The Narrows(66)

“Doesn’t look like it.”

When they came around the bend of Route 40 that overlooked the Narrows and, beyond that, the incline of the mountain where the old factory sat halfway up, Ben slowed the car and turned off the highway. The tires crunched over gravel and the ride was bumpy.

“There’s a turnabout down here where we can park,” he told her, craning his neck to peer through the dirt-speckled windshield. “Since the Highland Street Bridge is out, we’ll have to walk across on the footbridge.”

In the passenger seat, Brandy nodded numbly and looked out the window.

The turnabout was halfway down the embankment that led toward the Narrows. Ben parked and stepped on the emergency brake. “Fall out,” he said, attempting to sound jovial, and pushed out the driver’s door. The air was humid this afternoon, the sun a blazing eyelet in the sky directly overhead. He went to the trunk and took out the bolt cutter while Brandy meandered down to the edge of the Narrows and peered down.

Ben came up beside her. “Be careful.”

The tips of her sneakers were overextending the concrete barrier. Inches below the lip of the barrier, the grayish waters of Wills Creek shuttled by. Typically the water was no more than four or five feet deep, but after the series of storms and all the flooding, the water was high enough for someone to lean over the barrier and touch it with their fingertips or graze the surface with a boot heel.

“It’s deep,” she said. “I’ve never come this close to it before.”

Ben knew what the girl was thinking, mainly because he was thinking the same thing. Had her brother come down here on his own and fallen into the Narrows? Christ, he hoped not…

“Listen,” he said then. “You can come along with me but you do whatever I tell you to do. You do it without question, okay? I don’t need to argue with no kid out here, okay?”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Well, you get what I mean, right?”

She averted her eyes from his. “Yeah.”

“Good. Now come on,” he said, turning away from the water and heading across the sloping field toward the stone arch of the footbridge. Brandy followed, her shadow mingling with his in the brownish grass.

“This is where you found that other kid, right?” she asked.

I knew it was only a matter of time before she brought that up, he thought, feeling uncomfortable and unprepared nonetheless.

“A bit farther down,” he said. “Where Wills Creek empties into the river.”

“Do you know who he was?”

“No.”

“But he wasn’t from town, right?”

“He wasn’t.”

They crossed the footbridge. At the apex, Ben peered over one side and examined his smeary reflection in the running, black water.

“What killed him?” Brandy asked. She appeared beside him now, also gazing down at her reflection.

“I assume he drowned.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m not sure,” Ben said. He was growing increasingly perturbed talking to this girl about the strange boy’s death. “The autopsy hasn’t been done yet.”

“When will the autopsy be done?”

When they find the goddamn body, he thought eerily. If it just got up and walked away, maybe it will come walking right back. Which made him even more uncomfortable thinking about it…

“Was that all?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Did he have any other injuries or anything?”

“No.” They stepped off the footbridge and began climbing the grassy slope toward the factory. Sweat already ran down Ben’s forehead.

“Are you sure?”

He paused and glanced at her. He felt himself offer her a crooked smile though it was more out of discomfort than humor. Wincing in the bright light of day, she looked up at him, her face otherwise expressionless.

“Of course I’m sure,” he said evenly. “Was there something else you wanted to ask me?”

“You said my mom already told you about the T-shirt we found in the yard? Matthew’s T-shirt?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “I guess that’s it, then.”

They continued up the incline until the trees parted and the massive stone fa?ade of the ancient plastics factory rose out of the earth. As recently as a few years ago, the factory grounds had been part of the department’s patrol area, in an effort to keep an eye out for potential drug users or neighborhood delinquents who found it exhilarating to throw bricks through windows and spray graffiti on walls. But it seemed no one ever trespassed on the property. When the land eventually reverted back to the county, officers stopped coming up here. There was no landowner to complain if anything ever happened, and it seemed that nothing did ever happen. Quite often, Ben forgot the place even existed.

It seemed to greet him now, however. If buildings could smile, he thought and shivered.

He moved around the side of the building and Brandy followed, her footing as delicate as a fawn’s. The shrubbery was overgrown back here, obscuring most of the windows and doorways. Back when he had still patrolled up here, there used to be a dirt access road that toured the circumference of the building. That road was gone now, and Ben could not even see remnants of it beneath the overgrown grass.