Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake)

by Rachel Caine

“She brought it up all on her own.”

  “Anything else?”

  I tell her the rest of Mrs. Gregg’s saga, though I’m not sure how probative it is. She makes a note of Dr. Fowler’s name, which might be useful in giving Sheryl an alibi—or disproving one—on the day her husband went missing. I tell her about Heidt too. “Watch out for that one,” I say. “Seems territorial, but that could just be because I’m me. Maybe he’d be more welcoming to you.”

  “Yeah, I doubt that,” Kez says. “Penny Carlson’s prints came in, by the way. They’re a match to Sheryl, and two more aliases. Starting to look like Penny was some kind of rolling-stone grifter.”

  “But a murderer?”

  “Don’t know.” She eats some more of the cake, for which I’m grateful; the slab is the size of Rhode Island. “The woman we talked to out in the sticks? At the big house?”

  “You got the video?”

  “I got a double murder,” she says grimly. “And the camera hard drive’s gone.”

  “Killed how?” I ask.

  “Shot,” she says. “Up close and damn personal. Autopsies are pending, but that’s how I read it, anyway. If I had to guess from the scene, she was surprised in the shower, killed in the kitchen, and dragged out into the trees. Husband was either home or got home, and he was shot in the back of the head. Totally surprised, looks like.”

  “Jesus.” She just nods. “Kez—that’s four dead, one missing.”

  “Five dead,” she says. “If you count Tommy Jarrett, which is starting to look more likely all the time. That’s a whole lot of bodies dropping way too fast.” She sighs. “Maybe the TBI’s the right agency for this one. I don’t have the resources, and Prester’s not well and isn’t about to admit it.”

  “But he’s okay?”

  Kez licks some frosting off her fork while she thinks. “At his age, I’m not so sure. I wish he’d get himself checked out, honestly. If something happens because he’s being a stupid, stubborn man, I’ll kick his ass.”

  “More likely bring him soup,” I tell her, and she shrugs. “I don’t have much on my plate at the moment—”

  “Aside from your stalker problems?” Kez has a point. I was thinking caseload.

  “Well, I was trying to avoid that for a little while longer,” I say, and sit back. We’ve demolished the cake by this point; like all diners sharing a dish, we’ve left a little strip in the middle of the plate. No-man’s-land. “You’re right, though. I should be focusing at home.” And on getting back there. It’s time for me to start the drive.

  “Anything you can do from there, I’ll gladly accept,” Kez says. “But I don’t want to put you or the kids in more danger either.”

  “What about you?” I ask her. “With Javier off to training, Prester not his best, you don’t have any backup. I’m worried about that, Kez. Whatever’s going on—”

  “It’s not clear yet that the murders at the house had anything to do with the car in the lake. Easy to suppose that, but we don’t know what these folks were into, or who they were into it with. I saw a Belldene car up on that road.”

  That stops me. I’d considered that the woman who’d promised us video might have been in the drug business. It could make a lot of sense, and it might explain why they turned up dead, nothing to do with Sheryl’s case. “Even worse,” I say. “You think the Belldenes won’t pull the trigger on you if it means protecting themselves? They would. They might even get away with it.”

  “Not if Prester has anything to do with it. And that’s my problem, Gwen. Not yours.” Kez goes for the last bite. She’s going to need the energy. “Got to bounce. You go home and take care of the ones you love, okay?”

  “Kez?” I draw her direct gaze with the seriousness of my tone. “I love you too. And I don’t want you left vulnerable out there.”

  “Damn, girl, I’ve got the whole Thin Blue Line on my side,” she says, and acknowledges the irony of that with a quirk of her lips. “Well. It is pretty thin. But they’d put on the black armbands and give me a nice send-off. That’s some comfort.”

  It’s no comfort at all to me, but I keep that to myself.

  I head home, and arrive to relative calm . . . or so I think. Lanny and Connor are playing a video game and body-slamming each other to try to throw each other off; I settle them down and go look for Sam.

  I find him in the office. He’s just . . . sitting. When he looks at me, I feel my steps slow in response. It isn’t that I know that look, but I don’t like it. At all. “Sam? What is it?”

