The River Is Dark (13 page)

CHAPTER 15

Sunlight pried its sharp fingernails beneath his eyelids.

Liam tried to move an arm to block the offending rays, but it felt as if his body was encased in quicksand. He blinked instead, and rolled his eyes away from the eastern sky, where the sun, an inferno of orange, hovered. He studied the roof of his truck. Why was he here? He squeezed his eyes shut and worked his mouth, feeling the sticky paste of dried spit on his gums. What the hell was going on? He tried to sit forward, and a stripe of pain more intense than the morning light bloomed across his back.

Liam opened his mouth to release a moan, and the night before came rushing back. The letter, the trap, the attack in the garage, his hazy drive back to the hotel. Reaching out, he managed to grab the steering wheel and tried to hoist himself from his slumped position. A Velcro sound filled the cab, and for a moment he wondered how a dozen fishhooks had become embedded in his back. Reality took over a second later—he was glued to the seat with his own blood.

Liam settled back into his original spot, his shoulder thudding with the renewed pressure against the console, his fingers alive with pins and needles.

“Holy. Shit.” His voice came out in a croak. Nausea wormed its way through his guts, and he refused to make more of a mess than he already had. Clamping his teeth together, he strained against his dried injury and felt the sickening pull of the seat separating from his body.

“FUCK!”
he yelled, sitting up straight. A trickle of heat traced the channel of his spine, and he almost passed out again. “Fuck that shit, you piece of fucking—”

Grabbing the door handle just in time, he half stepped, half fell from the cab of the truck. His head felt like it was full of Novocain, his limbs not much better. When he attempted to shut the door, he realized the fingers on his right hand wouldn’t open or close all the way, their joints swollen so much that his digits resembled cooked sausages.

Retrieving a light, long-sleeved button-up from the backseat, he strained to put it over his shoulders, his back screaming in agony the entire time. After steadying himself against the truck for another few minutes, he picked up his phone and hobbled into the hotel and past the front desk, giving the clerk as much of a smile as he could muster.

In his bathroom he stripped both shirts off, his T-shirt coming away in a crackling layer, pulling one last time at the wound. He closed his eyes and turned just enough so that he faced the mirror in the corner of the small room, his back exposed to another mirror behind him. He opened his eyes.

A saw-toothed gash ran in a horizontal line beneath his shoulder blades. Dried blood coated most of his back, interspersed with a few dripping lines from where the truck’s seat had pulled the scab free. The wound was fairly deep and almost a quarter inch wide. When he moved, he felt the snagging pain of the cut, but the muscles beneath didn’t seem to be damaged.

Reaching back with one arm, he tried to touch the area, but only got close to one edge. He sighed and turned to lean against the sink. He couldn’t disinfect it himself.

“Shit,” he said to his haggard reflection, and walked to the table, where his phone lay.

When he stepped out of the shower twenty minutes later, he heard knocking at the door. Liam wrapped a towel around his waist and considered putting on a shirt, but knew he would only have to take it off in a minute. When he opened the door, Dani’s eyes widened a little at the sight of him in a towel.

“Always answer the door like this?” she asked, stepping past him.

“Only for beautiful women and the pizza delivery guy,” he said, shutting the door. “You didn’t bring any pizza, did you?”

Dani started to say something but caught sight of his back when he turned away from her, and she let out a small gasp.

“Oh my God, Liam! You’re bleeding! Are you okay?”

“Well, that’s what I was hoping you could tell me.” He smiled and went to sit in a chair close to the bed. “I had room service bring up some antiseptic and a little gauze. I figured you could play nurse.” He looked up and saw her raise her eyebrows. “You don’t have to put on an outfit or anything.”

Dani laughed and shook her head as she positioned herself on the bed behind him. “What happened?”

He relayed the story as she began to clean the wound. She paused to listen as she dabbed hydrogen peroxide. At times he forgot to continue speaking, the feeling of her delicate fingers moving gently over his flesh nearly sending goose bumps outward from the gash. When he finished talking, Dani sighed behind him.

“That was really stupid.”

“I know.”

“
Really
stupid.” Dani punctuated her words with an extra, cold dousing of peroxide across the cut, which made him stiffen.

