by Lisa Wingate
“Mart, please,” Laurie whispered, her voice shaking. “Chris and I want you to come.”
“Laurie, it’s better this way.” Chris didn’t want me to come. Chris was a nice guy, but having to share space with a third wheel and a dead guy was more than any man could do forever. If Laurie didn’t wake up, Chris would pack his bags and head out the door. “Y’all just go on and have a good day with Levi – just the five of you. Do something … different than usual.” Something that didn’t end in sitting around a half-lit room, sipping wine and drowning in memories.
“It’s not right without you here,” Laurie whispered.
“It can be. You’ve just got to make up your mind to it.” I loved Laurie like a sister, and I always would. She loved me because I was the closest link she had to my brother and Mica. I was the last one to see them alive.
I was the one who should’ve looked after them that day.
Laurie didn’t see it that way, though. She’d never blamed anyone for it – except maybe Aaron for not being more careful, especially when he was taking Mica out in the boat with him. Aaron should’ve scanned the storm reports. He should’ve checked over our little bay boat before he took it out – made sure that, if the weather changed, he and Mica wouldn’t end up trapped out on the water when the bay turned rough and dangerous. The fuel filter had been clogging up and killing the engine. I had a new filter waiting in the back of my truck – a little ten-dollar part. I should’ve been there to put it in the boat, but I wasn’t. I was at work, clearing up one last case, when I should’ve been at our little man-shack on the beach, getting the boat ready for a weekend of bay fishing with my brother and his boy. An extra hour at work and a ten-dollar part had cost Aaron and Mica their lives.
Laurie pulled in a trembling breath. She was probably off in a room by herself, trying not to let anyone know the past was wrapped around her so tight she couldn’t breathe. “I was just … looking at the pictures from that trip to Taos. Remember? Aaron and me, and you and Melanie.” She laughed softly, and I could see her sliding a hand over the pages, her fingertip caressing the faces. “Mica was just little. Remember, you got him all dressed up and stood him in your ski boots? He looks so funny in those huge skis.”
“I remember.” The good times slid around me with the softness of freshly combed fleece. The past turned in my head like a spinning wheel, slowly twisting fleece into thread, and then into rope. Melanie was Laurie’s best friend, the maid of honor at their wedding. The four of us did everything together – trips to the beach, campouts in Big Bend, weekends in the mountains. The ski trip. None of us had any idea that we were living on borrowed time. Just a few years later, Aaron and Mica were gone, and Melanie was packing her bags to move back home to Kansas, saying she couldn’t take all the grief anymore. I feel like I’m choking on it, she’d said. You’re all choking on it. You just don’t see it. Sometimes things aren’t anybody’s fault, Mart. Sometimes bad things just happen. They got caught in a storm. The boat capsized. That’s it.
“I’ll try to get home for Christmas,” I told Laurie. “Tell Levi there’ll be something coming from Uncle Mart in the mail for his birthday.”
“He can call you when he opens it.” Laurie’s answer was flat, and she followed it with a quick good-bye. I sat staring at the phone after I hung it up. I wanted to call back and tell Levi I’d be there for his birthday, but I knew it would be ten steps backward.
All of a sudden, being dog-tired seemed like a stroke of luck. I took a shower, ate my sandwich, and sacked out instead of wandering around the little lake house, bouncing off the walls and trying to find something to do with myself.
In the morning, I was up before first light and ready for work. While I was pouring coffee into my thermos, Jake called to let me know he was down with food poisoning from some roadside taco stand, and wouldn’t be able to come for an assist this morning.
“Should’ve stuck with the Mennonite bakeries,” I told him, and he let out a weak laugh that actually made me feel a little sorry for him. Jake would eat just about anything that didn’t crawl away first. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go ahead and sidle on up Len’s way – see if I can catch him heading out to check his trotlines at sunup. I don’t think it’ll be a problem. If anything looks dicey, I’ll call the boys from the sheriff ’s department.” Jake and I traded a snipe or two about the sheriff ’s boys, and then he warned me to be careful, before he hung up the phone in a hurry, on his way to the bathroom again. I got the rest of my stuff together and headed out the door.
