Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  “Do you have them yet?”

  When Wofford nodded, the light flashed off her diamond earrings. “We received them this afternoon. We’re in the process of cross-checking numbers against their registered users now. But there’s one thing I can tell you. Your neighbor, the one you’re so certain of—your sister called his house on the morning of March thirtieth.”

  Ruby slid to the edge of her seat. “Before I spoke with her?”

  “Hours before your call. At five forty-two a.m., to be precise. You’d think a person would remember such an early call, especially from someone who’s gone missing.” Wofford leaned forward onto her elbows. “And yet Mr. McCoy never mentioned it to my deputy, or to me when we were talking. Did he say anything to you about it?”

  With a lump rising in her throat, Ruby shook her head to indicate he hadn’t. Could a handsome face and a fine body have swayed her judgment? Was Sam McCoy that good an actor?

  The sheriff opened her mouth to speak again, but a tap at the door interrupted. Her lips twitching downward, she said, “I’d better check on this. Please excuse me for a moment.”

  The interruption turned out to be considerably longer, time Ruby used to doubt each move she’d made, each word she’d spoken, since leaving the plane yesterday so eagerly. It seemed years ago that she’d looked down to find her backpack missing, since she’d thought of Carrie Ann’s death or the possibility that all of this might somehow be connected. Convinced by the security guard that a criminal gang had been behind the theft, Ruby had barely mentioned it to the sheriff last night. And she’d said nothing whatsoever about her last nightmarish weeks in Iraq, partly because she couldn’t imagine Wofford seriously considering that overseas deaths—a pair of abductions and beheadings quickly blamed on insurgents—could possibly have any bearing on a local case. Ruby could scarcely imagine such a thing herself, though memories of her surprising job offer and the upcoming hearings made her increasingly uneasy.

  She decided she would bring it up now, push the idea so hard the sheriff would have to give it serious consideration. Maybe then, Wofford could latch on to some scenario that didn’t cast her sister as a druggie and a thief.

  Tired of waiting for the sheriff’s return, Ruby moved toward the door to see if she could find out how long the delay might be. By the time she reached it, she could hear the low rumble of a man’s voice on the other side. Leaning in to put her ear beside the crack, she recognized Deputy Savoy’s voice.

  “Eight calls to this number. The phone’s registered to a fifty-seven-year-old woman, a file clerk for the city. No criminal record. But I found out she’s got a grown son.”

  “You know him.” Justine Wofford stated it as a fact, not a question.

  “Unfortunately,” Savoy said. “Leroy Coffer’s a dealer out of Houston, goes by the street name ‘Coffin.’ We arrested him eighteen months ago, before you came on board here. Methamphetamine charges—possession with intent, but some greenhorn prosecutor made a procedural screwup, and the conviction got tossed on appeal.”

  Ruby turned the names Coffin and Coffer over in her mind, but neither meant a thing to her.

  “Sounds like the type who’d set up a lab out near the lake,” Savoy continued. “He and his associates—a real bunch of scum-suckers—are probably tied with some of those other cases, too, probably funneling the stuff back to his old connection in the city. I only hope the son of a bitch blew himself to hell with the Monroe place. Because if he was the one who got out, we’ll have a hell of a time catching…”

  A rushing noise filled her head, and Ruby’s heart bounded against her ribs. There had been a drug lab inside her house? Her sister might be accepting of her friends’ quirks, but she’d never stand for anything illegal—especially not with Zoe present. Misty would have fought like hell to prevent such an invasion.

  Which meant, Ruby knew with a sickening jolt of clarity, that her sister had either been scared off or silenced somehow. And what about my daughter? What about my little girl?

  “You remember if Coffer has a lot of body art?” asked Wofford. “Including a triple six on his face, right about here?”

  “He’s done a couple of short stints in prison, had the ink to prove it,” Savoy responded. “I don’t recall any facial tatts except a teardrop, but he could’ve added more since I last saw him.”