“Yeah, I know. I don’t need you to rub it in. The part about me being stupid, not the antiseptic. You can rub that in.”

“Can you be serious for a second?” Dani’s voice was shrill, and she stopped cleaning his back.

“Sorry,” he said, and turned his head toward her. “I’m sorry.”

Her face softened, and she returned to wiping the gash clean. “What the hell did they cut you with?”

“The murder weapon—some sort of sword or piece of jagged steel. I couldn’t see anything in the garage.”

“But you were able to see enough of the guy’s face for an ID?”

Liam recalled the image of the monstrous head above him in the muzzle flash, bulbous growths bulging beneath the skin like tumors. “Yeah, pretty sure I could ID him.”

“Could you describe him enough for me to do a sketch?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” She applied a bandage and smoothed the medical tape along his back. “God, you are so lucky.”

“I know. As soon as we’re done, I want to go back up to Allen’s and see if I hit either of them. I have a feeling I missed, but I want to be sure.”

“No, you need to leave that to the BCA. Call them and have them go up there to check it out.”

“Dani, I—”

“No, you listen.” Her voice sapped the argument from him, and he fell silent. “You almost bled to death last night. It’s a miracle you didn’t. I know you want to catch these people, but there’s a line between seeking justice and being reckless.”

Liam opened his mouth to respond, but a sharp knock on the door cut him off. He stood and crossed the room, glancing at Dani over his shoulder.

“Who is it?” he asked, putting his hand on the doorknob.

“Agents Phelps and Richardson. We need to ask you some questions, Liam.”

Liam clenched his jaw and stared at the ceiling before pulling the door open. Both agents stood in the hallway, Phelps with his hand on his belt and Richardson sipping from a coffee.

“I was just going to call you guys,” Liam said, sweeping an arm toward the hotel room.

“That so?” Phelps said, moving past him.

“Yep.”

“And why’s that?”

“Oh, just this,” Liam said, shifting so that both agents could see his back and the white bandage spanning it.

“How did that happen?” Phelps said, leaning against the wall as he eyed Dani on the bed.

“I was attacked at my brother’s place last night by two people.”

“Attacked?”

“Yes, attacked. I found them in the garage, and one of them cut me with a weapon of some kind. I managed to fight them off, and they escaped through the living room window.”

Phelps stared at him like a wax sculpture. “And why didn’t you report this last night?”

“I barely made it back here and passed out in my truck. Dani was just helping me clean the wound. I was going to call you in a few minutes,” Liam said, adjusting the towel tighter around his waist.

Richardson spoke up. “We got a report this morning from a sheriff’s deputy out on patrol that he saw a broken window at your brother’s house. When he went to investigate, he said there were signs of a struggle and blood on the floor. We came up here to find out if you knew anything about it.”

Liam nodded. “Guys, I think the people in my brother’s place last night were the real killers. I think you’ve got the wrong man locked up.” Liam watched the agents’ reactions. Richardson squinted at him, his eyebrows knitting together, while Phelps stared across the room without blinking. Liam glanced at the table covered with the case files and then back at Phelps.

“Have you been drinking, Liam?” Phelps said.

Liam followed his gaze and saw the empty beer bottles from his and Dani’s dinner two nights before. “We had a few beers a couple nights ago.”

Phelps turned his gaze back to him. “What were you doing at your brother’s house?”

Liam ran his tongue along his bottom row of teeth. “I was reminiscing. Why? Is there a problem with me having access to the house?”

Anger flared and then receded in Phelps’s eyes. “No, but I’m wondering if you didn’t have a little too much to drink and broke the window yourself, causing the injury on your back.”

“I didn’t do this to myself, I was attacked. The suspects are still at large, and this community is not safe. Whoever’s doing this doesn’t want the project across the river to go through, isn’t that obvious by now?”

“This investigation is none of your concern,” Phelps said, stepping into Liam’s space.

