Stranger in the Lake

by Kimberly Belle

  The front yard is empty, all but a mishmash of fresh footprints that stomped down the snow by the front door, then moved in long strides around the left side of the house. I lean my head out the door and follow their path, my gaze landing on the word written across the snow in a series of angry red slashes.

  KILLER.

  I gasp and slam the front door.

  A prank. A horrible, awful, vile prank. Who would do such a thing?

  The answer slices through my mind: plenty of people. Half the town already thinks it. It’s probably a miracle that this is the first time.

  Except...

  I race down the hall to the laundry room, launching myself onto the washing machine like a gymnast. I sit on my knees and press my face to the window, craning to get a better look. The red letters have bled into the snow, carving out miniature trenches like cherry-flavored syrup in a snow cone.

  My gaze scans the footprints. Whoever did it came this way, around the side of the house in the direction of the stairs. Which means he was close—too close. He might still be outside.

  I hop down and race back to the kitchen, sending up a silent thanks I’m not alone in the house. I lean over the railing to holler down the stairs. “Chet, get your butt up here. I need you.”

  The lower level stays dark and silent. No voices, no movement. If Chet’s down there, he’s still sound asleep.

  I pull up Micah’s number on my cell. His phone rings once before his voice pushes through a background of white noise, like he’s got me on car speakerphone. “Hey, Charlotte. What’s up?”

  “There’s somebody outside the house. One set of footprints, big ones.”

  I creep to the mudroom and press my face against the window, my gaze roaming the deck. There’s snow, lots of it, a perfect fluffy carpet someone just walked through. I jiggle the knob, breathing a sigh of relief to find it locked up tight.

  “Could be Sam or one of the cops, coming to finish up something he forgot yesterday. Weather’s not ideal, but—”

  “They’re not from a cop.” I glue my gaze to the back window, but all I see is a snowy haze. Either he’s gone, or he’s tucked just out of sight. “Whoever it was wrote something awful in the snow. He rang the bell, then took off before I could open the door. The footprints look fresh. I’m pretty sure he’s still nearby.”

  “What’d he write?” Chet’s voice comes from right behind me.

  I shriek, whirling around to find him in nothing but cutoff sweatpants, washed a soft, grubby gray. His hair is a ball of frizz and tangles, licked up on one side like a lopsided Mohawk.

  I plant my palm in the middle of his chest and shove. “You asshole. You scared the crap out of me.”

  “I noticed.” He scratches a hip and leans his face into the glass, looking out on the falling snow. “What’s going on? Who’re you talking to?”

  But it’s Micah’s voice, all business coming through the phone, that I concentrate on. “Stay inside. I’m turning around, but I’m halfway to town and the roads are bad. It’s gonna take me a minute.”

  More like seven or eight. Maybe longer, depending on if he’s made it across Knob Hill or not, and assuming his truck can make it back over. At the first spit of snow, even four-wheel drives like Micah’s have trouble keeping their tires between the lines of Lake Crosby’s winding roads, and not even a tank could make it down our driveway. He’ll have to park at the top and walk down—another solid minute.

  “Is the alarm on?”

  “Yes. You told me yesterday to set it.” I glance at the alarm pad to be sure. A red light tells me it’s armed. “Alarm’s on,” I tell Micah, jiggling the mudroom door handle for a second time, “and the back door’s locked.”

  “Check the other doors. Windows, too. I’ll stay on the line. If you see anything, somebody in the yard or more footprints, I want to know about it.”

  The urgency in Micah’s tone burns like ulcers in my belly. I order Chet to check the doors and windows downstairs, then race from doors to windows back to doors, rattling knobs and inspecting locks. By the time I return to the kitchen, Chet is coming up from the lower level. He gives me a sarcastic thumbs-up on his way to the espresso machine.

  “Okay, we’re locked up tight.”

  “Good. I’m on Pine Creek Road.” On a normal day, in normal conditions, a two-minute drive. “Put Paul on.”

  “Paul’s not here. It’s just me and Chet.”

