The River Burns (41 page)

23

H
is task, Ryan speculated, was the easier of the two that needed to be accomplished. Tara's assembled upon a higher moral ground, yet could prove to be much tougher. For him to successfully execute his plan, he had merely to be a bastard. Play that bit part. In so doing, forgo his integrity as an officer of the law, relinquish his sense of himself, and, while he was at it, damn his soul to a flaming hinterland of hell—although he admitted that that might be jutting over the top, a tad. Tara, though—she was being counted on to transform the world and that was not an exaggeration. By a landslide, the more difficult mission. He gathered his courage from that.

Ryan bided his time in a hollow off the edge of the northbound highway, his vehicle tucked out of sight in a thicket and ready to pounce.

Earlier, in Tara's company, he made a joke about killing his brother, but the crime Denny committed was nothing to sneeze at. Ryan wrestled with the notion that he might have done the same if he'd worn Denny's work boots. Or not. He was uncertain and would never know. Something had to be done about the bridge, that was evident, and help did not appear to be forthcoming. But to burn it down? Man.
Especially
when his older brother was the town's top cop—putting him in a sticky position. Someday, maybe in Denny's backyard, they'd have words about it all. Just not yet. Although on that front, he was handed a way, by Skootch, surprisingly, to get even. So in the end he might be able to work through a desire to strangle his kid brother.

Serves him right. I'm going to come through, too. He'll hate me for it.

He was a cop, he knew the law, but he did not condemn his brother, not when he was on the verge of doing worse. At least, what could be construed as worse.
Morally, yes, worse
. He didn't have a peg leg to stand on, and from a legal point of view both legs were hobbled, and him without a cane. It's not as though he could ask anyone to rule on the finer points of jurisprudence.
Your Honour, which do you think is the greater trespass, burning bridges or abusing your authority as a policeman to perpetrate a grave injustice?

Perhaps Tara could make that ruling, except that she knew his plan and while she didn't exactly approve—how could she?—she was okay with it.

She understood.

Oh. Tara.

To trust someone with your hopes and dreams, and with your baggage, that was one thing, but with your moral decrepitude, that was something else. Again, over the top, he knew, but still. A whole other world opened for him, for them, and now he was going to do this. Nothing in life was ever simple. Or simple enough. At least she knew now that he was a complicated person, too.

Which seemed to count with her, for some reason.

He had to be complicated enough to suit her, to maintain her interest.

An orange Dodge reared over a hillock in his side-view mirror. Ryan checked the radar gun. The bastard wasn't even speeding. Which figured—nothing was ever easy when you wanted it to be.

Ryan O'Farrell started the engine on his squad car as the Dodge sped by at the legal limit. Before he moved out from his spot amid the trees, he rubbed his face with both hands. A postcoital sleepiness delayed him, but that was mere excuse. He was now going to do something he should not do. That he didn't really want to do. That was flagrantly wrong.

But he decided to do it. Though he hesitated.

He had a choice. He knew that. But his mind was made up.

Ryan took a deeper breath, his last as a relatively innocent man, and steered his vehicle onto the highway. He stepped on the gas and surged forward. To announce his descent into the morass of corrupt humanity with appropriate fanfare, he popped on his revolving lights, and then for good measure, the siren.
Ready or not. Here I come. Sorry, buddy. Over the top, perhaps, but our lives just took a turn for the worse. Yeah. Both our lives. But mostly yours.

He raced after the garish bright orange Dodge. Driving a car that colour was reason enough for an arrest. When the orange blob tried to outrun him, Ryan got mad, and commenced a high-speed pursuit.

■   ■   ■

Tara did not doubt that
Willis Howard cosseted a legitimate complaint, but she also knew what he did not—that she was willing to make it up to him another time. Even though she'd skimped on her duties in favour of robust lovemaking upstairs and so was behind on things, her next task took precedence. The opportunity to put her plans into motion had arrived. Her turn to act. She called Alex O'Farrell. They arranged to meet by the riverside. Expecting to tangle with Willis's righteous ire on her way out the door, she was bewildered instead by a scenario not anticipated.

Willis was busy talking to two men.

She'd seen them about town and knew who they were. Everybody did.

SQ detectives.

Everybody in town refused to talk to them in any meaningful way.

Apparently, Willis Howard didn't receive the message.

What Willis could possibly relate to the policemen Tara did not know, but she was alert. With swift clarity, a whoosh, she allowed that she and Willis could never resolve their differences and simply be friends, or become happy business partners forevermore. She readily detected in his marrow an inner malevolence, and most of the time this is what she most trusted to locate in him.

“Willis, I have an appointment. Gotta run.”

“What? I'm busy myself right now. As you can plainly see.”

He huddled with the detectives by the clay pottery stand she recently redesigned, adding the works of local artisans. Funny, that he chose that spot to conduct his subterfuge.
You fucking Judas.

“Lise can help take care of things,” Tara sang out.

Lise was dusting the upper shelves.

“No, she can't. She doesn't have a clue. Hang on for an hour.”

“I have a clue,” Lise objected.

“Can't,” Tara let him know. “Muddle through, Willis. I know you can. See you!” She didn't want to add, but did anyway, “I'll make it up to you.” At that moment she caught the interested glances of the police officers, and bolted.

