The Girl in the Lake

by Victoria Michaels - AKA-Angela Knight

  It was 9 am when Tommy arrived at Kenny’s trailer. He parked his Ford Escape next to Kenny’s brand-new Dodge Ram pickup and got out, carrying a couple of McDonald’s bags and a tray with two giant coffees laden with cream and sugar. There was no answer when he knocked, so Tommy let himself in through the squeaky screen door and called out.

  “Kenny, you up?”

  “Back here,” came the muffled reply followed by a toilet flushing. Tommy headed toward the back bedroom where he had left Kenny the night before.

  As Tommy entered the bedroom an overwhelming musky rotting smell hit him. It entered his nostrils and immediately Tommy got a flash of his grandmother in the end-of-life hospice. It smelt like death. He held up the McDonald’s bag to show Kenny, but also to get a waft of the breakfast hoping to cover the terminal smell in the room. Kenny stumbled across the floor and Tommy set the bags down and ran to help his dying friend. He eased him back into the bed and placed a couple of pillows behind his head to prop him up. Kenny gave him a weak smile.

  “What’s all this?” Kenny said motioning to the bags and coffee.

  “I thought you might want some breakfast, bud. Doesn’t look like you’ve been eating too much lately, you know?” Tommy looked at the plate with the peanut butter and jam sandwich from the night before. It had one bite out of it. He spread napkins on the quilt next to Kenny and laid out two breakfast sandwiches, two hash browns, and an apple pie, then opened Kenny’s coffee and set it on the bed side table next to him. Kenny just nodded.

  Picking up the sandwich plate Tommy said, “I’ll put this in the kitchen and be right back.”

  “Bring back my bottle of rye,” Kenny called after him, “It’s in the cupboard above the sink.” Tommy brought it back and poured a shot into Kenny’s coffee, then sat down in a chair next to the bed to eat his own breakfast. The two men ate in silence for a little while.

  “We went straight to Mr. and Mrs. Richardson’s – from the lake that is,” Kenny was nibbling the apple pie, but had not touched the other food. “Helga and Ivan – Donna’s parents.” He stopped and stared at Tommy for a second. “We didn’t try to hide it, you know. We knew they would be worried, so we wanted to let them know. Only…”

  “What did you tell them?” Tommy prodded.

  “As much as we could. Without…” Kenny paused, “We told them that Donna had gotten mad, at Greg, then at me, and she had run into the woods. We all thought she would cool down after a while and be waiting at the car.”

  “But she wasn’t,” it was not a question.

  “Nope,” Kenny said. “She sure as hell wasn’t.” He chewed a little and took a long drink of his spiked coffee, then continued, “We told the Richardson’s that we looked all afternoon and into the evening, tracking through the woods and around the lake. That little Allan was there, too, in the Richardson’s living room – Donna’s brother. I guess he was only eight or so, but he wanted to leave right that second to go look for her. He was bawling like I don’t know what. Jesus! I ne’re seen nothin’ like it. That kid loved her. Well, I guess…”

  They sat in silence for a while, then Kenny continued, “Ivan…Donna’s dad…he didn’t say nothin’ to us, jus’ got up and phoned the police. They tole us to come over right then to tell them what happened. That’s when Cheryl lost it, I guess.”

  “What do you mean, lost it?”

  “Her marbles. She started shaking like a leaf and when we got back to her car, she couldn’t drive, so Danny got in. We put Cheryl in the back seat and she immediately starting smoking. There were tears running down her face, but she didn’t make any sound. No sound at all. She refused to come into the police station with us…stayed in the car. One of the officers came out, but she wouldn’t even look at him. Didn’t say anything.” Kenny looked sad and Tommy wondered if he was sad for Cheryl.

  “What did you tell the police?” Tommy urged Kenny to continue.

  “Same thing we tole Donna’s parents – she got mad, she ran away, we looked for her. Couldn’t find her.” Kenny took a pack of cigarettes off the bed side table and stuck one between his lips, then looked around for a lighter. It was on the dresser across the room, and Tommy got it and brought it back to the bed.

