Crooked River: A Novel (27 page)

For a few seconds, there wasn’t anything on the other end but silence.

Then, raspy breathing and a low voice. “Sam?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Sam? It’s me. It’s Travis.”

I closed my eyes, opened them again, stared at the ceiling, tried not to imagine the worst.

From downstairs Franny called, “Sam, honey? Who is it?”

I blinked, took a breath. “What do you want?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew what his answer was going to be.

“We have Ollie.”

Franny shouted my name again, louder this time, like she’d moved from the kitchen into the living room. I pressed my hand down hard against the mattress.

“We have Ollie,” Travis said again. “At the house.”

“Please. Don’t hurt her. Just tell me where to go. I’ll come. Please . . .” My voice was a scratch below a whisper.

“Take Smith Rock Way north. About a mile outside Terrebonne you’ll see a gravel driveway on the left. Our name’s on the mailbox. You can’t miss it. Oh, and Sam?” His voice hostile, my name dagger-sharp. “Come alone.”

I hung up the phone.

The bedroom door opened. Franny stood half in shadow, half in light, with streaks of flour on her forehead and grease spots on her apron.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Wrong number.” I got up from the bed and pushed past her into the hallway.

“Sam?” She called after me.

“It wasn’t her.” I called over my shoulder.

“Sam!”

But I was down the stairs already, moving toward the front door. I shouted, “I’m going to go help Zeb,” and slammed through the screen door onto the porch.

The truck wasn’t in the driveway. Zeb must have taken it. I ran to the barn, grabbed the black-and-red Schwinn, and rode as hard as I could toward the road.

On the uphills, I stood and leaned over the handlebars and set my body on fire. On the downhills, I switched to the hardest gear and spun my legs into taffy. The wind screamed in my ears and drew salt tears from my eyes. And when it started to become too much, when my muscles and ligaments and cells begged me to stop, I imagined I was made of gears and cogs and greased-up bearings. I imagined myself a machine, incapable of pain.

I sped down Lambert Road, then Smith Rock Way, and all the way through Terrebonne, the fields and houses passing in a blur. Another mile to go now, give or take, and my legs were going numb. I dug way down deep, found a shallow reservoir of strength, and pedaled even faster.

32
ollie

I
pluck at the rope with my fingernails. Twist my wrists one way, another, rubbing my skin raw. I squirm and lean side to side, feeling for a sticking-out nail or splinter, something sharp. There’s nothing.

Mrs. Roth watches me struggle but doesn’t try to stop me. She says, “Things didn’t have to happen like this, you know.”

I slump down in the chair. The one who follows me beats her silent wings against the window. She wants me to be brave and keep fighting. I turn my face away from her.

“If you and Sam had just had the sense to leave well enough alone.” She looks at the pistol in her hand. “Maybe this will be better, though. For everyone.”

Someone’s running up the path. Mrs. Roth spins to face the door and raises the gun, pointing it at chest level, ready to shoot.

But it’s only Travis.

“Jesus Christ!” He stops short.

Mrs. Roth lowers the gun quickly. “Did you do it?”

Travis nods and enters the shed. He says, “Now what?”

“We wait.”

Travis begins to pace. After a while, he stops and stares at the sculpture behind me and says, “Tell me that’s not really her under there. Please tell me that’s not my sister.”

Mrs. Roth hesitates a beat too long.

“Mom,” Travis says, and then when she still doesn’t answer, “Oh my God. How could you let him do this?”

“Keep your voice down.” Mrs. Roth glances at her husband hunched over his workbench. She speaks to Travis in an almost whisper. “I had no idea this is what he was doing out here. Not until that night. When I realized what he’d done, that he’d gone into the woods and . . . I tried to talk him into doing something else, leaving her out of it, but he refused.”

“You aren’t really going to send this to New York, are you? I mean, now that you know, you aren’t really—”

Billy Roth slams his hammer down. “Quiet!”

Travis glares at his father. Mrs. Roth glares at her son. And for a while, except for our breathing, the shed is silent. Then the clinking, clanking, tinkering starts up again.