  For answer, he holds up an envelope. One glance at it, and I know what it is. My heart drops.

  It’s the letter I received. The one written by Melvin, delivered posthumously. The sight of it makes my mouth go dry, my knees weak. I don’t like that Melvin still sparks this physical revulsion in me, but it’s also more than that. It’s fear. Not of Melvin, not anymore . . . Fear that he’s still got the power to destroy something I love even if he’s six feet underground.

  Sam says, “Why didn’t you tell me?” His tone is as hollow as a struck bell. “I saw it in the drawer.”

  “I was going to, and then this thing with the flyers—”

  “Gwen. You had plenty of time to tell me.”

  He’s right. I did. I kept it from him because . . . I don’t know why I did, really. It felt private. Horribly personal. I didn’t want to worry you is the first thing that I think of saying, but I don’t, because it’s disingenuous. There’s something about receiving letters from my dead ex-husband that makes me want to keep them to myself, and I know that isn’t right, or fair.

  And I know it’s wrong when I jump to the attack, but I still do it. “You went through my drawer?” My words are sharply pointed, and they draw blood. Sam sits back in his chair, staring.

  “I needed staples, and that isn’t the point. Gwen.”

  I’m instantly sorry, and I know I’m wrong. Damn, I wish I could flip a switch and turn off this darkly aggressive streak I have, just be different, but I have to work at it. Hard.

  But after counting to five, I finally try. “Sorry. I—you caught me by surprise with it, and when it comes to Melvin, I still have places that aren’t really healed. You know that, right?”

  He nods. “I’ve still got some sore spots there too. Maybe more than sore.”

  “He’s not your rival, Sam. In any way.”

  I know, as soon as I say it, that I’m wrong, and I see it flash in his eyes. He leans forward and looks at me intently. “I wish that were true, but Melvin’s still here. He’s standing here right between us. Can’t forget him if he won’t go away. You have to let him go, Gwen.”

  He’s absolutely right. And it’s the scariest thing I’ve done so far, it feels like jumping off a cliff into the dark, but I take the envelope and letter out of his hand. Then I walk over to the crosscut shredder and feed it in. Watch it chewed to random bits. Utterly gone.

  Turns out that wasn’t a cliff. It wasn’t even a fall. It was easy. I feel a strange surge of release and wonder, like stepping out into the sun after a long, long darkness.

  I feel Sam’s hands on my shoulders, Sam’s warmth at my back. He kisses me gently on the side of the neck. “Thank you,” he says. “I know that was hard.”

  “It wasn’t.” I thought it would be. I thought it would hurt, or be terrifying, that there would be some kind of consequences for the action. I’ve been bracing myself for a long, long time. Treating Melvin Royal like a threat even when he’s gone.

  Treating him like junk mail feels astonishingly like freedom.

  “You’ve still got the address it came from?” Sam asks.

  “I have the mail center envelope. That gives me a place to start looking for the sender. If we can find the source of those letters . . . we can put a stop to it. Maybe, finally, forever. We could shred every single thing that’s left of Melvin Royal.” I swallow. “I’d like that. That would be great.”

  “It would,” he says. “We start tomorrow. We owe the ki
ds a movie today. I don’t want to let them down.”

  Neither do I. So we wait until they are ready to pause the game, and we load up the SUV, and we spend a glorious couple of hours not home, out of our too-full heads, transported to another world.

  It’s a temporary escape. But God, it matters. Happiness, however brief, always matters.

  Even if it makes things that much more jolting when we get home.

  The night’s chilly; people are still burning fireplaces, and I smell the pleasantly pervasive scent even through the closed windows as we turn off into our neighborhood. It’s calm, well lit, quiet, totally normal. Our house sits at the far end of the block, and we glide past glowing houses and neatly kept yards, and I make the turn into the driveway.

  There’s something taped to our door. I focus on that sheet of paper and feel the hair raise on my arms, pull tight at the back of my neck. No. Oh God. Then I get hold of my anxiety and push it down, hard. Maybe it’s a pizza delivery ad. Or a note from a neighbor. Or . . .