  “You think Misty Bailey could’ve been involved with somebody like that?” the sheriff asked. “Here’s an attractive, supposedly responsible young woman, working on her education, looking after her sister’s little one. Seems kind of a stretch.”

  Ruby felt a surge of gratitude that Wofford had done more than pretend to listen to her. Maybe she would listen to the part about DeserTek as well.

  “Who knows what women see in these thugs?” Disgust weighed down the deputy’s words. “But I’ve seen plenty of nice girls, pretty girls, throw their lives away on garbage. Hell, there’s some that write love letters to complete strangers doing hard time.”

  “I’ve seen it, too,” said Wofford. “I started out working in the jail in Morton County.”

  “Not so very long ago,” Savoy said with clear disdain.

  “Deputy, I asked for your opinion on Misty Bailey and this Coffer—” A warning hammered Wofford’s voice flat. “Not my level of experience. Now, do you think the two of them might’ve been involved?”

  “Could’ve been.” His low tones sounded more resentful than contrite. “Man always had an eye for hot blondes, not that they keep their looks long once they start partying with Leroy. Aside from the drug use, he’s pretty quick to lay down the law with his fists. He’s had a couple of domestic battery reports on the books—one against his mama, and another on a girlfriend. I responded to one of those calls, and that girl was scared half out of her mind, refused to cooperate no matter what assurances I gave her. So Coffer walked, of course, and the girl with the cigarette burns and the black eye vanished.”

  “You look into it?” asked Wofford.

  “Put in man-hours like you wouldn’t believe, Sheriff, but we never could get the evidence to convince the DA to file charges. For one thing, her family thought our ‘victim’ might’ve took off with another friend of Coffer’s, another bad seed. She had a history of poor choices when it came to men.”

  “You believe it? About her running off, that is?” Deputy Savoy’s voice dropped to a murmur, as if he’d turned his head away while speaking. Ruby couldn’t make out his response, but Justine Wofford’s next words sliced straight to her center like a white-hot blade.

  “Men like Coffer,” the sheriff said grimly, “aren’t inclined to put up with any extra baggage. Especially in the form of kids they didn’t father. Which means…goddammit, I hate this, Deputy, but we’re gonna need to go beyond the volunteers’ efforts to comb the woods around the Monroe place. We’ll need to call in divers and dredge the south end of the lake for bodies. And tell them—tell them in particular, we’re looking for a little girl’s.”

  C HAPTER N INE

  “Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”

  —James Anthony Froude,

  Oceana, Or, England and Her Colonies

  They’d be searching the house soon, Sam figured, either the DEA or the sheriff or God only knew what entity. In spite of his cooperation, there was no way they’d leave anyone with his background and proximity in peace.

  Already, they’d impounded the johnboat. He’d discovered it missing when he’d gone out to take care of it. He couldn’t imagine what evidence they’d whip up to establish probable cause to come inside, yet he felt certain they would get the warrant within a few hours and tear his place apart looking for any sign that Zoe or Misty had been here.

  Sam could live with that, since he’d never so much as invited the two of them inside, and he wasn’t worried the authorities would find anything to link him to illegal drugs. But before they came, he had to do something with
the cell phone hidden in the insulation near the water heater in his attic. His possession of it was in direct violation of the terms of his probation.

  He hadn’t even used the damned thing, though he’d been sorely tempted, and he’d certainly gone to a lot of trouble to acquire it in the first place. He’d ended up buying several disposable telephones, removing the SIM card from each and trying the various cards inside several more expensive phones he’d purchased used and with cash. Finally, he found a combination that allowed him to activate what had turned into a completely anonymous cell phone capable of browsing the Internet.

  An insurance policy, he’d told himself, in case of an emergency. He realized now it had been stupid, like a recovering alcoholic hiding a full bottle “just in case.” The temptation had eaten away at him daily, forcing him out onto the water at all hours. Despite the risk involved, he meant to break it out now, to make a single phone call he did not want traced.

