Porter looked at me. “The hell was that?”
“Nobody signed out to go shooting today,” I said. There was a sheet in the front office for students who wanted to go shoot in pairs at the skeet range on campus. It had been blank all day—I had checked before and after lunch. No one was supposed to have access to guns without signing them out from a locked cabinet in Stilwell Hall.
“That was close by,” I added.
Porter looked steadily at me, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, which shone in the dull red glare from the setting sun. Then he put his mug and his book down, and he stood. “We have to go see,” he said.
PORTER’S CAR WAS AN older Honda Civic, and we drove down the rear-entrance road in a brittle silence. I was afraid to say anything out of an irrational belief that doing so would bring about some terrible disaster. Porter merely drove, concentrating on the road and glancing out at the trees that began to pass us by.
When we reached the river and the bridge that spanned it, we were deep in the woods that encircled the school. Twilight had already settled on the forest floor. The last rays of sunlight touched the very tops of the poplars and oaks that stood by the river. Porter stopped the car just before rolling onto the bridge. I frowned. “What are you doing?” I asked. “The skeet range is over there, on the other side.”
“Thought we’d check out the river first,” Porter said. “You can see a ways from both sides of the bridge. Maybe it’s a hunter, wandered onto school property.” He opened his door and got out, and shortly I followed.
As we walked onto the bridge, I was conscious of the open space beneath us, the gurgling river twenty feet below. Porter looked downstream, and I crossed to the other side, leaned on the railing, and peered out into the gloom. Upriver, I could see a corner of the ancient outing cabin about fifty yards away at a bend in the river. The Outing Club sometimes camped there overnight. When I was a student, some of my classmates would sneak out to that cabin to smoke illegally, but now the cabin was as dark and cold as the forest around it. With a sudden passion, I realized how much I hated that forest, the circle of trees enclosing Blackburne like some enchanted wood from a medieval fairy tale. Those woods were haunted, even if only by memories. An image flitted across my mind like a sparrow crossing a room through open windows: Fritz running away from me into the trees, his white shirt gleaming in the shadows for a moment before he turned a corner and vanished forever.
“Matthias,” Porter called, jarring me back. I crossed the bridge to his side and looked where he was pointing downstream. It took me a moment to see it. Something was lying on a large flat rock in the middle of the river, about a hundred yards away. It was too big to be a dog.
“Hey!” I shouted, but the form did not move. Porter and I looked at each other for a heartbeat, and then we ran back to the end of the bridge and scrambled down the riverbank. We hurried through the darkening wood, branches slapping at our faces. I tripped over a root and fell to the ground, catching myself on the palms of my hands. I got up and lumbered on. Porter crashed through the underbrush just ahead. We lurched out of the trees and came upon the form sprawled on the rock only ten feet from shore. One arm was flung out, its hand trailing in the cold stream, and the feet were turned outward. I could just make out the shape of a rifle or shotgun lying half in the shallow water next to the body.
“Go get help,” I said to Porter, and as he crashed back up through the trees toward the bridge and the car, I approached the still form. Everything I saw took on equal weight in my mind: the watch on the arm, the fingers of which dangled in the water; the red Blackburne sweatshirt; the untied shoelace; the jeans that were water-darkened up to the knees. Memories of CPR classes flashed up on my internal screen—keep calm, ask questions, raise the feet, keep warm. Then, as I splashed through the water and reached the body, I saw the puddle of blood, slick and black as ink in the failing light, spreading across the rock and dripping ever so slowly into the gurgling river.
I SHIVERED IN THE flashing red-and-blue lights of the sheriff’s patrol car. Floodlights were trained on the river, white shafts cutting through the night that had descended like some monstrous shadow. Two people dressed in yellow slickers lifted a stretcher and carried the body, now zipped into a black body bag, out of the river.
A deputy named Smalls stood nearby with an open notepad and pen. He was tall, maybe six foot three, hefty like a linebacker who’s gone off his training, with an open round face and a pug nose. His nightstick and revolver hung like afterthoughts around an ample waist. As if he knew I was watching him, Smalls glanced over at me, and then approached with a grave look on his face.
“Mr. Glass?” Smalls asked. “I have to ask you some questions. You up to it?” I nodded, and Smalls flipped back a sheet of paper on his notepad.
“You were the faculty member on duty this afternoon, that correct?” Smalls asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I was off duty when I heard the gunshot.”
“What time was it when you heard the gunshot?”
“I’m not exactly sure. About six, I think.”
“And you were with another person when you heard the gunshot?”
“Porter Deems. You already spoke with him.”
“Yessir. And then you drove down to the river?”
“Yes. Porter drove the car.”
“Why did you go to the river?”
I watched as one of the men in slickers slipped in the mud and nearly dropped the stretcher. “The shot seemed to have come from down this way. Then Porter stopped the car on the bridge, said we should look around. He thought . . .” I stopped, frowning. I couldn’t remember what he’d said.
Deputy Smalls consulted another page on his notepad. “He thought maybe it was a hunter?”
“That’s it,” I said. “A hunter. So we got out and looked over the railings.”
“And who saw the body first?”
The body. Just those words struck me—the finality of it. Not the person, but the body. My lips tasted like salt. “Porter did,” I said. “I called out, but . . . it . . . didn’t move.”
“And you went down to see if you could help, that right?”
I stared down at the river. The floodlight illuminated the flat rock where the body had lain. “Yes.”
“Could you identify the victim?”
I turned to look at him. “He blew his head off with a shotgun, Deputy. I’m not even sure it’s a he.” My voice had ratcheted up a few notches. I was on the verge of either sobbing aloud or screaming to the treetops.
Deputy Smalls clicked the top of his ballpoint pen. He tilted his head slightly to the side, as if trying a different angle of view. “Why do you say he blew his own head off, Mr. Glass?” he asked.