Page 24 of The River We Remember

“I’m pretty sure not.”

“Then what?” J.P. asked. “Was it those pills he takes to sleep?”

He sat next to his mother and held her hand, as if to give her some of the strength that was his simply by virtue of his youth.

“Not the pills.” Brody paused a moment, then said, “It was a shotgun blast.”

J.P.’s face went slack as the young man absorbed this piece of information. Marta may have paled, but her makeup made that hard to see.

J.P. responded carefully, “Someone killed my dad?”

“He sustained a gunshot wound, J.P. That’s all I can say for sure. I can’t tell you that’s what killed him. Not yet, not officially. And I can’t tell you exactly how he got that wound either.”

“Did you find the shotgun?” J.P. had let go of his mother’s hand and was leaning forward toward Brody.

“Yes. It was an unusual piece. A fine old Tolley, an eight-gauge.”

“That was one he was especially proud of.” J.P. sat back and stared at the floor and then lifted his eyes to Brody again. “Could he have done it himself?”

“I can’t say for sure at the moment. But possibly.”

Marta appeared as if she were about to faint again. “A mortal sin,” she whispered.

The Quinns had a family plot in the Catholic cemetery in Jewel. But if he’d committed suicide, which was, as Marta observed, an unforgivable sin, James Patrick Quinn would not be allowed to be buried there. His remains would have to reside in the town cemetery, separated from the rest of his family.

“Until I know all the facts, I can’t say anything for sure.” Brody waited a moment, then asked, “When Jimmy left the farm Thursday evening, how did he seem?”

Marta thought the question over. “I was inside, resting. He came in and told me he was going fishing. That’s all. He didn’t seem anything.”

“Did you smell alcohol on his breath?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t unusual.”

“Did he say anything about fishing with someone?”

Marta frowned in thought, but J.P. said, “He never fished with anyone. It was something he liked doing alone. He said it relaxed him and was the one time he could count on no one bothering him.”

“You never fished with him?”

“When I was a little kid,” J.P. said. “But not since I was ten. I don’t much care for fishing.”

“Marta, did your husband seem unusually troubled lately?”

The cardinals had flown from the telephone wire, and Randy Swope had left off his cutting. In Brown’s office, an uncomfortable silence settled.

“If you don’t tell him, Mom, I will,” J.P. finally said.

Brody said, “Tell me what?”

Marta stared at her hands.

“My father tried to kill himself once before,” J.P. said.

“When?” Brody asked.

“Last fall, not long after harvest,” J.P. said. “He’s got this shack near where our creek runs. He keeps a supply of liquor there. It was one of the best harvests in years, so I’m not sure what was going on, but when November turned gray, Dad went into that hole in himself, that place he goes sometimes. He started drinking in his shack and didn’t come back to the house and when I went to check on him, I found him standing on a chair with a rope around his neck and a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He was drunk out of his mind. Just standing there, swaying. I figured he was maybe waiting to fall and hang himself that way, or he was trying to build up his courage to step off the chair.”

J.P. had started this piece of information angry, but as he told it, his emotion changed, and by the time he’d finished, he seemed resigned.