Redemption Lake
Page 30
Radhauser had seen enough murders to know the way rage could build up like a pyramid of sticks laid out for a fire. And when the match was struck, rage could take a person inside it and use them in ways they’d never thought possible.
Millie blew her nose again. “I guess I must have gone back into the bathroom and picked up them scissors, because the next thing I knew, I stood in the middle of her bathroom with blood all over me.” She tried to drink some of her iced tea, but her hands shook so hard the ice cubes rattled in the glass.
Radhauser gave her a moment. “Then what did you do?”
“I stood there, I don’t know how long. Crystal stared right at me, but her eyes had gone blank, like on them deer heads hunters hang over their fireplaces. I grabbed the towels from the racks and wiped off as much blood as I could. I took off my cowboy boots and carried them, along with the towels and the scissors out the front door. I even remembered to wipe off my prints. Then I crossed the street, got into Baxter’s car, and drove to his house. I knew Bax would be a suspect and I didn’t want Gracie to see the motion light and think he’d gone out, so I drove through the alley and used the back entrance.”
“What did Baxter say when he saw you?”
“At first, he didn’t say anything. He just stared at me. Then he told me, real gentle like, to take a shower. He gave me some of his ex-wife’s sweats and a pair of his socks to put on, and said he’d burn the towels, my bloody uniform, and boots. And then he gave me money to buy new ones. I didn’t want to take it because I already had some spare uniforms and a pair of new boots. But Bax insisted. He said not to worry, that it would be okay. He walked me to my car, gave me a hug. He told me to go home and get some sleep, that he’d help Gracie close up The Spur.”
Radhauser didn’t have another set of handcuffs with him, and he wasn’t sure he’d use them if he did. He stood and helped Millie up. “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. “But I have to arrest you for the murder of Crystal Reynolds.”
When he finished reciting her rights, he gave her time to close up her house, call a lawyer, and her sister in Bisbee.
Her brown eyes lifted up toward him. “Don’t feel bad, sugar. I figured you’d be coming for me. But I do need a big favor.”
Radhauser nodded for her to go on.
“I want you to see to it that Travis gets my Beretta. It’s sporty and perfect for a college boy. I’ll sign over the title. It’s all paid for and still smells brand smacking new. I never let no one smoke in it. Not even me.”
Radhauser told her he’d talk to Travis about the car, then took her arm as if escorting her to a dance, and led her to his car.
Chapter Forty-Two
In early August, just two weeks before Matt was scheduled to leave for the University of Iowa, Travis phoned. “Hey, man, what’s up?”
Matt clamped his fingers down on the phone. His hand started to tremble. He held the receiver tight against his ear in an attempt to stabilize it and stop his shaking.
“I get it you’re surprised to hear from me, but I didn’t expect speechless. I’d really like to talk before you leave.”
Matt’s eyes filled with tears. “You name the place and time and I’ll be there.”
Travis remained quiet for a moment. “Thanks, man. I’m in Patagonia with the baseball team. Think you could drive down on Saturday and meet me at the lake? I finish up with practice around 7pm. I could be there at 7:30. By the pier where my mom took us fishing with Justin.”
* * *
Matt parted the reeds at the entrance to the old wooden fishing pier where Crystal had once helped them load worms onto their hooks. He could still see her in a pair of blue shorts and a bright green T-shirt, laughing at three ten-year-old boys afraid of nothing except those slimy, squirming bloodworms they had to feed onto fishhooks. He smiled at the memory and then looked for Travis.
He sat at the end of the pier, tossing a navel orange into the air as if it were a baseball and staring out at the water, his feet dangling over the edge.
When Matt sat next to him, he smelled the tangy orange, the slight pine scent of Travis’s shampoo, and the dust and sweat on his baseball jersey—that familiar Travis odor.
“Thanks for calling.”
Travis said nothing. He peeled the orange, dropped the peelings into the water, then handed half of it to Matt. The two of them sat quietly for a few moments, eating orange slices and watching the twilight, as the sun’s final shadows grew longer. Just before the light disappeared, Travis turned to Matt. “What’s up with the blue shirt, dude? Did the stores run out of black T-shirts?”
Matt didn’t know how to explain, how to tell Travis the way the spring and summer had changed him. “I confronted my demons and now I’m expanding my wardrobe and all my other horizons.”
“That’s good,” Travis said. “Me, too.”
For a moment, Matt was uncertain what Travis meant. Was he expanding his horizons to include Matt again? Had he found a way to incorporate their friendship into the rules of The Narrow Way?
“I’ve decided to leave the church,” Travis said, as if he’d read Matt’s thoughts. “And I’ve been seeing my father.”
Matt cocked his head and stared at Travis, unable to believe what he’d just said. Travis told Matt about the letters Radhauser had found, and the way he’d honored Crystal’s wishes by giving them to Travis on his birthday. About the note Crystal had written explaining what she’d done and why. “Detective Radhauser had already talked to my dad and he had a phone number. I called him right away.” Travis grinned. “He has that same gene you got, dude. He bawled when I told him who I was.”
