The River Is Dark

by Joe Hart

  He moved down the sidewalk, the business fronts giving him accusing looks as he passed by. He stayed in the shadows until he saw the sign for the turnoff to the park. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he bolted through the pools of light from the streetlamps and into the welcoming night of the unlit walking path leading to the river.

  The air smelled fresh and clean, the rain having washed all other competing scents from it. He could still see the occasional flicker of lightning in the eastern sky, the retreating bank of clouds a swollen form of condensed darkness. The reality of what he was about to do made his stomach flop, but he pushed on, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, he would lose his chance to inspect the body and crime scene.

  He moved as quietly as possible down the path, his ears hypersensitive to any sounds besides his own heartbeat and the soft rasp of his shoes on the tar. The open space of the park widened before him, and he stopped, raking the darkness with his eyes. He could hear the river now, a soft shush of flowing water straight ahead. He moved in that direction, still following the path, trying to position in his mind the area that Nut described over the phone. Soon the path began to curve, the river on his right, its waters swollen between the shoulders of the banks. Liam stopped and turned to the left, stepping onto the large chunks of rock embedded in the ground between the path and the grassy hills of the park. A shadow unfolded itself from a sitting position and he froze, his hand going to the handle of the Sig at his back.

  “Nut?” he whispered.

  “Yes, God Almighty, who else do you think it would be?”

  Liam moved across the rocks, their uneven surfaces trying to throw him off balance in the dark. “Where?”

  The vagrant’s face was drawn and constricted, and a faint smell of booze hung in the air around him. The older man raised one arm and pointed to a small depression a dozen yards from where they stood. “He’s there. I went to cut across the stones and meet up with the path where it curves again, and fucking almost tripped over him.”

  Liam said nothing and moved past him, being careful not to fall and skin a knee; he didn’t need his DNA discovered at a murder scene. As they reached the bowl in the ground, Liam began to make out the lines of a body.

  “You didn’t touch anything, did you?” Liam asked.

  “Uh, no, like I said, I almost stepped on him. Took me a second to get my bearings, but then I called you.”

  Glancing once more around the area, Liam bent his knees and flicked on the flashlight. Nut cursed under his breath, and Liam blinked, taking the scene in.

  The body lay spread-eagle, its chest as well as its feet bare. A thin pair of sweatpants covered its legs. The skin was white, all of the blood that wasn’t splashed on the stones surrounding it having pooled at the lowest point. Liam played the light from the corpse’s feet to its thickly muscled chest, noting several puncture wounds in the abdomen, and stopped where its face should be.

  The man’s head was crushed flat beneath a large stone.

  Gore and graying brain matter lay on the rocks around the body’s ruined skull like splattered mud. The stone that sat amidst the shattered mess was nearly a foot wide, resembling a rough triangle. Liam could make out no features of the man’s head. From the chin up, everything was pulverized. He moved the light lower until it shone on the corpse’s right arm, wrist bones glistening in the glow, the hand missing.

  Liam stood and circled the body, careful to avoid any blood spatters and loose rocks. Kneeling next to the dead man’s other side, he examined the amputated wrist more closely. A deep groove ran around the arm’s circumference before the bloody stump, a white rut still indented from earlier pressure.

  “They cut off his hand before they brought him here,” Liam murmured. “Tied a tourniquet around the stump so he wouldn’t bleed to death.”

  “Why the hell would they do that?” Nut asked in a hushed voice.

  “So they could torture him.” Liam shifted the light to the deep holes gored in the dead man’s stomach. “They wanted something from him,” Liam said, more to himself than to Nut. “And I bet they got it.”

  “If they attacked him at his house, why the hell did they bring him all the way down here?” Nut asked. “The place he was rentin’ has to be almost a half mile upriver.”

  Liam stood and swept the light in a little circle, and then snapped it off. “To send a message. This is a display.”

  “Well, it got through to me. Don’t go out at night anymore, that’s the message I got.”

  Liam moved around the perimeter of the corpse’s outstretched limbs, looking for anything that might have been dropped or left behind. A sound that raised the hair on the back of his neck met his ears, and he looked up, searching for its source.

  A car pulled into the park and cruised down the drive toward them.

  “Go toward the path. Don’t hurry and don’t fall,” Liam said.

  Nut cursed again and moved away, a quiet clack of rocks marking his retreat. Liam stood for another ten seconds, studying the shape of the car, before he followed. He saw no light bar above the cab, and he doubted a small town like Tallston would have an unmarked cruiser. Longing to stay and investigate the area, Liam hurried away from the approaching vehicle and managed to stay clear of its sweeping headlights. Nut waited on the opposite side of the path, crouching low and watching the car, with wide eyes.

  “Listen to me,” Liam whispered. “You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. In a few hours, if the body hasn’t been discovered, I’ll call it in anonymously. I’ll contact you later.”

  Nut jerked his head up and down, his wild mane bouncing with the movement. Liam watched him turn and scurry away down the path until it met a grove of trees, where the vagrant veered off and vanished into the shadows.

