Christine had slammed out of the party, refusing Sloane’s attempts to take her home, asking a friend to drive her instead. The next day she’d broken off her engagement to Sloane. Less than a week later Dara had disappeared.
The phone rang and Christine awakened abruptly, Dara’s sneering face dancing vividly in front of her own. She jerked up in bed and grabbed the phone on her bedside table. “Yes? What is it?”
“Did I wake you?”
“No.” Christine always said no whether or not she’d been asleep, as if she felt guilty for not being alert at all times. “Who is this?”
“You were asleep or you’d know my voice. It’s Streak.” Streak Archer? Wilma’s son? And what time was it? Christine peered at the bedside clock. Twelve forty-five. “Chris, I’m with Jeremy,” he said urgently.
“Jeremy is downstairs in his room.”
“No, he isn’t. Now wake up and pay attention. He’s down at the bridge at Crescent Creek with the cat. I found him when I was jogging.”
“At the creek? What’s he doing?”
“Don’t ask questions. Just come. Your brother is more upset than I’ve ever seen him. He needs you now.”
CHAPTER 4
1
Christine bolted from bed, pulled on jeans, a sweatshirt, and a jacket, and rushed to her car. The constant rain of the last four days had stopped, but she didn’t notice. The streets were nearly deserted, mist creating halos around streetlights. The Prince home was only a half-mile from her own. She passed its large brick facade and saw two lights burning, one in Ames’s study and another in Patricia’s bedroom. Patricia had probably retreated to her room to let Ames suffer alone. Or maybe he’d sent her away. Ames couldn’t bear for people to see him as anything but strong and controlled.
Christine turned down Crescent Creek Road, a narrow asphalt lane that ran beside Ames’s property. Only three small homes sat along the lane before the asphalt stopped and the gravel began. Her light car, a blue Dodge Neon, bounced over the road damaged by the heavy rain of the last week and a hard winter. Some trees appeared on either side of the road, mostly small locusts. She rounded the final curve leading down to the creek. Here the trees and undergrowth were denser, everything gleaming moistly in her headlights. She stopped the car, put on her emergency brake, and stepped out onto a slick patch of mud and gravel. Immediately she spotted leaning against a tree the ten-speed bike Jeremy kept at her house.
“Christine.” She looked up to see Streak Archer in a running suit. At fifty-three he looked at least ten years older, with thick, silver hair and deep lines running across his forehead and down his cheeks. A scar bisected his right eyebrow. His real name was Robert, but people had called him Streak since he’d been the fastest thing anyone had ever seen on the Winston High School track team.
“Where’s Jeremy?” she asked anxiously. “Is he all right?”
Streak came to her and put his hands on her shoulders, gazing at her with his sad, hooded eyes. “He’s not hurt and he’s calming down some. I’m just glad I had my cell phone with me. I hate the damned thing, but Mom made me promise I’d carry it when I ran in case I ever got hurt in some desolate spot.” He smiled wryly. “Guess she knew best. It came in handy.”
Streak was the son of Wilma Archer, who had been in the store earlier that day. Streak and Ames Prince had been friends since childhood, when a young, lonely Ames had found comfort in the Archers’ warm, noisy, openly loving home so unlike his own with his austere father and invalid mother. Wilma was like a mother to him and Streak like a brother.
“Jeremy is upset about Dara, isn’t he?” Christine asked tensely.
“Yes. Mom called and told me about their finding the body, then about Ames identifying it as Dara’s.”
“Jeremy got very upset in the store when he found out about the body, but later this evening at my house he calmed down. Then Ames called. Jeremy seemed unnerved but under control. Maybe he was too calm when he went to bed. I should have known that was a bad sign.”
“When I found him he was sobbing, throwing petals from silk flowers in the creek, saying he was sorry and talking about a dream with dark water and not being able to see or breathe.”
