,” Josiah said, and then he hung up and sat in the dark with a grin spreading across his face. Shaw would buy him some time, and that was good, but moreover he’d enjoyed this first brush with Lucas G. Bradford. He liked the rich bastard’s tone, the sense of control, the belief that he could run this world and everyone in it. He thought he was strong, and Josiah was pleased by that. Let it turn into a battle of will, Lucas, let us see who breaks first.

  45

  FOR A LONG TIME Eric sat on the balcony, sipping the water he’d taken from the faucet in the spa and waiting for visions, but none came. Eventually, he went back inside and pulled the curtains shut and turned off every light before he got into bed. Around him the room existed in shadows and silhouettes and nothing changed within it or entered from outside. At some point consciousness slid away from him, folded beneath sleep.

  The thumping on the door woke him.

  He let out a grunt and sat up, blinking at the dark room and trying to get his bearings. Just when he thought he’d imagined the sound, he heard it again. A knock.

  The clock beside the bed said it was twenty past one.

  He sat in bed, supported by the heels of his hands, and stared at the door. It’s Campbell, he thought, and then he turned and looked at the door to the balcony, as if he could run out there and hide like a child or fling himself from it and sail down to the floor below and escape.

  Another knock then, louder this time.

  “Shit,” he said under his breath, and then he got to his feet, wishing for a weapon. He’d never had any interest in guns as an adult, though he’d hunted as a boy, but he wanted one now. He ignored the peephole because he was afraid to peer out and see what waited, chose instead to unfasten the lock quickly and jerk the door open.

  Claire stood in front of him.

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to wait until morning,” she said, and then she stepped past him and into the room.

  He closed the door and locked it, then pulled on jeans and a T-shirt while she sat on the edge of the bed, regarding him like an engineer inspecting a building’s structural integrity, searching for cracks. He had not seen her in more than a month. Her beauty struck him now just as it always had, or maybe even harder because it had been so long. She was wearing jeans and a black tank top over a white one, no jewelry and no makeup, and her hair was tousled in the way it often was after a drive because she liked to have the windows down. He’d always loved that about her, had always liked a woman who didn’t mind being windblown. There were laugh lines around her mouth, and he remembered telling her he was proud of them when they began to show because he could take credit for plenty of them. There were also lines on her forehead now, though, creases of frowns, of sorrow and pain. He could take credit for plenty of those, as well.

  “What are you doing here, Claire?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t think it was good to wait until morning. The conversations we had today were getting progressively worse. Scarier.”

  “What did you do, climb out the window and rappel down from Paul’s penthouse? There’s no way he would’ve wanted you to be a part of this.”

  “Actually,” she said, “he encouraged it. He thought it was a dangerous idea for you to be alone. Medically, and legally.”

  He grunted.

  “Can I see it?” she said.

  “See what?”

  “The bottle.”

  “I don’t have it, remember? Kellen took it up to Bloomington to have it tested.”

  “I didn’t realize you sent the whole thing. I thought maybe he just took a sample. I wanted to see it.”

  “Well, it’s gone.”

  She’d given him an odd look when he told her the bottle was gone, and he wondered if she was searching for proof, looking for some sort of sanity test.

  “You’ve stayed here tonight?” she said. “Haven’t left the hotel?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I looked for your car in the parking lot. If you were gone, I was going to hunt you down and kick your ass.”

  He couldn’t find anything to say. It felt so out of place to be in the room with her, to be looking her in the eye again. She sensed the response.

  “You may not want me here. I understand that. But I’m worried. If you come back to Chicago, if you go to see doctors and lawyers and people who can help, I will step aside. But I want to make sure you do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. Just protecting my reputation. Reflects poorly on me if my husband gets arrested for murder or locked up in a hospital for the insane.”

  He smiled. “People would gossip about you.”

  “Point their fingers and whisper. I couldn’t bear that shame. Just taking social precautions, that’s all.”

  Say, “I miss you,” he thought. Say it, you dumb shit, it’s all you want to tell her, so just put the words in your mouth and let them go.

  “How long was the drive?” he said.

  She gave him a look that was both amused and sad. “That’s what we should be talking about?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I understand. It’s strange to see me, and you don’t even really want me here, but there are things—”

  “Stop,” he said. “It’s good to see you. The fact that you came down… I appreciate it more than you know
.”

