Episode 29 · At the Riverbed

From the public railing, Soles could see the patched roof and the side door of Ivo’s shed. Between them lay the old riverbed, reeds and shallow pools where the river had once run. The wooden footbridge crossed at the end of the row.

On the road behind the sheds, the gray car stood with its engine off.

Maxim kept his phone ready. Soles watched the door instead of the car, afraid that looking away would cost him the moment he had come for.

Stone blocks lined part of the opposite bank, their edges worn and dark with damp. There seemed too few of them for the figures on the invoice. He had no measurement that would let him say so.

Marta might have worked that stretch. His father might have stood where the reeds were now.

The side door opened.

A man came out with his right arm in a dirty sling. His shirt sleeve had been cut to clear it. He took a cigarette from a crushed packet with his left hand and turned toward the road.

Soles knew the movement before the face came fully into view.

— It’s him.

Maxim called. He gave the location, the shed and what Soles had recognized. When he ended the call, he said they were to stay where they were.

Across the riverbed, Kerr put the cigarette in his mouth. He searched his pocket for a lighter, found it, then stopped with it in his hand.

The gray car’s window had lowered. Soles could see a pale shape at the wheel but nothing that would make it a face.

Kerr stepped closer to the shed door.

— He’s going in, Soles said.

— We know which shed. They know too.

Maxim moved nearer his right side so Soles would hear him clearly.

— We’re not losing him because he closes a door.

Kerr looked across the channel.

His gaze passed them, came back and stayed. He lowered the lighter. Even at this distance, Soles could see him recognizing the two men beside the railing.

Kerr took the cigarette out of his mouth.

— You again.

The words carried across the open riverbed. Soles leaned forward without meaning to.

— Why? he called.

Maxim put a hand on his sleeve.

Kerr looked toward the gray car, then back at them.

— Come back for the other hand?

He lifted the sling a little. The movement hurt him; the smile vanished before he could put it back.

Soles wanted him to stop treating it as something between men who had had a fight. Kale and Mary had not been there to put a hand against a pistol. They had been at home.

— Tell me who sent you.

Kerr’s expression changed. He glanced toward the road again, sharply this time.

Then he opened the side door behind him.

Soles left the railing.

— Soles, Maxim said. Stay here.

The footbridge was only a short walk down the path. Soles could reach the other bank before Kerr left through the front, before someone from the car reached the shed, before another door shut with the answer behind it.

He could hear the excuses arranging themselves. He kept walking.

Maxim’s phone rang. His cousin answered with Soles’s name still in his mouth, then began telling the person on the line where he was going.

The first board shifted under Soles’s foot. He used the railing, crossed slowly and stepped onto the path on the other bank. There was no strange certainty to carry him. His chest hurt, and the ringing covered the sounds on his left.

Behind the shed, an overturned boat rested on two trestles between the path and the doorway. The near one stood crooked in the mud, kept level by a single block of wood. Soles stopped beside it. He had the bridge behind him and the way back still open.

Kerr had not gone inside. He stood just beyond the door, the unlit cigarette hanging from his good hand.

— You came alone?

— No. The police are coming.

Kerr looked past him toward the bridge.

— You should have waited for them.

He glanced through the doorway behind him.

— I’m not alone either.

A radio was playing somewhere inside. Soles could make out the rhythm, but not whether another voice lay beneath it. He had been so intent on the man coming out that he had hardly considered who might remain in the shed. The boat no longer felt like much to stand behind.

Soles kept the boat between them. He could not see a pistol, and he remembered how little warning he had had beside the truck.

Kerr moved his left hand toward his waist. Soles tightened against the boat before the hand came back empty.

— Still expecting me to shoot you?

The answer was obvious enough that Soles would not give it. His own injured hand had begun shaking. He left it at his side, where Kerr could see it, and made himself look at the man’s face instead of following every movement of his fingers.

— Was it your idea?

Kerr looked at him.

— What?

— Coming to our house. My parents. Was it yours?

He had imagined shouting the question. It came out quietly, and for a moment Kerr seemed more troubled by that than by the police.

— My idea, he repeated.

His eyes went to the road.

— None of this was my idea. Not even you.

Soles gripped the edge of the boat with his good hand.

— What does that mean?

— You weren’t supposed to be there.

— Where?

— Home. Then. You were supposed to come later.

Kerr stopped. He looked down at the cigarette as though he had discovered something in his hand that did not belong there. He dropped it into the mud.

Soles remembered the man beside the kitchen door, standing still before he raised the gun. He had gone over that moment until he could no longer separate memory from the effort of remembering. Now there was something he had never known to look for: somebody else’s time for his return.

— Who said I was coming later?

Kerr shook his head.

— I’ve said enough.

— You killed my parents.

He waited for a denial. A reason. Anything he could carry back across the bridge and put beside those names.

Kerr looked at him without raising his voice.

— I know what I did.