Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  Perhaps, she hoped, this could be the day they put aside past politics and came together as one. For Oscar Balderach’s sake, as well as that of their injured rookie, Calvin Whitaker. But she’d barely started divvying up assignments when Deputy Roger Savoy interrupted.

  “You ask me, we oughta haul the neighbor out of his hospital bed and let some of the more experienced interviewers sweat him till he coughs up something. I’ll lay you odds, Mrs. Wofford, if McCoy’s not involved, he’s at least seen something,” Savoy said, looking for all the world as if he meant to be helpful.

  He had a way of doing that, of casting himself as the seasoned professional who knew this jurisdiction inside and out—in contrast to her, of course. He’d emphasized this difference when he’d run against Justine, presented himself as her late husband’s heir apparent, a deputy who’d spent close to thirty years as Lou’s right-hand man. A man comfortable in what most saw as a man’s role.

  Too bad for him he didn’t bear the last name Wofford. Or understand he’d provoked some powerful grudges with his stiff-necked ways. Or that he didn’t appreciate how well the ten years she’d worked as a Morton County deputy and the two years she’d been married to Lou Wofford had prepared her to play hardball.

  “It’s Sheriff Wofford…”Justine corrected, giving him a half smile he would doubtless describe later as ball-busting. If one listened to Savoy, she was Wonder Bitch, capable of emasculating legions of East Texas law enforcers with a single glance. Which was a pretty neat trick, considering how ignorant and ineffectual he also made her out to be. “And I’m certain you didn’t mean to imply that my interview skills are in any way lacking. I said I’d handle it.”

  She saw surprise register in the split second before he slapped on a fresh coat of professionalism, saw the discomfort flash over another half dozen faces, too. Normally, she pulled men aside to redirect objectionable behavior, with the idea that embarrassing them before their peers was no way to win allies. But increasingly, she’d come to realize that this tactic made her look weak to them, so she’d decided on a new strategy. Fuck with her in front of others, and they could expect to be treated in kind.

  “Or course I didn’t mean that, Sheriff. But it occurred to me you weren’t around back when we had regular dealings with the McCoys. White trash, the whole lot of them—steal anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

  “Yes. Well, thank you for the history lesson. I’ll be stopping by a little later, to thank Mr. McCoy for his assistance last night.”

  “Thank him?” another of the veterans muttered, but Justine’s hard look shut the commentary down, a truce she knew would last only until she made it out of earshot.

  Which didn’t take as long as she expected, thanks to Larry Crane—cruelly nicknamed Ichabod in the department, in honor of his Adam’s apple and gangly goober-dom. As far as she’d seen, Crane was the butt of every joke, the deputy no one respected, which had made him the perfect person to recruit as her first ally. Left to man the phones, he interrupted to tell her, “Made that call to the bank, Sheriff. And I know you’re going to want to hear about this right away.”

  At the sound of approaching footsteps outside his hospital room door, Sam braced himself for another visit from the duty nurse, Elysse Steele, a tall blonde he had dated briefly. And apparently none too successfully, judging from the muted glee he’d seen on her face when she had come to jab his ass with a needle the size of a turkey baster.

  He forced his eyelids open, intent on banishing the enemy before she marched in a troop of student nurses working on their urinary catheterization merit badges. As he blinked away the medication haze, he made out sunlight filtering through the window shade. The breakfast tray came into focus next, its presence assuring him the night shift should by this time be off duty. He sighed and felt it in his ribs first: a knifing pain that awakened a constellation of aches and twinges.

  The door opened, and Ruby poked her head inside. “You awake?” she whispered.

  “Come on in.” His voice came out gravelly and slurred.

  She slipped inside but remained close to the door. “I—ah—I’m meeting a friend of mine here as soon as she gets finished with a few charts. She’s letting me stay at her place for a while. Anyway, I thought—I thought I ought to check to see how you are. My friend couldn’t tell me anything, except that you might be the luckiest SOB in Texas.”