  “You can mail me a formal thank-you next week. Use nice stationery. But until then, we’ve got to figure out what to do. I still think you need to go home. It’s why I came. To bring you home.”

  “Right,” he said. “Go home.” Home. Away from here, away from the story that had wrapped him in its eerie embrace. Away from the water.

  “So you’re agreed? We can leave in the morning?”

  He got to his feet and walked over to the balcony door, pushed back the heavy draperies, and waved his hand out at the dome and the expansive rotunda.

  “It’s a hell of a place, isn’t it?”

  “Gorgeous,” she said. “So we’re leaving in the morning?”

  He looked out at the hotel for a long time in silence, then turned back to face her.

  “Claire, the things I’m seeing… the story that’s there, it’s powerful.”

  “What does that have to do with staying or going?”

  “I’m getting the story because I’m here, Claire. Because I’m here, with the water. I’m seeing it almost like a narrative now, I’m seeing the story moving forward, and—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m beginning to realize that there’s a purpose to it, that I need to tell this story. This is the movie, Claire, this is the one I’ve been waiting for, the one I couldn’t find. If I stay down here for a while—long enough for me to get the whole thing down—I can turn this into something special, I can use this to get back in the game. Wouldn’t that be amazing? To use something like this as a way to get back what I’ve lost? But I’m starting to feel like that’s what it was all about, like I’ve been given a shot here, a chance at redemption and I just had to see that it was there.”

  She was watching him in disbelief, lips parted. Now she said, “Are you kidding me? You want to keep having these visions? To keep drinking that water? The water that almost killed—”

  “That was when I didn’t take it. The water has been nothing but good for me.”

  “Nothing but good for you! Eric, are you hearing yourself?”

  “This story needs to be told, and I’ve been looking desperately for something that would give me a chance to get back. There’s a purpose to this, Claire.”

  She shook her head in exasperation and turned away from him.

  “You can stay with me,” he said. “Give me some time.”

  “No. I will not stay. I came to get you, Eric, damn it, I came to bring you home because I was afraid for you. But I will not stay here with you!”

  She shouted so rarely—that had always been his job, a self-appointed task, of course—that this outburst stunned him silent. After a moment, he nodded and held his hands up, palms out.

  “Trust me, Claire, there’s nobody more concerned than me. I’m the one who’s going through it. But I’m also trying very hard not to panic. So can you back me on that? Can we throttle down on the planning and wait to see what tomorrow brings?”

  “How long, though, Eric? How much time do we give it?”

  It was a frighteningly familiar question to hear issued in her voice. One that had been offered in response to so many of his explanations and rationalizations over the past two years. He’d work again, he just needed time. He’d write a screenplay, he just needed a while to think of the idea. He’d be in a good mood again, he just needed a few days to get through this bad spell…. How long, Eric? How much time?

  “Let’s talk it out in the morning,” he said. “Let’s see where we are then, okay? We’ll get some sleep, and then see where we are.”

  She nodded. It was a grudging, fatigued gesture. Like she was going along with somebody else’s practical joke even though she understood she was the target, even though she’d seen the joke before and knew it wasn’t a damn bit funny.

  He walked toward the bed. He wanted to reach for her, wanted to push her down onto that soft mattress and cover her body with his own, but instead he picked up one of the pillows and stepped away.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’ll crash on the floor. You should have the bed.”

  She gave a sad laugh and shook her head. “I’m sure we can sleep in the same bed without touching each other. In fact, I thought it was an art we’d perfected by now.”

  He didn’t respond to that, just turned off the light. He heard two soft thumps as she kicked her shoes off, and then she slid back on the bed and stretched out and put her head on a pillow. He crawled stiffly in on the other side and lay on his back beside her, no part of them touching.

  It was quiet for a while, and then he said, “Thank you for coming.”

  When she answered, her voice sounded choked, and all she said was, “Oh, Eric.”

  The rain let up sometime after midnight and the clouds thinned, showed the moon again. Josiah left his position by the old barn and paced the woods, waiting. Every now and then he checked the cell phone to see if there was a signal. It claimed there was, but he was surprised Danny hadn’t called yet. Surprised there’d been no word.

