Читать книгу Rapid Descent - Gwen Hunter - Страница 12

The sheets were scratchy and coarse. The scent of harsh cleansers and the faint smell of floor wax brushed her senses. She struggled to open her eyes to a slit of light. Bright. The ruthless dazzle of fluorescent bulbs overhead, the glare stabbing steel blades through her brain.

Pain caught her up, pounding in her head, spasms in her chest with each breath. Muscles so stiff they creaked like old rubber when she shifted her head. The steady beat of agony on her brain. Lids so heavy she fluttered them but they stayed closed. Hot blankets encasing her, a little bit of heaven in a sea of misery. Hospital, for sure.

As if the lights knew what was wrong, the bulbs overhead went dark. A small light to her side came on. She sighed, and the pain softened into rubber blades stabbing her, instead of steel.

Finally, Nell opened her eyes. She was in a hospital bed. Window on her right. Door and sink on her left. Another door was at the foot of the bed, a shadowed toilet within. A man sat in a chair near her. An older guy, hair more gray than brown, suit rumpled. His eyes were on her. She frowned. Something was wrong…

“Joe.” She wrenched upright and the pain exploded again. She groaned, catching her head in her free hand, an IV yanking at her other one. She dropped back to the mattress, aware in some fragile part of her mind that she was not making sounds out loud.

“They said to stay flat,” a voice said. Cool. Conversational.

The man in the chair. Not a doctor. Not wearing the right clothes. Face too unemotional. Nell eased her hands away from her head and opened her eyes more slowly. Carefully, she turned and looked at him.

He leaned slowly forward and touched the fingertips of one hand to the tips of the others, dangling them between his knees, as if to create a sort of intimacy between them. Nell was pretty sure she hadn’t seen him before, didn’t know him, and didn’t want to be close to the guy. He smelled of old coffee and even older cigarettes. He said, “What’s your name?”

Nell considered. Not an unreasonable question. Just not one she was interested in. To save some pain, she whispered, “Have they found Joe?”

“The man you say is still on the water?”

She nodded slightly. It made her head pound harder, but it hurt less than her throat.

“River rescue is being coordinated right now. What’s your name?”

She moved her eyes to the window, her thoughts mushy and slow. It was black outside. It was the same day, then. Or same night. “Who’s in charge?”

“Park officials. What’s your name?” Steel in the tone now. The guy was persistent.

“Nell Crawford Stevens.” It came out a hard cee and sibilant esses in the whisper. “What’s yours?”

“Do you know where you are?”

Nell had been dealing with negotiator types all her life. Nobody was better at negotiation than her PawPaw Gruber. “Army, The Nam. Quartermaster,” as he always said. So Nell said, as distinctly as she could whisper, “What’s yours?”

“Detective Nolan Orson Lennox, Sr., investigator with the Scott County Sheriff’s Department.”

Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, yeah. Just like PawPaw. Nell saw some buttons, each with a small picture of a bed in a different position. She pushed the one with the head of the bed upright. In her mind she heard PawPaw as the bed rose. You want something? Always find a way to improve your negotiating position. Physical, mental, emotional. Next, offer something, so they have to offer something back. “I’m in a hospital,” she volunteered, feeling stronger now that she was more upright. “Who have they called to coordinate?”

“Your mother is on her way.”

Nell looked at the cop in surprise. “My mother couldn’t coordinate her way out of a paper bag.”

Amusement lit his eyes, and Nell was pretty sure he had spoken to her mother personally. He hadn’t understood her question. She couldn’t care less who was coming to help her. She spotted an ugly, squat pitcher, beaded with condensation and pointed at it, asking for something, requiring the other party to the negotiation to do her a favor. PawPaw would be tickled when she told him. “Water?”

The cop—she had already forgotten his name—stood and poured her a glass of water. “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked. He handed her the cup and helped her to steady it when her grip was too weak to hold it without spilling.

She studied him over the rim of the cup and sipped through the straw. The water tasted wonderful. When she had enough and her mouth felt less like it was covered with river mold, she dropped her head back and said, “I mean, who have they called to coordinate the river search?”

The cop put the pitcher down. He looked her over, examining her as carefully as she did him, letting the silence build. “The parks people have called in a team. After all the rain, the gorge is treacherous enough to warrant only the most experienced, though, so the team’ll be small. Maybe ten on the water. I understand that a few guides and rescue people from the Pigeon will be part of it.” When she waited, he added, “A guy named Mike Kren called about three hours ago. He’s leading them up. Some others were already closer in, rafting or kayaking. Most of them got here within the last hour.”

Nell nodded, feeling her eyes water, the sensation painful on her raw eyeballs. Unfamiliar. She did not cry. She rolled her head to the dark window, moving slowly, and started to talk, well, whisper. She told him everything she remembered, as close in sequence as she could. When she mentioned the letter Joe had left her, the cop said, “This one?”

