Down in the Lake

by Shianne Minekime

  The little girl’s eyes were sad and Tina realized that she was crying but Marie did not cry.

  “There’s no God here,” Marie whispered.

  Tina came awake on the couch with her heart pounding. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She was disoriented and filled with a swamping feeling of sadness and loss that seemed to be drowning her.

  “There’s no God here,” the words were a whisper ringing in her mind louder than any yell could have ever been. The panic and fear would choke her it seemed and her scream rang out in the silence of her living room. It was the scream of a rabbit caught in a trap, a mother fighting for her child, a warrior going into battle and it was a truly horrifying sound. Tina sat bolt upright on the couch, wild eyed as the sound erupted from her and helpless to stop it. The front door slammed hard, once, twice and it shattered inward with a shriek of tortured wood. The sliding lock that Tina had locked before her nap flew off the door with an indignant squeal and hit the opposite wall, striking a picture frame and shattering the glass.

  Annie pulled up in front of Tina’s house less than a minute before Tina screamed. The yard was empty, the reporters having given up for the moment or perhaps just gone into town to eat. The house was quiet and still and deceptively peaceful. Annie climbed the stairs to the porch with the picture of Marie tucked into her back pocket. A soft wind blew off the lake and ruffled her hair. The stairs squeaked softly under her hiking boots. The silence shattered into a million pieces with the scream. It was a scream of terror and sadness, heart wrenching and piercing at the same time. Her gun was already in her hand when she hit the front door without her even realizing she had drawn it. The door held and bounced her back off like a rubber ball, she would have a massive bruise on her shoulder the next day. She took a step backward and kicked it, putting all her weight and strength behind it. She felt a flash of gratitude for wearing the hiking boots. Her dress shoes would probably have broken her foot and not budged the door. The door surrendered and released its grip on the door frame with a horrible screech of protest and she came through the door ready to fight, sweeping the room with her gun held in both hands in front of her. Tina sat on the couch her eyes wide in alarm, tearstains streaking her cheeks.

  “Where is he?” Annie cried.

  Jamison had had it up to there and beyond, too. The expected call from the Mayor did nothing to improve his mood. He managed to not tell him where to shove it, but told him flat out that his niece was Not coming back to work there ever. The Mayor hemmed and hawed until Jamison dropped the words “impeding a federal investigation” and then he suddenly became all agreeable.

  “Sure, I hear you, I hear you,” he said in a placatingly hearty voice. He rambled on about how children these days just didn’t have the work ethic like in ‘the old days’. Like he knew anything about the old days anyway, the man had never done a day of physical labor in his life.

  Jamison heartily wanted to slap him. It might be worth his job to do it. Just the thought of it cheered him up.

  The Mayor was pestering Jamison about progress on the case.

  “We need this resolved quick as possible’ you know.”

  “No, really?” Jamison said icily. How did this bozo get into office and manage to get himself reelected to boot he thought. Of course he knew how, the Timmons family came from old money and money has a way of greasing the wheels and making people seem less like the jerks they are. The parties Artie Timmons threw out at his house, more of a mansion really, were infamous and invitations were always sought after. They usually went to the best brown nosers and you couldn’t have paid Jamison enough to have gone to one. He had been called out to the house a couple of times though when things got a little out of control. The mayor always expected it would be him that showed up and not one of the deputies and always managed to make him feel like he was holding onto some secret for the mayor or covering up some crime. He hadn’t been of course, he wouldn’t have anyway, but nothing that major had ever happened. But he always left there feeling dirty.

  Mayor Timmins chuckled nervously, as though it were a joke.

  “Election seasons coming up you know,” he began.

  Jamison hung up on him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Annie helped Tina clean up the mess from the door. She swept up the wood pieces and the broken glass. Tina’s hands were shaking so bad that Annie was afraid she would cut herself. The door hung drunkenly to one side and Annie figured there was nothing to do about that at the moment. She gently steered Tina back to the couch and Tina did not resist. She sat quietly on the couch, her hands twisting endlessly with each other. She was deathly pale and with the tear stains she looked like a child. Annie went to the kitchen and heated water and made them each a cup of tea. Tina looked a little more composed when she returned with the steaming cups, a little less like she might crumple and blow away. Her hands shook only slightly when she took the cup. She told Annie about the dream. She told her about everything, the bathroom visit, her plunge in the lake and the awful, too real dream. Annie listened quietly and Tina felt right about telling her. She felt that somehow this woman could understand her and maybe not think her crazy. If anyone could, she could. She felt that this woman might be the only one that could help them. Maybe the only one that could bring Hailey home. Annie smiled slightly when Tina told her how Jamison had stormed out when she had tried to tell him.

  “He’s a black and white kind of man,” Annie said, and Tina thought that summed it up perfectly. A good man, but too black and white to see the gray that Tina had been living in. She even told Annie about the drinking and Annie nodded like she understood. Tina thought maybe she did understand to an extent, but no one could really understand but her and James. Except the other girl’s parents of course. Tina finished talking and let out a deep breath. It was said, finally it was said and come what may, she didn’t really care. Annie sat back on the couch and stared out the window. Her brow was furrowed and she was silent.

