What the River Knows (32 page)

“I guess you’re right. The shrink and my partner, even the chief, keep telling me that.”

Dennis flipped down the footrest on his chair. “It’s that hard-headed Midwestern do-it-alone mentality we grew up with, Scott.” He stood. “The same work ethic that kept Dad in the fields when he didn’t feel good.” He glanced at their mother, whose eyes had filled with tears. “Sorry, Mom, but we’ve talked about this before. Same thing that kept Mom trying to mow the yard after you went to college.”

“I wanted to help, but I couldn’t be there enough.” Even now, Scott felt the guilt, torn between needing to be at college and needing to work the farm.

“I know, Scott. None of us could. That’s why we convinced Mom to rent the farm out, and finally sell it.” He looked back at their mother. “Sometimes you need to go it alone, push yourself, prove you can do it. But wisdom is in knowing when the smarter, more efficient, healthier thing to do is ask for help.”

Scott swallowed hard, trying to take in all his brother had said in such a short speech. “How’d you get so smart when you were so dumb all those years?”

Smiling, Dennis cuffed his ear. “I could still take you down, Pee Wee.”

“Right.” Scott jabbed him softly in the belly. “I’m two inches taller, ten years younger, and I train in self-defense every week.”

Dennis laughed. “Yeah, but I’m still the smart, good-looking one.” He turned to his wife. “Alicia, is dinner ready?”

“I never saw the day you Aylward boys weren’t hungry.” Alicia stood. “I think we can find something in the kitchen.” She nodded at Scott. “Why don’t you go see if you can get Vanessa to come to the table.”

“Are you sure she’ll even speak to me?” Scott started down the hall.

“God is the only one who knows the mind of a teenaged girl,” Dennis responded. “And I think even He throws up his hands sometimes.”

“Sure, toss me to the lions.” Scott rapped gently on Vanessa’s door. “Vanessa, can I come in?”

“Okay,” came the muffled response.

He pushed open the door and entered the glittery, neon world of a teenaged girl. Posters of pubescent male heartthrobs with emphasis on hair circled the walls. Bottles of nail polish in as many hues as the big box of crayons littered her dresser, her desk, and her nightstand. He shook his head at the alien-ness of it all; he had only brothers, and Rica always kept her toiletries neatly put away. Vanessa lay sprawled face down across her half-made bed.

“Hey, Nessa.” When she rolled sideways to face him but didn’t speak, he continued. “Can we talk?”

“Yeah.” She looked down at the floor and propped her chin on her fists. “About Aunt Rica?” She rolled over again. “Except I guess she won’t be my Aunt Rica much longer, eh?”

Scott perched on the corner of the bed; clothing covered the desk chair and beanbag. “Not officially, but I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to you anytime. You still have her number, don’t you?”

“Mom does.” She met his eyes. “I called my friend Janie to talk about it, and she told me what it was like last year, before I knew her, when her parents split up. They fought a lot, and neither one was happy, and they never had time to spend with her because they were so miserable.” She pushed her hair back out of her face. “She said life was a lot calmer now, even though it is more effort to see her dad. She said her mom told her that sometimes people just grow apart.” Her lower lip trembled. “Is that what happened with you guys, Uncle Scott?”

He smiled and stroked her hair, remembering when she was a tiny baby with only fuzz for hair and had hung on to his finger to walk across the room. Where had the time gone? “Kinda, Nessa. We never fought that much, but there was tension.” He sighed. “Rica said it was too much work.” He smoothed the corner of her bedspread. “Maybe we didn’t know each other as well as we should have before we got married. Maybe we were just too different.”

“I know one thing.” Vanessa sat up. “It wasn’t because you weren’t nice to her.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her comment surprised him.

“Yeah.” She turned to sit beside him, her bare feet, with green painted toenails, on the floor. “When we would see you guys, you were always trying to do nice things for her and for grandma and Mom. And Dad and Uncle Ian and Aunt Marsha and Jerry and John and Jason.”

He laughed. “You make me sound like Mr. Rogers.”

“Well, you are, kinda.” She giggled. “But Aunt Rica was always trying to get you to do this instead of that. I just thought that it was because nurses were bossy.”

