Silence on Cold River

by Casey Dunn

  “Why does it all matter right now?” Lindsey asked, her voice suddenly firm. “Is it because of what happened to you? You think you got shot by a stranger because you defend guilty people?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Ama Chaplin I know doesn’t think the world works that way,” Lindsey said.

  “I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore. I know how that sounds. God, I know how that sounds.” Ama tsked at herself. “I set out to put the system on trial, to force it to be better, to shine a light on all the trapdoors innocent people can fall through. And for all these years, I’ve felt like whatever hurt I’ve caused other people along the way was just the price of doing business, the cost of revealing a larger truth. What if, all this time, I’ve been dead fucking wrong?”

  Lindsey watched her for a minute. “I’ve seen you lose cases. I’ve seen you put the fear of God in the minds of monsters. I’ve seen you pull out that newspaper article in your bottom desk drawer from the day your father was convicted and stare at it for your entire lunch break. But I have never seen you question yourself or why you do what you do.

  “Because you are good, better than good, which means you force prosecutors to work harder, you force the system to honor our most basic foundational principal in a court of law: innocent until proven guilty That is the beginning, Ama. That’s the only thing that matters. I don’t know what you’re going through, but I know you well enough to see that whatever this is, it isn’t just about you and it isn’t just about your dad. I think it has something to do with whatever really happened in Tarson Woods. I know you won’t tell me everything, and that’s okay. You don’t have to. But if you want me to help you, you do have to tell me what you actually need.”

  Ama looked at the circle of evidence as if seeing it for the first time. Innocent until proven guilty. She of all people understood how sometimes evidence lied, how every single finger and test and lead could point to someone innocent. She couldn’t change the outcome of her father’s trial from the floor of this motel, and even if she stumbled upon irrefutable proof her father had been innocent, he was dead. There was no changing that.

  Had she launched herself into his trial because it seemed easier, less overwhelming, than finding Michael and Hazel? Their case—her case—was over her head and out of her league, no question. But then whose league did it belong in? The justice system had failed to convict Michael, and this town had been staring at his face for two years and had no idea. She couldn’t hand off the one chance to bring him down and bring Hazel back alive to the department that kept fucking it up.

  With a start, the simplest of truths presented itself to Ama: she was putting herself, her life, her work, on trial. But Lindsey was right—Ama knew exactly who she was, and that value wasn’t something she was willing to put on trial for anyone. Guilty people didn’t go free because the defense was too good; they walked because the prosecution hadn’t been good enough.

  “Lindsey…” Ama trailed off and clamped her teeth briefly down on her lip, organizing her thoughts, focusing them ahead instead of in the past. The fundraiser was still the best option she could think of to draw Michael out of hiding and into the public eye; her instincts hadn’t been wrong there. But if Martin was right about the timing of the news article, he was also right about the event being too late for Hazel. Even if the AJC agreed to delay the story, she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t tease it somewhere. The date of the event would have to be moved to this Saturday. At least she hadn’t sent off the press releases yet. She could only hope that with more money, the promise of press, Lindsey’s ability to talk people into anything, and the opportunity to look like good Samaritans, everyone would be willing to accelerate the logistics.

  “I’m not going to tell you everything,” Ama began again.

  “That’s okay,” Lindsey said. “I’m used to it. Just tell me enough.”

  MICHAEL Chapter 62 | 8:35 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  I SPRINT DOWN ONE LAST hill, darting between trees, and burst into the field surrounding the factory. Overhead, the clouds part and I am spotlighted by the moon, which washes the wet, dead grass in a silver glow. Mist rises from the damp earth, swallowing me from all sides, hiding me from anyone peering down from higher ground.

  I have lost Ama for now, but it would appear I have not lost all favor with Lady Fate. Protect yourself, protect our work, she seems to say.

  When Eddie appeared in the dark, I thought I was seeing things the way I saw Timmy’s ghost on the bank of Cold River. Then Eddie spoke, fired the gun, the blast tearing apart the dark, echoing in the chambers of my ears. How could I not have foreseen that this piece would be the most challenging, that Lady Fate would make sure I earned it?