  A pause. “Can you get to Paul’s gun?”

  “His gun, seriously?”

  Chet turns around, his brows disappearing into his shaggy hair, but I shake my head. Like every good country boy, Chet knows how to handle a gun, but only in theory. He’s too clumsy, much too unpredictable. I can see him now, trudging through the snow in his cutoff sweatpants and a pair of Paul’s snow boots. It would be like handing a butcher knife to a toddler.

  I shake my head again. “No. No guns.”

  Chet rolls his eyes and turns back to his coffee.

  “Put on some clothes,” I whisper, frowning.

  He ignores me, digging through the cabinet for a mug.

  “You live in the middle of nowhere,” Micah says. “You should know how to use a gun.”

  “I know how to use a gun, Micah. I just don’t want to.”

  “Because she was at the receiving end of one once,” Chet hollers toward the phone, not helpfully. He knows I don’t like to talk about it, and it was twice, actually. The first by some scumbag who thought our father owed him money, and the second time at the gas station, a meth head who cleaned out the register.

  “Stay in the house,” Micah says. “I’m coming down.”

  The line goes dead, and I move to the front window just in time to see him coming down the hill, sliding from tree to tree, his coat flapping open behind him. He lands at the bottom with both feet, then takes off around the side of the house.

  I hurry back to the mudroom and stare out the window, willing him to appear on the other side. I stare until my vision goes hazy from the swirling snow and the adrenaline, and maybe a little bit of panic—though I seem to be the only one. Chet is banging around in the kitchen behind me, pulling breakfast ingredients from the fridge and slapping them to the counter. I jump at the rattle of the coffee grinder, as loud and jarring as a chain saw.

  I flinch when Micah appears in the window, covered in snow, fat flakes lodged in his hair and clothes. He motions for me to meet him at the mudroom door.

  “What’s out there?” I say, once I’ve turned off the alarm.

  Micah blocks the door with his body. “You don’t want to know.”

  “The hell I don’t.” I stuff my feet in my boots and grab my coat from the hook, yanking it on as I push past him to outside.

  “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  He follows me around the corner, to the narrow passageway between the side of the house and the stairwell. Like the rest of the deck, it’s covered in a thick blanket of snow, all but a bright red patch at the top of the stairs where something has bled out, staining the snow and melting most of it away. Whatever this messy heap used to be, it was warm when it died.

  I take in the bloodstained fur, the lumps of waxy fat, innards the color of raw chicken, and a surge of nausea has me sucking in a breath. I pull my coat closed, wrap it taut around me. “Oh my God, I think I’m gonna puke. What the hell is that thing?”

  “A pretty decent-sized opossum, or at least it was, before something mauled it.”

  “A bear?”

  Wouldn’t be the first time one has wandered into our yard, though they don’t typically come this close to the house, not unless we’ve left out some food or garbage. And despite what people think, bears aren’t violent, not unless they’re provoked. No way an opossum, not even a rabid one, could have gotten a bear riled up enough to do this.

  Micah be
nds at the waist, leaning over the carcass. “See here? See how this skin is cut away, these bones sliced clean in two? Hunting knife, I’m guessing. A fairly big one.”

  The nausea folds into a new spasm, reaching with claws into my chest. I take a step back, grounding myself with one hand on the siding.

  A big knife. There was an unidentified person on my back deck with a big knife. I think of Jax out here just last night, the warning he flung as a parting shot. Watch your back. Jax has a big knife, and he’s known for skinning bunnies on the benches in town, but he does that for food, not as threats or for his own sadistic pleasure.

  Or so I’ve always thought.

  The footprints have already grown faint, filling in with a fresh coating of flakes.

  “I’ll get Sam to send somebody out. Maybe they can lift a print, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. By the time he gets here, everything’ll be covered, including this carcass. He’ll pick up what he can, but you’ll probably have to wait until things thaw out to get the treads really clean.”

  Micah’s right. Even with a shovel and an ice pick, that much blood means the stain isn’t going away anytime soon. The deck will need a good hosing down, and with Paul’s industrial-strength pressure washer. Yet another mess for Paul to deal with when he gets back.

