Crooked River: A Novel (15 page)

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sam

A
long chain running from Bear’s handcuffed wrists to his shackled ankles made it so that even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to stand up straight. He kept his eyes on the floor, hadn’t looked up once since the bailiff brought him into the courtroom. They’d shaved off his beard and trimmed his hair and put him in a bright orange jumpsuit that didn’t fit. The sleeve cuffs fell only a few inches past his elbows, and the pant legs rode so high I thought at first he’d rolled them up on purpose. There was a fresh bruise, swollen and red, on his right cheek just below his eye. I tried not to think about how he got it.

When they brought him through the side door into the courtroom, I drew back at the sight of him. Zeb leaned in close and whispered, “Mr. Clemens said the beard made him look guilty.” But I thought this was worse. His eyes were set too deep in his head, his mouth stretched too thin, his angles too sharp, cutting the air like so many knives. This man in front of me was capable of doing horrible, terrible, awful things. Things my father, a softer, kinder man, would never, ever do. Not that it even mattered. Beard or no beard, I had a feeling public opinion would stay the same.

“How does the defendant plead?” Judge Latham asked the question like a yawn.

At the table in front of us on the other side of the railing, Mr. Clemens, my father’s attorney, shuffled through a stack of papers.

“Not guilty,” he finally said, and I worried that he’d needed his notes to remind him.

If my grandparents were here, they would have hired someone better, someone without so many cases, someone who was paid to give a damn. But neither our social worker, nor Deputy Santos, nor anyone else who’d tried had been able to reach them yet. They’d keep trying, but it would be another two days before the ship reached port and then probably another whole day after that before my grandparents arrived in Terrebonne. Until then we’d just have to do the best we could with what we had, and that was Mr. Clemens, Deschutes
County’s public defender.

I was sitting close enough to see yellow sweat stains on Mr. Clemens’s starched collar and a purple birthmark peeking out from his hairline. He smelled like fried chicken and raw onions. He checked his watch every few seconds, clearing his throat each time.

Across the aisle from Mr. Clemens, the prosecuting attorney, a thin man with grease-black hair and a cut-marble jaw, rose to address the judge. “The State requests that the defendant be held without bail.”

“That seems a little extreme, Your Honor,” Mr. Clemens responded, shuffling through his papers again, barely looking at the judge or Bear or anyone else, like he didn’t think we were worth his time and energy. “Hardly necessary considering my client has no history of violent criminal behavior. And though his living conditions are a little unconventional, he’s been residing in the same place for the past eight years. His wife recently passed away, Your Honor, and he has custody of his two young daughters, one of whom is here today.”

He flicked his hand toward me. I straightened my shoulders and lifted my head a little higher, ignoring the rustling, cruel whispers of all the people around me, people who had come here today to gawk and gossip. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. The redheaded kid who worked with Travis at Patti’s; a few people who bought honey from Bear every year; the man who ran the farm supply store where we sometimes bought seeds and fertilizer; a checkout clerk from Potter’s Grocery Store. Every bench full, standing room only. There were reporters in the back jotting notes, and two benches behind me to the left was Pastor Mike. I’d seen him come in, and he’d seen me, and I could still feel his eyes on me even now, though I didn’t dare turn around. Any one of these people was just as likely a suspect as Bear. Any one of them could have been standing where he was standing now. I stared at his lowered face and didn’t look away, didn’t duck my head, didn’t show any shame. I wanted them all to know that I believed he was innocent. I wanted them to see my faith.

“My client is not a flight risk,” Mr. Clemens continued. “His passport’s expired. Given his limited and sporadic income, the defense requests bail be set at ten thousand.”

Judge Latham’s caterpillar eyebrows shot up. He leaned forward on his elbows and returned his attention to the prosecution’s table, nodding at that attorney to go ahead.

“Your Honor.” The prosecutor adjusted his tie and took a single step out from behind the table, as if what he was about to say was going to take up too much space and he needed to get out of its way. “Considering the violent nature of the crime with which the defendant has been accused, as well as his prior arrest and the fact that he has no ties to this community, the State believes holding Mr. McAlister without bail is in everyone’s best interest.”

And when he said “everyone,” he turned and looked at me.

A drop of sweat ran down my forehead. The ankle-length wool skirt Franny had forced me to wear—“You don’t want that old judge thinking your daddy doesn’t know how to raise his babies up right, now do you?”—itched something awful, but I kept my hands folded in my lap and sat very still. Beside me, Zeb shifted on the hard bench. He squeezed his straw hat between both hands, squashing it down so small I didn’t think he’d ever get it to fit quite right again.

The prosecuting attorney said, “A young woman was killed, Your Honor. Brutally murdered. Bludgeoned again and again by an animal who has no regard for the sanctity of human life. And when he was finished with her, he threw her out like so much garbage, dropped her in a river to be picked apart by trout and crayfish.”

A woman sobbed loudly, but just once. An ugly, harsh sound that echoed through the open rafters and bounced off the painted-shut windows. Someone began to murmur softly, hushing her to silence. I craned my neck, trying to see who was voicing my grief, all the things I kept swallowing down, swallowing and swallowing until my mouth was dry and my throat on fire. She was sitting in the first row behind the prosecutor’s table. Collapsed forward, her head was buried so deep in her hands I couldn’t see her face. A balding, heavyset man sat beside her with one arm placed firmly around her shoulders, as if he thought his arm would be enough to hold her together. He fixed his gaze pointedly on Bear. His etched-deep frown showed more disgust than anger, the lines in his face like uneven ruts. Perspiration beaded his temples.

The prosecuting attorney finished by saying, “This is not the kind of man you can trust to stick around for his trial, Your Honor.”

