Silence on Cold River

by Casey Dunn

  “I lied, Eddie. Ama is awake,” Martin lied. He wondered what Captain’s expression looked like on the other side of the one-way mirror.

  “She’s awake?” Eddie jerked upright. “I need to talk to her. Is she talking? What did she say? Did she tell you the man was there? That he was hurting her?”

  Martin closed his eyes.

  He might be wrong.

  He might be completely wrong.

  MARTIN Chapter 27 | 4:00 AM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  MARTIN POURED A CUP OF tepid, day-old coffee and swallowed it in two gulps. He made a face as bitter grounds trapped themselves in every corner and crevice in his mouth. He could’ve made a new pot; it was morning somewhere. In Tarson, the sun was still hours from the horizon, and he didn’t have the patience to stand by and listen to something drip, not when his case was both revealing itself and imploding at the same time.

  Five minutes later, he stepped inside an empty incident room and closed the door with his hip, his arms loaded with the tub containing evidence from the time of Eddie’s arrest and the files Martin had collected on Hazel’s disappearance, including the information from Eddie. He was no longer convinced there was a connection, but for the next hour, or as long as the caffeine lasted, he was determined to pretend there was and see what links this belief might conjure.

  On one corner of the table, he placed a picture of Ama he’d printed from her online bio. In the opposite corner, he placed Hazel’s senior picture. On immediate assessment, the only three things these women had in common were gender, the trail, and Eddie. A call to the hospital confirmed Ama had no signs of sexual assault, although in Martin’s opinion, the burns on her thigh seemed suspect of intent. He grimaced, wondering, if this man-in-the-woods theory was true, what Hazel might have endured while she was still alive.

  “We need a body,” he muttered to himself. Otherwise it would be almost impossible to tie these two together without implicating Eddie. No matter what he felt in his gut, he couldn’t reclassify Hazel from runaway to homicide without evidence. Without a body or a confession, he couldn’t even really call her dead. His mind returned to Eddie’s face when he’d prompted the tense change; the weight around his eyes, the way his cheeks sagged. He had become the picture of a sail with no wind.

  Stanton’s head appeared through the door. Martin hadn’t even heard it open. “You wanted a list of names of everyone from the anti-Ama site?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks.” Martin stretched out a hand without standing.

  “So you don’t think Eddie did it now?” Stanton tried to maintain a neutral tone, but his concern lined his forehead.

  “I don’t know,” Martin mused.

  “I hope he didn’t. But finding him like that, with that lady…” Stanton trailed off and shook his head. Without another word, he backed out of the room.

  Martin set the list aside. If he was going to pinpoint a connection between Ama and Hazel, a group of vigilante victims’ families wasn’t the place to start. Hazel had never been in trouble with the law. She’d never seen the inside of a courtroom. She didn’t have a Facebook page, and he hadn’t discovered any handles for any chat rooms. She was quiet, low risk. Ama was all over the internet. She was neither high risk nor low risk.

  Martin rubbed his face. The only thing that made any sense was that both grabs, if this was a man in the woods, were rooted in opportunity, not in victimology. So why had Ama’s injuries seemed so… personal?

  He pulled out a map of the mountain range and highlighted the trail. He hadn’t even known it existed until yesterday. It wasn’t listed in any guidebooks as far as he could tell. Ama must’ve known it because she’d lived here at some point or knew someone who did. And if there was a man in the woods, he had to be local, or at least well versed in the area.

  From what Martin had heard, this trail was lucky to see a hiker a day, and more or less remained empty once colder weather hit. How would his suspect know anyone was coming? His suspect would have to be fit enough to grab and drag another adult across mountain grades. There were elements of opportunity and elements of planning. It was like he was dealing with two completely different people.

  What if Captain was right and Hazel had fallen victim to the mountain, while Ama had been snatched by a pissed-off vigilante? Trying to force a link between Hazel and Ama might botch this whole thing.

