The River Is Dark (14 page)

Liam felt all the eyes in the room rest upon him as he stood and walked to the podium. The faces of the council members and mayor gazed at him as he placed his hands on the cool wood and licked his lips, which suddenly felt too dry.

“Good afternoon, my name is Liam Dempsey, my address is 1400 Wayward Drive, Nexton, Minnesota.” He ran his eyes over each face, pausing just a second longer on Grace’s. “My brother was Dr. Allen Dempsey. Some of you might have known him. Suzie, his wife, was also very involved in the community here. They were murdered in their home early this week, and I have reason to believe that their deaths have something to do with the Colton project across the river.”

A few hushed voices exchanged words behind him, and Harley leaned forward, his dark eyebrows lowering so that they hung as bushy ceilings above his squinting eyes.

“Sir, I’m very sorry for your loss, but this is not a court of law and we aren’t—”

“Hear me out,” Liam said, holding up a hand. The mayor’s mouth tried to churn out more words, but Liam continued before the other man could speak. “As you may all know, Donald Haines, the project manager for Colton Incorporated, was murdered two nights ago.” More mumbling from the public. “This is not a coincidence, this is a pattern. The people responsible for the murders do not want this project to go through.”

“We were told that the authorities have a suspect in custody,” a balding man in a gray sweater said from the mayor’s left.

“Exactly,” Harley said, spreading his hands out in a calming motion. “I was told yesterday by a reputable source that a man has been arrested and that the reason for concern is over.”

“I was attacked two nights ago at my brother’s house,” Liam said. His words cut through the din that was building in the room and left silence in its wake. “I fought off two individuals, and was nearly killed doing so. The man that is in custody right now is innocent, and the killers are still free.”

Loud conversation broke out in all parts of the room. Liam watched the mayor lean forward and ask for order, but people kept talking. Grace caught his eye and nodded again. This was okay—he had people talking. Maybe even a few of them would listen.

“We need to quiet down!
Quiet down!
” Harley yelled. His baritone voice reverberated in the large space, and the cacophony of speculation receded to a few muted whispers. When he looked satisfied, the mayor shifted his eyes back to Liam and pointed a finger in his direction. “You need to sit down, sir, before I have you removed from this meeting.”

Liam opened his mouth to respond, but Grace spoke before he could.

“Actually, Harley, he has a right to speak just as anyone else does, and we need to hear him out.”

The mayor’s upper lip curled, revealing a set of even teeth. He stared at Grace for a few moments, and when it appeared that she wasn’t going to drop her gaze from his, he turned back to the podium and spoke through clenched jaws. “Proceed, but please tell us what this has to do with today’s meeting.”

Liam nodded. “Like I said, I believe the murders are somehow tied to the Colton project, and the people responsible do not want that plant to be built. They’ll be watching the outcome of this meeting, and if you decide to go ahead with the vote on Monday, I think that will be all it takes to provoke them again.” Liam leaned forward, metering his words into the most powerful syllables he could. “If you proceed with the vote, I believe someone else will die.”

Harley waved a hand before his face, but another voice cut him off.

“Why should they believe someone as unstable as yourself, Mr. Dempsey?”

Liam turned to face Shirley Strafford, who rose from her seat and took a few steps toward him.

“Ma’am, this is unacceptable, and this isn’t the place to have a discourse. In fact, this isn’t the place for either of you,” Harley said, motioning to the brunette he had smiled at earlier. “Tracey, get Security up here, please, and have these people escorted out.”

Tracey nodded and stood from her chair, but paused when Shirley spoke again.

“Oh, we’ll go of our own volition, but I thought you should know you’re being preached to by a man who killed a pregnant woman.”

There was a collective intake of breath in the room, and time slowed. Liam watched the newswoman’s smile widen as her triumphant, large eyes twitched to his face. His heart reversed directions and he felt his limbs grow cold, his tongue thickening into a block of frozen meat. He knew his mouth was hanging open but he could do nothing about it, the reporter’s sentence rebounding inside his mind until it was all he heard.

“He shot a pregnant woman while on duty as a homicide detective in Minneapolis ten months ago,” Shirley continued, in the confident tone of someone at ease with speaking to a large audience, the facts rolling out of her mouth like poisonous honey. “He was decommissioned and is still under investigation by the Minneapolis Police Department. Oh, and the baby died too.”

Liam wanted to weed out the lies, to try to defend himself, but he couldn’t speak or move. His stomach roiled, the creeping unease of nausea rising with each second. His legs wobbled, and he put out a hand to steady himself against the podium.

