Page 148 of The River We Remember

Bluestone slid from the cruiser, then launched himself. Before Brody knew what hit him, he lay facedown on the ground with the full weight of Bluestone on his back, the chain of the handcuffs digging into his throat, his air cut off. He clawed at Bluestone’s arms, tried to push himself up, flip his body over, somehow blunt the attack. But Noah Bluestone, who’d spent the last twenty years killing and training others to kill, knew his work. Brody’s head tingled, and he saw honest to God stars, and just as he began to black out and go limp, the chain came away, and he could breathe again.

He felt Bluestone rifling his pockets and he tried to protest, but the chain that had choked off his air had done something to his vocal cords as well, and he couldn’t speak. He rolled over and watched as Bluestone used the key he’d found to free himself. He threw the cuffs down next Brody in the dirt lane.

“I have to do this,” Bluestone said.

“Creasy?” Brody managed to croak.

“Creasy,” Bluestone said.

Brody swallowed hard and it hurt, but he said hoarsely, “Know where he is?”

“Pretty sure.”

Bluestone got into the cruiser, which Brody had left running, and drove away.

GRAFF SAT ON the bench beneath the Dutch elm tree in the yard of the Bluestone farm, smoking a cigarette he’d rolled. In their pen, the pigs were quiet now, unmoving and white under the risen moon. In that windless night, the old deputy stared across the fields of strange crops that Noah Bluestone had planted. Not the corn and soybeans of the neighboring farms, but crops with names like amaranth and millet, and what the hell could you make from those things? Why had a man with nothing to pull him back returned to Black Earth County? Why had he brought a beautiful woman like Kyoko to a place that didn’t want her and where men like Jimmy Quinn and Tyler Creasy could prey on her? Connie Graff was angry with Noah Bluestone, angry with himself, angry with Brody. Men were supposed to protect those they loved and those they were responsible for. A lawman especially. But what had he done? Or Brody or Asa Fielding or anyone else?

He’d never truly felt murder in his heart, but that’s what he felt now. There was a man somewhere out there in the dark who was better off dead. He could name a hundred unfortunate reasons why Tyler Creasy was the way he was, but that didn’t change what the man had done and still could do.

If only he hadn’t gone on the call to the Quinn place. If only the Bluestones’ dog had not been shot and could have barked a warning. If only Noah Bluestone had not been arrested for a crime he was probably guilty of but which Graff understood completely and could pardon. If only… if only…

When he heard the shuffling in the dirt of the lane behind him, he threw his cigarette down and stood quickly, ready for battle if it was Creasy returning. He saw the dark figure against the white moon and immediately recognized Brody Dern.

“He jumped me,” Brody said in a strange, rasping voice.

“Bluestone?”

“Took my cruiser.” Brody spoke not only strangely but breathlessly, as if he was having trouble drawing air. “He must know where Creasy is.”

Which amazed Graff. “How could he know that?”

Brody leaned against the back of the bench and sucked hard and didn’t answer.

Graff thought a moment and the answer came. “We gave it to him.”

Brody looked up, uncomprehending.

“Think about those last questions he asked us, about Creasy on foot. We haven’t been able to find the man, so it’s a good bet he’s hiding somewhere, somewhere he’d be pretty certain not many people would go. Think, Brody. Where would that be? Somewhere walking distance from here.”

Graff watched Brody’s eyes and saw the knowledge come into them, watched them turn to the south where Fordham Ridge stood like a dark wall against a tide of moonlight. Below that great formation lay Inkpaduta Bend.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

HE CAME AFTER the moon had risen. The boys heard him breaking through undergrowth along the river, then saw him, ghost-white in the moonlight, enter the clearing. He crossed the Bend in the same way they had crossed, following almost the same line they had followed through the tall wild grasses. Scott was afraid Creasy might notice the crushed ground cover and bent stalks they’d left in their wake, which was something Scott had learned about tracking from the Boy Scouts. But Creasy seemed oblivious. Scott figured this was probably due to the dark, or the man’s ignorance of such things, or maybe the liquor, because Del had found empty bottles in the cab of Creasy’s pickup. When Creasy passed near the boys, who were lying prone in the stand of sumac, Scott saw that he cradled a rifle in his arms in the way of a hunter, and the sick feeling that had been with him all day and all evening worsened, and he felt like puking.

The birds had ceased their calling and their songs, but now a spring field cricket began to chirp. Scott had heard that you could tell the temperature from the sound of a cricket. He tried to remember the equation, to take his mind off the awful reason they were there, but he couldn’t concentrate. The cricket chirped and chirped, and the incessant sound began to feel like a little chisel working at Scott’s resolve. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want Del to be there. He thought about home, about his mother and Ida and how worried they probably were. He felt awful for them, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Now there were only Creasy and Del, and what was going to happen between them, one way or another.

In the moonlight, through the broken view afforded from within the sumac, Scott watched Creasy throw some wood together and start a fire. He kept waiting for Del to give some kind of indication of what they should do, but Del held rock still, watching. Creasy was never more than a step away from that rifle of his, and Scott thought maybe that’s what Del was waiting for. In his hand, Del gripped the pistol he’d brought from the trailer in the hollow. It was a Luger, which Tyler Creasy claimed to have taken off a dead German officer. Del said that Creasy was always full of crap, so who knew if the story was true.

For a long time, the moon had seared a white hole in the indigo sky. But now an errant cloud moved across its face and the light vanished. Creasy sat by the fire he’d made and opened a can of some kind and began to eat with his fingers. Scott thought it might be Vienna sausages. He realized he hadn’t eaten in forever, but his sick stomach made the idea of food repugnant to him.

Del moved, just a slight adjustment of his position. It made a sound, a brittle crackling, and Creasy looked up. Del froze, and Scott’s heart went into a gallop. Creasy’s face flickered red-orange with reflected firelight, and his eyes, as they scanned the sumac, seemed to flame. Creasy set down the can he held and reached for the rifle. At that same moment, the cloud moved on and the moon returned, bathing everything in brilliant silver-white light. Then Scott heard another sound. Weeping. It was the same ghostly voice he and Del had heard when they’d come to Inkpaduta Bend the night after James Quinn had been found dead. Creasy must have heard it, too, because his eyes swung away from the sumac. He stood up with the rifle in his hands, left the fire, and walked along the riverbank toward the crying sound.

Del finally made his move. He tapped Scott on the shoulder, gestured for him to stay where he was, and crawled on all fours out of the thicket. He dashed through firelight and moonlight to Creasy’s pickup, slipped around to the far side, and disappeared.

The crying sound died as suddenly as it had begun. Creasy stopped, held still, an alabaster statue as he waited for the sound to come again. But it never did. He finally turned back toward his truck and the campfire.

Beside Scott lay the shotgun Del had given him. Scott’s hand rested on the stock. The weapon felt hot under his touch, as if he’d already fired it. He was more afraid than he’d ever been in his whole life. Even worse than on the river when Holly Coleridge had almost drowned. Because with Holly he’d had no time to think. He’d simply acted. Now his brain worked and worked, trying to find some way out of what he’d signed on to do here. Which was nothing less than to kill or be killed. He was afraid, too, that he was going to throw up or soil himself, because all his guts were in turmoil. He knew that whatever was going to happen that night was going to happen when Creasy reached the campfire. And the man was almost there.