River Run

by J. S. James

  “Nothing. Never mind,” he said. “You just better be good and ready to hit the ground running, ’cause we got a probable homicide.”

  “That makes two.”

  He stopped. “Two … you sure?” His pale eyes took on a light that hinted excitement. Off-kilter with the news. Almost gleeful.

  “Pretty sure,” she answered. “I just got back from the Yamhill County ME on that floater Harvey had been on his way to investigate. More like a headless hung-upper. Nine months in the water, going by the decomp.”

  “What makes you think it was homicide? And why should a Yamhill body concern us?”

  “A detached finger, for starters. Harvey’s desk file on last year’s missing Falls City hunter ties the deceased to our county.”

  The sheriff glanced upward, as if stargazing indoors. He shook his head. “Mighty cold case when we have a red-hot one at Buena Vista.”

  “Oh, and by the way,” she added, as they veered toward his office. “Harvey will be out longer than we thought. More surgery coming up.”

  “Sorry to hear that. What about his accident?”

  “Maybe no accident. I spoke with the Yamhill deputy who investigated. Harvey’s F-350’s emergency brake tested A-OK. He was adamant he’d set it.”

  “Suspects?”

  “Next to none. He noticed a kayaker hovering upstream when he backed down the ramp. Gave me a rough description. No bow numbers on a kayak. Still, I talked the Yamhill dep into lifting door and cab prints off Harvey’s rig.”

  Grice paused, unlocking his office door. “Leave it for now.”

  She waited, a touch of wishful unease creeping into her thoughts. Did she imagine it, or was he just a tad more civil? He’d just come down from a meeting with the county biggies and she’d read bad news all over his face. Did he think he could make hay with a high-profile murder investigation?

  “I want hourly updates on that probable homicide. Hourly, Cha-vez.”

  He stepped in and shut the door on her.

  Delia turned back toward her slicker, cautioning herself not to be fooled. What was that old saw? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  * * *

  Delia rode the clutch on Enrique’s ’67 Camaro, braking her “borrowed” ride to a stop above Buena Vista Ferry, inches from Craig Castner’s duty brogans.

  Her fifteen-year-old Pontiac had died earlier that morning. After telling the Yamhill ME she’d be late for their meeting, she’d hiked home for her brother’s pride and joy, which she kept stored in her garage. When she’d gone to update Grice, she had parked the convertible an inconspicuous two blocks away. Why? Smirks like Castner was giving it right now.

  Four hundred forty horses rocked the frame at a galloping idle as she rolled the window down and braced for the inevitable. He didn’t disappoint.

  “Wow. Nice flame job. Will Cheech be joining you?” Thumbs in his utility belt, her least favorite coworker stood before a police tape barricade flanked with road flares.

  She mustered a pitying smile. “That the best you’ve got?”

  His smug expression didn’t waver. “Just itching to see you bounce that cholo-mobile off the pavement.”

  Still smiling, Delia shook her head. “Misinformed, as usual, Craig. This is a classic muscle car, not a barrio lowrider.” In no mood for more of his crap, she nodded toward the driveway off to their right. “In the marine park?” The 911 message on her screen was short on details, only the location and body recovered from the Willamette, possible homicide.

  Castner unhooked one of his thumbs from his belt and motioned down the blockaded road. “Nope. On the ferry.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Did you call for the ME?”

  He made a face. “Now what do you think?” Then he hawked and spat to the side. “Better not fuck this up, Hot Rod. The ferry pilot who found the stiff is down there and waiting. Surly little rooster. Name’s McFarley, and he doesn’t—”

  Delia closed her window on Castner, her cheeks prickling with irritation—mostly at herself for feeling embarrassed about her ride. She stared ahead, waiting for him to scoot back the plastic barrier horses, hating the rumbling, chassis-shaking mill that powered her jailbird brother’s Super Sport.

  She geared the Hurst speed-shifter into first, feathered the gas, and eased out the clutch. Rear tires chirped and Enrique’s supercharged bomb lurched forward, every start a prelude to a drag race. Delia blew out a puff of air. “What the hell. Might as well act the part.” She thundered past Castner, feeling immature but satisfied at having flipped him off.

