Cypress Lake

by Graysen Morgen

"Are you going to tell me who the dead guy was?"

  "Are you sure you don't already know?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "When's the last time you saw Paul Davis?" Dani questioned.

  "Paul Davis?" Kristen repeated the name with a raised eyebrow before her face sunk slightly. She turned her eyes to the window, looking out at the lake in the distance. "Was that him?"

  "Have you seen him since you've been back in town?"

  "God, no. I haven't seen anyone since I left and you know that."

  "How do I know?"

  "Because…" Kristen sighed. "You know if I was going to come back for anyone it would've been you."

  Dani chest ached at the admission.

  "Why didn't you come back?"

  "It's complicated, Dani."

  "Damn it, Kristen. I deserve to know the truth. You walked away from us…from me…without ever saying another word. Then, you show up here twelve years later with one of our classmates dead in your backyard."

  "Do you honestly think I had something to do with his death?" Kristen growled.

  "I have no idea. I don't know you anymore."

  "Yeah, well I don't know you either and unless the Cypress Lake Sheriff's Office is officially arresting me, this conversation is over."

  Dani knew when she was defeated. She didn't actually have the right to stand in Kristen's house and accuse her of the murder, but she was hurting and she wanted answers that had nothing to do with Paul Davis.

  "He was living on the streets and caught up in drugs," Dani sighed. "More than likely, he owed his dealer money or something of the kind," she said as she walked out, pulling the door closed behind her.

  Chapter 6

  Dani sat in Sheriff Fisher's office eating an apple. The week had finally come to an end and she was happy to put it behind her.

  "I hate that this is a drug related murder, but I don't see anything that convinces me otherwise," he said, flipping through the file in front of him.

  "Me either. Everyone I spoke to said he smoked pot and dabble with snorting cocaine and selling drugs over the years."

  "I just can't believe someone cut his throat. Usually drug dealers shoot the person and move on."

  "I agree, but there's nothing else to go on. Roger Fillmore said he hadn't seen Paul in at least a year and a half. I don't know how true that is, but again, there's no evidence. Nothing." Dani shrugged, as she chomped on the green apple in her hand. "He didn't seem too surprised that someone had murdered Paul, but then again Roger had always been the smarter of the two, so if he knew anything, he hid it well."

  "Do you think Roger did this?"

  "Who knows. Maybe Paul owed him drug money. We've caught Roger growing pot on his property a few times. He could have been selling it and using Paul as his bootlegger so to speak."

  "That makes sense. Roger was probably smoking half of it and buying coke with the money from the pot he did sell. If that were the case, he'd owe Roger a lot of money." Sheriff Fisher chewed the corner of his mustache in thought.

  "Enough money to cut his throat?" Dani questioned.

  "I don't know."

  "Roger lives on the lake and could have easily ridden around in his boat and dumped Paul's body near the Malone's dock," she said. "I'd love to have a search warrant for his truck and boat, but with no evidence, there's no warrant and we have no probable cause to go on either. It's all speculation at this point."

  "Damn it. Sometimes our own laws come back and bite us in the ass." He shook his head. "Let's keep this between us for now. I'll push the city drug dealer angle to Mayor Olsen. Roger Fillmore may have just gotten away with murder. I don't like this…not at all," he signed.

  Dani tossed her apple core into his trash can. "I'll keep an eye on Roger, but I doubt anything will come of it," she said as she walked out of his office.

  *

  The next morning, Dani dressed in khaki shorts and a dark brown t-shirt with the word sheriff written across her chest in large yellow capital letters. She pulled a red tackle box from the back of her closet and put her pistol, cell phone, and wallet with her badge inside the top compartment. She grabbed a small cooler from the kitchen counter and the fishing pole by the door on the way out of her apartment and drove down to the marina, parking her SUV in the spot reserved for law enforcement.

  "Good morning, Chief," the dock master waved to her.