  He went through a bottle of water, rinsing and spitting with it more than drinking, still unable to rid himself of the odd tobacco taste that had taken to his mouth. It wasn’t an unpleasant taste, though. Matter of fact, he was growing to like it.

  He wondered what the scene was like down at the hotel. Must be taking a while if Danny hadn’t reported back in yet. Would the cops stay down there to talk to Shaw or haul him off to the police station? Couldn’t arrest him for anything, but maybe they’d bring him in for questioning. Maybe he already had been in for questioning, if Lucas Bradford was so convinced he’d done Josiah’s killing. It was a strange circumstance, no question, and one that begged for exploitation.

  By one-thirty his enthusiasm was gone. There should have been word by now. Josiah called, fearing the lack of answer that would tell him Danny had run into trouble and Josiah was now in this thing without any help at all.

  Danny answered, though. Said, “Josiah? That you?” in a hushed voice.

  “Yes, it’s me, but if you’re not sure, then don’t use my damn name when you answer the phone, you jackass. What if it had been a cop?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why in the hell haven’t you called? What’s going on with the police?”

  “Haven’t been any police.”

  “What?”

  “Not a one, Josiah. I’m parked where I can see the back of the hotel and the front drive, and there’s not been a cop car up here yet.”

  More than an hour had passed since he’d hung up with Lucas Bradford. If the man were going to call the police, he’d have done it by now. This was both surprising and encouraging. Whatever had kept Lucas from phoning the police once probably would again. Now it was just a matter of getting his sorry ass engaged in conversation, keeping the son of a bitch from hanging up on Josiah and acting like he could avoid the hell storm that was headed into his life.

  “Josiah? You there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Just thinking.”

  “Well, there ain’t been cops. But somebody else might’ve come to see Shaw.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman. See, I got a place where I can look down at his car, that Acura. Well not fifteen minutes ago this woman drives up real slow through the parking lot, like she’s looking for a car. Then she pulls in and parks right by his. When she got out, she put her hand on the hood. Like she wanted to see if it was warm, if it had been driven.”

  “Could be a coincidence.”

  “Could be. But the car has Illinois plates.”

  No coincidence. The woman had come to see him, a woman from Illinois.

  When my wife hired you…

  “Oh, Lucas,” Josiah breathed. “You dumb bastard, you’re in trouble now.”

  46

  HE LAY IN THE DARK in bed with his wife of fourteen years and he could not sleep. They had not spoken in more than an hour now. He was no longer sure if she was awake. Her chest rose and fell slowly as if
in sleep but there was a rigidity to her body that suggested she was not.

  Six weeks since he’d last seen her. And then it had been tense and angry, as was always the case since they’d separated. Since he’d moved out of the home they shared, moved out because she dared to question the indulgence of self-pity that he was still riding after two years.

  You are a child, Eric thought, a petulant boy, not a man. And still she is here now. Still she came for you.

  He wasn’t surprised either. Despite everything that had happened, he’d believed she would be there when he needed her. She’d gotten into the car and driven six hours through the night, and that very act defined the question he’d never been able to answer, one that had been in his head for years—why was she still with him?

  He understood the possibilities she’d originally seen; theirs had been a truly passionate romance from the start, and the future they had planned to share was full of promise. Had been, at least, until his failure.

  And that was it—failure—no other word applied, though Claire had sure as hell tried plenty of them out. There’d been talk of obstacles, setbacks, hindrances, delays, tests, interruptions, and holdups, but never talk of the one cold truth. Eric had failed. Had gone out to California expecting to be directing films within a few years, expecting to be a figure of fame and acclaim soon after that. It hadn’t happened. The goal had been clear, the results equally so, and the verdict couldn’t be argued: failure.

  It was in her calm acceptance of that, in her unyielding patience, that Eric’s frustration grew. Don’t you get it? he’d wanted to scream at her, it’s over. I didn’t make it. What are you still doing here? Why haven’t you left?

  He’d never have blamed her. Hell, he was expecting it. After the broken dreams in California, followed by the two-year tantrum in Chicago, how had she not left him? It was the right thing to do, so he’d waited for her to go, waited and waited and still she was there, so finally he’d left himself. It had to happen. The circle had to be completed, the whole package of Eric’s once-bright future, professional and personal, had to be sealed and stamped with one bold black word: FAILED.