Читать книгу The Tanglewood Murders - David Weedmark - Страница 10
ОглавлениеThe forty acres of Tanglewood Vineyards, owned by Michael Voracci, and the sixty acres of Tanglewood Farms, owned by his brother Vic, existed side by side, north and south, divided by the lane that led to the river. The river, which curled around the farm, marked the eastern and northern edge of the properties, while the highway marked the southern edge. To the west, a long, thin hedgerow divided the Voraccis’ farms from the cornfields of their neighbour. The hedgerows were the trimmings left behind of the vast forest that had once covered this region before the first Loyalist settlers had arrived from the United States and assumed upon the land the harsh geometry of their farms and their grid of roads dug out mile by mile by mile.
In the centre of the brothers’ farms stood the warehouse, the winery, and the bungalow of Abe Wagner. The warehouse was constructed of corrugated steel, as was much of the winery. Within the core of the winery building, however, one could still make out the architecture of the farm’s original barn, with its foundation of fieldstones and large square timber beams. The migrant workers, all of whom were from Mexico, shared a small bungalow on the far southeast corner of the vineyard, where the highway crossed the river on an unnamed bridge. Ben had been there only once, driving an injured worker home to rest, and had been appalled to find the men slept in bunk beds without sheets, six to a room. There was a stove in the kitchen, but no fridge. The shower did not have a curtain, and the bathroom did not have a door. There was not even a seat on the toilet. When he asked Randy Caines about their living conditions, Caines had shrugged. “I don’t go there. Beats me why they don’t have a shower curtain. They know where the hardware store is.”
While Vic Voracci had kept a portion of the apple orchard intact, most of his land had in recent years been covered with plastic and concrete—hydroponic greenhouses. Vic had begun this construction about eight years before, when the peach orchard had been decimated by a particularly harsh spring freeze. That portion of the orchard was bulldozed out and, with the help of some generous grants from the federal government, Tanglewood’s hydroponic greenhouse operations were launched. Within a couple of years, nearly all of Vic’s portion of the farm was covered with plastic and concrete. Gone were the green fields. Gone were the dark starry nights, masked now by the orange-green glow of the greenhouse lights. Gone as well was the annual Apple Festival, which had been a tradition at Tanglewood Farms for as long as anyone could remember, but which the Voracci brothers had always openly despised.
Taylor parked the golf cart beside the back porch and led Abe Wagner by the arm to his door. Wagner’s burning pain and outrage had exhausted itself within moments of leaving the pump-house, and now there was the subdued anguish of knowing a child was lost forever. On his porch, Wagner stared vacantly at the torn screen door until Taylor opened it for him and, hand on Wagner’s back, gently led him inside to the sunlit kitchen table.
“Thank you,” Wagner said. “But I should check on the vines.”
Ben understood this statement was a symptom of shock and grief, complicated by the prospect of going into an empty home.
Wagner was a widower. His only son had been estranged from the family for more than a decade. His only daughter, the child he had once held in his arms and had watched bloom from an infant nearly to full womanhood, was dead. Inside his house there was no one to hold, no one to share his grief with or to console. He was alone.
Wagner stared at the table before sitting down on a worn wooden chair. A plate of half-eaten toast, a jar of jam, a jug of milk and a cold cup of coffee waited on the table before him, remnants of a world that had been eclipsed for him less than an hour ago. That these items appeared to be within arm’s reach was an illusion. The world Wagner had known this morning was forever separated from him, Taylor understood.
“You should try to get some rest, Abe.”
“No,” said Wagner after a long, bewildered pause. “I need to keep busy. Keep my mind busy with work.” He pushed back the plate of toast and rested his elbow on the table. “I knew she didn’t leave.
No one believed me. I should have tried harder to find her. She was here somewhere all the time. You know, if I’d been working harder, I would have found my way out there. I might have seen her. I might have heard her…”
Wagner’s head and shoulders began to shake.
“Try not to think of these things. You did everything you could.”
Taylor stood behind him and rested his hand on the man’s shoulder until his silent, shaking subsided.
Wagner began to speak softly in German for several minutes, whispering more to himself than to Taylor before coughing and settling into a stunned silence. He stared at the food on the table, leaning forward, concentrating on the plate of toast and the few crumbs surrounding the plate, bewildered as if he were expecting the morning’s breakfast would scamper away if left unobserved for a moment.