“She was that, wasn’t she?” A month ago, he would have bridled at any criticism of Rica, but now he had begun to see her in a different way.

“A little.” Vanessa threw her arms around him. “I may call her about being a nurse.” She jumped up from the bed and crossed the room to an electric guitar in the corner. “But I don’t think I want to be a nurse any more.” She strummed a chord, sort of, that made him wince. “I think I’m going to work on writing songs and performing.” She sang a short ditty about breaking up and vandalizing lockers and finding someone new. Maybe the kid had a better grasp on life than he did.

Somehow, he heard Alicia’s voice over the screeching of the guitar. “Your mom’s calling. Dinner’s ready.”

She switched off the guitar. “Okay.” She linked her arm through his as they left the room. “But will you take me for ice cream after dinner?”

He pinched her nose. “That I will, sweetheart.” Walking down the hall with her skipping beside him, he wondered what her career goal would be by next year. Physicist? Professional wrestler? Maybe he wasn’t ready to have kids of his own yet. He sighed. Life had many surprises ahead of him.

Chapter 70

December came, and Scott could not force himself to put up a Christmas tree. Though he promised his family he would be there to share Christmas-in-January as had become their custom in the past few years, he fell just short of “bah-humbug” every time he saw Christmas lights. He scrupulously avoided every showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Then he found himself face to face with Rica in a courtroom, listening to their past and their future dissolve through a series of questions establishing uncontested “irreconcilable differences.” And then his lawyer and he, a single man instead of a married one, walked out of the courtroom.

“You know, Scott, you can’t marry again for thirty days,” his attorney said.

“That won’t be a problem.” Pausing to listen to his lawyer put him at the courtroom door as Rica came through with her attorney. She stopped, facing him, tears in her eyes.

She extended her hand to him. “I’m sorry, Scott.”

Automatically he took it, surprised that the electricity that used to flow between them was gone. He could only nod, and let go of her hand. He struggled to sort out words, to make the right ones roll off his tongue. “Me, too.” He blinked back his own tears. “If you ever need anything, call me.”

“Ah, Scott.” She put out her hand to caress his cheek. “You are like a knight of the round table, always willing to help a damsel in distress.” And then she walked down the stairs and out of his life forever.

His attorney finally cleared his throat. “I know this isn’t the outcome you wanted, but when there are no kids involved and one party wants out, there isn’t much the other can do.”

Scott forced his gaze from the last place he had beheld Rica. “I know, Evan. Thanks for being so straight with me.”

“You may not thank me when you get the bill.” Evan gripped Scott’s shoulder. They had crossed paths many times in Scott’s line of work; he just never expected to need an attorney for anything like this.

“Then I guess I’d better get back to work to pay it off.”

“Consider taking the rest of the day off, Scott. Give yourself time to process.” Evan closed up his briefcase and started down the stairs. “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah.”

****

“What are you doin’ here?” Bates greeted him as he entered his office.

“Working off my attorney’s fees.”

“No way.” Bates rose, tossed his coffee cup in the trash without even tasting, and crossed the room to sit on Scott’s desk. “You’ll be useless today—”

“Gee, thanks.” Scott looked up at his partner. “Why more so today than any other day?”

“Because you have a lot to think about—”

“Yeah, paying off the damned attorney.”

“I’m serious, Scott. Don’t make me drag the chief down here.” He put a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Go home, go for a run, call your mom, do something for yourself.”

So, on one of those warm Kansas December days that make it seem impossible for Christmas to be right around the corner, Scott found himself dressed in his running clothes, barely needing the sweatshirt he had thrown over the T-shirt, and turning south along the river. To divert his mind from thinking about Rica, he turned his thoughts to Delia and her unsolved murder.

He reached the official end of the path, just on the north side of the bridge that carried Highway 50 across the Arkansas south of the city. A couple hundred yards to the south of the bridge, he had found Delia’s body. He hopped the barrier and continued south along the unofficial path. Worn graffiti decorated the underside of the bridge. He walked on, scanning the east side of the dike for the old cottonwood tree that marked the spot. When he found it, he forced himself to walk on past it, another few yards south.