“If I were any of the council, I wouldn’t listen to another word from this man. He’s unbalanced, and I heard today that the altercation he referred to earlier was nothing more than a drunken fit.”

The room broke into raucous babble, a roar in Liam’s ears. The rush of blood pounded inside his head, and he turned to look at where the council sat. Several of them gesticulated and tried to be heard above the commotion, while Harley hammered his fist against the desk and yelled for Security. Liam’s eyes found Grace, who sat motionless in her seat, a rock amidst a frothing sea of movement. She looked stricken, and her skin wasn’t the same shade as before.

He knew he had to get out of the room, out of the building, out of this town. He couldn’t stay here anymore; he needed the solitude of his farmhouse, the wind pushing against the windows and the sun on the floor of the kitchen. It was a mistake to come here, to think he could help or even function properly. Vomit rolled up the back of his throat, and he gagged. He spun on his heel to flee from the room, but pulled up short.

Dani stood near the doorway, one hand clasped over her mouth.

Her eyes found his, and she blinked, her head jerking in a small movement. He didn’t know whether it was a shudder or an admonition. Liam felt a delicate strand of something within him break. Already tenuous, it held a weight heavier than he had realized, and when it let go, the falling sensation was too great.

He ran.

Pushing past Dani, he didn’t wait to see whether she reached out to him or shrank away. The shafts of sunlight streaming through the windows outside the room were razor blades that shredded his sight. He tripped when his feet met the stairs and nearly fell, his legs beyond rubber. Stumbling, he covered his mouth and stifled back the puke that yearned to tumble out. The stairway went on forever, switching back until he became dizzy and sure that he was underground, that the stairs continued into hell and he was almost there.

Liam burst through the doors to the outside in a stumbling haze. A raging storm of static buzzed in his head, and the memory of holding the gun, aiming at the man in the alley, tried to filter through it all. He gasped and finally threw up on the sidewalk, drawing repulsed comments from a nearby family passing behind him. He lurched to his truck, his eyes puddles of tears, wiping the sick from his mouth with one forearm as he searched for his keys with the other hand.

Then he was inside the cab, his fingers turning the keys, the engine purring to life. Without bothering to look over his shoulder, he backed up, eliciting a honk from a minivan that slammed on its brakes to avoid him. He shifted into drive, the tires leaving twin black strips on the pavement as he tore into the shimmering day.

CHAPTER 17

Liam meant to leave town, but instead, he drank.

He took the first swig just to rinse the taste of bile out of his mouth and to steady his shaking hands as he packed his bags in the hotel room. The second and third were because the first helped. Within twenty minutes of leaving the city hall, his room was clean and he was drunk. The defiling afternoon sun slid across the bed, so unlike the rays that filtered into his farmhouse. How could the sun be so different here? He responded to its touch with a yank to the heavy blinds, and the room became layered in shadow. Each time the reporter’s words replayed in his head, he took a sip of whiskey. Each time he saw the abhorred expression on Dani’s face, he took another. It was a drinking game of the most lethal kind, no cards or dice needed, only the hitching whir of his mind to signal a turn. He floated in a pool of despair, not awake and not dreaming. The room rotated at an even pace, and after what felt like hours, he closed his eyes.

He and Allen stood on the edge of the bluffs outside Allen’s house. It was almost sunset, and the river below leached the dying light from the sky like it would never see the sun again. A bird made a forlorn call in the woods, and he wondered why it was so sad, how anything could be so sad looking at the view beyond.

“It’s beautiful,” he said to Allen. His voice had a paper sound to it, one-dimensional and lifeless, so adverse when compared to their surroundings.

“Yes, it is,” Allen answered. Liam glanced at his brother, who had his eyes closed, his lips parted as if he was drinking the clean air in. “The river is dark, and the night isn’t something to swim in.”

Liam gazed out at the vista and wondered if night could ever truly fall over the evening before them. He thought it might last forever.

“Let her go,” Allen said.

“Who?”

“Sacrifices are necessary and prudent. Triage the soul and you’ll be successful.”

Liam watched Allen turn away from him and step closer to the edge of the bluff. “Why didn’t you love me?” Liam asked.

The sound of rain began to beat against his eardrums, and he glanced at the horizon, where a tumorous cloud advanced toward the vanishing sun. Veins of lightning coursed down its bloated sides, and its belly broke loose and began to flood the land beneath it with blood. The red rain ran in streams, meeting the river and tainting it. Liam watched the scarlet tendrils extend and consume the water until it flowed like an artery within the banks. The salty smell drifted to him, and he looked at Allen again, wondering if his brother had heard the question.