Taylor patted Wagner’s shoulder before stepping outside and walking across the compound to the warehouse, the place he had been this morning when the world had seemed a bit brighter and much less distressing place. He passed the warehouse altogether and stepped inside the first greenhouse. It was quiet here. The pickers would not reach this end of the greenhouse for at least another hour. But picking they were. Outside of this momentary pocket of calm Taylor now found himself in, outside of the pumphouse where Anna’s body lay, and outside of Abe Wagner’s home, the gears of the world continued to turn.
Taylor gazed down the length of the greenhouse. Within the white arched walls were hundreds of rows of hydroponic tomatoes.
The vines were strung by wire eight feet from the ground and fed intravenously with a solution to promote the growth. The fruit which sagged like plump water balloons never saw the ground, which was coated with plastic splash sheets. Even the roots were denied earth. They grew in white fist-shaped blocks of rock wool to keep the vines weighted down.
Taylor wondered to himself if Antonio, Vic and Michael’s grandfather, would have ever allowed this type of farming. He doubted if any man with an appreciation for the land could have condoned such a solution. It seemed to Taylor too sterile, too automated and too precise for any man who truly loved the earth.
Taylor had grown up in Buckingham, a twenty minute drive from Andover. He had known very little about the town of Andover, but had spent four of his best summers working at Tanglewood Vineyards—long, satisfying summers. He had had the pleasure of talking to Voracci’s grandfather, Antonio, many times. He remembered very well sitting at a picnic table—white table cloth weighted with stones to keep it from blowing away in the breeze— with a dozen or so other students enjoying sandwiches made by Antonio’s wife, Juliana, and jugs of cold water brought up from the nearby well with an old iron hand pump. Often she would bring out fresh oatmeal cookies or slices of freshly-baked pie. More often than not, Antonio would take lunch with the students and would ask them about their plans for the future and tell them stories about his life. These were some of Taylor’s fondest memories. They were, in fact, a large part of his reason for returning here.
The vineyard and the farm seemed to be more profitable today, but it was no longer the happy place to work that Taylor had known as a student. As he looked now at the plastic walls, the concrete floor, and the plastic all around him, he shook his head; this was not the same farm at all.
Antonio Voracci had begun the vineyard as a hobby sometime in the early Sixties. Until then, it had been a potato farm and orchard, which he had purchased for a modest sum in 1968, after selling the menswear store he had established in Andover twenty years before. Both Antonio and Juliana had been raised on small farms in the mountains of southern Italy. While life in the city had not been bad to either them or their children, Antonio had craved the touch of fresh earth. In the city, they cultivated a large garden in their backyard, at the expense of any grass, where they’d raised their own potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, grapes and a host of other vegetables, herbs and flowers. It was the garden that Antonio daydreamed about during his long hours handling cotton and silk at his store. He longed for the touch of fresh earth in his hands.
Juliana tended the garden each day, but thoughtfully left behind a small patch of the garden untouched for her husband to work on for a few minutes each evening. When he arrived home, he would put on his overalls and an old shirt to step into the backyard to happily pull some weeds in his garden. He would then lift a fist full of soil and rub it slowly between his palms with a tranquil softening of his eyes.
When he sold his store in the late Sixties, Juliana asked him while sitting on the swing in their garden one afternoon if he would consider buying a farm of his own. Antonio put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, threw back his head and sighed happily. At that moment, it was as if his life had suddenly been punctuated with exclamation marks, with an honest life with the land marking both ends.
He had purchased the farm from a man named John Harris whose wife of nearly fifty years had recently passed away. John Harris, whose family had traced their ownership of the farm to the years following the War of 1812, had been alarmed at the amount of residential development he saw around his land. He was happy to pass his farm to Antonio, with only one stipulation: the property was to remain farmland or allowed to grow wild. No houses or shopping centres were to be constructed here. Antonio, from the depths of his farmer’s heart, had insisted that stipulation be put in writing, even though John Harris had been satisfied with his word and a handshake.
