Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  Sam heard antagonism in the man’s words, a willingness to push aggressively if necessary. Sam hesitated, weighing his impulse to push back against Pacheco’s warnings about escalating an uncomfortable situation into something that might net him time in prison.

  Acosta put in, “We think you might have seen or heard something that could help us in our investigation of the drug activity next door. You never know, something you tell us could help nab some bad guys—or even bring a little girl back to her mother. You do want Zoe Monroe to come home, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. I want them both home,” Sam said, knowing that Acosta had just backed him into a corner. That neither man would hesitate to lie or manipulate to try to trip him up.

  He felt rather than saw the peach fuzz agent staring through the black lenses of his shades, felt the man’s suspicion radiating like frigid waves off a block of ice.

  “Or maybe you want a little family reunion with your brother in the federal pen. Our people in New Mexico are closing in on him, man.” Felker glanced down at his watch. “Should be busting him as we speak, and we’d be just as happy to put two McCoys away for life as one.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do with J.B.,” Sam assured them. “Right now, I’m a whole lot more concerned about my neighbors.”

  “Then you’d better let us in, tell us your side of this story.” Acosta shot him a dark look. “Before we can come up with any other versions of our own. Or get to wondering who was the brains behind your brother’s operation.”

  With no better choice, Sam let them inside…and wondered if he would be arguing against assumptions already made. Suspicions born not of his own crimes, but his brother’s.

  Suspicions Sam could think of no way to combat without doing those things he did best—even if that meant taking the biggest gamble of his life.

  THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE

  Drugs hazing her awareness, Misty barely heard the voice from behind the locked door. She had a hard time differentiating it from the background murmur of a radio until the voice grew so insistent it triggered a painful thumping in her brain.

  Except the noise wasn’t in her; it was pounding from the outside. The beating of small fists against the heavy wood.

  Zoe, Misty remembered, something akin to panic slicing through her muddled thoughts. Zoe was here with her, crying so hard Misty couldn’t pluck a single word from the stream. Couldn’t comprehend a damned thing except the noise chewing through her head like a chain saw.

  “Zoe, please be quiet.” Misty instantly regretted her outburst—the explosion of sound inside her skull. Had he heard it, too? Would he come back with another needle, maybe one for Zoe this time?

  Anything to keep her quiet, out of his way while he—

  No matter what, Misty couldn’t let that happen.

  “Go back and watch your movie.” She fought to keep the fear from her voice. “Watch it like a good girl, and I’ll talk to your mom about getting you a kitten. Two kittens maybe, to keep each other company.”

  To her surprise, the bribe worked, or at least the sounds of crying faded.

  As Misty drifted off on the dark waters, she wondered how long something as flimsy as a promise could protect someone so small.

  C HAPTER E IGHT

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned…

  —William Butler Yeats,

  from “The Second Coming”

  Using a motorized craft this time, the boatman glided past the houses along the canal once, then twice before anchoring to “fish.” Again and again, he expertly cast and retrieved a wicked, silver hook—left intentionally bare—until the mild spring afternoon sighed its last and faded into twilight. Courting frogs provided the bass notes to evening birdsong, while a great blue heron skimmed the water in search of a late meal.

  Yet the house he watched remained dark, as did both its neighbors. Reasonably assured that no one was around, he tied up to the dock that ran alongside the boathouse next door. The single pontoon boat within was covered, supported by slings above the water, with thick webs suggesting it had not been moved in months.

  Like all the others in the neighborhood, the boathouse owner’s home had been built on stilts, but the place appeared long unused, with its windows shuttered and weeds shrouding a set of steps to the raised, canal-side deck.

  As he walked next door, he assured himself that the target house and the one beside it also appeared vacant, with no vehicles or people in sight. No dogs, either, to raise the alarm as he mounted the stairs of the house belonging to Ruby Monroe’s blonde friend. Earlier today, he had followed at a distance, watching through binoculars as she and Ruby had carried suitcases upstairs. With the white car gone now and no sign of life from inside, he presumed the two of them had left….

  Which would work out quite well if he’d guessed correctly, he thought, pulling on a pair of latex gloves and removing first a box cutter and then a cordless drill from the carpenter’s apron he wore at his waist. If, on the other hand, he’d been wrong in his assumption, things could go quite badly for anyone inside…as well as for those “guests” he had left back at the cabin.

  But come to think of it, no matter what he found—or didn’t—this wouldn’t end well for them. It couldn’t, since they’d seen him…and since the one who’d bought his services had insisted they must die.

