The Girl from Silent Lake

by Leslie Wolfe

  “Emergency teams are on the way. Are you safe? Hello? Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  “Mom,” Kathy cried, her face touching her mother’s. “No, Mom, please, don’t go. Don’t leave us.”

  Pearl shifted slightly and opened her eyes, then called her name in a weak whisper. “Kathy?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” she said quickly, running her sleeve across her face to wipe her tears.

  “Hang… up the phone,” she whispered, struggling to point a weak finger at the fallen receiver.

  Jacob grabbed the phone and ended the call.

  “Take me… to the front room,” she said, her voice barely intelligible. “They can’t come in here. They can’t—um, see him.”

  “Yes, Mom, we’ll do that,” she said, desperately looking around for something to use to carry her into the other room without hurting her. “Jacob,” she called, and he came by her side without a word. “Here,” she said, taking her brother’s hand and putting it on top of the blood-soaked towel. “Press hard, like this,” she said, and Jacob nodded, pale as a sheet.

  She stood and rushed over to the cabinets, where she found a large tablecloth her mother rarely used, because they hadn’t had guests in years. She laid that alongside her mother’s body, gently pulling one edge of it under her, until she and Jacob were able to grab the corners and carry their mother into the front room in a makeshift gurney. Then she ordered her brother to go outside and guide the first responders to use the front door, not the side one leading to the kitchen where her father’s body lay in a thickening, dark pool of blood.

  Removing the tablecloth from underneath her mother’s body, she hid it under a sofa pillow, and kneeled next to Pearl, holding pressure on her chest like she’d done before. Seconds later, she was sobbing hard, unable to control herself any longer.

  She felt a gentle touch on her face and saw her mother’s hand reaching out. Grabbing it, she kissed her frozen fingers. “Mom, please, stay with me. They’re coming, Mom, soon.”

  “Don’t let them see him,” she said weakly, closing her eyes again. “My poor baby,” she whispered, as red lights filled the darkness of the windows. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll… clean up when I come home.”

  “Uh-huh, yes, Mom,” she said, ready to spring to her feet the moment the paramedics rushed through the door. “They’re here, Mom, stay with me.”

  A cop was the first one to come in, followed by a man and a woman wearing paramedic vests in bright orange with the star of life embroidered on their backs in reflective white, with a gurney loaded with kits and equipment in tow.

  “What happened here?” the cop asked, and Jacob, standing right behind him, seemed he was about to faint.

  “My father,” Kathy said, sobbing hard, “h—he stabbed her and ran.”

  The paramedics pushed her away, then kneeled by Pearl’s side and started to work quickly, efficiently. The cop started looking around the room, pointing his flashlight at certain areas of the carpet, although the lights were on. Then he headed toward the living room, and Kathy’s heart sunk, beating frantically.

  “She’s critical,” one of the paramedics announced. “On the gurney, stat.”

  The other paramedic sprung to his feet and pulled the gurney closer to her body, while the cop walked past the living room and toward the kitchen. Her father’s body would soon come into his view. It was over.

  “Kathy,” she heard her mother’s weak voice calling her. “Tell that officer I want to speak with him.”

  Rushing after the cop, Kathy caught him by the sleeve just as he was about to turn into the kitchen. “Please,” she said, “my mom wants to say something to you.”

  He approached Pearl just as the two paramedics were loading her onto the gurney. An IV line was already in place, the needle taped to Pearl’s arm, and one of them lifted the bag, holding it at his shoulder level.

  “Make it quick,” the paramedic said.

  “He’s going to Phoenix,” Pearl whispered, touching the cop’s hand. “My husband… he’s gone to Phoenix.”

  “Arizona?” the cop asked, and Kathy wondered how many other Phoenixes there were.

  Then she breathed, seeing him climb into his car and peeling away.

  As the paramedics loaded the gurney into the ambulance, she hugged Jacob tightly and whispered in his ear, “Don’t go in there, little brother, okay? Just, um, watch TV or something. Or come with us to the hospital.”

