Down River Part 7

"Not a word, man. He's gone into some kind of weird shutdown. I've never seen anything like it. And Dolf-Jesus-he looks like somebody hit him with a brick. I don't know. It's ugly." He paused. We both knew where this would go. "I've been out here for an hour. I just thought you should know... before you walk in there."

"Thanks, Jamie. I mean it. You didn't have to."

"We're brothers, man."

"Are the police still here?"

He shook his head. "They hung out for a long time, but it's like I said, Grace isn't really talking. I think they're out at the farm, Robin and some guy named Grantham. He works for the sheriff. He's the one asking all the questions."

"The sheriff," I said, feeling the emotion move into my face: the dislike, the memories. It was the Rowan County sheriff who'd filed the murder charge against me.

Jamie nodded. "Same one."

"Wait a minute. Why is Robin involved in this? She works for the city."

"I think she does all the s.e.x cases. Some kind of partnership with the sheriff's office when it's out of her normal jurisdiction. She's always in the paper. That Grantham, though, don't let him fool you. He's only been around for a few years, but he's sharp."

"Robin questioned me." I still could not believe it.

"She had to, man. You know what it took for her to stand by you when everyone and his brother wanted you strung up. She almost got fired for it." Jamie shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. "You need me to go in with you?"

"You offering?"

He didn't answer, just looked embarra.s.sed. "No problem," I said, and turned away.

"Hey," Jamie said. I stopped. "What I said before, about being glad to have a front-row seat... I didn't mean it. Not like this."

"It's cool, Jamie. No sweat."

I went in through the double doors. Lights hummed. People looked up and then ignored me. I rounded a corner and saw my father first. He sat like a broken man. His head hung loosely and his arms wrapped around his shoulders as if they had too many joints. Dolf sat beside him, very erect, and stared at the wall in utter stillness. The skin beneath his eyes had pulled away in pale, pink crescents, and he, too, looked reduced. He saw me first, and twitched as if caught doing something he should not.

I stepped farther into the waiting area they occupied. "Dolf." I paused. "Dad."

Dolf pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his hands on his thighs. My father looked up, and I saw that his face looked shattered, too. He held my eyes and straightened his back as if will alone could reconst.i.tute a broken frame. I thought of what Robin had said, that my father wept when he heard that I'd come back. I saw nothing like that now. His fists were white and hard. Cords stretched the skin of his neck.

"What do you know about this, Adam?"

I'd hoped that this would not happen, that Jamie had been wrong. "What do you mean?"

"Don't be smart with me, son. What do you know about this?" He raised his voice. "About Grace, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

For an instant I froze, but then I felt the palsy in my hands, the disbelief that made my skin burn. Dolf looked traumatized. My father stepped closer. He was taller than I, still wide through the shoulders. I searched his face for reason to hope and found nothing. So be it.

"I'm not going to have this discussion," I said.

"Oh, yes, you d.a.m.n well are. You're going to talk to us, and you're going to tell us what happened."

"I have nothing to say to you about this."

"You were with her. You kissed her. She ran from you. Don't deny it. They found her clothes still on the dock." He'd made up his mind. The calm was a veneer. It wouldn't last. "The truth, Adam. For once. The truth."

But I could tell him nothing; so I said the only thing that still mattered to me. Knowing my father and what would come, I said it.

"I want to see her."

He lunged for me. He caught me by the shirt and slammed me against the hard hospital wall. Every detail of his face was plain, but mostly I saw the stranger in him, the pure and crushing hatred as the last of his faith in me fell away. "If you did this," he said, "I will f.u.c.king kill you."

I didn't fight back. I let him hold me against the wall until the hatred shrank into something less total. Like pain and loss. Like something in him just died.

"You should not have to ask me," I said, removing his hands from my shirt. "And I should not have to answer."

He turned away. "You are not my son," he said.

He showed me his back, and Dolf could not meet my eyes; but I refused to be made small. Not now. Not again. So I fought the overwhelming urge to explain. I stood my ground and, when my father turned, I held his eyes until he looked away. I sat on one side of the waiting area and my father sat on the other. At one point, Dolf made as if to cross the room to speak with me.

"Sit down, Dolf," my father said.

Dolf sat.

Eventually, my father climbed to his feet. "I'm going for a walk," he said. "I need some unspoiled air." When the sound of his feet faded away, Dolf came to sit beside me. He was just over sixty, a hardworking man with ma.s.sive hands and iron hair. Dolf had been around for as long as I could remember. My entire life. He'd started on the farm as a young man, and when my father inherited the place, he'd kept Dolf on as the number two man. They were like brothers, inseparable. It had always been my belief, in fact, that without Dolf, neither my father nor I would have survived my mother's suicide. He'd held us together, and I could still remember the weight of his hand on my narrow shoulder in the hard days after the world vanished in a flash of smoke and thunder.

I studied his uneven face, the small blue eyes and the eyebrows dusted with white. He patted my knee and leaned his head against the wall. In profile, he looked like he'd been carved from a hunk of dried beef.

"Your father is a pa.s.sionate man, Adam. He acts in the moment, but usually calms down and sees things differently. Gray Wilson was murdered and Janice saw what she saw. Now you're back and someone's done this to Grace. He's worked up. He'll get over it."

"Do you really think words can make this right?"

"I don't think you did anything wrong, Adam. And if your father was thinking straight, he'd see it that way, too. You need to understand that when Grace came to me, I had no idea what to do. My wife left when my own daughter was young. I knew nothing about nothing. Your father helped me. He feels responsible." He spread his palms. "He's a proud man, and prideful men don't show their hurt. They lash out. They do things they eventually regret."

