A Stranger Lies There (33 page)

Up ahead, the stars twinkled above the highway and the lake I couldn't see, and the lights of the towns next to it glowed faintly in the eastern sky. I wondered how long those marks of civilization—streetlamps and store signs and house lights—would continue to shine, as the allure of the sea that had once supported them steadily diminished. Then the white light became pulsing flashes of blue and red, and I knew the police had found our cars.

WHITE WATER

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Friday afternoon, four days after it ended, I woke up in a blazing shaft of sunlight. The bedroom window was open and the heat of the silent desert invaded the room. I turned over, groggy with too much sleep and unsure of how I would make it through another day. The last few had been a haze of loneliness and depression.

I got out of bed, stumbled to the shower and turned the water on all the way cold. The phone rang in the bedroom just before I stepped under the spray. For some reason I decided to answer this time, not bothering to turn the water off.

“Is this … is this Tim Ryder?” the caller asked.

Soft, hesitant. I knew exactly who it was. “You're John's friend.”

For a moment I thought he'd hang up. “I just … I don't know why I called. I guess I wanted to say I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“Everything that happened. Your wife.” His breath hitched in his throat. “I'm the one that started it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I convinced John to come out here. Never knew my own parents, so I know what it's like, wondering. John wouldn't admit it, but I could tell why he wanted to drive. So he'd have plenty of time to change his mind. But he didn't. And then, that night…”

I sat down on the edge of the bed, listened.

“I shoulda left the gun in the car. But that guy, Anderson, wouldn't leave John alone.”

“You knew him?”

“I'd seen him before, around John's parents' place. John told me his dad would be pissed if he knew what he was doing. So it didn't really surprise me to see Anderson there. I just wanted to get rid of him. Didn't think he'd grab the gun.”

“Was it yours?”

“I found it in an alley behind where I used to live. I just … liked it. Always kinda kept it nearby. I guess that's why I brought it. Kept the stupid thing under the seat. John didn't even know I had it.”

A long pause. I waited.

“I panicked when the gun went off. Just … lost it. Anderson was shaking him, but I knew it was no use.”

“Why didn't you report it? Call an ambulance or something?”

“I know. I know. I wasn't thinking straight, afraid I'd go down for it. But I stuck around anyway, trying to make it right somehow. Then your wife—”

“You were in my house that morning,” I said, seeing him speed away in that car as I'd run home. “You knew she was dead before I did.”

“I finally decided to tell her it was her son, if she didn't know already, and whatever happened after that, I could live with. But they got to her before I did.” He stifled a sob, took a deep breath.

“Where are you calling from?”

“I was there the other day. At the funeral.”

“You were? At the cemetery? I didn't—”

“Those cops scared me off. But I guess it was too late by then anyway.” Another sob.

I wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault, that it had really begun years earlier. But he probably wouldn't believe me. I remembered what Branson told me about his wife's miscarriage, how she'd blamed herself. Guilt could be a tough thing to shake.

“They got everybody,” I said. “Even the doctor that signed the fake birth certificate.” It occurred to me that Deirdre would probably be in some trouble if she were alive. But I knew she'd done what she thought was best at the time.

“They're probably looking for me.”

“Turn yourself in.”

Silence. I tried again. “Just tell them what happened. If you don't, this will be hanging over your head for the rest of your life. Believe me, you don't want that.”

No response.

“It's up to you,” I said, then thought of something. “Do you smoke?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Never mind. You take care. And think about what I said.”

I hung up the phone and got into the shower. The shocking blast of freezing water at first felt burning hot, literally taking my breath away. The world disappeared for a second, then returned brighter than before.

Later, I made some breakfast. Washed the dishes and put them back in the cabinet when I was done. Stepped outside into a blanket of clear sunshine. Everything I looked at seemed new, as if a lens in front of my eyes had been cleaned and focused. The San Jacintos stood out sharply against the porcelain sky, and the flowers in my neighbor's yard suffused the air with color and scent.

I got in the car and drove west toward Beaumont, where Deirdre was buried. The freeway kept to the northern edge of the pass, hugging the sides of the San Bernardino foothills as it rose from the valley floor.

