Ray feels guilty all over again, as well as resentful about what now feels like a trap. He picks up a piece of pineapple, drops it back on his plate.
‘Why doesn’t somebody just tell me what happened? How about that? You were all missing for seven hours. You left me alone in the camper all night. You never told me what the hell you did with those people. Now this is my responsibility, that you’re all a mess, your lives are ruined? I’m sorry, but I think it’s a little late to pretend that I owe you – any of you – anything.’
Megan studies her mimosa. Colt and Leonard have turned stone-faced and pale. Francine appears to be sleeping, a thin line of saliva hanging from her chin and inching toward her chest.
Warren smiles ruefully. ‘You were young. You chose to stay in the camper, and that was a bit of wisdom beyond your years. But understand, Leonard and Colette did what they had to do, in the moment, and they shouldn’t be blamed for that. It was my choice to keep you out of it, and God knows they wanted to tell you, if only to unburden themselves. But I wouldn’t allow it. We were trying to protect you.’
Ray is mildly placated by this admission.
‘Well, I for one am deeply moved,’ Leonard says, his sarcasm too tired to carry a bite. ‘What is it you want us to do, Dad? Chop some firewood, build a survival shelter? Whatever the hell it is, I say we get on with it.’
‘You’re going to stay here at base camp with your rifle,’ Warren tells Leonard, not missing a beat. ‘To protect your mother and little Sierra. Colette, Raymond, and his fiancée Megan are coming with me on a short hike.’
Ray coughs. ‘Why does Megan need to come? She’s not a part of this mess.’
‘We need four adults to carry out the mission,’ Warren says, bending over. From under the table he produces a steel suitcase of the sort conspicuous drug dealers use. It requires both of his arms and a lot of back strength to set it on the table. ‘Leonard is best prepared to stand guard here, which leaves us.’
Leonard licks his lips and points. ‘What’s in the Miami Vice lunchbox?’
‘Restitution,’ Warren says. ‘For that which was taken thirty years ago.’
‘Someone knows,’ Colt whispers, teetering on panic. ‘Someone else was there?’
They are all staring at the old man, praying for a punchline.
‘There was a witness,’ Warren confirms. ‘We’re going to drop this at a place of his choosing, and pay our respects to the dead. And then, my dear children, we are going to enjoy our vacation.’
The Anchor
‘Hey, Ray, wait up a sec,’ Leonard calls to him, just as the elected foursome begin to make their way out of the clearing.
Ray walks back, not eager to get too close to his brother, who has the 30-06 slung over one shoulder and a beer going in the cupholder of his foldable canvas sentry chair in front of the Airstream. ‘What now?’
Leonard leans in, close enough for Ray to smell his sweat. ‘Be careful out there. The old man’s not serious, you know. This is all head games to him. He’s just trying to toughen us up. There was no witness. No ransom demand.’
‘Then why do I need to be careful?’
Leonard tips his hat in salute to their father, who is waiting at the edge of the camp ground with Megan and Colt. ‘Because it’s Dad. He’s crazy, Ray. Don’t you know that by now? He never really left ’Nam. Mom’s last wheel is about to come off, and now he’s losing his company. He’s scared, and that’s why you need be careful.’
Ray is neither convinced nor relieved. ‘That’s Colt’s daughter in the camper, with Mom. Don’t get bored and go start shooting beer cans or… drink too much.’
‘Little bro, more like my big bro now.’ Leonard smiles. ‘I love you, kid. You were always the best of us.’
Ray is so thrown by the rare display of sincerity, he thinks Leonard must be kidding. But no. There is an actual tear forming behind the yellow lenses of his sportsman’s glasses. Still smiling and a little embarrassed, his big slob of a big brother looks so deeply sad and ready to fall to pieces, Ray is moved to take one of his hands, squeezing it between his own.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Len. Better days to come, huh?’
Leonard snorts, swallows. ‘Maybe so.’
Warren whistles at the two of them.
‘Giddy up.’ Leonard slaps Ray on the ass. ‘And keep your powder dry.’
Ray catches up with the others, and now one more thing among the many isn’t sitting right with him. He looks back over his shoulder, knowing he should stay awhile, keep his big brother company. Leonard scratches his crotch, then waves him off, as if to say, go on, get out of here.
To Ray, it feels a little too much like goodbye.
Which is how, by eleven thirty in the morning on their first real day at the lake, Ray finds himself walking beside Megan, this mysterious new presence in his life, holding his hand and pointing at dead birds and beach debris as if they are on a romantic stroll on Cape Cod. Warren and Colt walk ahead of them, Ray’s sister the one towing the heavy silver travel case on a shopping dolly leaving wheel tracks in the sand.