  Either Ama needed to wake up, or Hazel’s body needed to show up. Otherwise, he would need to put Hazel’s box back on the shelf and focus on Ama. Except he wouldn’t be able to do that, he knew. This whole thing had a feel about it, a bigness. Whoever took Hazel, if she had been taken, hadn’t left a trace, not a single hint, and there had been no sign of her in a year. This couldn’t have been a first crime for whoever had done it, Eddie or otherwise. There had to be a beginning, and this wasn’t it.

  He stared at the wall, bringing his fingers together against his lips, imagining Eddie sitting at the same table in the room opposite his. No wonder Eddie brought that gun, why he thought it would make the brass pay attention. Ama would win over Hazel, and Hazel would slide back into the shadows of the unknown once more.

  Sighing, Martin reached inside the tub and pulled out the first bagged evidence, which contained the clothes Eddie had been wearing at the time of his arrest. The bag was heavier than it should’ve been, his clothes still soaked through with rainwater. He imagined they probably already stunk of mildew. He unsealed the bag, and a wet smell filled the room. Martin hung the jacket over the back of the spare chair and draped Eddie’s jeans across the seat. Ama’s watch was in a separate bag, tucked into a corner. He plucked it from the rest and watched the light catch on the silver. He’d read that Eddie had sworn he’d picked it up while he was looking for Ama.

  Martin paused, recalling a detail he’d read in Hazel’s file: a little ring they’d found somewhere on the search. He rifled through Hazel’s official file, hoping for a picture, but the only evidence regarding the ring was a scrawled note about finding it on a search and that they believed it was her way of saying goodbye. Martin sealed the watch inside the plastic bag, pocketed it, and headed to the interrogation room where Eddie still sat alone.

  Eddie glanced up. His eyes were bloodshot. Martin sat down across from him and put the watch on the table between them.

  “How did you find this?” he asked.

  “It was in the stone memorial hutch close to the old factory. Whenever I’d look for Hazel, I would go look there.”

  “Why?” Martin leaned forward.

  “That’s where I found her ring.”

  “What made you go in there the first time?”

  “It started to rain. The gate wasn’t locked, so I stepped inside to wait out the storm. I found her ring in there.”

  “Where is it now?”

  Eddie bent down so that his chest was nearly resting on his hands. He worked his fingers under his shirt and pulled out a gold chain. A little silver band with a small amethyst stone was strung on it.

  “They gave it back to me when they called off the search for Hazel,” he said softly. “It was like a consolation or something. A piece of her, I guess. I know they think I did it now. That I killed Hazel. That I shot that lady—Ama—on purpose. But when they took my clothes, they didn’t take this. I don’t know why. Maybe somebody still believes me.”

  “And you found the watch in the same place?” Martin asked.

  “I think that’s why I couldn’t just leave it there,” Eddie said. “I thought if I picked it up, maybe it would help me find her.”

  “But the ring didn’t help you find Hazel.”

  Eddie slipped Hazel’s ring back under his shirt. “We don’t know that yet,” he said.

  “I need to check on a couple things.” Martin stood, studying him. He needed to go back through the evidence. “Do you want to call a lawyer yet?”

  “Are you charging me yet?”

  “Not yet. DA wants to see if the charges will include murder or attem
pted murder.”

  “Then I guess I don’t need one yet,” Eddie said.

  Martin nodded, his mind already back in the woods, and walked out of the room.

  MARTIN Chapter 28 | 5:00 AM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  MARTIN SAT DOWN AT HIS table. He glanced from Ama’s picture to Hazel’s. He couldn’t help fixating on how small her ring was, especially in comparison to Eddie’s fingers. Even his palm had looked oversize beneath the little band. Her file had her listed at five foot one and a hundred pounds. They’d also noted that she couldn’t swim. Whether she fell into the river or into this hypothetical man’s hands, she’d never stood a chance.

  Martin stared at Eddie’s jacket, deeply tired. He began to stand when his gaze caught on a brown line near the hem of the jacket’s front. He turned his head, studying it, and moved closer. That line was intersected at a perpendicular angle by a second line that linked to another, which ran nearly parallel to the first one he’d noticed.