Under the Harris name, the land had been used to grow potatoes and turnips with a modest allotment of fruit trees, mostly apple and peaches, a few rows of corn and some grazing land for a few dairy cows. Antonio Voracci continued this heritage for several years; except for the sale of the cattle, which he spurned as stupid, unsanitary creatures. He planted potatoes for the most part, with a large vegetable garden for his family and some grape vines for his own wine. As he began to get a feel for the land, he found it uniquely agreeable for wine, due to the quality of the soil, its proximity to the river and its placement in the valley. As the farm straddled the snow belt of southern Ontario, the winters in this stretch of land made it hard for the vines, but not impossible if they were cared for properly.
Tanglewood Vineyards still grew the same varieties that Antonio had established twenty years before, after years of testing and experimentation: Chardonnay, Cabernet, Vidal Blanc, Riesling and Pinot Noir. The unique weather of Canada’s most southern region, which gives the grapes a cooler summer than anywhere in the United States, also gives a longer warm period in the fall. The climate, Antonio had always believed, was similar to the Rhine Valley in Germany and the Loire Valley in France (neither of which had he ever visited) and the wines this land produced were, in his admittedly biased opinion, similar, if not superior in quality to anything ever produced in California’s Napa Valley.
Twelve years before, as a teenager, Taylor had worked primarily in the vineyard, but now with the new setup, he was spending most of his time working in the tomato portion of the operation, with little time in the vineyard. For most of the fall and winter he assisted with the construction of the three new greenhouses and renovations to the warehouse and offices. During the late winter and early spring, he’d helped pruning the vines outside, planting new tomato plants inside, and helping with the bottling operations.
The efficiency of the hydroponics required eight men to collect a day’s harvest. It was hard work for meagre pay, and the picking crew consisted of those who could find nothing better, newly arrived Puerto Ricans for the most part, who began work at dawn each morning. They would pick tomatoes until one or two in the afternoon then work the afternoons maintaining the greenhouses and orchards, finishing their day at sundown. They stacked plastic baskets full of perfect, dirt-free ripened tomatoes on wooden palettes which adorned the edge of each narrow concrete path that ran through the length of each greenhouse.
It was usually Taylor’s mid-morning task to remove the palettes with a forklift and stack them beside the sorting line near the coolers and shipping area. There, the girls, who worked for even poorer pay than the pickers and who were nearly all Hispanic as well, would sort them according to size, colour and quality and repack them to be shipped out. This morning, Scotty Doherty had been tasked to take Taylor’s place on the forklift. As he pulled himself up to the loading dock through the bay door, Taylor could see all three forklifts motionless on the platform.
Randy Caines sat behind a small desk, filling out a logbook.
“Did Juan talk to you?” Taylor asked.
“Yeah. It sucks, but I’m not surprised,” said Caines with a dismissive shrug. “It’s about fuckin’ time you showed up. Where the hell is Doherty?”
“How would I know? You’re the manager.”
Caines peered up at him. “Don’t tell me you want time off too.
Juan already asked.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good. So get to work. It’s backing up out there. The packers are going to be here soon, and they damn well need something to pack, don’t they?”
Most probably, Taylor surmised, Scotty had slipped into one of his many hiding places in the back of the warehouse or one of the older glass greenhouses to smoke a joint and doze the morning away. Taylor stepped through the warehouse and opened the doors leading to the first greenhouse. A quick glance inside assured Taylor that his suspicions were correct. Scotty was nowhere to be seen, and dozens of full palettes, each neatly stacked with baskets of tomatoes, lined the walkways in the greenhouses for as far as he could see.
Taylor, vaguely relieved at having something to occupy his mind, quickly hopped onto a forklift, fired it up and began to submerge himself into the warm routine of his usual daily duties. However, the stale smell of propane exhaust, the smooth touch of the steering wheel and the levers beneath his fingers did nothing to ease his thoughts away from the morning’s ghastly discovery. His fingers and mouth yearned for the touch of a cigarette, but he had tried to light three cigarettes since taking Wagner home. The tobacco tasted of ashes, burnt wood and flesh. Time slowed down around him, and Taylor felt as if he were moving underwater. He pulled the watch from his wrist and pushed it into his front jeans pocket, lifted the forks by wrenching down on the hydraulic lever and accelerated away.
He tried to summon some anger towards Scotty, his scrawny, good-natured co-worker, but could not find the energy. Each time his thoughts began to drift back to Anna, he would try to envision Scotty crouched and hiding, or asleep, in the rear of the smallest greenhouse, where the Voracci family kept their prized orange and lemon trees. Instead, he would see Anna Wagner, scorched and naked, exposed, staring at him with an open mouthed grimace.