  “Was that the truth?” Tommy ventured, lighting the cigarette for Kenny.

  “Nope. But I guess close enough.” Kenny took a long drag off the cigarette and Tommy set a glass ashtray next to him on the bed covers. “I don’t want to talk about this part no more.”

  Racking his brain, Tommy searched for another way to continue the conversation. This guy was going to die soon…this story needed to be told…at least Kenny needed to get it off his chest. Tommy no longer really cared about getting a great news article, he was more concerned about the look of absolute misery on his old friend’s face. Hell, it was not just on his face, his entire body exuded desolation.

  “Can you tell me about what life has been like for you, then, Kenny? You know, what happened to you and your buddies? How did people in town treat you?” Tommy used Betse’s suggestion to from last night. She thought this may stir up some emotions and she was right.

  Kenny furrowed his brow, “We went to jail, you know?”

  “What? I thought no one was ever charged. I mean…you said…they never charged you with any crime.” Tommy was surprised; this was the first he was hearing about this.

  “Not for Donna. They never had that as a crime. No body. No evidence that a crime was committed. No, not that. See, the police still had to investigate Donna as a missing person, so they had to check out everywhere she’d been that day. Well, when they got to the shed that Danny and I had rented for our…little business…they found everything. Like all the dope, the money, the lists…that stuff.”

  “Oh, I see,” was all Tommy could say.

  “Danny and me we got six months each, but they didn’t put us at the same place. Greg had priors, so they gave him eighteen months. That was the first of many for him.” Kenny took another bite of the apple pie and chewed for a moment, seeming to think, “That’s dang good pie,” he said holding it up and weakly pointing it at Tommy, “don’t think even my mother made such dang good pie.” He finished chewing and continued.

  “When I was locked up, I got to thinking, this is not the life for me. Took some mechanics courses and volunteered to work in the prison garage. Learned a lot there. My brother helped me get the rest of my training when I got out, then him and I went into the garage business together. It’s been a sweet little enterprise, if I do say so. Got me some respect anyhow. Some, but…there’s always people who’s gonna hate ya. Don’t blame ‘em, but life was hard.”

  “What about Danny? How’d it go for him in jail?” Tommy had heard that Danny and Cheryl had gotten married, but never knew what happened to either of them after that.

  “Well, I guess prison did the same thing to him. He didn’t want any part a that. Got his drivin’ ticket. You know, semi truck. Him and Cheryl got married, had four kids. She’s real squirrelly, though. Ever since he died.”

  “He died? How?”

  “Car accident. Not even in his semi. He was off for a week…that’s how it works…ya go out on the road for a few weeks at a time, hauling shit all over the country. Then when ya get back, ya really need to rest. That’s what he tole me anyhow. He musta been tired was all they could figger. Driving back from the bar after a night out with the guys. Wasn’t even drunk…under the limit. Went off the road out on the west side of town…you know where that is?” Kenny stopped and looked at Tommy. Tommy nodded; he knew. That’s the same road he had done his run on that very morning.

  “Well, that one curve is quite a doozie. Car went down the bank and flipped. ‘parently he was a real mess. Closed casket. Geesh now, that was back in…’78, I think. Yeah, ‘bout there. I remember, ‘cause I was 33 and he was the same age as me. Funny how that goes, eh? I remember thinking how young he was…and then I thought of Donna and how young she was…only 18. Fifty-four years ago it was, b
ut I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember her hair was so blonde and real long and I wanted to touch it all the time; it was incredibly soft. The smell of her Emeraude perfume, still lingers in my head, like a ghost. Her ghost has haunted me every day since that day. I’m not sure what’s worse – the ghost or the guilt. How come I got to live so long? I couldn’t even enjoy it. I guess that’s my punishment, right?” Kenny’s eyes were distant, like he was indeed really back in 1965.

  “What did you do, Kenny?” Tommy wondered if he was about to confess to killing Donna. No one had ever really accused him out loud as far as he knew, but they had sure inferred it. “Tell me what you did, Kenny, that makes you feel so guilty?”

