Joe Hardy used his feet as a brace against the side of the white cement support under the County Line Bridge.  Frank controlled the rope at the top, easing it over the railing a little at a time.

The closer he got to the rushing, muddy river, the louder the current sounded in Joe’s ears.  He kept his focus on the cement pillar, not the churning water below his feet.

‘Maybe this wasn’t one of my better ideas,’ Joe decided when he was about a foot above the dark Black Warrior River.  He glanced up at his bother far above him on the bridge.  Joe shuddered as he imagined Lydia and Chet falling from the bridge into the debris-littered river.

Joe saw Frank’s mouth moving and assumed he was trying to tell him something, but Joe couldn’t hear over the roaring rush of the river.  He tried to signal that he couldn’t hear, and Frank must have figured it out.  He nodded and gave the rope a tug.  Joe put his finger and thumb together as best he could in the thick gloves, giving Frank the ‘okay’ to start pulling him back up.

Joe held on tightly to the rope, keeping his body as straight as possible.  He mentally marked off each body length on the concrete, counting as he ascended.  He looked up and knew Frank was doing the same.

The steel under-frame of the bridge was within his reach when Joe spotted something shining on a girder.

“Frank! Hold up a minute,” Joe called out.  Frank peered over the railing.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Joe replied.  “I see something under the bridge here.  Give me a little slack.”  Joe grabbed the steel beam and crawled under the bridge as Frank eased up on the rope.

Frank could see Joe crawling through the rusted grating that made up the ‘floor’ of the structure. 

“What is it?” Frank questioned as Joe picked up something shiny in his gloved hand from the support girder.

“I think it might be a clue,” Joe grinned up at his brother.  He tucked the object into the pocket of his t-shirt and climbed back out to the side.  Frank reached down and helped pull his brother up over the railing.

On the bridge, Joe quickly retrieved the object from his pocket and handed it to Frank.  Frank frowned as he turned the shiny lighter over in his gloved hand.

“See the initials? I’ll bet J. T. was on this bridge with Chet and Lydia!” Joe exclaimed.

Frank smiled at Joe’s enthusiasm.  “Well, it’s definitely not been here long.  It’s silver plated and it’s not tarnished at all.

“But Joe, don’t go jumping to conclusions,” the older boy admonished.  “We really have no idea if this ties in with Lydia’s death or not.”

* * *

Brian Jackson had seen enough to know that the two boys on the bridge were trouble.  He quickly made his way home and dialed a familiar phone number.

“Yeah?”

“Vern, it’s me.”

“Jackson?  What’s up?”

“I been keepin’ an eye on the bridge like you said,” Jackson explained, “and today, a couple kids were snooping around.  One of ‘em went over the side on a rope like some acrobat or something.”

“Who were they?”

“Don’t know,” Jackson replied. “I ain’t never seen ‘em around a’fore.”

“You did good, Jackson.  I’ll look into it.”

Vernon Dixon stared at the silent phone.  Two kids snooping around the bridge wasn’t a good thing.  He needed to find out who they were and what they were doing there.

* * *

“Fresh air…freedom!” Chet Morton exclaimed as he stepped into the alley behind the police station.

Chester Morton and Sean Prescott chuckled. 

“Here comes Fenton’s car,” Sean said moments later.  The trio had slipped out a back door to avoid the press gathered on the front steps of the police station.  “Let’s go.”

In minutes, they were driving to the motel where Fenton, his boys and the Mortons had rooms. 

“Good.  My boys are here,” Fenton said as he pulled his rental to a stop beside Frank and Joe’s black van.  “Let’s get inside.”

“Chet! Dude, am I glad to see you!” Joe Hardy exuberantly hugged his stout friend as the group entered Fenton’s motel room.

Frank quickly joined his brother in greeting their longtime friend.

“Is Chet free of charges?” Frank asked Sean.

“No,” Sean answered with a shake of his head.  “The D. A. issued an immediate release because she felt there wasn’t enough evidence to hold Chet on the charges against him.  Because of the so-called confession, the charges can’t actually be dropped yet; not until District Attorney St. James reviews everything in more detail or the police produce some incriminating evidence that would prove that Chet was involved in Lydia’s death without any doubt.”

“But that can’t happen because Chet didn’t do it,” Joe responded, a bit more defensively than he’d intended.

Sean smiled slyly at the younger Hardy boy.  “Well, Joe, have you got anything to help prove that fact?”

* * *

David Neel parked his old Buick station wagon along the side of the road near the Black Warrior River.  He grabbed his fishing gear from the back and headed down the bank toward the churning water.

David had been fishing the river for many years and knew where all the best fishing holes were along the shady banks.  The river was running higher and faster than usual, so he was headed for one of his favorite spots, downriver of the County Line Bridge.

He looked up the river and could make out the bridge in the distance.  David shook his head as he thought about the boy he’d found on the side of the river not far from where he was fishing right now. 

“Kid didn’t seem like no killer to me,” David mumbled to himself as he baited his hook.  He looked out into the pool of still, muddy water created by the large rocks along the bank.  Acting like a breaker, the water behind the rock was calm; a perfect place for catfish to hide on the bottom.

He dropped his sinker into the water and waited patiently.  The weather was warm and there wasn’t a bit of a breeze, so it didn’t take long for David to drift off to sleep on the grassy bank.

Below the surface of the water, in a crevice between two rocks, Lydia Morton’s lifeless eyes watched the fish hook with its sinker skim the sludge on the bottom of the river.