  “Your friend’s Elysse?” He winced, a movement that telegraphed a neon-bright sting from those stitches closest to his mouth. “Listen, whatever she has to say about me…”

  He stopped there, reminding himself that anything he said could and would be used against him in a court of feminine opinion. And unlike his last trial, no defense would be allowed. Instead, he changed the subject. “I’ll be okay. What about you? Did you get hurt?”

  As his vision cleared, he’d noticed the blood spotting the same jeans and turquoise top she’d been wearing yesterday. She clearly hadn’t taken time to sleep, either, judging from the dark circles beneath her eyes.

  “It’s your blood.” She moved nearer to his bedside, took a closer look at the bandaged spots: the bridge of his nose, his forehead, and his jaw. Wincing sympathetically, she asked, “How’s that feel?”

  “Like sixteen stitches,” he said. “The doctor fished out a few shards from the window, but Elysse’s right. I’m damned lucky I didn’t break my neck flying off that porch roof. Or burn up in the fire. Thanks to you.”

  “I spotted the deputy first, and—and I thought you were dead, too.” Her blue eyes looked haunted. “There was so much blood. But corpses don’t gush like that. I—ah—I’ve seen my share this past year. And then you blinked up at me.”

  “I was pretty damned surprised to be alive. Listen, I want to—I want to thank you. For getting Calvin on his feet and for—for the two of you—” It sucked the air from his lungs, the thought of how they had risked their skins to drag him toward the water. “I would’ve cooked right there. Burned up like poor Balderach.”

  Lying on his back, stunned, as the flames had crackled their way closer, he had realized that if he died, no one would be much inconvenienced. Oh, maybe his former partner or Paulie and Anna Hammett and a few running buddies would raise their beers in tribute, or Pacheco would curse him for a stupid bastard, but sand would swiftly cover the faint footprint he’d left on this earth.

  But wasn’t that what he’d been going for these past years? Hadn’t a lack of complications, of connections been his goal?

  Unsettled by the thought, he asked, “How’s Calvin?”

  “I ran into his mother out there.” Ruby nodded toward the door. “She says he’s got a mild concussion, but she’s taking him home as soon as they get his discharge papers finished.”

  Sam nodded. “I imagine he’s pretty busted up about Oscar.”

  “They all seem to be, the whole department. And that poor family…” Ruby shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Why would the house—how could it just explode like that? It makes no sense—the place burned so fast. Too fast. It really makes me wonder…”

  She turned her face from him, but not before he took note of its pallor.

  “Ruby? Are you—have you had any word yet? About your family?” When no answer came, he added, “Maybe you’d better sit down.”

  She wobbled toward the chair beside him and sank down, hugging herself tightly.

  Sam used the controls to raise himself, fighting off a groan with the shift in his position. “Tell me,” he said.

  “I spent most of the night answering questions, or waiting around the sheriff’s office. While I was there, I called everybody we could think of.” Ruby rubbed at damp eyes. “I must’ve woken up half of Dogwood, but I couldn’t find a single soul who’s seen either of them. Misty hasn’t called her old boss. She hasn’t called her friends or shown up for her classes. And Zoe—I managed to reach the pediatrician, too. The doctor hasn’t see her in months, hasn’t heard a word about her being sick. I talked to M
isty on Monday but no one else has heard from them in the past week, unless you—”

  “It might’ve been that long ago for me, too. Sorry I can’t be sure.” Sam pulled the bedside table close enough to pour a cup of water from the pitcher. “Does Misty have friends out of town? Someone she might visit? A boyfriend, maybe, where she might lose track of the time?”

  He held out the water to her, but Ruby shook her head.

  “No one I know of,” she answered. “But I should try her friend Crystal again. You know Crystal Kowalski, don’t you? From Hammett’s?”

  “Sure.” Also a waitress, Crystal was as much a fixture at the restaurant as her best friend, though Sam found her constant, self-absorbed chatter annoying enough that he avoided sitting in her section. “She and Misty have been practically joined at the hip, always talking about that court reporter program they’re in.”

