Late Last Night (River Bend)

by Lilian Darcy

  “Yes, he’s been out there, searching.”

  Annette Shepherd ran down the front steps, looking wild with suspense and grief. Harrison seemed so quiet and serious in contrast, as he spoke to her, and was that fourteen-year-old Kira in the doorway? “They must have called off the search for tonight,” Kate said. “They’ll need daylight to keep looking farther downstream.”

  Gemma was silent again. She hadn’t cried yet. Kate thought she was too shocked, and she hadn’t had an easy night before this, herself. She’d had that fight with Garth and Judd, whatever it had been about, and then they’d just abandoned her in the middle of the night to walk nearly eight miles home on her own in the dark and cold. This alone must have shattered her happiness and self-belief, and now the news about her friend…

  It all went too deep for tears, maybe.

  “I want to go in and see them,” Gemma said, her voice sounding suddenly stronger and more resolute.

  “Go in?”

  “Neve… is… my friend. Her parents, her sister—I want to tell them… that I’m here for them… that I really loved her.”

  It was a very young decision, and terribly, poignantly brave. Kate’s heart went out to Gemma and she said in a voice that had gone husky, suddenly, “Yes, okay, if you want to. I’ll come in with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  So they climbed out of the truck and made the short journey to the house, which was lit up in a way that no house should be lit up at this hour. Three o’clock, almost.

  The front door was still open. Inside, Kira was sobbing her heart out, while her mother repeated over and over, “This can’t happen. This can’t happen.”

  Gemma walked up to her and hugged her without a word, and she and Annette stood there for quite a while in their close embrace.

  Lord, Gemma has grown up tonight, Kate thought. She’s grown up about fifteen years. There’s been no choice…

  Harrison came to her, and said quietly, “We’ll see if they want some hot chocolate, or tea. Do you mind staying for a bit? Might help. Another woman…”

  “No, of course not,” Kate answered. “It’s fine. Anything I can do. I’m planning to drive Gemma home, when she’s ready.”

  “After that, could you come in to my office? I need to get a proper statement from you.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I want to make sure you’re okay,” he added in a different tone.

  I’m okay when you’re around.

  As if she could say that! She shouldn’t even feel it, when she didn’t know what was happening between them. He’d called Rick Styles from Helena, where his ex-wife lived, to have his house taken off the market, yet the moment Kate was within breathing distance of him, she felt safe and happy and incredibly good, and surely some of that was coming from him, it wasn’t all just her.

  Was it?

  Was she capable of any reasonable perception in this situation? She felt so fragile where he was concerned.

  She had to blink back tears. “Been a rough night, and I’m only a bystander. I can’t even imagine…”

  “I know. But being a bystander can get to you more than you realize. Might last for a while. Are you warm enough now?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Do you want this back?” She hugged herself tighter inside it, and saw him watching the movement.

  “No. Another time. I’m glad I had in the vehicle to give you.”

  “Thank you,” she said again.

  “Take care of yourself.” He made it sound more like I’ll take care of you and her throat thickened.

  Please take care of me, Harrison.

  Take care of me forever.

  And tell me why you’re not selling your house.

  They made mugs of tea, of which Annette and Gary each took a couple of token sips before the mugs found their way to a coffee table and stayed there, filled and cooling. Gemma gave Kira the same hug she’d given Kira’s mother.

  There was an almost visible light of courage and… sacrifice, could it be?… coming from inside her, and once again Kate had the powerful impression that she’d grown up tonight. Somewhere between starting out from River Bend Park and finishing her long walk in the Shepherds’ street, Gemma had changed.

  If Neve appeared now, miraculously alive, there would already be a distance between them, a gap in their level of wisdom and maturity. Growth was like that, for teenagers. Whether physical or emotional, it could happen in dramatic spurts that made you blink in disbelief. Kira, too, would be profoundly changed by what had happened tonight. She’d lost a sister, and it had hit her hard.

  Finally, after about half an hour, there was a sense in the grief-stricken Shepherd household that it was time to move on, to continue with the next step in living, which was to go to bed for the few hours that remained of the night. The Shepherd family, made smaller than it had been a few hours ago, closed their front door.

  On the sidewalk beside his official vehicle, Harrison said to Kate, “I’m going to head back out to the park to see how things are wrapping up there. I really need to, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. This is your job.”

  “Can I meet you at the sheriff’s office? There’ll be someone to look after you if I’m gone a while, and there are vending machines, too, if you’re hungry.”

  She nodded. “See you there.”

  She dropped Gemma home and waited until the girl had rung the doorbell and her mother had come down. Gemma’s parents were long divorced, Kate knew, and her dad didn’t live in Marietta any more, it was just Gemma and her mom. There was a little flurry in the doorway—a mix of relief and anger from Cathy Clayton. She’d been worried, and was mad at her daughter for giving her a scare. Even for prom night, this was a late arrival home.

  They soon disappeared inside, and Kate drove away.