  "Hey, Phil," Dani called back as she climbed aboard the white, eighteen foot center console boat, with Cypress Lake Sheriff's Office written in large green and yellow letters on the side, matching the letters on her SUV.

  She turned the key, bringing the outboard engine to life and letting it idle to warm up as she stored her tackle box and fishing pole. She turned on the police radio, switching it to the main channel to listen for any calls that may need her attention. It was her weekend off, but in a small town like Cypress Lake, there really wasn't such a thing as having days off. She was on call twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, although she was rarely bothered on her days out of the station. Most of the department knew she would be out on the sheriff boat fishing anyway, so she was easily accessible.

  "The lake trout and largemouth bass have been biting over in the groves," the dock master yelled as she backed the boat out of the slip.

  "Thanks!" she yelled back before pushing the throttle down and driving away.

  She ran along the shoreline of the lake, slowing past the Malone house, as well as Roger Fillmore's before cutting the engine and tossing the anchor out as she drifted towards the overgrown mangroves on the section of the lake that was unoccupied by houses. The woods were thick with cypress trees and large mountains were off in the distance behind them.

  Dani turned the radio volume down, keeping it low enough to hear emergency calls without frightening the fish below. She opened her tackle box, choosing a green and white striped crankbait and tied it to the end of her line. Casting it out towards the water weeds, she worked the lure back towards the boat, reeling it in and moving the pole slightly to make it move around like a baitfish under the water.

  After a half hour of casting in different spots with no bites, she changed to a green and silver jerkworm that resembled a baitfish. She jigged back and forth, dragging the fake bait through the vegetation near the bottom of the lake. When the lure reached the boat, she reeled it all the way in and cast it back out. After the third cast her line was hit hard, bending the pole down. Dani jerked back, setting the hook in the fish's mouth as she began reeling it in. The fish fought back and forth, trying to get free as she pulled it closer and closer to her.

  "Sweet!" she yelled, leaning over the side to bring the largemouth bass into the boat.

  She took the hook out of its mouth and measured the twenty-inch fish on the measuring chart on the top of the gunwale. She took a quick picture of it with her phone before putting it back in the water and casting her line back out to do it all over again.

  *

  The rest of Dani's day had gone the same way. She'd stopped to eat the sandwich she'd packed for lunch between catching fifteen fish and getting ten more bites. After another slow pass by the two houses on the back of her mind, she reached the marina and re-docked the boat in the reserved slip and reminded the dock master to refill the gas tank. The sheriff's office paid a hefty fee for the marina to not only store their boat, but to also keep it ready to go out at any minute.

  Dani arrived at the building that housed her apartment and tucked her pistol into the waistband of her shorts and pulled her shirt down over it as she walked through the back door of her parent's store. Her father was in the office, typing on the computer with his reading glasses on the edge of his nose. She grinned and maneuvered through the back to the double doors that led out to the main area of the store. She grabbed a basket from the nearby rack and began perusing the aisles. She'd forgotten her list, but photographic memory never failed her.

  She placed various items into the basket as she mental
ly went down the list and just about missed the woman walking briskly past her. Dani raised an eyebrow when saw the backside of the woman in jeans that hugged her tight ass. Her eyes rose to the salmon colored t-shirt and light brown hair settling on her shoulders in loose waves. She cocked her head to the side, biting her bottom lip, as she watched the woman walk.

  A light smack to the back of her head broke Dani's sinful train of thought. She spun around to face her father. She grinned sheepishly as he smiled, shaking his head.

  "I swear you're just like me. Don't let your mother catch you with your tongue hanging out like that."

  Dani rolled her eyes, but she knew what he was talking about. Cindy Ricketts ruled with an iron fist.

  "Did you catch anything?" he asked.

  "Yeah, it was a pretty good day. I got a few pictures of the big ones. I'll email them to you."

  "Don't you sneak out of here without seeing your mom."

  "Where is she?" she asked.