  The silence gathered in the room, sitting in the corners using its beady little eyes to give an uncomfortable weight to the air.

  Finally, Annie pulled the picture out of her back pocket and unfolded it and handed it to Tina.

  “You recognize her?” She asked.

  In that last moment of clarity, before the view of the world that she had carried most her life was changed, she almost hoped that Tina wouldn’t recognize her. It wouldn’t change the fact that she had recognized her or seen her or spoken to her, but it would somehow take some of the weight from it. As though if it were not validated it could somehow be explained in a rational way. Maybe just her subconscious whispering to her, maybe just bad Mexican food. She almost hoped but not quite.

  Tina sucked in her breath in a weak little drowning fish gasp.

  “It’s her,” she whispered. “It’s the girl I’ve been seeing.”

  Annie nodded resignedly, no simple explanation here. Not that she had really believed there would be. Or maybe it was the simplest explanation after all.

  “That’s Marie Jenning?” Tina asked, and her voice shook.

  Annie nodded again, even though Tina wasn’t looking at her. She still stared at the picture in her hands.

  Annie figured it was really a rhetorical question anyway. She hesitated, torn between saying too much or nothing at all. As an FBI agent she had an image to uphold and a duty to deal in facts. Facts solved cases, linking the evidence in an orderly chain that ultimately tied the people who did wrong to the things they did. It inexorably wrapped around them and trapped them and hopefully dealt them the punishment for their crimes. This was a chain, too, but not a logical or rational one, not even really a sane one. Looking at the scared mother who sat opposite her with her hands shaking and her heart torn, Annie knew she couldn’t keep silent. Her duty to right and wrong carried far more weight than her duty to facts. Her duty to Hailey and the other girls carried the most weight of all. So what if she were to lose her job over this. If she couldn’t do her job a h
undred percent and trust herself then she probably should lose it. What if it were her little boy that was gone? What if he was taken God only knew where and going through God only knew what. What if it was Evan?

  “I’ve seen her, too,” she said.

  Tina paced the floor, back and forth across the living room. By unspoken agreement neither of them called Jamison. This was past his scope of experience and even belief. They both felt that he couldn’t help them now. Tina did try to call James but his cell phone went straight to messages. She couldn’t remember the last time he had charged it. She could have called the office but she didn’t. She felt stuck in this moment in time, locked into it and whatever it had in store for her and Annie. The momentum was building and she was afraid of stopping it. She felt that if she detoured or slowed it then somehow it would stop and the chain would be broken, the chain of events that might lead her to her daughter. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the waiting, it would kill her.

  Annie stood staring out the window, not really seeing anything at all.

  “So what do you think the church means?” She asked, turning around to watch Tina’s pacing.

  Tina followed her relentless path back and forth across the carpet.

  “I think her killer was there, that the church has something to do with her death,” she said, staring at the carpet as she passed over it.

  “That doesn’t really tell us that much,” Annie said slowly. “So many people are in and out of church that any one of them could have seen her there, could have targeted her.”

  Tina shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, it’s more connected than that.”

  ‘There’s no God here.’

  Tina shivered at the echo of the words in her mind. The sadness and fear in that little voice.

  “Are you talking about the minister?” Annie asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

  Tina nodded. “Reverend McCallister,” she said.

  She saw the look on Annie’s face and understood the feeling. And just like that she knew. It seemed so implausible, impossible almost, but she Knew it, she knew that was what Marie had been telling her.

  ‘There’s no God here.’

  “He’s the right age, he’s probably close to sixty now,” Annie said slowly, thoughtfully.

  “He could have easily have been here when Marie was here. What do you know about him?” Annie asked.

  Tina shook her head.

  “Not much really, we don’t go to church much.”

  “So, where would he have seen Hailey then?”

  Tina stopped moving. Horror crossed her face and she stood frozen.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. She stared at the picture on the wall but didn’t really see it.

  “Oh My God,” she said furiously. Everything went red and she started to shake.

  “Hailey went to church camp last year,” she said in an awful, quiet little voice. “It was the first year she went, she wanted to go because her friend Shelly went.”

  She felt sick, sick and angry. She was so angry her vision blurred at the edges.

  “She talked about how nice he was to her, how much time he spent with her.”

  She picked up the closest thing to her, a vase James had given to her full of flowers for Valentine’s Day a few years back. She flung it against the wall and it exploded in a shower of glass, tinkling merrily as it fell to the floor.

  “He Taught Her How To Fish,” she screamed.

  Jamison was sitting at his desk going over everything yet again, hoping against hope to find something he missed, when the phone rang. His head hurt and he was tired. It felt like he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. He was swamped with a feeling of helplessness and inadequacy. He knew Hailey was out there somewhere waiting to be brought home and it was his job to find her and he couldn’t find anything. He picked up the phone thinking that it had better not be the Mayor again or he was going to go over and punch him in the nose. He listened disbelievingly as Annie talked.