Warren has a small knapsack belted to his waist and uses a walking stick as the two of them keep a steady but unhurried pace up the beach. Their visibility extends so far in all directions, Ray doesn’t think anyone could get very close without revealing themselves. But despite Warren’s cavalier approach to this errand, and Leonard’s suggestion it’s just a game, the old man’s idea of a midlife boot camp, Ray is on edge.
In the left side pocket of Ray’s cargo shorts, the M1911 bounces against his thigh every few steps. It’s no secret he carries it now. Warren asked him, in plain sight of the others, if he had brought ‘my old pistol from the war’ and Ray nodded guiltily, for Megan he supposed, but she didn’t seem surprised. Why would she at this point? She’s made her decision; what’s one more gun thrown into the mix?
Megan looks cute and a little unsettling thrust into her new tactical role. She has a bandana tied around her forehead, pushing her thick brown hair back. She wears her running shoes, nylon shorts, and Ray keeps reminding himself there are more important things to focus on than the outline of her black sports bra under her white T-shirt.
‘You don’t seem like you’re dying of curiosity,’ Megan says, after they’ve covered the first mile or so in silence.
‘About?’
‘Whatever this person demanded, and why.’
‘Maybe I already have a pretty good idea.’
She waits. He can’t think of a reason not to share his suspicions. She’s probably arrived at the same, and she deserves the chance to consider the worst.
‘I figure someone got killed,’ Ray says. ‘Maybe several someones.’
Megan doesn’t react with shock. She doesn’t react at all.
‘My dad said we were going to pay our respects to the dead,’ Ray continues. ‘The police never came, I can only assume. There was no ranger. Because something got out of control, and maybe one of them drowned, or my dad had to put one of them down in self-defense or just lost his temper. Either way, somebody’s dead and it’s not a Mercer.’
‘Can you really imagine that?’ she says. ‘Your entire family taking part in…’
‘Murder?’ he finishes, gazing off to the great band of blue lake stretching to the horizon. Even in its shrinking capacity, Blundstone is something to behold. Ray realizes he hasn’t had the chance to swim in it yet, and he promises himself he will, at least once, before this is all over. ‘People never imagine someone they know killing someone, but people get killed all the time. Killed by people who were just… people.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t as cold-blooded as that,’ Megan says.
‘Cold-blooded enough it needed covering up.’
‘Victims fail to report crimes too,’ Megan says. ‘Maybe they were scared.’
‘Either way. There could be bodies out here,’ Ray says. ‘Buried in the sand. Maybe it was my family that buried them.’
Colt and Warren hav
e been outpacing them, building a few minutes’ lead.
‘I need to tell you something,’ Megan says. ‘In case things get out of control. Or maybe just because it’s time. Long overdue, actually.’
Ray doesn’t like the sound of this. ‘Okay.’
‘There’s another reason I agreed to come on this trip with you. Why I kept encouraging you to press on when we were lost, even after the warnings in the diner. Why I didn’t take you up on all those offers to turn around and go home, after the weird things we saw on the beach. Your brother with the gun. And why I can’t leave you out here now, no matter who’s behind this payoff scheme.’
‘I figured there must be a good one. I’m really not that charming.’
‘Look at me.’ Megan removes her sunglasses, taking his arm. He stops. She presses her palm to his chest, eyes vulnerable in a way he has not seen before.
‘I surprised you in the tent last night,’ she says. ‘Yes?’
‘Little bit,’ he says.
Megan smiles. ‘And before the tent, before this trip, taking everything you know and have sensed about me, did you ever think of me as the kind of girl who would give herself that way? To someone she barely knows?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Good. So, why would I let down my guard like that?’
Ray looks past her, up the beach to Colt and Warren, who continue to build a lead. Megan takes his chin and pulls him back.
‘The answer isn’t with them,’ she says. ‘It’s here. Between you and me.’
Ray blushes. Can’t think straight. Has to say something or risk disappointing her. ‘I think you like me. I believe that, but —’
‘What I feel for you is a lot more than like,’ Megan says. ‘I’ve felt things for you since I first started working at the restaurant, and it’s been growing in me, the way it has been inside of you. I know you felt it. I’ve seen it in the way you look at me, and even more in the way you pretend to avoid me. I waited for the right time to tell you, and there were reasons I had to wait. But when you asked me to sit down and told me about the trip, I realized this was how it was supposed to be. It’s real. I don’t know what’s going to happen today, tomorrow, when we get home. But we are real. What I feel for you is real. You needed to know that regardless of what comes next, and that’s why I gave myself to you last night. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Mostly…’ Ray shifts from foot to foot. ‘I feel the same way. But I’m missing something here. Something big.’
