Murder Lake

by Dan Ames

  Donovan led me to his desk. There was a small, opened package sitting on it. “It was for you,” Donovan explained. “You weren’t here, and there was no return address, so I thought–”

  “Yeah, I know what you thought,” I said, cutting him off. He looked to be on the defensive and I decided that dealing with him right now wasn’t worth it.

  I walked closer to the desk and peered down into the package.

  A pair of brown eyeballs looked back at me.

  “It’s not polite to stare,” I told them.

  19

  There was something cold and gleeful about the package and its contents.

  This had taken time. Forethought. I could almost feel the amusement as the killer packed this up and sent it to me.

  “Could we be dealing with a serial killer?” Donovan asked, his voice low. He looked pale and maybe sick to his stomach.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Killing both Holloway and Khatri. Now sending us these eyes.”

  Donovan shuffled his feet and I looked at him. “Call the crime scene guys, tell them to swing by after they’re done at Khatri’s house.”

  “Will do,” Donovan said.

  I walked back to my office and sat down, thought it through.

  It just didn’t make sense. There was a blackmail letter as well. But it was vague. It didn’t say how much money the person wanted, or why they were blackmailing them.

  It seemed to be vague on purpose.

  And now sending the cops a set of eyes? It made me wonder if the killer was doing more than just taunting. Maybe there was a different goal here.

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so good. The eyeballs. And that horrible smell of Khatri’s place. The smell of the body was bad enough, but that other smell. It had been like–

  And then it hit me.

  Perchloroethylene.

  Popular with dry cleaners.

  20

  The siren and lights were going full blast as I raced to George Heartley’s house. The real one, not the shack he’d moved to.

  My first instinct had been to go directly to his new place, but my guess was that the killer didn’t know George had moved out.

  Which meant Maura was in danger.

  Or maybe not.

  Depending on one of my theories. The one that said George Heartley was being set up. After all, it would be so easy. His wife had betrayed him, he was a drunk with nothing to lose. Plus, he’d threatened Holloway’s life.

  I also had my doubts about whether George Heartley was capable of cutting out someone’s eyeballs. To me, it didn’t look like the man had it in him.

  Then again, you never know.

  In front of Maura’s house, I slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car and ran to the door, then skidded to a halt.

  Maddie Burfict was exiting the house. Maura was at her heels and the two women were laughing. They both stopped when they saw me.

  “Chief Rockne?” Maura said.

  “Hey Boss, where’s the fire?” Maddie asked.

  “I had reason to believe that Maura might be in danger.”

  Maddie looked confusedly over her shoulder at Maura. “No, everything’s okay here. Sorry you ran all the way out here, boss.”

  “No problem.” Something caught my eye and I froze. As Maddie turned to reassure Maura, she exposed the back of her uniform pants.

  There was a splatter of something on them.

  Was it blood?

  21

  Maura, you haven’t heard from George recently, have you?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” Maura said. She sounded breathless. “He said that he wants to get back together. I told him that we could get coffee and talk about it.”

  “When did George call you about this?” I asked.

  “Why, just this morning.” Maura was back to beaming. “I was surprised, let me tell you. He’d said such awful things last time. But I think he’s lonely. I hear he’s been at the drink again. He never could hold his liquor.”

  She had picked up a little hat. This one looked like the kind worn by an English explorer.

  “Did George mention if he’d be home tonight?” I asked.

  “He didn’t say anything but I expect so,” Maura answered. “What else is he going to do? Sitting on the couch sucking down beers is sort of his specialty.”

  “Okay, sorry to have troubled you,” I said, making a rapid change of plans. I had assumed the killer didn’t know where George had moved, but maybe I was wrong and he was moving faster than I had thought.

  It took me less than five minutes to pull up in front of George’s rundown abode.

  It was all quiet, which unsettled me. The last time I’d been here George had been out on his porch. Now everything was silent. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would ignore a car pulling up.

  I honked the horn once, just for good measure.

  Nothing.

  I kept a hand on my holster as I got out of the car and approached the front door. I knocked and called out, “Police!”

  No response.

  Technically, I shouldn’t break in. That would be breaking and entering, my second time for the day. I didn’t have a warrant. I didn’t even really have any solid evidence. But every instinct was telling me that I needed to see George Heartley and see him right now.

  After some deliberation, I hefted my leg up and slammed my heel into the door right where the lock was.

  The door buckled. I gave it one more kick and the door swung open. I followed it in, and found myself staring into a tiny room.

  George Heartley was in the middle of the space.

  Dead.

  Hanging from a noose.

  22

  George Heartley hadn’t been my favorite person but he hadn’t deserved this, I thought.

  Tacked to George’s shirt was a note.

  Handwritten.

  I killed them. The liar Holloway and the doctor both. They fucked my wife so I fucked with them. I didn’t expect it to feel like this. I keep hearing them. I keep seeing them. I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  23

  No.

