FRIDAY MORNING FOUND Julia detouring along the creek after she dropped Calvin off, for once not in search of anyone, counting on the rushing water as a distraction from her thoughts.
This time of year the creek rose daily, fed by mountain snowmelt, tumbling fast over rocks, surging up the banks, already so high that the county was offering sandbags to nearby businesses and homeowners. Some years the water even lapped across the walking path, but today it remained a safe few yards away, tearing at the creekside shrubbery, which bent and groaned in protest.
Julia wondered where Ray’s friends stashed their belongings when the creek rose. Where they camped, where they slept. Transients had favorite spots all over Duck Creek. As the weather warmed, they lounged on the shady lawn of the courthouse, giving them easy access to the court appearances required by their citations for loitering.
In winter, the foolish found steam vents near downtown businesses, earning both the wrath of the shopkeepers and persistent bronchial ailments from the combination of frigid air and hot, wet steam.
In the teasing warmth of spring and during the brief, achingly beautiful fall, they populated the parks like solid citizens, soaking up the too-few days of just-right sunshine, albeit wisely choosing the most out-of-the-way benches lest the good and generous people of Duck Creek reach for their phones to dial 911 and complain that dangerous characters were about.
But the creekside denizens were a special breed, long-termers as opposed to those just passing through, their fiercely guarded territory staked out by some unmistakable signal known only to those inhabiting Duck Creek’s underbelly.
Julia cast her gaze along the bank, looking for places that might provide reliable shelter over the next few weeks until the raging waters finally calmed. She didn’t see any. But farther up the path, a grimy red Chuck Taylor lay half-hidden in the bushes, probably left behind by one of Ray’s friends as they decamped.
She hurried toward it, thinking to pick it up and sit it out in plain view in case its owner came looking for it.
But when she reached into the shrubbery to retrieve it, the high-top sneaker stubbornly resisted, and she let go and fell backward, a scream rising in her throat as she realized it was still on a foot, attached to a leg, attached to the rest of Little Guy, floating half in, half out of the water and very much dead.
She didn’t know the cop who responded to her 911 call, but she knew some of the others who followed, a regular gaggle of cops and sheriff’s deputies and firefighters—a firetruck accompanied every ambulance call—and EMTs, even though their services were clearly of no use to Little Guy.
They stood at a distance while the police photographer did his work, bending low to get close-ups of Little Guy’s face, a ghastly gray, hair in wet strings across it. The water had washed the blood away from the wound on one side of his head, his skull crushed from ear to crown. A magpie stalked nearby, angry at being kept from a ready meal.
A cop wearing blue rubber gloves sidled up to Julia. He thumbed through a billfold, worn and wet, extracting a couple of limp dollar bills and a Social Security card, its blue printing blurred and faded. He squinted and read aloud. “Craig Thompson.”
Julia had forgotten his name. She nodded.
“You’re the one who found him?”
Another nod.
“Your name?”
She opened her mouth and waited for the words to come. They didn’t.
Wayne appeared next to the cop. “I’ll handle this.”
He took Julia’s elbow and steered her away from the cop and his sputtering protest.
“Julia. Take a breath.”
“I don’t want to.” Silly. Of course she was breathing, shallow sips of air, terrified that each one might bring a whiff of putrefaction that would seal the reality she was desperately resisting despite having found Craig facedown in the water, despite his caved-in skull: Little Guy was really and truly dead.
Wayne whacked her on the back, and she gasped. “What the hell?”
He shrugged. “They don’t let us slap people anymore. Now. Deep breath. Good. Another. Okay. Tell me what happened.”
She turned her back on the group around Craig’s body, which was fast attracting onlookers, a dead body the one thing that could interrupt the relentless pursuit of fitness by the early-morning runners and cyclists increasingly populating the trail as the weather warmed.
“Not much to tell. I was taking the walking trail to work. Saw a sneaker. Recognized it as Craig’s—at least, I’d seen him wearing sneakers like that. I thought maybe he’d dropped it, and I went to pick it up because I thought maybe he’d want it and—oh God.”
She bent double, choking back nausea. Failed. Wayne, bless him, turned and walked a few steps away.
“Better now?” he asked after a few moments.
“I think so.”
“Here.” He offered her a stick of gum.
She bit down hard, the rush of spearmint reviving her.
“Look. You need to go to the cop shop and give a formal statement. And for sure you’ll want to take the rest of the day off.”
“No.”
She couldn’t imagine anything worse than going back to an empty house and sitting alone with the dog and her memories of Craig’s face as they’d turned him over, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a frozen grimace.
She’d happily spend the rest of her life writing up plea agreements on bullshit cases if it meant she could chase that image from her mind forever.
Julia had finally gotten used to the presence of someone else in the office she’d briefly enjoyed having to herself.
On Monday, someone else greeted her, sparking a jolt worse than Marie’s appearance had ever occasioned. Her boss, Li’l Pecker himself, occupied her chair, arms folded across his chest, eyes fixed on the doorway where she stood frozen.
Marie sat at her own desk pretending to stare into the computer screen open before her, the set of her shoulders telling Julia that Marie very much realized the seriousness of the occasion.
Even her worst encounters with Li’l Pecker, including the time he’d briefly laid her off during a round of budget cuts, had taken place in his office. Sometimes he dropped by, standing in the doorway making small talk and asking awkward personal questions—but carefully not too personal—in a way that Julia figured came out of some HR handbook: Let Your Staff Know You Care.
But seated at her desk? Never.
Her stomach twisted into the kind of intricate knots she should have learned in Girl Scouts but never had.
“Marie,” she said without looking at her. “You should probably leave.”
Marie snatched at her coat and purse, her face a study in pure gratitude.
“No, don’t. This concerns you too.”
Marie sank back into her seat with the expression of someone who’d just been informed the governor had denied a request for clemency.
“I understand you’re a witness to Friday’s, ah, unfortunate event.”
“I found the man who’d been killed, yes.” Li’l Pecker’s delicate phrasing always brought out the worst in Julia. Why did the man have to dance around everything?
“Yes, indeed.”
And that habit of agreeing with her on everything! When she knew that any moment he was going to dig a knife deep into her back and twist. Hard. What would it be?
“And that the man in question is—was—a potential witness in the case involving our Mr. Belmar.”
Our Mr. Belmar, my ass. When had Li’l Pecker ever looked at Ray as anything but an impediment to his lovingly burnished reputation as the sort of public defender who guaranteed that only the most trustworthy defendants were released on bail?
“Yes, but Ray has nothing to do with this case. Clearly. Being that he’s still in jail.” Why were they even talking about Ray? She wished he’d just get to the point.
“Yes. Well.” He rose from the chair. Her chair. “There may be some sort of tie-in. Even if he couldn’t have done this, he may know who did. We can’t risk actions by the Public Defender’s Division jeopardizing safety in any way.”
Of course not. Not when the head of the Public Defender’s Division still hankered after a judgeship.
“I can’t see what we have to do with it. The police will investigate. They’ll turn their investigation over to the prosecutor, and—”
“I’m removing you from his defense.”
“What?” Julia sagged against the door.
“The police will no doubt want to question Mr. Belmar about this case, just like they’ll want to question you. It just doesn’t look right to have you involved in a case with someone you’re defending. Excuse me.”
He’d taken a few steps toward her as he spoke and now looked past her toward the door she was blocking.
She took the hint.
Moved aside.
Watched him walk away, taking the biggest case of her career with him.