Mrs. Roth whispers, “Your father’s worked hard on this project, Travis. It’s the first time since the accident he’s wanted to be in his studio. The first time he’s made something important. Something that has the potential to shake up the art world, change its very essence.”

“This isn’t art,” Travis says. “It’s . . . it’s wrong and awful and—”

“Remarkable,” says Mrs. Roth, raising her voice to drown out her son’s. “Groundbreaking, really. The work of a true genius.”

“Of a lunatic.”

A loud crash behind me and Billy Roth shouts, “Enough!”

Travis ducks. A wrench flies overhead and dents the wall.

“Billy!” Mrs. Roth shouts.

Travis takes a step back. “Shit!”

“Language!”

Billy Roth says, “Coming in here, criticizing, cutting me down. Flapping and squawking. Telling me what is and isn’t. Acting like you know better. Like you’re all high and mighty and above. You have no idea. None.”

“Billy, honey, calm down. Travis didn’t mean—”

A jar of nails crashes to the floor. Mrs. Roth screams. So does the pale girl, a sound like screeching tires and breaking glass. A sound of shattering bones.

“I don’t want you in here!” Billy screams. “Go! All of you! Get the hell out!”

“Billy, honey, listen to me. Listen.” Mrs. Roth goes to him. “He doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. You need to finish her so he can see. So he can understand.”

I rock back and forth, trying to get the chair to move, but it’s too heavy, and I’m too small. Travis stares at me but does nothing.

Mrs. Roth continues, “You’re so close now. Look. Look at what you’ve done. She’s beautiful. You’re going to make history with this one, Billy. You’re going to be bigger than Dalí.”

Billy Roth murmurs something so soft I can’t understand, and then there is a single pop, a paint can being opened.

Mrs. Roth returns to Travis and says, “You need to calm down too. You’re not helping, getting him all riled up like that.”

“But—”

“Enough.” Mrs. Roth gets right up close and puts her hand on his chest, looks straight at him and doesn’t look away. “I know I’m asking a lot from you right now. I know that, but I need you on my side. I need you to trust me.”

Travis bites his lip and rubs his neck. He lowers his head, hiding his eyes.

“Travis.” She reaches and lifts his chin, stares at him with a trembling smile. “We’re too far in to turn back now.”

He jerks from her grasp and steps back. “I told you, didn’t I? When you asked me to help clean up his mess, I told you it would only make things worse. From the very beginning I’ve said this was a shitty plan!”

“Language,” Mrs. Roth says through gritted teeth.

“We should have called the sheriff right away.”

“Your father would have gone to jail. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“He killed that woman, Mom. He just . . . he killed her.”

“No, it wasn’t like that.” She reaches for him, but her hand can’t cross the distance. She says, “She showed up early for the interview. If she had come to the front door instead of going straight to the shed . . . but she just barged in on him, came into his space, and started asking him all these questions about Bear and you know how your father gets, and then she saw the sculpture and, understandably, she was upset. But she could have just walked out. She didn’t have to start tearing him down, calling the whole thing a desecration. She didn’t have to threaten to call the police, either. She pushed him first. Your father . . . he felt trapped. What was he supposed to do? But it was an accident, Travis. I swear to you. He didn’t mean to push her that hard. If she had fallen any other way, we wouldn’t even be here right now, talking about this. It was an accident.”

“Then what are we protecting him from?”

“You know how hard it’s been for him since the crash. With his headaches. His episodes. And remember how they raked him over the coals when he tried to go back to work? How they said he’d lost his edge? They won’t understand. They’ll think he did it on purpose.” Mrs. Roth shakes her head. “Prison is the last place he needs to be right now. He’d die in there.”

Travis stares at the sculpture, says nothing.

“He needs this, Travis. He needs
us
.”

“He needs to be in a mental hospital,” Travis mumbles.

“So we’ll find him a doctor. After the show, we’ll get him help.”

“And what about that woman’s family?” His voice loud again. “Who’s going to help them?”