  It isn’t. I know it isn’t.

  I pull the SUV into the garage and take the alarm off as everybody crowds into the house after me. Relocking the garage door is second nature, and so is scanning the place to be sure everything’s just as we left it.

  Nobody mentions the note on the front door, but when I look around, they’re all staring that direction. Connor says, “Should I get it?” His tone is so calm and adult that it almost scares me. He is facing things head-on.

  Lanny doesn’t wait for anyone to give permission; she just stalks straight ahead, unlocks the door, opens it, and grabs the flyer as she kicks the door shut again. Even as she’s studying it, she’s turning deadbolts and setting the alarm. My girl.

  “Anybody want to guess?” she asks. “Because this is a super easy one.”

  “Wanted poster,” Connor and I say at the same time. Sam doesn’t speak.

  “You win the awesome prize of even more harassment!” She brings the flyer over and puts it into my hand. “So. What do we do?”

  “We check the video and see who thought they were being clever,” Sam says. “Doorbell camera.” He’s already walking down the hall, and the rest of us follow.

  Sam pulls up the feed and scrolls back. It happened about an hour ago, just after dark; the front door camera shows two people in black hoodies with bandannas over their faces. From their build, I’d say teens, maybe a little older. One has the piece of paper, tape already applied. They’re both wearing gloves. Once the paper’s on the door, they both back up and flip off the camera.

  “And another country asshole heard from,” Lanny says. I don’t try to police her language, not now. Maybe not ever again. I like the dismissive, pissed-off way she says it. “Where are they going now?”

  They run to the right, toward the garage. Sam switches cameras to follow the progress. They bypass the garage and go around to the side of the house. The fence meets the house halfway down the length, and I keep the gate padlocked from the inside.

  They don’t get that far. They take out cans of spray paint. From the camera’s angle, I can’t see what they’re doing, but it’s pretty obvious it’s not Banksy creating a masterpiece on our south wall.

  “Great. So original,” Connor says. “They must be freshmen at Troll School.” He doesn’t sound shaken either. Or scared. He just sounds . . . normal. I spare a second to mourn for the fact that this is normal for them, that they have a connoisseur’s appreciation for the finer points of vandalism, but honestly, in the next second I’m completely okay with that. They’re steady. They’re ready.

  All of us are. I wait for the panic to grow inside me, but this time, I’m actually okay. Angry, but—like my kids—grounded.

  “Any guesses about their identities?” I ask, and freeze the picture at the best moment to get a view of their clothes, the bandannas they’re wearing.

  “Well, for a start, they’re from our high school,” Lanny says, and points to the taller one on the right. “See his sweatpants?”

  I’d missed it. Her eyes are better, but when I grab my glasses, I make out a logo—black on dark gray—of a small stylized Viking’s head. Her school’s mascot.

  “That could be a brand mark,” I say, but she shakes her head, grabs my laptop, and quickly navigates to the school’s website. She finds a shot of the boys’ track team.

  Same logo. Same sweatpants. She’s absolutely right.

  On-screen, the vandals finish up and run off into the dark, fleeing through a neighbor’s yard, and then out of sight.

  “Well,” Connor says, “we know for sure they’re not on the track team.” We all look at him. He raises his eyebrows. “Come on. You saw them run. I could beat that time, and I’m kind of a nerd. But anyway, all the athletic teams get the same basic workout gear. We can find them, though. These idiots will be sharing this like crazy.”

  “Go find them,” I tell him. “Just get their names. Let Sam and I take care of the rest. Clear?”

  He and Lanny both nod, and they head off together. Little soldiers on a shared mission.

  “They’re so strong,” I whisper. “Aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Sam says, and gets up to put his arm around me. “I was hoping you’d start to recognize that. Come on. We’ve got work to do too.”

  We go outside, around to the side of the house, and Sam turns on the flashlight.

  Bloodred paint in wobbly letters. From the difference in sizes and slants, one teen did the first word, the other did the last two.

  PSYCHO’S LIVES HERD. I can only assume the writer meant here, but his graffiti penmanship is as bad as his grammar.

  “Well,” I say, “we know they’re not on the honor roll.”

