Crooked River: A Novel by Valerie Geary Read Free Book Online Page B

trousers, huddled together under the awning a few steps from room 119.
    Her room.
    The group broke apart and set to work. Three of them, one with a camera around his neck, followed Detective Talbert back inside. The rest remained in the parking lot with a few of the sheriff’s deputies, fanning in a wide arc to search potholes and sidewalk cracks, gutters and storm drains, and all possible places in between for blood, hair, shoeprints, cigarette butts, gum wrappers, anything and everything that might hold some importance, a revealing piece of evidence to help reconstruct her final hours.
    Someone bumped into me, jostling the satchel, and I panicked, thinking how stupid I was to bring the jacket here to the one place where every person might be a suspect and every unclaimed item a clue. I tried to step back from the tape and bumped into a thick wall of people pressing forward for a better look. I twisted, searching for a break in the crowd, some narrow opening to squeeze through, but we were packed in too close, our elbows and shoulders touching, our legs and breath tangling. I was stuck.
    “Sam? Are you okay?” Travis touched my arm.
    I flinched away from him and bumped into a woman standing beside me.
    “Sorry,” I mumbled, gathering my arms close against my body.
    “Hey,” Travis said. “You don’t look so great.”
    I nodded and said something about the heat, about not drinking enough water, about feeling dizzy. He pulled me along with him, forcing a path through the crowd, away from the yellow tape and chaos, the deputies and the dead woman’s room.
    We crossed the street and ducked into the shade of a maple tree growing in front of the First Baptist Church. I shrugged the satchel from my shoulders and let it slide to the ground.
    “I’ll get you some water,” Travis said.
    Before I could stop him, he was halfway to the church. The front doors were open, and he went inside.
    I leaned against the maple tree and stared up into its twisting branches. The dark green leaves were still, even as the air vibrated with heat and light and shimmering, ocher dust.
    Travis returned with a Dixie cup of cold water. I drank it in one gulp.
    “You want more?” he asked.
    I crushed the empty paper cup in my hand and shook my head. “Thanks.”
    “You gotta be careful in this heat,” he said. “Gotta keep hydrated.”
    He kept glancing at the Meadowlark. My gaze wandered there, too, but the crowd was too thick. Nothing to see but the backs of heads. I rubbed my eyes, wiping away sweat and dirt and the image of the dead woman’s battered face. Summer was supposed to be drowsy and carefree, measured by days and weeks of aimless roaming, doing whatever we wanted, lazy and young and unaware. Not this senseless violence and terrible death and so many questions unanswered, so many secrets and lies.
    Travis was kneeling on the ground beside the satchel, tying his shoe. He straightened when he saw me looking down at him.
    “Do you think they’ve told her family yet?” I asked.
    “If she even has family.” He picked at the tree trunk, pulling off small strips of bark and tossing them into the air, watching them fall.
    His mouth was turned down and his brow crumpled, his shoulders slumped. He wouldn’t look at me. This was the Travis I remembered, the boy from summers before who scowled at his feet if we passed on the sidewalk, who was always aloof and detached and so much cooler than me. Then he lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes. He smiled, and I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong, if maybe he wasn’t cool at all. Maybe he was just shy. Like me.
    He said, “I guess everyone has some kind of family somewhere, though, don’t they?”
    “Shit,” I said, picking up the satchel from the grass and slinging it over my shoulder. “I have to go.”
    I hurried away from Travis and the church.
    How much time had passed since I’d left Ollie? Twenty minutes? Thirty? A whole hour? Long enough, I was certain, for