  The docked ferry loomed over a slight rise. The far end of the four-car barge slanted downstream, bent by an angry brown current. Delia cut the engine and rolled to a stop short of the steel on-ramp. Clutching the religious symbol at her neck, she swallowed on an acid taste that climbed her throat every time she got close to that damned river.

  Flashing lights went off in her rearview. Castner had reset the roadblock at the top of the hill and repositioned his patrol car behind it. To better eyeball the proceedings and report back, she bet. She stopped twisting the crucifix on its chain and let it fall against her collarbone. Her other hand found the door handle. She refused to be trapped between a hard-ass and a wet place.

  Delia figured Castner was wondering why she hadn’t driven onto the ferry. Well, why hadn’t she? Truth be told, she wouldn’t drive across a Willamette River bridge if she could get around it, let alone onto a hunk of iron that was barely afloat.

  Her thing had a name. Potamophobia: fear of rivers or running water. She knew exactly what she had; even studied it in college. Knew by heart the mumbo-jumbo for fighting it: Face fear head on. Don’t let it paralyze you. Put fear into perspective—what it robs from your life. Like, your family?

  She’d found a simpler way. Avoid rivers altogether.

  No avoiding this time. Not the memories, either. Those newspaper photos were burned into her brain. A migrant farm truck upended in the Pudding River. The blue tarps draped over her parents. That mud-brown stream meandering off, satisfied at its theft.

  Instead of being given by Delia’s parents, her quinceañera had been put on by an aunt and uncle. Beautiful but not the same. Nothing had been the same.

  Get on with it, Chavez. Step out, shut the car door, breathe.

  She ignored the nauseating odor of riverbank rot, retrieved her evidence kit from the trunk, and concentrated on the ferry ramp—its two-car width, the welded metal sturdiness. Head down, she trudged upward.

  “Hope you’re here to get this dead guy off my boat.”

  She tracked a voice that could hammer tacks over to a forty-something man standing with his backside against the ferry’s blue-and-white pilothouse. The boat pilot, she assumed, unfolded his arms, uncrossed his ankles, straightened up to a whole five foot two in his peacoat, and strutted toward a tarpaulin-draped mound. A red-tipped stocking foot poked out from one corner.

  She advanced slowly, taking in details, doing her best to tune out any movement past the plate iron she walked across. From the corner of her eye, watery mouths opened and closed as they swirled past the empty car deck. One eddy sucked noisily at the surface—a river hungry for more victims.

  They met at the tarp, the shrimp-size boat captain’s glance traveling up and down, then between her and the parked car at the bank. “You are a detective, aren’t you?”

  She set the kit down, flipped open then pocketed her new ID in a recently practiced motion. “Chavez. Polk County Sheriff’s.”

  “McFarley, Marion County Ferries.”

  She shook his ice-cold hand and surveyed the empty car deck, noting drag marks through puddle depressions on the welded metal deck. “You moved the body?”

  McFarley nodded, motioning toward the ferry’s upstream corner where the water trail ended, or rather, began. “Draped over that cable like a limp blanket on a clothesline.” He shrugged, anticipating her why question. �
�Afraid the uh—corpse—would wash downstream, so I gaffed it by the coat and hauled it onboard. Docked my vessel and called 911.” Again, he eyed her.

  Though she was accustomed to men staring, she still buttoned her coat. Crouching beside the green plastic cover, she removed and snapped on black surgicals. McFarley’s rubber-soled work shoes stayed planted in the corner of her vision. She shot him a look. “I’ll let you know when I have questions.” Mr. Roving Eyes wandered off. She peeled back the tarpaulin.

  Fully clothed, except for missing waders—suspender fragments crisscrossed at the shoulders—the body looked as if it had been in the water awhile. Sharp-angled lids framed brownish milky eyes, indicating the dark-haired man may have been of mixed ancestry.