  I laugh in spite of myself as I pry open the cap to the underground bunker. The harder this becomes, the more opposition we face, the closer we must be to the most perfect song.

  I steal down the ladder and crack open the main door. Hazel sleeps huddled in the corner between the concrete wall and the metal shelving unit. Her forehead rests on her knees. Her elbows frame the sides of her face, and her shackled wrists swing back in forth in tiny movements, pitched and dangling ahead of her like a diver leaning over the side of a pool.

  I creep across the floor to retrieve Hazel’s recorder from the counter. Then I walk back out of the bunker, leaving the door open a hair. I climb up the ladder just high enough to peer aboveground and make sure no one has ventured this way. I am still alone, cloaked in fog and night. I rewind Hazel’s tape to the very beginning, then move my thumb over the play button. This is a risk, but it is one I need to take. If I play this and Hazel—the real Hazel underground, chained to my wall—makes a sound, we will have to leave here, and I will have to trust that Ama will come back to me another way, another time. But if I play this and Hazel remains silent, then we are meant to stay, and Lady Fate will take care of the rest.

  I draw a breath, hold it, and press play.

  “Hazel!” Eddie’s recorded voice sails across the field, spills down the tunnel, slides through the crack I left in the door. I notch the volume louder. “Hazel! Ha-zy?”

  Eddie’s voice pleads with her absence. I remember the day I recorded it, as we searched the same area where he’d caught Ama and I just now, how I hoped he wouldn’t realize I wasn’t calling out for Hazel, too.

  From inside the bunker, I hear the chain knock against the metal pipe frame of the shelving unit, the scuffle of Hazel’s feet drawing under her.

  “Hazel! Can you hear me? Hazel!”

  I lean into the hole, ear turned and straining to detect the smallest whisper, but Hazel remains true to her vow of silence. If Eddie really was up here, treading across this field, crying out for his daughter, she wouldn’t answer.

  All things for a reason.

  Lady Fate was right to condition Hazel to silence. When will I stop second-guessing the process just because it isn’t happening on my schedule?

  We can stay, and Ama’s time is now. All I have to do is wait for Fate to shine her light. I shake my head at myself, relief spreading through me cool and tingling, and lower myself back into the earth.

  EDDIE Chapter 63 | 9:00 AM, December 6, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  EDDIE WAS NEARLY ASLEEP ON the couch when Martin swung open his door. Since they’d begun investigating the case, Eddie had taken to sleeping during the morning. He’d worked nights before and was well practiced at snatching sleep when he could, but between the sleeping arrangements and Hazel’s case on the forefront of his mind of every waking minute, sleep seemed as evasive as the criminal they were hunting. He couldn’t turn it off, and even if he tried, he’d be so overridden with guilt that he’d never be able to get comfortable enough to doze off.

  After he’d gone the first two days there without a wink of sleep, he’d finally found a way to make his mind hold Hazel close and let go of consciousness at the same time. He would close his eyes and conjure the trail along Cold River in his min
d. He imagined her walking behind him, where he could hear but not see her, and he counted her footsteps, one-two, one-two. At last, the office fell away and he walked through dreams with his daughter.

  If only he could see her. But even in his dreams, he couldn’t turn around, couldn’t find her face or feel her breath, and when he woke, he would realize it was his own heartbeat he had been listening to. Waking up began to feel like dying anew.

  Eddie sat up, alarm coursing through him. “What happened?” he asked, and in the split second it took Martin to answer, Eddie’s mind filled with the two worst possibilities: they’d found Hazel’s body, or they’d found proof that whoever had her had left Tarson.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Martin said, and his face sagged. Eddie noticed how tired he looked, how gray, and he wondered if that was Martin’s worst possibility: that nothing would ever be found. “But I want to go look for something in Tarson Woods, and I’ll need your help to find it.”