  Downstairs, the dog began to bark. Sweating from the exertion of his climb to the attic—and the heart-freezing conviction that some Gestapo types would kick in his front door and catch him—Sam went to the attic window and used a yellowed section of newspaper to dust it off. Almost immediately, he spotted a van bearing the logo of a Dallas TV station and a miniature satellite dish on its roof.

  Edging away from the window, he listened, teeth gritted, as someone knocked below. But with his truck out of sight in the locked garage, the vultures quickly lost interest, and soon he caught a glimpse of them—a female reporter and a cameraman, climbing back inside the van and disappearing.

  He imagined they had only gone so far as next door, to shoot footage of the charred rubble that comprised the crime scene. And almost certainly, they would not be the last to think of asking him to comment. Though Sam had no intention of saying one word to any reporter, they could make it damned tough on him if they decided he was worth harassing. Eager to frame a story, they might easily cast him—with a little help from the authorities—as the potential villain of this modern tragedy. The quiet neighbor who kept to himself when not dismembering those who swiped his morning paper.

  The thought broke him out in another layer of cold sweat.

  After finessing the insulation back into place, Sam hauled himself painfully to his feet and climbed down the attic ladder to the second story. Walking from the master bedroom to the empty guestroom to the upstairs bath, he made a last check of all the windows, which gave him a clear view of the dimming sky, the cypress-studded lake, and his own front yard, where the deer had again returned to graze. He looked carefully, taking a pair of field glasses with him, and waited for ten minutes until he spotted the green and white Dallas news van leaving.

  With any luck, there were no more teams out of sight behind the trees and the investigators would believe his injuries were keeping him at home. With even more luck, he hadn’t missed spotting someone specifically left in place to watch him.

  By the time he made it back to the ground floor, he wanted nothing more than a long nap on his oversized sofa, or at least to veg for a while in front of the TV. Instead, he shuffled to the kitchen and downed a pain pill with a glass of water. Thus fortified, he whistled for the dog.

  “How about a boat ride?” he asked Java. “But we have to keep it quiet.”

  Barking with excitement—to Sam’s chagrin—the Lab spun around and raced to the old sleeping porch. The door creaked as she pawed it open, and she disappeared inside, only to return seconds later with Sam’s life vest clamped firmly in her jaws.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Let’s see if we can sneak onto the water before we both get in big trouble.”

  Heart thrumming, he took the dog out and started the bass boat’s nearly silent electric trolling motor with the cell phone in his pocket, illegal intention in his heart.

  The boatman liked to watch the blood pool. He liked it even better than the shock he’d glimpsed on her face, the disbelief that he could be here, that he could do this to her. That her life could be distilled into a spreading, crimson puddle.

  When he had the time, he liked to stick around, to watch the gleam dim from sparkling ruby to a flat rust color. Dulling at its edges first, then filming, the brown eating its slow way toward the center like a cancer.

  But the watching was pure pleasure, and this, regretfully, was business. He didn’t have the time today, and he had neither twenty thousand acres of water nor a hungry alligator handy to conceal what he’d been forced to do.

  Fortunately, in this case, he didn’t need to hide his victim. In fact, he realized, her discovery could serve his purposes far better, if he planned things carefully.

  But then, he always did, for it was that care which differentiated him from shadows, which set him above the common lot of those who called themselves professionals.

  The thought warming him, he went to find a larger knife.

  C HAPTER T EN

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  —William Butler Yeats,

  from “The Second Coming”

  As she sat at her desk perusing the file on Leroy “Coffin” Coffer, Justine Wofford caught herself wishing it had been Deputy Savoy who’d been blown out of his shoes on the front lawn of the Monroe house. Not killed, certainly, but put out of commission for a while, like the rookie Calvin Whitaker.