  Kenny shook his head and his eyes cleared. He looked deep into Tommy’s eyes, like he was searching for something. Maybe forgiveness? “I’m guilty of not finding her. Of letting that bastard, Greg, run her off like that. Maybe she tripped or fell down a steep cliff…or something like that. Maybe someone picked her up in the parking lot and drove away with her. I’m responsible for that. I was supposed to protect her.” Now Kenny’s eyes were glossing with rising tears.

  There was another long silence. Tommy took the breakfast items into the kitchen and when he returned Kenny was lighting another cigarette. He took a puff and began coughing. It was a gurgling wet cough, and Tommy thought it almost sounded like Kenny was drowning. He sat on the edge of his chair watching to see if he would need to do anything – Heimlich maneuver, maybe slap Kenny’s back, at least get him a glass of water – but the coughing soon settled and Kenny took another drag off his cigarette.

  “You know they thought they found her once?” Kenny finally said.

  Tommy raised his eyebrows at this comment. He had not heard about this, but he had not had a lot of time to do research yet. He made a note to himself to do a scan on the internet that night. “When was this?”

  “Well, there were some kids, you see. They weren’t kids no more when they came forward, but they were kids when the incident happened. In…hmmm….I think it was 2005 when they reopened the case…that Sergeant…Lewis. Yeah, that’s it, Sergeant Lewis. He was a cold case investigator – just a young guy; don’t think he was even born back in ’65 when it happened – he came knocking on my door and asking a whole bunch of questions. They put it in the paper back then that they were re-opening the case. “Local Girl Missing for Forty Years” I think that was the name of the article. Ya know, there was an article around every five years since Donna’s disappearance. Kept people around these parts pretty riled up, but they never reopened the case until 2005.”

  “Why did they decide to do it at that time? Did they have some new evidence or something like that?” Tommy was curious as to what new story line had been brought to light.

  “Some kids found some bones. Up there near Lilac Lake.” Kenny stopped and looked at Tommy, maybe for dramatics, maybe for some recognition of the story he was about to tell. Tommy pointed at his phone indicating he would like to record this; Kenny nodded and continued.

  “These boys were about 24 or 25 when they came forward in 2005, but they found the bones back in ’93, when they were just kids. They said they were supposed to be camping in one of their backyards, but they snuck out and walked the five miles up to Lilac Lake. You know, boys?” Tommy tipped his head in acknowledgement.

  “They had pinched a third of a bottle of rye from one boy’s dad’s cabinet and a pack of smokes from another’s mom’s purse. Wanted to try out their maturity, I guess. Nothing too nefarious, just boys being boys.” Tommy was surprised that Kenny even knew a word like nefarious but said nothing.

  “Well, they were walking through the woods up there, laughing and smoking and passing the bottle between them, when one of them tripped over something. They said it looked like a raised mound that was out of place amongst the trees, so they got sticks and started poking it, thinking it was probably something an animal had buried. Who knows, maybe it was.” Kenny let out a few coughs, but nothing like before.

  “What was it?” Tommy asked, knowing that Donna’s remains had never been found.

  “Bones. A leg – femur – and a skull! Geesh, they said when they saw that skull they ran. Ran all the way back to their house and got back into the tent in the backyard. Never tole no one ‘cause they weren’t supposed to be out there. But, twelve years later when they heard about the Donna Richardson cold case being re-opened, they came forward and told their story. They led that Sergeant Lewis and his investigators back to where they remember finding the grave. After all them years it took a while, but after digging around for a couple of days, Lewis found it. He was like a dog with a bone – no pun intended, course, but he just would not give up looking. And…he confirmed they were human bones.”

  “Who’s?”

  “Testing proved, of course, they weren’t Donna’s bones. Nope. It was a vagrant worker who had gone missing way back in ’81 while hitchhiking from Billings, Montana. Family said he was down on his luck and searching for work in Washington State. At least one mystery got solved.”

  “Do they know what happened to him?” Tommy thought this story may also go somewhere.