  “Did you see what he wrote?” I swallow, the image of that awful word slashed through the snow bumping around in my brain. I press a palm to my stomach, greasy and empty.

  “I saw.” Micah goes quiet, watching me. “It’s just someone looking to get a rise. Don’t let them.”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, it’s kind of working. Is it...? What did they use to write it with?”

  “Blood, and from the looks of things, from more than just one opossum. More like a cow, probably.” Micah shakes his head, sighing. “Don’t you pay it any mind, you hear me? Other than to make sure the doors are locked and the alarm is armed at all times.”

  “You don’t think it was just a prank?”

  No. Micah’s carefully blank look tells me it’s not a prank. “I think it’s safe to assume that whoever comes that close to your door with a knife isn’t going to hesitate to use it. Now’s not the time to be taking any chances, especially when Paul’s away. When’s he back?”

  “He said today or tomorrow, but now with this weather...” My stomach trips up with the lie, the knife, the blood. I wave a hand, scooping snowflakes out of the air. “There’s no telling.”

  Micah takes this in with another grimace. “And Chet? How long will he be staying?”

  One night, that’s it, I’d hollered after him as he raced out to the car for his duffel bag, but we both knew I didn’t mean it.

  “I didn’t exactly give him a deadline.”

  “Let him stay until Paul gets back at least. Where’d he go again?”

  I shrug, holding my expression steady. “Work. That’s all I know.”

  Another day, another lie, teetering at the top of the pile. If Micah notices, he doesn’t let on. I see only worry stirring in the depths of his gaze, the way his mouth goes tight. He rubs a hand across his lower jaw, then tugs me toward the mudroom door.

  “Come on. As long as I’m here, you might as well make me a cup of Paul’s fancy-ass coffee.”

  * * *

  We step inside, where Chet is still barefoot, but he’s scrounged up some jeans, thank God, and a Falcons T-shirt that’s seen better days. On the stovetop behind him, pans sizzle on all five burners—bacon and batter sprinkled with fresh blueberries.

  “Hey, Sheriff. Want some pancakes?”

  “Nah, just a double espresso, extra strong. Thanks.”

  Chet’s not just making pancakes; he’s working the opposite side of the island like a short-order cook, moving between the espresso machine and the stove, sliding there just in time to tease the batter loose from the pan or flip the bacon with lightning-quick twists of a hand. While the second side darkens to toasty brown, he slips a cup under the coffee nozzle and works the knobs. This chef thing might not be such a bad idea after all.

  The doorbell rings as I’m digging a coffee cup from the cabinet, and I peek around the corner. Sam stands on the other side of the glass in his uniform parka over heavy snow boots, staring off to the left of the house. To that awful word, faded to pink in the fallen snow.

  I open the door, and he looks at me with bloodshot eyes, dark circles against a bright white background. A shadow of stubble decorates his chin. He points a long finger at the snow graffiti. “It wasn’t me. I just want to lay that out there first thing, that I had nothing to do with it.”

  I roll my eyes, lean a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Maybe not, but I bet you wanted to.”

  “Hell yeah, I wanted to. I’d take out an ad in the newspaper and write it with smoke in the sky if I thought it would do any good.” He puffs a humorless laugh, unable to stop himself. “But you’ve made it pretty clear you’re more interested in this big, fancy house filled with designer clothes and that diamond as big as your knuckle than you are in the truth.”

  His words land on me like a bucket of icy water, and I shove my left hand in my pocket. “Paul cries at sad movies, you asshole. He chops firewood for grumpy old Mr. Guthrie, and he gives bonuses to his staff every Christmas, even the ones who don’t do much of anything, and he loved her. He loved Katherine.”

  “In the wrong hands, love can be just as deadly as a loaded gun, Charlie. All you gotta do is take off the blinders.”

  I gesture to the eastern side of the house, step back to close the door. “Opossum’s around back, at the top of the stairs.”

