Thief River Falls by Brian Freeman Read Free Book Online

smelled of tobacco and leather. Two walls were made of built-in bookshelves stocked with hardcover first editions that he’d collected throughout his life. A third wall had glass doors that led to the green grass of their backyard and down the slope to a horseshoe bend in the Red Lake River.
    He sat behind his huge walnut desk and switched on the brass lamp, which gave a dim yellow glow. An oil painting on the opposite wall mocked him. So did the framed photograph on his desk. Art lasted forever, but people didn’t. He took the picture in his hand, stared at it for a while, and then turned it facedown. He put his palms flat on the desk, which was neatly arranged with file folders. There was plenty of work to do, but he didn’t have the spirit to do any of it.
    Some people dealt with grief by crying. Some ran away. Some, like Gillian, drank their troubles down. Denis dealt with his grief by getting angry. He liked control, he liked power, and grief took those things away. Gillian was right; he felt impotent. When he felt that way, he had a need to strike back at whatever was causing his pain. He had to find someone to blame. Not that it took any of the grief away.
    Denis unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. He kept his most important papers there. His financial accounts, statements, and passwords. The deed to the house. His will, which would need to be changed yet again. He dreaded the thought of another meeting with his attorney, his life’s tragic events reduced to a series of codicils.
    A gun was in the drawer, too. A revolver, practically antique, with a hardwood grip. It had belonged to his father and then his grandfather before that. Denis stared at it and could almost hear the gun calling to him. He thought about taking it out, caressing the black steel of the barrel, easing back the hammer. He’d always kept it loaded for a circumstance just like this. For the end of the road. He’d never intended to go out slowly, wasting away to nothing, losing control over his body and mind day by day. No, when the time came, this was the way to go about it.
    He wondered, Was this the day?
    Gillian wouldn’t miss him if he left her. Some relationships recover from loss, and some don’t, and theirs fell into the latter category. If he asked her about it, she’d probably tell him to do whatever he wanted, but to do it outside, please, where the blood wouldn’t get on the carpet and the walls. That was the extent of her concern with whether he lived or died.
    No. It wasn’t that day yet.
    Denis closed the drawer and locked it again. He got up from behind the desk and went to the outside door. His hand-carved walking stick hung on the handle. He opened the door and leaned on the cane as he proceeded into the yard. The grass was sodden below his shoes from the long day of rain. There was a fall chill in the night air, but he didn’t bother with a coat.He never did. He hiked past Gillian’s flower garden and past the fire pit and mature oak trees out to the boat dock that jutted into the water. The shifting dock was treacherous underfoot, but he didn’t care. He walked to the very end, where the river slouched past him at a lazy pace. He stared into the water and then up at the sky, as if he could find answers there. But there were no answers anywhere. Not tonight.
    He took his phone from his pocket. Typically, he kept it powered on all the time, because emergencies were commonplace in his job day or night. But he’d switched it off earlier in the evening and left it that way. He turned it on again by habit, and when the phone acquired a signal, he heard the buzz that told him he had messages. Voice mails. E-mails. Texts. People were trying to reach him, but he had no stomach to talk to them. Everything could wait until daylight. He switched the phone off again and dropped it back in his pocket.
    But they wouldn’t leave him in peace. He couldn’t get away from who he was. Behind him, on the east end of Eleventh Street