Green Lake

by S. K. Epperson

  Jacqueline looked tired, but she smiled as she walked over to Madeleine's table. “What are you doing here?”

  “Eris and his mother were shot today. I came as soon as I heard.”

  Jacqueline's eyes rounded. “Eris Renard? Who shot him? Why?”

  “Nobody knows. He's all right, but his mother was wounded in the head. Last I heard she was still in surgery.”

  “Who's doing it? I'm not sure where Manny is today.”

  “He's at home,” Madeleine said haltingly. “I saw him when I dropped off the kitten.”

  Jacqueline peered at her sister. “What's wrong? Why did your cheeks just turn red? Did you walk in on him in the bathroom or something?”

  Madeleine covered her mouth and stared at her sister over the top of her hand. The mental debate of whether to tell her or not tell her lasted approximately ten seconds.

  She had to. If the circumstances were reversed, Madeleine knew she would want to know.

  “I walked in on him with another woman, Jacqueline. They were both naked on the sofa.”

  Jacqueline gaped soundlessly at her for nearly thirty seconds while her face went white. “You're lying,” she said finally. “You're paying me back for everything I said to you. It's been eating you up thinking of a way to get back at me and you—”

  Madeleine put her hands over her eyes and shook her head. She got up to leave the table, but Jacqueline snatched her by the arm and pulled her around.

  “Tell me you're lying, dammit. Tell me.”

  Madeleine could only look at her and apologize with her eyes.

  Jacqueline swerved away from her and bent over to grip the table and make a choking sound. Madeleine put a hand on her back, but Jacqueline knocked it away and collapsed into the booth, her eyes red and her shoulders already heaving in silent sobs.

  “I never wanted to hurt you/’ Madeleine whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

  “Go away,” said Jacqueline. “Just go away.”

  Madeleine stared dejectedly at her sister's bent head and wondered why doing what felt like the right thing never felt right once it was done.

  Before she realized what she was doing she was in the truck and heading back to Jacqueline's house. She didn't go inside, she simply put the keys to the truck under the visor and hopped into her Audi, parked beside the drive.

  She felt better driving the Audi. Once on the highway she opened up and flew down the road.

  While driving she asked herself the real reason she told her sister what she witnessed. If she had kept her mouth shut things might have gone on the same for them, with Manuel only occasionally sampling other women and Jacqueline remaining blissfully unaware and still happily married.

  Perhaps it truly had been something vindictive on Madeleine's part. Some desire to take retribution for all Jacqueline had said and to prove to her sister that even people who did good and never hurt anyone else got hurt themselves sometimes, just because people were people.

  She closed her eyes briefly as her thoughts shifted to Eris. She wished she hadn't told him how she felt about him. She had warned herself not to say it aloud, not to give in to her emotions when she was still unsure of his. Now she found herself feeling like Sam Craven must have felt the last two years of their marriage. The way her sister Jacqueline was doubtlessly feeling right now.

  It was a terrible, desolate feeling.

  The miles crawled by as she shifted gears and mashed the accelerator with her foot.

  She had told Eris she would come by later, but she could not go back and face him that night. She had to get away from everyone.

  Ronnie Lyman spent the day following a man in a baseball cap driving a SUV. He had seen the man shoot Eris Renard earlier, and he giggled himself into a fit when he realized the guy was staggering drunk.

  It was too good. It was just too good. Ronnie had been following Renard and hanging way back, wondering who the woman in the cab with him was and what he could do to her, when he saw the whole thing happen. Renard's truck had gone down the road, kicking up dust, and the SUV pulled out two hundred yards behind it. There was a moment of hesitation, and then the SUV fell in behind Renard's truck. In a flash the man had leapt out of the SUV and thrown open the door to begin firing, as if the decision had been made and acted upon in an instant. It took him two shots to blow out a tire, and Ronnie was impressed at the man's marksmanship. Renard would be dead right now, splattered all over the road, if the man hadn't been so drunk. Ronnie was sure of it.

  The guy had balls, he gave him that. But now Ronnie was wondering what else he had. He followed him all the way back to Fayville and saw the SUV turn off in a drive a half-mile long that led up to a house the size of a damned shopping center.

  Ronnie hung in there, watching to see if the place was maybe the house of a girlfriend or someone else, but the SUV stayed there for hours. Long enough for the guy in the ball cap to sleep off his morning drunk, Ronnie guessed. An hour after dark, just as Ronnie was preparing to leave, he saw the lights of the SUV suddenly come on again. He started his own car and made ready to follow.

  The SUV headed northwest again, and Ronnie trailed him as he picked up a couple buddies along the way. Then the man in the baseball cap and his two friends headed for a public hunting area, where they began to drink beer, spotlight deer, and take turns shooting.

  The guy obviously figured he didn't have to worry about Eris Renard that night.

  Ronnie stayed back and watched until the trio decided to leave. They drove to the reservoir and trolled the bays before stopping to join a party in progress at a private dock. When the three men left the SUV, Ronnie took a tiny penlight from his glove compartment and hurried over to have a look inside. He wanted to see what kind of rifle had been used on Eris Renard and the luckless deer that night. The rifle was in the back, and Ronnie picked up a cartridge rolling around on the floorboard. .270 cartridge.