A low fog clung over the grass, cutting my legs at the knees as I walked down to the lake. In the glow of the dock lights, the water was silver and still, like a pool of mercury poured between the hills. A lazy crescent moon rested on its back just above the ridges to the west; and to the east, the first gray light of dawn challenged the pinpoints of a million stars.
I took a deep breath, and a handful of memories were tied to the scent of water, damp grass, and mist. Good memories. The kind that run through your mind barefoot and laughing and kicking up dust. I remembered the way the grass felt that summer at Moses Lake when we were kids – slick, wet, and cool with the dew still on it. I could hear the four of us laughing. I saw Shawn running ahead, heard Aaron lagging back, whining because it was dark, and he was scared. I told him to shut up – if Mom heard us sneaking out, we’d be dead. Crybaby, I said. Quit whining or go away. Aaron was always the crybaby, the mama’s boy. The little freckle-faced whiner who that summer had the nerve to shoot up like a weed and get taller than me. All I wanted was for him to buzz off.
Be careful what you wish for. The voice in my head was older and wiser now. Now I would’ve given anything to head down to the lake with my brothers, all four of us together again. That summer was the last of it. The end of the four of us. This place would always be special to me because of that summer. When we left Moses Lake, Shawn turned eighteen and joined the army. Now he was gone, and Aaron was gone, and there were just two – just Jay and me, the two who would’ve been in the middle on that race down to the shore.
Here at the lake it felt like they were still with me, tramping through the fog, headed out to see what the day had to offer before it’d even begun. Here, I didn’t drive by the church where we’d held Shawn’s funeral, or the cemetery where we’d laid Aaron and his little boy side by side. Here, they were all still alive, frozen in time. No reminders of how it’d ended, except the ones you carried with you.
The lake felt good this morning – quiet and calm, the air just cool enough to pull steam off the water. There was the faintest scent of fall in it, a whisper promising that soon enough the weather would change, the tourists would go home, and the shores would be left to the locals.
Heading across-water, I passed by Larkspur Cove, looked up the hill at the houses there, and my thoughts took a sharp right turn. There was a light on in one of Andrea’s windows. I wondered if she was up this early, and what she was doing if she was. For a half a second, I was tempted to grab my field glasses and look over that way. The impulse was a stealth attack, and as quick as it came, I tossed it over the side of the boat and let it float away in the wake. Peeping into houses with binoculars was wrong in a half dozen ways, and besides that, I was on duty.
The idea followed me across the lake, trailing behind the boat like moss that wouldn’t quite shake loose. I realized there was a strange fantasy circling in my head, the kind you have early in the morning before your mind wakes up all the way. I’d drift by Andrea’s house, and she’d just happen to be out on the dock, getting a little fresh air …
Before sunup. Yeah, right.
I throttled the motor down, passing the Big Boulders, then slid under Eagle Eye Bridge. Overhead, a breeze blew through the cliffs, and I heard the Wailing Woman’s voice. She was moaning low, mourning a child who’d disappeared from the wagon train as they forded the river, or so the story went. In the day-use picnic area across the way, the mockingbirds echoed her voice along wi
th a medley of mimicked birdcalls.
The Wailing Woman’s moans and the mockingbirds’ answers faded as I started up the channel, and there was nothing but predawn stillness and the soft song of mourning doves. When the water was dark and quiet like this, the rumble of the motor floated like smoke, traveling for miles, winding into the trees.
I hoped I’d started out early enough to get to a resting spot and cut the motor before Len made it down to the water. My plan was to pull up in the cedar overhang just past the place where Len had been putting his rig in the water. I could wait there for him to come down for his morning spin on the lake.That’d be a pretty good place to catch him for a friendly little chat. He wouldn’t be able to avoid me at that point, unless he wanted to up and make a run for it, in which case, I’d have to start the day by detaining a suspect.
