The River Burns (40 page)

“Why, Mr. O'Farrell? You tell us.”

“Well, maybe because somebody else did it. Maybe that's why. Now leave, please. Feel free to take your beers with you or chug them down. Or hell, drink them at your leisure. But gentlemen, this so-called interview is over.”

Maltais stepped close to Denny. He stopped staring at the ground to gaze at him. Denny returned the look. Those weepy bloodhound eyes. He knew he should fear this man, for what he could see, for what he could sniff. Maltais whispered, as though imparting a grave secret, “We may have a witness. It's okay to let your brother know. He might be unreliable, our witness. We think he has something against you, so it's possible he didn't really see what he says he saw. So you see, we're actually
not
trying to pin this on you, Mr. O'Farrell. We'd rather not. Unless you did it. But if we can't break this witness down, then you go down. Nothing we can do about that. Nothing you or your brother can do. So you get sent to hell and maybe you never come back. A lot of good men don't. So don't piss on my pant leg. You're living in hell right now, I can see that, I can feel that. It might turn out that we're the only hope you got in this hell of yours. So watch where you piss if you know what's good for you, Mr. O'Farrell.”

Denny stared back at him, and for the first time in the conversation he was both conflicted and confused, as though he didn't know himself whose side he was on. “And you're into being my only hope, because of my brother?”

Maltais scratched his neck in an upward motion, using the backs of his fingernails. He thought about the question. “I don't really know your brother. Not that well. No, what you don't get is this. We understand. We really do. We know that you're not a criminal. Maybe you committed a criminal act, and the courts won't look kindly on that. Nor will we. But you're not a criminal. If you burned that bridge, we have reason to believe—in fact I can pretty much guarantee—that you're not likely to be stupid enough to go burn another one.”

Vega moved in close as well and Denny wanted him, in particular, he didn't know why, to go away. “We want to get back to hunting criminals. Not the foolish workingman who did something wrong,” he said.

“So we can help. You know?” Maltais continued to whisper, as though, Denny was thinking, he wanted to make sure that Val was not part of this discussion, that this was strictly man to man. “That's what we're saying. You'll still do some time. But maybe you can get your buddies off, they might help with the family expenses while you're gone, maybe we can talk with the prosecutors, you know, to clear this up pretty quickly and give you, a family man, a workingman, with no priors, no likelihood to reoffend, an even break, a sharply reduced sentence. A couple of years maybe. It's worth thinking about.”

“In other words, since you have no evidence, you want me to confess.”

“We may have a witness. Hell, we probably have one, I'm sorry to say.”

“Your brother,” Vega added, “will get wind of it sooner or later. So you'll know for sure we're not bullshitting you.”

“So what we're saying is,” Maltais scratched his neck, then brought his bottle up for a sip, “you've got to think about being
strategic
, Mr. O'Farrell. A hardened criminal, I'm not going to give him a break. A family man with young kids who made a mistake, he's got to own up to his responsibilities, face the music, but you know, he can be strategic, he can make this work to get the best possible outcome. I've said enough for now. But think about it, Mr. O'Farrell. You can save your friends. People won't forget that. And you can ease the pain for yourself, too. I believe that. Good-bye, and thanks for the beer. There's a little left in my bottle but will it be okay with you if I just put it down on the stoop?”

Both cops seemed to be waiting on his reply.

“Yeah, sure,” Denny said, and he remained where he stood as they moved away, put their beer bottles down, and shuffled off around the side of the house. He was still standing there when Val came back outside. She crossed her arms, and this time leaned against a supporting post for the porch roof.

“So,” she said, “what did they say?”

Denny wasn't prepared to look at her just yet. “They want me to confess.”

“Did you?”

“No. They just want me to think about it.”

He seemed strangely distant, his voice his own and yet so oddly pitched.

She went to him, and when she took him so gently into her arms he seemed to stagger against her, and she believed for a moment that she was the one holding him upright.

22

J
ust when she hoped he would, Ryan tucked his head into the store.

“Ah. So you do know where to find me!” Tara greeted him.

“Maybe I'm here to buy something.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, like, paperweights?” He cast a look around the store to check out the possibilities. “Or canvas shopping bags with an imprint of our dearly departed Old Covered Bridge.”

“We're making up new ones showing the bridge on fire. Or I am. Willis is opposed.”

Disembodied, working in a drawer around his ankles behind a counter, Willis Howard parried, “I will not exploit our tragedy.”

“He's ethical,” Tara mentioned. She sipped from her coffee mug.

“I have extra duty tacked onto my day,” Ryan told her. “So, you know, I booked off for a break.”

“Nice. You're not here to arrest me then?”

