She smiled back. He was about her age, early thirties, with delicate features and no facial hair, good-looking in a bookish, nerdy way, his dark hair slicked back with gel. Like Irving, he was overdressed for this kind of work in a brown suit and matching brown and gold-striped tie. Everyone else working the scene wore long-sleeved shirts and jeans, with windbreakers and rain jackets to keep warm. Kevin turned a page in his notebook and went back to writing.
“He had a wallet on him, but that’s about it.” Charlie handed Irving a paper bag.
Irving put on a pair of latex gloves, then handed a second pair to Brett.
The picture on his driver’s license wasn’t great but confirmed what she already knew in her gut, what she hadn’t wanted to be true. Muddy brown eyes, unsettled and unsettling. Lips twisted to a scowl, his skin pale, his beard thick, a glint of the flashbulb off the dome of his forehead where his hair was beginning to thin though he was barely thirty-two. The Nathan Andress found dead on her grandmother’s beach was the same Nathan Andress she’d shared a beer with at the Pickled Onion, a local dive bar, a month ago. And the same Nathan Andress who’d left a message on her phone not even twenty-four hours ago.
I have some information you might be interested in. It’s about your sister.
She waited over an hour for him last night at the Blue Whale Diner, but he never showed.
She returned the wallet to the bag and handed it back to Irving. “I know him.”
Irving hummed in acknowledgment. “Small town. It’s hard not to know people.”
“No, I mean…” But Irving had stopped listening to her.
“Did my guys already get pictures?” he asked Charlie.
Charlie nodded. His knees cracked as he rose to his feet. “An Officer O’Reilly, or something equally as Irish, took a whole roll’s worth.”
He flapped his hand at the officers and other crime scene techs wandering the beach, searching the pebbles and shallow water for evidence. Some walked the dock. Some searched the yard and around the house. A handful of yellow markers were scattered over the ground, but fewer than Brett expected at a scene like this one. Someone inside the boathouse snapped pictures, the camera’s flash a bright explosion through the single small window overlooking the bay.
“If you don’t need anything else,” the medical examiner said, “we’ll go ahead and wrap him up and put him on ice.”
“Do your thing, Charlie.” Irving looked glad to be done with it and hurriedly walked away from the body, moving toward the dock and boathouse.
Brett followed him. “Irving, there’s something I need to tell you about the victim.”
“The deceased.”
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t know he’s a victim of anything yet but cruel fate.” He stopped where the beach met the lawn, squinted at the boathouse, then out across the water, then spun around and looked at the main house before turning back to the water.
The number of seagulls had doubled and were becoming even more raucous and aggressive. Two left the water and landed on the beach, hopping right up to the tent. Kevin swatted at them with his notebook.
“It could have been an accident,” Irving said. “Nathan works for a fishing charter. He’s on boats all day long. He could have slipped, lost his footing, hit his head on the way down. Or maybe he was out drinking with his buddies. Drinking and boating make for a terrible combination. Or maybe he was taking a late-night walk along the cliffs.” He gestured to the north, where the shoreline changed gradually from a flat beach to sandstone cliffs. “It’s too early to sign on the dotted line, don’t you think?” He narrowed his gaze on her. “Remind me again? You and your grandmother found the body around…?”
“Nine-thirty, give or take.”
“And then?”
“She went up to the house to call the police,” she said. “I stayed with the body. No one else came anywhere near the beach until Officer Miller arrived to secure the scene properly.”
As if he was hovering nearby waiting for someone to say his name, Officer Eli Miller appeared at her elbow. He was wearing a patrol uniform and an easy grin. Most of the squad’s uniformed officers buzzed their hair short, but Eli kept his longer on top. It was puffed up like he’d been running his fingers through it.
In one hand, he gripped a slip of notebook paper.
“Find it?” Irving asked.
Eli shook his head. “No, sir. I went all up and down this main stretch and even checked a few of the side roads. His car’s not anywhere around here.”
