The Current

by Tim Johnston

  But she wouldn’t turn to look at him—she was looking straight ahead and she was looking at something more than just the road, and when he looked he saw it too: a white SUV parked in the driveway near the farmhouse, and he knew the SUV because it was the sheriff’s 2014 Chevy Tahoe.

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “It’s OK Momma.”

  She turned into the drive and pulled up behind the SUV and put the car in park and cut the engine. They could see the sheriff looking at them in his rearview. Then the sheriff stepped out, putting his hat on, and walked toward them, and Rachel opened her own door and got to her feet and stood holding on to the door.

  “Evening, folks,” the sheriff said, nodding to her and then to Marky, who stood behind her now, somehow, a presence felt more than seen, his breaths blowing by in white clouds. “Mrs. Young?” the sheriff said, and she tried to say yes but all of her attention was on his hand, watching to see if he would raise it to his hatbrim and remove the hat from his head. He didn’t do it. But neither did he give her any indication that he’d not driven out here to rip her heart from her chest.

  He said, “Hey, Marky,” and Marky said, “Hey Sheriff Halsey,” and the sheriff began to say how sorry he was to just show up like this but he’d tried to call and—

  “Sheriff,” she said. “What’s happened?”

  “Well, ma’am, that’s a good question. All I know is I’ve got an abandoned vehicle about a half-mile mile shy of the Mississippi with plates that are registered to Daniel Paul Young of Amarillo Texas, whom I believe is your son. Your other son.”

  “What kind of vehicle Sheriff Halsey?” said Marky.

  The sheriff looked at him, and Rachel said, “He asked what kind of vehicle.”

  “A dark-blue Ford F-150, two thousand and one.”

  “XLT?” said Marky.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Four-by-four?” said Marky.

  “Yes, sir, I believe that’s right.”

  “That’s Danny’s truck Momma.”

  She was holding on to the door, but the door too began to sway and she stepped back until she felt her son’s chest against her and she found his hand and gripped it and he gripped back.

  “What else, Sheriff?” she said.

  “Well, I was hoping you might tell me. The keys were in the truck and it started right up, hadn’t run out of gas or anything like that. No flat tires.” The sheriff glanced down, then looked up again. “Mrs. Young, when did your son get back in town?”

  She had to think a moment. “A week ago?” she said, looking at Marky.

  “Eight days ago Sheriff it was Sunday night he was here when we came home.”

  Rachel repeated this, and the sheriff nodded. “And did either of you notice anything about the condition of his truck then?”

  “The condition of his truck?”

  “Any, ah, holes in it, that you saw?”

  “Holes, Sheriff?” Her heart was crashing. “More than one—?”

  He looked at her. “You know about that, ma’am?”

  “I know somebody took a shot at him in the park.”

  “Momma—”

  “What park was that, ma’am?”

  “Henry Sibley.”

  The sheriff stared at her. His lawman’s mind working. “Did he have any idea who shot at him?”

  She shook her head. Then she said, “No.” Seeing that rifle in Gordon’s kitchen, beside the refrigerator.

  But he wouldn’t do that . . . He wouldn’t.

  The sheriff was silent. Marky silent too, breathing heavily behind her. Then the sheriff said, “Well, there’s just the one hole, and not anywhere near the cab, and there’s no other signs of foul play, nothing to indicate any harm has come to him personally. His things are packed up in the cab shipshape and—”

  Blood, he meant. He meant there was no blood.

  “—it looks for all the world like he just pulled over and either got in some other vehicle or else went afoot across the bridge into Wisconsin. Ordinarily I wouldn’t get too worked up about an abandoned vehicle, but your son is no ordinary case, not around here, anyway. And there’s that bullet hole. So I came out here hoping he’d called and told you where he’s at. But clearly he hasn’t.”

  “I’ve been calling him all day,” she said, “but he hasn’t answered.”

  “Momma I have to show Sheriff Halsey the letter now.”

  The sheriff looked at him. “Letter—?”

  “Danny wrote a letter Sheriff Halsey and told me to give it to you if he didn’t call first to say he was OK it’s upstairs in my room. I’m sorry Momma he made me promise not to tell you—” And he’d begun to go but Rachel held him in place by the hand.

  “It’s not in your room, Marky, it’s in my purse.” Then to the sheriff she said, “Sheriff, do you want to come inside out of the cold?”

  53

  The light was blinking again and she hurried to it, and once again it wasn’t him, it wasn’t Danny; it was the sheriff who’d come in behind her.

  She erased the message and slipped the handset into her coat pocket. She put the kettle on the burner and got down the mugs, then she walked out of the kitchen and went upstairs to the bathroom. Took off her coat to sit down, and put it back on again after, checking her face in the mirror, white as a ghost, frightened old woman, slapping her cheeks a little and then coming back down the stairs and by the time she walked back into the kitchen the sheriff had given the last page of the letter to Marky, and Marky was reading it slowly as the sheriff sat staring at the white square of cloth where it lay before him on the table. He’d taken off his hat when he walked in but he still wore his jacket, and Marky wore his too.