She looked at him, and he was holding the double-bagged letter. Nell extended her hand, and he placed it in her palm. She saw him looking at her hands, at the blood-crusted wounds, but she had eyes only for the single piece of paper in the baggies.

How come she felt that it was the last thing she would ever have of Joe’s? How come she felt so…empty? No. I refuse to think that way. Joe is still out there. All I have to do is find him.

She smoothed the letter over her heart. Holding tight, so the cop couldn’t get it back without getting personal, she took a breath that quivered through her. The bandages on her chest were small lumps beneath her hands, beneath the hospital gown she wore. She went on with her story. Everything she could remember.

She had reached the part about finding Joe’s boat, when the door opened. Mike Kren strode into the room. It was like a small hurricane entered. “Hey girl,” he boomed.

The tears that had been swimming in her eyes fell as she held out her arms to her best friend in the world. Her tears caught the lights and haloed him, bright glints on the silver in his hair. As if he were her own personal avenging angel.

Mike would have laughed at the thought of being compared to an angel.

He lowered the bedrail and sat beside her, his wiry body blocking her from the cop, and gathered her up in his arms. She sobbed into his chest, the familiar scent of the man surrounding her. She crumpled Joe’s letter at him, indicating he should take it surreptitiously.

He tucked it into his own shirt before speaking. When the baggies were safe, he said, “Hey. What’s this?” He turned her face up and touched her cheek, his finger coming away wet. “I never saw this before. Nell Stevens, crying? Tears? Devil must be draggin’ out his long johns, ’cause it’s cold in hell right about now.”

“I lost Joe,” she sobbed. “He’s lost on the river and he’s got to be hurt, and I couldn’t find him—”

“Hey, hey, hey.” He snugged her face against his shoulder, stroking her short hair. He lowered his voice. “I’m making you a promise. Okay? Right now. If he’s findable, I’ll find him.” He tilted her face to him again. “You know that. I’d never leave somebody on the river in trouble. Specially not Joe.”

But the words resonated inside her. If he’s findable…

Nell stopped crying. Stopped breathing. She focused on Mike’s river-brown eyes, steady and serene. If Joe wasn’t findable, it was because he was stuck beneath an undercut rock or tangled in an underwater strainer. Or washed so far downstream he might not be found until low water in the next drought. It he wasn’t findable, it was because he was dead.

The thought opened something up within her, a deep, dark chasm, empty and howling with icy wind. A chasm she had been ignoring, denying. A shot of something bitter and frozen rushed through her veins like ice crystals. She clenched Mike’s shirt, the flannel and long-john shirt beneath bunching. “You find him,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes demanding. “You find him and you bring him back.”

He read her face, her demand, her desperation. Gently, Mike peeled her hands from his shirt and held them in his, like a promise. Or a benediction. He kissed her forehead, his lips cold and dry. “I won’t lie to you. But you know I’ll do what I can.”

It wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t a promise to make it all right. But the chasm that had opened beneath her moved away a bit, to the side. Mike had never lied to her. He never would. No matter what. Not even to save her sanity. But if a mountain could be moved, Mike Kren was the man to do it.

He squeezed her fingers and let go, set his craggy, lined face in a confrontational expression, and turned to the cop. “Mike Kren.”

“Jedi Mike? Old-Man-of-the-River-Mike?”

Mike blocked her and Nell could see neither man’s face, but she knew they were taking each other’s measure. Mike wasn’t fond of cops. Nell rather suspected that the cop would pick up on that. And Mike was well known in the river-guide community as a pacifist anarchist. If the cop had done any research at all into river rats, he had to know that.

“Some people call me that,” Mike acknowledged. He angled back to Nell before the cop could introduce himself, his weathered face creased in the soft light. “Tell me everything.”

Nell whispered, pushing her broken voice, starting over with waking in the campsite. Mike asked questions as she talked, questions about water volume, wind and weather conditions, other boats on the river, the kind of supplies they had carried with them on the overnight trip. He asked about certain rocks, places where boaters could go missing for weeks or months. Questions about the cheat and what she remembered about the strainer. They were questions of an experienced river guide, and Mike’s thirty years on the rivers in the Southeast U.S. showed in each. He concentrated on current changes, taking in her description of the big water, the tube that should have been only a curl at the El, listening with intensity about the zigzag current at the end of the Long Pool, nodding when she described the Narrows, tilting his head, his gaze far away, as if seeing it all in his mind.

Mike had been on rivers for longer than Nell had been alive and having him here improved Joe’s chances more than anything. When she reached the end of her tale, Mike sat silent, rubbing her fingers with his thumbs, thinking.

“Okay. Gotta go, girl. Got supplies to get together. I shut the shop, put a note on the door for any drop-ins to head over to Amos’s. He can have that church group coming in on Saturday, too, if we don’t get back in. We’ll lose money but it won’t kill us like it would have before Labor Day. Later, girl.”