  “What the hell?” he murmured. He rounded the table and pulled the front of the jacket straight. Next appeared to be an upside-down V. Another line began almost immediately after in a continuous zigzag, which dipped off the end of the jacket. A quick inspection confirmed that these lines were limited to only this place on Eddie’s jacket. It was unlikely a muddy branch had swiped across Eddie’s left hip repeatedly and left such a clear pattern. This also had to have happened close to the time of his arrest, or the rain would’ve washed it away.

  Martin gently swiped one gloved index finger down a stripe. He’d seen enough blood on blue latex to know it when he saw it, and that was exactly what was on Eddie’s jacket. Blood spatter wouldn’t be any surprise. He’d held a bleeding woman in his lap. But this looked organized, purposeful.

  Martin took a picture of the pattern to preserve the integrity of the finding. He needed to send the jacket to the lab for testing to confirm his suspicion that the lines were drawn in blood. First, he wanted to take a crack at discerning the meaning of the pattern.

  He turned to a blank piece of paper and sat on the table, allowing his eyes to wander the lines. Sometimes patterns appeared easier on their own, when they didn’t think they were being hunted. The first group of three lines jumped out at him.

  “I,” he whispered as he jotted it down. He moved to the second group, committed to writing down whatever first came to mind. “V.” He looked at the zigzag. “N.” He looked down at his letters and wrote them congruently: IVN. Were they someone’s initials? Did that mean Ama knew her attacker? Maybe she was trying to spell “Ivan”? He wrote down the name with a question mark and circled it.

  He kept pushing for possibilities, flipping the puzzle pieces around in his mind.

  What if the V is an N? Which could make the zigzag a Z.

  He wrote: INZ. “That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.” He stood, needing a break and to send the jacket back to the lab. He also wanted to get the search for “Ivan” underway, just in case anything popped from the name. He eyeballed the jacket from his peripheral as he passed, and then stopped cold. From the opposite angle, the lines on the I turned it into an H. Using the new angle, he reevaluated the letters.

  “Holy shit,” he said on an exhale, and bolted from the room.

  MARTIN Chapter 29 | 5:15 AM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  WITHIN MINUTES, MARTIN HAD SHUTTLED Captain Barrow into the incident room without telling him why. Martin dipped his chin low, studying his superior officer from under his brow, his thumb pressed against his lips to keep him from blurting out his theory. Captain planted a hand on either side of Eddie’s blood-streaked jacket. Martin noticed how Captain’s fingers quivered. Withdrawal, he’d wager. They’d barely slept since Ama had been found, much less had time for a vice. Martin was grateful. If he’d had a free hour, he’d have driven to the nearest pharmacy and done his best to convince somebody behind the counter to refill a prescription—anything he had—one more time. Hell, one more pill would do.

  It would do a lot, Martin told himself. None of it good.

  He exhaled through his nose.

  “Am I boring you, Detective?” Captain asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you see so we can move on with our lives?”

  “I don’t want to color your judgment, Captain. I may be wrong about Eddie Stevens. I don’t want to lead you here, too.”

  “Well, I don’t see shit. So spit it out or I’m leaving. I have a press conference in thirty minutes at the hospital for the six AM news cycle and a date with a shower and my bed after that.”

  “I see ‘Hazel,’ sir. The first three letters, anyway.”

  Captain narrowed his lids and craned his neck. He traced above the fading lines with his pointer finger, and his lips morphed as he mouthed each letter.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “If you look from this angle—”

  “No, Martin. I see what you’re trying to see. But it’s not there. You’re reading too much into this. Ama Chaplin’s hands were covered in blood. She was probably clawing at his jacket or trying to sit up.”

  “Then why isn’t there a handprint?”

  “Martin. Drop it.”

  “Ama must have come into contact with Hazel. Or at the very least, she knew about her. These cases are related, whether Eddie is the real perp here or not.”

