Sulfur heart, p.1
Sulfur Heart, page 1
The cover photo shows night view of a motel from the outside.
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SULFUR HEART
Brooke Carter
Copyright © Brooke Carter 2022
Published in Canada and the United States in 2022 by Orca Book Publishers.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication 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 now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Sulfur heart / Brooke Carter.
Names: Carter, Brooke, 1977- author.
Series: Orca soundings.
Description: Series statement: Orca soundings
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210204044 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210204060 | ISBN 9781459831605 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459831612 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459831629 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8605.A77776 S85 2022 | DDC jc813/.6—dc23
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934073
Summary: In this high-interest accessible novel for teen readers, Will returns home after his father is killed under mysterious circumstances.
Orca Book Publishers is committed to reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources in the production of our books. We make every effort to use materials that support a sustainable future.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Governmentof Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Design by Ella Collier
Edited by Tanya Trafford
Cover photography by Getty Images/ImageegamI (front)
and Shutterstock.com/Krasovski Dmitri (back)
Printed and bound in Canada.
25 24 23 22 • 1 2 3 4
To those who dream of better places.
Go, and don’t ever look back.
Chapter One
Will didn’t love the big city. It wasn’t home. Then again, he didn’t love home either. He stared out the window of the tiny tenth-floor apartment he’d been crashing in. He thought it was like looking at an alien landscape. Home for Will was back in Hope, the armpit town he’d escaped from a couple years earlier. Hope was all mountains and landslides. It was the sulfur mill and the railyard. When he thought of Hope, he thought of Eve. But she was always on his mind.
Where was she? Was she still afraid of the dark?
He looked at his watch. It was 5:47 in the morning. Dawn lit up the sky—an early-autumn sunrise that had no soul. Nothing but buildings, row on row, all exactly the same. Sharp edges and glinting skyscrapers. Nothing green or growing. All was clean and square and shiny.
Will drank his coffee. He hadn’t slept well—but that had been true for a couple of years now. These days he had permanent dark circles under his eyes. He was the oldest eighteen-year-old on earth, and he’d only just celebrated his birthday. Here, alone, in this crappy studio apartment that didn’t even belong to him. It had been two years since he’d run away, and there was hardly anything in the place to make it feel like home. A small folding table near the tiny kitchen. A phone, a newspaper, a spoon. There was no couch. No TV.
As he stared at it, the phone rang, and he jumped, sloshing hot coffee on his wrist. “Shit,” he said.
He picked up the phone and paused for a moment. The caller ID said Bro.
He grinned as he answered it. “Hey, man, why are you calling me so early, did you have a wild night—” He fell silent and listened. Will closed his eyes as he placed his mug down on the table. It rested on the edge, close to falling off.
“What are you telling me?” he asked. He listened some more, his eyes still closed. “Yeah. I’ll check it now.” Will opened his eyes and then ended the call.
He opened his phone’s browser and typed in Beatty’s Beat. A flashy tabloid-style news website loaded. The top headline featured a video. Will clicked on it.
A young man with dark, curly hair appeared on-screen. “Welcome back to Beatty’s Beat. I’m Nigel Beatty. There’s been a major development. Early this morning local security guard and former cop William Homer turned up dead in a pile of sulfur at the SulCorp sulfur mill. Homer’s own son left town after the mysterious death of SulCorp’s chairman, Aaron Sullivan Senior. Could there be a connection? And could it have something to do with the lost Sullivan gold? So far, no one knows how Homer ended up in the sulfur. Now, in a Beatty’s Beat exclusive, we have some visuals sent to us by an anonymous source. A warning to our viewers—this is graphic.”
The broadcast cut to dark and grainy video footage of a large sulfur pile. A winch lifted a body by the feet from deep within the pile. The yellow powder slid from the corpse like fine sand.
“No!” Will cried, shutting the browser window. He braced himself against the table. The coffee cup crashed to the floor, but he made no move to clean it up. “Oh, Dad,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Another call came through. The caller ID this time said Aunt Justine.
Will sighed and picked up. “Yeah,” he said. “I saw the video too. My good friend let me know. Now that my dad is…I’ll have to go back sooner.” Will listened for a moment. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
He hung up and then typed a short text.
I’ll be there. Wait for me.
He walked over to the single bed. His duffel bag was already packed. He pulled open the drawers of a small dresser and added some more clothes to the bag. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. “You wanted me to come back,” he said softly. “You got it.” He looked away.
His past had come looking for him. He’d thought he had more time. He’d thought wrong.