  At the law enforcement building, there was a deputy on duty who made her some weak coffee and found a couple of cookies for her. She asked if there was any news, and he told her the search would resume at first light, which in late May in Montana wasn’t long away. It was after four o’clock now. Sipping the coffee, she waited for Harrison to get back, and time went very, very slowly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Out at River Bend Park, the last search and rescue vehicle was getting ready to leave, and all of the prom kids had gone now. Down on the sand, one dilapidated vehicle remained, and Harrison asked the two deputies if they knew whose it was.

  “One of the high school seniors,” one of them told him.

  “Garth Newell,” said the other. “Apparently he’d been here earlier, but left in another vehicle with his brother. Judd. We know Judd.”

  They all did. He’d been in minor trouble with the law several times before, since he was in his early teens. There was a thick file on his parents’ misdemeanors also, including a drug dealing conviction for his dad, and Harrison knew there was more going on that Judd hadn’t been caught at, yet.

  “You going to impound the vehicle?” Deputy Brothers asked. “It’s illegally parked.”

  Right now, it seemed like the least of Harrison’s problems. His eyes were gritty with fatigue and his jaw ached. Telling someone that their child was dead was the hardest thing anyone in law enforcement had to do, and tonight’s news had been worse than most because it was ambiguous.

  He was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that there could be no miracle for Neve and her family, but without a body he knew that the parents—the mother at least—were clinging to a kind of desperate hope that he understood, even while believing it was misplaced.

  “If it’s still here in the morning,” he answered the deputies.

  There was nothing more to see or do, right now. The fire was out. Someone had even gathered up the empty bottles and cans.

  “Any more alarms going off tonight?” Deputy Brothers asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard. There was one when I left town to come out here after we first heard about the drowning—”

  Yes, Neve Sheph
erd was “the drowning” now. It sounded so callous and clinical, but if you didn’t distance yourself… Harrison already felt too personally bound up in this, because he kept thinking not only of the Shepherd family but of Kate, back in his office, wearing his jacket, probably drinking terrible coffee. It would smell of her skin when she gave it back to him. Please let her not decide to have it cleaned! What a night, what a mess, the personal and professional, all mixed up together. Kate knew the Shepherd girl, had taught her, graded her papers…

  “We heard the alarm, too,” Deputy Taylor said. “Think they were sending a patrol car round.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Gun Mart. Again.”

  “They did send a patrol car,” Deputy Brothers informed them. “But they radioed in that the alarm had stopped before they got there and the street was quiet.”

  “There’s the alley behind it between the gas station and the liquor store, did they check that?” Harrison asked.

  Deputy Brothers shrugged.

  “Not that it seems to matter,” Harrison agreed.

  Still, they were all developing such a casual attitude to the frequent and apparently meaningless alarms and breakins by this point. Complacency was dangerous. With the County Sheriff’s Office being responsible for search and rescue, he knew this all too well. People got themselves killed through complacency all the time. Neve had been killed by complacency as much as anything—drowned by her own teenage belief that she was invincible.

  Hell, another dark path for his thoughts to go down. The river rushed just out of sight and the dead fire in its circle of stones seemed forlorn. Hard night. Horrible night. And Kate was waiting.

  “Let’s head off and get some kind of a break before it gets light,” he said. Deputy Taylor was in charge of search and rescue, and would probably not make it home to rest until Neve was found.

  Unless she wasn’t found.

  Harrison drove back into town, and started thinking about complacency again, and all those alarms, and prom night, and the old story about the boy who cried wolf. And even though all he wanted was to go directly back to his office to make sure Kate was okay, he swung past the Gun Mart instead.

  It looked quiet, but then he turned down the alley that ran behind it and the other few stores in this dispiriting little complex on the wrong side of town and saw the humped and motionless shape lying on the ground like a bag of old clothes.

  “Sheriff sends his apologies,” one of the deputies told Kate at a quarter after five. “He’s been delayed by another matter. He says to go home if you need to. He’s in the process of handing over to the Marietta police, and should be here in around twenty minutes, but he says he understands if you can’t wait, and he’ll take your statement later. And call you. He wanted me to make sure to tell you that he’ll call you, if you decide not to wait. Or you can call him. He was very insistent on that.”

  “Oh, he was?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “I—I think I’d rather wait.”

  “Would you like some more coffee?”

  “Um, no thanks. I’m fine.”

  She was seated in a windowless room that was quite comfortable, with its coffee table and three armchairs. She guessed it was where they conducted their less formal interviews or gave information to people who weren’t under any kind of suspicion. But the lack of windows was a drawback. She knew it must be getting light out, by now. Any minute, Rob would be up and about, out at the ranch. He usually set the alarm for five-thirty.

  Someone had shown her a phone out front that she could use if she needed to, so she waited a few minutes more and then went to the desk and called home to tell Rob and Melinda not to worry. There’d been some drama after prom and she was needed, but would be home in a few hours.

  “We didn’t realize you hadn’t come home,” Rob said. “But I would have as soon as I got outside and saw your pickup not there. Glad you called.”

