The Bramble and the Rose

by Tom Bouman

  To get to Aunt Medbh’s house from the south, Ryan had to cross a creek, and then a road that curled around a few high hills, with the house up top on one of them. The driveway was to the north, so he’d either crawl through the field next to the house or move around the woods at the edge of the clearing, so he could show up coming from the right direction. He climbed the hill on aching legs and took up his post on a dry, flat rock to wait for the right time.

  Before long, he heard something moving in the woods behind him. The sound became the steady footsteps of a person. No, two. He slipped behind the rock where he’d been sitting and lay still. The footsteps stopped somewhere to his left, and some rustling and scrabbling followed, and then silence. Ryan waited a minute and then picked his head up to where he could see: Off at the edge of the woods, behind some saplings and brambles, were two men. One held a scope to his eye and was looking straight at Aunt Medbh’s house. The other stood beside him on the other side, and Ryan could not get a clear look. For a wild moment he thought, was the one with the scope his dad, back from home to get him? The height was close, the body hidden under baggy camo, the face behind a bandanna. No, it wasn’t him, but a stranger. The hands were harder than his father’s.

  The one stood for some time spying, then turned, took a water bottle or flask from a pocket, pulled his bandanna down, and had a drink. Not his dad, but a puffy, unshaven face of a man about his dad’s age. He handed the bottle to the other, also in camo, and squatted, giving Ryan a look at the taller one. As the first man looked around, Ryan eased back. When he rose again to look, the strangers were not where they had been. Slowly, Ryan craned his neck to get a look at the field between him and the house; they were not there. Turning back, he faced the first man, who was now just twenty feet away, looking at him, face still uncovered. When the man took a step, Ryan ran out into the field and toward the house with all the strength and speed he had.

  Later, as night fell, if he worried about the men in the woods, it was not much. They’d been dressed for hunting, so probably they’d been scouting. Maybe they shouldn’t have been there, and were mad he’d caught them. He didn’t know enough to tell someone, and telling someone would raise questions he didn’t want to answer.

  It had gotten cold enough that Mag had made Ryan move from the tent in the yard to inside the house at night. He’d broken down the tent and stowed it in a downstairs closet. With Grandfather and Grandma in one bedroom and his baby sister out cold in another, his mom’s bedroom floor was his best option. That night, he lay awake. His mother finished brushing her teeth and peed in the upstairs bathroom—he could hear it—and came in wearing her night-tee that showed too much of her white legs. Ryan rolled over and faced the wall, angry without knowing why.

  “Love you,” she said. She read until she fell asleep with the light on.

  He’d got away with it. They still didn’t know that he’d left school. Not skipped, left. He’d never go back. And what they also didn’t know, because they hadn’t bothered to notice, was that his backpack was still out there at the edge of the woods, on the wrong side of the house. Slowly he raised himself standing and slipped out the door of the bedroom.

  IN THE morning, Ryan was gone, along with his tent, sleeping bag, my .270, my third-best knife, a map, food for a few days, and all of the cash he could scrounge from the house—we guessed about a hundred dollars. I had a few theories, and quickly ruled out the first, that he was heading toward Binghamton, north of the state line to catch a bus somewhere, maybe following his father. If that were so, he’d have to ditch the rifle. He hadn’t left a note, and he didn’t have much money. Mag didn’t think that’s what he was doing, and neither did I. My next guess was that he was heading south on foot. If that were true, he’d still need more than a hundred dollars and his two good legs, and I only hoped he wouldn’t be so careless as to hitchhike. The third and most likely possibility was that he needed time to himself, and was taking it somewhere nearby in the woods he’d spent the past few weeks exploring. Mag called the school and learned that they didn’t have good attendance records for him.

  I spiraled out from the house, and in one of the places I’d taken Ryan to in days past, a flat sunny spot in the woods with grass and a scattering of bluestone slabs, I made a troubling find: the tent, disassembled flat and abandoned.

  I asked Father what he’d been telling the boy, teaching him.

  “Nothing I didn’t teach you,” he said. “His father sure isn’t going to do it. I’ve been telling the boy things for years; nobody mentioned it until now.”

  “Hunting?”

  “Among other things.”

  We put out an alert for Ryan. I held my family, told them I’d find the kid, and went in to work, where I hoped I’d be able to think clearly.

  Later that morning the sheriff called me in to Fitzmorris, and suggested I wear comfortable clothes instead of my uniform. I protested. I was going looking for Ryan, I didn’t have time, it was ridiculous. No good. I wore the uniform but not the .40, drove down to Fitzmorris, and made myself available at the Holebrook County Sheriff’s Department in the courthouse basement.

  Ben Jackson led me down the hall to one of the interview rooms. “Any sign of the boy yet?”

  “No, and I’ve got to say—”

  “I understand. Hanluain’s out looking in the meantime.”

  “Hanluain,” I said, frustrated, and stopped myself. “Just watch out he doesn’t come upon my father unawares. What about Paycheck? He may be quickest.”

  “It may come to that. Keep it simple in there.”

