What the River Knows

What the River Knows Read Free

Book: What the River Knows Read Free
Author: Katherine Pritchett
Tags: Contemporary,Suspense
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beside him. “It was awful. I pulled him back as quick as I figured out what he found.” His hands were shaking and scratched. “I didn’t want to destroy any evidence.”
    “You’re sure she was dead?”
    The man merely nodded, his face growing even paler.
    Scott stepped over the access gate arm. “To the south?” It had to be south; to the north the path led under the highway, totally exposed to traffic. He knew the north end of the trail well; he ran it every day he could. The south end wasn’t officially trail; just a footpath along the top of the dike that a few people like the dog-walker used. Even the dirt bikes and ATV’s kept to the riverbed north of the bridge.
    The man nodded, leaning over the gate, but making no move to cross it. “Almost to the big cottonwood.” He indicated a huge gnarled tree about a hundred yards from the gate. “Maybe twenty feet from the pathway, by an old tree trunk, through a sand plum thicket.”
    “Wait here. I’ll need to take a formal statement.” Scott glanced back at him. “But you might wait in the shade over there.” He pointed to a grove of scrubby autumn olive trees throwing a lengthening shadow along the ditch at the edge of the road.
    He scrambled up the steep face of the dike, trying to maintain his professional demeanor and keep the sand out of his shoes as he waded through the deep pocket of sand deposited at the base of the dike. In years past, the dikes had protected the flat city from the waters of the raging Arkansas River when it flooded. In Scott’s memory, the dikes had seemed pointless, as the once-mighty Ark now barely murmured as it flowed past the city, tamed by John Martin Reservoir in Colorado and increased pumping from the Ogallala Aquifer beneath it. He studied the ground at the top of the dike. The dry sand of the hardened path told few stories, as the relentless wind swept it daily. He saw shallow depressions that perhaps indicated the footsteps of the man and the dog, but they were indistinct. He pulled out the radio.
    “Seventy-three to dispatch.”
    “Go ahead, seventy-three.”
    “Have the reporting party waiting at my truck at the end of the dike road. Might get another unit en route to help secure the scene if needed.”
    “Ten-four. Will send the next available unit.” That meant that other officers were still busy. He would be on his own, even if he needed backup.
    “Twenty-one to seventy-three.” He heard Bates’s tired voice crackle at him.
    “Go ahead, twenty-one.”
    “I can be there in ten minutes.”
    “Ten-four. Thanks.” He slipped the radio back in its case and started cautiously south along the top of the dike. Step by step, he walked as lightly as he could, scanning all around the pathway for anything not native to the site. Halfway to the cottonwood, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he unsnapped his holster. He slowed his pace within twenty feet of a gray and twisted tree trunk that must have once supported a massive cottonwood, but now instead provided a windbreak that allowed sand to settle in its lee and let shrubs gain a foothold. He looked down the sloping bank of the dike toward the river, noting the lazy flow as it rippled barely a foot deep in half a dozen shallow braided channels within the banks. A gray heron took off from a sand bar, long legs dangling behind him.
    He stopped and squatted to view the path from a different angle. Just this side of the tree trunk, he saw indistinct grooves in the sand of the path that could have been made by a body being dragged. Big bluestem waved behind the tree trunk, and a sand plum thicket guarded the north side of the approach. Buffalo grass carpeted the ground from the path to the tree, obscuring any sign from this angle. He stood up again.
    Now it looked like there were faint marks in the grass, here and there, that could be drag marks. He continued on the other side of the path, careful not to disturb the sign. At last he was even with the

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