Mrs. Roth doesn’t answer.

And I imagine her, the one from the river. Taylor Bellweather. I imagine her lying there in a pool of her spilled-out blood. Her body broken, but her soul still awake. Waiting for someone to come.

33
sam

I
rode down the Roths’ long and narrow, winding driveway. The first fifty yards or so were gravel, but then it changed to rutted dirt with patches of soft sand. My tires kept slipping. Fir trees crowded me on both sides, their limbs intertwining overhead and blocking the sun. The farther I went, the darker it got. The light changed, and the colors shifted from a dust-and-orange summer to a shadow-and-blue midnight. The sun couldn’t be setting. Not yet. It wasn’t that late, but sweat was drying on my skin, cooling me, and I couldn’t see more than a few feet into the trees. And the birds—there were none. That scared me more than anything else.

Dirt became gravel again as I finally came around the last bend, and the narrow road widened, ending in a turnaround driveway big enough to park two cars and Travis’s dirt bike. Black handlebars stuck out of the open back of a Jeep Wrangler. I skidded to a stop beside the car and looked inside to find Ollie’s blue-and-white Schwinn crammed between the backseat and the tailgate. Keys dangled from the Wrangler’s ignition.

Travis hadn’t told me what to do once I got here. I thought he’d be waiting, but he wasn’t. I got off my bike and leaned it up against a tree that was set back a few feet from the road. My legs shook and my elbows were numb. My palms were red from gripping the handlebars so tight. I wiped my hands on my jeans and walked toward the house.

I’d never seen anything quite like it before. All hard edges and sharp corners, it looked like three giant shipping containers stacked one on top of another, each end turned a slightly different angle. The roof was flat, and wrought-iron balconies jutted from two dormers facing the driveway. One lower-level wall was made entirely of glass, but no lights were on and I couldn’t see inside. The sepia-colored siding was going a bit green with moss on the north side, and there were mobiles hanging from every railing and empty space—delicate bird skeletons wired together, wings stretched in midflight, so perfect it was impossible to tell what they were made of, if they were real bones or something else entirely. Sculptures littered the front garden, lunging from behind azaleas and rosebushes and clumps of ferns. Many were like the fox in Pastor Mike’s office, some unholy combination of carved wood and real animal, but a few were made of glass and metal, bits of things welded and twisted together to make abstract shapes and whorls of color and light. I went up a winding staircase that curved twice around a pole inlaid with colored glass and tiny mirrors before reaching the upper level and what I hoped was the front door. Instead of a regular brass doorknob, there was a clenched metal fist the color of blood. I grabbed it and turned.

The door swung open, and when I walked in, it was like stepping into a tomb. Dank, suffocating, crowded. The air reeked of wet dirt and mold and something else, something long dead. The room was dark except for an old film projector set up in the middle of the floor with a spent reel that hissed and clattered, flickering bright white light against the opposite wall. Hanging from the ceiling above my head, a rainbow-colored and shimmering banner shouted
HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY!!
Limp gray streamers sagged from the center of the banner to the corners of the room. I took a step toward the couch and a cardboard party hat crunched under my foot. I kicked it aside and lifted a framed photograph from the coffee table.

A barefoot, blond-haired girl with buckteeth grinned up at me. She wore a light blue swimsuit and goggles around her neck. Behind her, brightly colored slides spiraled into a large, indoor swimming pool. She had wrapped a beach towel around her shoulders like a cape and was clutching the corners together just under her chin. She stood beside a birthday cake ablaze with candles. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering. Hanging from the table’s edge was a rainbow-colored and shimmering banner. The exact same banner that hung over my head now. All these years later. I returned the picture to the coffee table and then turned off the rattling projector. The house settled into silence and twilight.

“Ollie?” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure what good that would do. Louder, I called out, “Travis? I’m here. Hello?”