Officers had scoured this entire area for evidence, cutting the grass with scissors around where her body had been found, finding nothing conclusive. Several indistinct footprints, bicycle and ATV tracks, just like could be found all along the dike area. Nothing that could be tied to Delia’s killer. Finally, where the river made a slight bend to the east, he stopped and lowered himself to the sand.

He sat by the river, possibly on the exact spot where she died, certainly within a hundred yards of where he had first stumbled over her body, and thought about her life, and how it was now somehow inextricably bound up with his. The breeze that ran its fingers lightly over the little bluestem around him was not cold, almost balmy, and the sunlight that beat down on him warmed him, making him drowsy. The words in the state song, “And the skies are not cloudy all day,” rang true most of the time, with brassy blue skies the norm.

Perhaps it was the end of his marriage or the warmth of the sun that made him introspective. Maybe it was the whisper of the wind in the dry russet stalks of the bluestem. He raised his gaze from the buffalo grass under his crossed knees to the bare-limbed cottonwoods across the river. He missed the twinkling leaves of summer. In the fall, they turned the color of sunshine, and then scattered with the first north wind.

The river barely flowed through this area. Little more than scattered shallow pools in a wide bed of sand, connected by trickling rivulets, it was what ecologists termed a braided river, whose streambed fluctuated, running bank to bank at high water, changing its path through the cut with every flow event. A hundred miles west, he knew, it ran only under the surface of the sand.

A little further east, the river deepened into a channel that could properly be called a river. At the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas, within the city of Wichita, stood a famous statue by Kiowa artist Blackbear Bosin, “Keeper of the Plains.” Raising its hands to the sky, the statue, many believed, gave thanks for the river and the life it represented. Yet, here, for him at least, the river represented death. Delia’s death. And the death of his dreams.

He pulled a few stems of the buffalo grass and let the breeze blow it from his palm. He identified with this river. Like the river, he had started his public life roaring with power and purpose, cutting a swath through school, social life, and profession much like the Arkansas cut the Royal Gorge. Later, like the river, he moderated and matured, still full of power, but more restrained, useable, like the Ark was for irrigation. And now he sat, like the river, meandering, not making noticeable progress, sometimes nearly disappearing in his lack of direction, other times creeping along. Like the river, his life contained deceptively deep, dangerous pools, and quicksand that could pull him under if he let his attention wander. Would he, like the river, regain his purpose and power? Or would he end here, like Delia?

The sun began to drop in the sky, and with it the temperature. A glance at his watch confirmed it was about four. Time to finish his run and shower. And, he decided, rather than a frozen pizza, he would treat himself to a nice dinner tonight. He had the rest of the run and shower time to pick out where.

Chapter 71

Charlotte paused to look out her west office window at the waning sun. Almost time to change for her shift at the Dragon. These past few months, she had been working nearly every shift Harvey asked for, saving her money, though she had no idea what for. Devlyn would never do the major remodel they talked about. Charlotte would never pack her bags and run. Or would she?

For the thousandth, or maybe ten thousandth time, she relived that last day with Mags. As had become their custom on Tuesdays, she had left her office at four, walking around the block to the parking lot shared by the Taco Casa and a convenience store. Mags always parked nearer the Taco Casa, where her car couldn’t be seen from either store, then they walked together to either their destination (sometimes a malt shop, sometimes a nail salon) or to Charlotte’s car. Then, if Devlyn was working the late shift and Mags didn’t have custody of her baby this week, they would have dinner together and just enjoy making up for lost time. But this particular day, Mags jumped out of her car, leaving the door open, to meet Charlotte. She had been crying.

“Why do I do it, Ky?” Mascara softened by her tears smudged her huge eyes, making them even more vulnerable. Her hands shook.

Charlotte glanced around to check who could see them, before she slipped her arms around her. “Do what, Mags?”

Mags shuddered with a sob. “Continue to meet up with
him
.”

“Oh,
that
.” Charlotte let go a dry laugh. “Oldest reason in the book, honey.” She patted Mags’ hair. “Sometimes you just need a man, no matter how little he cares, no matter how cheap, no matter how married, you just need to get laid to feel alive.”