Eyes Wide Open

Later, they coasted downstream. The river grew wide and the current smooth. The group pulled over to the shore for a basket lunch, part of the outing. The guide broke out the single-person kayaks that the rafting company had towed there. Everyone took a shot at it. It was fun. The current was easy. Kyle was a little scared to get in, but some other kid not much older tried it and had a blast.

Maybe if he hadn’t pushed him, Sherwood always thought when the dark moments came.

Maybe if he hadn’t pushed Dorrie: “C’mon, he’s a big kid. He can handle it.”

He was nine.

Kyle was paddling a few yards behind the main raft when the current, more like a series of small eddies, intensified.

Still not enough to make anyone alarmed, only enough to keep an eye out. Kyle suddenly seemed to be having a little trouble steering. No one paid much attention. There was no danger. Sherwood had been telling his war stories to one of the other couples, a stockbroker and his wife from Seattle. The guide even broke out the cold drinks.

Then Kyle called out.

“Donny, ” Dorrie shouted, noticing the gulf between them had widened.

For the first time Sherwood saw that his son was afraid.

“Mom,” he called out, struggling. “Dad!”

“Right side, right side, ” one of the guides yelled out to him, doing his best to slow the main raft.

“Keep it steady, son!” Sherwood called.

If the boy had just been twelve, even a little larger, it would have been nothing. The current was barely more than a trickle.

But a hundred yards downstream, the river divided. There was a sliver of an island in the middle separating the two sides. No more than a couple of hundred yards long. Everyone watched with elevating concern as Kyle got himself caught in a midstream current and was drawn, against his increasing attempts to right himself, to the other side.

Dorrie became alarmed. “ Don! ”

That was when Sherwood took off his sneaks and went to jump in. But the guide held him back. They were too far along.

“He’ll be okay,” the guide said, trying to reassure him. “There’s nothing dangerous over there.” He signaled to the other raft. “We’ll meet up with him on the other side.”

Sherwood yelled out. “You’ll be okay! Just paddle, son!”

But his heart told him something entirely different.

Back outside Charlie’s apartment, Sherwood gazed out at the darkened courtyard. He turned on the radio. Something easy and soothing. Country. Annoyed at himself.

Why did he have to go through this now?

It was called a strainer-a thatch of branches just below the surface.

And the sound of that word still brought him anguish and pain, though it had been almost twenty years.

They steered the main raft to the far end of the island and waited for Kyle to make his way out.

Everyone was shouting, “ Kyle! Kyle! ” Even the other rafters.

He never did.

Sherwood finally jumped in. Panicked. Running ahead of the guide. Thrashing against the current upstream. The river was no more than thigh high and seemingly smooth, but after running hard a hundred yards Sherwood’s thighs began to tire and feel like concrete, a steady stream of water pushing against them. “ Kyle! Kyle! ” His heart suddenly accelerating in a way he had never felt on the job.

“Kyle!”

The second hundred yards lasted a lifetime. All the power in his legs simply gave way. They turned to fire and then to rubber, and he had to stop, the guide running past him.

Where are you, Kyle?

Up ahead, he saw the guide kneel in the water, freeing his boy from the brambles that had caught on his life jacket, under the surface. He gazed back with a look Sherwood would never forget, crying out, “ Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man…”

It’s time to risk it, Sherwood…

Really? He had already lost it all!

He snuggled in the car seat in a comfortable position and took out a burrito from a bag and settled in. He turned up the volume.

Thank you, the doc had said. And it made Sherwood smile.

Don’t thank me. Thank that damn pastor. Knightly.

Behind the shades in the apartment, the light had gone off.

Chapter Fifty-Four

T hat night, I fell asleep while paging through Greenway’s book.

I woke up a couple of hours later. The digital clock read 2:17 A.M. I climbed out of bed, poured myself a glass of water. I checked my e-mails, flicked on the TV. Criminal Minds was on.

My brain seemed to be repeating the same question over and over.

How is my brother involved?

I lay on the bed, suddenly hearing noises everywhere: a car passing by. Two late-night guests returning to their room. The low drone of the TV. I turned on the light again and picked up my book. Skimmed through a few pages at random, through the photos of the major participants, the ranch as it was back then, the police shots of the gruesome crime scene and evidence. I was hoping Greenway’s painstaking detail of the investigation would lull me back to sleep.

It didn’t take long after Riorden’s sister, Marci, was informed of her brother’s murder for attention to fall on his ex-wife, Sandy, and the “bunch of loonies” she was tied to.