  “No way!” was his first response.

  Then:

  “Oh, my, no.”

  Then:

  “You’re sure?”

  Then:

  “Oh crap.”

  And finally:

  “I’m on my way, don’t make a move till I get there.”

  Tina walked out of the bedroom with a three fifty seven, a six shooter carry over from the days of the old west. A gun that had originally belonged to her dad and that he had thought was perfect for his daughter because of its small size. She looked incongruous and out of place with it, a small, too thin woman with a serious weapon and obviously plenty of intention to use it.

  “I’m going,” she said flatly.

  Annie stood up in alarm at the sight of the gun and now she moved slightly toward the door, subtly trying to block her. A small percentage of the population actually owns a gun but somehow she was not that surprised that Tina owned one.

  “You’re not going in there with that,” she said with a jerk of her head toward the gun. “If we do this wrong he could walk scot free in a court of law.”

  Tina stared at her disbelievingly.

  “He’s got my daughter,” she said, low and angry. “He could be hurting her right now; he could have decided to cut his losses and kill her.”

  Annie sighed. “There are procedures we have to follow,” she said gently and reasonably.

  ‘You have to help her,’ echoed in her mind. Only now it seemed like ‘You have to help her,’ implying that she was the one who needed to save her. Jesus, this thing could blow up in her face. She had a feeling that Tina did not intend to have him see a court of law. She couldn’t blame her really but she had taken an oath and you didn’t get to decide which parts you were going to follow and which ones to blow off. Not unless you wanted to wind up like the ones you were putting away.

  Annie sighed. “Please tell me it’s at least registered and you know how to use it,” she said resignedly.

  “Yes, I do, and it is,” Tina said, looking her straight in the eye.

  “We do this my way,” Annie said firmly. “First of all you put that thing in your coat or purse or something and you don’t touch it unless I say so, agreed?”

  Tina nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Whatever you say. As long as we’re going.” Tina dug in the closet. She passed over light jackets and sweaters and finally came up with what she was looking for, a trench coat with big deep pockets. She didn’t like the coat and hadn’t worn it but a couple of times. It was a Christmas gift from her publisher. She tucked the gun into one of the pockets, it made a lump but it wasn’t obviously a gun. Annie headed out the door with her.

  “You follow my lead and remember we don’t have a warrant and without probable cause we can’t do a thing.”

  Jesus, Jamison was going to kill her.

  “You sure you know where he lives?” She asked as they got in the car.

  Tina nodded. She tried again to call James but he didn’t answer. This time she tried the front desk, too, and got the machine. They must have closed already. James had probably already headed home, maybe stopped by the grocery store or the video store on the way. She knew he would be angry, God, would he be angry, but she hoped he would forgive her. She was haunted by the feeling of the clock running out of time. She tucked her hands in her pocket. The cold steel of the gun brushed her fingers and she shivered. Could she do it, she wondered. Her daughter’s face rose up in her mind and she knew she could.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We pass his house when we go out to visit the Robertsons.”

  “This is nuts,” Annie muttered even as she backed the car out of the driveway, spraying gravel. She punched the gas and took off into the gathering dusk. Tina looked back at the window of the house she had called home for a long time. It looked sad, sitting there hunched against the backdrop of the dark water. She prayed with all her might that she wouldn’t be coming back there alone. That she would find her d
aughter alive and bring her home safely. She promised to live her life the best possible way she knew how, bargaining as people do when they are threatened with losing the ones they love. She prayed as hard as anyone had ever prayed in a church, speeding down a road that she could not have imagined in a million years she would ever be on. She was scared but at least she was not alone. Annie thought as she always did, of her family. Of the last thing she said to them in case something bad happened and it was the last thing she ever got to say. She thought of those little girls and swore to herself that it ended here. The thought occurred to her that it might be a wild goose chase, that she might get in a world of trouble if this went down wrong. He was a minister; and they were talking about murder. Multiple murder and of children, the most heinous and unforgiveable crime there was. But she knew that evil could and did, wear any face it chose.

  I’ve been on the verge of being an angel all my life

  but it’s never happened yet.

  By Mark Twain

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Last Day

  Jamison pulled up at the lake house. He drove through town with no lights on or siren to give away their presence. He didn’t want him to catch wind of them and run or hurt the Hansen girl. The reverend was about four miles out but still, it didn’t hurt to be careful. Deputy Johnson and a young deputy named Jacobs followed in the car behind him. The other deputies were posted to make sure no media managed to follow them. That was the last thing they needed. He pulled up in front of the house and saw only Tina’s car. He muttered some really ugly words that would have made his Mama cringe. He waved the others to follow him and went in the house, the second person to go through that door with a gun drawn that night. He saw the shattered door and wondered about it briefly as he swept the house and found it empty. He met his men back on the front porch in the dusk.

  “What now, Boss?” Johnson asked.

  Jamison expelled a breath.

  “Eat biscuits,” he muttered. “She went without us.”

  He stood on the porch and kicked the post by the stairs. “FBI, she should know better,” he said angrily.