  Eddie practically leaped from his seat on the couch. He hadn’t been out of the station since he’d been processed, hadn’t seen the sun or breathed fresh air. He wondered if it would feel different outside the same way the confirmed possibility of Hazel still being alive changed everything inside, and he realized he felt alive again, too.

  “Put this on,” Martin said, and tossed Eddie a navy blue hoodie with an emblem from the Savannah Police Department. “It’ll be too small, but this way you aren’t walking around the woods in prison scrubs. Plus it frosted overnight. You’re going to want an extra layer.”

  Eddie’s heart sank, his elation with it. Hazel would be out in this cold somewhere. He doubted she was being held somewhere soft and warm. Someone who would abduct and keep another person probably wasn’t too concerned with their comfort, especially if Martin’s contact out of Savannah had ended up in the same hands as whoever had Hazel. He flinched at the thought, closed his eyes against the pictures resurfacing in his mind of Toni Hargrove’s crime scene.

  “You okay? We don’t have to go anywhere,” Martin said.

  “No, it’s not that. This… this whole thing gets harder, the closer it feels. Even though you think she could still be alive after a year, every minute that passes I feel like I’m running out of time,” Eddie admitted.

  “I think that’s true for every case, every time. The closer I feel, the closer an inevitable collapse feels.”

  “Do they usually collapse?”

  Martin studied Eddie for ten seconds before answering. “There’s nothing usual about this case,” he finally said. Then he quickly turned away, leaving Eddie to wonder if there was something in his expression Martin didn’t want Eddie to see.

  Eddie followed Martin through the precinct to the parking lot. He wasn’t in handcuffs, but he was still wearing his jailhouse grays under Martin’s sweatshirt. He felt freer than he had in a year, but he still didn’t feel comfortable deviating left or right without asking. When they reached Martin’s car, he waited by the back door, unsure whether he could touch it.

  “What are you doing?” Martin asked, then recognition washed over his face. “Hop in the front.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Eddie looked around the empty parking lot, feeling exposed, vulnerable. What if they got separated and Eddie was found in the woods by someone who didn’t believe him?

  “I need you to tell me the best way to get to that stone hutch where you found Hazel’s ring. I don’t know how to get there, and I don’t want a bunch of uniformed cops crawling all over the woods for various reasons.”

  “What are you looking for?” Eddie asked.

  “Toni’s ring. But that stays between you and me,” he said, and disappeared inside the car and started the engine. Eddie hesitated, mind reeling, pulse soaring, and then he slipped into the passenger seat and locked the door behind him.

  They drove in silence, Eddie pointing whenever Martin needed to make a turn. They pulled off the paved road onto a gravel road, brush overgrowing the edges. Martin glanced over at him, his face a question mark.

  “This goes to the old factory. The little hutch is still about a mile in, and we’re going to have to cross Cold River, but there’s a big tree that fell across in one spot, or we can just walk across where it’s about hip-deep, if you don’t mind getting wet,” Eddie explained.

  “And this is the best way?” Martin raised a brow.

  “We could drive to the other side, and it’d be about a six-mile walk. Up to you.”

  Eddie had a pretty good idea of what Martin would choose, knowing Martin wouldn’t want to draw a lot of attention or spend more time than necessary on the trail. Eddie also wasn’t about to tell Martin about the little footpath they could’ve accessed from the county courthouse, which would’ve been just a half-mile walk from the courthouse parking lot across fairly flat terrain to the little hutch. Eddie had picked this way because he wanted to get a good look at the factory in daylight. The big, silent building made the hair on the back of his neck rise every time he came near its shadow, and even though it had been searched top to bottom twice when Hazel disappeared, Eddie always felt her there, swore she’d be right behind him when he turned around.

  “I’ll get wet,” Martin said, and Eddie was clotheslined with both relief and reawakened nervousness. He remembered how spooked the officers seemed every time they stepped inside the concrete walls, as if they were disturbing an ancient graveyard. Eddie was more nervous about the living. What if whoever had Hazel was watching from the factory, saw Eddie traipsing across the field, then took Hazel, and vanished?