  “No,” he said, pulling himself away from her. He’d grown up overnight; she was looking at an adult. A pale and jittery one, but an adult, nevertheless. “I have to stay here, just in case.” He looked around and made sure no one could hear them, then whispered, “No one can know, sis. I can’t lose you.”

  Kathy rode in the ambulance with her mother, holding her hand and whispering encouraging words in endless phrases that made little sense.

  Then they rolled her away and she waited for a while, curled up on a weathered couch that reeked of disinfectant while her mother was in surgery. She’d dozed off, exhausted, when she felt someone touching her shoulder. Startled, she stood abruptly, fearing the words that were about to come from the man dressed in green surgical garb. But there was a promise in the man’s eyes, a smile she guessed touched his lips, hidden by the surgical mask.

  “Your mother is going to be just fine,” he said, then lowered his mask, and the smile was there. “She was lucky, having you by her side. I heard you applied pressure like a pro.”

  Tears rolled down her face as she struggled to find words.

  “I’ve arranged for you to sleep in her room,” he said, inviting her to follow him. “And tomorrow you can both go home. She insisted we release her at the earliest.”

  When Kay returned home the following day, supporting her mother’s arm, she talked her into taking a seat on the front room sofa and wait there, until she figured things out. With Jacob by her side, she entered the kitchen holding her breath, and found nothing.

  The floor had been scrubbed clean, and only a couple of small smudges remained where the linoleum tiles met the side of the cabinets. She searched her brother’s eyes, unable to ask the question.

  His eyes veered toward the living room window, the one facing the backyard. Silently, she walked over there and put her hands on the windowsill, as if to seek support to keep standing.

  Outside, between the two willow trees by the far edge of the yard, the ground was disturbed, and the grass had been laid in large, ill-fitting chunks.

  She didn’t need to ask why.

  Searching her brother’s hand, she squeezed it hard. He reciprocated, and the both of them stared at the willow trees for a long, silent moment, hand in hand.

  “The knife?” she eventually asked, her voice a whisper.

  “That too,” Jacob replied.

  Those were the last words any of them had spoken about it.

  Just like Kathy had done, Pearl had entered the kitchen most likely fearing what she was about to see, then seemed to understand everything without words, her tears the only visible reaction. Later that night, after everyone had gone to sleep, Kathy scrubbed the floors over and over, stopping occasionally to gag and dry heave, her empty stomach unable to give her the relief she needed.

  By the following spring, the ground between the willow trees had settled, and new grass replaced the old, seamlessly, sealing the secret buried below its roots forever.

  Thirty-One

  Weapon

  There was no way she could begin to explain to Elliot what was going through her mind, how if she closed her eyes for only a blink, she could see nightmarish images of the ground splitting open to swallow the lawn tractor and its rider, the roar of her father’s rage shattering the house and everyone in it.

  Kay knew what she was dealing with; post-traumatic stress, augmented by a guilty conscience. In theory, she was well prepared by her formal education and experience as a doctor in psychology to deal with any case of PTS, but not when it came to her own pe
rson. She’d thought she’d resolved these issues a long time ago, but it seemed she’d only blocked them, tucked them away in a secret drawer in her mind, together with the distance she’d put between herself and the house she’d grown up in. And still, regardless of the distance or how deeply she believed she’d buried her trauma, it had kept her away from her home for all those years. Whenever she thought of going home to visit, she saw the haunting image of her father’s body lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. Her bullet nearly killing Jacob. The patch of lawn between the willows. Her mother, barely alive, finding the strength to lie to protect her children.

  And she’d stayed away, hoping the bad memories would fade.

  She’d left Mount Chester as soon as she’d finished high school and rarely came back, even if she missed her mother dearly. Jacob brought Pearl to San Francisco to visit on occasions, but that was mostly it. She couldn’t find the strength to go back to the house, and no one, not her mother and not Jacob, had ever questioned her reasons. They both understood; they’d been there. But she’d found time to call her at least twice a week and spend real time with her on the phone, cringing in fear her mother would ask her to come visit, yet knowing she would never.