‘I think we both are. But no matter what happens, you can’t be afraid of me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Don’t ever be afraid of us.’
‘Hey, foxtrot!’ Ray’s father shouts back to them, waving his walking stick. ‘Come on, troops! Keep up, keep up!’
Ray waves and turns back to Megan. ‘I —’
She cuts him off with a strong kiss, then leads him onward, up the beach.
‘Raymond, you remember the anchor we used on the old catamaran?’
Funny thing, with almost no lag time Ray does remember it. To his child’s eyes the anchor always looked like a giant Lego piece. ‘The red one?’
Warren smiles proudly. ‘That night after all the fuss died down, we went out a little ways past the cove and I dropped the anchor in what I estimated to be sixty or seventy feet of water. I guess I knew we’d have to come back someday. That anchor is our marker in the sand now.’
‘What if someone found it already?’ Colt asks. Ray’s sister is sweating profusely, the work of dragging the loaded dolly up the beach wearing her down. Ray offered to take over for her half an hour earlier, but she refused, darting her eyes toward Dad as if to say, captain’s orders.
‘Entirely possible,’ Warren says. ‘But somehow I don’t think so. The lake’s never been this low. Whole state park’s been closed for over two years. Even before that, the number of visitors had dwindled substantially.’
‘Why is that?’ Ray says. ‘What’s with all the signs? Danger! Keep out! Like this is a nuclear waste site now.’
Warren consults a digital compass of some sort. He glances at Ray, then at Megan, and leads them onward as he theorizes.
‘Hard to get a boat in when the water is this low, for one. Then there were staffing problems, budget cuts, which meant more safety issues. Can’t leave people out here un-policed, God forbid. But mostly I think it’s something in the air, the water, the thing people sense even when they can’t explain it. Have you felt it?’
Megan looks at Ray. He wiggles his eyebrows. Felt something? Last night they were seeing things.
‘Death,’ Warren says, more with resignation than drama. ‘The lake is drying up. The wildlife is moving on. Last summer a couple of hikers found a two hundred pound channel catfish that had thrown itself up on the dam. Like some lake monster who’d survived for decades and finally had enough. The striped bass are gone, no one’s caught one of those for years. Terrible shame. This used to be a source of pride for the entire state. Now it’s a blight, and no one can do anything because the farmers need the water and nature isn’t making enough of that these days. Sometimes I dream of snow, apocalyptic snowstorms covering the mountains to feed it once again.’
‘Is that your anchor?’ Megan says, pointing off toward three or four o’clock.
Warren raises the small pair of binoculars clipped to his belt. Glasses the beach. Lowers them. ‘A red blanket, maybe a towel. We should have another couple hundred yards to go yet.’
‘When did the messages start arriving?’ Colt asks.
‘About three years ago,’ Warren says. ‘In July, near the anniversary. First one didn’t say much. Just “Hello, enjoying another summer at Blundstone, exclamation point”. Scribbled on a postcard, like something from one of the old bait shops.’
Ray realizes he and Megan have missed part of the conversation. ‘This person demanding the payoff, he sent messages?’
‘Thirteen of them,’ Warren says. ‘One every few months. The last one arrived about two weeks ago. As if he knew we were planning the trip. Had inside intel.’
‘What did they say?’ Megan asks.
Warren looks back at her as if annoyed to be pushed into specifics. ‘Earlier ones were hints. Cryptic comments about those nasty storms, safety tips, the need to be careful. Later, the messages turned ominous. “A family is a terrible thing to lose.” Some were invitations to come back. “Don’t stay away forever. We miss you! Why not make Lake Blundstone your next family vacation destination!” Coy threats, details proving they had been here and seen us go out on the boat. Finally, this silly demand.’
The messages are disturbing, Ray thinks, but not as disturbing as the fact that his father seems to be relishing this whole ordeal, the game it has become.
‘Dad, what’s in the case?’ he asks once more.
‘Something heavy,’ Colt says, shifting the dolly from one hand to the other.
‘How do we know we’re not being set up?’ Ray says. ‘Ambushed?’
Warren shakes his head. ‘He could have done that a long time ago. At home, late one night, anywhere. This is about a payoff, not violence.’
The mere suggestion of violence prompts them all to have another look around. They are a quarter of a mile from the bluffs, at least two full miles from the main point and the road leading in. The water is several hundred yards in the other direction, and it’s nothing but beach for miles ahead and behind them. Unless someone is hiding under a trapdoor in the sand, there is little chance of being caught off-guard. But if they need to run for cover, it’s going to be bad. Very bad.
Beneath the Lake Page 14