UNDER THE BRIDGE
By
Geoffrey Knight
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 by GEOFFREY KNIGHT
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, situations and incidents are the product of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published in Australia
Digitally by
Dare Empire eMedia Productions
ISBN: 978-0-9872703-0-6
ADAPTED BY GEOFFREY KNIGHT FROM HIS SHORT STORY 'TROLL' WRITTEN UNDER THE PEN NAME SAM CROSS
Cover Art © 2012 Dare Empire eMedia Productions
Also by Geoffrey Knight
The Cross of Sins
The Riddle of the Sands
The Curse of the Dragon God
Drive Shaft
Drive Shaft 2: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The Gentlemen’s Parlor: Room of Chains
The Pearl Trilogy
An Empire of Broken Hearts – Anthology for Charity 2011
Chapter I
“Are you sure you wanna do this? You don’t have to do this.”
Dylan looked out the passenger window of the police car driven by his lover of ten years, the town’s Chief of Police; and in that precise moment—as he stared into the passing night, seeing nothing but the mist-choked darkness—he changed his mind.
No, he wasn’t sure at all.
For fuck’s sake, he was terrified.
He was sick with fear.
Sick with fear and the memories that had haunted him for a decade.
Unwanted.
Unwelcome.
Which was exactly why he was here.
Suddenly the police radio crackled loudly, a static crash of thunder, so startling it made Dylan jolt in his seat. The voice of Mitch’s deputy, Hilary, blared from the two-way, distorted and garbled.
“Chief? Are you there?”
Mitch pretended he hadn’t caught sight of Dylan’s nervous reaction out of the corner of his eye. Mitch was doing his damnedest to keep Dylan calm, to ease his fears, yet at the same time he desperately wanted to grab Dylan and tell him this trip, this night, this damn foggy night, wasn’t necessary. Screw the shrink. Screw what he thought was right or wrong, what might help and what might not. In Mitch’s eyes, Dylan had already overcome the past. He had buried those demons long ago. Mitch wanted to tell Dylan that he was a strong, confident man with a loving partner.
But instead he didn’t say a word.
Dylan seemed so determined to do this that Mitch was scared it might push his lover even further away from him.
So instead Mitch snatched up the two-way. “Copy that, Hilary. What’s up?”
“Just checkin’ you two are okay.”
That was Hilary for you. The fifty-two-year-old deputy was a mother hen to Mitch and Dylan, much to Mitch’s constant annoyance. She was a single woman who lived alone with two dogs, and filled in her own loneliness by doting over them. Although Mitch and Dylan had never announced their relationship to the angry little town, Hilary was the only one who treated them as a couple. She baked cakes and casseroles for them on her days off, as though Mitch and Dylan were incapable of looking after themselves. She defended them from town gossips at the local supermarket who made the occasional snide remark about Chief Shaw and that boy. And she always knew when Mitch and Dylan had been fighting… and always asked if she could help… which only added to the tension that Mitch tried so hard to suppress.
Mitch sighed now and the frustration in his voice was evident. “Yes, Hilary. We’re okay. We’ll be back in town in twenty minutes. Call me if there’s any emergencies. Only if there’s an emergency.”
“But there ain’t never any emergencies in Twin Rivers, Chief. At least not since…” Her voice trailed off awkwardly. “You know what I mean…”
“Hilary, we’re fine. Over and out.”
Mitch slammed down the two-way and kept driving.
“She’s just worried about us, that’s all,” Dylan said by way of something—an explanation, an apology, a way of easing his own mind a little.
“I know,” Mitch said and placed his hand on Dylan’s knee.
Dylan flinched again.
Mitch took his hand away and kept steering through the fog.
They both knew the old footbridge wasn’t far now.
Chapter II
Dylan Sanders was eighteen years old when it happened. In a month’s time he would turn twenty-eight. For almost ten years now he had spent countless sleepless hours trying to weave together the threads of that terrible night, with help from his therapist, the evidence presented in court and the eye-witness accounts of a young Deputy Chief Mitchell Shaw in the days and months that followed the murder. Throughout the trial of the killer—through the mayhem and madness and the media circus surrounding the man with the headline-grabbing nickname the Troll—Mitch was the one person Dylan could lean on, the only one who understood him. In the stress and chaos of the case, Dylan’s parents became strangers to him in their efforts to try to gloss over his experience, to wash away his tears with a positive, Christian attitude, to hide their own sense of helplessness and keep a brave face in front of their neighbors. Dylan’s friends also drifted away, silently holding him responsible for Kayne’s death, their eyes asking the question he had asked himself a million times over:
Why Kayne?
Why not Dylan?
Why should one young man die at the hands of a serial killer—
—while the other walked away with barely a bruise?
No matter how many sleepless nights, how many questions, that fact of the matter was:
Kayne Kellerman—the star quarterback, this small town’s hero—was dead.
And Dylan Sanders—Kayne’s best friend, just your average small town guy—wasn’t.
But if the questions and the looks of blame weren’t enough, it was the shame of the circumstances leading up to the murder that drove everyone from Dylan’s life.
As the trial was coming to a head, Dylan was put on the stand as the defense lawyer pried open Dylan and Kayne’s secret for all the world to judge.
“Is it not true, Mr. Sanders, that on the night in question, you and Mr. Kellerman were caught in the middle of activities of an… intimate nature.”
Dylan froze on the stand as the first murmur of shock swept the courtroom. His own defenses kicked in. “I don’t know what that’s got to do with—”
“Just answer the question, Mr. Sanders.”
Dylan paused and swallowed hard. “We… we were drunk, we—”
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Sanders. That during the party at the Fletcher household, you and Mr. Kellerman were caught kissing in the bathroom? After which you promptly left the house together.”
Amid the gasps in the courtroom, someone started crying. Dylan looked up to see Mrs. Kellerman trying to cover her tears with a tissue. Beside her, Mr. Kellerman glared angrily at Dylan.
“We are waiting for your answer, Mr. Sanders.”
“Yes,” Dylan blurted, humiliated and angry, his heart breaking for Kayne and his parents. He was no longer the one who survived. Now he was the young man who shamed Kayne Kellerman and tainted his name forever.