  The gun was a Remington 7400. Semiautomatic. A play toy for a rich boy.

  Ronnie slunk back to the car and made himself comfortable. The party went on until nearly three in the morning, and Ronnie was fighting sleep by the time they stumbled to the SUV. Someone from the party came out and told the man in the baseball cap to leave the beer he was taking with him. The man in the ball cap put down the beer and kicked the other man in the balls, then hit him over the head with his fists locked when he doubled over. Somebody shouted, somebody else screamed, and the guy's friends dragged him away and shoved him in the SUV, leaving the beer in the grass.

  Several guys from the party came running, but the SUV took off after a shuddering start and weaved down the road away from the pursuers.

  Ronnie frowned as he started his car and fell in behind. He wondered if he should even mess around with this guy. The asshole was clearly unstable.

  But a second look at that big house changed his mind, and he thought he even glimpsed a Jaguar in the garage when the driver put the SUV inside for the night.

  Everything that had been driving him the last two weeks, the need to find Sheila and his daughters, the urge to harm Eris Renard and scare his pretty blonde girlfriend, were swept away like leaves in a gutter as Ronnie considered that Jaguar.

  He knew what he would do. He would bypass the guy in the ball cap entirely and go directly to the owner of that Jag. Without knowing it, the owner of the Jag would pay for all Ronnie had lost. For Kayla, for Sheila and the girls, and for the aggravation, jail time, and the thirty-second report on television that Eris Renard was responsible for about the hoax perpetrated by Ronnie. Ronnie's mother couldn't show her face in public because of him. Even the lowlifes at the bingo hall were shunning her. And unless Ronnie changed his name or stumbled across someone who hadn't seen the telecast or a newspaper, no one was going to give him a job doing anything but picking fruit or hauling furniture.

  But maybe, Ronnie thought, just maybe, the owner of the Jaguar could see his way free to help Ronnie out. Then Ronnie wouldn't need a job. He could just skip the state altoget
her and say a fond farewell to everyone he knew in Kansas. Including his good friend the judge.

  And he would deal with Sheila later, when and if he ever found her.

  Ronnie rummaged around in the car until he found a pen. He used a white hamburger wrapper to write on. He wrote down the rifle make and the cartridge he found and added that he had watched the man in the baseball cap jump out of his SUV to shoot conservation officer Eris Renard in the back. A woman in the cab was hit in the head.

  He finished by writing that he would take one hundred thousand dollars not to tell anyone what he had seen.

  Ronnie was sure he had misspelled conservation, and maybe a few other words as well, but he wasn't worried. He idled up to the mailbox and saw the name Beckworth, and was about to put the note inside when he changed his mind. He drove instead the rest of the way to the house and then left his car to stick the note in the storm door. The minute he made a step toward the door a security light came on, and as he snatched at the handle to open the door and shove the note through the crack, an alarm sounded somewhere.

  Breathing hard, Ronnie jumped away from the door and raced for his car. He crawled behind the wheel and was speeding down the drive before the front door of the house opened.

  Tomorrow he would give Beckworth a call.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Eris slept badly in the hospital. He had many hours to lie awake and wonder who had shot him and for what reason. There were so many possibilities he could not begin to narrow it down. Every man who walked in the woods with a firearm disliked and distrusted a conservation officer. It might have been someone Eris nailed for killing game out of season the year before, afraid to get caught again or still pissed off about the first time. It was impossible to say whether the person meant only to wound or to kill, but the placement of the shots suggested the latter and further suggested to Eris it was someone serious with intent, or a drunk who was otherwise a damned good shot.

  When he tired of thinking about it his mind wandered to other areas of his life and to the changes that had occurred and were still occurring so rapidly. He tried to think when it had all begun, when things started changing, and he found himself remembering a night when he stood in his yard eating a sandwich and watching a woman take off her clothes in the bedroom of the log cabin above him. That was it, he told himself. The first time he had seen Madeleine.

  It worried him that she hadn't come by to see him again. He sensed she was troubled by his decision to return to New Mexico with his mother, but he had no choice. He felt responsible for what had happened to Sara, who had remained unconscious for many hours after surgery before finally coming around. The eyesight in her left eye was damaged, as well as the hearing in her left ear, and there were miniscule pieces of floating bone fragments the surgeons had been unable to reach, but all agreed the prospects for recovery were good.

  Eris saw her first thing the next morning. He was taken to her in a wheelchair by a nurse's aide. She cried to see him and asked how he was feeling.

  He had asked the hospital to call Clint after Sara was out of surgery, and they had complied. Eris called the number for her while in her room, so she could talk to her other son herself and tell him she was all right.

  When he ended his visit with his mother and returned to his room he found Jacqueline just leaving. Her eyes were swollen and her face was pale, but she gave him a brief smile and asked how he was feeling.

  “Good,” he told her.

  “How is your mother?”

  “She'll be all right.”

  “I'm glad. I was shocked to hear what had happened. Do you have any ideas about who was responsible?”

  “Could've been anyone,” said Eris. Then he asked if she had seen Madeleine.