How would you know?
I wanted to shout.
How would any of you know what kind of man my father is?
And I wanted to tell them about how every Christmas Eve, even though he got carsick and hated the city, he rode the bus from Bend all the way home to us in Eugene to sing carols and make sugar cookies and fall asleep under the tree waiting for Santa. How he brought us things from the meadow as presents: dried wildflowers pressed flat between the pages of books, a thunderstone cracked open and polished, a beaver figurine he’d carved from a small oak branch, a brilliant sapphire feather from a Steller’s jay, a jar of his sweetest honey. And I wanted to tell them about the summer we found the fawn with the broken leg, and how it was bleating and bleating, but its mother never came, and how Bear carried it three miles back to the meadow and splinted its leg and kept it fed by dipping a rag in milk and letting it suck, and how a few months after that when it was old enough and strong enough and healed, the fawn had walked into the woods and disappeared. I wanted to tell them that my father had called that day to tell my mother and me and Ollie how much he loved us. I wanted to tell them he cried.

The judge shuffled through a stack of papers on the bench in front of him and scratched his cheek. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m setting bail at five hundred thousand dollars.”

His gavel came down.

Zeb flinched.

Bear closed his eyes.

I dug my fingernails into my arm and sat frozen, staring straight at him until the courtroom cleared.

C
ameras flashed. Reporters shouted my name. Zeb wrapped his arm around me and guided me through the crush of strangers crowding the courthouse steps. He held his hat in front of my face.

“Leave the girl alone,” he said. “Go on. Git! You goddamn vultures!”

“Samantha! Samantha!”

“What do you think about your father’s arrest?”

“How do you feel about the bail the judge set?”

“Samantha!”

“Has he ever been violent with you or your sister?”

“Has he ever hit you?”

“That’s enough.” Zeb pushed their microphones away, but he couldn’t push away their questions.

“Samantha, do you think he’s guilty?”

“There’s a rumor going around that you and your sister found the body first. What did she look like? Did you see her face?”

“Samantha! Samantha! How are you handling all of this?”

“Will you testify?”

“What about your sister?”

“Samantha!”

“What’s it like knowing your father’s a murderer?”

I was glad Ollie wasn’t here. She’d wanted to come, had even climbed into the front seat of the truck next to me, but Franny had pulled her out again and said this wasn’t any kind of circus she needed to be a part of and it’d be better if she stayed at the farm and helped make blueberry pies. I was starting to think maybe I should have stayed behind, too.

The reporters broke apart, moving away from us and squawking someone else’s name.

“Sheriff Harper! Sheriff Harper!”

I could breathe again.

Zeb wanted to keep going, hurry me along as fast as he could back to the truck before the reporters had a chance to come after us again, but I ducked away from him and stopped at the bottom of the stairs, under the shade of a reaching dogwood.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with a thick head of graying hair stood at the top of the courthouse steps. He held up his hands, silencing the reporters. He had a politician’s smile and a fat gold ring on his pinkie finger.

“Sam.” Zeb reached for my elbow. “Let’s go.”

“No. Wait,” I said.

Deputy Santos must have told Sheriff Harper about the boot print and the tire tracks by now. Certainly he would make some kind of appeal for more information, more tips, or a brief statement about how they were still looking at the evidence, pursuing leads, that they hadn’t stopped searching, wouldn’t stop searching until they knew exactly what had happened to Taylor Bellweather that night and why. I wanted to stay and hear exactly what he had to say.

Zeb let out a frustrated sigh, but let me be. He fixed his hat on his head and turned his attention to the sheriff.

“I want to first express my condolences to the Bellweather family, and thank them for their continued cooperation during this investigation. When something as terrible as this happens to a community, to a family, it’s hard to find the right words, any words really.” He choked up here. His jaw trembled, and he blinked hard. And I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that he was putting on a mighty good show.

“The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Department is committed to doing everything we can to ensure justice for Taylor Bellweather and her family. We’re working day and night on this investigation. We’ve made it our top priority. To that end, we’re still asking anyone who believes they might have information about this case to please come forward.”

For a second, hope.

Then a reporter shouted, “Does that mean you’re looking into other suspects?”

“Not at this time.”

I took a step back, bumping into the dogwood trunk. Zeb’s hand found my elbow, steadied me.

Sheriff Harper said, “We are confident we have arrested the man who committed this heinous act.”

“Do you have enough evidence for a conviction?”

“I cannot comment on the details of our case at this time.” And then he winked. Or maybe there was just a bit of dust caught in his eye.

Zeb squeezed my arm. “You sure you want to be hearing all of this?”

I nodded. To prove them wrong, I needed to hear everything.

I needed to know every detail.

M
y fingers shook, but I managed to press all the right numbers, and after three rings, someone on the other end picked up and said, “
Register-Guard,
how can I direct your call?”

Calling the newspaper Taylor Bellweather had worked for seemed the best place to start, especially after the papers reported she was in Terrebonne on assignment. They didn’t say who or what exactly she was here for—her editor was quoted saying, “No comment”—only that she was here for a story. But it felt like something important to me. Something worth following up on.

I drummed the side of the metal phone booth and stared at the keypad and the buttons I’d just pushed, trying to decide what to say, if I should even say anything at all or just hang up and walk away because maybe this would lead me nowhere except straight into trouble.

“Hello . . . ?” the woman on the other end said and then again, louder, “Hello?”

I’d found the number in the phone book easily enough and had borrowed enough change from Zeb’s cup holder to pay for at least an hour, though I didn’t think it would take that long. After the hearing, Zeb said he needed to stop by the hardware store for screws. I was going to wait for him in the parking lot, but then I saw the phone booth reflecting in the side mirror and even though it was just a coincidence, it felt like a little something more, too. Like maybe everything had worked out in a certain order just to bring me to this point, this phone call.