“Who says Iowa isn’t beautiful?” Sullivan asks as I lower myself to a thick railroad tie. We’re sitting knee to knee.
I’m surprised that there’s a note of wistfulness in his voice, but I understand. It’s lovely up here. The sky is darkening to velvet before us, and back the way we came is a watercolor smudge of citrus. Tangerine and grapefruit and blood orange spilled across the horizon. If I turn the other way there’s a break in the trees where the train tracks once ran, and framed in leafy greens beyond the grove on the far bank is a farmer’s pastoral field. It swells and dips like waves on the sea, and perfect lines of newly planted corn march into the distance. Every couple of seconds a firefly glints in the dusk, lending an almost magical quality to the deep quiet of this place. I realize I can hear myself breathe. And Sullivan, too.
“It’s pretty,” I admit, just to break the silence.
Sullivan nods. He catches my eye, and for just a moment I study him. Sandy-blond hair, unusual green eyes. They crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and almost disappear completely, but it’s charming somehow. He’s not handsome in the traditional sense of the word, and yet it’s hard to look away from him. A single crooked tooth, a thin, pale scar above the curve of his eyebrow, the slightest cleft in his chin. I know he’s trouble, but here on the bridge he seems like any other guy.
When his lips pull into a lopsided smile, I remind myself that he was suspended from school for starting a trash can fire in the men’s locker room. That he has his own DUI on record, as well as a couple of minor in possessions. Because he’s Jericho royalty—his family owns over half the farmland in the county—the general consensus regarding Sullivan is that “boys will be boys” and he’ll eventually grow out of his mischievous streak. He’s twenty-one now, and working for his dad full-time, even though he maintains summer hours at GL Gas. This he does, I’m sure, for the abundance of girls in bikinis lounging on the boats he fills up.
The thought yanks me back to reality. Sullivan is here for one thing only, but I have very different motives.
“Okay, spill. You promised you’d tell me what you know about the Murphys’ dog,” I say.
“Why do you think I took you here?” Sullivan leans back with his elbows on the railroad tie behind him. The pose strikes me as risky. We’re maybe twenty feet above the water, and one look at the river strewn with branches, sandbars, and who knows what else assures me I wouldn’t want to fall.
I glare at him, losing all patience. I’ve played his game long enough. “They believe Baxter was poisoned. On purpose.” I pause to let it sink in. “I’m pretty clueless when it comes to local gossip,” I continue, “but even I know that the Murphys are feuding with the Tates.”
“You make it sound all War of the Roses.”
“Isn’t it?” I’m mildly impressed at his historical reference. Obviously my standards for Sullivan have been set pretty low.
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he says, and gives my foot a little tap with his so that it swings over the abyss. “You want to know the truth? It’s pretty boring, June.”
I don’t say anything.
After a moment he sighs and pushes himself up. “Turn around,” he tells me.
I swivel my head to look toward the field framed in the distance. The sun has slipped beneath the horizon and the rows are now nothing but dark shadows on black soil.
“That’s our land. Or, at least, some of it.” He points southeast. “And beyond those hills, past what we can see, is the Murphys’ acreage.”
I nod.
“There’s a creek that cuts through the land there, and”—he angles his finger further south—“a couple of sinkholes.”
“You lost me.”
Sullivan smiles a little. “Then I’ll skip the whole aquifer water contamination bit and get straight to the goods: the Murphys say fertilizer and pesticide runoff from our farm is polluting their well and poisoning their little hobby farm. And the river, too.”
I look down at the water churning beneath us. “Is it true?”
Sullivan shrugs. “We’re farmers, June. And it’s not illegal to spray our fields.”
“But isn’t there a way to stop the runoff?”
“Not our problem.”
I think it is, but I don’t tell him that. “What does this have to do with Baxter?”
“Those dogs trespass on our property every single day.”