19. Lance
Chapter nineteen
Lance
The man who comes around the curve of the trail hits me at a dead run. We both go down.
He’s up on his hands before I am. I get hold of him because that’s what you do, and that’s when I find out he isn’t trying to get away. He’s trying to fight.
He rakes at the sleeve of my sweatshirt, clawing at it. I take both his wrists, cross them, and put him down as I shout at him to stop. It costs me almost nothing. He stops writhing when he hears my voice and breathes deeply. His eyes are round in terror.
“Jonny. It’s me. It’s Lance.”
He doesn’t answer. I look down at him. There’s blood on his hands, on his shirt, on his scarf, on both forearms, and on his face. None of it appears to be coming from him.
“Jonny! Look at me. What’s happened? Are you hurt?” I snap out the words like I’m expecting a recruit to give me a report.
“It’s just my hands.” His voice is a wreck, even for him. “It’s nothing, it’s my hands—”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s not mine. I need to guide them.”
“Guide them where?”
“The boathouse.”
The sirens have already stopped. That means they’re out of the vehicles. That means they’ve been down there some minutes already.
“What happened?”
“It’s Alice,” he says. “Somebody killed Alice. I was ten feet away, I was walking back up the boards—” He gets a hand under himself and it doesn’t hold. “I was going for the road. To bring them in. And then somebody came at me out of the trees and I thought—”
He stops.
“I thought it was him coming back for me.”
There’s a protocol for this. I’ve run it more times than I can count.
“Sit up,” I tell him. “Slowly. Back against that tree. Don’t talk for a minute.”
“I have to meet the paramedics.”
“And what will that change?” I ask. “You’re alive, and I intend to make sure it stays that way. Breathe out longer than you breathe in.”
He does that too. While he’s doing it I put myself between him and the treeline and I look, because looking is the only thing I’m good for out here.
Fog. Birches. The lake going grey behind them.
Nothing moving anywhere at all. I see someone with flashlights coming down the trail. “Over here!” I call.
The paramedic has a buzzcut and takes one look at Jonny and kneels. “Hey. I’m Wes. What’s happened here?”
“It’s not my blood,” he repeats. “Not my blood. Not my blood.” He looks at me, like he’s run out of other things to say.
“Boathouse,” I say. “He was going to fetch you when I ran into him. I’ll watch him.”
Wes nods at me and signals to the other paramedic. “He’s fine. Boathouse.”
“The police are going to want to talk to you,” I say, when his color starts coming back into his cheeks. “I’ll stay. You won’t be on your own with any part of it.” I put my hand out.
“I need to—Oh, God. Alice.” He blinks at me and swallows hard. I can see the shock like it were printed across his face. I help him get up and walk him toward the boathouse.
They’ve got the boardwalk taped off before we reach it. A man in a waxed jacket is sitting on the grass with a yellow Lab across his knees, an officer crouched in front of him. There’s a tent going up over the far end of the boards. The two paramedics stand beside it with nothing left to do.
A short, dark-haired woman detaches from the group and comes toward us with her hand already out.
“Detective Van Hoek. Which one of you is Bishop?”
“I am,” he says.
She takes him off to sit in her car with the door open and a blanket he doesn’t want. I stand where I’m put. That’s the other half of the protocol.
After a while an officer mentions a kiosk at the top of the park that opens early for the joggers, and suggests it would be a kindness. So I walk up and buy two coffees I don’t want.
I’m turning back with them when I see a man at the far end of the loop trail. Three hundred yards off, through fog, moving away at an easy jog. Dark clothes. Dark cap.
And a gait I watched cross a parade ground, a mess hall, and a bedroom, every day for two years.
I stand there with a cup in each hand until he goes behind the trees. Then I keep standing there.
It’s fog. It’s three hundred yards. I’ve had forty-five minutes of sleep and a man at my door telling me I’d regret it. I’m seeing him everywhere. That is exactly what he wants, and exactly what men in my situation get warned about.
That’s what I tell myself the whole way back to the scene. I hand out the coffees and quietly refuse payment.
“Is that everything?” Detective Van Hoek says.
“It is, Detective.” Jonny’s voice sounds more clipped than usual, as if the stress has pushed him back toward that strange, half-Indian accent he’s picked up over the years.
But he’s holding himself together. His back is straight.
His answers are clear. “I heard a scream and a thud. I ran back around the boathouse and found her on the deck. I tried to make her comfortable, but she stopped breathing before the paramedics arrived. Tom and I were together on the trail when we heard it. I didn’t see the attacker.