Irving was quiet a minute, scanning the property and bay beyond. He tugged on the flaps of his coat and asked Brett, “Have you had any trouble with trespassers recently? Any disturbances? Strange cars parked outside your house?”
“It’s been quiet,” she said. “Nothing stands out.”
Even in summer, when the town was flooded with tourists, this beach was usually frequented by people living or renting houses along Bayshore Drive. Everyone else went to the public beaches and docks a few miles to the south. Since moving in, Brett occasionally saw neighbors, older folks like Amma, taking slow strolls with their poodles or paddling their kayaks close to shore. But in October, because of mist and rain and colder temperatures, the beach was empty most of the time.
“Whatever happened to him,” Irving said. “I don’t think it happened here. Eli, we need a BOLO for his vehicle.”
“Already done, sir.”
Irving nodded. “Good. We’ll do one more sweep so we can say we crossed our t’s. But I doubt we’ll find anything useful. We should be able to release the scene by this afternoon.” He scratched at his chin. “Someone needs to contact next of kin. The sooner, the better.”
Though it was Saturday and technically still her day off, Brett volunteered.
Irving shook his head. “I need you somewhere else if you’re up for it. I was on my way to follow up on a complaint that came in overnight when your call came in. I know you’re not on duty today, but I could use the help. I’ll get the sergeant to sign off on overtime.”
“Sure.” She wasn’t about to turn down a little extra money. “Where am I headed?”
“You know Lincoln Byrne’s place? Out near Lake Chastain?”
She thought for a moment and said, “No, but I’m sure I can find it.”
“Call says there were a bunch of ATVs driving through the woods, tearing things up. There was loud music and shouting, maybe a fight. A couple of shots were fired.”
“No one went out there last night? When it was in progress?”
A scowl furrowed Irving’s brow. “Of course we sent an officer. We might be small town, but we’re not stupid. The forest was empty by the time he showed up. There were tire tracks and crushed vegetation, though, and some signs of blood. Poor Billy’s been sitting up there in his car half the night making sure no one disturbs anything, waiting for one of us to come have a look.” He started to walk away, calling over his shoulder. “Take Eli with you. He knows the place.”
“Irving, wait! About Nathan—”
“There will be a briefing on Monday morning,” he called back. “Don’t be late.”
Brett watched him walk down to the beach where Charlie and Kevin were loading the body onto a stretcher. Then she turned and started toward the house to grab her gear and tell Amma where she was headed and for how long. Eli followed her.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she said.
“What do you know about Lincoln Byrne?” Eli asked.
The name didn’t ring a bell. She shook her head.
“He’s married to Danny Cyrus’ sister.”
She stopped walking. “Shit.”
“Danny’s been living in a trailer on their property for a few years, ever since the packing plant shut down and he lost his job.” Eli waited a minute, and when she didn’t fill the silence, he added, “So, look, I get it. If you want me to get lost, I can. Like Detective Winters said, Billy’s
up there, and he might be a rookie, but he’s still good police. He can help you work over the scene and get what you need to write up a decent report. He’ll watch your back, too. You don’t need me. But…”
“But,” she echoed, turning to face him.
Twenty years had passed since that terrible summer, but Eli Miller still looked so much like his seventeen-year-old self. Brett remembered one afternoon at the country club, one in particular that stuck in her memory even though every afternoon that summer was spent at the country club. Margot, with her oversized sunglasses, a fashion magazine spread over her bronzed, flat belly, sitting up and asking Brett to put more sunscreen on her back, jerking her chin toward a group of boys doing cannonballs in the deep end of the pool. The one with lips like James Dean, she whispered, I think he has a crush on you. Of course, he didn’t. They all loved Margot—beautiful, seventeen-year-old, gold-trimmed Margot. But Brett had blushed anyway, suddenly unable to catch her breath. The boy looked over at them, smiled with twin dimples crinkling his summer-tanned cheeks, then tucked his legs into his chest and hurled himself into the water. It was the last time Brett and Margot were at the pool together that summer. The day before she went missing, the last good day before everything went so wrong.