  “I forgot to light the burner,” she said, and the sheriff said, “Don’t bother with that,” and his voice startled her—loud in the kitchen in a way she hadn’t noticed outdoors. As if he’d decided she might be hard of hearing.

  She sat down across from him. She took the handset from her coat pocket and set it on the table next to Marky’s cell phone. One of the two would ring any second now. One of them would.

  They waited for Marky to finish reading the letter. His lips moved when he read and the small noises his lips made were the only sounds. Finally he put the last sheet of stationery down and sat looking at the square of cloth. She could see him shuffling the parts of the story around and around in his head, how he wanted to fit them all together before he’d say anything.

  The sheriff ran his hand through his hair slowly, front to back, and returned his hand to the table. He looked at the sheets of stationery and after a while he tapped them with his fingertips and said to her, “You didn’t show this to anyone else besides Gordon Burke?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And he handled this piece of cloth?”

  “He touched it. Just a little.”

  “And you’ve handled it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so has Danny,” said the sheriff.

  “And so has the person who put that girl in the river,” she said weakly.

  “Yes, if that is, in fact, the pocket from her blouse.” He shook his head. He blew the air from his lungs as a smoker would. “I had a bad feeling about all this the second that girl stepped into my office.”

  “What girl?”

  “Audrey Sutter. Tom Sutter’s daughter. The girl who—”

  “I know who she is. She came to talk to me too.”

  “Me too,” said Marky, and they both looked at him.

  “What did she say, Marky?”

  “She wanted to know did I know where Danny was Momma. She said she wanted to help him.”

  “That’s all?” Rachel said.

  “She asked me to give Danny her number when he called.”

  “She didn’t say anything about Katie Goss?”

  “No Momma I don’t think she knows Katie Goss.”

  “Katie Goss?” said the sheriff. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “That girl,�
� Rachel said, “Audrey Sutter, she went up to Rochester to talk to her.”

  “And why did she do that?”

  “Because someone told her to.”

  The sheriff looked at her. “Someone told her to.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did Katie Goss have to say?”

  Rachel glanced at Marky and turned back to the sheriff. “Something I think you already know about,” she said.

  He looked at her darkly and for a long time. Then he said, “Tell you what I know about Katie Goss. I know some friend of hers told a story got back to Sheriff Sutter, back then ten years ago, but when he went out to talk to her, to Miss Goss, she had no idea what he was talking about. I know her story doesn’t even qualify as a story, legally speaking, unless she’s all of a sudden changed her mind about telling it. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No,” said Rachel. “But she might change her mind, if the Holly Burke case were reopened.”

  “And why would the Holly Burke case be reopened?”

  “Because of this!” she all but cried, picking up the sheets of stationery. “Because of that pocket.”

  “That,” said the sheriff, nodding at the letter, “is one humdinger of a story, but that’s all it is, at the moment. And as for the pocket, even if it does match the blouse, it’s ten years old and has been handled by half the county by now. I don’t mean to be harsh about it, Mrs. Young, but those are the facts of the situation here. So far it’s your son’s story against the sheriff’s, with no other witnesses and only this piece of cloth, which your son has kept hidden all this time—an unfortunate move on his part, I’m sorry to say, as even the world’s sorriest prosecutor would point out that that is a practice consistent not with innocent men but with guilty ones.”

  “Danny didn’t have nothing to do with Holly Burke going into the river Sheriff Halsey,” Marky said, and the sheriff nodded, as though he’d understood.

  “You’re right, Marky. In the eyes of the law, right now, that is absolutely true: Danny is altogether innocent of Holly Burke’s death. But it’s also true that he was never formally charged and never stood trial.”

  Though he looked at Marky as he spoke, watching carefully to see that he was understood, Rachel knew he was speaking to her. He said, “Now along comes this new piece of evidence here, and this new testimony—and possibly even the testimony of some third party like Miss Goss—and suddenly you are placing that boy into the hands of a system that may just find him guilty whether he had anything to do with her death or not. Do you understand? He’s free now. He might not be afterwards.”

  “He’s free?” said Rachel. “Sheriff, he hasn’t been free a day in his life since you all took him into custody ten years ago. And you knew. You all knew about that—deputy, back then, and you protected him.”

  “Momma . . .”

  “Mrs. Young.” The sheriff looked at his hands on the table, then looked up again. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through. Or what you’re going through right now. But I would ask you to ask yourself one thing.”

  She waited. She was trying not to tremble.

  “Why didn’t Danny tell his story ten years ago?” the sheriff said.

  “He was just a boy, Sheriff. He was confused. He was terrified.”

  The sheriff scratched his jaw and cocked his head. “He was nineteen, Mrs. Young. And I wouldn’t say he was terrified.”

  She stared at him. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I watched his interview, with Sheriff Sutter, and I wouldn’t say he was terrified. I’d say he handled himself pretty well, actually.”

