Page 117 of The River We Remember

“You there, Brody? Come in.”

He pulled away reluctantly and went to the cruiser. When he came back, all the softness was gone from him. “We have to go, Angie.”

“What’s wrong?” she said, frightened by what she saw in his face.

“Trouble,” he said. “A shooting out at Noah Bluestone’s place.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

THE BOYS FOLLOWED the river south. Scott began to think that they were headed once again for Inkpaduta Bend, but Del turned off before that, at a place where the railroad tracks crossed the river. They dismounted, and Del walked the bike across the trestle and parked it among the trees on the other side of the Alabaster.

“This way,” he said and waved for Scott to follow.

The light in the west was mostly memory now. Along the horizon lay a thin strip of red and a few scraps of cloud that were the color of flamingo feathers. Scott could see Fordham Ridge, a dark wall that cut off the view of everything beyond. He followed Del across a field of young corn and slipped through a fence of loosely strung wire. On the far side of the next field stood a small barn and a house and outbuilding. In the gathering gloom, the boys loped to the back of the barn, where Del put his finger to his lips for silence. He opened a narrow door and they slipped inside. The dim twilight offered enough illumination for Scott to see a tractor and tools and the stairs that Del took quietly up to the hayloft. Scott’s heart had begun to beat faster as he realized they were trespassing in a way he hadn’t considered in his imaginings.

Hay bales stood stacked against a wall of the loft. Del crouched near a dusty window that overlooked a little wooden tower next to the barn. Atop the tower sat a big plastic container with a spout. A neat, square slab of concrete had been poured on the ground next to the tower.

“What is that?” Scott asked in a whisper.

“A shower,” Del whispered back. “Creasy told me about this. Said Quinn blabbed all about it once when they got stinking drunk together. Just watch.”

Creasy? Quinn? The names felt dirty to Scott. And then the whole thing felt dirty. He could see the house and the front door and illuminated windows. He thought that someone was in there who felt safe, who had no idea of this trespass. He decided that he wanted no part of whatever it was that Del had in mind.

But by then it was too late. The front door opened. A little slice of lemon-colored light fell across the grass and a shadow entered that light. He watched a woman cross the yard. A dog, an old Saint Bernard, trotted along at her heels. He couldn’t see her well in the early dark and through the dusty window, but he could tell that she wore a robe and carried a towel. She approached the little tower, reached toward the barn wall, and an outside light snapped on. He could see her now, clearly, and he recognized her.

He felt like the worst kind of criminal. He wanted to leave, to run, but he knew he couldn’t do this without giving his presence away and Del’s. He told himself not to look at the wife of the man he’d come to know and admire in the jailhouse in Jewel. But when she slid the robe off her small white shoulders and reached to open the flow of water from the plastic container, he saw her breasts lift and their brown areolas and the dark triangle of hair between her legs, and he couldn’t pull his eyes from the sight. He watched her step into the flow of water, take a bar of soap from the little shelf attached to the tower, and lather herself. He watched her hands run over her whole body. He watched long fingers of soapsuds feel their way down the curve in the small of her back. He wanted to look away but could not, and even as he stared, he hated himself for it.

She rinsed completely and turned off the water. As she reached for the towel that she’d hung on a crossbar of the little water tower, Del moved—God knows why—and an old floorboard under his foot collapsed with the loud snap of breaking wood.. The dog looked up, went rigid, and began barking furiously. The woman froze and looked up, too. Scott prayed she couldn’t see him in the dark of the loft and through the dusty window. But in the glare of the light on the barn wall, he saw terror on her face, and she turned without bothering to grab her robe and fled toward the house.

The boys raced from the loft. Del went first, thundering down the stairs. Scott was hard on his heels. They hit the dirt floor and were just turning for the back door of the barn when the old Saint Bernard leapt from the darkness and blocked their escape, teeth bared and barking furiously. The boys backed away and the dog came at them. Before he knew what was happening, Scott heard the crack of Del’s .22 pistol and the yelp of pain as the dog went down. Del sprinted past the animal and Scott didn’t hesitate in following. The boys burst from the barn and sprinted across the fields toward the waiting motorbike and neither of them looked back.

CONNIE GRAFF LAY on a mattress in the bed of his pickup truck, which was parked among the trees along the Alabaster River where he could watch the lane that led to the Bluestone place. He’d done this every night since Noah Bluestone’s arrest. He was worried about the enmity abroad in Black Earth County since the murder of Jimmy Quinn. It wasn’t just the general concern of a decent man but also the concern of a man who’d taken a deep, almost paternal interest in the young Japanese woman. In this way, he eased his own unsettled mind about her safety.

He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and watching the stars emerge above Fordham Ridge when he heard the furious barking followed by the crack of a gunshot. He threw the cigarette away, leapt from the bed of the pickup, and hopped into the cab. He kicked the engine over, swung the pickup onto the dirt lane, and sped to the farmhouse. The light above Bluestone’s makeshift shower blazed and there were lights on inside the little farmhouse. Graff parked, grabbed his rifle from his gun rack, ran to farmhouse door, and knocked hard.

“Kyoko! It’s Connie Graff! Are you in there?”

A moment later, the lock released and she swung the door wide. She wore a flowered kimono that she clutched about herself. Her eyes were huge and terrified.

“In the barn,” she said. “There was someone in the barn when I was showering.”

“Stay here. Keep the door locked.”

The light above the outside shower gave only a bit of illumination inside the barn. Graff stood in the open doorway a moment, an ear cocked toward the dark, a bullet already chambered in his Winchester. He heard a soft whimpering and he reached for the light switch. When the bulb came on, he spotted the old Saint Bernard lying on the floor, bleeding into the dirt. His first impulse was to see to the wounded animal, but his training pushed him to make certain the barn was not still occupied by the intruder. Kyoko Bluestone had been right to be terrified. Anyone who’d shoot a dog was the worst kind of unpredictable scum.

Graff slowly circled inside the barn, then cautiously mounted the steps to the loft. He moved to the window that overlooked the makeshift shower. He saw the wild disturbance of the dust on the floor there and the broken floorboard and he figured he understood the trespass. He worked at keeping his anger in check, his senses on alert. He left the loft and descended the stairs. He turned out the barn light, crept past the wounded dog, and eased open the door in the back wall. He slipped outside and crouched and let his eyes adjust. He could see the empty field and far away the dark, uneven outline of the trees along the Alabaster. From that distance came the sound of a little motor, like the whine of a mosquito, vanishing into the deepening night.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

BEFORE THEY’D GONE a mile in Brody’s cruiser, Hank Evans radioed and redirected Brody to the animal hospital on the west side of town.

“Graff’ll explain everything to you there,” Evans said.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the animal hospital, the cruiser’s headlights swung across Graff’s pickup. Brody and Angie found Connie Graff inside the hospital, sitting in the waiting area with Kyoko Bluestone. The old deputy held her hand as a father might have. It was clear the woman had been crying, but now her eyes were dry. Next to the tall, lanky man, she looked small and childlike.

“What happened, Connie?” Brody said.

“Somebody snuck out to the Bluestone place and shot their dog.”