River Road Page 2

  But Cressida had told me because she was my friend—my best friend in the department. Since her office was right across the hall from mine we couldn’t help but hear each other’s student conferences. Can you believe they still don’t know what a dangling modifier is? I’d moan after a student left. Don’t believe that story about the dead grandmother, she’d say after a student had wept for ten minutes in my office, she told me that last year when she was in my Women’s Lit class. So when I’d asked Cressida what had happened in the committee she had only hesitated a moment before breaking down and telling me.

  I’m so sorry, Nan, I tried everything I could but the committee went against you. If only you’d listened to me—

  She was right. A year ago, when Cressida was up for tenure, she told me that it had made a big difference that she’d just gotten a contract for a new book. I really needed to at least have something under way. She even offered to make an introduction to her editor, but I hadn’t taken her up on her generous offer and now I’d repaid her with getting her in trouble with Ross. I’d have to tell him it hadn’t been her fault that she’d told me. If I hadn’t completely blown things with Ross. Snatches of things I’d said to him in the kitchen were coming back to me. I’d accused him of sabotaging my chances because I’d broken off with him six and a half years ago. Shit. How many people had heard that? How many people were gossiping about me right now? Poor Nan, did you hear she threw a fit at the Christmas party because she didn’t get tenure? Did you know she had an affair with Ross Ballantine? It must have been right after her daughter . . .

  I reached for my tea and upset a stack of papers that slid down onto the floor like a sheet of snow coming off a steep-pitched roof. My living room was a mess. I was a mediocre housekeeper at best and got worse as the semester went on. Half-full teacups tottered on stacks of books. A fine layer of dust and cat hair floated in the air. I’d clean up tomorrow while grading papers. And then I’d write a letter to the tenure committee. I would demand to know the basis for being denied. I had good student evaluations and had published an award-winning novel . . .

  But nothing for over six years. Nothing since Emmy.

  . . . but I had an idea for something now. Something about hitting that deer. I’d start on it tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep. I stretched out on the couch and closed my eyes. I’d rest up a little before climbing the stairs—I’d call someone in the morning to fix them—and fell asleep.

  In my dream I was sitting at my desk watching Emmy run down the snow-covered hill toward the road. I knew it was all right because the day Emmy had died had been in spring and the apple trees had been in bloom. She was picking daffodils. The best ones grew down on the edge of the road on the other side of the stone wall. She knew she wasn’t allowed to climb over the wall. I’d overheard Evan whisper to her that they would pick flowers for me for Mother’s Day when he got home from work. She must have gotten tired of waiting. When I found her she was clutching a handful of daffodils. The smell of daffodils and apple blossoms still makes me sick. But in the dream it was all right because it was winter so this wasn’t the day. I had time. I lowered my head to my laptop. I was writing my second novel, the one that I would never finish . . .

  Come back!

  A screech of tires . . . a scream . . . and then . . . thump.

  I startled awake, the remembered impact of the deer hitting my car reverberating in my chest. It was morning, the living room full of that morning-after-the-first-snow kind of light that for a moment made me feel hopeful—like a child waking up to a world transformed. A new beginning. A clean slate. That’s what I had promised myself in the woods. I was going to appeal the tenure decision, clean my house, cut back on my drinking. . . .

  Something thumped against the front door. For a moment I had the horrible thought that it was the deer throwing itself at my door in vengeance for hitting it and leaving it for dead in the woods. But then I heard the noise again, and the creak of the loose floorboard on the front porch, and realized it was someone knocking at the door.

  “Coming,” I shouted, getting groggily to my feet. It was probably Dottie, stopping by on her way to work, come to see if I was all right. Dear Dottie, I should take her out to lunch over break. Or it was Cressida, who could have seen my car parked in the turnaround on her way in to work and wondered if I was okay. Or Ross, come to say it had all been a terrible mistake. He’d already talked to the tenure committee and they’d reversed their decision—

  It wasn’t Dottie, Cressida, or Ross. It was a police officer, his uniformed bulk looking too big for my doorway, breathing cold into the room. His bland, broad face and dark, thickly lashed eyes looked vaguely familiar. I thought for a second maybe I’d had him as a student but I realized he was too old.