“I’d like you to comb the area around the house in case one of them cut themselves jumping through the window,” Liam said, locking eyes with Phelps, and then swinging a glance at Richardson. “You find only my blood out there, fine, but if there’s someone else’s—”

“We don’t need you to tell us how to do our job, and I’ll thank you to stay away from that crime scene from now on, as we’ll have a patrolman stationed there. You can notify the sheriff for an escort if you need access to the house. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”

Phelps spun away from him, bumping Liam with his shoulder as he went. Liam’s body tensed, but he resisted the urge to form a fist. Richardson looked as though he wanted to say something, and even opened his mouth, but he shut it and followed his partner out the door, closing it as he left. Liam shoved his palm against the door as hard as he could and locked the dead bolt. He stalked back to where Dani sat, and grabbed a clean set of jeans and a T-shirt from his bag.

“See how much help they are? That egotistical fuck can’t see past the end of his nose, and it’s going to mean someone else’s life. The only upside is that he didn’t spot the paperwork across the room.”

Dani dropped her chin to her chest, then stood and looked up at him. “We should go to the hospital, you probably need stitches.”

“I don’t have time,” he said, moving toward the bathroom.

“You need to rest, you lost a lot of blood.”

“Last night was the most sleep I’ve gotten in a while, I’ll manage,” Liam said, pausing at the bathroom door. He looked at Dani and gave her a half smile.

“I can’t—”

“I know,” Liam said, and felt his heart bend at the sight of a delicate teardrop sliding down her face. “I know. Call me if you need anything else before the funeral, and please don’t go out at night.”

She nodded and wiped the errant tear from her chin as she tried to move past him. He reached out and stopped her with a hand on her forearm. She brought her eyes up to his, and she was so close it made his pulse double its pace. He could smell her shampoo and see the tear-track glistening on her skin.

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” he said.

Her breath brushed his bare skin, and he felt the air grow tight between them, a magnetic field straining to bring them closer. Her eyelids fluttered, and she stepped away, dropping her gaze to the floor.

“It’s not me you need to be worried about,” she said, moving past him and out the door.

CHAPTER 16

For the remainder of the day Liam studied the case notes from the sheriff, leaving his hotel room only twice, the first time to grab an orange juice and two protein bars from a convenience store and the second to pick up a bottle of whiskey and a burger from a local fast-food joint called Cliff’s.

Each time he exited the hotel, the sun sat behind a thick blanket of white clouds, a cataract in the sky. He saw a few news vans parked in front of the sheriff’s station and wondered if Phelps was giving them an announcement about the case.

When he returned to his room the second time, the door barely closed behind him before he spun the cap off the whiskey and drank three swallows straight from the bottle. He cleared his throat as the liquor splashed into his stomach and exploded in a satisfying ball of warmth. He devoured the burger standing, glancing every so often at the paperwork spread out in piles across the table. As he finished the last bite and tossed the wrapper away, he hoped, for what seemed the hundredth time that day, that he hit one of the attackers the night before—and wished against it. If one of them caught a bullet, the other would make sure they got away or would bury the body somewhere no one would find it. If that was the case, then the remaining suspect would most likely disappear and there would be no way to exonerate Nut. If he’d hit neither of them, they would be free to kill again, unchecked.

Liam sighed, moving the papers around into a Go Fish pile, their edges overlapping one another, and tried to sort the information in his mind as he picked up a pen and sat at the table.

The Shevlins’ murders made sense being tied to the land purchase and their involvement with Colton. He wrote
Colton
in the center of a blank piece of paper, drew a line to the right, and scribbled
Shevlins
. Donald Haines also fell in with his theory, especially with the display of his body in such a public place. He drew a line to the left and wrote
Haines
. Then he drew a line straight up and wrote Allen’s and Suzie’s names, circling them. They were the only ones that didn’t fit. What connected them to Colton besides knowing the Shevlins? He stood and paced the room, murmuring to himself, the whiskey turning the glow of the lamp on the desk into a soft halo of light.

“Allen and Jerry were friends, but Allen didn’t know Donald Haines.” He turned, walking back to the desk to glance at the simple connection chart.

“Grace and her group are opposing the project, but they aren’t responsible either.” He couldn’t fathom the elderly woman organizing something as insidious as the murders, even if she loved the outdoors as much as she said she did.

“And Suzie wasn’t supposed to die.”

He walked away from the table and came back to stare at the paper again. Picking up the pen, he drew a line connecting the Shevlins and Allen. The answer lay between the two families, he could feel it.