  Okay, I had to admit that I’d smelled PERC at both crime scenes. Both men were sleeping with Maura. And George had written a suicide note.

  Then why send us the eyes?

  George Heartley was a small man. He’d been cuckolded. Maybe he just wanted to feel superior in some way.

  But then I thought about the blackmail letter.

  That, too, made no sense. Maybe it was unconnected. Holloway’s kids had said the old man was excited about something. And George didn’t even know who Khatri really was.

  He said the guy was an Arab terrorist. This doesn’t add up. Why kill Khatri when George didn’t even know who he was? How does a depressed, alcoholic, overweight man kill two men in cold blood? This took foresight, planning—

  Maybe it was all a set-up. It could even have been planted by one of the kids. Wallace pretty much acted like he hated his dad.

  I remembered going over to the Holloway house for the second time. Junior and Leslie had been there. Neither had seemed like the lying kind. But it was often the people you least expected who turned out to be the best liars.

  Something about that visit tugged at me. There had been something there. Something I had noticed and gotten distracted by…

  It sprang into my mind. The picture of a younger Leslie, clinging to another girl. They’d both been around high school age. I hadn’t paid much attention to it because I’d been focused on Leslie’s beauty.

  But something tugged at the corner of my mind about that other girl in the photo.

  She’d been a little thicker than Leslie. A little more muscular–

  And then it hit me.

  Maddie.

  Then I remembered the stain on Maddie’s pants. I walked over to George’s corpse and felt it.

  Still warm.

  She’d had o
nly a few minutes head start on us but if she worked quickly… it might have given her just enough time.

  “George was being set up,” I said. I felt like an idiot. Here I was chasing leads and phantoms when I had forgotten the rule of thumb when solving a murder: follow the money.

  Maddie had told me that people held onto memories. That she herself had a high school sweetheart she’d never forgotten. I’d assumed she was talking about a man. But then I thought about that picture. What if she’d been talking about a woman? A woman who could easily plant a fake blackmail letter and would probably know about her father’s affairs and dark secrets? A woman who was now very, very rich and free of a tiresome father?

  “I’ve been played this whole time,” I admitted. I’d fallen for the whole song and dance as much as anyone else.

  Now it was time to turn the tables. To do what I should have done in the first place.

  It was time to go after one of my own.

  24

  Maddie pulled up along the side of the road and breathed a sigh of relief. It was all over. Ellen would find George’s body along with the suicide note that Maddie had forced him to write. It had taken the drunken asswipe forever to do it. She’d had to bribe him with beer after beer.

  Maddie pulled out her phone.

  Now Leslie would be free. Free from that awful man with his bribes and lies and lack of emotion. Leslie would have the money and freedom that she deserved and she would have the greatest gift of all: Maddie’s love. Out in the open. Eternal.

  They’d be together. The way that they always were supposed to be until Charles Holloway had found out about them in high school and shipped Leslie off to Europe.

  The phone rang twice before Leslie answered. “Is it done?”

  Maddie couldn’t stop the smile that crept up her face. “It’s all done.”

  Leslie breathed a sigh of relief over the phone. Maddie could easily picture the other woman’s grin. It would be splitting her from ear to ear.

  “And you’re sure that you’re okay?” Leslie asked.

  “I’m fine, I promise.”

  The blackmail letter, the gruesome package, had been Leslie’s idea. But she was playing the bereaved daughter and nobody could have any reason to question an alibi. Especially once Holloway’s will revealed just how much money each of his three children got.

  So Maddie had done the actual murders. It put her in the greatest position of risk but she didn’t mind. She would never mind doing anything if it was for Leslie. Plus, she was more suited for the job, anyway. In fact, she kind of enjoyed killing. Each one was a little more enjoyable than the last.

  Honestly, Maddie had been surprised that Ellen hadn’t looked more closely into the three Holloway siblings. Not that she was complaining. The less heat on Leslie, the better.

  But the most logical place to look when a rich man dies is his children. All three of them stood to gain.

  Hell, a little digging would tell anyone that Holloway had been an awful dad. He’d shipped his only daughter off to a European boarding school her senior year of high school. He and Wallace had fought constantly. And he bullied poor Junior, the child who had his name but was the most unlike him. No backbone whatsoever. Any one of them had grounds to get rid of him. But the eye doctor aspect had been enough of a distraction that Ellen had chased after it like a hound with a rabbit.

  She did feel a bit bad that Ellen got saddled with this. Not that she regretted about doing it. It had to be done.

  All three men were disgusting.

  Khatri had been a sleaze plain and simple. A thorough background check had shown his history of bribing people and accepting favors from others.

  Holloway was a bully with no morals.

  And George was a drunkard who ignored his wife until she was desperate enough to go to another man and then left her and blubbered about it. The world was better without those three in it. Maura was certainly better off without any of them.