“If you forget yourself, no one will remember you,” Allen said, his voice so low it sounded like the growing wind before the storm. He turned his head, and Liam saw that his eyes weren’t closed anymore.

They weren’t there at all.

Two sunken pools of ichor swirled in his eye sockets. Allen smiled horribly and then stepped off the bluff into the open air.

A moan escaped his lips as he rolled off the bed and caught himself on the floor. The room was pitch-black, and he felt awash in its swimming motion. He felt with a hand until he found the foot of the bedside table. He stood and wobbled, the whiskey still wreaking havoc in his skull. The digital numbers of the clock told him it was close to 7:00 p.m. He slid his foot right until it nudged the bed, and he sat.

He’d missed the funerals. Dani knew about him, as did the city council and probably the rest of the town by now. He had to leave; there wasn’t anything else he could do. Liam stood again and fumbled with the lamp on the table until it clicked on, the light making him wince even with its dim wattage. He went to the bathroom and drank several cups of water. After brushing his teeth, he stowed away the last of his things in the duffel bag and stood in the center of the small room.

Just as he was about to snap off the light, he heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway. He listened as they slowed and finally stopped before his door. He waited. At last, a soft knock. The Sig sat on top of a folded shirt in his bag, and he retrieved it, flicking off the safety. As he moved to the door, another knock came, this time louder.

“Who is it?” he said beside the door, his hand on the knob.

A pause. “It’s me.”

His stomach rolled. Putting the gun back into the bag, he snapped on another light and went to the door. He pulled it open, revealing Dani, who stood in the hallway. She wore a plain black dress that came to just above her knees. A clasp pulled her hair tight at the back of her head, and she clutched a small black purse with both hands. He waited, staring into her face. He noted the tearstains, both new and old, in crooked lines on her cheeks. Her mascara ran in a few small streaks, which only made her eyes look more luminous.

“You didn’t come,” she said, shifting on the low heels she wore.

“No,” he said, looking at the floor.

“It was a nice service, as nice as a funeral can be. I think the whole town was there.” He nodded, still not looking at her face. “Liam, I—”

He raised a hand toward her. “You don’t have to say anything. You didn’t even have to come. I understand. I’m leaving here in a few minutes.” When he looked up, he saw the crumpled expression, the helplessness, the confusion, and something else.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For everything that’s happened to you.” She reached out and took one of his hands in hers, squeezed. He let her hold it but didn’t return the pressure.

“Thank you.”

“Can I come in?”

He glanced at her again, wondering what she wanted. “I don’t—” He shrugged, shaking his head.

“Please?” She squeezed his hand again.

They sat on the bed after he poured them drinks. Dani sipped at hers and then held it between her legs. Liam perched next to her, enough distance between them so that he couldn’t feel her warmth, but not enough to escape the smell of her perfume. Something about the smell reminded him of his front porch, of early spring, but he couldn’t say why. The silence stretched out between them until he broke it, his words almost too loud in the room.

“They’re going ahead with the vote, aren’t they?”

Dani sighed. “Yes. Six to one. Grace voted against it.”

He chewed at his lip and stared into the depths of his whiskey. “I knew they would, but I had to try.”

“You spoke well.”

He glanced at her and then away, still not able to bring himself to look her fully in the face. “You heard everything.”

“No, not the whole truth, just what that horrible woman said.”

“She was right.”

“About everything?” He sat still, not even breathing. “I didn’t think so.” She reached out and laid a soft hand against his arm. “Tell me.”

The thought of relating the story was like an exponential wall in front of him. With every second it gained altitude, soaring higher and expanding wider. The memory was a pulsing, infected scar, just waiting for him to speak to spill its septic touch across his mind, to immerse him in the moment that he would regret until the last beat of his heart and beyond.

Her grip tightened on his arm, as if she knew he was slipping away. “I don’t hate you. You can tell me.”

Liam swallowed the lump in his throat, surprising even himself as he began to speak. “I was on a death investigation. A man involved in a narcotic ring had been murdered. It was like several I’d been on before—no witnesses, nothing to go on. I got a tip from the deceased’s cousin. A guy called Abford used to run a lot with the victim, so my partner and I went to his apartment to ask him a few questions.

