Chapter Nine
Nine
It had taken some convincing, but Micah agreed to go with me to Trentham Gorge.
He was booked for a guide trip on the Klamath River that would last the entire day, and in the meantime, I’d set myself up at a small booth in the back of the diner. The morning rush was clearing out by the time I arrived, with the exception of Harold, the red-bearded man who’d been seated on the same stool every time I’d come in. His bulky build hunched over the counter as he sipped his coffee, a ring of keys dangling from his pocket, and I listened in to the meandering trails of conversation between him and the other customers who came in throughout the morning.
I’d had an email from Rhia waiting when I opened my inbox, going over the details for the show that was opening when I got back. I was the only female artist in the lineup, and there was a magazine that wanted to interview me for a profile on working women artists in the city. It was the kind of thing that had once excited me. When I was fresh out of art school, any spotlight on my work felt like an opportunity to be seen and discovered. A way to become known. But I’d been a working artist long enough now to know just how quickly art was consumed and forgotten. The glimmer of being a Byron graduate had all but faded, my own idealistic view of my work whittled down to the nubs. Now, I mostly painted what people wanted.
Unfortunately, I’m unavailable. Please politely decline.
I typed the reply and hit send, dedicating the rest of the day to Johnny’s field notes. I’d made my way through only about half of them, and it was evident that he’d taken the work seriously. There was special attention given to the accuracy and details he was relaying and there were times that I almost couldn’t believe the writing in the notebooks was his. He sounded so…scientific. So specific and technical. I imagined his voice speaking as I skimmed his notes, but I struggled to hear it.
The places I could hear him were in the entries that meandered from the default voice of the scientist. He sometimes rambled into more than just what he saw in a way that felt almost strange. Two notebooks in, I was picking up on a pattern that suggested that the longer Johnny observed his subjects, the more attached he appeared to get. His handwriting became increasingly illegible as he teased out his theories about how the birds might be related to one another, or how they seemed to him. Every few reports, it almost sounded like he was talking about the feelings, struggles, and circumstances of people, not animals.
That was Johnny. That was Johnny through and through. And it was nowhere more apparent than in his recorded observations of Subject 44. The owl in Trentham Gorge.
The entries began officially on October 11, 2022, when Johnny first documented the subject. Only a few entries in, it was apparent that the bird had been an elusive one. There were fewer negatives in Johnny’s files for the owl than any other, which meant he hadn’t had much luck when he went out to get photographs. Most of the entries in the field notes revealed that Johnny had been fixated on the owl’s defective foot, taking detailed notes on 44’s health, mobility, and any other perceived areas of concern he wanted to compare notes on.
His visits to the gorge were spread out over the next two years, and unlike the other subjects, 44 was spotted fewer than half of those times. That explained the lack of film.
I unearthed the contact sheet for the roll I’d developed, setting it beside the laptop. If he was in Trentham Gorge on November 10, the date that had been written on the canister, then Johnny was a few weeks past the designated CAS observation window.
Knowing Johnny, the looming project deadline might explain why he’d been out there that day, and he’d obviously had his camera then. He’d probably been trying to get more images before he had to submit everything to Quinn. Why he hadn’t even finished the roll of film he was shooting, I didn’t know. Maybe a storm had blown in or something else unexpected had forced him back to town. But two days later, he would return to the gorge. This time, without his camera. Or his notebook.
I stared at the open page, trying to make sense of it, but the flicker of movement in my peripheral vision interrupted the thought. My gaze lifted to the booth across the diner—Johnny’s booth. But it wasn’t empty anymore.
The blurred, shadowed shape sharpened more with each second. A head of dark hair. A set of square shoulders. As each detail solidified, it was harder and harder to deny what I was seeing. It was him. It was Johnny. Slowly materializing before my very eyes.
He sat with his back to me, his elbows on the table and his attention cast to the window. I felt cold suddenly, my throat closing. The lights of the diner seemed to dim, the sounds quieting around me as I stared at the back of his head, waiting for him to turn around. Like at any moment, he would feel my gaze on him.
“No rest for the wicked.”
I jumped when Sadie appeared at the edge of the table, a pot of steaming coffee in each hand. She followed my gaze to the empty corner booth I’d been staring at with a faintly puzzled look.
When I blinked, Johnny was gone.
“You all right, James?”
I could hear my own breath loud in my ears, the cold on my skin replaced by a sheen of sweat. “I’m fine,” I choked.
Sadie’s expression was shifting now. She eyed my empty coffee cup. “Should we switch to decaf?”
I glanced at the clock, rubbing at my temples. It was already almost five p.m. “God, I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“You’ve been sitting here for hours.” She turned to shout at Ben, who was standing behind the counter. “Get her some soup, Ben. A slice of cornbread, too.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to—”
She ignored me. “The eggs you had this morning are only going to take you so far. And the longer you sit here without eating, the more anxious it makes me.”