  Sam stops the door with a toe. “Is Chet here? I need a word.”

  “What for?”

  “For a word.” His gaze flicks beyond me, to deeper into the house. “I also have a couple of follow-up questions for you and Mr. Keller.”

  I stand there for a long moment, trying to decide what to do. I could call Chet to the door, have Sam fire off whatever questions he has from right where he’s standing, on my doorstep in the freezing cold. But I also heard the bit about the follow-up questions and it occurs to me that Chet banging around the kitchen might be a good kind of distraction, and same goes for Micah. With those two in the room, Sam will at least keep things civil.

  “Take off your shoes.” I turn away, leaving Sam to deal with his own coat. I don’t want to see his face when he clocks the house’s most impressive features—the steel-and-wood staircase that hangs like magic from the wall, the glass-front refrigerator and stainless-steel appliances, the twin couches on a massive wool rug thick as a cloud. Don’t want to know if his expression looks anything like mine did when I first saw the place, an equal mix of envy and awe.

  In the kitchen, I busy myself with the gathering of plates and silverware, digging napkins out of the drawer while Sam doles out greetings to the other men. Chet points him to a counter stool with a greasy spatula. “Hungry man’s breakfast, coming up.”

  “I just ate,” Sam says, but everybody knows Sam has the kind of metabolism that gets him banned from the all-you-can-eat buffet. Doesn’t matter how long ago he ate; he can always eat again. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  Chet’s back is turned, flipping a row of bacon on the frying pan, and it takes him a couple of seconds before he realizes Sam’s talking to him. “Who, me? Sure, man. Shoot.”

  Sam shifts his feet, stabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “We can do this in the other room if you prefer.”

  Chet points to the stove. “I’ve kind of got my hands full. Ask away.”

  I set everything on the counter with a hard clatter, glaring at Sam as he flips through a notepad to a page filled with his tiny scribbles. He sinks onto the counter stool next to Micah. “Want to tell me what you were doing at the Crosby Shores B and B Monday night?”

  Chet shrugs, sliding a stea
ming pancake onto the pile on a platter. “Playing darts and drinking half-priced beer, like pretty much everybody else in town. The place was jammed.”

  “Did you talk to anybody?”

  “Dude. I talked to everybody. They were short-staffed and folks were starting to get rowdy, so I gave Piper a hand behind the bar. She paid me in booze. Is that what this is about? Because I didn’t drive home. Piper told me I could sleep on the cot in the back.”

  Sam digs his cell phone from his pocket, pulls up a picture. “According to multiple witnesses that night, you spent quite a bit of time talking to this woman.” He slaps his phone to the marble, faceup. I take in the blond hair, the light blue eyes on a pretty face, and my heart clangs to a stop.

  It’s her. The woman in the lake. And Chet was talking to her.

  “Do you recognize her?” Sam says.

  I stare at Chet’s back, willing him to not turn around, to shake his head, to say no, he’s never seen her before.

  He peers over his shoulder at the photo and his mouth curls in a sheepish grin. “Hell yeah, I talked to her. As you can see, she’s smoking. What’s her name? Savannah? Sierra?”

  “Sienna,” Sam says.

  Chet points at Sam with the spatula. “Sienna, that’s right. What happened? Did she rob a bank or something?” He laughs for a second or two until it dawns on him that no one else is joining in. He looks at me, and the smile drops off his face. “What? What’d I say?”

  “Chet, that’s her,” I say, my cheeks stiff. “The woman Micah pulled from the lake.”

  Chet blinks. His mouth goes slack. He looks from Sam to Micah to me, then back to Sam. Behind him, the pans hiss and sizzle.

  “No shit. Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” Sam watches him with an expression that’s wiped clean, a blank slab—somehow scarier than his usual scowl. “And now I’d like to know the last time you spoke to her.”

  I scurry around the island, stepping in front of my brother like a shield. “Samuel Anthony Kincaid, now you’re just trying to piss me off. You know Chet as well as I do. You know full well he didn’t have anything to do with how that woman ended up in the lake.”