  A massive, X-shaped throat puncture was the obvious physical insult. After photographing the body from all angles, she knelt and eased the man’s head upward, discovering a larger exit wound, also four-sided but jagged and torn. Fleshy material hung down the back of the neck, suggesting a force powerful enough to punch severed larynx rings and pieces of vertebrae backward and out the rear lesion. The weapon that killed the man had been driven through the neck and later retrieved, probably by yanking the thing out the back. No mere knife blade had inflicted this damage. By the wound’s position, the crushed voice box and sliced arteries, she figured the victim had choked or drowned on his own blood.

  Searching his pockets for ID, she withdrew a lanyard with a tube-shaped wooden object attached—a duck call. Eight letters had been burned into the wooden barrel: H. T. Snyder.

  A siren wailed in the distance. Back in a crouch, Delia crab-walked around the body, scrutinizing what was visible. The man’s left arm lay crooked beneath the zipped hunting coat. The siren grew louder. She lifted the soggy material, slid the hand out, and instantly let go.

  “Ah shit.”

  She gazed up the road at the approaching ME van, overcome with the need to fixate on a less jarring, more routine image. Lights flashed. Red, blue, white. But the pearly shine of a bared knucklebone where a pointing finger should be—and what that might mean—stayed with her.

  The siren cut off midwail.

  * * *

  The Blue Garden had seen better days. And now new life. Back in the lounge, mainly, where Delia had made more than a few collars. Scooting across Main from the Dallas, Oregon, courthouse, she cringed at the restaurant sign’s daytime shabbiness compared with the nighttime brilliance of royal-blue neon.

  Grice had left a note for her to come find him as soon as she’d finished processing the crime scene that wasn’t. Who knew where the murder had actually happened? Two miles upriver? Twenty? None of the hunters or vehicle drivers she’d questioned in the area had seen anything.

  She pushed between the thick glass doors, cased the patrons at the candy counter and fifties-style soda fountain down the left side, then headed over to Grice’s hangout in the bank of time-worn hardwood booths. A waitress with a straw-colored wig stood by while he slipped something inside his coat and gestured toward the chalked-up luncheon special—clearly why the perfume of onion rings hung in the air. She left and Delia took the seat opposite him, releasing her grip on the Crush Ball and withdrawing her hand from the pocket of her jacket.

  He said nothing, stirred his coffee, and eyed her Italian leather, like she should be in uniform. Still, his silence seemed an improvement of sorts.

  “Sheriff, I just picked up your message. It took a while to wrap up—”

  “I know how long you took.” He swigged deeply, as if something had cooled the black coffee.

  Yeah, you do, Delia thought, a faint boozy pong drifting past her nostrils. Castner had already updated him on her progress at Buena Vista.

  Still wired from the morning—the good, the bad, and the gruesome—she tugged at her sleeves under the table. “Definite homicide, Sheriff, a real freaker. The ME—”

  “Hold off.” Gus peeked around the corner. The booth behind was still vacant. “Lower your voice.” She skimmed the room, wanting to ask why even meet here, but knowing the Blue Garden functioned like an informal rotary for the local business crowd. His kind of place for rubbing elbows with supporters. Deal-making, too.

  “I already got most of the particulars.” Castner again. So she wasn’t here for a case debriefing. “First off, let’s set things straight—”

  Delia flipped her hands in a shushing-him-back motion and nodded to the left. The waitress arrived with his special. It had to be a dish-up-and-serve.

  “Thanks, Mae.” He turned the plate, inspecting the meaty bounty.

  Mae also set down a menu and water in front of Delia, who averted her sight from Grice’s sauce-smothered, onion ring–piled concoction and up to the waitress’s big-tip smile.

  “And what can I get you, hon?”

  Grice put a thumb on the menu and slid it toward the waitress. “Take it. She’ll be leaving soon.” Yep, she thought. The old Grice was still there.

  Mae scooped up the menu. Delia’s gaze following her retreat, wondering if salad was the only vegan option. She started to call Mae back when Grice dropped something on the table that made a loud clunk—a mobile communication unit the size and thickness of a Belgian waffle. His forearms surrounded his lunch and he dug in.

  She sat back and stared at the rugged phone.

  “Military? Thanks, but I use an iPhone.”

  “Not on this case.” He folded then shoved a crusty ring into his mouth, chewing as he talked. “Minimizes eavesdropping.”