I hoped it didn’t come to that. Innocent men don’t run, for one thing. I didn’t want to be wrong about Len, and it seemed a shame to muck up such a nice morning by having to haul someone to the county lockup. Aside from that, there was the fact that I wasn’t hoping to find out anything bad had been happening to that little girl. I wanted to finally be able to tell Andrea I’d sorted out the situation – that some neighbors had been at Len’s place, and the little girl belonged to them.
It crossed my mind that I was thinking about Andrea again – imagining her catching a breath and looking relieved when I told her the little girl was fine. Andrea smiled, in my mind, laughed about the big adventure up to Len’s cabin, and said she’d ruined her dress shoes for nothing. I told her if she was going to be working with Texas Parks and Wildlife, she’d better get some more practical footwear.
I shut down the conversation in my head as I pulled the boat up into the cedar overhang and waited. It wasn’t like me to have my mind on anything other than work. Normally, even with seeing the sleazy and sometimes downright stupid human behavior that went along with this job, I was happy to stay focused on the task. While I was at work, I didn’t wonder how Laurie’s boys were getting through the baseball season without Uncle Mart there to have a catch with them. I didn’t wonder if the new stepdad was arranging his day so that he could go by the ball field and help Levi learn to hit off the tee.
Maybe that was why I was thinking about Andrea now – maybe I was trying to fill the gap in my life. Another single mom, another boy who needed a man around. Maybe I was working to cap the black hole now that Aaron’s family had a new man in it.
Pulling the plug on the chatter in my brain, I sat back in the seat and watched the last of the stars fade overhead as the day crept in, light gray at first, then misty and pink. The lake yawned and stretched and came to life, little perch and bass popping the top of the water, doves calling in the trees, their wings beating the air as they flitted from branch to branch, a mockingbird imitating the calls of the doves. The dove cooed in reply, and I figured the mockingbird had a laugh over it. He’d fooled someone.
I waited, sort of drifting in and out of a doze, longer than I thought I’d have to before I heard movement in the brush. My pulse jumped. I sat up and listened, but it was just a rabbit or squirrel, maybe a little bobcat or a fox. Nothing to get excited about yet, but anytime now, Len would come tromping down the hill. In the morning quiet, and with the blanket of dead leaves underfoot, he wouldn’t be hard to hear. I’d be able to tell from the sound whether he was alone or had someone with him.
A hawk left its nest and circled overhead. I watched it gliding on the warming air currents, stretching its wings in the mist. Passing over me, it cried out a complaint, letting me know I was horning in on its territory. I thought of my grandpa, a one-quarter Chickasaw who lived in the hills of northeastern Oklahoma when I was a kid. He talked to wild things like he expected them to answer. Looking back, I guessed he was the one who’d given me a love for the woods. The summers we went to visit at his farm were some of the best I remembered. A trip to town in his old pickup was always an adventure for us boys. We’d go in the five-and-dime and pick out penny candy, or pinwheels, or kites we could fly in Granddad’s hayfield.
There was a game warden who hung around the old feed mill. I’d sit on the porch and listen to his tales while Granddad jawboned with the men inside. It was that game warden who gave me the idea that maybe I’d like to do his job one day – have all those adventures like he did, not be tied to an office or a desk. Guess, even though my daddy left when I was fourteen and I didn’t see my granddad much after that, a little of Granddad and that game warden stayed with me.
A twig snapped on the hillside while my mind was in Oklahoma. I sat up and listened. Footsteps for sure this time. Just one person coming – a long, loose, easy gait, dragging one foot a little. That’d be Len. He was pretty late getting down to the lake this morning. By the sound of things, he was carrying something fairly heavy – fishing equipment, cast nets, and jug lines wrapped in a tarp, maybe. Hopefully not some kind of trap I’d have to cite him for.
I moved to the side of my boat and slipped off into the mud where I wouldn’t make any noise, then worked my way along the shore and stopped at the edge of the cedars, waiting for Len to make it down the hill. Once he’d uncovered his boat and started wrestling it down to the water, I would let him know I was here. By then his hands would be busy. He was probably carrying a gun, and I didn’t want him to get surprised and decide to use it.