Dread washed over Christine. “Apparently that’s a recurring nightmare. He’s mentioned the dream a couple of times since Dara disappeared, but he didn’t seem too distressed by it, and frankly, I didn’t pay much attention. Today he went into more detail about it. It’s awful.” She sighed. “Streak, sometimes it’s hard to know what’s bothering him. He’ll get upset over something trivial but not say a word about something that deeply troubles him like this dream. He must have had it again tonight and it set him off.”
“I think you’re right.”
“I need to see him.”
“Sure you do.” Streak put his arm around her. “Watch your step. This gravel in the mud is treacherous.”
“I’m surprised you’re out jogging tonight.”
“I jog every night unless there’s pelting rain or a snowstorm. Helps keep my own nightmares away.”
Nightmares of Vietnam, Christine knew. Streak had been only nineteen when news came from an exotic place called Qui Nhon that he’d been shot in the head and the bullet had lodged in his brain. He was sent from the field hospital to Saigon, and although he was alive, doctors warned there was next to no hope. Ames told Christine that a deeply religious Wilma had spent all her time in church and Streak’s father had put in compulsive eighteen-hour days working the farm while they waited for the inevitable news that their son had died. But Streak had hung on, although doctors again warned that if he survived, he would be brain-damaged, maybe little more than a living corpse.
Streak was eventually sent to Hawaii, where he continued to astonish everyone by gradually recovering, struggling through an agonizing rehabilitation where he relearned to walk, to feed himself, and to talk. Fourteen months later he returned to Winston with the only visible signs of his experience being a couple of scars on his forehead and a mane of silver hair that had been black two years earlier. But he had changed in a way that was not immediately noticeable. He suffered memory lapses and was plagued by insomnia. He endured shattering migraines. Most shocking was that the once-gregarious Streak was now taciturn, growing distraught and suffering panic attacks in the crowds he’d once loved. During one boisterous surprise welcome home party thrown by some rowdy old friends, Streak had started to sweat and shake and ended the evening curled in a corner, whimpering. So people said he’d gotten strange and a little scary, and they left him alone.
That had been a long time ago, but he’d never lost his new love of solitude. Now he was close only to his family and to Ames, along with some contact with Jeremy and Christine. Streak spent his days at home designing brilliant computer programs, providing himself with a very healthy income, and a good part of his nights he filled with jogging to keep at bay nightmares of his horrifying injury and the hell of his recovery.
Christine and Streak started down the slope to the bridge. They’d only gone a few feet when Jeremy ran toward Christine with an odd lumbering gait she’d only seen him use a few times when he was distraught. “Christy!” he cried, enfolding her in his strong arms. “Dara is dead.”
“I know, honey.” She patted his back. “But Dara has been gone a long time. We knew it was possible she was dead.”
“But Ames got those letters, so I thought maybe she didn’t die. If she didn’t send those letters, who did?”
“I’m sure everyone would like to know that,” Christine answered.
“She used to be real nice to me sometimes. She’d tell me about magic. And she sang with me on my machine.”
“Your karaoke machine?” Christine asked. He nodded. “I didn’t know that.”
“She sang really pretty. But she’d get the giggles.”
His eyes filled with tears again and Christine took his hand. “Jeremy, why did you bring Rhiannon and come here in the middle of the night?”
Jer
emy drew back and gave her a long intense look, his eyes troubled. “Because this is the last place where Dara was. She brought her boom box. Then she was gone.”
2
Christine’s heart gave an uncomfortable thud. Streak’s brown gaze met hers over Jeremy’s shoulder. “Jeremy, you don’t know that Dara disappeared from this spot. No one knows where Dara was before she . . . disappeared.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
Jeremy frowned. “ ’Cause Dara was upset. She’d been upset a couple of days. And the evening she went away, she was real upset.”
Christine searched his face. “Jeremy, I don’t remember Dara being upset.”
“You prob’ly didn’t even see her. But I saw her leaving the house with Rhiannon and her boom box. She always took her boom box to the creek.”
Christine’s anxiety grew. “You told everyone you didn’t see her that night.”
