Injustice by Lee Goodman

existed.”
    â€œIn other words, you don’t trust the state?”
    â€œWould you?”
    â€œI’m a prosecutor,” I said.
    â€œI know,” she said. “Too much of one sometimes.”
    The Drowntown Café, out near the reservoir, is indistinguishable from thousands of other rural eateries. Eggs, burgers, short stack, long stack. The place is decorated with old photos of the towns that existed in the valley before it was dammed for the reservoir back in the early 1900s.
    â€œAre you Arthur?” Tina said to a man alone in a booth with a cup of coffee in front of him.
    He stood, shook Tina’s hand, then mine. He seemed shy during introductions, the kind of guy who isn’t sure whether he should be meeting your eyes or looking into the air to the side of your face.
    â€œAnd this is Barnaby,” I said. “Barn, can you shake hands with Mr. Cunningham?”
    Barn confidently shook the man’s hand, getting a bit goofy about it, shaking too hard. The guy laughed and loosened up a bit.
    â€œSo, what’s this all about?” Cunningham said. “Are you writing a book or something? It was a long time ago now.”
    â€œSomething like that,” Tina said. “Doing some research.”
    â€œI try not to think about it anymore,” Cunningham said. “It was pretty disturbing.”
    â€œBarn,” I said, “let’s you and me go look at the reservoir while Mommy has a meeting.” I took him outside; we didn’t need him exposed to talk about decomposed corpses. Tina and Arthur Cunningham didn’t talk long. They were out within fifteen minutes. We got into our car and followed Cunningham to the site where he’d found the body.
    â€œDo you really need to see the place?” I asked Tina.
    â€œNo,” she said. “But I’d rather this guy thinks I’m a reporter or something. I’ve been vague with him. If he knows I’m a lawyer, he might call the state prosecutor and say that a defense attorney has been poking around. They might be tempted to hide something. Nobody wants to have their screwups uncovered.”
    â€œI think your job is making you paranoid,” I said. “How was the conversation? Did you learn anything?”
    She glanced over the seat back at Barnaby. “Later,” she said.
    Cunningham led us down old logging roads through the woods to an open area that had once been a hay field but was being taken over by weeds and willow saplings. At the edges of the clearing were alders that already had a few tinges of autumn yellow. I could see a stone wall through the trees. ZZ and the guy’s yellow Lab jumped out and started sniffing each other’s butts and running in growly circles. The Lab brushed against Barnaby, knocking him down, but Barn bounced back up laughing. I put him on my shoulders and started trotting after the dogs so Tina could talk to Cunningham.
    Again, they didn’t talk long. Tina called me back to the car. We thanked the guy and drove away.
    â€œCunningham told me about a paddleboat and canoe rental ten miles up the shore,” Tina said.
    â€œBarn, you want to go try a paddleboat?”
    â€œYeah yeah yeah.”
    So we drove up the shore to a place with a yard full of boats. “Just in time,” a woman said, “we close for the season tomorrow.”
    She put us in a blue plastic paddleboat. Barn sat on my lap inhis huge life jacket, and we pedaled out toward the other side of the reservoir, which was remote and undeveloped. I’d once been present at a crime scene over there when the troopers dug up the body of a young informant who’d been executed. That was a long time ago, though. Now I thought it would be fun to explore the reservoir sometime in a canoe. Maybe even bring a tent. Tina and I occasionally talked about going canoe camping. I took Tina’s hand and held on to it as we pedaled our way across the water to the other side.