The River Is Dark (9 page)

CHAPTER 10

They ate breakfast at the café where Liam met Nut on his first day in town.

As they dined on sausage and pancakes, Liam couldn’t help but feel the normality of the moment. There were several other people in the restaurant, even with the early hour, their conversations muddled into a dull but comforting hum of humanity. People living, thriving, and enjoying one another. Liam caught himself listening to the din, the clatter of spoons and forks, instead of eating. He felt the beginnings of a smile forming on his lips as he watched Dani take a too-big bite of her pancake and struggle not to look unladylike while chewing it.

After paying for breakfast, they left the café and headed to the local funeral home, two blocks down. The building stood by itself, separated by alleys on either side that, no doubt, led to the rear, where they loaded and unloaded the bodies set for burial. The exchange with the funeral director lasted an hour and a half. He was a stocky man in a black suit who nodded the whole time, speaking to them in a low, comforting voice. After they gave the director all the necessary information, he assured them that he would take care of the details and all they needed to do was tell him when they would like to hold the funerals. Liam and Dani agreed that a single service would work best, and Liam referred the director to his brother’s lawyer for burial-versus-cremation preference, though he mentioned that most likely only Suzie’s body would be fit for an open casket.

After the time spent inside, the fresh air tasted sweet and light compared to the stuffy interior of the building tainted with grief and sorrow. They both left their windows down as they rolled through the growing heat of the day, the morning smelling of clipped grass and warming tar.

Liam took the street that he had driven only hours before and squinted through the glaring sun at the park, slowing the truck as he looked. He could see a small portion of the clearing from the road, but the light reflected off a dozen vehicles behind the trees was easy to discern. A sheriff’s deputy blocked the entrance to the park with an angled cruiser, and glanced at them as they drove by.

“Looks like it’s in full swing,” Dani said.

“Yep.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t leave anything incriminating behind?”

“I’m sure. There’s no finding footprints on rock. Even if they did find a track, I can just say I was there earlier, which I was.”

They followed the street to its end, where it terminated in a T that shot left and right. Liam turned left, and after passing several quaint homes, they spotted the river flowing at the base of a public water access and turnaround. A ramshackle bait store with dirty windows and sagging siding stood on the bank, overlooking the brown water. Liam parked the truck in one of three empty spaces, and they both hopped out, their feet crunching on the gravel in front of the shop.

The smell of dead fish met Liam’s nose as he pulled open the rickety screen door and stepped inside the shop. A long row of minnow tanks lined the left wall—dark, shifting schools of twitching tails and fins twirling in the bubbling water—and Liam steered away from the overpowering smell that emanated from them. The floor was concrete, with a single stained rug leading to a pitted counter, where a scruffy middle-aged man sat reading a paper. He was skinny and had large lips and a long nose, which he wrinkled every few seconds beneath the bill of a torn Green Bay Packers hat. His brown eyes didn’t look up from the paper until Liam and Dani stopped on the other side of an ancient cash register.

“Howdy, folks, what can I do for ya?”

“Well, I saw that you have a guide service listed in the Yellow Pages,” Liam said, trying to sound as touristy as possible.

“We sure do. You two wantin’ to catch a few walleyes?”

Liam smiled. “Actually, we’re just looking for a ride across the river. There’s some hills that look like good hiking a few miles down, and we’d like to check them out.”

The man behind the counter tipped his hat back and scratched at his forehead. “You just want a ride across the river?”

“Yes,” Liam said.

“Why don’t you just drive over the bridge down south—it’s only a few miles out of the way. There’s a nice road that runs into the state land you’re talkin’ about.”

“Yeah, we know, we just want to spend as much time in the woods as we can. Our time’s limited, and we don’t want to drive all the way around to find the entrance.”

The man’s eyes floated over them both before he shrugged. “Sure, we can give you a lift. I’ll have my son, Tom, float you over. Whereabouts you guys want to land?”

Liam pointed straight across the river. “Just over there, if that works.”

The man nodded. “Tom’s just gearing up the boat for the day. I’ll let him know, and he can bring you across right away.”