  Eddie realized, with a sinking, gasping feeling, that he assumed whoever had Hazel would know Eddie on sight, would have known him before, and one name kept surfacing in his mind: Jonathon Walks. For the first time, he was grateful that Martin hadn’t given him back his phone, or he may have called Jonathon, just to see if he got a feeling one way or the other. If Martin was right, one little phone call could tip him off and send him and Hazel out of Tarson.

  They parked the car alongside the chain-link fence. Eddie pulled the hood over his head before stepping out of the car. It felt colder here than at the station, the sun blocked by elevation and trees, the wind sliding down the mountain, but his skin felt like it was on fire, his blood nearly boiling in his veins. Without a word, he walked into the woods, this time with Martin trailing behind.

  They climbed the first rise, weaving between trees.

  “We’re not on a path,” Martin said.

  “Didn’t think you’d want to run into anyone,” Eddie answered. “And didn’t you ever hear that the shortest path between two points is a straight line?”

  Martin, save his labored breathing, stayed quiet the rest of the way.

  It felt strange to be in these woods without calling out for someone. The only sounds were the rustling leaves under their feet and birds chirping overhead.

  They reached the little stone hutch, the door propped open, and for a moment Eddie froze. What if a new piece of jewelry sat waiting for them atop the earth? What would it mean for Hazel? He wondered if Ama escaping gave Hazel a better chance, that whoever had her—not Jonathon, he wouldn’t commit to that yet—would keep her alive longer having lost his next victim. He would be enraged, Eddie realized. The reality of what Hazel might be facing struck him square in the chest, and he doubled over, catching his hands on his knees.

  Martin’s feet appeared next to his, and Eddie felt his hand on his back, light and unsure.

  “Go sit,” Martin said. “I can take it from here.”

  Eddie propped himself against the outside of the hutch as the spinning sensation faded, and he watched Martin maneuver through the door. He listened to Martin push aside leaves with his foot, then the sounds turned softer, and Eddie imagined he was prying at the earth with his fingers.

  “Find anything?” he called to Martin.

  “No. Wishing I brought a shovel right about now.”

  “How far down are you going to dig?” Eddie asked
.

  “Until I find something.”

  Eddie peered into the hutch, saw Martin’s streaked face, brown fingers. He saw himself in Martin’s eyes, the desperation, the need, the regret.

  “Let’s take turns, then,” Eddie said.

  They dug all morning, layer after layer of earth coming out of the hutch. The sweat and exertion made Eddie drive harder, grateful for the feeling of doing something, watching the hole grow. Martin, on the other hand, seemed to grow more agitated and less committed with every turn. As the sun began its slide toward the west horizon, Martin emerged from the hutch with defeat hanging off his face, pulling on his shoulders.

  “Nothing,” he said. He planted his knuckles at his waist and tilted his head to the sky.

  Eddie wondered if he was having a few choice words with whatever higher power he believed in. He knew that look, knew that talk. He’d had them both out here at least a hundred times.

  “Let me have one last go,” Eddie said, and was squeezing through the propped door before Martin could disagree. He dug like a man possessed, chipping away at harder ground with the sharp end of a rock. A chunk of dirt broke off, and he pulled it away. Beneath it, something silver caught his eye. He reached into the soil, not daring to hope, unwilling to alert Martin until he was sure. The first object was a silver spoon, the kind used to ladle soup or punch. He set it in his lap, then felt around the fresh hole with numb fingers, unearthing several silver coins. He brushed the dirt off of one well enough to read the year: 1980. Old, but not remarkably so.

  He breathed out a sigh and rocked back on his heels, his bad knee throbbing for want to stand. One more go, he told himself, and reached inside again, tilling the earth with his hands. Something round and hard passed between his fingers, and he plucked it from the dirt. The piece of silver was like the threaded end of a screw, but on its head was a dished, metal plate. He’d seen these before, a decade before, when Hazel started learning how to play a violin. It was a tuning peg she used to change the tension on the string. Nine years old, and she’d had to teach Eddie how to do it.