A Drunkard's Path

by Clare O'Donohue

  Her voice was almost a whisper. “He’s alone.”

  I hung up and started to tell Jesse, but it was clear he had figured out the situation. “She’s lost out here, that’s all.” Jesse turned toward me and held me. “Don’t get scared. It takes longer than a half hour to freeze to death in this weather.”

  “You’re right. It’s just that it’s easy to get lost.”

  “But she’ll walk toward the light coming from the house. She’s got common sense, right?”

  Against my better judgment, I laughed. “Not really. But she’s got a way of getting herself help.”

  Jesse grabbed my hand and started to walk toward the river, shining the flashlight on the water. “If Barney is wet, maybe he walked into the water. Maybe she followed him.”

  With the snow and the incline, walking became nearly impossible. I grabbed Jesse’s coat and held on. I knew I was slowing him down but I couldn’t turn back. If Kennette was in trouble, then I was partly responsible. I’d brought her to Eleanor’s house, I’d insisted she be here for this dinner party, and I’d let her go out into the cold alone so I could sit with Jesse.

  “It’s not your fault, you know,” Jesse said.

  “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “I know you,” he said.

  I smiled. He did know me, and that was pretty cool. I looked up at him, his glasses frosting over in the cold, and I thought how lucky I was to have found such a good man. But before I had a chance to say that, something flashed behind him.

  I stopped and took a deep breath. “Something’s in the water,” I said slowly. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “Stay here,” he said. “Stay right here.” He moved slowly, deliberately, toward the water.

  “What is it?” I shouted.

  For what seemed like an eternity, Jesse said nothing. Then he turned back to me. “It’s a body,” he shouted back. “A woman.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Within minutes officers from Archers Rest and Morristown were crawling all over my grandmother’s home and backyard. The snow had stopped, but that made moving around only slightly easier. When I came back inside, I sat in the kitchen so I could have a clear view of the backyard. Oliver had put his tweed jacket over a chair and was doing the dishes. Eleanor worriedly brought blankets into the kitchen.

  “Kennette will be cold when she comes home,” Eleanor said.

  Oliver took Eleanor’s hand but said nothing. Like me, he probably didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m quite fond of her,” Eleanor said. “Some people you can know your whole life and never feel close to. And others you just connect with right away.” She looked toward Oliver and he smiled.

  I wanted to say something but nothing would come out. I was irrationally angry at Barney for not being Lassie. I was angry at myself for letting her go out, and I was angry at Oliver for coming over and creating this stupid dinner party.

  I got up, put my coat back on, and went outside. I saw Jesse and Chief Powell down by the river but they were in no hurry. It was clear that, whoever it was, the person was well past saving. Warm tears stung as they hit my cold cheeks.

  “What’s going on?”

  I turned toward a vaguely familiar voice and saw a teal wool coat coming toward me. 17542.01_ADrunkardsPāth.indd 847/9/09 12:52:06 PM

  I ran to her and grabbed her.

  “She’s okay! She’s okay!” I shouted. “She’s okay.”

  Jesse came running toward me and Eleanor and Oliver came out of the house, without their coats. Barney ran after them, jumping at Kennette and me excitedly. Kennette struggled to get away from me, and when she did, she looked at all of us as if we were nuts.

  “What’s wrong?” She looked from face to face, more upset than we were.

  “Where have you been?” I yelled at her.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I lost Barney and when I went looking for him, I got lost. I couldn’t see in the snow.”

  That was exactly what Jesse said had happened. But it was such a simple, logical explanation that I had been unwilling to believe it.

  “Where did you go?” I asked, my voice still a full octave above normal.

  Kennette was looking at all the fuss around her and seemed more confused than anything. “I went into this little sheltered area down river.” She pointed away from the house.

  “Why didn’t you call?” I was still yelling. I knew how irrational I sounded but I didn’t care.

  “I don’t have a cell phone,” she said quietly.

  “Come inside now,” Eleanor said.

  Jesse took my arm. “Get inside,” he said quietly. “Get her warm. We’ll get her story, but first she needs to calm down. We all do.”

  “Come with us,” I said. “Everything’s okay now.”

  “We still have a dead girl in the river,” Jesse pointed out.

  How weird that I had forgotten that.

  “Do you know who she is?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Can I see her?”

  Jesse shrugged and pointed toward the body, now lying on the snowy ground near the water. I walked slowly over to the spot, nearly slipping twice. When I got to the body, I turned white.

  “Oh my God” was all I could get out.

  “What?” Jesse grabbed me and turned me away from the body. “Do you know her?”

  “What’s going on?” Powell walked over. “This is a crime scene.”

  “She knows the victim,” Jesse said quietly.

  I was shaking, surprised by my own reaction. Once I knew it wasn’t Kennette, I had expected the woman to be a stranger.

  “Let’s get back to the house,” Jesse whispered to me.

  I nodded and Jesse pressed me against his chest and led me back to the house. Powell followed, barking orders at the other officers as he went.

