So Cold the River

hours earlier, no trace of sweetness or honey. Good. This one didn’t change.

He took the plastic cup and carried it over to the bedside table and set it down. There if he needed it. He would try not to need it, but at least it would be there.

The Bradford bottle he left untouched.

He got in the shower, was hardly out when Kellen called from the lobby. He threw on clothes and grabbed the bottles, then almost dropped the Bradford bottle.

Cold was no longer an accurate assessment. The thing was freezing, gave his hand the sort of cold burn you could get from touching a metal railing on a Chicago winter night. The frost was dry now; he had to use a fingernail to scrape any off.

“I’m going to find out what’s in you,” he said. He carried the bottles down in the elevator and out into the lobby, shifting them from one hand to the other because the Bradford bottle was too cold to keep in one for a prolonged time. Kellen was waiting near the front doors. He looked at Eric with a critical eye as he approached.

“Looks like you did have a rough night.” Kellen lifted a finger and indicated his own eye. “You ruptured some blood vessels, man. Across the bridge of your nose, too.”

Eric had already seen that in the mirror.

“Like I said, it wasn’t a whole lot of fun.”

“Doesn’t look like it, no.” Kellen reached out and took the bottles from him, said, “Damn!” when he touched the Bradford bottle.

“Getting colder,” Eric said.

“You ain’t kidding. That’s a big difference from yesterday.”

Eric watched Kellen study the bottle, saw the awe in his eyes, and thought, This is why he believes me. The bottle was so insane it made Eric’s story acceptable.

“I called Danielle,” Kellen said.

“Danielle?”

“That’s my girl, yeah. Told her we needed to get somebody to look at this thing fast, and she said she’d call around and see what she could do. No promises, though.”

“I appreciate it. Tell her I’ll pay—”

“Nobody’s worried about that.” Kellen was juggling the bottles from hand to hand now just as Eric had been. “She knows somebody to do it, that’s all.”

“You said she’s going to med school?”

“Yeah.”

Eric nodded, feeling a pang of guilt. Claire had been in law school when they’d met. Had dropped out when they got married to follow him to L.A. She had a good job now, working for the mayor’s office, but it wasn’t the career she’d had in mind for herself. She’d given that up for him.

“Well, you might ask her to have them run a specific test,” he said. “If it’s even possible. I’ve got an idea of what might be in it. We know Campbell was involved with bootlegging and moonshine, and in my vision last night I saw that whiskey still…”

“Old moonshine,” Kellen said and gave a nod. “That would make some sense. Who knows what the hell they put in it or how potent it was back then, let alone now. It could be giving you fits, no question. I still think it might be worth talking to a doctor.”

“I will if I need to,” Eric said. “But I’m feeling all right now.”

“Okay. I’ll come back down this afternoon, catch up with you then.”

Eric followed Kellen out the doors and onto the veranda overlooking the grounds. Out in front, at the end of the brick drive, a TV news van was parked.

“Something going on today?” Eric said.

“I don’t know. Saw another one on my way here, somebody interviewing a cop on the sidewalk. Could be something happened last night.”

“Casino robbery. Ocean’s Eleven shit.”

“There you go.” Kellen laughed, then lifted the bottle and held it up to the sun. The frost glittered. “All right, I’m off to Bloomington.”

“Hey, thanks for helping with the water. I appreciate it, more than you know.”

Kellen looked at him, serious, and said, “You take care today, all right?”

“Sure.”

He left and then it was just Eric on the veranda, facing into a warm morning wind that was tinged with moisture. It was humid already, and though the sky was blue, it had a hazy quality. Maybe Anne McKinney had been right. Could be a storm brewing.

32

TIRED OF THIS TOWN as he was, Josiah still found himself grateful for familiarity in this situation. Figured he had to get himself hidden quick, because there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of time passing before the police were looking for his truck. Hell, they’d do that on principle, something like that happening so near his home. He wasn’t real eager to talk the matter over with them either.

Time to get off the roads and out of sight, then, and while the idea of flight was appealing, gassing up the truck and heading for the Ohio River line and points beyond, he wasn’t foolish enough to do that. He had a grand total of twenty-four dollars in his wallet and maybe four hundred in the bank, and that wasn’t going to get him far.

He drove about three miles west of his house, into the woods that climbed the hills between Martin and Orange counties, and turned into a gravel drive marked with a half dozen no trespassing signs. Had been a timbering camp at one time, years ago, and now all that remained was a weathered barn and decrepit equipment shed. The place was isolated, though. Josiah had found the spot deer hunting one year—the property wasn’t open to hunting, but hell if he cared—and filed it away in the back of his mind, knowing that such a location could prove useful to any of the handful of illegal ventures he experimented with from time to time. This wasn’t the sort of use he’d hoped to require it for, but right now he was glad that he’d stumbled across the spot.

He stopped and then dug his toolbox out of the truck and found a stout pair of bolt cutters. Should’ve thought to grab a hacksaw, but he hadn’t been exactly flush on time when he’d left the house. He left the lights on in the truck, used them to illuminate the sagging doors on the barn. Just as he’d recollected, there was a rusted chain with a padlock holding them closed, and the chain wasn’t thick. It took him a few minutes of grunting and swearing—his burned and bleeding hand hurt like hell each time he squeezed the bolt cutters—but eventually he broke through half a link and then he slipped the chain apart and dropped the lock at his feet.

The doors swung open with a crack and groan, but they slid apart all right, and inside there was plenty of room for the truck. He pulled it inside, hearing a harsh scrape as he dragged past the door, then turned the engine off, and sat there in the dark.

What in the hell had he done? What in the hell had he just done?

The last fifteen minutes had been too full of action for much thought, but now, up here in the dark barn, hiding his truck from the police who’d soon be looking for it, he was forced to consider what had just occurred. That man was dead, and Josiah had killed him. Killed him, then lit his ass on fire. That wasn’t just murder, that had to be some aggravated version of it. Sort that got you on death row.

It wasn’t as if Josiah had never thought of killing a man before, he’d just never actually expected to do it. Figured if he ever did, it would come slow and calculated, the product of a great deal of provocation. Revenge for some grave offense. But tonight… tonight it had happened so damn fast.

“Was the gun that did it,” he said. “Was his own fault for pulling that gun.”

Surely that had been it. A self-defense move and nothing else. You see a man swinging a gun your way, what in the hell were you supposed to do?

Problem was, it hadn’t been the first blow that killed him. Josiah was almost certain of that. Oh, it had knocked him out well enough, but the one that killed him had been that second strike, when the man in the ditch was already down and out and Josiah jumped down there and laid the cinder block to his head with every last ounce of strength he had in him. That wasn’t Josiah’s nature; he’d never been one for kicking a man he’d already put on