“I said I didn’t talk to her, and I didn’t. But I knew where she was going because of the boom box and it being Black Moon night and everything.” Jeremy hung his head. “I did say Dara might be at the creek. Remember? We went and looked and she wasn’t there.” His expression grew even more troubled. “Later, when she didn’t show up at all, I knew I should’ve told about her being upset, but it seemed too late then. People would have thought I was making it up. But I came back here and looked a hundred times.”
“Jeremy, just because Dara came to the creek that evening doesn’t mean she disappeared from here,” Christine said, trying to sound calm.
“But it is the place where she left.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Jeremy looked miserable. “I don’t know, Christy. It’s a feeling, that’s all. At least, I think that’s all. I can’t really explain what it is.”
Oh, dear God, Christine thought in despair as her hands grew cold. Was Jeremy merely experiencing a vague feeling of guilt because he hadn’t been completely honest at the time of Dara’s disappearance? Or was he dredging up a dark memory of what had happened to her the last night she’d been seen alive?
3
“Jeremy, you don’t know that Dara disappeared from this spot,” Christine repeated slowly and emphatically, emphasizing the word disappeared so as not to upset him even more with the word murdered. “I don’t want you to tell anyone that you know she definitely was here.”
“Why not?”
“Because it could be misleading,” she said quickly, feeling Streak’s gaze on her.
Jeremy’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”
“Look, Jeremy, maybe she did come down here with her boom box before you went next door to play Ping-Pong at the Torrance house with Danny.”
Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. That’s when she left.”
“Okay, let me finish. Let’s say she came down here, but it started to rain and before you came home from Danny’s, she went back to the house. Maybe she was really upset about something and she’d decided to leave home. You know she was always threatening to run away.” Like a nine-year-old, not a nineteen-year-old, Christine thought. “She came back and no one was home, so she packed up some of her clothes. You know things were missing from her room—things she would take if she were leaving. And she wrote the good-bye note. You saw it. Then she had someone pick her up in a car. They picked her up at the house, Jeremy, not here.”
“Nobody ever said they picked her up.”
“She could have sworn them to secrecy, made a secret pact. Remember when we used to make secret pacts?”
“Yeah.” Jeremy was not to be placated so easily, though. “But we were kids. Grown-ups don’t make pacts so much, and everybody knew how scared Ames was that she might be dead, so they wouldn’t have told him they took Dara away from the house.” Jeremy shook his head vehemently. “Nobody helped Dara run away, and I know this is the last place she was.”
Christine stared at her brother, panic racing through her. Three years ago when Dara disappeared, Sheriff Buck Teague and some other Winston citizens were suspicious of Jeremy. Many people knew he’d had a crush on Dara. And Jeremy was big. And retarded, they said. Who knew what a big retarded guy might do if he was rejected, angered, hurt? Ames had quieted a lot of the speculation by letting it be known Dara constantly talked of leaving Winston and that many of her clothes and possessions were missing. He’d also told everyone of his acquaintance about the first letter he’d received supposedly from Dara postmarked Miami, Florida. Wilma Archer had also spread the word to her many friends, but Christine knew not everyone was convinced Jeremy Ireland had not harmed Dara. Now he was insisting he knew where Dara had been on her last night in Winston, which would certainly stir up old suspicions. Dangerous suspicions.
Fear for her brother struck so deep that suddenly Christine couldn’t speak. She stood staring at him while he looked back with an injured expression growing in his blue eyes. Christine could have kissed Streak when he said easily, “Jeremy, why don’t we just hang around the creek for a while and talk? It’s quit raining and the stars are out. And you’ve got Rhiannon with you. Let’s make this a fun midnight adventure.”
Jeremy hung his head. “I don’t feel like having fun.”
“Oh, come on, I know you like adventures.” Streak took Jeremy’s arm and began walking toward the creek with him. “I think looking at a flooded creek at night in the moonlight is really cool. Don’t you?”
“I guess,” Jeremy said listlessly, as if all the emotion had abruptly drained out of him.
“Don’t you think it’s cool, Christine?” Streak prodded.
