The River Burns

by Trevor Ferguson

  ■ ■ ■

  Officers Maltais and Vega both signed a petition to restore the old covered bridge and have it named after Alice B. McCracken. Neither thought the effort was anything but impractical and a bit dopey, and both were aware that as officers of the law they were expressly forbidden from signing petitions or publicly taking a side. But they needed a measure of traction in this town. They came up against a public that refused to have anything to do with them. People clammed up. The detectives remembered the old lady with some fondness, although she was no different than the rest, but in supporting this petition, others might think better of them, loosen up a little. Talk. At the funeral they spotted Denny O’Farrell and followed him and his family home. They already knew where he lived but catching him in was proving difficult. This time they parked along the curb just as his truck came to a halt in the driveway.

  When Denny clambered out of his vehicle, he spotted them stepping out of theirs. His wife said, “Den.” He calmly instructed her to take the kids inside. She did. He wandered down the driveway and met the officers at the edge of his property.

  “Some people in this town,” Maltais said in English, “want us to talk to them on the street. Like we might contaminate their grass or something.”

  “I don’t even know who you are,” Denny said.

  “Sure you do. But you’re right. We haven’t been properly introduced.”

  “We’re not here to piss on your lawn. We’re friends of your brother,” Vega said, but he didn’t extend his hand. He reached into his pocket as Denny was essentially forcing him to do and pulled out his badge. He held it up and the shield glinted in the sunlight. “Vega,” he said.

  “Maltais,” the other one said and he also showed his badge. “Do you have any more formalities in mind?”

  Denny said, “Pardon me?” A way of questioning the man’s attitude, but then he broke from that poor start and invited the policemen into the backyard for a beer. He wanted to demonstrate that he wasn’t afraid of them, and not antagonistic either. He wanted them to know that, whether or not it was true.

  “It’s early,” Maltais noted.

  “I was at a funeral,” Denny said. “That can build up a thirst.”

  “We’re working,” Vega pointed out.

  “You’re friends of my brother, you said. So you don’t have to call it work. Come around out back, guys. We can sit at least.”

  Maltais agreed to sit, and perhaps to drink beer. Vega shrugged in partial agreement. “We were at that funeral, too.”

  “You were? Why?”

  “We met her. Mrs. McCracken. We liked her. We interviewed her.”

  “You interviewed Mrs. McCracken? She probably shook you down.”

  Vega smiled. “Maybe that’s why we went to the funeral, out of respect.” Each of the three men knew that that was a lie.

  “Come on back,” Denny encouraged them. “There might be food, too.”

  They moved more slowly than he did, which caused Denny to look back a couple of times to check on their delay. Vega, his suit jacket open, walked with his hands in his trouser pockets and his head up, looking around as though gathering impressions. Maltais cinched his belly with a single jacket button, which did appear on the verge of springing loose. He directed his observations to the ground. Denny’s first instinct was to dismiss him, perhaps because he appeared slovenly and depressed, but his second thought was to scratch that opinion. The man’s nose to the ground that way, he looked like an overweight bloodhound, droopy of flesh and bleary-eyed, but a bloodhound as an investigator was not someone to ignore. From his testicles up through his gullet, through his lungs and heart and windpipe, Denny felt fear inexorably rising.

  Val was ahead of him. She put out the beer and salsa and chips. Then she went back inside but Denny knew she’d be listening in. He twisted a beer cap off and handed the bottle to Vega.

  “Okay without a glass?”

  “No problem. Thanks.”

  “I could get a glass.”

  “In a backyard, beer is best straight from the bottle.”

  Maltais agreed and accepted his beer and Denny rushed to untwist a third cap and to swallow. He was not certain if the beer helped him relax but it felt good to quench his flaring thirst.

  “So was it worth it?” Vega asked quietly.

  “Excuse me?”

  Neither man answered him. They sipped their beers while Denny took another long pull.

  Then Vega said, “I mean, you could get ten years. More or less. I know it’s not worth that. But the stress. The worry. Even if you get away with it, was it worth it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Denny said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Vega told him.

  Denny took the bait. “What are you sorry to hear?”

  Vega shrugged first. “Because that’s what a guilty man would say. A guilty man says, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Both the innocent man and the guilty man know exactly what I mean, but only the guilty man asks me to repeat the question or tells me that he doesn’t understand it. Did you know that?”

  Denny said that he didn’t know that.

  “There you go. You see?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Denny said.

  “You don’t know how a guilty man responds, no reason why you should, so you said no. Plain and simple. You didn’t say to me, I don’t know what you mean. That time, you gave me an answer. No. Now, if I say, was it worth it what you did, and you’re an innocent man, you would say . . . well, you tell me, what do you say, if you’re innocent? I’ll give you a second chance.”

  “You’re playing games with me.”

  “No, I’m not, and you just failed your second chance. Ten years you can get, Denny. Maybe an even dozen.”

  “You’ll lose your house,” Maltais added.

  “Your family.”

  “Maybe not his family.”

  “Maybe not your family. But your house.”