  At fifteen minutes before six, Harrison finally appeared in the doorway and it took all the self-control Kate possessed not to jump up and throw herself into his arms.

  “They told me you’d waited,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He almost kicked the door shut behind him and came over to her as she stood up and suddenly there they were, face to face, alone together, nothing in the way.

  Nothing except fatigue, and his uniform, and her totally inappropriate black cocktail dress, and a disastrous night.

  Maybe this was what stopped them from touching each other. There was a sudden change of intent and a catch of breath and they both froze in place, a safe distance from each other, close enough to touch but not touching after all. It was as if there was an invisible wall.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Armed robbery at the Gun Mart, the owner dead inside, and a hit-and-run in the alley at the back, by the gas station. I’ve handed over to the police department now, because it’s their jurisdiction, but I’m pretty sure the two incidents are connected, and their investigator thinks so, too. He’s on scene. He’ll be there a while.”

  Kate’s spine crawled. “What a night! Any idea who—?”

  “Who’s responsible? None, yet. Who the hit and run victim is? Guy called Earl Anderson, who we have in our holding cell a couple of times a month after he’s gotten drunk enough to cause trouble. He’s no great loss to the community, I have to say. You okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “Hell, Kate.” He gave her a hunted look. “I’m sorry, I have to take your statement, can’t leave it, but when we’ve done that, can we go somewhere and eat breakfast? There should be somewhere opening up soon. The diner.”

  “Yes. That would be good. Statement first. I—I want to get it done.”

  “We’ll sit by the computer, if that’s okay with you. I’m not the world’s best typist, but it’s still faster than doing it by hand and putting it in later.”

  “Whatever is best for you, Harrison.”

  So they sat stiffly side by side in office chairs at a desk with a computer screen glaring at them and he hunted and pecked at the keyboard a lot faster than she’d expected after his “not the world’s best typist” warning. Still, it took a while. Almost seven by the time they were done.

  “Main Street Diner’ll definitely be open by now,” he said. “Is that all right?”

  “Only if they serve coffee.”

  “Only that? Coffee. Gee, I don’t know, might be a stretch.”

  “Yeah, my requirements are pretty extreme.”

  He gave a short laugh. Still they hadn’t touched, and she didn’t know if it was because he was in his official role or if he actively valued the distance offered by his uniform. There was this we need to talk vibe going on, but she didn’t know what it meant.

  She needed to talk. She needed to ask him about his house, but how naked and vulnerable would that make her, especially after the other night, if he came back with an announcement that he and his ex-wife—Christie, she remembered—were getting back together?

  “Walk or drive?”

  “Drive,” she said, because of her cocktail dress and her shoes.

  “I’ll take you. Leave your truck. I’ll drop you back to it later.”

  It almost took longer to get in and out of the car than to make the actual journey to the opposite end of Main Street, so neither of them tried to talk, and the atmosphere between them grew thicker and thicker. He slowed out front of the diner and then he said, “I don’t want to do this,” and her heart sank.

  She made herself speak brightly. “That’s fine. Take me back to my truck, then.”

  “No, I mean I don’t want to do this… do anything… here. I want to take you home to my place, where we can be alone and talk, because I just don’t want anyone around but you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Know what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said.

  He looked alarmed. “You don’t?” The car was crawling along Main Street, almost d
riving itself. So early, the street was almost deserted, and he pulled over with a lurch, the front tire kicking the curb. “You don’t,” he repeated.

  “Rick Styles called me this morning… yesterday morning.” She stopped and corrected herself again, so that it was clear. “Friday morning. He says you’ve taken your house off the market. For personal reasons. I asked what personal reasons, and all he could come up with was that you’d called from Helena to tell him your decision, and maybe you were getting back together with your ex.”

  “Christie and I are not getting back together.”

  “Then I don’t understand about your house. You and I… would have spent half the night together, Wednesday, if there hadn’t been that message from my brother. I let you… I let you—” She stopped.

  “You let me make you come,” he said for her, very quietly.

  “Yes. That.”

  “Do you not like saying it? It was amazing.” His dark eyes were watchful.

  “It was amazing, and it’s a very naked, vulnerable thing to do, to come when the other person doesn’t. Especially when it’s… been a while, for me.” She dared to look up at him, and found him still watching her quietly. For once she couldn’t feel the calm, she was too scared about what she was saying. “But I let it happen,” she went on. “And then the next thing I hear, you’ve gone off to Helena in, I have to think, a state of huge sexual frustration—”

  He laughed. “You’re not wrong, there.”

  “—and I hear that you’re not selling your house and seems like Rick might be right.”

  “Rick is wrong.”

  “So why wouldn’t you tell him your reasons?”

  “Because you’re not the only one vulnerable, Kate. You’re going to think—Well. Here’s the thing. I gotta tell you I’m scared about what you’re going to think when I tell you why I’m not selling the house.” The back of the car seat creaked a little as he shifted. “It’s embarrassing.”