  But Ellen was a good cop and a good person, and this whole case had been Maddie yanking her chain. So that was a little sad. Maddie would have much rather yanked Donovan around. He was certainly stupid enough for it.

  Leslie’s voice jerked her back to the present. “You didn’t leave any evidence, did you?”

  “Sweetheart, I’m a cop. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Okay. We’ll have to lay low for a month or so. Just in case.”

  “I was thinking I could take some sick days and we could drive off somewhere. Somewhere out of Michigan where nobody knows us.”

  She could hear the smile in Leslie’s voice. “I’d like that.”

  Maybe some people would be disgusted at the idea of murdering for someone else. To Maddie, it was nothing. She’d do it all over again. If you truly loved someone you’d do anything for them. Who could say they’d done more for their love than she had?

  Maddie saw a car approaching through her rearview mirror. It looked like Ellen’s car. “I have to go, Les. But I love you and I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  “Okay. I love you too.”

  Maddie hung up and then waited. It was definitely Ellen’s car, and it was too close for her to pull out ahead without it looking suspicious. She just had to sit there and hope that Ellen would fly on by.

  No such luck.

  Ellen slowed down alongside her and Maddie saw that Dawkins was there with her. Who did he think he was, an amateur detective? This wasn’t a television show.

  Ellen rolled down the window. “Hey, Maddie. I need you back at the station.”

  “Everything okay?” Maddie asked. Her fingers automatically twitched towards her gun but she stopped herself.

  If she killed them now, she’d have a hell of a time cleaning it up.

  Maddie looked into Ellen’s face. There was conviction there.

  And something else.

  In that moment, Maddie knew that Ellen had somehow gotten to the truth.

  There was only one thing she could do.

  Run.

  25

  No surprise to see Maddie stomp her accelerator and take off. It had been all over her face, and maybe mine, too. The way she’d studied me, and then the flash of acceptance in her eyes.

  And then she was gone.

  I pressed my foot to the gas and tore after her, called dispatch and explained I needed backup, in pursuit of a fellow cop.

  We tore down the highway and I gained on her. I was a good driver and Maddie looked like she was trying to beat her car into submission, as opposed to letting it do its own thing. She oversteered, slammed on the brakes too hard, and veered into the oncoming lane.

  I inched up towards her on her left.

  She glanced over at me. Her mouth was drawn into a tight line.

  Maddie yanked her gun out again and took aim.

  I jerked the wheel, swerving behind her and heard the bullet ricochet off the front of the car.

  Maddie took the lead again and she moved ahead. I checked my speedometer. Holy shit, we were both going ninety-five.

  The road ahead was starting to curve dangerously. I hadn’t been in Good Isle long but I knew this stretch went around Lake Michigan. It was curvy and hilly and had some tough cliffs. We should have been going thirty miles per hour, tops.

  Maddie hit the brakes but she was a little late, and then she compounded her error by cranking her steering wheel to the left.

  The thick tires of the cop car held, and she managed to make it around the curve.

  I followed her around, hugging the inside tighter and without using the brakes.

  Maddie was up ahead of us by a couple of curves. I checked our speed. We were both pushing ninety again.

  As I watched her hurtle her car around the curves, I saw her hand emerge from the car.

  She was holding a gun and trying to fire backward at me.

  “No!” I yelled instinctively, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me.

  She fired and her car lurched toward the shoulder.

&n
bsp; Maddie braked and I saw her reef the steering wheel to the right.

  This time, she didn’t make it.

  Her car skidded, then flipped and disappeared over the side of the road.

  One second she was there, the next she was gone.

  I started pumping the brakes and when I slowed, managed to do a quick U-turn and parked near the edge where Maddie had crashed.

  When I reached the edge, I peered over the side.

  Her body was half out of the driver’s side window. My guess was that she was trying to climb out as she fell. I wasn’t sure why. The body of the car would have possibly provided some cushion or even protection from the rocks. Maybe she thought she could leap for it and grab onto the cliff face.

  Whatever the reason she’d done it, she hadn’t made it. I could see the wreckage from up above and the way her body was lying. There was no way she’d gotten out of it alive.

  I started to climb down the cliff anyway.

  It didn’t take me too long to get down. When I got to the bottom I was shocked to see that I had been wrong.

  Maddie was still alive.

  Barely. Just barely. There was an awful wheezing sound to her breathing that told me a lung was collapsing. Her limbs were twisted unnaturally. Her hair was sticky with blood.

  I crouched beside her. “Maddie?”

  She looked up at me. I saw recognition in her eyes. I waited for the rage at me but none came. Instead, she looked like she was trying to say something. A message to Leslie, perhaps? An apology to me? A final declaration of her pride in her actions?

  I didn’t know what she intended to say. I still don’t. Maddie never got the chance to speak.

  I put my hand over hers as she struggled for breath. Her eyes were oddly bright. She wheezed one last time. Still fighting for words.

  And then she was gone.

  26