  As a criminalist, she knew quite well that the shooting of her father was defensible as justifiable homicide, the ending of his life being unavoidable to save her mother’s. Pearl would’ve testified to that, Jacob too. But that fateful night when she’d pulled that trigger, Pearl had urged her to lie, to hide what she’d done, probably afraid she’d lose her daughter to a legal system that often misfired, especially when people without financial means were involved. Kay too was afraid; she hadn’t just shot him once, enough to stop him. She could barely bring herself to admit it, but she’d pulled the trigger twice more after that, and there was no possible way she could justify it, other than the fact that she was a thirteen-year-old scared out of her mind.

  It would’ve held in any court, granting her the not guilty verdict that could’ve cleared her conscience and put her mind at ease for the rest of her life.

  But not after Jacob had buried his body in the backyard. Not after Pearl had given that cop a false statement. No, there was no turning back, not without doing irreparable damage to her mother and her younger brother. She had to bear her cross, no matter what.

  Eight years later, her mother lost a long battle with breast cancer, a disease Kay blamed on her father. It must’ve been his blows, the pain he caused, the physical and emotional bruises that had seeded the tumors in her body. When Pearl died, Kay cursed her father’s name for the last time, but found she couldn’t bring herself to attend the funeral. She drove all the way to the cemetery, then, frozen in grief that bore no witnesses, watched from afar, between streaming tears, how her mother’s body was laid to rest. Before anyone could see her, she’d driven off, swearing she’d never come back to the place that had broken her heart, and swallowed her tears.

  With her mother resting beneath the tall pines of Mount Chester’s only cemetery, she wanted to come clean, to rid herself of the burden and face whatever consequences she had to for the shooting, for what had happened afterwards. But at which point could she walk into her boss’s office, at the FBI, and say, “Just wanted to tell you, a few years ago, I killed a man. He’s buried in my old backyard.”

  She’d played the scene countless times in her mind, and there was no way it could end well. Over the years, both Jacob and she were asked by the police if they had heard from their father, still a wanted man for the stabbing of his wife, but they continued to lie, even after she’d become an FBI agent, an officer of the law, and that changed things dramatically.

  There was no turning back, especially not now, not with Elliot’s suspicions kindled by her unusual behavior.

  “I have a terrible headache,” she eventually said, looking at him only briefly, afraid he’d see right through her lie. She knew she wasn’t controlling her body language and her facial micro-expressions correctly, but she just couldn’t. She had no energy left. Watching Elliot drive the lawn tractor over her father’s grave had left her weak, lifeless almost.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied, a hint of concern in his voice, and another of doubt. “Anything I can do for you?” he asked, putting down the coffee cup and grabbing an apple. This time he went over to the knife block and took the small knife himself, using it to cut the apple in quarters, like he’d done the day before. Then he rinsed and dried the knife and slid it back into its place. “Want one?” he offered a quarter of the red fruit, but she declined with a hand gesture. She was happy he’d stepped away from that knife block, where only five black, riveted handles could be seen, instead of six that used to be.

  “You’ve done enough,” she said, “with the lawn, I mean. Thank you for that; you didn’t have to. I know it, and you know it, but… thanks.” She forced some air into her lungs, aware she was losing track of her thoughts and babbling like an idiot. She needed to focus. “I’ve been procrastinating,” she added, managing a weak smile. “Mowing is my brother’s job. He’s always done it. I guess I was thinking maybe I could work out a deal and have him released earlier, and maybe he’d do it.” She looked at him briefly, then lowered her gaze and ran her hand across her forehead, painfully aware it was exactly what most liars did in an interrogation. Avert their eyes, run their hands over their face, subconsciously hiding. “Doesn’t make much sense, I know,” she added with a quiet chuckle.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied, taking a big, crunchy bite from the apple quarter he’d offered her. “We all do—”

  His phone rang, and he frowned briefly at the display before taking the call.