He was about twenty feet away – just on the other side of the cedar brush – when I heard him set down whatever he was carrying, then work his boat out from under a tangle of branches, turn it over, and push it toward the water. The swish of the hull over the leaves moved away, but then there was another noise. Something closer – where Len had set down whatever he was packing. A dog, maybe? I should’ve thought about the fact that he could have one of his dogs along. If that was the case, the whole picture changed. A protective pit bull goes a long way toward making the odds uneven. Surprising Len was one thing, but surprising one of those dogs was another.
If it was a dog, why hadn’t it sniffed me out yet?
Nearby, Len grunted and struggled, the boat hanging up on something. My ear strained into the brush, tried to pick up what was out there, to figure out whether it was a threat or not. My heart pumped. I settled my fingers over my gun, broke it loose in the holster.
The carpet of leaves shifted and rustled, and then there was the faintest sound. It seemed out of place at first – soft and peaceful. An exhale of breath, like a child sighing in its sleep. The leaves shifted and crinkled again, and all at once I knew. Len wasn’t alone. The little girl, whoever she might be, was right there on the other side of the cedars, not more than eight or ten feet from me.
My thoughts whirled like fish schooling up. What would Len be doing at the shore with a child first thing in the morning? Nothing good. Nothing normal. He probably hadn’t picked her up at some neighbor’s house before seven. Whoever she was, he’d had her with him overnight, and now he was … was … what? Where was he headed?
Stories from the evening news and missing persons cases pushed into my mind. Maybe I’d been wrong about Len. Maybe everyone had. Maybe his mild manner and his slow, stuttering speech was all an act. Maybe he wasn’t mentally handicapped at all. Maybe he was some kind of a long-term perp, a fox hiding right here in the chicken house. The lake and the parks were full of kids, all summer long… .
I shook off the idea. No point in speculation. Right now the only thing certain was that I couldn’t let Len leave here with the little girl. I should’ve arranged some other form of backup when Jake called in sick. Coming alone had been a bad choice. I’d been at this job long enough to know that a situation could seem safe enough one minute, then blow up in your face the next.
Crouched there in the cedars, I thought through the scenarios. If I went after the child, Len would perceive me as a threat immediately. If he was armed or chose to fight, I’d be weighted down, trying to protect and contain the child while Len was free to come after me in whatever way
he wanted… .
He’d worked the boat loose and was pushing it toward the lake again now. I heard the aluminum hull grind over the rocks at the edge of the brush cover. A better chance isn’t coming along anytime soon, I thought, and made sure my gun was ready, but I didn’t draw it. Better to make this look casual, try not to set him off.
While the boat was scraping along, I slipped back the other direction a bit, got to the shoreline where I could see clearly, and started Len’s way, just moving at a casual pace, so as not to come up on him too quickly. Rounding the last of the cedar brush, I could see him pulling his rig through the shore muck. I checked him over as I moved in. No visible weapons, except a hunting knife on his belt. I doubted I was in too much danger from that.
He hadn’t seen me coming yet. He was turned toward the lake, pulling the boat along with a piece of frayed rope wrapped over his shoulder. He slid a hand up the line, and I could see that he had on bulky work gloves. That was a point in my favor. Gloves like that make it pretty hard to use a weapon of any kind.
“Mornin’, Len,” I said, and he jumped about three feet, dropping his draw line. His eyes flew open wide, and his gaze darted around. For about a second and a half, I got the strong feeling he was thinking about running. If he did, I’d have to stop him before he made it back to that brush. Len wasn’t a big man. He might’ve been at one time, but at this point, he was shrunken up and stooped over, old looking. The skin on his neck moved up and down like a turkey wattle as he swallowed hard, his eyes tracking from my badge to my gun and back.
I held my hands away from the holster a bit. “Don’t panic on me now. I just want to talk to you a minute. You know who I am, right?”