“Perfect,” Liam said. Dani stood smiling next to him.

The bait-store owner nodded and went through a door covered by a black curtain behind the counter. He returned after only a minute and stepped up to the cash register, tapping at the stained, unmarked keys with his index fingers.

“That’ll be forty dollars for the ride over and back. What time would you like Tom to pick you up?”

“Oh, around one should be just fine,” Liam said, looking at his phone.

The man nodded and accepted the cash Liam handed him over the counter. He directed them outside the building and down an unsteady walkway that led to a short dock extending into the river.

A remarkably new and clean Lund fishing boat bobbed in the current, and a boy with the same long nose as the man in the shop greeted them. He was no more than sixteen, and was polite and helpful as he got them situated in the boat before casting off and firing up the motor. Liam pointed to a spot beneath some overhanging trees on the far bank, and Tom piloted them to it. Liam and Dani hopped out of the boat and onto the riverbank’s slick edge, beveled by yesterday’s rain into a sheet of brown muck that looked solid but wasn’t. Liam frowned as he felt his tennis shoe slide into the wetness of the bank, and saw Dani smile as she jumped over the spot to drier land.

Liam pushed the boat free into the pulling flow of water, and Tom called that he would be back to get them at one. Liam checked his phone again, noting that they had a little under three hours before they had to be back to this spot. They moved up the incline of the bank until they crested a small rise, which sunk back down and became tangled with growths of hazel brush. Reed grass slithered against their shins and, in some places, their thighs. Liam managed to find a pool of standing water and cursed as his sock went from damp to sopping.

They climbed to higher ground, where the tangled nettles of wild raspberries dissipated and the trees grew taller, blocking out the sun with a canopy of intertwining leaves and branches. Liam stopped and surveyed the surroundings. He could still see the river on the left. Birds flitted between trees overhead and called to one another in snippets of song.

“It’s beautiful out here,” Dani said beside him.

He glanced at her as she popped a wild raspberry into her mouth. “Yes, it is.” Liam picked a long piece of grass and began to split it into sections. “So did you ever get back together with him?”

“With who?”

“The boyfriend you broke up with right before the wedding.”

Dani looked down and smoothed a bit of hair behind one ear. “Yeah, we did. Didn’t work out, again, and we broke up a few months later. I should’ve known better, trusted my instincts the first time.”

“It’s tough when you’re young, and in love.”

Dani shook her head, her eyes far away. “How about you?”

“I didn’t get back together with my boyfriend. I totally deserved better.”

Dani laughed and tossed a twig at him as they continued walking. “Seriously.”

“Oh, you know, cop works all the time, married to the job, can’t commit, that old story.”

“That old chestnut.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s funny, I thought you would’ve been happily married with a family by now.”

“Ditto.”

“Guess we’re both losers.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Dani smiled and they walked in silence for a while before she asked, “What do you think we’ll find at the foundry?”

“Probably nothing, but I want to walk the land myself, see if anything sticks out.”

They moved southeast, keeping the river in sight while winding between tall stands of birch and the occasional towering oak. After a half hour, Liam saw a flat slant of gray emerge through the trees ahead. Gradually the rest of the building came into view, and when they finally stepped free from the forest into the clearing, Liam paused to observe the structure.

It was two stories tall, just as he’d estimated the first time he spied it from across the river. It was rectangular, divided into what he assumed were two different eras of building. The front, the most recent construction, was sheet metal with a base made of cinder block. It ran for two hundred yards or more until it met the edge of the river, where a large overhead door stood on its end, a system of decrepit rails extending from the loading dock to the edge of the river. Some sort of trolley system for exporting its product onto ships, he assumed. A bank of dirty windows, some broken and with yawning teeth of glass, sat twenty feet above the ground at the front of the building, but other than that the walls were smooth and unbroken.

The rear of the foundry looked to be the original building, much older than the newer construction. It was made of brick, stained a deep brown with time and moisture. It stretched back into the trees, which grew uncontained against its sides, reclaiming the ground man once cleared, the creep of nature slow but inevitable.

“Wow, it’s huge,” Dani said after a few seconds of silence.