  “When did the department acquire these?”

  “It didn’t; I did. This one’s not just military grade but military secure. Locked in to call my number and one other. Annie’s, but only in an emergency and you can’t get me.”

  “Why the extra security?”

  “Because I don’t know how big this case is or where it’s going, and neither do you,” he said between last-bite cleanups. “Trust me, you’ll need that security.” He pushed the plate aside. “Until further notice, you’re replacing Harvey, but at Detective One pay grade. Two-a-day debriefings, eight and four, always in my office. You get called out”—he reached over and tapped the Ulefone’s sturdy case—“you get on this cell straightaway. You uncover new information—any at all—I’m the first to hear.”

  He leaned in. “Understood?”

  More than he figured she did. Military tie-ins, secure phone, “trust me.” Need any more alarm bells, Chavez?

  She crossed her arms, her lips tight together, barely opening after a measured delay. “Still on C felonies? Property crimes only?”

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice. “Yesterday morning, you restricted me to the not-so-lily-whites in Harvey’s caseload. Now, a looming murder investigation tops that list.”

  Grice made a wave-off motion. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that comes first.”

  “Big overtime allotment in your budget?”

  His head tilted, one eye narrowing. “You damn well know there’s none.”

  “You plan on sharing the load? Fieldwork, too?”

  Grice sat back, giving her the stare. She could take his pulse visually, at both temples. “It’s an election year. What’re you getting at?”

  “So. I’m in charge of an investigative division consisting of me, and I’m staring at a list of actives that’d choke a Clydesdale”—to use one of his Texasisms. She flattened her hands on the table. “In the same breath you dictate a shitload of debriefings, knowing full well field time breaks cases. You can’t have it both ways, Sheriff.”

  He looked around and hissed at her. “Keep your voice down.” Grice didn’t embarrass easily, but she could see the flush now, mainly because she was right and knew the spot he was in. Her message was clear. It didn’t pay to underestimate her.

  He took a couple of deep breaths, and the redness drained from his face. “Okay, granted, the situation’s changed.” His eyes narrowed into a thoughtful squint, but he wasn’t all that good at pretending. “I have an idea that�
��ll lighten your load.”

  She leaned forward, saying nothing, looking unconvinced.

  “Granted, you’re going to need, uh, flexibility. Also, whatever resources I can scrape up. That’s provided this murder case stays all ours, jurisdiction-wise.”

  She shook her head, wondering why the cave, why all ours. “Looks like it’s joint, since the ferry’s run by Marion County. God knows we can use an assist from their investigative division, especially since we no longer have river patrol capability and they do. I could get in touch—”

  “Never mind that. Did the Staties or Marion County tumble to it yet?”

  She frowned. “Tumble? Uh, well no. McFarley, the ferryman, lives in Buena Vista, so he docked on our side of the river and called us. But we still need to notify—”

  “Good, good. Let’s keep it Polk County for now.”

  “Sheriff, you just said we need resources.”

  “And I’ve got them. Most of the cases on Harvey’s list are in the Dallas area, right?”

  Her moment of hesitation ended with a guarded nod. “Mostly. Here and around West Salem.” His shift in direction was too easy. Too quick. “Why?”

  “All those actives. Mainly misdemeanors, Class Cs or unclassified felonies, right?”

  “For the most part.”

  “How many major felonies or violent crimes?”

  “Aside from the ferry homicide and Harvey’s truck running over him—which is damned suspicious—a handful. Oh, and I’m betting there’s a link with the Yamhill body find.”

  “Perfect. Now head back and pull the files on everything except for those three, anything within ten miles of Dallas, Oregon, and West Salem city limits.”

  Her frown deepened. “What’re you going to do?”

  His smirk told her Grice was in his element.

  “Call in a few chits.”

  Yep, she thought. Way too easy.

  13

  THREE WEEKS INTO WATERFOWL SEASON

  Reaching the last on her list of questions, Delia dropped her foot from the pickup’s step rail. The four hunters inside the crew cab had their windows rolled down, the one with a wispy chin beard leaning out and grinning, watching her draw from her jacket three finger-worn photos.