“We knocked, and when he asked who we were and we told him, he shot straight through the door, caught my partner in the stomach. I fired back and then kicked in the door, but Abford was already out the window and halfway down a fire escape. My partner was holding his own in the hallway and already had an ambulance coming. He told me to go, and now I wish to God I would’ve stayed with him. Just a few seconds and everything would be different.”

Liam stopped to drink from the cup he held, the whiskey coating his bone-dry mouth. He felt Dani’s eyes on him but didn’t look at her, sure that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to continue.

“I went down the stairs and out an emergency side exit. Abford had just jumped from the last rung of the fire escape and was running down the alley between the apartment building and a business complex. I ran after him, and I remember how his hair bounced on his back just before he started to spin around.” Liam paused, his eyes burning through the floor at his feet.

“All I saw was the muzzle of the gun, and I stopped and took aim. I remember my vision narrowing until all I could see was him aiming back at me. At the last second, right before I pulled the trigger, she stepped in front of me.” He swallowed again, his spit thick and acidic. “She was coming out of a beauty parlor. I found out later she’d just gotten her hair cut. It was her and her husband’s eighth wedding anniversary the next day, and she wanted to look nice, I suppose. Her name was Kelly.”

Tears coated his eyes and began to drop, one by one, onto his pant legs. “My bullet hit her in the neck, clipped her carotid clean in two. She didn’t even have time to scream or make a sound. She just fell down, and that’s when I first really saw her. In that split second, I knew everything would be different for the rest of my life. I knew it when she hit the ground and all she could do was hug her stomach.”

He glanced at Dani, wiping away his tears so that he could see her crying beside him. “She was seven months’ pregnant, a boy. The doctors said if I’d hit her anywhere else, they might’ve been able to save him, but she bled out so quickly he didn’t have a chance. I learned all this later, because the moment she fell, I emptied my gun at Abford and killed him too.”

“Oh God,” Dani whispered. Liam waited for her hand to leave his arm, but it didn’t.

“Every day, I wake up and the first thought is of her. About her husband raising two little kids alone without his wife, wondering what his son might have looked like. The second thought is of putting my pistol in my mouth and pulling the trigger. And you know the only reason I don’t?” He tilted his head to the side, his mouth a line of anger and trembling grief. “Because I don’t think I deserve it. I feel like I should have to suffer with this on my conscience every day, carry it with me at night when I can’t sleep, because it’s nothing—nothing—compared to what I took from that family.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dani said, her voice watery with tears.

“Why? Because the department ruled it an accident, a righteous shooting? Because they closed the book on it? Ho-hum, let’s move on with life. Sorry, Liam, but you just need to hoist yourself back up and continue on!” His voice rose, and he stood, shaking. “They’re not the ones who can’t sleep at night without drinking half a bottle of booze! They’re not the ones who wish for death and then deprive themselves of it! They’re not the ones who made the mistake!” He thrust a quaking fist into his chest. “It was me . . . it was me.”

Sobs rolled through him, unbidden and unlike anything he’d ever felt before. His emotions lay exposed, skinned and bleeding for anyone to see, but there was only this woman, who stood from the bed and came to him.

He jerked back at her first touch, not because he wanted to get away from it but because he longed to collapse into it. Dani’s fingers grazed his neck and caressed his wet cheek. He felt her come closer, her body only inches away from his. He turned his head away, and her gentle hands guided his face back. He vibrated with the urge to pull her close but kept his arms at his sides as she looked up at him, her breath hot on his face. Her perfume was everything; it surrounded him, and now he remembered why it was so familiar. There was a lilac bush that bloomed white petals every spring beside his porch, the warm scent like sugar in the air. He held on for one second longer, one beat, and then broke.

His lips found hers, barely touching at first; the subtle glide of her lipstick sending a tremble through him. Instantly he was transported back to Allen and Suzie’s wedding night, his arms around Dani, their kiss bridging the years between then and now. She moaned as he drew her close, her body sealing to his, without even air between them. His hands found the back of her head, releasing her hair so that it fell onto her shoulders, as he pressed his lips harder against hers. Their clothes were only burdens, and he undressed them both with a fluidity that seemed dreamlike. He laid her gently on the bed and covered her with himself, a blanket of flesh, and caresses that he couldn’t stop, nor did he want to. Then they were one, moving together, the force restrained before now locking them in union. Everything was sound and flesh and a burning pleasure that rose from his depths until time meant nothing and an undeniable heat blossomed in both of them, shuddering, shaking with the power of it as she cried out and arched against him.