I stepped over a stuffed bear that was missing one eye and coming apart at the seams and moved past a bookcase filled with taxidermy raccoons and squirrels, blue jays and crows and something that looked like a bobcat. Their glass eyes twinkled and seemed to move with me, watching, disapproving. A few steps more, past a desk strewn with sketches and pictures of the same blond-haired girl, and I reached the sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony overlooking the woods behind the house. About fifty yards down a bark mulch path was another building, a shed, similar in color and style to the house, but smaller, a single cube instead of several stacked together. The lights were on inside.

I turned to go back out the front door, but I stopped halfway there and stared at my empty hands. I curled my fingers into fists. So small and fragile, so completely useless. I searched the living room, but nothing seemed right. In the kitchen, I grabbed a frying pan from the hook hanging over the stove and swung it once, twice, like a baseball bat, but it didn’t feel heavy enough to me. I needed something menacing, something I might not even have to use once they got a good look at it. I put the pan back on its hook and started opening drawers instead. I found the butcher’s knife in the third drawer alongside a lemon zester and a bottle opener. The knife was almost as long as my arm, heavy and sharp and glinting silver. This.

Keeping the blade pointed away from me, I ran back through the living room and outside. A light wind had started to blow, setting the trees grumbling like angry old men. A thin orange ribbon twisted through their thick black trunks. The sun was flickering out, collapsing into night.

The shed door was ajar. Hushed voices drifted toward me.

“If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it,” Mrs. Roth said.

“I just think . . . maybe we should go to the sheriff first.” This was Travis. “Right now. Before we make it worse. If that’s even possible. Just tell them everything. Tell them the truth.”

“The truth.”

“Yes.”

“Tell them everything?”

They were quiet for a few seconds, enough time for me to get right up close to the shed and hunker down behind a stack of firewood. I clutched the knife in both hands now, holding it close to my chest.

Mrs. Roth said, “We’re as guilty as your father now, Travis. Our hands are covered in just as much blood.”

“But maybe if we tell them—”

“What? Tell them what, exactly? There’s nothing we could say to fix this.”

“So . . . what? What do we do?”

Mrs. Roth didn’t answer.

I needed to see what was going on inside, what I was up against. I needed to see Ollie. Staying low to the ground, I inched around to the other side of the woodpile, closer to the door.

“We could run,” Travis said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Mexico? Canada? Wherever. Somewhere far away from here.”

“And what about Sam?”

Something tickled the back of my arm, making circles near my elbow, then walking toward my sleeve, but I didn’t dare move. I was close enough now to see inside.

Ollie was tied to a chair. A sock or a handkerchief, some kind of cloth, had been shoved into her mouth, and her hands were tied behind her back, her legs tied together at the ankles. My grip tightened on the knife. I couldn’t see Travis, but from the sound of his voice, he was close to the door. Billy Roth was at the back of the shed, busy with something at his workbench. Mrs. Roth stood in the center of them all. I stared at the gun in her hand, stared and tried not to panic.

Travis said, “When she gets here, we tie them both up and that will buy us a few hours. Enough time to pack up a few things and get the hell out. If we drive fast enough, we might even make it to the Canadian border. We could disappear.”

“And then what?” Mrs. Roth said. “Keep running? Keep hiding? For the rest of our lives? Always looking over our shoulders? No. Absolutely not. Not when we’re this close. Not when it’s almost over.”

Whatever creature had been crawling around my elbow was almost to my armpit now. I twitched my arm, but I could still feel it creeping around, tickling its tiny legs over my skin. I brushed at my sleeve and a honeybee fell into the dirt. Dazed, she hobbled in circles for a few seconds, then gathered herself up again and flew away, circling around me and landing somewhere in the woodpile.

Mrs. Roth was still talking. “No, we stick with the original plan.”

“And if Sam doesn’t agree to it?”

Another bee landed on my jeans. I brushed her off.

“She won’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

I leaned closer to the crack in the door, sticking my head out far enough that if either of them looked over, they would see me plain as day. But Mrs. Roth had her back to me now, reaching for something I couldn’t see, and Travis, a few steps from the doorway, was too busy watching her to notice me. Ollie saw me, though, and started squirming and grunting. I pulled back into the shadows.

