Six Seconds

How big does a story have to be?

Any way you cut it, a wilderness accident can be a perfect murder.

Mother Nature is your murder weapon.

The wind shook the house. Graham tossed and turned and in his dream state he heard Nora whisper to him as she did when he’d been underwater in the river facing death.

Keep going, Daniel. You have to keep going.

Little Emily Tarver’s dying words haunted him.

Don’t—daddy.

But the girl’s voice was so soft, so small and the river was deafening. These factors raised doubts. Did she actually speak at all? Or did he dream that she did?

Was he dreaming now?

Or was he mining his subconscious as her last breaths played in his memory. He could hear her again. But this time she said more.

He heard her clearly.

An icy chill rocketed up Graham’s spine, forcing him to sit up, wide awake.

The time glowed: 2:47 a.m.

He made coffee, sat in his chair and considered his case. Then he went to his computer and by dawn he’d completed a new case status report. He showered, had fresh coffee and scrambled eggs for breakfast then drove back to the office and placed his updated report on his boss’s desk.

Graham was convinced he now knew Emily Tarver’s dying words.

“Don’t hurt my daddy.”

After reading Graham’s report, Inspector Stotter removed the jacket of his mohair suit, hung it on the wooden hanger, and then hooked it on his coatrack.

“I know you’ve saved our team many times with solid detective work, Dan.”

Graham sat in one of the cushioned visitors’ chairs watching Stotter.

“You stood your ground when everyone else thought you were wrong.”

Stotter loosened his tie then rolled his sleeves to the elbows.

“But I don’t see it here. I don’t see a reason to grant your request to go to the U.S. and look into Ray Tarver’s history.”

“Why not?”

“I think you’re using this case as a means of repentance.”

“What?”

“I think it’s got something to do with why you were in the mountains in the first place and why you jumped in the river after the girl.”

“I jumped in to help that girl.”

“The result was heroic but the act was suicidal.”

Graham averted his stare.

“Danny, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up for what happened to Nora. You can’t go back and undo what happened. It was an accident, which is probably what happened with the Tarver family.”

“She spoke to me.”

“Who spoke to you?”

“I told you. The little girl, Emily. In the river. Just before she died.”

“Dan.” He let a long silence pass. “Dan, are you sure you’re ready to be back on the job?”

“I swear it happened, Mike.”

Stotter looked at him for a long moment, thinking.

“This isn’t in your report.”

“It was chaotic. I was unclear at first.”

“What did she say?”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy’?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“She say anything else?”

“No, just, ‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’ Why would she say something like that? There has to be something else at work.”

Stotter looked hard at Graham for a long time then scratched his chin.

“You’ve attended traffic accidents, Dan. You’ve seen badly injured people in shock. They fight off people who try to help them. They say all kinds of things that don’t make sense when they’re in shock. I don’t think you have a clear dying declaration here that would warrant a criminal investigation into suspicious deaths. You have no solid evidence.”

“We still haven’t found Ray Tarver, or his laptop. He met some stranger the day before this happened. The guy was a freelance investigative reporter from Washington, D.C. And there’s another thing, the last handwritten entry in his notebook, this Blue Rose Creek.”

“All circumstantial. It will not hold up in court.”