  So there was I, on the wrong side of a heavy wooden table, tapping my foot and looking from Garcia’s face to Collyer’s as they looked back at mine. In came Sheriff Dally with a coffee for me. I let it sit.

  “Can we just,” said Collyer, “go over your relationship to Ms. Bray again?”

  We did so.

  “So you never got into her vehicle with her?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Did she touch you, make physical contact with you, last time you saw her?”

  “Not that I’m aware.”

  “Did you still have any feelings for her?”

  “No.”

  “Were you attracted to her?” Garcia said. “It’s all right, no judgment.”

  “I’m married and my wife’s pregnant. Shelly and I were through.”

  “Congratulations. I’m … trying not to disrespect you or your wife here.”

  “Try a little harder.”

  “Look,” said Collyer. “Let’s be real for a minute. People have all kinds of lives. You know that.” I checked in with the sheriff. His face was blank.

  “Henry, did you ever visit Shelly Bray in her motel room in Fitzmorris?” said Sheriff Dally.

  “No, Jesus Christ. I didn’t know she had a motel room. I never even knew where she lived after the divorce. Sheriff, you tell these guys they got the wrong idea here. I don’t know who’s saying what, or what you found, or what you think you know. I told you the whole story. I went home to my wife. Talk to Shelly’s husband.”

  “Why do you say that?” said Collyer.

  “You know why.”

  “Henry,” said Dally, wincing, “can we reach out to Julie?”

  “You don’t have to ask me,” I said, hoping I was hiding my panic. “You want to talk to her, talk to her. Are we done?” The detectives and the sheriff didn’t answer, but exchanged looks. “I have to go find my nephew.”

  “Take Jackson with you,” the sheriff said.

  “I don’t want him. Let Jackson look someplace I’m not already looking.”

  The three men shifted eyes at each other. “We’d like to have someone with you for the next little while,” said Garcia. “To be safe.”

  “Jesus Christ, don’t waste your time on me.”

  But as I pulled out of the courthouse parking lot, Deputy Jackson followed in his patrol car.

  Miss Julie worked for Franklin Ambulance, the county’s
only commercial ambulance company. They were located on a side street in Fitzmorris, in what used to be a mechanic’s shop. The three garage doors were all open, showing all three vehicles home and in service. As I got out of my truck, Jackson opened his door too—I held up a hand to him, part plea, part warning, and headed into the station alone.

  At this point, Miss Julie was showing and I had been hinting that she should stop working soon, or change her job for a little while. Paramedics ride in the back of the ambulance without any seat belt, for one. They do a lot of lifting of bloody, flailing, sick, and dead people. But my hints had annoyed her, and this was not the time to bring it up again.

  In the common room, Miss Julie, uniformed in blue with her hair pulled tight into a ponytail, looked up. Her face fell when she saw mine.

  “It’s not about Ryan,” I said. “We haven’t found him yet.”

  “Oh. Okay,” she said.

  “Can we talk a minute?”

  We went out into the cool fall morning outside the station, where her coworkers wouldn’t hear. Miss Julie took note of Jackson sitting there in his car, but had the good sense not to wave to him or show much on her face. And I explained to her about me and Shelly Bray. Back when Miss Julie and I were getting together, I didn’t know where it was going, and at some point she was in my life, and so was Shelly. And that’s no hanging matter. It’s the twenty-first century. But Julie once asked me if I’d stepped around with married women, because there were rumors, and I’d point-blank denied them. She had me for the lie, the skulking, dirty secret. If only I hadn’t made it a secret. And the whole time I was telling her about it, our baby was between us.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You should have known about it a while back.”

  She didn’t say it was all right. “Why are you telling me now?”

  “The other night at the bar, she was there.”

  “Oh?”

  “Julie …” I began.

  “Go on.”

  “I’d never.”

  “You did,” she said.

  “Before you—mostly—and not behind your back. Not … really.”

  “Behind some other idiot’s back.”

  “The marriage wasn’t going good for them.”

  “Oh, my god, that’s what they all say.”

  “Anyway, I’d never. I love you.”

  Miss Julie turned her face down the road. “So, Shelly Bray.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She got ahold of me after the show. She said she had some information, something to tell me, but before she could come through with it, she was killed. That night. Two nights ago.”

  “Henry, let’s get out of here. Out of town. I want to deal with this, I want you to help me understand it, but I need us to be safe.”

  I stifled a flash of anger. Just go to some new place, some new house, why not. “They’re going to want to talk to you. We need to find Ryan …” I looked over at Deputy Jackson in his car. “Listen, the sheriff and two state police detectives had me in an interview room this morning. It’s possible their people found a trace of me, a hair, something, in Shelly’s car. Maybe in her motel room, I don’t know.” Miss Julie gave me a look of horror. “I would never go there,” I said. “I’m a policeman. There are people who want me gone. Including Shelly’s husband, and whoever killed Carl Dentry. I wasn’t in her car, and I wasn’t in her motel room, not for any reason. But she was killed the same night she talked to me, and we have a history, so they’re going to follow me for a while, search our places … and I need to get word out. For the family. To get Ryan found. We can talk when this is over. Until then, will you do something for me?”

