Dead Girl. Craig Nybo

that the old man’s gone, you can use my name anyhow you want. Jist don’t make me out to be some kind of backcountry fool.”

      “You got it. I appreciate your time.” I put the micro recorder into my attaché, stood up, and made my way through the clutter maze back to the front door. I heard Bob pop the top of another can as I reached for the tarnished doorknob. “Oh, there is one more thing,” I said. I turned and caught him scratching his crotch with one hand and tipping his beer can with the other. “You might want to check that kitchen of yours, I think I smell something burning.”

      Shuler clambered, lowering his beer can, glancing both ways, and forcing an uncomfortable smile. “Ain’t nothing burning in here. They’s probably paving the road nearby, you’re probably getting a whiff of the new tar.”

      “Yea, that’s probably it.” I smiled and winked.

      As I stepped outside, I caught the end of an argument coming from DeeDee’s house. Torre stormed out the front door, DeeDee in tow.

      “Torre, I’d rather you didn’t go out tonight.”

      “You’re not my boss.” Torre stalked down the porch steps and walked to his purple rice-burner, fumbling through his keys.

      “You’re not going to that damn bridge are you?” DeeDee stopped at the railing on the porch and hugged herself from the cool. She watched her grandson unlock the car.

      “It ain’t none of your business where I go.”

      “Don’t go to the bridge, it’s dangerous, especially this time of year.”

      Torre fired up his rice-burner. It’s fat exhaust pipe coughed up a cloud. Torre dropped the car into reverse and gunned it. The car patched backward along the gravel drive-strip, shooting pea-stone like shrapnel in all directions. When the car met the road, Torre engaged the emergency brake and cranked the wheel, skidding the car around, a maneuver that, no doubt, he had practiced many times. The rice-burner patched away at 20 miles-per-hour better than the speed limit.

      DeeDee watched Torre’s car jet away. After the rice-burner’s tail lights winked off into the dark, she turned and stared at the barred up cinderblock garage. Her eyes narrowed. She stood that way for a moment, both enraged and defeated. I watched her from the shadows. She uttered something pointed, a curse or an epithet. I couldn’t make out her words. She wheeled around and went into her house.

      I had seen two bridges when I had driven into town. They lay side-by-side over the same river, one condemned, the other built as a replacement. I checked my watch. It was nearly a quarter past nine; I had nearly two hours before I was due back at DeeDee’s for her mystery appointment. I decided to head to the bridge incognito to see exactly what DeeDee had said was dangerous.

      Chapter 6

      Using a pair of binoculars, I looked down from the shoulder of Bluff Road, an overlooking ridge, at an enormous party unfolding at the Milvian Bridge. There must have been at least 50 teenagers. They smoked, drank, and acted like a bunch of James Deans, leaning against their souped-up cherry-bomb cars. I counted eight rice-burners at the mouth of the bridge, situated in a circle, their high beams illuminating the center of the action. I felt a subwoofer thump even from my high vantage point. A teenaged girl, dolled up in hot pants and frizzed hair--I still can’t believe the 80’s are coming back--danced between a pair of fire-spewing 50-gallon drums. Her hypnotizing gyrations insinuated that she was high on something.

      I spotted Torre. He leaned against his rice-burner, sunglasses on, an arm draped over a young thing with blond hair. “Torre, Torre, Torre, shame on you,” I said and snicked my tongue.

      I panned my binoculars to the bridge itself. The Milvian spanned 100 yards across a river called the Iceridge (as I had learned from a map I had picked up at a Texaco Station). The powers that be had decommissioned the bridge and gated it off nearly two decades ago. They had built a new bridge in the early 90s not fifty yards from its former counterpart. The old bridge appeared to be functional, other than a few rust cankered iron beams and spider web cracks in the tarmac through which ground creep had been allowed to run its coarse. Tall gates blocked both portals onto the bridge. Chains and hardware store padlocks held the gates closed--nothing a kid with a pair of bolt cutters couldn’t best in less than 10 seconds.

      I heard tires crunch over the shoulder-gravel behind me. I turned around and spotted a police cruiser pulling off Bluff Road, headlights standing down. The cruiser parked. The door opened and out came Sheriff Biels. He walked with a John Wayne gate in the moonlight toward me. I wondered if he had practiced that swagger in the mirror.

      “Nice night, isn’t it?” Sherriff Biels said.

      “A bit nippy for my tastes.”

      He stepped up next to me and looked down at the circle of cars at the mouth of the bridge. “What are you doing out here?” I sensed an under-carrying flavor of indictment in his voice. I wondered if that tinge of accusation was like his swagger: rehearsed.

      “I didn’t realize there was a curfew for adults in Ridgewater.” I studied Biels’s face. I hadn’t rattled him.

      “No curfew. I’m just wondering why a man of your age would want to go voyeur on a band of underage kids.”

      I raised my binoculars and looked off into the distant hills along the eastern side of town. “Just admiring the scenery; nothing like a big happy moon to punch the shapes of those mountains out of the night sky don’t you think?”

      “How poetic. Why are you here?” Biels put his hands on his hips.

      “Haven’t I already answered that question? I’m a novelist on the research prowl. That should explain the opera glasses and the voyeurism.” I held up my small binoculars.

      “You’re correct about the writer part. But I did a little digging and found some information on you, Mr. Brock Vang, columnist for the Wasatch Times, or should I refer to you as Ernie Hunshuler, tabloid junk writer for The Star?”

      I smiled and let the binoculars go. They dangled around my neck on a faux leather strap. “Okay, you got me, Sheriff.” I raised my hands. “But based on what I’m digging up here in Ridgewater, maybe you should refer to me as Ernie Hunshuler. This place is a little slice of the Danvers State Hospital.”

      “What’s that?” Biels asked.

      “It’s a compliment, man. Danvers is a famous institute for higher learning.”

      “I’m not in the mood for your self-important quacking.”

      “I’ll try to keep my feathers and bill to myself.”

      A smirk creased his lips.

      I couldn’t help but allow the corners of my mouth to rise into a self-satisfied smile. “Why are you busting my chops anyways, copper? I haven’t done anything.”

      Biels took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, gathering himself. “What it comes down to is; your kind aren’t wanted around here.”

      “Spoken like a true small-town peace-keeper.”

      Biels fixed me with an expression so intense that I actually shut my mouth. “We’re a small community of good people, doing the best we can. Everybody here knows what everybody else is doing. A stranger rolls into town and there ain’t a soul who doesn’t know about it. If you start poking around, looking for old maggoty meat to write about in your cheap tabloid rag, it ain’t going to do any good for my town.”

      Damn how I hate censors; now I was getting mad. “I get it, man. You don’t want me rattling the locals. Look, Biels, I respect your position, I really do, but, last time I looked, Ridgewater is situated right smack dab in the heart of the U-S-of-A and thereby beholden to an old contract called the constitution, which clearly states that there are no laws against free speech.”

      Biels smiled either comfortably or nervously, I couldn’t tell, and looked down at the ensuing party of teenagers. “I’ll be keeping my eyes on you.”

      “Tell