River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(61)

Becca rushed into the kitchen as Jackie hung up the phone. “What’s wrong?” Jackie asked.

“He’s in a lot of pain.”

A loud thump came from upstairs. Both Jackie and Becca stared at each other before running for the stairs. Becca was the first to reach her father’s room, finding him on the floor at the foot of the bed. Jackie ran in behind her and gasped.

They crouched on either side of him.

“How in the world did that happen?” Jackie asked. The hospital bed’s rails were up.

They tried lifting him to his feet. He made a moaning sound.

“Can you stand?” Jackie asked and then mumbled, “That was a stupid question.” To Becca she said, “Put the rail down. Then grab his legs. We’re going to have to lift him.”

Becca did as she was told and put the bed rail down before lifting his legs while Jackie slipped her hands underneath his arms. He was heavy, considering he was all bones. They were lifting dead weight, Becca thought, then pushed it out of her mind.

“Easy. Easy.” Perspiration covered Jackie’s upper lip.

Becca’s father continued moaning, a deep, guttural sound that had a frightening effect on both women. They got him onto the bed a little crooked, but he was on far enough that Becca could put the rail back up. Jackie wiped her upper lip with the back of her arm.

Becca’s father curled into a fetal position. He looked small and childlike. His body position seemed to say he was ashamed for turning into this frail, dying man. He continued to moan as Jackie administered the morphine.

Becca touched his shoulder as a way to comfort him because she didn’t know what else to do.



Both Becca and Jackie stood by his bed, listening to his moans weaken as the medication massaged the pain. After some time had passed, the terrible sound he’d been making stopped, and her father slipped into a drug-induced sleep.

“I need a drink,” Jackie said. “How about you?”

Once they were in the kitchen, Jackie poured each of them a straight shot of whiskey. They drank it down. The alcohol burned Becca’s throat, heating her insides and searing her stomach. She set the glass on the countertop.

“What the hell was that about anyway?” Jackie poured herself another shot, tipped the bottle toward Becca’s glass.

Becca held up her hand to stop her. “I’m good.” She didn’t mention to Jackie what she believed had made her father get out of bed. It was the sheet of paper Becca had shown him. He was coming after the sheet of paper.

Becca grabbed the whiskey bottle. “On second thought,” she said, “I think I will have another.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Jackie had been up and down throughout the night, trying to stay on top of the pain, giving Becca’s father morphine every few hours. Becca would wake, shuffle down the hall in her bare feet, ask if there was anything she could do.

“Go back to bed,” Jackie would say each time. “One of us should get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

The last time Becca heard Jackie get up was four o’clock. Becca closed her bedroom door, unable to fall back asleep. She hadn’t been able to talk with her father again about the sheet of paper she’d found in his lockbox, not after she’d believed it had been the reason he’d fallen out of bed in the first place. Now, she pulled her laptop out and searched the local newspapers online. There were two articles about the recent body they’d found in the river. The first article offered little information. It didn’t even mention Paul, the owner of the antique store who had found the body originally. Becca remembered the television broadcast, how Paul had tried to shield his face and his grandson from the camera. People were afraid. No one had wanted to come forward with information. No one had wanted to get involved.

The second article she read was more about the victim. She looked at the grainy mug shot. His eyes were small, and his jaw was big and square. He looked like something out of a cartoon. She continued reading about his previous run-ins with the law. The article was slanted, in her opinion, taking the focus away from the killer and shifting the blame to the victim. She had no doubt this was what the local reporter had intended, helping the townspeople in Portland sleep a little easier at night.

But she wasn’t able to shake the fact that the victim had been somebody’s son. He’d had a mother and father, maybe a brother or sister, maybe even a wife and kids. Somewhere someone was missing him, mourning his death.

Becca shut off the power and closed the laptop. A weight as heavy as an anchor sat on her chest, the kind of steel anchor that Parker had used to toss over the side of the boat to keep them from drifting. Only now, instead of being in the boat, she was sinking to the river bottom like a mudhook.



The sun was coming up when Becca peeked into her father’s room. She checked the rise and fall of his chest. His breathing was ragged. But he was breathing, she reminded herself. He was breathing. Jackie was still in bed, finally able to get some rest after the long night.

Since both her father and Jackie were sleeping, Becca decided now was a good time to leave the house and find Parker. She had to at least try to explain Matt to him. But what about John? If she told Parker about John, about what she’d seen, would he think she’d deliberately kept something else from him? Would he ever trust her again? How could she tell him she was scared, when there was still so much she didn’t understand?