It reached its highest point at the Whitewater turnoff and there, without thinking, I exited the freeway and pulled up to the stop sign overlooking the interstate. If I turned right, the two-laned road would take me past a concrete company, then into the San Gorgonio wilderness. Eventually it would end at the Whitewater Dam, where I'd fished as a kid. On the other side, the road descended to the desert floor, traversed the sandy bottom of the pass and crossed over the Southern Pacific tracks before meeting Highway 111 into Palm Springs.

I made the left, parked at the side of the road a few hundred feet below the highway, and got out. A hot, dusty wind whistled through the pass and gave motion to the massive wind farm windmills rotating silently in the heat. One hadn't started up. Its three blades were frozen in place, conjuring a '60s peace symbol from the memories of my past.

I looked away, to the Whitewater riverbed below me. Sometimes, driving by on the highway, you'd see swimmers who'd ignored the fence and the warning sign wading in the cool water that flowed briskly over the rocks toward Palm Springs. But the river was dry right now, with rocks and large boulders strewn along its banks and weeds poking through the cracks in the parched soil. I stepped closer to the fence, trying to read the sign. Some of its lettering had been sandblasted away by the windblown dust.

DANGER!
NO SWIMMING ALLOWED

THIS CHANNEL IS SUBJECT TO SUDDEN FLASH FLOODS AND UNANNOUNCED OUTFLOWS FOR IRRIGATION PURPOSES. CURRENT MAY BE DANGEROUSLY STRONG.

COACHELLA VALLEY WATER DISTRICT

Cars whizzed by on the freeway above. Semis lumbered over the hot concrete, flinging highway grit into the air. The wind gusted stronger now, rattling the fence and the metal sign hanging from it, and blew my hair into my eyes. It pushed at my back and whipped my shirt violently. I looked past the sign and saw the valley spread out in front of me behind the chain-link fence.

I reached up, hooked my fingers through the latticework and pulled myself up. The flimsy fence shook precariously under my weight. Straddling the top, I rested a moment while the twinge in my abdomen subsided, then hoisted my other leg over and jumped down to the opposite side. One of the jagged wires at the top caught the inside of my wrist on the way down and ripped a bloody track in my forearm. I landed and rolled in the dust, scraping the wound painfully against the ground. Got up and brushed the blood-moistened dirt away, ignoring the pain.

I made my way carefully over the rocks lining the riverbed, to the caked and hardened soil below. I started walking away from the freeway with no destination in mind, following the line the water had cut through the desert. The sun beat down harder than ever, reflecting off the banks and the hardpan at my feet, and the wind did little to cool the sweat on my body.

I heard a faint rumbling above the noise of the freeway and the moan of the wind, and wondered if the mountain was speaking, shedding large chunks of itself, or if the earthquake faults in the vicinity were trembling and shaking once again.

When I turned around it was already too late, and I barely had time to steel myself against the onrushing water. It was knee-high, white and foaming as it slid over the rocks faster than lightning, a raging torrent that knocked me down and bore me away, kicking and floundering, while I struggled to keep my head above the surface. I swallowed lungfuls of cold water, the swift current tossing me back and forth.

I felt a jagged rock at the river bottom slice across my ribs and another one cut into my thigh, and prayed for a way to save myself. Up ahead, through the white spray of water, I could make out a sharp bend in the river, a split-second glimpse, before my head went under. Then my weight and momentum shot me up onto the rocks at the side of the river, where I was plastered like a piece of wet laundry on a large boulder, clinging for life as the water roared past.

I choked and gagged violently, expelling the water from my lungs onto the warm stone beneath me—solid, blessed earth—turned my head up to the bright blue sky, and breathed in deeply the hot desert air.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Astute readers may have noticed several liberties I took in the telling of this story. Calipatria Prison is a state prison, not a federal prison. Also, I slightly modified part of Manhattan for my own purposes and depicted the Palm Springs area of a few years ago, not the vastly expanded and more populated Coachella Valley of today.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

A STRANGER LIES THERE
. Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Santogrossi. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

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Photography by Inna Kleyman

ISBN-10: 0-312-36441-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36441-0

First Edition: May 2007

eISBN 9781466857117

First eBook edition: October 2013