Her larynx felt raw, ripped, even though her screaming had pretty much been silent. Rapturous, her only word for it. That second joust with Ryan took her where she'd not been before—
Hey, ­Daddy-o, you were fine, we had some times, but geez, let's face it, you were old, sweetie. I just found out there's a difference
—and now she strolled along on her own two feet feeling a seismic pummelling through her limbs and joints. She was so far gone for a few moments that she might have let out a telltale scream, which would have Willis Howard pounding on her door wondering if she'd just been murdered, or, knowing him, wanting to interrupt, to prohibit such wanton joy within earshot. And she did scream, she couldn't help herself, only she had no voice by then, no sound escaped her, although her throat hurt afterwards.

A small mercy, the silence of my scream. Tah.

She felt it coming. Ryan did well by her, he had good hands, good instincts,
I adore his penis
although that wasn't what did it
and it wasn't only him
or sex after abstinence, which was part and parcel, too. Her own pent-up fright and enthusiasm for her new life, Mrs. McCracken's demise, the spectre of death,
fleeing, quitting the profession and now, suddenly
, in her life, a guy. Romance, perhaps like never before, swayed and surged inside her and she could hold nothing back, nothing she could sequester for next time, or another time. Somehow she landed in that room seized by a greater wonder and urgency than she was ever privy to before and never fully imagined.

Whooshes!

She was overcome.

A confluence, she was guessing, that may not easily return.

Tara ambled down the winding couples' walk, quickly at first, then she measured her steps as though to counter the river's flow. As if treading water. She wore low heels, comfortable enough but the pointy toes were an ill fit for the stone and dirt surface, and the breezes that scuffed the mountaintop during the hillside internment ceremony were now rambunctious in the valley of the town below. As if Mrs. McCracken still wanted, and expected, her say. Along the way stood the monstrosity of a barge, or whatever it wanted to call itself—a slum built on a rusted stack of oil cans, it looked like—and she didn't want to go that far down the shore to pass it by, so she detoured across the grass to the water's edge and sat where she could keep an eye out.

She'd been wantonly and basely sexual with men before, but never, she reflected, never so spontaneously crazily passionate and nuttily delivered out of herself. Never so beguiled. Never so happy. She revelled in the difference. Thought back to exquisite details. The intimacy. Her own inner storm. She felt atilt. An axis bent.

Then she saw Alex coming over. He already spotted her. Tara worried that after what just occurred she remained as exposed as when she lay naked and virtually expiring, which is what it felt like, on a bed. Her nerve endings popped through her skin, she felt flushed and compromised, certain that the crafty old guy with a reputation as a philanderer in his day would identify her state of being. He would know. Guess, anyway. She took a deep breath, blew it out, combed her breeze-tossed hair with her fingers, and urged her rational self to return to base camp. He couldn't possibly tell. How could he possibly tell?
He can't possibly tell!
She waved to him, and the old guy, having doffed his cane, waved back.

He was still fifty feet away and she could tell that he could tell.

Get a grip.

He hugged her as she greeted him, kissed both cheeks, and sat upon a boulder. She smiled, checked him out, and guessed that he feigned being oblivious to her bliss. A gentleman. In his company, she could breathe more easily now.

Tara could guide this conversation to where she meant it to go, across to its sombre concerns and deft tactics.

“Look at that thing,” first, Alex pontificated. “A floating rat's nest. You don't happen to have a pail of gasoline and a match, do you?”

“So that's where Denny gets his predilection for arson.”

“Well, my God, look what burns, a beautiful old bridge, and this is left standing? Maybe we should start a trend.”

“Or maybe we should, you know, fix things.”

He gave her a long look. She was a natural beauty, no doubt there.

“How are you and Ryan doing?”

“Oh, fine. Why do you ask?”
Don't you dare answer that question.

Alex looked away awhile, then seemed to grow preoccupied with the laces of one boot. “Is that what you called me down here for? To fix things? I thought you wanted to wrench my hips back into place.”

“Are they out of whack? You're walking with a hitch, I noticed.”

Looking at her, he smiled.
You dare smirk and I'll—

“Life is a hitch,” he said. A simple aphorism, meaningless in some circumstances, emotionally fraught in others. Then he asked, “What does ‘fine' mean exactly?”

Ryan must have been a mess after his previous lady to provoke this everlasting concern among his loved ones. “You're worried that he's lost? That he won't recover this time? Okay, here's the bulletin you've been waiting to hear. I'm totally, like, into the guy, okay? So maybe I'm the one who's lost. I'm the one who's hanging by a thread. Maybe him, too. But I'm right there with him. So far, we're in it together.”

He hoped for something from her, some consideration, an indication, and never expected the honest spiel. He was both taken aback and impressed.

“Okay,” he said. “Good.”

She apprehended then that she'd inadvertently advanced her cause for the afternoon, that the moment needed to be seized. Tara did not want her powerful attraction to Ryan to be part of this, but now the two pressing aspects in her life, romance and action, were inseparable. Perhaps, she reconsidered, as it should be.

“Ryan's in trouble, Alex. Because of Denny. So he's going to do what he has to do. I'm not going to tell you what he's going to do but you won't like it when you find out.
If
you find out. Know that there's nothing you, Denny, or I can do about it. By now, shall we say, it's water under the bridge.”

“Okay,” Alex said. Waiting.

“He's going to fix things for Denny. You'll like that part, but you know, it's not even for Denny. Reading between the lines, if this was only about his brother he'd probably arrest him and let him do his time.”

“If it's not for Denny—” He stopped himself, as though he answered his own question even before he got the words out.

“Right on. The kids. And Val. He doesn't want this to fall on them. So he's doing what he has to do. The family is ninety percent, I'd say, and the town the other ten percent.”