It took a little bit, time I took walking Lee and Duilion through the photos and scene, and guiding them through what narrative I’d constructed with Ryan before they arrived. Lee seemed keen on an explanation of the heavily armed security, but I didn’t have an answer for that yet. “The only person that would know more about that would be my father, wherever he is, and the person that contracted the expedition. It’s certainly not normal for Dad to have this much security.”
Lee frowned, looking into the distance at nothing specific, deep in thought. We heard Chief Beech returning, more than we saw him coming through the darkness. Or more accurately we heard Cooperfield, who was still swearing a blue streak about the futility of all of this and how it was obviously an animal attack and there was nothing to see here. Cooperfield stopped short of our group on the trail, all gathered around a flashlight that we’d hooked the wrist cord around a branch to review the information we had. “Who the f-”
“Sorry, we already did that game and you missed it.” Ryan said dryly. But I noticed that he’d repositioned himself to the far side of the group from the approaching Beech and Cooperfield. “Sheriff, Chief, This is Agent Kassie Duilion and Agent Henry Lee from the SBI, we are just getting them up to speed on what we’ve gotten so far.”
I’d not thought that the sheriff could get much redder, but he took on a few more shades of purple upon hearing the SBI had arrived, that vein in his forehead engorging just a bit more, like a bloated earthworm under his skin.
“Agents,” He said, his voice a mock facade of pleasantry. “Welcome to the county, I’m sure you needn’t-”
“Sheriff.” Agent Lee said. Cutting the taller man off, who genuinely looked as if he’d no idea how to respond to that. “I’ve heard you are a straight shooter, so lets cut the crap. You’ve obstructed an SBI unit on state business, and have been doing nothing short of trying to get SBI to arrest you for years. We’re here now, there’s evidence that whatever these gentlemen were doing,” Lee indicated the photos he now held of the heavily armed men that had accompanied the expedition to wherever it was going. “Might be involved in one of our statewide wheelhouses, and not run of the mill county sheriff level crimes. So we aren’t going anywhere, and if you continue to obstruct, I may well remove your department from the chains of command and evidence entirely.”
The Sheriff turned from a beet red, to an ugly blotched purple, and I could hear a rumbling wail start to form at the base of his chest and rush up his throat, like a roaring inferno shooting up a mineshaft. Quickly, Beech stepped in. “Where I appreciate your frustration Agent- Lee was it? We should all take a breath and recall that there’s a pound of difference between what we are able to do, should do, and can do.” Beech being between them and sticking up for the sheriff, however mildly seemed to have knocked Cooperfield off balance, and the inferno extinguished. “That being said, you are already here, there’s no point in bickering the details of it.”
“But why are they here?” Cooperfield grunted, obviously not anymore pleased than he’d started, despite his temper cooling.
“Because I asked them to be. It was an awful lot of bodies.” the chief said with a smile.
We all reconvened on the trail. Beech had his arms crossed in front of him, leaning back against a tree trunk as I'd come to expect from my grandfather. Dulion and Lee thanked us for the time and for getting them up to speed, then started down the trail, saying they'd report in and get in touch with Forestry.
I glanced at Ryan, who, in contrast to Chief Beech, was straight as a board and had his hands wound into tight fists as we all stood on the trail wrapping up.
"For all that brass—" Cooperfield said, his angry flush evaporating, replaced with a smooth, practiced response tailor-made for reporters, "—the simplest answer is that your Pa hired a bunch of well-armed amateurs that couldn't hit the broad side of a—" He caught himself. "Point is, let's not make it more than it is. Tragic, but an animal attack nonetheless."
I stared through the windshield. The trees loomed like specters in the darkness as the Bronco's headlights swept over them on the mountain switchbacks.
"So, I've heard yoga helps," I said, eyeing Ryan.
He grunted. "Sorry. Um. Cooperfield. He's... hard for me to be around."
One of my brows arched. "I mean, I've seen he's not exactly the most lovable—"
"No." His voice was a hoarse whisper. Ryan took a deep breath, his knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, and sighed before continuing. "It's not that. Do—do you remember the incident?"
"I remember it well enough to know that's underselling what happened. You were almost killed in a domestic call that went sideways."
Ryan clicked his tongue softly. "Yep. That'd be the one..."
"...Except," I said flatly, prompting him to continue.
"Except it might not have exactly..."
I'd had an image of that scene for the last ten years. After all, for the longest time, I'd felt it was my fault Ryan was in that situation. In another time and world, it could have been me looking down the barrel of Duck's shotgun that night. Suddenly the image in my mind shifted as the detail Ryan was avoiding saying clicked into place: the tank top and gym shorts in my vision were replaced with a pressed khaki uniform. "RYAN. What the actual fuck. It's been TEN YEARS and you are just now—"
“JUDAH—” Ryan said, raising his voice to interrupt my outburst. He stomped the brake to emphasize the point, causing dirt and dust to crunch and dance around the vehicle, and the belt to bite into my chest from the abrupt stop.
“—I wanted to. Hell, I’d have been shouting it from every rooftop between here and Cedarville, but—” He exhaled harshly, too tight to be a laugh, but not casual enough to describe as a sigh. “—but for Ol’ Sheriff Cooperfield. He came to my hospital room not too long after I came out of surgery. Don’t think I’d even seen your dad yet. He says, ‘Now listen, son, we don’t want this unfortunate incident to blemish the public trust and make citizens feel like we can’t work together.’”
I noticed that I was now the one white-knuckling. My hands were balled into tight, indignant fists. “Cooperfield what—covered it up?”
“Exactly so. Not so explicitly as to make a scene over it, but enough to get the idea that my life would be even more of a mess if I went against the official report. He basically emphasized that, in a ‘he said’ competition, he’d back George Walton and remind people of reasons why they might not want to trust me.”
We stared at each other for a few beats. Ryan wrestled with the ghosts from his confession. I tried to reel in my own guilty feelings over the matter.
“Um—” I said, glancing over to Ryan, my brain now reset.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, still peering out the windshield. “Anyway. Cooperfield told me that, and the rest is history. Walton got transferred to another county; I got nearly six years of PT visits and medical bills. No therapy, though. Not like the town can afford the best insurance, but still, you’d think that’d be there.”
I wasn’t in a place to appreciate the attempt at humor. “Ryan, if I’d have known—”
“You’d have gone AWOL, fucked your career, and then gone to jail. I know.” He half-smiled. “That’s part of why I didn’t tell you, bud. At least until now. Now you can’t mess up your career path. What you do in retirement is on you, I guess.”
“As much as I’d be open to the idea of a jailhouse stint—” I inhaled deeply, trying to refocus. Trying to push the emotions back into the box where they needed to be instead of out and everywhere. “—Dad is on a timer. So let’s focus on that first. We find him, then we deal with Sheriff Cooperfield and Walton.”
A low howl lifted from farther down the mountain, as if you’d sized up a coyote to the size of a Great Dane. We both looked through the windshield, peering into the darkness around the pale cones of light the Bronco was throwing.