Staring out the darkening window at the river beyond, he went over his options for finding what tied his brother to the wealthy couple. He didn’t want to chance another visit to the Shevlins’ house since Phelps might have a patrol there too, and there wasn’t anything at Allen and Suzie’s. He tapped the pen against his forehead and then paused, an idea forming in his mind.

He grabbed his phone and dialed Grace’s number, glancing at the time to make sure it wasn’t too late to call. She answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Grace, it’s Liam Dempsey.”

“Liam, I’ve just heard. That poor man they call Nut—Perry, is it? I can’t believe it was him.”

“That’s because it wasn’t,” he said, sitting on the bed. Quiet hung on the phone line, and he waited, trying to gauge her reaction.

“You think he’s innocent?”

“I know he is, because two people tried to kill me at Allen’s place last night.”

Grace inhaled a sharp breath. “My God, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I do need to know two things from you.”

“What’s that?”

He paused, figuring out the best way to ask without having her hang up on him. “First, I want to know if the special meeting tomorrow is open to the public.”

“Yes, it is. It’s at one o’clock at city hall. Why? Are you coming?”

“I am. I’m going to try to dissuade the rest of the council from going ahead with the vote. I think that might mean saving someone’s life.”

“Lord,” Grace breathed.

“And the second thing is asking a lot of you.”

“I’m in it up to my waist already, Liam, go ahead.”

“I think there’s another connection between my brother and the Shevlins that’s at the center of all this.” He waited a beat. “Would you have any way to gain access to Jerry’s and Karen’s medical records at the clinic?” He cringed and waited for her to berate him or simply hang up, but neither happened.

“Liam, that
is
asking a lot of me.”

“I know, but I think it might mean the difference between saving the next victim’s life and not.”

He heard Grace moving around on the other end of the line and a single loud woof from Ashes. “Why should I trust you, Liam?”

“Because your dog loves me.”

Her surprised laughter filtered through the phone in warm waves. “You definitely have something Allen didn’t.”

“What’s that?”

“A sense of humor.”

Liam waited, knowing they stood upon a cliff together.

“One of my dearest friends still works as a receptionist at the clinic,” she said after a moment, and Liam closed his eyes, relieved. “I’m sure she would let me borrow her keys. What would you like me to look for?”

“Anything to do with the Shevlins. If you could find their doctor visits, see if Allen had anything stored in their files that he might not want to keep at home, where Suzie might’ve seen it.”

“When do you need this by?”

“The sooner the better,” he said, rising off the bed.

“I’ll do what I can, but I’ll need a little time. It will most likely have to be tomorrow night at the earliest.”

“Okay, that’ll work.” He picked up the whiskey bottle and stared at the amber liquid. “Thank you, Grace. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was crucial.”

“Just come bail my old ass out if I get caught and we’ll call it even.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Good night, Liam. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

Liam ended the call and took another long pull from the bottle. It burned again, but this time he barely felt it. He wedged a chair under the doorknob after locking both the dead bolt and the security bar, then sat and reloaded the Sig’s empty magazine. His eyes hung level with the opaque window, his fingers sliding the rounds in one by one. When he finished, he took a last drink of whiskey before capping the bottle and setting it aside.

The bed felt luxurious save for the blinding pain in his back when he lay down. He grimaced, rolling onto his side until the blazing slice beneath his shoulder blades receded to a manageable throb in time with his heartbeat. He closed his eyes, letting the liquor draw him away from the pain and occasional sound from outside his room. He tried to recall the feeling of Dani’s hands on his back, how gentle her touch was and the softness of her fingers. He thought about the pull he felt when she was close to him, like he stood at the door of an airplane with no parachute, wanting only to feel the sensation of falling without the worry of the ground below.

Just as he was about to drift away completely, he heard pounding footsteps on concrete, those of him and the man in front of him. The man’s lank, dirty hair hung over his shoulders and onto the mechanic’s coveralls he wore. Liam’s stomach swung in a sickening way as he watched the man spin, a crazed grin cut in his pasty-white face. The gun leveled at Liam, its muzzle the only thing he could see. It encompassed everything, the world shrinking into a tunnel, until the flash of his own weapon perforated the silence, morphing from a gunshot into a woman’s scream, then into his own as he sat up in bed, his eyes flicking around the room.