  A slow-talking deputy with a world-class comb-over and an Adam’s apple the size of a grown hamster ushered Ruby into Sheriff Wofford’s surprisingly well-appointed office. “Make yourself comfortable,” he invited, “and I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  Inviting as the leather chairs looked, Ruby couldn’t think of sitting. Instead, she paced the room, bypassing a large, potted tree beside the window blinds and angling around a desk topped with a neat stack of files, a phone and intercom, and a closed laptop computer. After glancing at the translucent glass door to assure herself no one was outside, Ruby walked around the desk to peer at a framed photo. In it, Justine Wofford stood behind an older, gray-haired man—the former sheriff—with her long hair down and her lean arms draped around his beefy shoulders. The photo had been taken locally, judging from the wisps of Spanish moss decorating tree limbs and the slice of sunlit water in the background. Handsome and relaxed, the couple laughed at something out of camera range, a clearly candid moment that reminded Ruby sharply of her own late husband, of the fact that Wofford’s loss had been quite recent.

  Would it prevent her from doing her job? Ruby thought about how muddled her own thoughts had been in the months following Aaron’s funeral. She’d nearly miscarried soon after the services and had ended up on bed rest, but if she’d been able to return to work—she’d helped with billing at a local doctor’s office at the time—Ruby couldn’t imagine how she would have functioned. What if the new sheriff was so distracted, she missed something important? Something that could make the difference for Ruby’s family?

  After rapping lightly at the door, Deputy Savoy poked his head inside. “Ah, Deputy Crane told me you were in here. Sheriff had to run home to change her outfit or fix her makeup or some such.” He glanced down at his watch, a frown creasing the corners of his mouth. “Said she wouldn’t be ten minutes, but you know how you women can—”

  “She left? For clothes and makeup,” Ruby interrupted, disbelief quickly giving way to anger. “Why on earth would she call me over here if she meant to take off? Does she have any concept of what I’m going through, what it’s like not knowing if my family—if they’re…”

  “I’m so sorry,” Deputy Savoy said, his head bowed as if in prayer, his hair thick and dark save for the silver patches at his temples. “I’m sure Mrs. Wofford—I mean the sheriff—had no intention of upsetting you, but, well, the little lady had a mishap over by the coffeepot.”

  His silvery blue eyes flicked upward, and in that instant, Ruby saw his contempt for his superior. A year ago, she would have though
t little of it, but overseas, she’d seen that look herself, had been on the wrong side of it a few times. She could be wrong, she knew, but intuition hinted that the coffee spill he’d mentioned hadn’t been the sheriff’s doing, that going home “to fix her makeup” had not been Justine Wofford’s choice.

  “While you’re waiting, could I get you anything?” he offered. “How about some coffee? Water? Or a soda?”

  Ruby shook her head, not wanting anything from the man except answers. “So, what about my family, Deputy? What did Wofford want?”

  “She wanted to chat with you herself—” he said.

  “No. I came. I came right over here like she said, so—”

  “—but it seems downright wrong,” he went on, “to leave a worried little mama cooling her heels in this office.”

  He slipped around the desk and, after cutting a look toward the door, dropped into the sheriff’s chair with a self-satisfied look that set Ruby’s teeth on edge even more than the “little mama.” But he could be as obnoxious as he wanted, as long as he ended the torment of waiting.

  “Neither of the bodies found in your house was your sister’s.”

  Tears sprang to Ruby’s eyes. “I knew it. I knew she couldn’t be…But who, then? I mean, I know about the guy with the tattoos, but who else was in my house?”

  Justine Wofford stepped in, dropping her keys into her handbag. In spite of the expensive-looking tan suit and crisp white blouse she wore, she looked harried, with splashes of color at her cheeks and dark strands working their way loose from her chignon. But the look she shot Savoy had him leaping up from her chair with an alacrity that Ruby couldn’t help enjoying.

  “Sorry, Mrs.—I mean Sheriff,” he said. “I was just telling Ms. Monroe here the ME says the body’s not her sister’s. I didn’t think you’d want her to be kept waiting.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t.” Though Wofford’s white teeth flashed against the smudged background of her lipstick as she spoke, no one would mistake her expression for a smile. “But I’ll take it from here, Deputy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Savoy slunk toward the door but rescued enough dignity to turn and nod toward Ruby with a promise. “We’re going to bring them home, Ms. Monroe. You’ve got my personal guarantee on that one.”

  As he left, one corner of Wofford’s mouth ticked downward.