  Because as often as Calvin had annoyed her with his overly crisp yes-ma’ams, his obvious infatuation, and his thousand and one questions about his shiny new career path, he was one hell of a lot easier to take—and certainly simpler to direct and divert—than a seasoned investigator like Savoy.

  And unlike Roger Savoy, Calvin didn’t resent the hell out of her, didn’t weigh her every decision against the gold standard of her husband’s. Thinking of Lou, Justine cursed aloud, furious all over that he hadn’t bothered changing his insurance policy’s beneficiary in the two years they’d been married. That as a result, every dime of a half-million-dollar policy was going to his ex-wife while Justine and her son were left with…

  Guilt struck her like a logging truck, grief pooling in its tracks. The suddenness of the stroke that had left him dead within an hour had given her no chance to say good-bye, much less ask his forgiveness. And certainly no opportunity to check to be certain he had made the arrangements he’d promised that evening, close to three years earlier, when he had blindsided her with his proposal.

  “I know it’s a surprise,” he’d told her after they’d met in the neutral territory of a motel room. Met and had surprisingly energetic sex, despite their twenty-two-year age difference and the two-hour drive between their jurisdictions. “I know you’ve hardly been thinkin’ about dating, much less remarriage, what with workin’ nights and keepin’ things together on the home front like you do. But a man my age doesn’t want to waste time—and I’m sure as hell not comfortable with sneaking around like a damned teenager.”

  “But my job—” she’d protested, though she was really thinking about Noah. How long it had taken to settle him down after his father had skipped town and vanished, how upset he still became at any change to his routine.

  But heaven forgive her, she’d been thinking, too, of how hard she had to struggle to provide for her son’s special needs and how ruinously expensive it was proving.

  “Hell, you marry me and you can turn in your badge,” Lou told her earnestly. “I’ll take care of you and Noah. I’d consider it my privilege.”

  “You awake, Justine—I mean Sheriff?”

  Starting, she turned her head toward Savoy, who was standing in the doorway holding another mug of coffee.

  “If you’re thinking of showering me with any more caffeine,” she said, “you can get the hell out of my office.”

  He flinched at her tone. “About that, Sheriff. You know I’d never—”

  “Forget about it,” she snapped, angry with herself about bringing up the incident. He’d apologized already, and her f
ather, a retired lawman in his own right, had advised her not to be pulled down into such horseshit. “So what can I do for you, Deputy?”

  “Just wanted to let you know we got a tip off the AMBER Alert line. A possible sighting of Misty Bailey in the area a few days back. She was in a black car driven by a white male with facial tattoos.”

  As his boat drifted over lily pads, Sam realized he had no right to expect his ex-partner’s forgiveness, and even less to think Luke Maddox would be willing to risk helping him. No right, but Sam hoped anyway, because he knew the kind of man his old friend was.

  “Do you have any idea how much damned trouble you caused?” Luke demanded. “Since you’ve been arrested, I’ve had to personally visit every client, do nine kinds of groveling, and swear on a stack of Bibles I didn’t have a thing to do with your actions. And I still ended up losing more than half of the accounts.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam told him, repeating what he had said so many times before. Though Luke said nothing, at least he didn’t hang up.

  Sam took advantage of the lull to explain, “I never thought about it coming back to bite you, never thought of anything but those corporate bastards screwing over their own retirees.” It still pissed him off royally, the way the corporation had dissolved and “reallocated” the pensions and health-care costs people like his neighbors had worked for decades to earn. Intent on covering its ass, the company had reformed under a new name, using carefully hidden financial assets.

  And then its officers had made the mistake of hiring Sam—whose expertise ran to following money trails—to help them keep their secrets hidden.

  “Save it for the jury,” Luke said. “Oh, wait. That’s right. They didn’t buy into your bullshit, either.” After a brief pause, the harshness ebbed from his voice. “Listen, I feel for your friends, too. Harry and Mona are good people, and what happened to them is dead wrong. But this was never your fight, Sam. They should’ve gone to the authorities or found an attorney.”