Free Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Jay to produce a pad and a pencil, to make sure he’s getting all this down. So this is his big moment, Jay thinks, his little piece of fame. The man’s name in the paper and everything. More than his mama ever dreamed for him, probably. Jay, playing the part, pats his pockets. “I must have left my notes in the car,” he says, trying to sound casual, jaded even, a beat reporter who’s seen everything. “What happened out here?”
    â€œHell if I know,” the groundskeeper says. He takes a single, lusty pull on his cigarette, sucking it nearly to the filter. He stares out across the field at the police markings, the ghostly shapesin the dirt. “It was early when I got out here Sunday morning, around eight, like I always do. I come up the walk here,” he says, pointing to the dirt road. “And I set my buggy over by the fence.” He points to the wheelbarrow resting against the fence now. “I stopped to get a little sip, you know, just to warm me up.” He reaches for the bottle now, reenacting the scene, pulling the Seagram’s from his pocket. He takes a hearty swallow, nodding his head toward the field. “And that’s when I seen the car. I mean, it was just sitting right there.” He nods toward the white markings in the grass.
    â€œWhat kind of car was it?” Jay asks, remembering the woman from the boat, her nice clothes and diamond ring.
    â€œIt was a Chrysler, kinda gold-like,” the man says. “It was a rental, that much I remember, ’cause the sticker on the back said LONE STAR RIDES . I got a good look at it too. I come up on it real close,” he says, tiptoeing on his bowlegs, walking through the open field like it’s a graveyard, careful where he lays his feet. “The driver-side door was wide open. The light was still on inside.” He gets within a few feet of the white police paint, the lumpy circle in the dirt, and then stops short, his voice almost solemn. “He was laying right here.”
    â€œWho was he?” Jay asks.
    The man shrugs. “Cops pulled an ID off the man, but who knows?”
    â€œIt was a white guy, though, right?”
    The man nods. “Laying right there, hanging out of the car, on his back.”
    Jay looks out across the empty field. There are black mosquitoes dancing in the white light of his high beams, crickets humming to themselves in the brush behind them. Jay turns from the view of the field to look at the empty warehouse and the dark, nearly deserted street. At this hour, the place looks like an industrial wasteland. What in the world was she doing out here ? “If he was on the driver’s side,” Jay mumbles to himself, repeating the groundskeeper’s description, arcing around the four X ’s that mark the car, to what would have been the Chrysler’s passenger side, “then she must have been riding here,” he says softly, thinking out loud, still trying to piece together some kind of a story. He wonders if the dead man picked her up somewhere, if the two knew each other.
    When he finally looks up again, the groundskeeper is staring at him.
    â€œHow do you know it was a woman?” the man asks.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œI said…how do you know it was a woman he was with?”
    It takes Jay a moment to understand what the man is asking, to realize the mistake he’s made, the single clue he let slip from his mouth. The panic, when it hits him, is swift and forceful, and he actually feels himself sway just the tiniest bit. Then, remembering the article from the paper, he repeats a few of the details. “The cops talked to a lady friend,” he explains. “It was in the police report.”
    â€œIs that right?” the groundskeeper asks, a knowing smile creeping across his stubbly face. He pinches off the head of his cigarette, letting the cherry fall to the dirt and pocketing the dirty butt. “Well, I know why they