Taylor hit the brake and made the forklift skid-stop on the concrete platform. Her image came to him again, and he snapped his head to refocus his attention and to escape the memory of her blue-grey eyes, the curve of her smile, her shining blonde hair. Such a beautiful girl she had been, shining bright with the possibilities of a full life.
Taylor wiped his eyes and turned his head to the side, staring pointedly at one of the pickers, a Mexican named Manuel, who had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and was washing his hands in the pale, soapy Pine Quat solution to remove the green stains of the tomato stalks from his hands. He seemed to feel Taylor’s gaze on the back of his head; he flinched, stopped washing then carefully moved away, as if a bee had lighted on his shoulder.
“Lot of tomatoes today,” said Taylor.
Manuel was one of the few pickers who could speak English. He searched Taylor’s face, his eyes soft with sadness, before replying with a simple nod.
“You’ve heard about Anna,” Taylor said.
“It’s a very sad day, yes.”
“Does anyone know how she got there?”
“No. But my friends, they are all very upset. And they are afraid.
They are afraid the police may not believe us that we did not know.”
“I’m sure the police will be fair.”
Manuel cocked his head and looked as if he had not understood Taylor’s words. “I hope so,” he said. “I hope they find the one responsible. For her sake, yes. But for our sake as well. I would not want to pay for the blood of another.”
With that, he dropped his head, offered Taylor a humble, uncertain smile and walked away.
Taylor drove the forklift a dozen feet forward and expertly slipped the forks beneath the palette. Working methodically, he stepped down and wound a single piece of nylon twine around the top layer of boxes, looped it into itself and tied a simple knot to secure the stacked black plastic boxes from jostling. Lifting the load six inches from the concrete floor and tilting it back a few degrees, he sped in reverse to the end of the greenhouse.
The door that protected the greenhouse environment from the warehouse had to be opened manually. As Taylor slid open the large plastic door, he realized for the first time what was missing. The workers weren’t singing, as was their custom. No one was talking. No one was laughing or smiling. They had all heard the news.
Once his load was in place with the other palettes, Taylor put his forklift in park. His fingers moved once again towards his shirt pocket, tapping his chest, reaching for a cigarette, his thoughts on the girl’s image again... He could not bear to say her name, not even silently in his thoughts, even though his tongue would press against the roof of his mouth to form the first syllable of her name each time he pictured her in his mind.
By the time he had placed two dozen pallets in the processing area, the crew of young women had begun to step up to their platforms on the sorting line. After one more trip, Juan had returned as well. Without a word, Juan started up the conveyor belts and graders and began dumping tomatoes onto the conveyor belt. The girls were silent, grim; Juan had told them the news.
Taylor drove up to Juan and looked at him pointedly. “I thought you had the day off.”
Juan shook his head. “I asked. He said I could go home as soon as I finish here.”
Taylor leaned towards him and whispered, “I told you not to talk to anyone but the police.”
“Mr. Voracci told me he’d call the police,” the youth replied, crossing his arms. “He’s the boss. Not you.”
“Did you have to tell Caines?”
“He wanted to know why I came back. He’d find out anyway.
Why are you mad at me? I had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t my fault, you know.”
Taylor drummed his fingertips on the top of the steering wheel.
“I’m not pissed off with you. I’m just pissed off.”
“It sucks,” said Juan. “We’re all pissed off.” He cocked his head, adding quietly, “And the girls are really scared.”
“They should be.”
After that, Taylor resolved to keep to himself for the rest of the day.
He worked through his lunch hour, lifting pallets and bringing them to the processing area. He was at the far end of the greenhouses when his forklift slowed and sputtered to a stop. Methodically, he unclasped the propane cylinder from the rear of the machine and, carrying it with one hand, he kicked open the steel door to take a short cut across the gravel driveway. He stopped in his tracks as the door slammed shut behind him and stared up in surprise at the bruised and darkening sky of dusk. He pulled his watch from his pocket and hesitated before putting it back on his wrist. Instead he shoved it back in his pocket. It was just after seven o’clock. The compound was silent. All the pickers and packers and truckers had gone home.