  Liam moved in the same direction, his eyes locked on the car that was now parked in the lot before the playground. The dome light inside the car flared as the headlights went out, and Liam saw two teenagers inside. The driver was a boy wearing a dark coat, and the girl was blond, a giggle splitting her mouth into a grin as they opened their doors and stepped into the night.

  “It’ll be fun,” the boy said.

  “Danny, we can just do it in the backseat, we don’t have to go down by the river,” the girl chided.

  “I don’t want your dad catching us again, he’s crazy.”

  “But that’s what makes it exciting.”

  Liam lost their conversation as he left the path and felt a solid coating of dew soak his shoes. He glanced over his shoulder as he headed in the direction of his truck and saw the two teenagers making their way across the playground with what looked like a blanket draped over the boy’s shoulder.

  Liam crossed the street and could just make out the shape of his truck when he heard the girl scream at the top of her lungs, and he knew he wouldn’t have to call in the murder after all.

  Liam eased onto the bed beside Dani and studied her face in the dim light of the room. Her hair fell in tangles across her cheek, and he could hear the light breaths that she pulled in between her parted lips. He lay there, imagining a life that wasn’t his, of early mornings just like this, listening to her breathing, knowing that when she woke he could make her breakfast in their kitchen. He saw the morning light playing off her face and her eyes coming open with the touch of his hand. Her smile. He imagined not looking at the closet where his gun rested, not thinking thoughts of darkness that clouded his days gray. He thought of happiness.

  And then her face came back to him.

  She was pretty and young, and had dark hair that curled near her shoulders. She stepped out of the doorway, and for an instant he saw a smile on her lips before she turned her head, her hand resting on the curve of her belly.

  He sighed and forced the image away, the fantasy of Dani crushed beneath a reality already in place. It was his; he owned it and he had to carry it. Happines
s was a foreign concept meant for others, not him. Not him.

  Hours later, Dani stirred. She smacked her lips and slid a hand out from beneath the covers to rub her sleep-stained eyes. Liam stopped staring at the ceiling and sat up, his face impassive as she looked at him and blinked.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Were you able to sleep?”

  “A little.”

  “Was I snoring?” The disgust in her voice made him smile.

  “No, but there’s been a development.”

  Dani propped herself up on an elbow and studied his face. He began to speak, telling her of his dealings with Nut and the call he received during the night. As he told her the details of the murder scene, her face became quizzical and she began to bite at her lower lip. When he finished, he waited, glancing every so often at the brightening window behind her.

  “That was a huge risk,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Someone could have seen you.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think you can trust a drunk hobo?”

  “I have to since he’s my only other source of information besides the sheriff.”

  “And you don’t think Nut had anything to do with it?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’ve interrogated hundreds of suspects. I know when someone’s lying. Nut’s a fool and a drunk, but he’s telling the truth.”

  Dani pursed her lips. “Forgive me if I’m not a hundred percent convinced.”

  Liam smiled. “You’re forgiven.”

  “Just don’t put too much faith in him, okay? You don’t know him at all.”

  “Noted.”

  Dani ran her tongue over her teeth and grimaced. “Pizza-and-beer breath.”

  “Mmm, my favorite,” Liam said.

  She shot him a look of dismay and got out of bed. He liked how she looked in his clothes, small but strong in her own way. She caught him staring at her, and he dropped his eyes to his socked feet and began to pull at a loose string near his ankle.

  “So what do you think it means?” Dani asked, looking out the window.

  “The murder?”

  She nodded without looking at him.

  “I think somehow everything’s connected to the Colton project across the river. There’s too much coincidence with Jerry Shevlin and the company rep being murdered. It’s obvious that someone doesn’t want the project to go through.”

  Dani turned to him and leaned against the table beneath the window. “But killing someone to stop an industrial project? Isn’t that extreme and, overall, not very effective? I mean, won’t they just get someone else to head up the development?”

  “You’re right, but I’m thinking that the person or persons we’re dealing with aren’t thinking lucidly.”

  “Really?” Dani said, raising her eyebrows.

  “I mean, they’re obviously psychopaths, but this isn’t the way to stop Colton from proceeding if that’s what they’re trying to accomplish. Nut told me there was a group opposing the project in town. I want to speak to them at some point today, but there’s something else I want to do first,” he said, rising from the bed to look past Dani out the window.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to go across the river.”

  CHAPTER 10

  They ate breakfast at the café where Liam met Nut on his first day in town.

  As they dined on sausage and pancakes, Liam couldn’t help but feel the normality of the moment. There were several other people in the restaurant, even with the early hour, their conversations muddled into a dull but comforting hum of humanity. People living, thriving, and enjoying one another. Liam caught himself listening to the din, the clatter of spoons and forks, instead of eating. He felt the beginnings of a smile forming on his lips as he watched Dani take a too-big bite of her pancake and struggle not to look unladylike while chewing it.