Liam nodded. “Wonder if we can get inside.”

He stalked forward, heading for a door cut into the otherwise unblemished side of the building. When he touched the rusting doorknob, he knew it wouldn’t turn. He tried anyway, the rough steel flaking off beneath his twisting hand as it held firm. “Locked,” he said, stepping back. Liam rubbed the rust away from his palm, his eyes watching the way it stained the skin red.

“Let’s try the older part,” Dani suggested.

They walked through the tall weeds, which only grew higher the closer they got to the brick portion of the building. Liam felt a few nettles scrape through his jeans, and he batted away a flurry of mosquitoes.

“I’m totally getting Lyme disease out of this,” he said. He heard Dani giggle behind him. “I think I’ll let you cut the path from here on out,” Liam said, half smiling over his shoulder.

“Sorry, it just seems like you’re not much for the outdoors.”

“I went hunting all the time with my dad when I was a kid, thank you. I just happen to have feet that are attracted to puddles. I’d be the guy you’d want with you in the desert. No water? Here, let me walk around, I’ll fall in some.”

Dani laughed again, and Liam smiled. Her laugh was warm and unique in a way that he was sure she would call “annoying,” but he could have listened to it all day.

As they moved beneath the ceiling of trees leaning against the building, the weeds became sparser and the walking easier. A few windows with rusted latches lined the brick ten feet above their heads, and Liam saw an archway farther down, its recesses filled with darkness and waving cobwebs. They headed toward it.

The doors set within the arch were solid steel. An iron crossbar secured with a padlock the size of a baseball stretched across their centers, and Liam didn’t bother yanking on the handles, knowing it was futile.

“Let’s try the other side, and maybe poke around along the perimeter of the woods,” he said, motioning to the closest corner of the building. He took a step in that direction and stopped, smelling something rank in the air.

“God, what is that?” Dani asked behind him.

It took only a moment of scanning the area to see what caused the stench. Several piles of human feces grew up from the ground, forming small pyramids. A fresh splatter of waste coated the top of the closest pile. Liam wrinkled his nose.

“We found a regular hot spot,” Liam said. “But where’s the newspapers and Charmin?”

“Wow, that’s a lot of shit,” Dani said. “This must be a homeless hangout.”

Liam nodded and began to inspect the foundry again. Suddenly, an earsplitting shriek pierced the serenity of the forest, and adrenaline dumped into his veins. One hand whipped to his back and drew the Sig, his other arm reaching for and finding Dani’s fingers without taking his eyes off the corner of the building.

“What was that?” Dani asked, her voice so low he almost couldn’t hear it over the pounding of his heart.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Sounded like steel rubbing on steel.”

Letting go of Dani, he motioned for her to follow and stepped around the end of the brick, leading with the barrel of the gun. The back wall was flat, made of unremarkable brick. Liam swept the edge of the woods with the pistol and continued on, trying to keep his eyes everywhere at once. The screech came again, and now he knew it was the grating of metal, unused and unoiled, against something equally rusty. Checking to make sure Dani was close behind, he sped up and neared the next corner of the building, stopping before swinging clear of it.

The last unexplored side of the structure was almost the same as its counterparts, save for a long row of bushes extending into heavy vines that snaked into and through the cracks in the brick. Two more overhead doors sat at the far end, both featureless and caked with the grime of disuse.

Liam waited, letting his breathing slow while keeping the firearm outstretched. After nearly a minute, he lowered the gun and turned to Dani, who leaned closer to him.

“Do you think it was something on the roof? Maybe the wind—”

The snapping of twigs in the woods cut her words off.

Liam spun toward the sound, raising the Sig, and saw a growth of small trees rattle with the passage of something near the ground.

“Come on,” Liam said as he began to run.

They entered the shade of the forest, and Liam spotted a small trail leading away from the foundry. The sounds of breaking sticks came sporadically, and he took a moment to determine their direction before setting off. Branches and leaves slid over his arms and face as he moved. Dappled sunlight coursed through the canopy of trees in patches, but most of the woods sat in green shade, all the birds silent or departed from their perches.