  "She's around here somewhere. I saw her putting a stock order together a little while ago."

  "Okay, I'll look for her."

  "While you're at it, do more than just look at the pretty girl in the tight jeans. Invite her to dinner or something," he chided with a smile that matched hers.

  She laughed. "I know how to ask someone on a date, Dad. Thanks."

  *

  Kristen hated going to Dani's parents' store, but they owned the only general store in town and it was a one-stop shop for pretty much everyone in Cypress Lake. She'd been in there one other time since she'd been back and thankfully hadn't been recognized. She was just about finished gathering the few things from her list when she turned down the bread aisle.

  The woman standing halfway down on the right side, bending over to pick up a package of flatbreads, was most definitely Dani Ricketts. Kristen's eyes focused on the flexing thigh and calf muscles of her runner's legs and moved up to the fitted t-shirt that stretched across the broad shoulders and narrow waist of her athletic torso. Her short, dark brown hair was up in a ponytail with black sunglasses up on the top of her head. She swallowed the lump in her throat and hurried past her, hoping to go unnoticed.

  I have to stop lusting after her every time I see her. She was hot in high school, but did she have to grow up looking like that! The damn church walls would go up in flames if she walked inside! Damn. She thought, shaking off the instant arousal Dani seemed to invoke in her as she walked out of the store with her bags.

  I'm here for one reason and one reason only, to put the past behind me and finally move on, away from this place.

  *

  Dani continued walking around the store, filling up her small basket. She spoke to her mother briefly when she found her on the paper goods aisle and promised to come to dinner the following day. She paid for her items and left without ever seeing the beautiful woman again, which was probably a good thing. She didn't have room on her plate for another conquest at the moment. She was trying to juggle the fact that Kristen Malone was back in town, for some unknown reason, causing her buried feelings to surface, conflicting with the pain and anger that had buried them long ago.

  Chapter 7

  Two weeks had passed and the last cold front of the season had arrived, dropping the spring temperatures down to the low forties. The sheriff's office had been quiet ever since they wrote the Davis homicide off as a bad drug deal. His parent's understood; they knew the kind of life their son had lived. The mayor of Cypress Lake never questioned the case that Sheriff Fisher laid out for him and subsequently, the town had gone back to normal.

  Dani was having the most amusing day that she'd seen in the last ten days. It started that morning when two elderly men got into a rift over breakfast and decided to sword fight with tree limbs in the front yard. Their wives thought were going to kill each other, so they called the sheriff's office and Dani had arrived in time to break up the comical argument. She was on her way back to the department to do some paperwork and call it a day when a blue car turned onto the main road without stopping at the stop sign, a few hundred yards in front of her.

  Dani hit the switch for the lights and siren and stomped the gas pedal to catch up with the speeding vehicle. She pulled over behind the car, punched the tag number into her computer, and got out before the screen finished loading. She adjusted the brown v-neck sweater she wore over her uniform shirt and rested her hand on the butt of the gun in the holster on her utility belt as she strutted up to the car. Pushing her sunglasses up on her head, she leaned down, peering inside the open window.

  She nearly fell over backwards when she saw Kristen's chocolate brown eyes staring back at her and an angry expression on her face.

  Dani shook her head. Great.

  "Care to tell me why you ran the stop sign back there? Or possibly why you're going fifty in a thirty-five?" she asked.

  Kristen shrugged.

  "You're obviously headed somewhere in a hurry."

  "Either give me the damn ticket, Dani, or let me go," Kristen huffed. This was the last thing she needed at the moment. The dark gray car she thought had been following her had disappeared and Dani's SUV had appeared in its place with its blue lights flashing. She'd just about had enough of seeing Dani.

  "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were up to something." Dani grinned.

  Kristen knew that devilish smile all too well. She turned her face towards the windshield, blowing out a frustrating breath.