  “Howdy, boss,” he said, and Kay understood it was the sheriff himself calling at that early hour. She held her breath, waiting, hoping the search teams might’ve found something, some trace of Alison and the kids.

  He listened intently, then said, “Got it, we’re on our way.” Ending the call, he slid the phone into his pocket. “They have another body, this time a fresh one.”

  She exhaled, feeling a sense of unspeakable dread.

  “Where? At Silent Lake?”

  “Yes, you were right,” he said, with a hand gesture mimicking a salute. “He just chose another path leading to the lake. But he changed his ritual; he didn’t put her up in a tree first; straight into the ground, it seems.”

  Her mind embraced that new piece of information like a vine, wrapping itself around it, building around it, grasping it from all directions. He’d changed his ritual. Why? What did that mean? Was he afraid he’d get caught, with the entire community up in arms about the bodies found at Silent Lake? Or was he afraid that tomorrow’s forecast of -10 ºF would make his ritualistic burial impossible?

  One thing seemed certain; the perpetrator had been rattled to the point where the most important part of the killing, his signature, had to be modified, altered to fit new circumstances. And she knew well that a rattled unsub meant an escalating unsub, likely to kill more, to torture more viciously. And to make mistakes.

  She grabbed a jacket from the other room and rushed outside, where Elliot had already started the engine. She didn’t bother to pretend to lock the door, just pulled it shut after her and climbed into the SUV.

  “There’s more,” Elliot announced, turning onto the main road. “There’s a witness. Someone saw a suspicious vehicle pull out of the lakeshore woods just before the light.”

  “Where’s this witness now?” she asked. Finally, a lead, a shred of hope. Although that hope was strangled, thinking who might’ve been buried at Silent Lake. Was it Alison? One of the children?

  As if reading her mind, Elliot said, “They confirmed it’s an adult female, recently deceased. That’s all I have for now.” Then, probably realizing he’d skipped the answer to her question, he added, “He’s at the office, waiting for us.”

  If it was Alison Nolan, Dr. Whitmore would soon be able to confirm it, being they had Alison’s
driver’s license from the car rental company. Soon, they’d know. Maybe within minutes of unbearable tension.

  The witness waited for them in the interview room, his rifle leaning against the wall, outside the room. Kay raised her eyebrow, and a deputy clarified, “He said he was out there hunting. He’s got a permit and all.”

  They entered the room and Elliot introduced both of them. The witness, a scrawny guy in his thirties named Mitchell Pettus, shook their hands firmly and took his seat, ready to start talking. His face was covered in a three-day stubble, a little more pronounced where his mustache would’ve been if he let it grow. His face was grimy, as if he’d spent days in the woods, not hours.

  “Mr. Pettus, thank you for calling us,” Elliot said. “But, before we start, what were you doing at Silent Lake so early in the morning?”

  His lips tensed in a controlled grin. “I could tell you I was huntin’ for wild pig, ’cause that’s year ’round, but it ain’t true.” He scratched his head and continued, “I was hunting for him.”

  Elliot’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “For whom?” Kay asked.

  “For the bastard who’s been killin’ those women. I’d say season’s open for that mother—” He stopped, lowering his head, embarrassed. “Sorry, it slipped.”

  Kay smiled encouragingly.

  “My kids play by that lake, ma’am,” he continued, running his hand over his disheveled hair. “And you might be thinkin’, what’s this dude gonna do by himself out there, right?”

  Kay nodded.

  “It’s not just me,” he added, lowering his voice as if sharing a well-guarded secret. “It’s twenty-three of us, standin’ watch all around Silent Lake. We figured the sheriff ain’t got enough people for it.”

  “What, like a crew of vigilantes?” Elliot asked.

  Pettus stood, visibly insulted. “Not vigilantes, sir, uh-uh. Concerned citizens, that’s all. We called the cops, didn’t we?”