So Cold the River (2010) (28 page)

Danny reached up and scratched the back of his neck. He was still in his church clothes, had on a starched white shirt that
was showing sweat stains under the arms.

“Something going on, that’s for sure,” he said. “But the way you’re handling it ain’t right. You’re just making things worse.
You said he pulled a gun on you? Shit, call the police and tell them that. Get yourself a lawyer—”

“Danny,” Josiah said, “I set the man on fire. You understand that? Think about that, and about the reputation I got in this
town, and you tell me what’s going to happen.”

Danny was frozen for a moment, but eventually he gave a small nod. Then, in a whisper, he said, “What in the hell did you
set him on fire for?”

“I don’t know,” Josiah said. “I don’t even know why I hit him the second time. Didn’t feel like myself. But I did it, and
now I got to figure something out fast.”

“What are you thinking?”

“This fella Lucas Bradford has money to spare. And I’m in need of it. But first I got to understand some things—who he is,
and why he’s asking about me. I’m going to need your help to do that. I’m asking you, please, to help.”

Danny sighed, reached out and wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, squeezed it tight.

“Danny?”

He nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. Thank you. First thing I want you to do is find that son of a bitch who came down to Edgar’s and told us that bullshit
about making a movie. He’ll be staying at one of the hotels. You find him, and you follow him.”

A
LYSSA
B
RADFORD DIDN’T
answer her phone. Eric called without even leaving the table, speaking into the cell phone in a hushed but hostile voice
as he left yet another message, and demanded that she call him back, and this time he
would
be talking to her husband, thanks. Someone was dead, damn it, and he needed to know what the hell was going on.

The phone didn’t ring. He sat there for a while, waiting and thinking of Gavin Murray with his sunglasses and cigarettes and
smug voice. Blown up in a van.

The waitress came by and said, “Is there a problem with the food?” as she eyed his practically untouched plate.

“No,” he said. “No problem. Just… thinking.”

He ate the meal without tasting it, paid, and went back up to the room. He hadn’t gotten the door open before the phone began
to ring.
Alyssa,
he thought,
it damn well better be you.

It wasn’t her. Rather, the manager of the hotel, wishing to inform him that the police were looking for him.

“Tell them I’ll be down in five minutes,” he said, and then he hung up and called Claire.

“Are you home?” he said when she answered.

“Yes. Why?”

“I’d like you to leave.”

“Excuse me?”

“I need you to bear with me for a minute, and I need you to believe that I’m not crazy. You still believe that?”

“Eric, what’s going on?”

“Somebody followed me down here from Chicago,” he said. “A man named Gavin Murray. Write that name down, or at least remember
it, would you? Gavin Murray. This guy was a PI from Chicago, with a group called Corporate Crisis Solutions.”

“All right.”

He heard a sheet of paper tear loose, then a rattling sound as she looked for a pen.

“He showed up at the hotel yesterday,” Eric said, “and he knew all about me. He mentioned you by name. He knew that we were
separated and that the divorce hadn’t gone through yet.”

“What?”

“Yeah—pretty detailed, right? He’d done his research, but that’s the sort of thing those guys can do quickly and easily. So
I wasn’t too concerned. Now I’m starting to be.”

“You think I should be afraid of him?”

“Oh, not of him. He’s dead.”

“He’s
what?
”

“Somebody killed him last night,” Eric said. “Murdered him, blew up his van. I don’t know the details yet. I’m on my way to
meet with the police. What I do know is that the guy followed
me down here, offered me seventy-five grand to stop asking about Campbell Bradford, and then he was killed. I don’t have any
idea what that means, but I do need to tell you that he essentially threatened me last night. He said other sorts of leverage
could be used if I ignored the money.”

“Eric…”

“I’m sure this is an undue precaution,” he said, “but all the same, I’d like you to stay away from the house for a while.
Until we understand a little more about this, I think that would be a good plan. It would give me some peace of mind, at least.”

“Eric,” she repeated, voice lower, “did you drink any more of that water?”

“That’s irrelevant right now, because we’ve got—”

“You did.”