Matt was too shocked to form any words.
“Dad came down last weekend to watch me practice.” Travis told him how great it had felt to finally have a dad cheering on the sidelines. “I got him a University of Arizona baseball cap.” Travis looked happy, as if there was a big window full of sunlight in his eyes. “I’ve been reading a lot, man. And I’ve concluded that God lives inside all of us. Love doesn’t need any church to exist. The funny thing is, it was inside me when I walked away from Bryan and The Narrow Way. Imperfect love is still love, don’t you think?”
Matt thought about his dad and Crystal. He didn’t know if she’d loved his father, but he was certain she’d loved Travis. “I submitted my questions to Iowa and they sent me a summer reading list. Joseph Campbell said the greatest hell is being separated from yourself.”
“That’s good, man. It’s the right school for you.”
Matt swallowed. “I’ve missed you.” He took a chance Travis would understand everything those three words implied.
“Radhauser told me how Columbo Matt and his dramatic sidekick, Sedona, led him to Baxter and Millie.” He shook his head. “I would never have believed they could do something like that. Just goes to show you, man. Never trust a guy with a comb-over.”
Matt laughed.
“I’m sorry I doubted your father.”
“I doubted him, too,” Matt said. “But something good did happen. Sedona is spending every other weekend with Dad, so I won’t have to worry so much about him while I’m in Iowa.”
“I’ll pick up some of the slack, man, and get him and Sedona tickets to a couple of my home games. Nate and Karina, too.”
The night sky over the water grew black, and away from the glare of street lamps the moon rose, speeding toward the lake, leaving behind it a trail of shimmering sequins. The air cooled quickly and smelled like the trout lakeside campers pan-fried over their fires.
It was hard for Matt to remember that sense of falseness in so many things he’d done, the hovering grief over Justin. This night he was pure awareness. There was a huge, spacious quality to his existence as the waves lapped the shore, as regular as a heartbeat, while the reeds under the pier brushed their own rhythms against the bottom of the splintered boards.
“I know you tried to protect me from having to see my mother in that bathtub the way you did.”
&n
bsp; Matt no longer needed to confess he’d had sex with Crystal. It would only hurt Travis further. And he understood the impulse to remain quiet was the same one Matt’s parents and Crystal had for keeping their affair a secret.
Travis soft punched Matt in the shoulder. “I’d like to have my brother back, dude. Even if he’s a clueless geek.” His gaze met Matt’s and held.
Matt believed they were looking right into each other’s souls, as though there was no air or wood or flesh between them. As if they both understood and always had, exactly who they were and why they had to do the things they did, unquestionably, with love and without accusation.
For a moment, Matt didn’t speak, didn’t want to break the spell. “I’m here,” he finally whispered. “I never left.”
The lake was a sheet of black glass beneath them. And the moon and stars were mirrored there, silver and bright.
Matt didn’t know how it was that he and Travis had drifted so far from that innocent and wise place in the desert where their friendship had first begun. In truth, he didn’t know how any of us lost ourselves, or how we were rediscovered. He didn’t know what mysteries eventually sustained us through life. But he did know that he and Travis would discover their separate visions, and help each other in the quest to find that inward light where miracles of love and compassion could leap out of the most ordinary hearts.
Into our dreams.
And into our waking.
ABOUT SUSAN CLAYTON-GOLDNER
Susan Clayton-Goldner was born in New Castle, Delaware and grew up with four brothers along the banks of the Delaware River. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona's Creative Writing Program and has been writing most of her life. Her novels have been finalists for The Hemingway Award, the Heeken Foundation Fellowship, the Writers Foundation and the Publishing On-line Contest. Susan won the National Writers' Association Novel Award twice for unpublished novels and her poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Animals as Teachers and Healers, published by Ballantine Books, Our Mothers/Ourselves, by the Greenwood Publishing Group, The Hawaii Pacific Review-Best of a Decade, and New Millennium Writings. A collection of her poems, A Question of Mortality was released in 2014 by Wellstone Press. Prior to writing full time, Susan worked as the Director of Corporate Relations for University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona.
Susan shares a life in Grants Pass, Oregon with her husband, Andreas, her fictional characters, and more books than one person could count.
Find Susan online:
Website - http://susanclaytongoldner.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/susan.claytongoldner
Twitter - https://twitter.com/SusanCGoldner
Blog - http://susanclaytongoldner.com/my-blog---writing-the-life.html
Tirgearr Publishing - http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/ClaytonGoldner_Susan
BOOKS BY SUSAN CLAYTON-GOLDNER
A BEND IN THE WILLOW
Released: January 2017
ISBN: 9781370816842
In 1965, Robin Lee Carter sets a fire that kills her rapist, then disappears, reinventing herself as Catherine Henry. In 1985, when her 5-year-old son, Michael, is diagnosed with a chemotherapy-resistant leukemia, she must return to Willowood and seek out the now 19-year-old son she gave up for adoption. Is she willing to risk everything, including her life, to save her dying son?