  “Not really. There were some teeth marks, Lewis said, like animals had chewed on the bones probably after he was dead. They figured he may have been living off the land and was starvin’ or something. Likely died from exposure – maybe in the winter. An animal might have buried him to save it as a cache for eatin’ later. But who knows? Lewis said there was no sign of foul play, so they couldn’t label it as any kinda crime or nothin’.” Kenny yawned and coughed a couple more times.

  “Do ya think ya can come back again tomorrow, Tom? I need a rest – get some shut eye. I’m sure I’ll be able to tell ya more then.” Not waiting for an answer, Kenny rolled over to one side and within seconds was snoring loudly.

  Tommy packed up his things and dumped out the ashtray, then let himself out.

  Chapter Five

  It was noon and Tommy decided to get some lunch and go over his notes and the recordings from his two visits with Kenny. He pulled into the A&W and parked his SUV and went inside. There were a few other customers gathering and it was getting busy. After purchasing a Papa Burger, Chili Cheese Fries and a large Root Beer, Tommy took his tray to a table next to the window. He had just started munching down when a man approached his table.

  “You a friend of Kenny Hughes’s or something?” the stranger asked standing over Tommy’s table.

  “Why do you ask?” Tommy was not giving up anything until he figured out who this guy was.

  “Seen your vehicle over at his trailer the last two days. Not many people go visit that creep, so I figured you gotta be his friend. Or a cop. You a cop?” the man put his hands on his hips as if demanding a response.

  Tommy held out his hand, “I’m Thomas Coleman. I grew up around here, but now I’m a retired journalist out of Portland. I’m here…visiting. And you are?”

  The man ignored the outstretched hand, “Name’s Allan. Allan Richardson,” he waited for a reaction, but Tommy just sat there looking at him with a pleasant smile. Oh yes, the name registered, this was Donna’s little brother who had been eight when she went missing, but Tommy was not about to be playing any games. Especially with this sensitive subject.

  “Nice to meet you, Allan,” Tommy dropped his hand and motioned to the other chair at his little table, “care to join me for a coffee? Seems like you might have something to say to me.”

  Without answering Allan took the other chair and stared at Tommy expectantly. Tommy motioned to a bus boy and asked him to bring two coffees, “Cream and sugar,” Allan added. Tommy ordered the same for himself and began to relax. This guy wanted to tell him something, that was clear. He decided to come clean with him.

  “I’m here working on a…follow up story. Kenny said he had something he wanted to tell me…wanted me to write about…so I came down from Portland a couple of days ago. I’m staying at the Circle 8 Motel just off W
est Side road. I’ll be here until I get that whole story.” Tommy looked back at Allan as if challenging him, waiting for some type of conversation to start.

  “Well, holy shit,” Allan said taking his coffee from the bus boy, “the fucker’s coming clean. ‘bout time, we’ve all been waiting for him to tell the truth.”

  “Are you sure you want to know,” Tommy asked stirring his own coffee, “it might not be what you think.”

  “He told you something already? What? I demand to know,” Allan’s voice got louder. He glanced around as a few people in the restaurant were now looking at the two men. Allan continued with his voice lowered, “I know what happened. Most people around here got their own opinion, depending on which family their related to, but I know. I saw it in his eyes that night. That night he came to Mom and Dad’s house. He was scared, but not scared like he didn’t know where Donna was. Scared like he did know where she was, but he couldn’t tell. I knew he liked her…probably thought he loved her…everyone loved Donna. Especially me. She was my big sister and took care of me like…like…well, like I was her child. She was ten years older than me; you know that?”

  “So, I’ve heard. I also know that she was very beautiful and have been told she was very kind. I do remember her from high school, but she was two years behind me, so I didn’t hang out with her gang,” memories buried deep for Tommy were starting to resurface. He had been bullied in school. He had been what they all called a ‘nerd’ – glasses, braces, and he was on the chess club and worked for the school newspaper. Very typical, Tommy knew, but that’s who he had been, “my family moved to Portland as soon as I graduated high school. That’s where I went to College. It was a bit harder on my younger brother and sister, but at least they weren’t in high school yet, so they adapted after a while.”