“So what if I did?”

“I’m just wondering… are you sure this happened? Are you sure that man—”

“Was real?” he said, and gave a wild laugh. “Is that what you’re asking me? Shit, Claire, that’s just what I need, to have
you questioning my sanity.
Yes,
the man was real and yes, he is
really dead
now, okay? He is dead. Somebody killed him, and I’m going to talk to the police about it now, and if you don’t believe that,
then get on the damn computer and look it up, look him up, do whatever the hell you need to do to convince yourself—”

“All right,” she said, “okay, okay, calm down. I just had to ask, that’s all.”

It was quiet for a few moments.

“I’ll leave,” she said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll leave. Okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t get upset when I ask you this, but why did you drink the water again?”

So he answered that as the room phone began to ring again—probably the police wanting to know what the hell was keeping him—and
told her about the terrible night he’d had and the way Anne McKinney’s water had quelled it, and about the vision of Campbell
Bradford and the boy with the violin.

“The only thing I’m worried about right now,” she said, “is what that water is doing to you. Physically, and mentally. All
the rest of this—it’s scary and it’s weird, but it can be dealt with. But that water… that’s more frightening, Eric. Your
body is dependent on it now. Your brain, too. That’s not a safe situation.”

“We don’t know if I’m dependent yet,” he said, but the headache was back and his mouth was dry.

“You need medicine,” she said, but then there was a knock on the door and he knew the police had decided not to wait for him
to come down.

“I’ve got to go, Claire. I’ve got to talk to the cops. Will you please get out of the house for a while? At least until I
know what’s going on.”

She said that she would. She told him to be careful. She told him not to drink any more of the water.

T
HE COP WHO TOOK
the lead in talking with him was with the Indiana State Police, a guy named Roger Brewer. He drove Eric down to the little
police station in the middle of French Lick, didn’t speak much on the way, didn’t say hardly anything at all until they were
seated and he had a tape recorder going. He was a grave man with a focused stare.

“Isn’t a whole lot I can tell you at this time,” he said, “or at least that I can
disclose
to you, that’s the better word, but for right now it’ll suffice to say that Gavin Murray was killed last night. I was wondering
what you could tell me about that.”

“What I can tell you?” Eric echoed. The headache had dialed up a notch as soon as they were under the fluorescent lights.
In addition to the tape recorder on the table between them, there was a video camera showing near the corner of the ceiling.
“I can’t tell you anything about that.”

“Then tell me about him,” Brewer said, “and about you. Curious as to what brought everybody down to Indiana.”

Eric started to speak, then caught himself and hesitated for a moment while Brewer arched a questioning eyebrow.

“Something wrong?”

“Just thinking it might behoove me to ask whether you consider me a suspect.”

“Behoove?”
Brewer’s face seemed lost between angry and amused.

“That’s right.” Maybe it was a mistake to ask—Eric’s previous dealings with the police had been few, and he had a natural
instinct to just roll with Brewer’s authority—but the hissing wheels of the tape recorder had put his guard up. Eric understood
better than most the potential for manipulation of film and tape.

“Well, Mr. Shaw, as is generally the case when we have the discovery of a homicide victim, the suspect pool is initially deep
and wide. Are you in it? Sure. So are plenty of others, though. Right now, you’re looking like one who can maybe provide some
answers. Hate to think you’re unwilling to do that.”

“It’s not a matter of being unwilling, it’s a matter of understanding the situation. I’d like to know how you got my name.”

Brewer was silent.

“Look,” Eric said, “I’d like to talk to you. It’s my preference, in fact. But I’m also not going to treat this as a one-way
exchange. I’m worried, and I feel like there are some things I deserve to know. If you want to have a conversation, great.
If this is an interrogation, though, I’ll ask you to hold on until I get a lawyer in the room.”

Brewer sighed at the mention of the word.

“Hey,” Eric said, “it’s your call.”

“We have a homicide to solve,” Brewer said eventually, “and
unless you were directly involved, I’d hate to think you’d voluntarily slow us down.”