In adolescence, a girlfriend's attempts at coyness came across as snide, so early in life he hated coy. Tara was teaching him otherwise. “Care for a late lunch?”

“Train's in!” Willis Howard called out from behind the cash, where he ensconced himself to continue eavesdropping. “Busy time coming up!”

“That's why we hired Lise,” Tara chimed back. “You'll be fine, Willis.”

“I've got people coming to see me, too, later.”

“Hush.” Ryan looked ready to pistol-whip him. She whispered, “If you really want to piss him off ? Have
lunch
with me upstairs.”

One look and he guessed that the invitation might be a ploy. Struck by lightning, mute, he nodded.

“Gone fishing!” Tara called out and was heading for the side stairs, around the corner and somewhat out of sight, before Willis could fulminate a response. Ryan tramped behind her, and the moment he entered her suite she shut the door behind them and they kissed.

At length.

When she opened the door briefly Ryan thought that she was checking to make sure her business partner was not peeking through the keyhole, but she was letting the cat out.

“You have a cat now?”

“Buckminster,” she explained. “Mrs. McCracken's. She likes to wander the store.”

He took her hand in his.

“Seriously,” she said, and indicated her kitchenette, “I do have food. Bread. Cheese. Crackers.”

He didn't answer but kissed her awhile instead. Then he ran his mouth down one side of her neck and up the other to nibble a lobe. When she broke free she touched his jawline with her fingertips, flashed a smile, then stepped away and slyly undid the top button on her jeans. She let him consider that event a moment. Then she slid the zipper down, shoved the jeans to her thighs and wiggled to drop them to her ankles. Her underpants, he saw, were removed with the same flurry and kick.

“How much time do you have?” she asked. He didn't hate coy anymore.

He checked his watch. “Two hours. Nearly. About.”

“So,” Tara inferred, “a quickie.”

“Two hours?” he mildly argued before detecting that she was still teasing. She stepped her feet out of the jeans, leaving them on the floor. The hem of her robin's egg blouse hung low enough to assure her modesty, then nothing below that but lovely bare legs. His hands went to his own shirt buttons. A more conventional start, he knew. After his shirt, his gun. Tara turned, he caught a glimpse of her derrière, then she spun onto the narrow captain's bed, up on her knees and facing him holding a small decorative cushion before her sex with one hand, the other hand rising, suggestively, until her chin rested on the curled digits while the littlest finger poked her mouth. Unadulterated girlish coquette. Brash, though. He wasn't sure what to make of her now.

“Don't worry,” was her advice, as if reading his mind. “I'm no little girl, sir. Just helping you get charged up.”

He undressed more quickly. “No worries there.”

“So I see.”

His shoes gave him trouble, the laces needed to be untied while she giggled at him, then he chose to be less conventional than he may have been in a previous life. He stripped naked, the last item off being his damned watch, and when he approached she was expecting him to remain standing, but he went to his knees, to the floor, and she gasped as he guided the cushion to one side as though opening a curtain and with the utmost tenderness kissed her thighs.

Ryan slipped his tongue as low as he could go under her pubis and she adored this man and put her head back and the sounds she emitted let him know how much.

She felt herself opening, as he grazed her with his tongue.

He unbuttoned her blouse. From the bottom up. A slow, thoughtful ritual, conducted in utter silence and reverent, while she held the weight of his cock from underneath with one hand and stroked its upper surface with the other. Nibbling her lower lip was an involuntary reflex now, not guile. She let go to permit him access to ease the blouse off her back and arms, except that he used it to trap her wrists in the fabric awhile as he kissed her, her arms pinned behind her, then he let her finish the removal herself and undo the front clasp of her blue bra, which she slipped off her shoulders and gently, teasingly, let slip to the floor. Tara lay down then, her arms modestly crossed over her breasts, expecting him to lie his fine body on top of her. He surprised her by raising her left calf to his touch and kiss, and slowly his lips drifted upward, pecking at her skin, until the two of them lay prone together, side by close side. Skin to skin. No longer could she restrain herself, although she seemed afflicted by an incongruous shyness amid her desire. He was the more astonished one as she initiated their rhythms, their coupling, this sudden desperate shared joy, this happy outrage of cries and squeals and wilful moaning. A passion tripped up by laughter repeatedly. At first she was urgent, near frantic, fearing perhaps that he might soon be spent, but her confidence in their motion gained with his, and only when she called out and he was stifling her gasps with his fingers to restrict public awareness of this rampage did the pace quicken to a level that broke a near bellow out of him and she was the one laughing her head off now and trying to stuff her wee fist between his teeth.

He ended up mauling her elbow while he writhed and she giggled.

Lying together, recovering, grinning in a cartoon Cheshire way, she was somewhat tempted to say, “I love you,” and open herself to that adventure and to all that it might promote, but unable to trust herself in her present euphoria she said instead, “Willis will be incorrigible now.”