  “Hi,” I said, pulling my cardigan over my blouse to cover up the fact I wasn’t wearing a bra. “Can I help you, Officer?”

  “Nancy Lewis?”

  “I’m Nan Lewis.”

  “Is that your car parked on the side of the road? The one with the broken headlight?”

  Crap. “Yes, is it in the way, Officer”—I peered at his name badge—“Sergeant McAffrey? I couldn’t get it up the driveway in the snow last night so I pulled into the turnaround so it would be out of the way of the snowplows. I was going to take it to Van’s when I got dressed.” I saw his eyes roving over the disarray of my living room, lingering on the bourbon bottle on the kitchen counter, disapproval in his eyes. Well, fuck that. Who was he to judge me?

  “Look, I had a crappy night last night. I hit a deer on my way home from the English faculty party. So if you’re going to ticket me for a broken headlight . . .”

  He turned his cold, disapproving eyes on me. “I’m not here about a broken headlight, Ms. Lewis. I’m here about a hit and run—a student at the college named Leia Dawson. She was found dead on the river road this morning.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “No,” I said, gripping the edge of the door to steady myself, “you must be mistaken. Dottie drove Leia home last night.”

  “Dottie?”

  “Dorothy Cooper, the English Department secr—administrative assistant. Call her. She’ll straighten this out.” Dottie could straighten anything out, I started to tell him, but then my stomach flipped over and I realized I was about to be sick.

  “Excuse me,” I managed. I fled to the downstairs half-bath off the kitchen and emptied my stomach of the red wine and three mini quiches I’d had last night. I rinsed out my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror. Mascara under my eyes, hair a rat’s nest. Do rats have nests? Emmy had once asked me when I used the expression. I finger-combed it back into a sloppy bun and scrubbed the mascara off with soap and cold water. It couldn’t be Leia dead, I told myself, but it must be someone.

  When I came back the cop was standing at the kitchen counter looking at the bourbon bottle. I wanted to explain that I hadn’t had any when I got home last night but then that would sound like I usually had a drink when I got home, so I said nothing. He straightened up when I came into the room. His head almost touched the low farmhouse ceiling. I cleared off the nicest chair for him and sat down on the couch, pulling the afghan over my lap. “Why do you think it’s Leia?” I asked. “Because of her ID? You know they all use fake IDs to drink at the Black Swan.”

  “I’m familiar with the underage drinking problem at the Swan,” he said. He was still standing. Looking up at him was making me feel sick again. “But I’m afraid there’s no doubt about the identity of the girl. Your department head identified her this morning.”

  “Ross?” My voice sounded shrill and foreign. “My God, he must be devastated. Leia was his favorite student—mine too. Was he absolutely sure?”

  “Dr. Ballantine made a positive ID and verified that Ms. Dawson was at his residence last night for the faculty Christmas party. You were there too.”

  I looked up at him, not sure if it was a question or a statement. “Would you please sit down? I promise the chair is
cleaner than it looks.”

  He blushed, which made him look younger—maybe he had been in one of my classes. There was a criminal justice program at the college that local cops took sometimes, but it clearly wasn’t the right time to ask him. “Yes, I was at the party. I saw Leia in the kitchen talking to Ross.”

  Leia, swiveling her swanlike neck as I burst in, spilling red wine onto Ross’s wrist, her big blue eyes wide and startled. Those blue eyes that stood out even more since she’d cut her waist-length black hair short at Thanksgiving. She’d lost weight too, and there were dark rings under her eyes, which I’d assumed came from late-night studying. I covered my mouth at the image of those eyes frozen in a death stare. Could it really be true? Was Leia really dead? I found a tissue in my cardigan pocket and wiped my eyes. “But Dottie said she was driving her home.”