“We’re driving separately.” Brett turned her back on Eli and resumed her march toward the house.
Chapter 4
Brett followed Eli’s police cruiser south and east, rolling a few miles through town before turning on to a highway that eventually ended somewhere in the North Cascades. Buildings thinned and gave way to farms and sprawling acreage, with trailers and cabins tucked in among tall stands of second-growth fir trees. They drove past Lake Chastain, a freshwater lake tucked beneath the foothills, popular with water-skiers and fishermen, and large enough to accommodate both. Eli made a sharp turn on to an unmarked, single-lane, paved road that quickly narrowed and turned to hard-packed gravel. With every jostling pothole, Brett’s VW Beetle shuddered, but she wasn’t worried—the old girl was as tough as they come.
The clouds from this morning had burned away. Sunbeams pierced the canopy, turning the shadows to burnished copper, the color of geese flying south, of warm days and cool nights, of red and spinning leaves. It almost looked inviting. As a child, Brett loved spending her summers in the northern reaches of Washington. The forest here had always seemed more remote and treacherous than the woods by her childhood home in Corvallis. For nearly ten summers, she ran like a wild thing beneath these towering giants, chasing down tangled paths, the sound of her sister’s laughter echoing close by. As a child, Brett had felt ferocious among the trees, infinite, as if the roots and canopy and everything in-between were hers to command.
But that was before. When she didn’t know any better.
It felt claustrophobic now, the trees choking the light, the air through her half-open window damp and tinged with autumn rot. Now all she saw was danger lurking in every shadow, pockets of darkness where evil hid. Now all she thought about when she entered these trees was her sister dying.
* * *
The search for Margot lasted four days and three nights. For half a week, they searched the beaches and bay because she loved the water; then the industrial part of town because someone claimed they saw her smoking a cigarette behind Tadd’s Frozen Foods; then and finally, the woods surrounding Lake Chastain because someone said they saw her parked on Lover’s Lookout with Danny Cyrus.
They found her body on a too-bright Saturday morning, twelve days before Brett’s fourteenth birthday.
At the time, no one told Brett much. Two officers came to Amma’s house to give her parents the news. Brett stayed upstairs, hiding out of sight around the corner, listening to their soft murmurs at the front door. Her mother wailed, a sound so terrible it had stuck in Brett’s chest, formed a knot so tight it hurt to swallow, to breathe. Her father shouted and began to weep, a strangled sound. She had never seen her father cry, not before or since.
Her grandparents stayed quiet the entire time.
Later that night, Brett had come downstairs to find Amma sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, her fingers wrapped around a cup of tea, silent tears streaming down her face. Pop stood stoic, with both hands resting on her shoulders as if the very force of him could hold her together.
The next morning they sat Brett down with a box of tissues and puffed red faces and told her what the police had told them the night before, what Brett already knew.
Your sister is dead.
There would be an investigation. The police would ask questions. Don’t be scared, they told her. Just tell the truth.
But she was scared, scared that whoever had killed Margot would come for her next. So when the police arrived, she didn’t tell them much more than what she had already told them when Amma and Pop first filed the missing person’s report. The last time she saw Margot was Tuesday morning at Amma’s house, out on the dock where they were playing. Margot went to get something from the house and never came back. And after that? Brett read a book in the boathouse until Amma called her for dinner, and they realized Margot was missing.
There was more she didn’t tell. She and Margot had fought.
Brett wanted to go swimming at the country club the way they always did, but Margot said she couldn’t take her today because she was meeting up with a friend. When Brett asked who, Margot said none of your business. When Brett asked where they were going, Margot called her an obnoxious gnat and told her to bug off.
Fine, go! Brett had screamed at her. I don’t care! Go, and never come back! She didn’t tell anyone that she’d said those things, not even the police, because she hadn’t meant it. She didn’t want them to know what a horrible sister she’d been. Telling them wouldn’t bring Margot back anyway.