Mrs. Roth said, “Hush, dear. No use working yourself into a fit. This will all be over soon.”

Ollie fell silent.

Mrs. Roth asked, “Do you still have the lighter?”

Travis said, “I lost it.”

I shoved my hand in my front pocket, took the lighter out, cupped it in my palm.

Mrs. Roth sighed loudly, then said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. The purse will be enough.”

“Tell me again how this is going to work?”

“We’ll give it to Sam, have her take it to the sheriff. She’ll tell them she saw Bear with it the day after the murder, that she saw him throw it in the woods, but she was too scared to come forward with it until now. We’ve planted enough evidence already, everyone thinks he’s guilty. But just in case. If they have any doubts, they won’t after this.”

“She won’t do it.”

“She’ll have to,” Mrs. Roth said. “This won’t come back to us. I won’t let it.”

“You’re not going to . . .” There was a long stretch of silence, and then Travis said, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt them!”

“You understand what would happen if anyone else were to find out what we’ve done, right?”

Silence and then Mrs. Roth continued, “We’re the victims here, Travis. You, me, your father. We wouldn’t have to be dealing with any of this if your sister was still alive, if that accident had never happened. This is Frank McAlister’s fault. You know that as well as I do. He’s the bad guy, Travis, not your father. He’s the monster who started all of this. Try and remember that.”

The door opened a little wider, and Travis’s shadow stretched long across the orange swatch of light bleeding onto the grass. I leaned back against the woodpile, as far away from the opening as I could get. Two bees twirled and buzzed in the air around my head. I stayed still, hoping the shadows were thick enough to make me invisible.

Travis moved away from the door again. “Where is she?”

I couldn’t wait any longer. If I was going to do something, I had to do it now.

I crawled to the other side of the woodpile and scooped up dry pine needles and small twigs, making a messy pile of kindling that butted right up against the side of the shed. My timing would have to be perfect. I held the lighter to the bottom of the pile and struck a flame. A twig caught fire, then sputtered and died. Smoke curled away from me.

“It shouldn’t be taking her this long,” Travis said.

I tried again. Snick, pop, flare. I cupped my hand around the flame this time and blew softly on the fragile embers. Some leaves caught fire, then a bundle of dry moss. More smoke lifted, carried away by the wind. The twigs were burning on their own now.

“She’s told the sheriff. I know she has. We’re fucked. Completely fucked.”

“Language,” Mrs. Roth said. And then, “If she’d told the sheriff, they would have been here a long time ago. She’ll be here. Have a little faith.”

I reached for a small log teetering near the top of the woodpile. When I brought it down to the fire, the dim light caught the movement of fluttering wings and marching legs and yellow-and-black wiggling bodies. Half a dozen bees roamed up and down the stick. I rose to a half crouch to get a closer look at the woodpile.

The bees were coming from a large, hollow stump that was up against the side of the shed, teetering on the edge of a rotting pallet. From what I could see, the comb inside was new and thin and still growing, so they had only been here a few days, if that. They were starting to gather inside now, clustering together for warmth, whispering their bee secrets as night settled around them. I desperately wanted to believe they were Bear’s bees, the ones whose hives in the meadow were so recently destroyed, and I wanted to believe they recognized me. But even if they didn’t, even if they came from someplace else entirely, their low and steady hum still gave me courage.

My pile of kindling was starting to die, the embers smothering, turning gray and puffing bits of ash into the air. I left the bees and dropped another handful of dry tinder onto the fire. The flames shot up again, angry and red and hotter this time. I added a small log and the flames grew bigger still, taller and meaner. They thrashed against the side of the shed, snapping like devil tongues. The smoke bulged and shifted with the wind, burning my throat and making me cough. Sparks sprang from the center and then settled in the dry grass, and it was only a matter of time before something else caught fire, and the whole world went up in flames. If that happened, the bees with their wings would be all right, but I couldn’t say the same for Ollie and me. Too late, now.