Chapter Two
The bus depot was all but abandoned. Will sat alone and waited until a bus labeled Rural Route pulled up. It was more rust than metal, and when he climbed on board a stale smell hit him full force.
The bus made its way out of the city and began a long, winding journey along a forest-edged highway. He was going home after two years away, and he didn’t know what would be there when he arrived. Hell, he didn’t know who he would be when he arrived.
Hours later the bus passed the rockslide memorial. A long time ago, several people had lost their lives under the crush of the fallen mountainside. People loved to visit to get a taste of tragedy. They loved the strange mystery of the accident. During the day, clusters of them would take pictures on the graffiti-covered rocks. But at night, when darkness fell and the moon came out, the roadside attraction lost its appeal. There were no more families picnicking on the boulders. It became what it was always meant to be—a monument to the dead.
Will loved the memorial most at night. That’s when it belonged to him again and to the other locals. They were the night-walking youth. The street kids. The hopeless ones. The rockslide was all shadow, as dark as their own thoughts and as dim as their own futures.
He imagined Eve there, sitting on the rocks, waiting for him. As the bus continued to roll along, he drifted off to sleep, her face in his mind.
Eve sat on a large boulder. The cliff face above was scooped out, as if sliced into by a giant ax.
All Will could do was stare at Eve. She was so pretty it hurt.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
She got up and hopped to a different boulder. She stood, arms crossed, like an ancient, sad statue.
“What, you don’t want me to say you’re beautiful?” he asked.
“If you knew me, you’d know how wrong that is,” she said.
“I know you better than anyone,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I’m a good liar. Like all the other girls who walk the highway. I can make you believe anything.”
“Not me,” he said.
“Yes. You won’t see until it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” he asked.
“The landslide,” she said. “It comes down and crushes everything. Everyone.”
She was crying. He hated it when she cried.
“It won’t crush me,” he whispered.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because I love you.”
“Then you better get out of the way,” she said.
There was a loud crack, and then the mountain split in half behind her. The whole world came rushing at them.
The bus hit a pothole. Will woke with a start. He squinted against the harsh lighting of the bus interior. He’d fallen asleep with his face pressed against the grimy window.
He had arrived. Across the street was the welcome sign to the town of Hope. It used to read WELCOME TO HOPE, but someone had spray-painted the sign in blue paint. Now it read WELCOME HOPELESS.
The bus traveled
The town was dark, save for the light from the neon of bar signs and pawnshop displays.
The bus stopped to pick up a few more passengers. There were two sulfur-mill employees on their way to do the graveyard shift. Will noted their coveralls, once white but now tinted a sickly yellow from years of sulfur dust.
A woman boarded and sat in front of Will. She wore a sleeveless dress despite the chilly fall temperature. There was dark brown makeup on her arms, though Will couldn’t imagine why. A small red dot—it looked like a bug—floated out from under her dress. It circled around on her upper arm before disappearing.
He leaned back in his seat.
It was midnight by the time the bus pulled up across the street from the sulfur mill. The graveyard-shift workers shuffled off. They took their time passing through the large SulCorp archway.
Will got off the bus too. He stood under that archway for a long time. He stared at the SulCorp logo, a dirty yellow image of three interconnecting pyramids.
The mill never stopped operations, especially at night. The eerie yellow glow covered the town. Most people living in Hope were employees of the mill or relatives of an employee. SulCorp had fallen onto hard times when its boss, known to everyone as Old Man Sullivan, died. His only child, the power-hungry Aaron Sullivan Jr., was in charge now. Will knew him as a loudmouthed jock who had been a few years ahead of him in high school. Aaron was the kind of guy who liked to shove people around and flaunt his money and connections. Everyone had expected him to go to some rich college far away. They had expected Will to stay behind and work at the mill. Funny how things turn out.
It was a local legend that the Sullivans had a fortune in gold and the old grudges that went along with it. Aaron could have pulled up stakes and gone wherever he wanted. But when Old Man Sullivan died, much of the SulCorp gold went missing. The mystery had never been solved. Aaron became as stuck as any other Hope resident.
Now Will was back in the place he had sworn never to return to, and all because his own dad was dead.
“Sulfur,” Will whispered and then turned away.
Chapter Three
Will stood outside the old Trainstop apartment building. It sat right beside the old railroad tracks that cut a dead end into the town. The building and tracks were next to the massive sulfur mill and the bordering river and forest.
A car pulled up, kicking gravel as it came to a sudden halt. It was an ancient Oldsmobile, a real boat of a car, but the V8 engine purred. Will recognized it right away. It was the kind of car a cop likes to drive, and not just any cop. It belonged to his dad’s old partner, Detective Jim Rivers.