Ryan said, “I won't be able to face him.”

“He'll be pleased,” she replied, “to have that power over you.” They kissed again. Their tongues playful together.

His kisses closed her eyelids with such sweetness she sighed.

They lay quietly awhile.

The way Ryan sucked in a breath caused her to intuit that he had something to say. Perhaps something serious. Tara snapped her eyelids open and placed a forefinger over his lips. She didn't want to hear any such words now, not when she wasn't willing to say them herself, not yet, not here. Maybe sometime. Maybe never. Somehow she communicated that, that this was another of her complications, which he accepted, and they just kissed and touched lightly. Then she said, “Do you really have to go, really? Or was that just more of your imbecilic hick-town small talk.”

“If it wasn't absolutely critical,” he told her.

She believed him.

Tara took a very deep breath. “So tell me your plan,” she invited.

He gazed at her, his head supported by his hand and upright forearm, his elbow on the bed. He knew what she was talking about. “Will you tell me yours?”

She nodded. “You first, though.”

That again. He took a while to begin.

“I know,” she said.

She could not possibly know his plan and he looked at her quizzically.

“To tell me,” she explained, “you have to trust me. I know that.”

So he told her. He trusted her. The story was difficult to bear in a way.

“It's because it's family,” she said when he reached the end. She asked, “Right? You're not always such a bastard, are you, Ry?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does. If you're up to becoming the father of my children—”

“We're having kids already!”

“I didn't notice anyone roll on a condom, did you?”

“I assumed—”

She placed her forefinger to his lips, laughing lightly at his sudden consternation. She was always able to catch him.

“Baby, you assumed correctly,” she said. “But. You know. I feel like I'm in this. To find out where it leads.”

They gazed at each other. She didn't want him to say anything, but he did, “So am I,” and then she was glad that he spoke and was succinct. But she didn't want him to say anything more just yet. No mush. She needed to come to terms with this on her own first. Words right now would affect her only as silly.

“It's because it's family,” he admitted. “I'm not always such a bastard.” He was trying to make light but she could tell that this hurt him, that this was going to cost him.

“He's lucky, Denny is, to have a brother like you,” she whispered.

“Not so much. When this is over, I'm going to kill him.”

She laughed. She believed him, too.

“Actually, something's up. One of many compromises. A deal. I suspect that I'm going to break Denny's heart, in a way that really will hurt him. We'll see.” She was mystified, but he said no more. “So what's your plan?” he asked.

She told him.

His affection for her didn't come with a gauge, yet he cherished her even more. At the very least, he revelled in this, the idea. The chance it presented.

“So,” Ryan summarized, as though he needed to draw them a chart, “I'm the notoriously good guy, who's going rogue, and you're the notoriously bad, cynical,
complicated
girl who's doing what's right. And beautiful, really.”

“Finding our true selves, do you think?” She meant to be funny.

“Not such good news for me.”

“You'll adapt. Well. You have to.” She sensed that she could say something then. “So I guess this works, huh? Me and you, I mean. In a way. Sort of. Maybe.”

They kissed, and she liked that he kissed her at length even in the aftermath of their lovemaking. That was so nice.

Then he said, “You have to do it sooner rather than later.”

“Do I? Why—? Are you—?”

“I am,” he told her.

“Today? Sure,” she promised. “I'll go see your brother.”

“He might be working.”

“Then I'll talk to Valérie. If she's out, I'll talk to your dad.”

“Maybe,” he said, and he was ruminating over something, so she let him hold his pause awhile, “just talk to Dad first. Let him bring it to Denny himself.”

She nodded. That might be smart. Leaning way over, she snatched her underpants off the floor and fiddled for the leg holes while he ran his fingers along her spine.

“Hey, Ry, now that we know that sainthood is a distance off for you—”

“You're going to hold this over me, aren't you?” But he was kidding, too. Ryan swung his feet onto the floor and leaned over to clutch his clothes and pull them up in a bundle.

“Next time, and in future times, you know, like these, you will talk dirty to me, won't you?”

The upper hand. The last word. She just could never let that go.

When he glanced back, Tara poked out her tongue at him, loving this.

Sitting behind him, she looped one arm over his right shoulder, the other around his waist, and pressed against him. She kissed the back of his neck, then rested her cheek against him. He felt her twin nipples, in particular, touch his back, and closed his eyes and concentrated on her nearness and delayed their departure awhile, the two of them just breathing, sitting there, skin to skin as though no skin existed, unwilling to budge.

Buck commenced scratching at the door.

Tara said, “You still have some time. Ryan. Make love to me before you go. Really make love to me, Ry.”

He did.