  “I haven’t been able to reach her, either.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Ruby what he could do to help her. To let her know that despite his aches and pains, he’d be going home today. But instead, he said, “Well, the new sheriff’s taking care of things, I’m sure. She’ll be hell-bent on getting to the bottom of this, especially since she’s lost a man.”

  And because she had something to prove. There had been a huge hullabaloo when Justine Wofford, a fairly recent transplant from a distant county’s sheriff department, won the recent special election, claiming the right to complete her husband’s term. But there were plenty who argued that she wasn’t qualified, plenty waiting for the chance to run the woman they considered an upstart out of office at the first sign of trouble.

  When Ruby stared at Sam, her blue eyes welling, he had to look away to continue. “She’s probably already working with the volunteer networks and putting out an AMBER Alert. And other law enforcement agencies will come in, too.”

  The state fire marshal, he thought, and maybe ATF, if there had been some sort of explosives in the house. The more investigators that showed up, the more closely they would look at any handy suspects.

  And who could possibly be handier than the felon living next door?

  “The firefighters…” Ruby started. “Sheriff Wofford told me…”

  He swallowed hard, dread pooling in his gut like liquid flame. Though he didn’t want to know, he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What did the sheriff tell you?”

  “She said the firefighters pulled two bodies from the rubble. Just a few hours back. There were two adults and another of those big dogs. They don’t know a lot more yet, but they think maybe one of the—the victims was a woman.”

  A nightmare memory constricted Sam’s chest. A memory of the falling figure he’d seen through the window. The woman he had tried and failed to reach.

  “They asked me for the name of Misty’s dentist,” Ruby went on. “They need—they’ll need the records for the medical examiner.”

  “It can’t be Misty.” Sam shook his head, his mouth two steps ahead of his better judgment. “Can’t be. Because she’s with your daughter, keeping her safe. She is because she has to be, because they’re damned well going to find them both alive.”

  Nodding, she whispered, “Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And last night.”

  She slipped out of the room, leaving him feeling for the first time like the criminal the federal court had named him. Feeling like a coward and a monster for placating his foster brother’s widow with false hope.

  C HAPTER F IVE

  The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago, had they happened to be within reach of predatory human hands.

  —Havelock Ellis,

  The Dance of Life

  Above the algae-filmed green waters of an isolated slough, dragonflies glided, darted, or hung suspended in the sunlight: dashers and skimmers, eastern amber-wings and clubtails. To the uninitiated, they looked harmless, living jewels that studded the swampy bottomland. But the man watching knew that his old friends were killers, winged assassins waiting for the slightest flicker of prey movement to send them into action.

  As he stood smoking on a wooden walkway, he imagined himself much the same way. Not stagnating near some backwater bayou beside a cheap vacation rental, but hovering in place and waiting for his true target to panic and break cover. Waiting for the perfect moment to ful-fill his promise and do what he’d been born to do, as efficiently and guiltlessly as the tiny hunters of his temporary kingdom.

  Amid the calls of birds and the rustling of breezes through the bright, spring leaves, a discordant sound—unnatural and unwelcome—had him turning toward the shabby little cabin he was using as a base. Turning toward a high-pitched cry from inside. A human cry that fractured his peace, in spite of his precautions.

  He could not have this, would not allow the interruption.

  So he pushed past overgrown brush and stalked toward the steps, the world darkening as thunderheads obscured his inner vision. He would have the quiet he craved, to plan, to calculate, to think out every angle.

  And if that meant having to treat his reptilian allies to another carcass, so be it.

  Elysse drove, since a helpful deputy had arranged for the rental company to pick up Ruby’s damaged car.

  “I hate not having my own wheels,” she complained. She’d intended to buy another used vehicle upon returning, but car shopping was the least of her concerns now.

  “You can borrow mine whenever you need it,” Elysse said, “as long as you run me back and forth to the hospital for my shifts.”

  “Thanks. I promise it won’t be for long, and I’ll be careful with it.” The small car was just over a year old, with nary a ding marring its gleaming white exterior.

