So Cold the River

would have Josiah’s fingerprints. He felt around in the ditch until he relocated the chunk of cinder block and then he held it and hesitated for a moment, considered tossing it into the field but decided against that. They’d bring dogs out here and find it no problem and then they’d have his fingerprints, and Josiah had been arrested enough times that matching those prints wasn’t going to be a problem.

What to do, then? What to do?

Now that he thought about it, this whole ditch was filled with evidence—there were pieces of Josiah’s shirt down there beside the dead man—and there wasn’t any way in hell he’d get all of it cleaned up. He could load the man into the van and drive him off somewhere, but that didn’t get rid of the blood in the ditch, and odds were somebody would’ve known his location anyhow.

Odds were, somebody would’ve known he was watching Josiah.

No good way to clean up this mess, then, but he could leave more of one behind. Burn this place, scorch it all, and let them sift through the ashes for evidence.

He wiped the rock down carefully on his pants and then set it on the edge of the road and, dropping onto his back, slid under the van and found the gas line and jammed his pocketknife into it. First few times it glanced off the metal, and once his hand slipped down and across the blade and opened his flesh up. First his fingerprints, now his blood. He drove the knife at the gas line again, drove it with the fury of fear and anger, and this time the blade popped through and gasoline spilled out and onto his bare chest.

The idea of trying to tip the van into the ditch and create an accident scene ran through his mind but he discarded it. There wasn’t enough time, and it probably wouldn’t work anyhow. He wrapped his hand in one of the torn pieces of shirt he still had and then opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. There was a leather case on the passenger seat, and all the way in the back he found a digital camera. He took them both—after all this risk, might as well get something out of it, and maybe it would help if the scene had the look of a robbery. Then he went down into the ditch and patted through the dead man’s pockets and found a wallet and took that, too, dropped it into the leather case as the gasoline ran through the gravel and dripped into the ditch behind him.

He tucked the camera into the case, set it aside, and pulled the two remaining strips of shirt from his pocket and held them in the pool of gasoline forming by the car. When they were damp, he got the lighter out and lit them, one at a time. The first flared too hot and burned his hand, the hand that was already bleeding, and then he tossed the strip down onto the dead man’s body. For a moment it looked like the flame would go out, so he held the other strip of cloth over it and squeezed and the drops of gasoline got the blaze going again, and this time it caught the dead man’s shirt and then he was burning.

Josiah lit the final strip of cloth and tossed it back up on the gravel, into the pool of gasoline, which went up like a bastard, three feet tall and brilliantly light before he’d even had a chance to move. He got to running then, grabbed the leather case in his bleeding hand and ran for his house as the fire spread behind him. He was no more than a hundred feet away when the gas tank blew, and he felt the shock of it in the ground, and the whole night was filled with orange light then and he knew his time was slim, indeed.

He hit the front yard at a dead run, dropped the case in the grass, got his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door, ran inside in the dark, and went to his bedroom. Pulled a fresh shirt on, then opened the closet. There was a twelve-gauge pump shotgun inside, and he took that and a box of shells and ran into the yard. Tossed the shotgun and the shells into the bed of the truck and pulled a plastic tarp over them, then grabbed the leather case and threw it onto the passenger seat. His front yard was lit by the fire, but already the blaze was going down. He thought he could hear voices up at the Amish farm, but maybe that was his imagination.

He got into the truck and started it, thought about leaving the headlights off but then realized that would be begging for trouble and turned them on, pulled out of his driveway and sped down the gravel road, came out to the county road, and turned west. Sirens were audible by the time he reached the first stop sign. He drove on into the night.

Eric didn’t expect to sleep again, but he did. Long after the vision had passed he was still on the balcony, waiting, willing it to return.

It did not.

Eventually, he rose and carried the chair back into the room and looked at the clock and saw it was four in the morning. Claire was in the central time zone, an hour behind, and it was too early to call. Kellen would be asleep. All sane people would be asleep.

He lay on the bed and stared at the bottles on the desk as the sounds of early-morning preparations carried on around him in the old hotel.

Campbell, the old man had called the one in the bowler hat. Campbell.

It was what Eric already knew, had known since he looked into Josiah Bradford’s eyes and saw the similarity. The man in the bowler hat was Campbell Bradford, and he’d arrived in town yesterday on an all-black train. The boy, then? The boy who played the violin with his eyes squeezed shut to block his terrible stage fright?

He was Alyssa Bradford’s father-in-law. Eric was sure of that in the way he’d been sure of Eve Harrelson’s affair in the red cottage and of the Nez Perce camp in that valley in the Bear Paws. But the boy’s name was Lucas, and he had not been a relative of Campbell’s. So why had he claimed the man’s name? Had he been adopted, removed from the care of his uncle and placed into Campbell’s? Why take the name, though?

Amidst all the questions were two other confirmations: Anne McKinney’s water both alleviated his withdrawal pains and brought back the visions. Only this time, the vision had been more like watching a movie. He had distance. Previously, Campbell had looked right at him, spoken to him. He’d been a participant, not a bystander. With Anne’s water, what he’d experienced felt truly like a vision of the past, a glimpse into something that had happened long ago and could not affect anything in this world. What he’d seen from the Bradford bottle was hardly so tranquil. In those moments, Campbell had been with him.

He fell asleep sometime around six and woke to the phone ringing at nine-thirty. He fumbled for it with his eyes still closed, knocked the thing off the base, and then got it in his hand and gurgled out a sound that didn’t even come close to hello.

Kellen said, “You made it through.”

“Yeah.” He sat up, rubbed at his eyes.

“No problems?”

“Wouldn’t say that.”

“Uh-oh.”

Eric told him about it all, disclosing the depth of physical agony and the drinking of the water and the vision that had followed. It was odd he’d be willing to tell this stranger so much, but he was grateful that Kellen was willing to listen to it. He wasn’t running yet, dismissing Eric as crazy. That meant something.

“This changes things,” Kellen said. “It’s not the specific bottle of water that hits you, it’s Pluto Water in general.”

“I don’t think we can go quite that far. I’m getting visions from them both, yes, but there’s still something different about that first bottle, the one that started it. Last night, after trying Anne’s water, it was like I was watching something out of the past. When I’ve had the Bradford water, everything I see is right here with me.”

“So you still want to run the test.”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, I’ll come by and get the bottles then, take them up to Bloomington.”

Eric opened his mouth to say that was great, then stopped, realizing what it meant. If Kellen took both bottles to Bloomington, Eric would have nothing in his arsenal. It was a thought that chilled him.

“Do you know how fast they can test it?” he said.

“No idea. But it’s Sunday, you know, so probably not today.”

“If there’s any way they could test it today… or at least tomorrow… I’m just thinking, the faster, the better. I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

“Well, you’re talking to the wrong person, my man. I got no idea what the process entails. But I’ll see what I can do once I’m up there.”

Kellen said he’d come by the hotel in a few minutes and they hung up. Eric studied the bottles for a few seconds longer and then, hating himself for it, went into the bathroom and found one of the plastic cups and emptied a few ounces of Anne Mc-Kinney’s bottle into the cup. He took a small taste. Just as bad as it had been