That warmth and tenderness wasn’t something I’d expect from the old Sadie. She’d always been defensive, like she needed to prove something. And maybe she did, with Johnny. With a guy like that, I wondered if it was possible to ever feel good enough. But now, there was a warmth in Sadie’s eyes, and I wondered if it was a characteristic that came from motherhood.
“I wanted to say thank you, actually. For sending Ben over yesterday. That was really…sweet.”
“No problem.” Sadie filled my coffee cup just as the door to the diner opened, making the bell jingle.
Rhett Walker stepped inside, making me go stiff. He pushed the hood of his jacket down, revealing a head of wild dark hair, and his mustache twitched as his icy gaze scanned the diner.
I impulsively glanced down at his hands, half expecting them to still be covered in blood. But now, they were clean.
“Hey there, Rhett.” Sadie lifted one of the coffeepots in greeting, and he grunted in return. When his eyes landed on me, he stopped short.
I tried to smile. “Hi, Mr. Walker.”
But he just stared at me, those glassy eyes not breaking from mine. The rigid set of his jaw was turning more severe by the second. When he finally spoke, his voice was like crushed stone.
“Better keep that grim away from my property line.”
My brow creased. “What?”
It took a few seconds for me to make the connection. He was talking about Smoke. Calling him a grim—a specter or a haunting spirit. The reference made my blood run cold again.
He tipped his head toward the window, where we could see Smoke sprawled out across the sidewalk. “I’ve got venison curin’ out in the shed, and I warned your brother what would happen if—”
“Okay, Rhett. Go on and get your seat before someone takes it.” Sadie tried to smooth it over with a placating grin, but Rhett’s gaze was still fixed squarely on me.
“Been sayin’ it for years. Got no business keepin’ a wolf as a pet. That animal will tear your throat out if he catches you not lookin’.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Sadie said, more firmly.
Rhett’s lips pursed before he finally relented, his knobby hands reaching up for the zipper of his coat. He was shrugging it off a moment later, boots shuffling toward a table along the wall.
I looked up at Sadie, eyebrows raised in question.
“Probably best to steer clear of him.” She sighed. “He wasn’t too happy when he heard you were coming back to town.”
I watched him from the corner of my gaze. It was no secret that we were all there the night his son Griffin died—me, Johnny, and Micah. I’d been the one to leave the gorge, driving the treacherous roads back to town to get Timothy Branson. And while the story we told had been accepted by everyone else in Six Rivers, Rhett had never believed us. Not really. For months after I left, I had nightmares about waking up in my dorm to find him standing in the dark. Watching me. He had that same look as he eyed me now. Like he still hated me for what happened.
Ben appeared beside Sadie, breaking the spell around us, and he slid the bowl of soup across the table. It was followed by a small plate of cornbread. I’d convinced myself that I was being paranoid about Ben snooping in Johnny’s cabin, but the way he avoided my eyes now made that sense of disquiet resurface. Ben wasn’t comfortable around me, and I didn’t know why.
“Thanks,” I said.
He gave me an almost imperceptible nod and Sadie watched himgo.
“I swear to you there are some people in this town who have manners. Unfortunately, none of them can be found at present.” She gave me an apologetic smile before she moved to the next table.
I took a sip of my coffee and closed the notebook before I opened Johnny’s email inbox. It was flooded with unread messages, and I scrolled, looking for one that mentioned the name Josie. When I didn’t readily spot it, I typed the name into the search field at the top of the page. A few letters in, the email address populated.
Josie Garver [[email protected]]
I hit enter and a series of emails filtered from the inbox and archived messages. None of them appeared to be unread. The most recent was from August 4, but there was nothing in the subject line.
I opened it, eyes scanning the one-sentence message.
Stop or I’ll report you to CAS.
I read the message again, staring at it for several seconds, unease gripping my stomach. What could that mean? Stop what ?
I clicked back to the search results and skimmed the other emails from the same address. They all looked like they were related to the project, arranging meetings, or exchanging information on different sectors. But there were no more emails after August 4.
My mind jumped from one possibility to the next, trying to place the missing context. The other messages were all professional, familiar, and friendly, but the last one had a tone that felt pointed. In fact, it was threatening.
I scrolled to the bottom, copying down the phone number under the signature of the email. It was possible Johnny had gotten involved with Josie outside the bounds of a professional relationship, but Micah hadn’t alluded to anything like that.
I typed a quick message from my own account, asking if Josie would be willing to meet and copying Quinn so that it looked like official business for CAS. When I hit send, I sat back in my seat, fingers slipping from the edge of the table.
My eyes lifted to the booth across the diner, half expecting to see Johnny again. I waited for him to take shape, piece by piece, like the strokes of a paintbrush. But there was only the bend of evening light on the table. The shadows of passersby on the street. Now, I wasn’t even sure of what I’d seen. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.