  After paying for breakfast, they left the café and headed to the local funeral home, two blocks down. The building stood by itself, separated by alleys on either side that, no doubt, led to the rear, where they loaded and unloaded the bodies set for burial. The exchange with the funeral director lasted an hour and a half. He was a stocky man in a black suit who nodded the whole time, speaking to them in a low, comforting voice. After they gave the director all the necessary information, he assured them that he would take care of the details and all they needed to do was tell him when they would like to hold the funerals. Liam and Dani agreed that a single service would work best, and Liam referred the director to his brother’s lawyer for burial-versus-cremation preference, though he mentioned that most likely only Suzie’s body would be fit for an open casket.

  After the time spent inside, the fresh air tasted sweet and light compared to the stuffy interior of the building tainted with grief and sorrow. They both left their windows down as they rolled through the growing heat of the day, the morning smelling of clipped grass and warming tar.

  Liam took the street that he had driven only hours before and squinted through the glaring sun at the park, slowing the truck as he looked. He could see a small portion of the clearing from the road, but the light reflected off a dozen vehicles behind the trees was easy to discern. A sheriff’s deputy blocked the entrance to the park with an angled cruiser, and glanced at them as they drove by.

  “Looks like it’s in full swing,” Dani said.

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re sure you didn’t leave anything incriminating behind?”

  “I’m sure. There’s no finding footprints on rock. Even if they did find a track, I can just say I was there earlier, which I was.”

  They followed the street to its end, where it terminated in a T that shot left and right. Liam turned left, and after passing several quaint homes, they spotted the river flowing at the base of a public water access and turnaround. A ramshackle bait store with dirty windows and sagging siding stood on the bank, overlooking the brown water. Liam parked the truck in one of three empty spaces, and they both hopped out, their feet crunching on the gravel in front of the shop.

  The smell of dead fish met Liam’s nose as he pulled open the rickety screen door and stepped inside the shop. A long row of minnow tanks lined the left wall—dark, shifting schools of twitching tails and fins twirling in the bubbling water—and Liam steered away from the overpowering smell that emanated from them. The floor was concrete, with a single stained rug leading to a pitted counter, where a scruffy middle-aged man sat reading a paper. He was skinny and had large lips and a long nose, which he wrinkled every few seconds beneath the bill of a torn Green Bay Packers hat. His brown eyes didn’t look up from the paper until Liam and Dani stopped on the other side of an ancient cash register.

  “Howdy, folks, what can I do for ya?”

  “Well, I saw that you have a guide service listed in the Yellow Pages,” Liam said, trying to sound as touristy as possible.

  “We sure do. You two wantin’ to catch a few walleyes?”

  Liam smiled. “Actually, we’re just looking for a ride across the river. There’s some hills that look like good hiking a few miles down, and we’d like to check them out.”

  The man behind the counter tipped his hat back and scratched at his forehead. “You just want a ride across the river?”

  “Yes,” Liam said.

  “Why don’t you just drive over the bridge down south—it’s only a few miles out of the way. There’s a nice road that runs into the state land you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Yeah, we know, we just want to spend as much time in the woods as we can. Our time’s limited, and we don’t want to drive all the way around to find the entrance.”

  The man’s eyes floated over them both before he shrugged. “Sure, we can give you a lift. I’ll have m
y son, Tom, float you over. Whereabouts you guys want to land?”

  Liam pointed straight across the river. “Just over there, if that works.”

  The man nodded. “Tom’s just gearing up the boat for the day. I’ll let him know, and he can bring you across right away.”

  “Perfect,” Liam said. Dani stood smiling next to him.

  The bait-store owner nodded and went through a door covered by a black curtain behind the counter. He returned after only a minute and stepped up to the cash register, tapping at the stained, unmarked keys with his index fingers.

  “That’ll be forty dollars for the ride over and back. What time would you like Tom to pick you up?”

  “Oh, around one should be just fine,” Liam said, looking at his phone.

  The man nodded and accepted the cash Liam handed him over the counter. He directed them outside the building and down an unsteady walkway that led to a short dock extending into the river.

  A remarkably new and clean Lund fishing boat bobbed in the current, and a boy with the same long nose as the man in the shop greeted them. He was no more than sixteen, and was polite and helpful as he got them situated in the boat before casting off and firing up the motor. Liam pointed to a spot beneath some overhanging trees on the far bank, and Tom piloted them to it. Liam and Dani hopped out of the boat and onto the riverbank’s slick edge, beveled by yesterday’s rain into a sheet of brown muck that looked solid but wasn’t. Liam frowned as he felt his tennis shoe slide into the wetness of the bank, and saw Dani smile as she jumped over the spot to drier land.

  Liam pushed the boat free into the pulling flow of water, and Tom called that he would be back to get them at one. Liam checked his phone again, noting that they had a little under three hours before they had to be back to this spot. They moved up the incline of the bank until they crested a small rise, which sunk back down and became tangled with growths of hazel brush. Reed grass slithered against their shins and, in some places, their thighs. Liam managed to find a pool of standing water and cursed as his sock went from damp to sopping.