  “Your truck.”

  “Both trucks. Maybe fifteen years.”

  “Fifteen?” Maltais whistled in mock surprise. “That long? Wow. Your good life. Gone. Your friends, they’ll enjoy the new bridge.” Maltais rubbed the fingers of his right hand under the thumb. “They’ll make the big bucks.”

  “But not you,” Vega told him. “Counting down your time.”

  Denny drank some more. “So what would an innocent man say?” he wanted to know.

  “Ask the innocent. But since you agree with me that you’re not innocent, he would not say what you just said.”

  Val came out onto the back porch and she crossed her arms. “Okay, that’s enough,” she said.

  The three men looked at her.

  “We’re having a hard time with wives on this trip,” Maltais noted.

  “They keep kicking us off their properties.”

  “Nobody’s kicking,” Val said. “But you are playing games and that’s not fair. This is serious. Ask serious questions. We have the rumours to fight against. We can’t do that if you play games.”

  “Where were you the night of the fire?” Vega asked her.

  “Me?”

  “It’s a serious question.”

  Her eyes shot to Denny and back. “I was here,” she said.

  “I believe you. Was your husband here?”

  She needed the bulk of her strength not to look at Denny again. “No,” she said. “I mean, he was, of course, for dinner, but then he left.”

  “You see?” Vega said, but she didn’t see and he wasn’t willing to tell her what she was supposed to see.

  “That doesn’t mean he did it,” Val protested.

  “Of course not,” Maltais said.

  “But if everything you say is true—” Maltais pointed out to her.

  “—it probably means that you di
dn’t do it yourself,” Vega finished the thought. “You’re in the clear yourself, but of course, we never suspected you. But it also means that you can’t say if he’s innocent or guilty. Unless he’s admitted it to you, you probably don’t know. If he’s denied it to you, well, that doesn’t mean much, does it? So the point is, you’re not a witness. We accept that. So if you don’t mind, we’d like to talk to your husband alone, ma’am.”

  She lingered, and looked at Denny finally. He nodded, and she went back inside. Denny was touched that she didn’t slam the door, and he took that as a signal to stay in control of himself just as she was doing of herself.

  “Rumours and innuendo. Interview games. Seriously, guys, what else you got? I mean, I doubt if you guys could care less if I’m guilty or innocent—”

  “That’s cynical, Mr. O’Farrell.”

  “—you only want to know if you can pin this on me or not. So I don’t care if you think I’m guilty or innocent, and I don’t care if I act innocent or guilty because I don’t know how the innocent or how the guilty act. Psychological bunk to me. You know it won’t hold up in a court of law—”

  “I’ve always noticed,” Vega interjected, “that only the guilty ever mention a court of law.”

  “Oh, fuck off with that. What do you have? What evidence do you have to even be talking to me? I wondered, at first, why you never came to talk to me, because I know what people in town say. But now I get it. You wanted to build up your evidence first. To have something on me. Fair enough. So here you are. It took you a while, so what do you got? Speak now or bug out, that’s what I say.”

  “Or bug out?” Vega repeated.

  “You see? I could say now that that’s what a cop would say who didn’t have any evidence. A cop who was talking to a guilty man, who knew why he was a guilty man, would have pinned back that guilty man’s ears by now. Instead, you just repeated what I said with some kind of mock alarm. So, yeah, bug out. Since you’ve got nothing.”

  “Your house. Your trucks. Maybe your family. Even if it’s only five years.”

  “Threats? Yeah, you got a lot of those. I’m waiting to hear some evidence. You don’t have any. And do you know why you don’t have any evidence?”

  “Why, Mr. O’Farrell? You tell us.”

  “Well, maybe because somebody else did it. Maybe that’s why. Now leave, please. Feel free to take your beers with you or chug them down. Or hell, drink them at your leisure. But gentlemen, this so-called interview is over.”

  Maltais stepped close to Denny. He stopped staring at the ground to gaze at him. Denny returned the look. Those weepy bloodhound eyes. He knew he should fear this man, for what he could see, for what he could sniff. Maltais whispered, as though imparting a grave secret, “We may have a witness. It’s okay to let your brother know. He might be unreliable, our witness. We think he has something against you, so it’s possible he didn’t really see what he says he saw. So you see, we’re actually not trying to pin this on you, Mr. O’Farrell. We’d rather not. Unless you did it. But if we can’t break this witness down, then you go down. Nothing we can do about that. Nothing you or your brother can do. So you get sent to hell and maybe you never come back. A lot of good men don’t. So don’t piss on my pant leg. You’re living in hell right now, I can see that, I can feel that. It might turn out that we’re the only hope you got in this hell of yours. So watch where you piss if you know what’s good for you, Mr. O’Farrell.”

  Denny stared back at him, and for the first time in the conversation he was both conflicted and confused, as though he didn’t know himself whose side he was on. “And you’re into being my only hope, because of my brother?”