  “Ms. Cooper apparently was unable to locate her and assumed she’d gotten a lift from someone else. She suggested you as a possibility since you left shortly after Ms. Cooper saw Leia leaving the kitchen. Do you remember what time that was?”

  “When I saw Leia in the kitchen?” I was shaking my head, but then I recalled the view out Ross’s kitchen window. You couldn’t see the river from his house but there was a beautiful view of the Catskills on the other side. A couple of students had been sitting on the stone wall next to the old barn Ross used as a garage, black silhouettes against the setting sun, except one who stood out because her red leather jacket caught the sun and glowed like a burning ember.

  “The sun was going down over the mountains,” I said, “so what time is sunset these days? Four thirty? I left soon after and it was dusk when I was driving home. You know how it’s hard to see at dusk. A deer ran right in front of my car on the bend before Orchard Drive—”

  “You didn’t see Ms. Dawson walking on River Road when you left Dr. Ballantine’s residence?”

  “No. If I had I would have offered her a lift. She’s one of my favorite students—” I gasped, all of Leia’s bright future rising up in front of me—the prizes, the MFA, the novels she would never write now—how was it possible that all of that could be extinguished overnight? “I’m sorry,” I said when I could talk again. “This is a lot to take in. You say she was hit on River Road? But she wasn’t found until this morning? Who . . . ?”

  “A plow driver. He saw her boots sticking up out of the snow—”

  I pictured bright yellow rain boots, but no, Leia had worn red cowboy boots. And a red leather jacket. A tough-girl look she’d affected since she had started teaching at the prison.

  “She was lying in three inches of snow and covered with a foot more so we think she was hit after it started snowing—around five p.m.”

  “It wasn’t snowing when I left the party,” I said, “or when I hit the deer. It started snowing later, when I was in the woods.”

  “In the woods?”

  “Yes, I went to look for the deer.”

  He smiled for the first time since I’d opened my door to him. Two curved lines, like parentheses, framed his wide mouth when he smiled, making his whole face look softer. “Why?” he asked.

  “Sorry . . . ?”

  “Why’d you go look for the deer?”

  “In case it was hurt.”

  “And what would you have done if you’d found it?”

  “Um . . . I’m not sure . . . I just had to see. . . .”

  “And did you find it?”

  “No,” I admitted. “So I suppose it was okay.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, flipping open a notepad. “So you say it started snowing when you were in the woods and then you went back to your car when you didn’t find the deer?”

  First I sat down in the snow and had myself a little cry and a nap. “I hiked around a bit.”

  “In those?” He bent his eyes down to the floor where I’d kicked off the velvet ballet slippers I’d worn to the party last night. I picked them up. They were still damp. Ruined.

  “I guess it wasn’t very practical of me but I felt bad.”

  “About the deer?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t even see her—”

  “You didn’t see the deer?” He looked up from his notebook, eyes narrowing, jaw hardening. “Then how do you know it was a deer?”

  He held my gaze. His eyes, which I’d taken for black at first, were actually a deep brown with flecks of gold in them. Looking into them was like staring into those eddies of snow through my windshield last night. Dizzying and cold. I drew the afghan up over my chest.

  “I meant, I didn’t see it until it was right in front of my car and then it was too late to stop. It’s dark on the river road. The town ought to put up lights on it. I always tell my students not to walk on it at night. Poor Leia—”

  “And you came right home after looking for the deer?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t get up my driveway so I parked in the turnaround. I went to sleep early.” I didn’t even have a drink. “I’d had a long day—teaching, holding office hours, then the party. . . .”

  “And how much did you have to drink at the party?”

  He slipped the question in so stealthily that I was already saying “Not much, a glass or two” before I could stop myself. “Why? Why are you asking me that?”

  He looked up, his face carefully blank. “We’ve had a hit and run, Ms. Lewis. Hit and run. That means the driver didn’t stop, didn’t report it, left Ms. Dawson to die on the side of the road. We’re looking for the driver. You were driving home around the time Leia Dawson was hit. Your car was left on the side of the road with visible damage to the front left bumper. You were drinking—”

  “Only a glass!”