The dream’s resonance hung over him, and he felt sweat bead and then fall from the end of his nose. Rubbing his forehead, he slumped sideways onto the bed and breathed, trying to force the images out of his head.

Gradually his heart returned to a normal speed, and the lingering effect of the whiskey drew his eyes closed once again.

Tallston’s city hall stood in the center of town, a monolith of brownstone mimicking the towering bluffs that ringed the city’s edge. No traffic moved on the street as Liam pulled into a parking space in the building’s shadow, its intricately carved façade resembling a medieval stronghold more than a municipal center. He climbed out of the Chevy and into the scorching heat of the day, stretching his limbs while taking care not to put too much tension on the skin of his back lest he open the scabbed gash there.

The morning had come much too early, and he spent the predawn hours poring over the case notes again to see if there was anything else to glean. Nothing stood out to him, so he dedicated the rest of his morning to what he would say to the assembly at the meeting.

A secretary on the first level of the building directed him to the third floor, where the meeting would take place. He climbed the stairs, a small amount of trepidation spreading through him at the thought of the scene he was about to make. The doors to the meeting room stood wide open, revealing a large space with high ceilings. Several rows of chairs sat in a half-circle formation before an opposite-curving bench of seats elevated a foot higher than everything else in the room. A bank of floor-to-ceiling windows ran behind the council’s bench, and a simple wooden podium with a snaking microphone attached to its top stood off to one side of the public’s chairs.

People filled less than half of the seats, and several sets of eyes turned to him as he entered the room. He searched the faces and nearly stopped in his tracks when he saw the petite form of Shirley Strafford beside her dour-looking cameraman. The reporter spotted him at almost the same instant, and she smiled, making her face look plastic and false. The cameraman’s lip curled in a similar fashion, and Liam stared at him until the other man finally looked away.

Liam chose a seat close to the door, only a few paces behind the podium. Several of the city council members already sat behind the long desk, and after a moment he caught Grace’s eye. She nodded at him and winked once. A high-backed chair to her right was empty, and he saw a triangular nameplate on the desk that read
Harley Jefferson—Mayor
.

Liam glanced around the room once more, noting the time. It was two minutes after one. Allen’s and Suzie’s funerals were set for three o’clock, and he hoped the meeting wouldn’t run overly long since he still needed to get back to his hotel room to change into the black slacks and dress shirt he’d brought for the inevitable function.

His train of thought dissolved as three more people entered the room and strode behind the desk at the front. Two were women, and the other was a man, surely the mayor, dressed in a three-piece suit made of shiny gray material that looked gaudy under the fluorescent lighting. He had a strong jaw and dark hair with just a touch of gray at the temples, above the body of a high school linebacker gone to seed. Liam noted the alarming tension on the mayor’s suit-jacket buttons being applied by his ample belly beneath the fabric.

Harley Jefferson and the two women seated themselves, and the mayor nodded to the rest of the council on either side. The members all lowered their heads and shuffled a few papers before adjusting their respective microphones into place. The mayor glanced around the room, smiling briefly at a pretty brunette woman half his age sitting before a laptop at the far end of the room. The woman waved at him before turning back to her computer. The mayor cleared his throat audibly and then scanned the crowd before speaking.

“Good afternoon. I hereby call this special city council meeting to order. Roll call for attending members.”

Harley rattled off a list of names that each of the six people on the bench claimed. The room fell silent again, and Harley looked up from the desk.

“We are holding this special meeting due to the terrible recent events that have taken place in our city. First off, I would like to extend my condolences to the family and friends of the victims. We lost several fine members of the community in the last two weeks, and they will be sorely missed.”

Harley shuffled a few papers and cleared his throat again. “As I was saying, there was some concern raised in light of the crimes, and we were tentative as a governing body to proceed with our scheduled meeting on Monday of next week, out of respect and in accordance with the law enforcement’s investigation. Therefore, this meeting’s sole purpose is to decide whether or not we will gather on Monday to vote on that meeting’s proposals.”

A few mutters filled the public seating area, and Liam looked at the people to try to gauge their reactions. Most sat stoically, but a few leaned forward in expectance or anticipation.

“Before the council votes, we will entertain any questions or comments from the public. If you have something to say, please step to the podium, state your name and address, and then feel free to speak on the issue.”