Gibbs continued. “We made love that night. And he said ‘catch me’ again. He was trusting me with his secret, begging me to keep him from falling.” She paused for a good hunk of a minute before she confessed, “His life was in my hands for a few weeks. That’s how long it took me to betray him.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The bridge over the river where Sterling Storey disappeared wasn’t much to look at.
I’d been working under the assumption that it was a major highway bridge on the stretch of Highway 19 that connects Thomasville and Albany, but it wasn’t. For some reason, when Sterling had cut off the main road out of Tallahassee, which was Highway 319, he’d ended up on a smaller road, a two-laner that I guessed was a county road, marked Georgia 3, heading northwest just about parallel to Highway 19. The bridge on the smaller road was a concrete structure that had been doing its job for a lot of years, almost too many. The local cops figured Sterling had gotten lost in the storm and had taken the wrong turn out of Thomasville and ended up on the county road instead of 19.
It was a reasonable assumption, but assumptions trouble me.
The details of the accident weren’t what I expected. The minivan that had gone off the highway and that had been in danger of sliding into the swollen river was traveling southeast, not northwest, before it went off the road. I couldn’t figure out how Sterling had even seen it down there. It was on the opposite side of the road, on the opposite side of the bridge.
That wasn’t all that I couldn’t figure. After living in the high desert for as long as I had, it was a constant revelation to me how lush everything was in southern Georgia, even the week before Thanksgiving. With the accident having taken place at nearly eight o’clock at night, with all the woods and vegetation camouflaging everything, and with torrential rains obscuring anything that wasn’t camouflaged, I didn’t know how Sterling could have seen a damn thing out the windshield of his damn rented Camry.
Standing near the top of the bridge abutment, I stared at the placid river below my feet. The water in the Ochlockonee was more yellow than gray, and I suspected that with global warming and all, there were glaciers that moved faster than that river was flowing at that moment. It took every bit of my imagination to conjure up a picture of the biblical flood that had recently coursed down that channel.
Before I left the riverbank, I reread the police report that my partner Lucy had smuggled to me. The report was okay. Better than many I’d read. Written clearly, decent chronology, good descriptions. In most circumstances it would have sufficed. These weren’t most circumstances, though, and standing on the bridge, I realized what wasn’t spelled out in the report.
Who had arrived at the scene first? Was it the Baptist preacher, the twin sisters, or Sterling Storey?
According to the police report, the preacher who had witnessed Sterling’s disappearance into the river was Reverend Nathaniel Prior, who served the faithful at a church in Meigs, a little town a short stretch northeast on Georgia 3 from the accident scene.
That’s where I would start.
The drive from the river to Meigs passed through thick woods that alternated with fields harvested clear-I was guessing-of cotton. I didn’t see much else that would support the local economy. I assumed I was in a poor county.
I drove up to a recently whitewashed church and asked a young man who was out in front raking leaves on the ragged lawn if he knew where I could find Nathaniel Prior.
“You’ve already found him. I’m Nathaniel Prior,” he told me. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
Nathaniel Prior was no more than twenty-five years old. He was smaller than me by a few inches but matched my weight pound for pound and then raised me a few for good measure. He had a voice that resonated like a diesel in a tunnel. The pile of leaves at his feet covered him up to midcalf.
He had big ears.
He tugged off a canvas glove, and we shook hands. I said, “Sam Purdy. Shall I call you Reverend?”
“That’s fine, or Nate’s fine, too. There are moments when I’m convinced I’m called worse things behind my back, but you’ve barely met me, so what reason would you have to insult me? What can I do for you this fine day?”
It was a fine day. The afternoon sun was shining, and the moisture in the southern air had already softened up my cuticles and the tender skin inside my nose. Those are the first parts that turn to papyrus after even a few days in the Colorado high desert.
“Do you have a minute to answer some questions about last Saturday? The accident at the bridge?”
Prior looked over my shoulder at the Cherokee. He said, “Mr. Purdy? Do I have that right? Why don’t we sit a spell and get a glass of tea? I have a feeling you’ve come a long way to ask me these questions, and these leaves are probably more than content to wait to be imprisoned in Hefty bags.”
“Sam,” I said. “Some tea sounds great.” I sat on the wooden porch of the church while the reverend retrieved the tea from inside. At least three people walking down the quiet lane waved hello to me while he was gone. I waved back to every one of them.
The tea was sweet, flavored with mint, and was delivered in painted glasses fat enough to hold a Big Gulp with room to spare.
“Thanks,” I said after a long draw.
“Colorado, huh? You ski?”
“Snowboard, actually, if you can believe it. I have a kid I try to chase around as much as I can. The snowboarding is his idea. He thinks skis are dorky. For his benefit, I try not to be any dorkier than comes naturally.”
“Copper? Winter Park?”
I didn’t expect somebody in Meigs, Georgia, to be asking me about ski resorts on Colorado’s Front Range. “Winter Park and Breck, mostly. You know-”
“I did a semester in Denver. At the Denver Seminary. Went up skiing whenever I could afford it, which wasn’t very often. A bunch of us got those cheap Buddy Passes at Copper. That was a good winter.”
I almost said,“No shit.”But I didn’t; I was on God’s front lawn. “How long you been in Meigs?”
“A couple of years. I’m loving it. I have a wonderful congregation. My family’s in Atlanta, close by. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do. Life is as sweet as this tea.” He placed his glass between his feet. “So what caused you to drive all this way to ask me what happened at the bridge?”
“The man who disappeared? I’m assisting his wife. I told her I’d try to figure out exactly what happened to him.”
“You an investigator of some kind?”
I considered lying to him but didn’t want to lie to a preacher. I don’t know why, exactly; in most circumstances I’d be happy to lie to the pope to advance an investigation. “Yeah, I am. I’m actually a police detective in Boulder. But I had a heart attack a while back and I’m on medical leave. So technically, at the moment, I’m nobody. Just somebody trying to help a friend.”
This was the moment in conversations with strangers-the moment they learned I was a cop from Boulder-when they asked the did-you-work-on-the-JonBenet-case? question. I steeled myself for it.
“You don’t look like Boulder.”
I smiled at him, grateful that we’d skipped right past the Ramseys. I replied, “You don’t look like Meigs.”
“Touché,” he said. “Fire away. What can I tell you?”
I took a battered notepad out of my pocket, flipped it to the next empty page, and clicked open my pen. “When did you arrive at the accident?”
“I was the last car to stop before Mr. Storey disappeared in the water. When I arrived, he was already there, the two sisters from Ochlockonee were already there, and of course, Mrs. Turnbull’s minivan was already down the bank.”