  Once inside I sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by Oliver, Eleanor, Kennette, and Barney. They all looked at me with panic in their eyes. Behind them Powell leaned against the door, as if blocking my escape. Only Jesse seemed calm. He crouched down in front of me and looked into my eyes.

  “Nell, how do you know that girl?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath. “From class. She’s . . .” I looked up at Kennette and then Oliver before turning back to Jesse. “Her name is Sandra. She’s in the art class Kennette and I take.”

  I quickly looked up to see Oliver’s reaction. If there was one, it didn’t show. He barely blinked.

  “Poor dear,” Eleanor said. “Did she fall into the river somehow?”

  “If she did, she’s the second woman to do that in less than a month,” Jesse said flatly.

  “Lily,” I said, more to myself than anyone. “She’s connected to Lily.”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Powell interrupted. “All we know is that two women ended up in the river. And one of them was two hundred yards from your house.”

  “Meaning?” Eleanor asked, a hardness in her voice that usually intimidated. But not this time.

  “Meaning, ma’am,” Powell said, “that perhaps she has a connection to someone in this room.”

  “She was my student,” Oliver volunteered, “so I probably had more contact with her than anyone else. Though that doesn’t amount to much beyond some constructive criticism and a little encouragement. Perhaps she became friends with Kennette or Nell. Her easel was next to Nell’s.”

  “She didn’t. She spoke to Oliver more than she spoke to me,” I said as pointedly as I could.

  “Well, Oliver,” Jesse asked, “can you recall if she said anything about coming to Archers Rest?”

  “No. Why would she?”

  “Maybe coming to see you?” Powell offered.

  He shook his head. “I’m always friendly with my students. I’d be happy to answer any questions, but I know almost nothing about her.”

  Powell turned toward Oliver and took out a notebook. “What did you know?”

  “She wanted to be an artist, but sh
e had minimal talent,” Oliver said. “Obviously that upset her.”

  Is that why she was always crying around him? Another simple, logical explanation I hadn’t thought of.

  “Would she have any reason to come to this house?” Jesse asked.

  “I have no idea,” Oliver said, his voice steady.

  “Had she been here before?” Powell turned to me.

  “No, I barely knew her,” I said. “I never told her what town I lived in, let alone what house.”

  Kennette nodded. “I meant to be friendlier, but I guess she just seemed so . . .” She paused. I could tell Kennette was carefully choosing her words. “She seemed uninterested in getting to know anyone.”

  Not entirely true, I thought. She was interested in getting to know Oliver. But I said nothing. Powell would take that kind of thing way too seriously, and for all I knew there was nothing more to it than a famous artist comforting someone who would never reach her goal. Except, I wondered, why did he give her money?

  After Powell went back outside, Jesse took me into the living room and held me for a long time.

  “What’s going on?” I asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. Something bad.”

  “What’s the connection between Lily and Sandra?”

  “Nell,” he pulled back and looked at me sternly. “There may not be one, except that they were both young women. Women about your age.”

  “A serial killer in Archers Rest?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever it was, there was a killer in your backyard tonight.”

  I nodded. “Maybe closer than that.”

  Jesse kissed me lightly. “I’ll be back when we’ve finished up here. Allie is going to stay at my mother’s tonight, so I’m going to stay here.”

  I smiled. “Not how I pictured our first night together.”

  “We’ll have lots of nights together.” He kissed me again and then left the room. I heard him walk out the front door, but I didn’t want to go back into the kitchen so I sat on the couch and stared out the window into the lights from half a dozen police cars.

  Suddenly there was a voice behind me. “We need to make up the couch for Oliver,” Kennette said.

  “He’s staying?”

  “Yes. He’s very protective of your grandmother.” She smiled.

  “Jesse is staying too,” I told her. And I was suddenly very glad he was.

  “I don’t know where we’re all going to sleep.”

  I had a bigger question. With another dead woman washing ashore, this one only a few yards from the house, I wondered if we were going to sleep.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was more than an hour before Jesse came back to the house, and when he did, he was cold, tired, and in no mood to discuss the case. We had already decided that Kennette would stay with me in the guest room and Jesse would take the pullout sofa in Eleanor’s office, where Kennette had been sleeping. Oliver went to sleep on the couch in the living room, and Eleanor went to her room with Barney.

  By midnight the house was dark and quiet. Kennette was lightly snoring beside me and I was staring at the ceiling. How had Sandra ended up in the river right beside this house? The only logical explanation was that she had come to see someone, and the only someone she would have come to see was Oliver.

  I went over every detail of the evening but nothing was unusual until Kennette disappeared. Then I remembered something. It was small and probably meaningless but I had to check.

  I got out of bed as quietly as I could, though I had a feeling I could have jumped up and down and not woken Kennette. It was odd that she could sleep so peacefully when there was a killer on the loose.

  I crept into the hallway and noticed that the door to Eleanor’s office was open. It would have been fun, under different circumstances, to go to Jesse’s room and wake him up. But that would have to wait for another night. I moved down the stairs and into the hallway to the kitchen, then stopped cold when I saw the light was on.

  “Hungry?” Jesse was sitting at the table, staring at the back door.