  She just stared at him. No idea what to say to that—was that supposed to be a compliment?

  When he said nothing more she tapped her finger on the table and said, “Maybe that’s not the right question, Sheriff.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Maybe the question isn’t why didn’t he say anything back then. Maybe the question is why would he say anything now? I mean, why would he do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That is an awfully good question.” He cupped his hands together on the table and sat staring at them. As though he’d captured a small bird and was deciding what to do with it. Rachel and Marky watching him. Finally he uncupped his hands, popped the snap on the breast pocket of his shirt and brought out his notebook and pen.

  “All right,” he said, clicking the pen. “Let’s start with what he was wearing.”

  She stared at him. “What he was wearing?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Last time you saw your son, what was he wearing?”

  “Sheriff—” she said. Her mind was tumbling. “Sheriff—what about that deputy? Are you not even going to question him?”

  “Sheriff, ma’am,” he said.

  She looked at him. “What—?”

  “That deputy is a sheriff now, ma’am, in another county, in another state, and I can’t just go down there and question a sheriff across state lines.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, it might make him itchy before I got a chance to charge him.”

  “So then charge him.”

  “I can’t charge a man across state lines, ma’am. I’d have to convince a judge to issue a warrant for his arrest down there, and even then, well, it could turn out he’d almost have to arrest himself, and he might not care to.”

  Rachel took this in. She shook her head.

  “But—” she said, and the sheriff waited. “What are you saying—if he was up here you could arrest him?”

  “I could if I had probable cause. Only problem is, all I’ve got so far is this letter and this piece of cloth, both of which have been produced not by your son himself but by you, and one abandoned truck with a bullet hole could’ve been put there by anybody. So unless your son comes walking through that door in the next five minutes, or calls and tells me where he’s at, then I’m going to have to go out there and find him. So.” He readied his pen again and looked at them both, mother and son. “Can you tell me what he was wearing, last time you saw him?”

  54

  After the sheriff was gone, Marky went upstairs to get cleaned up and she sat at the table alone, staring at the two phones. Finally she picked up the handset and dialed Danny once more, and once more got the recording. She set the handset down and stared at it again.

  And why didn’t you tell the sheriff about that rifle? Why didn’t you tell him to go talk to Gordon Burke?

  Because just two weeks ago Gordon Burke was sitting right here at this table, and because he’d helped you bury old Wyatt . . . and because he’d watched Danny grow up, and because Gordon Burke had once been like a father to her sons and he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.

  When Marky came back down she had soup ready, and they tried to talk like it was just another night but everything they said sounded strange. The two phones sat on the table looking like they would ring, but not ringing. Outside it was snowing again, big white flakes tumbling in the farmlight, but it wasn’t pretty, not anymore. The first time it snowed it made you happy, it made you think of being a kid and sledding and making snowmen, and Christmas, and sometimes after that the snow would turn everything white and pretty again, but now the snow was just snow and the winter went on and the spring would never come.

  After dinner they each tried calling again, then she called the sheriff, using the card he’d left, and after she hung up she told Marky a deputy had answered and said there was no news and that he’d let the sheriff know she called.

  She turned on the TV and they sat down to watch, but everything they saw seemed loud and stupid and fake. Marky sat through one show, then said he was going upstairs, and she muted the TV.

  “Is this bothering you? We don’t have to watch.”

  “No Momma I just feel like going upstairs now.”

  “All right.” If he was going upstairs then he wasn’t worried, Rachel knew. Or was that just what he wanted you to think?

  “I
can leave my phone with you if you want me to Momma,” he said.

  “No, you keep it with you, sweetheart. Just, you know, let me know—OK?”

  “I will Momma.”

  Upstairs he sat on his bed, then stood again and went across the hall to Danny’s room. All his things were there, not as many as in his old room but just enough so you knew it was Danny’s room. His schoolbooks on the bookshelf, his old skates and his hockey stick. The Big Dam Mug on his desk where he kept his drawing pens and which always made you think about the dam that time you all drove there—Poppa lifting you up so you could look over and down and your insides all rolling over and what if he dropped you on accident and nothing to keep you from falling and you wouldn’t look again, you wouldn’t even stand there again for a picture.

  And next to the Big Dam Mug was the framed picture of the two of you in the canoe with Poppa behind you, you and Danny in the orange life vests that smelled of the river and fish, both of you smiling and Poppa smiling too and it was Momma in the back of the canoe who took the picture with her old camera. That was the year Poppa went back to the hospital even though he didn’t smoke anymore and you stood by the hospital bed and he put his arm around you one at a time and said no crying, you boys are too big for that. I need you to be men, now, all right? I need you to take care of your mother. Will you do that for me? And at the funeral you each sat to one side of her and held her hand and you watched the machine lower the casket into the ground and that was when you knew for sure he was gone, he was really gone, and it was just the three of you now and you would never see your Poppa again except in pictures and in your memories and your dreams.