  “No, uh, actually, I thought she might be in here. It surprised me to find her at the hospital yesterday. I had no idea she'd become so friendly with your mother. My sister doesn't make friends easily.”

  Eris looked away from her. It was obvious Jacqueline knew nothing about Eris's relationship with Madeleine.

  “If you see her,” Jacqueline continued, “please tell her I need to speak with her.”

  “Did she stay with you last night?” Eris asked, and Jacqueline shook her head.

  “I stayed here. Will you please tell her?”

  He nodded. “If I see her.” He was beginning to doubt he would, and a tightening sensation in his chest caused him sudden discomfort.

  “Are you all right?” she asked before leaving.

  He nodded again and looked at her. “Are you?”

  “No,” she replied then left the room.

  Eris picked up the phone and called the cabin. He let it ring twelve times before hanging up. As he put the phone down, his superior entered the room, and Eris spent the next hour listening to how these disastrous consequences could have been avoided if he had obeyed the rules of common sense and left his mother at home. Eris answered the questions he was asked, but he didn't volunteer any information, and his superior shook his head in disappointment. ‘‘You're a damned fine CO, Renard, but if she had been anybody but your mother, we'd be getting sued right now. I'm going to suspend you without pay for three weeks.”

  “On top of my disability?” asked Eris.

  “You want Russell handling things that long?”

  “No,” said Eris.

  “Me either. Take what time you need, then get back to work as soon as possible.” He started out and then stopped. “The shell casings found in the road were .270s. Make copies of all your reports and give the police a list of everyone you've offended for the last two years.”

  With that, the man left. Eris stared after him and silently thanked him for coming in person instead of simply calling. Then he got out of bed.

  He was still weak. And dizzy. Everything on his left side ached, and it hurt to move his head.

  He got back into bed and went to sleep.

  The ringing phone woke him, and he picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “How are you?” asked Madeleine.”

  “Better. Where are you?”

  “At the cabin. Sorry I didn't make it back last night.”

  “Run into trouble?”

  “No, I just…didn't make it back. How's your mother today?”

  He told her all he knew, and then he paused.

  “That's good news,” she said. “You must be very relieved.”

  There was a brief silence between them. Finally he said, “I want to leave here tomorrow. Can you drive over and pick me up?”

  She was surprised. “Surely they're not ready to release you.”

  “I can't stay here.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She'll be all right. I'll drive back in a few days. Will you come and get me?”

  “Your legs wouldn't fit in my Audi. I guess I can take it back to Jacqueline's house and get the truck again.”

  Eris told her about Jacqueline's visit to him that morning, and her request.

  Madeleine's voice lowered. “Okay. I'll call her. What time should I come tomorrow?”

  “Around noon.”

  “All right. See you then.”

  He hung up confused and disappointed. Something had changed again. Something in her voice was different. He figured it was the impending trip to New Mexico. He thought briefly of asking her to go with him, maybe settling her with her folks while he stayed with his mother, but they would still be apart.

  Eris didn't know what to do. He knew how he would feel were she to leave him, but it wasn't the same. He was coming back.

  Late that afternoon he went to see his mother again, and he sat quietly in her room looking at her face until she awakened. They talked awhile, and he told her he would be going home the next day, because staying in the hospital made him crazy. She said she understood. She didn't mind. He was coming back to New Mexico with her and that was all that mattered.

  When he returned to his room, Madeleine was waiting. She ran to him
, sliding her arms around him and pressing her face against his chest. Eris closed his eyes and held on to her with his good arm. After a moment he sat and pulled her down next to him, on his good side.

  “I hate talking to you on the phone,” she mumbled into his hospital gown. “It makes me miss you so much.”

  He kissed her forehead. “I was worried when you didn't come last night.”

  “I couldn't,” she said. “I was such a mess.”

  She went on to tell him about Manuel and Jacqueline. She had just come from seeing Jacqueline, who had forgiven her after a screaming confrontation with Manuel, who denied nothing, said it was his right as a male and he assumed it was something Jacqueline understood. Jacqueline didn't. When Manuel said women in his country understood, Jacqueline told him to go back to his country. She would take the house and the car. he could have the Jeep, the cabin, and his precious boat. Manuel had said fine. He would need a week to vacate the house, but he wanted the troublemaking Madeleine out of the cabin immediately.

  Madeleine was to go back that evening and pack all her things. Jacqueline had moved to a hotel in the city in the meantime and said Madeleine was free to come and stay with her.

  “It's time to get serious about finding a job,” Madeleine concluded. “I haven't heard a word about any of the grants I applied for.”

  Eris thought a moment, opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, then took a deep breath and said, “Come and stay with me.”

  “Now that you have furniture?” said Madeleine, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

  He smiled and looked at his bandages. “I'm going to need some help for a day or two.”

  “Just a day or two?”

  “After that you may be the one who needs help. I'm off work, remember.”

  Madeleine smiled and then glanced away. “What happens when you go to New Mexico?”

  “You stay.”

  “Until you come back?”

  “For as long as you want.”

  She looked at him, and her hesitancy matched his.

  “Do I take it you like my cooking?”