I heard footsteps moving away through the trees, but I couldn’t see who it was. ”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No. She was moaning.”
“Did she moan anything in particular? What did it sound like?”
“A moan. She was in pain. Like, enn.” He shrugs, and it looks like it costs him. “Sorry.”
Van Hoek writes it down without any change in her face at all.
“And your reason for meeting Ms. Cadwalader?”
“She wanted to discuss a personal matter. She believed she had information about my father. I never knew him.”
Van Hoek makes a note. “And you believe this could be connected?”
Jonny is quiet for a beat. “I don’t know. Maybe she told him she was going to tell me, and he wanted to keep her quiet. Or maybe it’s nothing to do with that. I don’t know who he is. She hadn’t given me a name yet.”
“We’re going to look at every angle, Mr. Bishop,” Van Hoek says.
“I should tell you that there was a similar incident in the next county about three months ago—a woman attacked on a walking trail, also struck from behind. Fortunately, she survived. We’re already checking local CCTV and comparing the two cases. ”
I see Jonny’s shoulders drop fractionally, and I understand it—it means they already have a trail, and somebody is already walking it.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that a man who hits a woman from behind on a foggy morning and a man who hits the right woman on a foggy morning can look identical from where the police are standing.
“Mr. Bishop, I’m going to need the clothes you’re wearing,” Van Hoek says. “Do you live far?”
Jonny hesitates and looks toward the road, and it reads like every young Marine who’s just come back from his first combat experience and is terrified of being alone for the next few hours.
“He can use my place, ma’am,” I say. “It’s the building right there. Two minutes on foot. Maybe three. Is it alright if we finish our interview there, detective?”
She nods. “Fine. We’ll just be in the way here. My partner and I can drive you there, if you like.”
Jonny looks at his shoes.
I made my bed this morning, and I’m grateful that there are some habits the Marines drilled into me.
My studio apartment is spotless when these three strangers walk into it for the first time.
I put a sweatshirt and a pair of my sweatpants on the end of the mattress and point him at the bathroom, and he goes without a word, and neither of us mentions that we’ve swapped clothes before.
Van Hoek waits until the door shuts.
“And you, Mr. Broussard. Can you remember the dates you saw this woman before?”
“Sunday morning and Friday morning, walking the trail. She wasn’t dressed for jogging. That’s all I noticed about her.”
“And she didn’t speak to you?”
“No. I just moved back to town a few weeks ago. I assumed she was a regular at the park.”
I answer her the way I’d answer a debrief—short, clean, in order. I put ma’am at the end of every sentence.
Jonny comes out in my clothes with his own bundled in his arms and hands them over without being asked.
He sits at the table next to the window, with his back to my bed, and stares at the kitchen area.
Van Hoek takes the seat facing it. The other detective takes a call, and then excuses himself, so I sit at the foot of my bed and listen as he repeats his story one last time while she takes notes.
At long last, she sets her pen down. “That seems to be about everything I need for now.” She gestures at the bag of clothes Jonny shed in the bathroom. “This is mostly going to be for elimination.”
“So I’m not a suspect?” Jonny asks.
She turns to me. “As a witness, we’ll likely want to talk to you again, and I’m going to need you both at the station later today for prints and DNA. Elimination purposes.”
“Done,” I say. “We’ll be there. Anything you need.”
Jonny glances at me. “I’m not going anywhere for a while. How long will you need me here for?”
I try not to let my sadness break through. Van Hoek shrugs. “I can’t legally advise on that, but these things can get lengthy. You’d likely have to travel back to testify if it goes to court. You might want to get comfortable here.”
“But I didn’t see anything.”
“You’d be surprised,” she says.
“One more small matter, now there’s no recording.” She has her hand on the doorknob. “I noticed your driver’s license expired last year, Mr. Bishop. I appreciate you’ve been living abroad. I’d rather not have to notice it twice.”
“Oh. I—” Jonny stops. He looks, for the first time all morning, entirely out of his depth.
“I’ve been driving him,” I say. “And I’ll keep driving him until we can get him to the DMV.”
Van Hoek looks at Jonny, then at me. “Good. It’s always useful to have friends with that much presence of mind.” She lets herself out.
I bolt the door behind her.
Then I stand to one side of the window and look at the street for longer than there’s any reason to. The fog has burned off. There are two students, a delivery van, and nobody standing anywhere they have no business standing.