River Mourn

by Bill Hopkins

Chapter 5

  Last Monday Afternoon

  Rosswell was in Ste. Genevieve because he'd finagled his way into being appointed to hear cases there. It was amazing how grateful the Missouri Supreme Court became when a judge volunteered to help out in other counties. There'd be less griping among the voters of Bollinger County (his home county) when and if anyone realized that he was spending a lot of time away from home. Rosswell would make sure that the voters knew he had the stamp of approval from the highest court in the state. And, since the docket in Ste. Genevieve wasn't usually that heavy, he'd have time to snoop. Tina was priority one.

  After court recessed at midday, Rosswell crossed the street to Mabel's, which was stuffed with people. A line had formed on the sidewalk. Rosswell assumed his place, vowing to wait patiently in the heat of the cloudless day. If it hadn't been Daylight Saving Time, his noon shadow would've been invisible. The smell of roast beef, the special of the day, made his mouth water even as he began sweating. He removed his suit coat and tie.

  Ollie appeared. "Let's take a stroll."

  "And lose my place in line?" The people behind Rosswell cheered when they heard Ollie's invitation to traipse around the downtown.

  Ollie pulled a tube from his pocket and slathered a dab of Vaseline on his head, wiping the excess petroleum jelly with a Kleenex. He waved his slim reporter's spiral notebook. "My notes." A slinky brunette in front of Rosswell craned her neck a bit too obviously. Ollie said to her, "It's about a venomous snake breeding program. You interested?" She pivoted away.

  Rosswell followed Ollie.

  When they were out of earshot of anyone, Ollie said, "I talked to the ferry driver."

  "Ferry driver? Don't you mean captain? Or pilot? Not driver."

  Ollie's face reddened. "Yeah, okay. Captain." Rosswell loved it whenever Ollie was wrong, since the snitch otherwise seemed to know every fact in existence.

  They reached Rosswell's truck. He took out his key, unlocked the door, and grabbed the handle. "Damn." He opened the door, threw his suit coat and tie inside, then locked the door. "This truck is freaking hot."

  "It's a black truck. It absorbs heat. More properly, black paint in sunshine promotes the process of equilibrium-"

  "Enough with the smart ass." Rosswell inspected his hand for burns. "What about the ferry driver?" A chuckle escaped before he could shut it down.

  Ollie rubbed his head and coughed before a massive frown spread across his face. "I caught the captain between turnarounds. He and I had a little chat."

  "And?" When they reached the shade of a building, Rosswell slowed, savoring the less hot air, even though only for a moment.

  Ollie scanned his notes. "The ferry can carry nine regular-sized vehicles. There were three on the run you saw yesterday morning. A white van, a white pickup truck, and a white SUV."

  Rosswell ran a quick mental calculation. "Each of those vehicles could carry four people. There could've been twelve people on the ferry. I assumed four people minimum, besides the captain. How many people were actually there?"

  "Four or five. The captain wasn't clear."

  "How can he not know how many passengers he had? Don't you have to sign something when you board?"

  "Nope." Ollie read more of his notes. "You walk or drive on. If the ferry is on the other side, you punch a button on a pole that sends out a radio signal. That calls the ferry. When the boat gets to your side, you pays your money, you takes your ride."

  "There's no way of tracing the vehicles?"

  "Correct."

  Rosswell wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief he'd drawn from his back pocket. "Did the captain know any of the passengers?"

  "Elbert LaFaire-that's the captain's name-said he'd never seen any of them before that he could remember."

  "How long has the guy worked on the ferry?"

  "He said he knew Mark Twain personally."

  "No wonder his memory is bad."

  Rosswell and Ollie reached the sidewalk in front of the Southern Hotel. Tina had dubbed the inn our special place after she and Rosswell spent several romantic weekends there the previous year. Rosswell, in fact, believed that Tina became pregnant in the Southern Hotel during one of their many lovemaking bouts. While he might be able to pin down the location-he was in the room when she conceived-the date still wasn't certain.

  Rosswell's memory wandered back to the time he first made love with Tina. He'd dragged himself from the doctor's office to the sheriff's station in Marble Hill, searching for Sheriff Frizz Dodson. He needed to talk to someone. Rosswell had no family and no close friends. Frizz wasn't there. Tina, the only deputy on duty, was dispatching.

  She gazed at him for an instant. "What's wrong?"

  Until that moment, Rosswell and Tina had dealt with each other in a strict business way. That changed when Rosswell said, "I got some bad news," and Tina said, "Tell me." Rosswell told her about the leukemia diagnosis.