He patted her shoulder, a single pat, like the promise he hadn’t been willing or able to give. Mike pointed his finger at the cop, a gun gesture, and blew through the door like a strong wind, taking Joe’s letter with him. The cop didn’t know that. Yet.

Nell lay back on the inclined bed and closed her eyes, fighting for composure. When she could control the tears, she asked the cop what else he wanted to know. And wondered if she cared enough to ask him his name again.

The cop was silent for a moment and said, “You’re a member of the river search-and-rescue team for the Pigeon River.” It wasn’t a question. Nell nodded. “You’re certified in river rescue?”

“River rescue, swift-water rescue, first responder, wilderness first aid, a few others, all through the New River Rescue Center.” Her throat ached with the tears building behind her lids.

“Mighty young to be certified in all that.”

Stupid questions, stupid comments. They needed to be talking about where Joe might be on the river. But he was a cop, and Nell had never once known cops to be useful on an SAR. They just got in the way. “I’m twenty-one. I took all the courses this past winter and early spring.”

“With your new husband.”

Pain sliced through her. His tone said, Your new dead husband. She nodded as the tears took over and leaked down her face. “It’s where I first saw him.”

The memory was a stabbing shaft, bringing her skin to chill bumps. She had been on the bank of the Nantahala River, putting together a Z-drag system to save an “endangered” swimmer in the water, a certification instructor at her shoulder. She had glanced up at the water. At a boater shooting past. Looking right at her with his daredevil smile, his intense eyes, so blue they might have been lasers. The connection so immediate it took her breath away still. And he was gone, his boat downstream so fast she couldn’t follow. She had lost him. Until he showed up on the Pigeon River two weeks later. He’d been looking for her. And he’d found her. And now she had lost him again.

“Joseph Griffon Stevens.”

She nodded. I lost him. The breath she took ached, as if it tore its way through to her lungs.

“You took all those courses so you could start up a new business.” Nod. “A business that had to require a lot of up-front, start-up money.” Nod. “And where did all the up-front money come from?”

“Joe got a loan,” she whispered.

“A loan,” he said, his tone odd.

Nell opened her eyes, seeing a halo now around the cop, but if he was an angel, he was an angel of the devil. His tone was too guarded, suspicious and Nell didn’t know why. She blinked and he wavered in the watery mix. Tears leaking down her face burned fresh trails in chapped skin. Her head was thumping like a jackhammer.

The words clawing down her throat, she whispered, “If you think I did something to my husband, you are stark raving crazy. Now go away.” It wasn’t the best thing to say in a negotiation with a cop—and everything was a negotiation, when it came to cops—but she just didn’t care anymore.

The cop studied her, his gaze taking in her bruised and lacerated hands, her face, lingering on the bump in her hairline. “I’d like the letter back, please. Until the investigation is over with. Or they find your husband. I’ll give you a receipt for it.”

“No.”

His brows rose. It was real surprise on his face, not some kind of fake cop look. But Nell had been raised with PawPaw and with Mike. She knew her rights, and like her independent mountain forebearers, she had little regard for keepers of the law. Nell just wanted them to get the heck out of her way and let her do her job.

“I won’t sign a receipt. You get a subpoena,” she whispered, “you can have anything I have. Till then, no. Besides, I don’t have any letter.”

The cop slid his eyes to the door. “I’ll be damned. He took it, didn’t he?” When Nell didn’t reply, his mouth turned up on one side in a knowing half grin and he looked back at her. “We’ll be talking.”

“Whoopie.”

The cop laughed, a single harsh bark of sound, and left the room, letting the door close noiselessly behind him.

Nell stared at the ceiling, silent tears dripping onto the flat pillow beneath her head.

Orson Lennox checked the phone’s display. His dad. It was 5:00 a.m., but it was also his first day on the job with the Knoxville PD. The old man had known he would be up. “Yo. You still up, old man?”

“Cop hours,” Nolan said. “And I can still whip your butt.”

“No question about it. What’s up?” Orson said, tying his spit-shined black shoes.

“You run rivers. Could a tiny little female with a concussion run the South Fork of the Cumberland alone? After a lot of rain?”

“You always run a river alone, Pop, no matter how many people are with you. But—” He thought a moment, trying to balance thinking like a paddler against thinking like a cop. “With a concussion? Only if she was real determined or real stupid.”

“How ’bout if her husband went missing on the river and she was going for help.”

“Possible. Any chance she did him in and tried to make it look bad? That’d make her pretty determined. He have money?”

“Friggin’ loads. And it looks like he mighta beat her up first, so maybe she can plead self-defense. Thanks. And good luck today, okay?”

“Nine tenths preparation, one tenths timing,” Orson said, quoting his father. He heard Nolan laugh at hearing his own words about the existence of luck quoted back to him. The call ended. Orson closed the cell, wondering about a paddler and her dead husband on the South Fork of the Cumberland. It was a perfect place to commit a murder and make it look like an accident.