“Oh yes,” she said tonelessly, following them to the creek bank. “Sort of spooky cool. Jeremy loves spooky cool things.”
“Like on TV,” Jeremy said with a tad more enthusiasm.
“Yeah, like on TV. I love having exciting experiences like the ones on TV,” Streak went on, knowing that cajoling Jeremy out of a mood took patience and verbal repetition.
“Don’t you feel sad that Dara might be dead?” Jeremy asked Streak.
“Right now I’m not thinking of Dara. I’m having fun.”
“I’ve heard people say you’re weird and you don’t like to have fun.”
Jeremy with his complete honesty and lack of tact, Christine thought, hoping Streak wouldn’t take offense.
But he laughed. “Jeremy, some people say lots of things that aren’t true. The people who say I don’t like to have fun have probably never even met me.”
“People say things about me, too. They say I’m stupid.”
“Those are the people we ignore. What they say can’t hurt us.” Streak pointed at the creek. “Look how high it is.”
“And still,” Christine said. “You expect rushing water in a flood.”
“The water from creeks does rush into the river until the river gets so full, it backs up the creeks like a big plug. The more the Ohio River rises, the more water will be forced back into Crescent Creek.”
Which meant Dara could have been killed in this very spot, thrown in the creek, and remained trapped there until the rushing water of this flood carried her into the river. And once the river had made its awful delivery, it was coming back into the creek, Christine thought fearfully. Jeremy could be right. This could have been the site where Dara had died. Or rather, been murdered.
Christine shuddered and forced thoughts of the possible logistics of Dara’s murder from her mind. Moonlight shimmered on the dark water that was higher than Christine had ever seen it. Not that she’d seen it often. She’d always avoided this place. Something about it made her edgy, as if she were intruding on sacred ground. The feeling probably came from the stories Dara had told her and Jeremy about the Mound Builders who had lived on the other side of the creek.
Christine had crossed the bridge on foot only twice with Dara to look at the mounds built by the Indians hundreds of years ago, and each time she’d been unnerved, although she tried to hide her apprehension from Dara. Dara would have laug
hed at her with good reason. No ghosts of ancient Mound Builders lurked around protecting their burial grounds. Still, Christine hated the creek and the peninsula on the other side. Unfortunately, Jeremy had always seemed as drawn to it as Dara had been. And now he was vehemently declaring he knew this quiet, gloomy spot was the last place Dara had been. Christine shivered.
“What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked.
“I’m a little chilly,” Christine said.
Jeremy frowned. “But you’re wearing a sweatshirt and jacket. I don’t think it’s cold. Do you, Streak?”
“I’m not freezing or anything, Jeremy,” Christine lied, knowing it wasn’t the temperature but her conscience that turned her hands and neck icy. For years Christine had not let herself think about the time immediately before Dara’s disappearance when she had allowed her long resentment of the selfish, spoiled girl to boil over at the party where Dara had flirted with and fondled Christine’s fiancé, Sloane Caldwell, and he had not resisted. Afterward, she’d treated Dara with cold and self-righteous disdain, publicly blaming Dara for having to break her engagement. She’d hated herself for the lie because she’d realized for some time that she didn’t love Sloane. She’d been looking for an acceptable excuse to break off with that generous and intelligent man who would have given her a steady, comfortable life, but whose dominating personality would have suffocated her.
When Dara caused the scene and Sloane allowed it to happen and said nothing, Christine had jumped at the convenient justification for canceling the upcoming marriage. Ironically, Dara had done her a favor, but everyone except Jeremy had been mad at Dara. Christine had been ashamed by her manipulation of the circumstances, in spite of years of Dara’s hauteur and slights, but she’d played the hand and was still playing it when Dara vanished only days later. Now Christine’s guilt over the incident came flooding back like the dark, dirty water of the creek. She knew she’d wronged Dara. She knew she’d never find peace within her own mind until she’d tried in some way to make amends. But how did you do that when the one you’d wronged was dead?
If She Should Die Page 6