  "I'm going to let you go…this time, but you need to slow down. This isn't the city," Dani said, pulling her sunglasses back down as she walked away.

  She watched Kristen's car drive away as she read over the clean driving record she knew she'd see on the screen.

  *

  Two days later, Dani was passed out on her couch with the TV across from her playing reruns of Gilligan's Island when her cell phone rang, waking her.

  "Sheriff?" she asked, noticing the caller ID as she sat up, stretching her cramped muscles. She was surprised she'd fallen asleep.

  "Sorry to wake you, but we have a 10-35 out at Barber's," he said.

  Dani was as familiar with the all-you-can-eat diner as the rest of the town, but at three a.m. the eatery was still closed. "What's going on?" she asked, walking across her tiny apartment to her closet.

  "Adam pulled into the parking lot to check on a truck that hadn't moved all night and found a man in the driver's seat with a hole in the side of his head. He said it looks like a suicide."

  "Damn," she said. "I'm on the way. Tell him not to touch anything."

  "There's one more thing," he added. "The truck is registered to Roger Fillmore."

  "Holy shit. Is it him inside?"

  "I don't know."

  "What the hell is going on around here?" she replied, pulling her jeans on.

  "I have no idea, but we better get to the bottom of it before it gets out of hand. Call me as soon as you have something. I'm sending Vince to the scene too," he said, hanging up.

  Dani hung up the phone and pulled her sneakers on. She tucked her pistol into the waistband of her jeans and grabbed the dark brown jacket that went with her uniform and had the word sheriff stitched across the back in large yellow capital letters, her rank and last name were stitched on the front left breast and a Cypress Lake Sheriff's Office badge was stitched on the opposite side. She slipped it on over her black t-shirt and headed out the door.

  *

  Dani pulled into the parking lot next to Adam's car and cut the engine on her SUV. She pulled out a pair of gloves and a flashlight from the back of her vehicle and walked over to the silver truck.

  "It looks like a suicide," Adam said, pointing to the hole in the left side of the man's head.

  Dani walked around and pulled the passenger side door open, shining her light all around the interior of the truck, before walking back to the driver's side.

  "I don't see the gun and the entrance wound looks a little odd. I don't think this is a suicide. Here, hold my light."
She took her phone from her pocket and began taking pictures of the scene, starting with the entire truck and working her way towards the wound itself.

  Vince arrived at the same time as Henry.

  "Ouch," Vince said, looking at the body in the front seat of the truck.

  "Pull that door open Vince," Dani said, taking more pictures of the full body position inside of the truck before putting her phone away and donning her flashlight again, shining it all over the interior and on the ground.

  The man was still in his seat belt, meaning he hadn't been there long when the shot was fired and there was no weapon. The entrance wound was just above the back of his ear and there was no exit wound, meaning the bullet was still in his head. Dani pulled her notepad out of her jacket pocket and began taking notes.

  "Start looking for a shell casing," she said to the two deputies.

  Henry pulled a pencil from his truck and stuck it into the small bullet hole with the eraser end first. The tip of the pencil pointed at an odd angle away from his body. He pursed his lips, looking at Dani who snapped a photo of the pencil.

  "It's not the best tool to use, but we needed to see the bullet angle."

  "It's a defensive wound. He jerked his body and turned his head like this because someone pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. His seat belt kept him in position, making it like shooting a fish in a barrel for whoever did this."

  "I agree," Henry said, removing the pencil and sticking it into a plastic bag. "Are you ready to get him out?" he asked.

  "Yeah. I'm hoping he has his wallet in his back pocket," she replied.

  Henry walked over to his van and returned with a gurney. Dani unzipped the black bag on the top, laying it open.

  "Vince, come help us move him," she yelled.

  The three of them maneuvered the body into the bag and Dani pulled the wallet from his back pocket before Henry zipped the bag. He stopped short of closing the bag so that Dani could hold the man's drivers' license next to his face. It was a match for the picture on the ID.