"That changes nothing."

Dolf shook his head again. "We all have regrets. You do. I do. But the older we get, the more there are to carry around. That much weight can break a man. That's all I'm saying. Give your old man a chance. He never believed you killed that boy, but he couldn't just ignore the things his own wife said."

"He threw me out."

"And he's wanted to make it right. I can't count the times he wanted to call you, or write you. He even asked me once if I'd drive to New York with him. He said there were things to say, and not all things should be trusted to paper."

"Wanting is not the same as doing."

"That's true."

I thought of the blank page I'd found on my father's desk. "What stopped him?"

"Pride. And your stepmother."

"Janice." The name came with difficulty.

"She's a decent woman, Adam. A loving mother. Good for your father. In spite of everything, I still believe that, just as she believes what she saw that night. I can promise that these five years have not been easy on her, either. It's not like she had a choice. We all act on what we believe."

"You want me to forgive him?" I asked.

"I want you to give him a chance."

"His loyalty should be to me."

Dolf sighed. "You're not his only family, Adam."

"I was his first."

"It doesn't work that way. Your mother was beautiful and he adored her. But things changed when she died. You changed most of all."

"I had my reasons."

A sudden brightness moved into Dolf's eyes. The manner of her death hit us all hard. "He loved your mother, Adam. Marrying again was not something he did lightly. Gray Wilson's death put him in a difficult place. He had to choose between believing you and believing his wife. Do you think that could be easy or anything but dangerous? Try to see it like that."

"There's no conflict today. What about now?"

"Now is... complicated. There's the timing. The things Grace said."

"What about you, then? Is today complicated for you?"

Dolf turned in his seat. He faced me with blunt features and a level gaze. "I believe what Grace told me, but I know you, too. So, while I don't know what, exactly, to believe, I do think that this will all be sorted out in time." He looked away. "Sinners usually pay for their sins."

I studied his raw face, the chapped lips and the drooping eyes that ill-concealed the grief. "You honestly believe that?" I asked.

He looked up at the humming lights, so that a bright, gray sheen seemed to cover his eyes. His voice drifted, and was pale as smoke.

"I do," he said. "I absolutely do."

CHAPTER 7.

Ten minutes later, the cops materialized in the door. Robin appeared subdued, while the other cop made small, eager movements. Tall and round-shouldered, he was somewhere north of fifty, in faded jeans and a red jacket. Brown hair spread thinly over a narrow forehead and sharp nose. A badge hung on his belt and small, round gla.s.ses flashed over washed-out eyes.

"Can we talk outside?" Robin asked.

Dolf sat up straighter, but said nothing. I got up and followed them out. Jamie was nowhere to be seen. The other cop held out a hand. "I'm Detective Grantham," he said. We shook hands. "I work for the sheriff, so don't let the clothes fool you."

His smile broadened, but I knew better than to trust it. No smile could be real tonight. "Adam Chase," I said.

His face went flat. "I know who you are, Mr. Chase-I've read the file-and I will make every effort to keep that knowledge from coloring my objectivity."

I kept my calm, but it took some effort. No one knew a thing about me in New York. I'd grown used to it. "Are you capable of that?" I asked.

"I never knew the boy that was killed. I know he was liked, that he was football hero and all that; that he had a lot of family around here. I know that they made a lot of noise about rich men's justice. But that was all before my time. You're just like anybody else to me, Mr. Chase. No preconceptions."

He gestured at Robin. "Now, Detective Alexander has told me about your relationship to the victim. None of us likes to see cases like this, but it's important to move as quickly as possible when something like this does occur. I know that it's late and that you're probably upset, but I'm hoping that you can help me out."

"I'll do what I can."

"That's good. That's just fine. Now, I understand that you saw the victim today?"

"Her name is Grace."

He smiled again, and this one had an edge on it. "Of course," he said. "What did you and Grace talk about? How was her state of mind?"

"I don't know how to answer that," I said. "I don't know her anymore. It's been a long time. She never responded to my letters."

Robin spoke. "You wrote to her?"

I could feel the sudden hurt in her voice.

You wrote to her, but not to me.

I turned to Robin. "I wrote to her because she was too young to understand my reasons for leaving. I needed her to understand why I was no longer there for her."

"Just tell me about today," Grantham said. "Tell me the rest of it."

I pictured Grace: the heat of her skin beneath my palm, the fierce resentment, the undertones of something more. I knew what this cop was looking for. He had his story from Grace and wanted corroboration; to h.e.l.l with objectivity. Part of me wanted to give it to him. Why? Because screw it.

"I rubbed lotion on her back. She kissed me. She said that she hates me." I looked Grantham in the eye. "She ran away."

"Did you chase her?" Grantham asked.

"It wasn't that kind of running away."

"It doesn't sound like the kind of reunion most would expect, either."

My voice came low and hard. "Thinking that I raped Grace Shepherd is like saying I raped my own daughter."

Grantham did not blink. "Yet, daughters are raped with great consistency by their fathers, Mr. Chase."

I knew that he was right. "It's not like it sounds," I said. "She was angry at me."

"Why?" Grantham asked.

"Because I left her. She was making a point."

"What else?"

"She said that she had lots of boyfriends. She wanted me to know that. She wanted me to hurt, too, I think."

"Are you saying that she's promiscuous?" Grantham asked.