  Captain rounded the table and marched toward Martin, stopping only when the toes of his dress shoes were inches from Martin’s sneakers. “You leave this alone, Martin. Hazel’s gone. If Eddie is the reason why, he already knows she’s gone. If he isn’t, then let that poor man believe his daughter was swallowed up by Cold River. If you tell him Ama was writing ‘Hazel’ in blood on his jacket and that the sick fuck who burned lines into that woman’s thigh was the last thing his daughter ever knew or saw or felt, you think that’s going to bring him peace? We need to bring in bigger brass. You jumped on your first instinct, and now you think you were wrong. Every path after this is dirty, and you know it. We need fresh eyes, more resources, and people who have worked this kind of case before.”

  “All due respect, but we’re not even a full day out. And I have worked this kind of case before. This is what I’m good at.”

  Captain paused. His cheeks sucked inward, pulling at the bags swelling under his eyes. “Not good enough,” he said.

  MICHAEL Chapter 30 | June 1993 | Atlanta, Georgia

  WIND HOWLS DOWN DEKALB AVENUE, throwing rain sideways. Raindrops assault windowpanes and passing cars, pound themselves against the asphalt in a frenzy of mist. I duck under the awning of a pay-by-the-hour motel.

  A woman steps out the door. Boots encase her calves nearly to her knees, and a corset binds her torso, flesh squeezing out both ends. The only thing free is her auburn hair, which tumbles down her back and sails with the wind.

  She glances at me and catches me staring.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says. It’s the first full sentence anyone has spoken to me since I stepped off the Greyhound bus that brought me to Atlanta. She lights a cigarette and brings it to her lips. A silver crescent moon on her ring finger catches my eye, the red stone in the middle the color of dried blood. “I’m a singer.” She exhales a stream of gray smoke. “We’re all just trying to make it, you know what I mean?”

  I have no idea what she means.

  “How old are you, boy?” she asks, and I imagine her vocal cords vibrating in her throat.

  I stare at her without answering.

  “You got a place to stay?”

  I shake my head.

  She watches me for three seconds more, something between contempt and concern in her gaze, and in this moment, in her brown eyes, I see my mother in the year before my sister died, hear her voice in my head. Get out of my house, Michael. I can’t stand the sight of you. Put on your jacket before you go or you’ll catch a cold.

  “Look, you can’t stay here. Not unless you’re paying for
a room or my time,” the woman says, bringing my mind back to the motel stoop. Her eyes are darker now, shifting to their corners. “I said it’s time for you to leave.”

  There’s agitation brimming at her edges, like fish panicking just under the surface of water. It draws alarm out of me, and I step back.

  She exhales two jets of smoke through her nose before dropping her cigarette on the ground and stamping it out. “If you need somewhere dry to stand, there are some down-luck fellas three blocks from here. They keep a fire going, and there are a couple of empty buildings on the alley. Three blocks,” she repeats, and points a long finger down the street. “Tell them Garnet sent you.”

  Three. Without further hesitation, I hunch my shoulders to my ears and hurry through the rain. I reach the corner of the third block and cast my gaze down the alley. Tucked behind a dumpster near the end of the street, three people huddle around a burning barrel. I silently count cracks in the asphalt as I walk down the center of the alley.

  My fingers squeeze the end of my father’s stick, and I see one pair of eyes take notice. I back away, the flesh between my shoulder blades tensing. All at once, the three pairs of eyes ringing the burning barrel lift to stare beyond me.

  I turn in time to see the end of the swinging pipe six inches from my face. Then there is a sound like a dropped egg, the flood of iron on my tongue, and iridescent bursts in front of my eyes. I am spitting and writhing. Hands clutch and pull and yank. I roll to my back, clawing upward, my vision doubled and blurring, and watch the pipe come down once more.

  * * *

  My eyelids crack open. My head throbs, pushing at the backs of my eyeballs, drawing bile from my stomach like the tide to the moon. I roll to my side and dry heave. A chill sets in, plunging deep the moment it touches me, and I realize my coat and backpack are gone. My shoes and socks have been removed.