Vengeance by Eric Prochaska Page B

be true to some extent. Even sober, it was challenging to determine whether he could be telling the truth and whether those details necessarily added up to some nefarious conclusion.
    I reached into the center console and pulled out the card George Flynn had given me in the cemetery. I wasn’t sure what time he went in for his shift, but I decided to give him a call. Back in my room, I left my name and return number with the officer who answered. I hefted the phone book across my knees and looked up the mortuary. I figured if no damage to the bike could be documented maybe Aiden’s injuries could shed some light on whether or not he’d been in an accident. As the phone rang, I tried to formulate questions that wouldn’t seem gruesome. Maybe that was for my own benefit. The mortician could handle talking about a corpse as an object. But for me to treat Aiden himself as evidence was unsettling.
    No one picked up so I had to leave a message on the machine. It was only a temporary setback, but I couldn’t help feeling discouraged. I couldn’t find someone to ask the questions I barely knew how to construct. But as soon as I cradled the phone it rang.
    “Hey, Ethan,” he said.
    “George.”
    “I guess the funeral was today? How you holding up?”
    “All right, I suppose.”
    “It’ll get easier.”
    He delivered that line with such assurance that I wondered how many times he had encountered death, whether professionally or closer to home. Neither of us was all that old. We had no business being well-acquainted with grief.
    “Thanks. I was wondering if you could help me out,” I said. “I wanted to take a look at the accident report. Can people get copies of those?”
    “Yeah. But I have to tell you, I already did. When I got off my last shift I made a copy.”
    “Well, can I ask you a few things?”
    “Of course.”
    “OK. It’s just that people are saying that there were all sorts of reasons it didn’t look like an accident. I know this probably sounds crazy. I’m not sure if these people are in denial, or what. But they put those ideas in my head.”
    “So you want to follow up and put your mind to rest?”
    “Yeah. They said the motorcycle was leaned against a tree off the side of the road, with Aiden’s helmet on the handlebars. Is there anything about that?”
    “Well, now that you mention it, I was wondering about the diagram myself. It shows the bike where you said it was.” He paused and I could hear him tapping on something as he deliberated. “Listen. What are you doing right now?”
    “Just trying to make sense of what I’m hearing,” I said.
    “If you’re up for it, I’ve got a little time before my shift and I could walk you through the scene of the accident.”
    The thought of seeing where Aiden had died gave me a sensation of sinking in cold river water at night. But if I wanted to understand what had happened I was going to have to see for myself.
    “Down on First, just across the tracks. Right?”
    We agreed to meet in twenty minutes, which was twice the time I needed to drive there. Even after killing several minutes watching the news channel, I arrived before George. I braked gently as I came over the hump where the railroad tracks crossed the road, as if I might disturb some leftover evidence, or, maybe, as if I might crest that rise to find my brother and the whole mess still sprawled across the pavement.
    But what I found was a nondescript stretch of asphalt, contoured along the outside of the levee. The road was not a tomb or a shrine. It was a route used by commuters and shoppers and those on their way to the marina. No one passing by would know what had been lost here. It made me reflect on all the roads I had driven and all the intersections I had crossed. How many of them held significance to a surviving family member? How many people had to avoid driving over a certain stretch of road for the uneasy sensation that they were desecrating hallowed ground?
    I parked on a