  “Just try not to get it shot, okay?”

  Ruby gaped, then faltered through a weak laugh at the rise and fall of her friend’s eyebrows. But Ruby didn’t have the heart to joke, so she was grateful when Elysse pulled into a yard dominated by an old magnolia tree festooned with Spanish moss. Rather than parking beside the house, she pulled beneath it, for the one-story cedar structure had been built on pilings to raise it above the occasional floods that washed through the canal neighborhood. Located on a narrow spit of solid land, the house was flanked by shuttered and elevated vacation cabins overlooking the man-made channel. Behind the houses and across the single-lane street, a domelike beaver lodge presided over a swampy wetland of the rodents’ making.

  After pulling her suitcases from the back of the Corolla, she followed her much-taller friend to a flight of wooden stairs beneath a screened porch that faced a green-brown strip of water lined with docks and houses on both sides. Elysse’s own dock—currently boatless—slumped in defeat beneath the waterline, but the small house itself appeared to be in good repair.

  “This is it.” Elysse introduced her recently purchased home—the first she’d ever owned—with a halfhearted flourish. Though she still wore her violet scrubs from work, she’d unclipped her ash-blonde hair, so the loose waves framed a face lined with the fatigue of a long night shift.

  “It’s really nice, Leese. Thanks for having me,” Ruby managed, her mother’s gentle insistence upon manners bubbling through the layers of despair, and terror. She wished her mother were alive and healthy now to take charge and see her through this nightmare, though in her heart Ruby knew Althea Bailey had been a gossamer magnolia, the kind who locked herself in dark rooms with a cold compress and a fifth of Southern Comfort. At least she had until her liver had cried uncle.

  “Place sat empty for years. It was a fine mess, first time I saw it,” Elysse told her. “Sam was the one kept saying what great potential it had. Helped me negotiate a bargain price and clean it out and fix it up, too. And silly me, I supposed that must mean something. Really, what man puts that sort of effort into a house he doesn’t mean to live in?”

  Disappointment appeared in Elysse’s hazel eyes, and bitterness shot through her honeyed voice. Grimacing, she flushed, something she’d been prone
to since the two of them had met in high school. “Sorry, Ruby. I’m sure the last thing you’re in the mood for’s another laugh-a-minute episode from the archives of the Elysse Steele Love Files. Served me right anyway for getting myself hooked up with a guy like that. McCoys steal—everybody knows that. Expect anything different, and you’ve got nobody but yourself to blame.”

  The comment reminded Ruby of rumors about the father, who had driven his wife to abandon both him and their two sons, of the stories she’d heard about Sam’s brother, J.B., and his dangerous behavior. The family reputation was at odds with what she’d seen of Sam so far. Yet she wanted to tell Elysse it was all right. Because Ruby would give anything to put things back the way they’d been the last time the two of them had spoken, with Elysse encouraging Ruby to take the job she’d badgered her insufferable stepbrother to set up and Ruby—considered the expert for having been married—talking her friend through her latest relationship implosion. But all Ruby could think of was Zoe.

  “I can’t just wait around here,” Ruby burst out, the truth of it slamming her like a two-by-four against the skull. Pain and panic pounded at her temples. “I should be out looking for them. I should be working with the volunteers to organize search parties—”

  Elysse touched her arm. “There’s an AMBER Alert, Ruby. Which means that you’ve got every officer in the state—probably a few states—looking. And it’ll go out on TV and the radio, too, right?”

  Ruby nodded mutely, and in her mind, she saw the information scrolling across the bottom of a screen or splashed across the e-mails that went out to thousands. Zoe’s description and the plate number of Misty’s Honda Civic. The photos deputies had collected when they’d awakened Myrtle Lambert and Anna Hammett. Because Ruby herself no longer had a single picture. The little album in her backpack had been stolen, and all the rest had burned up with her house.

  I’ll never get them back again. Not the baby photos nor the wedding pictures nor the last shots she’d taken of her husband. And what if I never get another chance to take more of my daughter, either?