  Later that night she invited herself to share his bed.

  Now, when asked, his doctor mouthed assurances that the disease was "in remission," which Rosswell took as meaning, "Hiding in your body, fixing to kill your ass."

  The memory of their first night led to another recollection, this one of Tina on the porch of the Southern Hotel in Sainte Genevieve last Christmas. Earlier Rosswell had suggested they drive there from Marble Hill for an early steak supper.

  After the meal, her skin glowed in the cold sunset as they sat on the porch. Only the slightest breeze disturbed the still air. Her delicate hand pressed against his face while she captured his eyes with her beauty. He knew then that living with her the rest of his life was necessary.

  As Melville wrote about another time and place, "The pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look."

  Rosswell drew out of his pocket a necklace he'd bought for her and draped it around her neck. "It's a Celtic cross. Pure gold. Look on the back. 'A single soul dwelling in two bodies.' Aristotle said that."

  "I'll never take it off. This moment should last forever. I hereby wave my magic wand and make this an eternal instant of time in this golden country." Full winter's dark had fallen early. A flurry of shooting stars graced the clear sky. "Each of those meteors is an angel, drifting to earth to give us a blessing."

  Tiny red, white, and blue lights strung over the building blinked in slow rhythm. Skyrockets took flight, bursting in crazy geometric patterns. Small children dressed in traditional French Canadian costumes wandered the dark streets holding candles and singing carols. The girls wore white bonnets and blouses, black skirts, and white aprons. The boys sported white shirts, black vests, floppy berets, and knee-length black pants. All the children wore white stockings and black shoes.

  Tina rested her head against Rosswell's shoulder. "Today is forever."

  "I..." Rosswell felt the same way as when Ollie checkmated him in a chess game. "I?uh?love you."

  "I love you, Judge Rosswell Carew." Tina laughed and tilted her head, staring at him as if she were expecting him to say something else.

  "What?"

  "Men recognize only obvious subtleties."

  Rosswell's brain hurt after that statement. Damn it, what was he supposed to say next?

  Tina whispered, "Ask the desk clerk if they have a room."

  Once inside their own world, Tina took a long time undressing in front of him. When he encircled her, she said, "Don't ever let me go."

  "Tina, I need you. Forever."

  Afterward they spent a long time making love. When dawn came, they'd never slept a moment.

  Now, Rosswell stared at the three-story red brick building, recalling every detail of that spectacular night. The memory would never leave him, no matter how his search for Tina played itself out.

  Rosswell ran his hands along the white wood of the railings, carved in the shape of ribbon candy. "I wonder if they paint these railings every year."

  "Use the correct term. Balustrade. The old building deserves respect."

&nbs
p; Rosswell closed his eyes a moment and prayed for patience. If Goddess wouldn't give him patience, maybe his own brain would pitch in. Ollie was a great snitch, but his anal personality grated on Rosswell's nerves like a bumpy dental drill on aching teeth. The fact that Ollie was indispensable to him, however, never left Rosswell's mind.

  "Thank you, Ollie." He opened his eyes. "I wonder if Tina came here?" Did she spend time in the hotel without him? He didn't like that possibility.

  "The FBI searched the place top to bottom, side to side."

  "How do you know this?"

  "I?uh?read a report somewhere." Ollie scratched his chin. "It was-"

  "Never mind." Rosswell had no need to ask. He already knew. Ollie had hacked a computer, maybe a federal one. "Don't confess any federal crimes to me, okay? Or, for that matter, any crime of any kind. I'd be duty bound to blow the whistle on you. Forget I asked."

  "Forget what?"

  They twined their way through the old streets without speaking until they reached the Church of Ste. Genevieve on Dubourg Place, next to the courthouse.

  "Ollie, now can we talk about the passengers?"

  "Only one stood out to the captain. The guy who was a passenger in the white van was slender. Red bandana. Blue jeans and a blue work shirt. Long black hair in a ponytail. Dark skin."

  Rosswell jerked to a halt. "Native American?"

  "A good guess. You didn't see the guy's ponytail? The captain said it was a beaut."

  Rosswell thought a moment. "A coat. The guy had on a light jacket or covering of some kind. The ponytail could've been stuck down the jacket."

  "A jacket in this weather?"

  "I guess I couldn't see his hair. What can I say?"

  "Start with you're a lousy eyewitness."

  "I'm a great eyewitness. But eyewitness testimony isn't worth crap. Circumstantial evidence is the best. They taught me in law school that the circumstantial evidence of dog tracks in the mud outweighs the sworn testimony of ten thousand angels vowing that no dog passed this way."