“Detective, yesterday that man surprised me in a parking lot, discussed details of my personal life, and then made a clear
threat. You want to know about it, I’ll be happy to share, but like I said, I have some other things to consider. Like protecting
my family.”

He’d hoped a little tease of information would improve Brewer’s cooperation, and it seemed to. The cop’s eyes lit at the disclosure,
and he pulled his chair closer.

“I’ll do what’s within reason for you, if you do the same for me, Mr. Shaw. And that’s going to require a full explanation,
quickly.”

“I’ll give it. Just tell me, please, how you got my name. I need to know that.”

“Gavin Murray’s company.”

“They told you he’d come down here after me?”

Brewer nodded. “They said that you were the target of his investigation.”

“Well, who hired him?”

“We don’t know.”

Now it was Eric’s turn to sigh, but Brewer lifted a hand.

“No, really, Mr. Shaw, we do not know. That’s all his company would tell us. They’re balking at more disclosures right now,
claiming attorney-client privilege.”

“Private investigators have attorney-client privilege?”

“They do when they’ve been hired by an attorney. At that point, they’re part of the attorney’s legal team. It’s legit, if
a pain in the ass. They seem eager to cooperate, but refuse to provide the client’s name. We’ll work on it, but for now that’s
where we stand.”

Brewer leaned back and spread his hands. “So as you can
imagine, it is pretty damn important for us to hear what you have to say, Mr. Shaw. All we know now is that the man came down
from Chicago to follow you. Or, apparently, to speak with you. The same night he arrived, he was killed. We’d like to know
why.”

“So would I,” Eric said, and then he hesitated briefly, wondering again if a lawyer was in his best interests, because in
the scenario Brewer had just recounted, Eric seemed not only like a suspect, but like a good one.

“The faster we move on this,” Brewer said, “the faster we can put your mind at ease for your family and yourself.”

“Okay,” Eric said. “Okay.”

He had Murray’s business card in his wallet, and he gave it to Brewer and then gave him Kellen’s name and number, and explained
he was a witness to the initial encounter.

“But not to the conversation,” Brewer said. His tone was soft and unchallenging but it still stopped Eric short, gave him
a tingle of warning.

“No,” he said. “There were no witnesses to the conversation. But I came back from it and told Kellen what had been said, immediately.
That’s the best I can do.”

Brewer nodded, placating, and asked him to go on. Eric explained everything he could as Brewer sat quietly with his eyes locked
on Eric’s, the tape recorder’s wheels turning steadily. Brewer’s face didn’t change throughout, didn’t react even when Eric
spoke of the payment offer or the suggestion that he could be convinced to go home through other means if he passed on the
money.

“He was talking on the phone when we left. You want to know who his client is, you should probably check the phone records.”

“We’ll be checking those, don’t worry.” Brewer looked down
at the recorder, thoughtful, and said, “And this was both the first and last time you saw Gavin Murray?”

“Yes. You want to talk to someone, I’d look for Josiah Bradford. He was the last person Murray asked me about, and in my opinion,
he’s probably the core of the reason Murray came down here.”

“Can you elaborate on that theory?”

“Have you talked to Josiah?”

Brewer looked pained, but he said, “We’re going to, don’t worry. It’s a matter of locating him, same as with you.”

“So he’s missing?”

“He’s not home, that’s all, Mr. Shaw. I’d hardly term him missing yet.” There was something in Brewer’s eyes that hinted at
a deeper level of dissatisfaction, though, something that told Eric they were indeed interested in Josiah Bradford. “Now,
could you please elaborate on the suggestion you just made?”

“Well, it’s a pretty simple idea. I came down here to do a movie about this rich guy in Chicago, about his childhood here.
As soon as I get here, somebody offers me a decent amount of money to go home. Felt like a protective move to me, somebody
maneuvering to head a problem off at the pass.”

A plausible explanation, but the details it omitted, like Eric’s growing confidence that the old man in the hospital was not
the same Campbell Bradford of local infamy, were not minor. How in the hell could he be expected to explain it all, though?
It was too damn strange. He’d sound like a lunatic.