  A long silence. Then she said, “I’m listening.”

  WHILE JULIE WAS at work, the PSP searched the cottage at Walker Lake. Deputy Jackson and I stood in the yard and watched. The Sovereign Individual did a slow roll past in his truck. I saw him and Jackson exchange a look I couldn’t read. I took five minutes to walk down to the boathouse and open the doors. Jackson followed. No sign of Ryan, and everything looked like it was in place, but hard to tell with their six small boats of different kinds, and jumbled-up stuff there. We took a pass through the woods that bordered the cottage plot and up the hill across the road to the timber-frame studio we’d built last year, full of Willard Meagher’s half-done abstract paintings. No sign, but again, I couldn’t say what was or wasn’t a sign.

  Then the circus traveled over to Aunt Medbh’s house. While my family stood out in the yard, they searched the place. I kept a wary eye on my father, who stood glowering for a minute, and then disappeared into the woods. Before we left there, Deputy Jackson asked Mag for some clothing of Ryan’s. Mag gave him a T-shirt.

  In the Wild Thyme Township building’s parking lot, they searched my station and my patrol truck. John Koslowski, the township mechanic, tinkered quietly on a dump truck in the garage, watching from the open door. Inside the one-room station, I let Collyer into my gun safe, remembering too late about the money I’d yet to turn over to the Game Commission and otherwise return. Collyer looked inside the envelope and said, “What’s this?”

  “A fine.”

  “You in the habit of collecting cash fines from the people here?”

  “No.”

  “You have anything to document this?”

  “No.”

  Collyer looked at me as if in bafflement, set the envelope aside, and continued picking through things. At some point Sheriff Dally showed up. Outside, they turned to my personal vehicle. The forensic techs laid all my junk out on a tarp, piece by piece. Behind the pickup’s seat is where they found a red shock cord and a jack handle that wasn’t mine. I know my things.

  A tech showed the cord and the handle to Collyer and Garcia. It got quiet fast.

  “Henry Farrell,” Collyer said.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Dally. “His nephew’s missing, his family needs him. This is a plant. It’s obvious. It’ll wash out.”

  “Henry Farrell,” Collyer said again.

  “We’ll keep him for you,” said Jackson, stepping forward and putting himself between me and the PSP detectives. “Don’t worry.”

  A long silence passed. Garcia said, “No, we insist.”

  “I’m going to insist right back,” said Dally.

  “With respect—” began Garcia.

  “I thank you, but no. You understand, my department covers all of Holebrook County when we have to.”

  Garcia smiled. “You called us in. We didn’t call you. Do you serve this township?”

  “When we have to. But that’s beside the point. We serve Fitzmorris, where Ms. Bray’s motel room was. We called you about Carl Dentry, not her.”

  “Officer Farrell isn’t sheriff’s department. And he’s the only local police for this township.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Our jurisdiction arises automatically when local law enforcement no longer covers its primary jurisdiction. And that’s what we have here, because Officer Farrell is under arrest.”

  “Not yet, he’s not. Again, our remit is the entire county.”

  “Just take him and let’s go,” said Collyer to his partner.

  “Deputy Jackson,” said Dally, “will you make Officer Farrell at home with us somewhere? The old lockup would be best; I don’t know what kind of space we’ve got in the jail at the moment. Gentlemen, if you insist on insisting, we’ll have to get a judge to sort this out, and I don’t want to put on a spectacle.”

  “Sheriff …” began Collyer, and then thought better of it.

  My mind raced. I barely followed what they’d been saying. I struggled to slow and center myself. The sheriff had bought me some time and safety, but in the end I could not submit to him or anyone. That decision, I’d already made. I’d seen too many things go wrong in too many ways to trust in my innocence alone. I turned my thoughts to the lockup in the courthouse basement, and how I might get out of it.

  “You
ready, Henry?” said Jackson. I got in the backseat, in the cage. “We’ve got to make a stop.”

  We drove down Route 37 in silence. It was the long way around to Fitzmorris. “Might as well read you your rights,” Jackson said.

  “Consider them read,” I said.

  “We know you didn’t kill her,” Jackson said. “Any ideas?” I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. Jackson said, “The ex-husband was with the kids.” Jackson turned onto a dirt road that led down over a creek and then up into the hills that marked the edge of the Heights.

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t have it done. Where we headed?” I said.

  “To get Paycheck. Least I can do while you’re our guest is take him out and look for the boy.” Another long silence passed. “We need people out there who know how to look.”

  “Is that what the sheriff thinks?” I leaned forward and took stock of the weapons in the car. One on Jackson’s right hip, my guess was a shotgun racked on the other side of the panel separating me from the front seat. In my job, drawing a firearm is not necessarily a show of strength. I don’t say this to criticize guns. I have shot people and would again if it was called for. But every time I’ve pulled a gun on the job, I’ve been on my back foot. Anyway, I didn’t have the .40. I’d left it in the locker out of my respect for the sheriff and the day, and my gun belt felt oddly light, like I might float. What I did have was everything else, and I wasn’t handcuffed.