“What the hell am I doing here?” he whispered.
Just a few days ago, he’d been preparing to leave, to go home, go back to his job in Ottawa and pick up the pieces of his life. Yet now, everything he had hoped to escape from for a few months had followed him. This was not the peaceful, carefree place he had sought. It stank with the same senseless violence he had turned his back on last autumn, and with the same despair. It had a voice now—the soft young voice of Anna Wagner.
You are responsible, she said.
Taylor walked silently towards the shipping bay and rested the empty cylinder on its rim, twisting it into the gravel a bit to ensure it did not topple over. He climbed up onto the loading bay, where the backs of trucks would couple with the warehouse, and waited.
His fingers picked at the black rubber padding that protected the frame from the more reckless drivers and stared out across the gravel parking lot as he listened to the sound of music in the far distance and then the sounds of quiet tires on gravel approaching the loading dock.
Taylor quietly stepped back a few feet into the dark shadows of the loading dock and positioned himself behind a stack of wooden pallets. From between the slats he watched a beige electric golf cart, with Randy Caines at the wheel, round the corner of the greenhouse and continue past.
Caines was a large man, about three hundred pounds, but less than five and a half feet tall. He seemed to own only three shirts and two pairs of pants, and these were all black—golf shirts and track pants; his hair was slick, shiny and black as well. He was the one person Taylor had met since he started working at Tanglewood that he felt himself capable of hating without reservation. Every pound of Caines seemed to be riddled with malice and hatred. Anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, let alone be placed under his authority, was liable to pay the price for his wrath. As the Warehouse Manager, there was no employee at Tanglewood who did not fall under his shadow.
Taylor eased himself around the pallets and watched Caines stop his cart in front of a white plastic greenhouse then carefully unlock the two padlocks that kept its contents safe and secret. This was the only greenhouse Taylor had never entered, because Caines kept it strictly off limits to everyone. Caines had explained during Taylor’s first week at Tanglewood that Michael Voracci grew rare flowers inside as gifts to his wife. Anyone entering the greenhouse, he had gruffly explained, would be fired immediately. Opening the door would disturb the pollination process.
It did not take long for that lie to be exposed. Taylor had overheard someone’s remark during dinner break the following night, “Just like Voracci’s flowers!” echoed by a chorus of laughter.
“So those aren’t flowers growing in there?” he asked.
No one answered him, but the continued laughter made it clear this was a standing joke amongst the workers. As his first days passed, it became obvious that the workers all believed Caines was growing marijuana in there. No one had ever seen Voracci bringing flowers to his wife. For that matter, no one had ever seen him kiss her.
Taylor decided not to concern himself with that greenhouse, at least until it was time for him to leave. For one thing, the greenhouse was quite small, no larger than what a hobbyist would keep in his backyard. For another thing, Ben Taylor was not exactly a narc.
But today, he wondered what other secrets besides marijuana might be hidden inside.
Everyone has secrets, of course. Taylor knew from personal experience that most secrets are only interesting to the person harbouring them. Strangers usually don’t care if you have a drug or alcohol problem, if you have financial problems, if you are cheating on your spouse, or have a sexual fetish, or were caught shoplifting when you were fourteen. However, that rule flipped like a coin when someone nearby died violently. Strangers, namely the police detectives who would inevitably arrive, would soon search for and isolate any secret they found relevant to their case. Lives were turned over, secrets exposed, and reputations often destroyed, in the search for a killer. Caines’ greenhouse would not be sacred territory to anyone once the provincial police began probing around.
There was some comfort in that, at least, knowing that the OPP would now be involved instead of the town police, who had written off Anna’s disappearance as a runaway. Taylor would not longer have to sit on the sidelines while the local chief muddled through this case.
Taylor felt just a hint of satisfaction in that when he saw Randy Caines emerge from the greenhouse. He was emptyhanded, and Taylor wondered what the purpose of this visit had been. He smiled.
He was going to take a personal interest in watching each of Randy Caines’ secrets brought to the light of day.
Now standing in fading twilight, Caines looked left and right before locking the greenhouse door and pocketing the keys. Like a black paunchy thundercloud, Randy Caines cut a conspicuous figure against the white plastic of the greenhouse as he boarded his personal golf cart and hummed away.