  “No, just couldn’t sleep.”

  He nodded. “What was she like?”

  “Sandra?” I asked.

  I sat in the chair where Oliver had left his jacket, which still hung over the back. “She was . . .” I searched for the right word, “emotional.” Then I told him how I’d seen Sandra and Oliver together and how she had been crying. And I told him about the scene in the ladies’ room just days earlier.

  “You don’t think it was because she wasn’t a very good artist?”

  “The weird thing is that he praised her in class, over-the-top kind of praise. Something he didn’t do for anyone else.” I paused. “Except maybe Kennette, but Kennette is talented.”

  “And Sandra wasn’t.”

  “Not to the extent he said she was. And if he was telling her she was so good in class . . . ,” I started.

  “Why did he tell us she wasn’t?”

  I nodded and leaned back, slowly slipping my hand into the pocket of Oliver’s jacket.

  “It’s not in there.”

  I sat up, startled that I had been caught. “What’s not in there?” I tried to play dumb.

  Jesse smiled and opened his hand to reveal Oliver’s phone. “What did the text say?”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “Well you obviously do, or you wouldn’t have the phone,” I said. “And you must have noticed that he seemed unhappy about the text and then went out for a cigarette not ten minutes later. Maybe she told him that she was outside.”

  “That’s what I thought, but it says, ‘Too soon to talk. Needs more time.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “But you know it’s from Sandra?”

  “Don’t know that either.”

  I smiled. “Would you tell me if you did?”

  Jesse shrugged. “I might. You would have a better idea of who Sandra wanted to see.”

  “That’s just it. She could only have been coming to see Oliver.”

  “Except, how did she know he would be here?”

  “Well who else?”

  Jesse stared at me. I finally got what he was trying not to say. “You’re crazy. Kennette wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “You sure about that?” he asked.

  Back in bed I tossed and turned while one of Jesse’s prime suspects slept beside me. What did I really know about Kennette anyway? She never spoke about herself or her past. She didn’t seem to have one. And wasn’t it just as likely that Sandra was coming to the house to see Kennette—who lived here—as it was that she had come to see Oliver? I didn’t like what I was thinking.

  As soon as it was daylight, I got up and dressed. I wanted to take a walk down to the river and get as close to the crime scene as I could. I could hear Barney getting restless in Eleanor’s room so I let him out. He would make good cover in case Jesse or Oliver, or I guess Kennette, wondered what I was doing wandering around.

  But once outside, Barney had his own ideas. He didn’t seem interested in venturing out into the woods, and who could blame him? The snow was more than a foot deep, and after last night’s adventure, he’d probably had enough. But when I left Barney at the back porch so I could walk to the river, he started barking.

  “Shh,” I called back. Barney paced back and forth by the house. I knew the poor deaf dog couldn’t hear me, and he probably felt left out, but I need to have a look around, so I kept walking.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for. I thought maybe there would be a photo near this dead body the way there was by Lily. Maybe there was. But with all the snow it would have been hard to find. It was hard to find anything.

  I could see where the body had been pulled onto the bank from the river. I could see where the police had walked back and forth. I could see an area that had been cleared where Jesse and the others had searched for evidence. And when I closed my eyes, I could see Sandra’s
cold, dead eyes.

  Barney’s barking was getting louder. I knew I would have to go back or the whole house would be awake.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him as I petted his cold fur. “Did you go to the bathroom?”

  Barney just wagged and circled me excitedly. I tried to calm him, but he just kept jumping at me like we hadn’t seen each other for years. I bent down to quiet him, but instead he knocked me over onto the porch.

  “Okay, Barney.” It seems mean-spirited to get annoyed at doggy love, but I was getting annoyed. “If you don’t stop this, I’ll put you back in the house.”

  I struggled to get up, and as I did, I saw something. A dark spot on the white pillar holding up my grandmother’s porch. I untangled myself from the dog and went closer. It was just a bit above eye level, so I could get right up to it. It wasn’t just a dark spot, I realized. It had small clumps of something in it: hair. Long hair.

  “It’s blood,” Jesse said. I had gone back into the house and woken him up, but in doing so I seemed to have gotten everyone else up as well. Eleanor, Kennette, and Oliver all came out to see what I had found.

  “Is it from that poor girl?” Eleanor asked.

  “Maybe,” Jesse offered. “We’ll have to get the state police to send a blood-spatter expert.” He reached into his coat pocket for his phone and stopped. “Everyone just go back into the house. It’s freezing out here.”

  The others followed Jesse’s advice but I stayed outside. “If it is her blood, does it mean she hit her head on that post?” I asked.

  “Several times and very hard.”

  “Hard enough to kill her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But that would mean she was killed two feet from my back door.” I said.

  “Go inside, Nell.”

  “That’s not possible.” It didn’t make any sense. “We would have heard something,” I said.

  Jesse glanced at me, a look of slight irritation on his face. “I know you want to help, but just go inside. I have officers on the way who can deal with this.” He walked over to me and took my hand. “Let’s not speculate. Let’s just wait until we have answers.”