Her birthday that year was a sad affair. Her mother refused to get out of bed. When Brett tried to wake her, she threw an empty wine bottle at her head and screamed at her to leave. Brett had no idea where her father was. Amma made her a cake, though. Chocolate with strawberries. A larger-than-normal slice with extra berries and a flickering candle stuck in the top. The dim light illuminated the sad lines in her grandparents’ faces as they sang “Happy Birthday” in two-part harmony. Amma and Pop gave her a beautiful wrist watch that year, a thin gold strap with a mother-of-pearl dial. The bezel was decorated in a ring of tiny diamonds. An expensive watch for a fourteen-year-old, but they said they trusted her not to lose or break it.
Brett kept the watch, wore it now for luck, for comfort, as a reminder that time hadn’t stopped when Margot died. She brushed her fingers over it as she pulled her VW off to one side of the fire road behind Eli’s police cruiser.
Another cruiser was parked a few feet up ahead. Billy climbed out of the driver’s side, arching his back and stretching. He had a baby face, soft and round, bright apple cheeks, and glittering blue eyes. He looked like he was still in high school, playing dress-up in his daddy’s clothes. Brett had met him at the chief’s Fourth of July barbecue, where she learned he was twenty-one, barely, and fresh out of the academy.
As she and Eli approached, Billy nodded at them both. “I was starting to think you all had forgotten about me.”
Eli slapped Billy on the shoulder in greeting. “Anything interesting happen overnight?”
“A family of skunks came for a visit.” Billy hitched his pants higher around his waist, turned, and started walking along the fire road.
“After you.” Eli swept his hand in the air, letting Brett go ahead.
“Spot’s through here a little ways.” Billy veered left, stepping over a clump of ferns and pushing aside a large branch, leaving the road and leading them into a tangled understory.
There was a path, but it wasn’t much wider than an animal trail and was hard to follow. The deeper they pushed in, the denser the foliage became, thick with clawing branches. Just when it seemed Billy had led them the wrong way, and they would get stuck in the tangle, they broke
through the brush into a large clearing. Billy stopped at the edge and folded his arms over his chest. He nodded toward the center of the clearing. There wasn’t much to look at but trampled grass.
“Blood’s over there,” he said. “A few splotches, but not much to worry about. And there are tire tracks up that way.” He gestured to the other side, where the underbrush appeared to have been crushed. “Those meet up with another dirt road a few yards in that direction.” He shifted his arm about ninety degrees east from the hole in the forest and said, “The neighbor who called it in lives less than a half-mile in that direction. Said they heard engines revving for a while, then shouting, like people were really getting into it. That lasted for an hour or two. They called after they heard the gunshots.”
“How many?” Brett asked.
“Two. One right after the other. Pop, pop.”
“Could someone have been hunting?” Brett asked.
Billy shrugged. “Doubt it. It’s illegal to hunt at night.”
Though they all knew there were certain types of people in this world who didn’t care whether something was illegal or not. If they wanted to do something, they’d do it.
Eli walked toward the center of the clearing, checking the grass before putting his feet down so he didn’t step on anything that might help them figure out what the hell had happened last night. Brett followed but veered slightly to the left, angling a more sweeping arc before moving toward the center. Billy went right. They worked silently, a search team of three, looking for blood, shell casings, disturbed areas, anything that didn’t belong in this natural space.
Twenty years ago, searchers had found Margot near a clearing similar to this one. At the time, Brett knew very little about Margot’s case. Her parents refused to talk about it. Her grandparents told her only what the news reported, which was vague and unhelpful. For many years what Brett knew about her sister’s murder couldn’t even fill a single sheet of notebook paper: Margot’s body had been found in a wooded area; there was evidence her body had been moved; police were investigating it as a homicide and asking for the public’s help and for witnesses to come forward with information that might be relevant.
On a Dark Tide Page 3