  "I read that on the back of a cereal box."

  Rosswell avoided the sparring. "You know who that Indian sounds like?"

  "Ribs Freshwater. And a hundred other guys in this area."

  To the best of the judge's knowledge, no one had seen Ribs since Rosswell shot Johnny Dan. The Cherokee was possibly connected to Nathaniel Dahlbert, a tall man with incredibly white skin and orange hair. Nathaniel had been standing by Rosswell when he shot the bad guy but had disappeared before Johnny Dan hit the ground.

  "Makes sense though," Rosswell said. "Nathaniel ran a dope pushing ring. Ribs worked for him, and after I killed one of their main connections, I cooked Nathaniel's golden goose. Now Ribs threw a woman in the river and I'll bet Nathaniel ordered it."

  "That makes no sense at all. Ribs is goofier than a happy puppy, but Nathaniel is sharp. If-and that's a big if-those jokers are working together, then they've taken off for Los Angeles or New York or Miami. They wouldn't stick around a place sixty miles from where you shot their man in Bollinger County."

  "Nathaniel hates me." Rosswell continued around the side of the church where he stopped by the memorial to children who would never be born. "Never eliminate suspects until you have proof." He prayed silently for the safety of Tina and their baby. He'd hardly finished his amen when he wondered what kind of deity would lead him around a corner, forcing him into the choice of shooting a little girl in the heart or risking his men being blown apart by the thing she wore that looked like a bomb. Maybe Rosswell's kid had already been killed to even that score. Maybe some kind of universal scale needed balancing.

  In his chase of Moby-Dick, however badly Captain Ahab thumped Ishmael, the seaman wrote about the satisfaction of knowing that everybody else was treated the same way. "The universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content." Now it came time for Rosswell's turn at the universal thump. Except he wasn't content.

  Ollie made the sign of the cross.

  Rosswell asked, "Are you Catholic now? I thought you followed some kind of pagan religion. Norse gods or something."

  "Never hurts to cover all your bases." Ollie slanted his head sideways, examining the memorial. "I'm partial to Loki. He's going to destroy the universe one of these days."

  "Herman Melville said, 'Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.' "

  "Loki is not a cannibal. Or a Christian."

  Rosswell avoided further discussion of religion. "Besides Ribs Freshwater, what about the other people on the ferry?"

  "I told you. The captain didn't know them. He thinks they were tourists." Ollie poked Rosswell in the chest. "And you do not know that Ribs Freshwater was on that ferry."

  Rosswell batted the offending finger away from his body. "Isn't the ferry used by people working in Illinois? Or people coming from over there to work in Missouri?"

  "I'm guessing it was too early for commuters or tourists. And Sundays are light traffic days." Ollie consulted his notes. "The captain thought the other guys were average build, medium height, brown hair, no facial hair, no glasses, no distinguishing characteristics. Vanilla."

  "All of the passengers were male?"

  "That's what the captain said."

  When they reached the restaurant, Rosswell said, "I'm free until tomorrow morning."

  "Are you thinking what you saw is connected to Tina?"

  "I hope not. Something bad happened, and Gustave isn't too concerned about it because he has a lousy witness."

  "That would be you."

  "Correct."

  Ollie stepped closer. "If I'm your researcher, then I have to tell you what I think about Tina."

  "Have at it."

  "She's dead."

  Rosswell choked, but Ollie continued. "If she's not dead, then someone's holding her against her will. She's pregnant. The people holding her may not know she's pregnant."

  "They know by now. And my baby could be in danger."

  "Not only that, but why do they want Tina in the first place? Is she wealthy? No. Are you wealthy? No. Tina doesn't have money and she doesn't have any deadly secrets." Ollie stopped, appearing to think about what he'd said. "Does she, Rosswell? Does Tina have some kind of information that could be dangerous to her?"

  Rosswell rocked back and forth on his heels, one of his thinking postures, ranking second only to pacing. He guessed that Ollie had been hacking something, or how else could he know that Tina wasn't rich? Comfortable. That described Rosswell. But not rich.

  "Have Mabel pack us a picnic lunch."

  Ollie ignored Rosswell's attempt to divert the questions. "How about Tina's parents? Do you know anything about them?"

  "Tina moved to Marble Hill when she was a freshman in high school. I never really got to know her parents. They were both?I don't know?bland. Uninteresting."

  Ollie took another step closer. "Were?"

  "They're both gone now. Let's get that picnic lunch."

  "Any particular reason we need to get food to go?"

  "We're headed for the scene of the crime."

  Ollie's eyes widened. "Which scene and which crime?"