  “Or two.”

  “I hit a deer.”

  “That you didn’t see and couldn’t find.”

  I stared at him. He wasn’t smiling now. His mouth was hard, his eyes unreadable. “Should I call a lawyer?”

  He shrugged, his shoulders rolling under his jacket with a smoothness that suggested a hidden reserve of strength. “That depends”—he put his notepad away, braced his hands on his knees, and leaned forward to get up—“on what we find on your car.”

  * * *

  I pulled on rubber boots over my bare feet and followed him down my unplowed driveway and across the road to the turnaround through shin-deep snow. We’d gotten over a foot. The snow lay on the top and trunk of my car, but had been cleared off the hood. A narrow strip had been shoveled around the front tires, where a police officer knelt taking pictures. In the bright sunlight the damage looked worse than it had last night, the left side of the hood crumpled. A flatbed tow truck was idling on Orchard Drive, its exhaust pluming blue in the cold, still air.

  “You’re going to take my car?”

  “After the initial forensics, yes—”

  “Don’t you need a warrant to confiscate my property?”

  “A damaged car in the vicinity of a hit and run constitutes probable cause.” The cop smiled at me. “I learned that at your college in Intro to Criminal Justice.”

  “I’m calling my lawyer,” I said, taking my cell phone out of my pocket.

  “That’s probably wise, Ms. Lewis,” he said more kindly, which scared me worse than when he’d been mean. “And look, if we find deer fur and blood and no trace of Leia Dawson on your car you’ll be in the clear.”

  My stomach turned at the words trace of Leia Dawson. He must have seen it on my face.

  “We just want to find the person who hit that girl and left her for dead in the road. You of all people must understand that.” His face softened and he looked like he was going to say something else, but then the other police officer called his name—Joe—and as he turned I suddenly remembered him. He was the officer who’d responded when Emmy was hit.

  He said excuse me—he’d been polite that morning too—and walked toward the cop who was crouched in front of my left front tire. As he knelt down next to the cop, I remembered him kneeling beside me on the road all those years ago. The paramedics
wanted to take Emmy but I was still holding her hand. The police officer—Joe—had knelt down beside me in the mud and laid his hand over mine. I remembered that the warmth of his flesh had shocked me and that when I turned to him his face had been as white as Emmy’s. Why, he’s so young, I’d thought, only a boy himself.

  He was leaning forward now, looking at something in a plastic bag that the other cop was holding up for him. When he got up all of the softness in his face was gone and he looked like he’d aged way more than six years since that morning when he’d knelt down beside me in the mud.

  “You’re going to have to come down to the station now, ma’am.”

  “But why? I told you, I hit a deer.”

  “We’ve found blood and white wool fibers in your tire. The fibers look like a match for the scarf Leia Dawson was wearing last night.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  McAffrey let me get my coat and make a phone call but when I asked if I could shower and change he said he’d prefer I didn’t, his face hard, no trace of the young officer who’d comforted a bereaved mother.

  “Can I at least go to the bathroom?” I asked, feeling like a child. A scared child.

  He nodded, embarrassed, and blushed when I plucked my bra out of the sofa cushions. I did too, but I didn’t want to sit in a police station without a bra.

  I called my college roommate, Anat Greenberg, who was a lawyer with a practice in Poughkeepsie, from the bathroom. She made me repeat everything twice. I could hear McAffrey shifting his weight over a creaky floorboard on the other side of the door.

  “So he hasn’t arrested you?” Anat asked.

  “No. No one’s read me my rights or anything.”

  “Okay, so they must not have enough evidence. Listen, Nan, there’s a lot of pressure in these cases to make an arrest. Don’t answer any questions until I get there.”

  I told her I wouldn’t and flushed the toilet even though I’d been too nervous to pee. Then I ran cold water over my hands until they stopped shaking. I wished I could brush my teeth but the brush was in the upstairs bathroom.