The driver’s door swung out on its hinges with a creaking noise. A tall man in his sixties unfolded himself from behind the wheel.
Rivers always seemed like he was wearing someone else’s clothes. They were bland and neutral-colored. The pants were too short. He had the look of someone pretending to be a person. Not exactly the kind of cop you see on TV.
“How did you know I was here?” Will asked, but of course it was a stupid question. Rivers knew everything that went on in Hope.
The older man lit a smoke and took a deep drag. “You’re kidding, right?” His face softened and grew more serious as he added, “Sorry about the old man, kid.”
Will nodded. “Was he drunk again?”
Rivers nodded. “You know your dad. What do you think?”
Will shrugged.
“It’s been a long time, kid,” said Rivers. “I didn’t know where you went. Your dad didn’t say.”
“Wouldn’t say,” said Will.
“Yeah, makes sense,” said Rivers, taking another drag. “What with all the gold that went missing.” Smoke seeped out of his mouth as he smiled. “And you being suspect number one.”
“You know that I didn’t take that gold,” Will said through gritted teeth.
“Do I?” asked Rivers. He puffed on the smoke again, burning it down almost to the filter. “Whether I do or not, it seems like an awful lot of people around here think you did. And then you disappeared.”
Will shrugged. “I had to get away. Too much happened and…” He trailed off.
“Some people think the past is in the past,” said Rivers. “But you and I both know that’s a load of shit.”
“Look,” said Will. “I’m here to deal with my dad. I don’t want trouble, and I don’t want to bring up old shit.”
“Whoa,” said Rivers. “Hold on, kid. I’m not saying anything. I’m not here to give you a hard time. I know you’re going through it. Your dad… hell, Bill was my friend for a long time. He’d want to know I was looking out for you.”
Rivers stubbed out his smoke with his boot. “There’s a lot of people around here who would love to get their mitts on you.” He pointed across the street at the SulCorp sign. “And Sullivan’s one of them. You best believe young Aaron knows you’re here.”
“He’d be counting on it,” said Will.
“Aaron’s running things now,” said Rivers. “All that shady stuff Old Man Sullivan was into has only ramped up. Aaron is looser with the law than his old man was. And now with your dad… It has happened before, you know? Not the first dead body I’ve pulled from the sulfur. Hope it’s the last.”
“So you’re saying my dad turning up in a pile of sulfur wasn’t such an accident,” said Will.
Rivers shook his head. “Not an accident at all. But not a murder either.”
“Huh?”
“My theory is he’d had enough,” said Rivers. “Wanted to end it. He was in bad shape, Will.”
“What are you saying?” Will asked.
Rivers sighed. “He took his own life, Will. I know you don’t want to hear it.”
“I don’t,” said Will. “Because it’s bullshit.”
Rivers held up his hands. “It’s the truth.”
“No,” said Will. “But I promise you that I will find out the real truth. You know Sullivan had to be involved.”
“Careful, kid,” Rivers said. “What’s your plan? You’re just gonna stroll back to town, no friends, all alone, and take on the guy who hates your guts?”
Will shook his head. “I’m not alone,” he said. “I’ve got you, Uncle Jim.”
Rivers grinned. “Tell you what. You keep your nose clean while you’re here, and I’ll make sure no one tries to get a piece of you. But you have to promise me something.”
“What?” Will asked.
“You’ll stay away from Eve Hart.”
Will swallowed hard, his pulse quickening at the mention of her name. “I can’t do that.”
“Listen,” said Rivers. “That girl has her head all twisted around. Best to take care of business and then get the hell outta here.”
Will said nothing.
“You need a place to stay?”
“No.” Will shook his head. “I got it covered.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” said Rivers. “Say, three o’clock?”
“For what?” asked Will.
“The hospital,” said Rivers. “The morgue. You’ll need to sign off. If you want to bury your dad. You are eighteen now, right? You had a birthday?”
Will nodded, unable to say anything at the moment.
“If it’s too hard, you can leave the official stuff to me,” said Rivers.
“No,” said Will. “But I thought there would be more of an investigation.”
Rivers shook his head. “What’s there to investigate? The bad medicine finally caught up with Bill. No use in poking around after a suicide. It only prolongs the pain.”
Will let that sink in. “I’ll be there,” he said. “I need to see him.”
“Good,” said Rivers. “Be careful, kid. And, uh, if you find anything interesting in that pigsty apartment of his, let me know.”
“Like what?” Will asked. “Are you looking for something?”
Rivers smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Old habits, I guess,” he said. “I’m always looking.” With that he climbed back into his car and drove away.