Once the golf cart was out of sight, Taylor walked across the loading dock and picked up the telephone, asking the operator for the local OPP dispatch office.
“Just in case you haven’t been notified yet,” he said, before briefly giving the details of the crime.
With that done, he went outside. The air already felt much cooler now that the sun had set behind the hedgerow at the edge of the vineyard. He listened to the gravel shift beneath his feet as he walked, looking up at the large, expansive clouds, draped in hues of orange and purple, gently wafting across above him. The clouds, it seemed to Taylor as his thoughts rose skywards, were nearly within reach of his hand if he were to merely stretch towards them. It was then that he began to hear the music softly flowing through the air.
Beyond the blue garbage hopper at the edge of the parking lot, perhaps a hundred yards from the loading dock, stood an eight-foot cedar privacy fence that separated the vineyard and farm from the private residence of Michael and Jennifer Voracci. From beyond the fence, from an open window on the side of the two-storey gabled home came the gentle sound of a piano, magically keeping tempo with the cascading white sheer curtain that danced in and out of the open window. Taylor seemed to recognize the piece but could not think of the name. Something classical, obviously, the quick steep notes played by talented fingers. Perhaps at one point in his life he could even have named the composer, but this evening nothing came to mind as he gazed up at the dark purple clouds above the rooftop and the grey, unlit, dancing curtain of the main floor of the Voracci home. It seemed to be a difficult piece, and the pianist would stop suddenly in mid-bar then start from the beginning again. She would play for thirty or forty seconds then suddenly stop to begin all over again. Mrs. Michael Voracci. Ginny to her husband. Jennifer to Ben Taylor.
Taylor had to smile at her persistence—the first time he had smiled since he had stepped down from the tractor this morning. And while he felt like a musical illiterate these days, he had not lost his love for music. If he were to guess—and as he listened more attentively now, he was inclined to guess—she was playing Chopin. The music felt thoughtful, reflective, and Taylor wondered if anyone playing such a nostalgic piece was mindful of the events of this morning or still happily unaware. He watched the darkening clouds bend towards the open window as Venus and Mars peered from behind the orange bending light of the setting sun. He took a breath of the cooling air and listened to her begin the piece once again.
Few of the workers had ever spoken to Michael’s wife. Indeed, few people working at the farm had seen her for more than a few moments as she went into or out of her house. She had the reputation of a recluse. During his first month working here, Ben had not seen her at all. At the time, he knew nothing about her. None of the other workers, with the possible exception of Anna Wagner, knew much about her either, but the rumours were abundant. The stories invariably contradicted each other and cancelled each other out: that she had been a model, that she was a distant cousin; that she was shy; that she was a cold and heartless bitch. That she was a simpleton; that she was a Russian bride who spoke no English; that she was the brains behind her husband’s success. Most of the rumours were based on fantasy. The souls around him would volunteer anything they knew of anyone to help pass the time more quickly.
The first time Ben had caught a glimpse of her, she had been across the compound getting out of her yellow Volkswagen Beetle with bags of groceries in hand, and he had seen only the back of her head, her long brown hair tied in a ponytail. Still there was something familiar about the curve of her shoulders, her slender arms, the way she wore her hair, and her long slender neck. The next time he saw her, a week or so later, she had been standing at the gate of her small fenced yard, her husband’s arm around her waist, as they said goodbye to some guests. That was when he was certain he recognized her. Jennifer Voracci had been Jennifer Spender, Ben’s girlfriend in university, his first love.
Not a single worker, trucker, manager or interloper had ever mentioned the sound of a piano coming from the Voracci household. It was as if Taylor’s ears alone detected the music, like the scent of a discreet perfume intended for only the most sensitive or closest witness.
Jennifer Voracci’s piano had now escaped the practice chords and played smoothly, beautifully for a while. The yard was immersed in darkness before the music stopped. A light had been turned on on the main floor of the house, and the billowing curtain was seen no more. Taylor sat on a small stack of broken pallets and watched the window, willing her with his heart to look outside. The light went out, but she did not come to the window. Then from inside the house, he could hear Michael’s voice, calling for his wife.
Ben clenched his fist and turned his attention towards the river, expecting to see the glow of car headlights, flashlights and searchlights from the area around the pump-house. But there were no lights reflected from the apple trees or glowing in the air. The area around the river was dark and silent.