  Maltais scratched his neck in an upward motion, using the backs of his fingernails. He thought about the question. “I don’t really know your brother. Not that well. No, what you don’t get is this. We understand. We really do. We know that you’re not a criminal. Maybe you committed a criminal act, and the courts won’t look kindly on that. Nor will we. But you’re not a criminal. If you burned that bridge, we have reason to believe—in fact I can pretty much guarantee—that you’re not likely to be stupid enough to go burn another one.”

  Vega moved in close as well and Denny wanted him, in particular, he didn’t know why, to go away. “We want to get back to hunting criminals. Not the foolish workingman who did something wrong,” he said.

  “So we can help. You know?” Maltais continued to whisper, as though, Denny was thinking, he wanted to make sure that Val was not part of this discussion, that this was strictly man to man. “That’s what we’re saying. You’ll still do some time. But maybe you can get your buddies off, they might help with the family expenses while you’re gone, maybe we can talk with the prosecutors, you know, to clear this up pretty quickly and give you, a family man, a workingman, with no priors, no likelihood to reoffend, an even break, a sharply reduced sentence. A couple of years maybe. It’s worth thinking about.”

  “In other words, since you have no evidence, you want me to confess.”

  “We may have a witness. Hell, we probably have one, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Your brother,” Vega added, “will get wind of it sooner or later. So you’ll know for sure we’re not bullshitting you.”

  “So what we’re saying is,” Maltais scratched his neck, then brought his bottle up for a sip, “you’ve got to think about being strategic, Mr. O’Farrell. A hardened criminal, I’m not going to give him a break. A family man with young kids who made a mistake, he’s got to own up to his responsibilities, face the music, but you know, he can be strategic, he can make this work to get the best possible outcome. I’ve said enough for now. But think about it, Mr. O’Farrell. You can save your friends. People won’t forget that. And you can ease the pain for yourself, too. I believe that. Good-bye, and thanks for the beer. There’s a little left in my bottle but will it be okay with you if I just put it down on the stoop?”

  Both cops seemed to be waiting on his reply.

  “Yeah, sure,” Denny said, and he remained where he stood as they moved away, put their beer bottles down, and shuffled off around the side of the house. He was still standing there when Val came back outside. She crossed her arms, and this time leaned against a supporting post for the porch roof.

  “So,” she said, “what did they say?”

  Denny wasn’t prepared to look at her just yet. “They want me to confess.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. They just want me to think about it.”

  He seemed strangely distant, his voice his own and yet so oddly pitched.

  She went to him, and when she took him so gently into her arms he seemed to stagger against her, and she believed for a moment that she was the one holding him upright.

  22

  Just when she hoped he would, Ryan tucked his head into the store.

  “Ah. So you do know where to find me!” Tara greeted him.

  “Maybe I’m here to buy something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, like, paperweights?” He cast a look around the store to check out the possibilities. “Or canvas shopping bags with an imprint of our dearly departed Old Covered Bridge.”

  “We’re making up new ones showing the bridge on fire. Or I am. Willis is opposed.”

  Disembodied, working in a drawer around his ankles behind a counter, Willis Howard parried, “I will not exploit our tragedy.”

  “He’s ethical,” Tara mentioned. She sipped from her coffee mug.

  “I have extra duty tacked onto my day,” Ryan told her. “So, you know, I booked off for a break.”

  “Nice. You’re not here to arrest me then?”

  In adolescence, a girlfriend’s attempts at coyness came across as snide, so early in life he hated coy. Tara was teaching him otherwise. “Care for a late lunch?”

  “Train’s in!” Willis Howard c
alled out from behind the cash, where he ensconced himself to continue eavesdropping. “Busy time coming up!”

  “That’s why we hired Lise,” Tara chimed back. “You’ll be fine, Willis.”

  “I’ve got people coming to see me, too, later.”

  “Hush.” Ryan looked ready to pistol-whip him. She whispered, “If you really want to piss him off ? Have lunch with me upstairs.”

  One look and he guessed that the invitation might be a ploy. Struck by lightning, mute, he nodded.

  “Gone fishing!” Tara called out and was heading for the side stairs, around the corner and somewhat out of sight, before Willis could fulminate a response. Ryan tramped behind her, and the moment he entered her suite she shut the door behind them and they kissed.

  At length.

  When she opened the door briefly Ryan thought that she was checking to make sure her business partner was not peeking through the keyhole, but she was letting the cat out.

  “You have a cat now?”

  “Buckminster,” she explained. “Mrs. McCracken’s. She likes to wander the store.”

  He took her hand in his.

  “Seriously,” she said, and indicated her kitchenette, “I do have food. Bread. Cheese. Crackers.”

  He didn’t answer but kissed her awhile instead. Then he ran his mouth down one side of her neck and up the other to nibble a lobe. When she broke free she touched his jawline with her fingertips, flashed a smile, then stepped away and slyly undid the top button on her jeans. She let him consider that event a moment. Then she slid the zipper down, shoved the jeans to her thighs and wiggled to drop them to her ankles. Her underpants, he saw, were removed with the same flurry and kick.

  “How much time do you have?” she asked. He didn’t hate coy anymore.