  Before we start, I take photos, and a sample of the red spray paint—which, thankfully, has already dried. Then we silently, methodically, paint out the evidence. It takes four coats of thick masking paint and then two more topcoats. When we’re done, it’s a decent job. A little trim work, and we’ll be back to normal. It takes most of the evening, and by the time we’re done, I’m feeling every inch of the day that’s rolled over me hard.

  We finish, put the paint and rollers away, and head to the bedroom to dump our sweaty, paint-stained clothes. Without discussion, we both get into the shower, and I lean back against Sam’s chest with his arms around me and let the hot water beat some of the aches out of my body. Sometimes—many times—this shower is our personal fun zone, but not tonight. Tonight it feels like shelter from the storm.

  When the water’s running lukewarm, we finally shut it down, dry off, get dressed, and find the kids. They’re both in Connor’s room, cross-legged on his bed, both with laptops. Neither looks up at us as we enter, though Connor says, “I was right.” He keeps typing one-handed, and holds up his left; Lanny meets it for a high five with her right. A well-oiled machine. “I’ve got their names.”

  “And I’ve got their address and all their social media accounts,” Lanny says. “They’re brothers, and they live two blocks over. Couple of total vacuum brains, by the way. I mean, they’re both on the baseball team and got a C in Prevention of Athletic Injuries. Who does that?”

  “And how do you know their grades?” I ask her.

  “Mom. How do you think? They posted about it. They were pissed that not showing up for class earned them a C. Should have failed their stupid asses, but a C is as close as it gets for jocks, I guess.”

  I sit down on the edge of the bed. “And you know that this means—”

  “Means we’ll be targets of all the best bullies now that the popular kids are on it? Oh yeah. We know,” my son says. “The flyers are all over the place. People are taking pictures with them and posting them on Instagram. We’re the hot meme. Want to see a photo of somebody taking a dump on one?”

  “No,” Sam says. “We really don’t. And you need to stop looking at it too. It’s not good for you.”

  Connor looks like he wants to argue, but Lanny reaches over and shuts his laptop,
then her own. “What did they tag on our wall?” I show her the photo I took. “Wow. Three words, three words wrong. That’s a new record in the Guinness Book of Fail.” She busts out laughing. Then Connor gets a look, and he laughs, and it’s ridiculous and we’re all laughing somehow. Angry, cleansing laughter that leaves us gasping for breath and clinging to each other.

  We’re almost done when Sam, out of nowhere, says, “That’s it. I’m putting my foot down. Homeschooling.”

  And we cling to each other and feel, in this strange and ridiculous moment, like the trolls are nothing to our power when we’re together. Sobriety finally hits when Connor says, “I don’t want to be the baby here, but—”

  “But you are, baby bro,” Lanny says, and ruffles his hair. He smacks her hand away.

  “But were you serious? About homeschooling?”

  “Was I?” Sam looks at me, eyebrows raised. “That depends on how the two of you feel.”

  “Homeschooling sucks,” Lanny replies, and sinks back, boneless as a relaxed cat, against the headboard of the bed. “Well, RIP my social life again, not that I actually have one. But . . . we can’t go back tomorrow. It’s going to be a horror show until they get bored and move on to somebody else. And I’d rather not beat some cheerleader’s popular ass for getting in my face.”

  Lanny, in fact, has rarely lost a fight. She’s rarely started one lately either. They’re strong, but I don’t think either of my kids has a bullying instinct. They don’t stand still for it either. Connor’s strategy used to be run. Lanny’s was always fight. But neither of them is a passive victim.

  It’s a recipe for disaster, sending them back to that school in the morning.

  RIP my social life, too, I think. But it’s the right thing to do for my kids, until this whole thing passes over like a spring tornado. Lock us away in the storm cellar and hope for the best.

  “You’re staying home,” I say. “That doesn’t mean no schoolwork. I’ll talk to the principal in the morning and get your studies from your teachers. Call it an extended vacation.”

  “Bored already,” Connor says. “Can’t we help you do something? We’re good at looking things up. Obviously. And we know how to find weird stuff.”