Moran stepped to the front of the cruiser and stood looking at the shot-out headlight. Then he walked back to Gordon and stopped before him, his hands on his sheriff’s belt. “Well, Gordon, we’ve got us a situation here. I put you in cuffs and take you in, you’re gonna have to explain why you decided to ambush me, and I can’t say I’m too crazy about that idea. On the other hand, you have committed serious crimes here, felonious crimes, and damn well could’ve blown my head off to boot.”
He looked up into the trestles then, or the dark sky beyond them, and it was the kind of thing a man would do just before he pulled his pistol and shot you dead, and Gordon considered what that would be like—to be shot dead where he stood. To fall back in the snow and feel the life drain out of you, to see the world go dark. And the face that came to him then, that hovered over him in his last seconds, was not his own daughter’s, but Audrey Sutter’s, Oh, Mr. Burke… what were you thinking?
But Moran did not pull his pistol and shoot him. He looked at Gordon again and said, “Give me that hat.”
“What?”
“The hat. Give it here.”
Gordon reached up and felt the hatbrim. There was a hat on his head. He took it off and handed it to Moran.
Moran held the hat in one hand, turning it upside down and righting it again.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Not even the real deal.” And he turned and flicked the hat Frisbee-style over the rail and they watched it fall out of the light and into the darkness below the bridge. Wherever the hat landed it made no sound. As if it had never landed at all.
“Tell you what, Gordon,” Moran said, facing him again. “I think we’d best call this whole thing a wash. I’ll take care of this headlight and you go on home and get some sleep. Some serious sleep. I won’t tell anyone you pointed a loaded rifle at me, and you’ll get some sense into your head again.” He stood staring at him. “That work for you?”
Gordon said nothing. He hadn’t moved since he’d let go of the rifle. He did not know if he would ever move again. Just stand here until the blood stops flowing, until the heart stops beating. Some old farmer coming along in his pickup and seeing the Crown Vic, seeing you standing here in the middle of the bridge, in the snow, Blue and just stone-dead on his feet, Officer, never seen nothin like it in all my days…
“Go home, Gordon,” said Moran. “We both of us dodged one here, and tomorrow will look a whole lot better.”
Moran turned then and walked back to his cruiser. He took off his hat and climbed in, and there was the sound of the shifter dropping into gear, and the single headlight began to withdraw toward the far end of the bridge. When the light was beyond the bridge it swung away, lighting up the trees to the side of the road, and then it swung away again as Moran completed his three-point turn and accelerated back the way he’d come. The two red taillights trailed away into the darkness until they were small as the eyes of an animal, and Gordon watched as they rounded the bend, as they shone briefly on the county road, as they blinked through the trees and were gone.
56
SHE HAD SEEN a light, several lights, small and moving way off in the darkness, way off in the trees, and she’d said, There’s someone in the park, Daddy.
What?
There’s someone in the park.
She was nine and riding shotgun. They’d been out for pizza and they were driving home and it was November and already dark out and you could see the moving lights from the road that went alongside the park; they looked like jumpy little fairies way deep in the woods. He’d leaned to look past her and after a moment said, That’s a sharp eye, Deputy. Why are there flashlights in the park at this hour?
Because it’s dark out, Sheriff.
Why are there people in the park at this hour, I meant.
Are we going to check it out?
Well, he said. He watched the road ahead. Then he turned to her again. What do you think, Deputy?
She didn’t like going into the park at night. At night the park was not a park; it was a woods so dark and deep it made the hair on your arms stand just to think about it—and that was before they pulled Holly Burke out of the river.
I think we’d best check it out, Sheriff.
All right then, he said, and they pulled into the park and drove toward the far-off lights. There were three of them, they saw as they came closer, but when they rounded the bend toward the river the lights all blinked out and did not come on again.
He pulled over and switched on his spot and swept it over the line of trees that ran between the road and the river, lighting up the trunks one by one like faces, and the beam lighting up the black water in the distance between the trees, and he swept it over the white wooden cross and its faded flower wreath, and lastly he swept it over the trees of the woods on the other side of the road.
They’re gone now or else they’re just gonna ride this out, he said.
Who?
The people with the flashlights. Who do you think?
She didn’t answer—not so sure now that it was people at all. Or flashlights.
He got on the speaker and said, The park is closed after dark. Go home. Then they sat in the silence watching the woods for any movement, but there was none, and Audrey turned back to look at the white cross and the wreath, visible in the glow from the headlights.
That’s where it happened, isn’t it, she said.
He looked where she was looking. Then he placed his hand on her head and moved it like a hairbrush to the back of her head and then down to her neck, and gently squeezed.
That’s where she went into the river, yes.
Did Mr. Burke put the cross there?
I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Who did then?
I don’t know. Someone who knew her. Friends, maybe.
Will it stay there, like a gravestone?
Probably not. The park will probably remove it.
She thought about that. They were silent.
And you’re going to find who did it? she said.
Yes, I am. He looked at her. Sweetheart—are you worried about that?
She shook her head. She thought she would cry and she didn’t know why, but she didn’t cry. She said, No, Sheriff. I know you will.
But he hadn’t, and the cross had been removed and there were no more flowers or stuffed animals or notes or anything at all to mark the place where Holly Burke had been hit by a car, they said, and thrown into the river still alive, still breathing, they said. There was the bank of snow, shaped by the snowplow blade, and there were the pine trees—jack pines, she thought—and there was the snow between the pines where someone had walked not long ago, and beyond that there was the wide frozen river, patches of icy black in the snow, and all of it lit weirdly blue by a bright, lopsided moon.
Audrey had not been standing long, three minutes maybe, between two pines, looking at the footprints in the snow, when she saw the light, as she’d seen the lights ten years ago from outside the park, and this light was coming along through the park as her father had come along back then, and she took it to be the headlamp of a motorcycle—but who would be riding a motorcycle in the snow and ice? And it wasn’t a motorcycle; it was a car with one of its headlights out, some kid or drinker or both cutting through the park in his beater car to avoid the cops.