To Love and to Perish

TWO


SHOCK AND DISBELIEF CROSSED Brennan’s face. He blanched and grimaced, giving the crowd a glimpse of his square white teeth. “The lady is mistaken. I tried to save him.”

A couple men in the crowd started to mutter, one stepped toward Brennan with his arm raised. The sheriff’s deputies were on him in an instant, herding him away. Ray stepped closer to Brennan, his gaze scanning the crowd until it came to rest on me. He looked all around me then mouthed, “Where’s Danny?”

I gasped and spun around. The crowd in the street blocked my view of the store entrance. I started to push through, stepping on toes and bumping people out of my way. A hand grasped onto my forearm.

“Jolene?”

“Danny! What took you so long?”

“I was looking at the race car miniatures. They have 1:43 scales in there of tons of cars. Can I get one?”

I hugged his shoulders. “Sure, but later. We have a problem.”

“What?”

I tugged him in the direction of the store and stopped next to the bake sale table, which was now surrounded by crying girls in red varsity sweatshirts. “A man got hit by one of the cars. He’s dead.” I said that with certainty.

An ambulance siren erupted, making me jump. The vehicle crept up the street, coming from the far end. The race organizers always had ambulances and flatbeds nearby, just in case. How unbelievably awful and surreal that this time they had been called into action.

My cell phone rang. It was Ray.

“Did you find Danny?”

“Yes, we’re by the bake sale table.”

“Can you come back over here?”

“What about Danny? I don’t want him to see … you know.”

“Leave him at the table. Tell him I said not to move, not one inch.”

“Okay.”

I clicked my cell phone closed and instructed Danny. He didn’t argue, taking up a position against the store wall. Then I wiggled my way across the street through the growing crowd, who were pointing, crying, explaining, speculating, or just plain standing with their jaws slack, expressing their own shock and dismay. I must have said, “Excuse me” a hundred times before I broke into the area cleared by the deputy sheriffs. One of them put his hand up to stop me, but Ray motioned to him to let me pass.

Cory now stood next to Brennan, pure panic on his porcelain-colored face. At a wiry five-foot-one with poodle-tight auburn hair and girly eyelashes, Cory was often tapped to play a teen in his Finger Lakes Broadway-quality theater group, but the fear on his face today made him look all of his thirty-plus years.

Ray flanked Brennan’s other side, along with the sheriff’s deputy Ray had gone off to talk to earlier. The three kept a wary eye on the crowd, Brennan still pale beneath his summer tan but standing tall.

A few yards down the road, I could see a deputy taking the statement of the woman who’d accused Brennan of shoving the man into the street. Her arms waved as she described the scene, and the deputy had to step back to avoid being whacked.

Ray motioned me closer. I kept my eyes averted from where the ambulance workers and deputies surrounded the dead man. “Ken, this is my wife, Jolene Asdale Parker. Jolene, this is Ken Sampson. He’s got a few questions for you.”

Ken was an imposing man with a thick neck, crisp uniform, and no-nonsense aura. “Mr. Rowe said he was walking over to meet you when the victim was shoved off the curb. He said you might be able to confirm he reached out to save the guy.”

My chest felt tight, my mouth dry. “Confirm?”

“Yes, ma’am. This gentleman”—Ken gestured to a white-haired man holding a camera with a telephoto lens—“has a picture of Mr. Rowe’s arm extended out into the street as the victim is falling.”

I swallowed. “A picture?”

Ray nodded. “It’s Brennan’s arm. Same gray shirt color. Same Rolex watch. What did you see, Jolene?”

This was not what I had expected. Ray looked at me, eyebrows raised.

Cory grabbed my bicep. “You saw Brennan try to save the guy, didn’t you, Jo? Didn’t you?”

I took in the tears sparkling in the corners of Cory’s eyes, the dawning realization in Ray’s, and the resignation in Brennan’s. Now would not be the time to admit that my gaze wasn’t on Brennan because I was watching the store entrance for my twelve-year-old boy who had gone to the bathroom and, if not there, then the other side of the street for my husband who’d disappeared in the crowd when he went to talk to his friend, this very officer standing before me and waiting for my answer.

“I’m sorry, Brennan. I’m sure you did try to save him, but I wasn’t looking your way at that precise moment.”

Always the gentleman, he dipped his head ever so slightly to acknowledge my apology.

Cory tightened his grip on my bicep. “Then what did you see, Jo?”

“I’m so sorry, Cory. I didn’t see anything.”

_____


As I crossed the street to rejoin Danny, it occurred to me that what I had said wasn’t quite the truth. I had seen Brennan in what appeared to be a rather heated conversation with the victim, minutes before he lay dead in the street. No one had asked me about that. I considered calling Ray’s cell, then decided it should wait until we could discuss it in private. I didn’t want to add to Brennan’s trouble.

I reached Danny, who was biting into a cookie. “Where’d you get that?”

“The girls gave it to me. They gave everything away and went home.”

The crowd had, in fact, thinned rapidly. The rain had dialed up to a full force downpour, killing any remnants of the spectators’ curiosity about the accident, which I felt confident it was. While I didn’t know Brennan all that well, I believed him incapable of violence. Cory wouldn’t be attracted to him otherwise, that I knew for sure.

By now, the ambulance had driven away with the victim inside. No sirens this time, just flashing lights. A dozen sheriff’s deputies had begun to take statements from the spectators on our side of the street, some of whom seemed excited to be questioned while others were more subdued. I wondered if any of them had been in the nearby bars or the beer tent earlier and how accurate their recollections might be. Hopefully one of them would be more helpful to Brennan than me.

Ken had asked Brennan to accompany him to the Sheriff’s Department, placing him in the back of a department SUV that had arrived minutes after the ambulance. Cory had tried to go with him, but Ray blocked him and herded him back in the direction of the Mini Cooper, instructing him to return to the track and wait for him there. Cory put up an argument to go to the jail instead, but Ray convinced him otherwise. Ray then asked me to wait with Danny for a couple more minutes until he could rejoin us.

Danny offered me a chocolate chip cookie from the sandwich bag he held in his left hand.

“No, thanks, you enjoy them.”

“Okay. What happened?”

I filled him in minus any details about the victim.

“They took Brennan?”

“Yes.”

“And Ray’s helping them?”

“Yes, but he’ll be here soon.”

“And you didn’t see anything. Geez.”

Again, I knew that wasn’t quite the truth. I turned to watch for Ray.