  “Trouble?” Ruby asked.

  The sheriff dropped her purse inside a desk drawer. With a shake of her head, she said, “Nothing that should concern you. He’s a fine lawman, smart, experienced. Just has a little trouble now and then remembering which of us won that runoff.”

  So it was more than sexism. “I have to admit, I haven’t kept up with local politics, especially this past year.”

  “No reason you should have,” Wofford told her, then unexpectedly came around the desk and offered Ruby her hand. “Now let’s start this conversation over on the right foot. First of all, I apologize for your wait. Couldn’t be helped.”

  Ruby nodded. “I have some questions. About those bodies found in my house.”

  “This case has been given the highest priority.” The sheriff went around and reclaimed her own chair. “But we haven’t yet identified them. I can say, however, that we have reason to believe at least one person escaped—or was helped to escape—the house around the time it started burning.”

  Ruby stared at her. “I saw that house just after the first explosion. How could you think anybody made it out of there alive?”

  “One of those two dogs did, didn’t it? The one you had to kill.”

  Ruby shivered, remembering the moment she had pulled the trigger. “Well, yes.”

  “And my deputy, Oscar Balderach…” Emotion shimmered through the sheriff’s voice before she brought it under control. “It turns out he was shot before the body burned. The other two victims—we believe they were upstairs, in the front bedroom, when they…succumbed. So a third person must have been the gunman.”

  Ruby felt the cold cramping of fear in her stomach. It had been bad enough thinking the deputy was accidentally killed in the explosion, but knowing that someone in the house had deliberately shot down a law officer was even worse. Anyone capable of such a thing, she thought, wouldn’t hesitate to murder an unarmed woman and a young child.

  The sound of gunshots reverberated through her mind. “I—I think I heard it last night,” she said, blinking back the burn of moisture. “I heard shooting, right before the first blast.”

  Wofford nodded. “Yes, that’s in your statement.”

  Ruby barely recalled what she’d said, sitting in that starkly antiseptic interview room through the longest night of her life. “So you think—you’re guessing someone came out through the back and shot the deputy, then escaped? But how? There wasn’t enough time, and besides, I would’ve seen him.”

  “Not if he took the boat.”

  “The boat?” She was thinking of the beat-up old canoe she’d kept tied to a tree down near the water. She couldn’t recall seeing it last night, but then, she’d been so distracted, she might not have noticed a flashing neon alligator, either.

  “Sam McCoy’s johnboat”—the sheriff’s expression hardened—“wasn’t tied at your dock as he reported. When we checked, it hadn’t been moved to his dock or boathouse, either.”

  Ruby weighed the possibility that someone could have stolen it while she and Sam were helping Deputy Whitaker. It would have been doable, she thought, before Sam had gone around to check the lake side of the house. “You mentioned this shooter might’ve had some help escaping. Who would have done that? There was no one else around last night, no one I saw anyway.”

  “According to your statement, McCoy was out of your sight for a time, wasn’t he? While you were busy helping Deputy Whitaker.”

  “Sure, Sam went around back to see if he could find…” It dawned on Ruby what Wofford was suggesting, and in some ways the theory made sense, in light of Sam’s background and the fact that his johnboat was missing. But Ruby didn’t buy it, not considering what she’d witnessed.

  “He dragged Deputy Balderach back from the house,” Ruby burst out, surprised by the heat in her own words. “He climbed up on the porch roof trying to save Misty and Zoe.”

  “That is what he said,” Justine Wofford acknowledged, with one sleek brow rising. “But did you actually witness him doing either of those things?”

  “You didn’t see. You can’t know—that man was upset. He was worried, almost frantic, about my family and your deputies. And he was definitely injured. You can’t imagine he cut himself like that on purpose. My God, I found him lying near the body. It was awful.”

  Raising her palms from the desk, the sheriff shook her head. “I was only speaking as an investigator, looking at all the possibilities. And I wasn’t aware you had any particular attachment to your neighbor.”

  Ruby stared at her, thrown off by the suggestion. When she recovered the power of speech, her temper took over. “You really don’t have any idea about who took my family, do you? Otherwise, I can’t imagine why you’d waste time on petty, ridiculous insinuations. I’m grateful to Sam for last night, yes, but when was I supposed to have formed this ‘particular attachment’? While I was driving buses in Iraq this past year? Please…”

  “I know you’re upset. I know you’re suffering a great deal. But I can tell you, I see nothing, not a damned thing petty”—the sheriff leaned forward in her chair, her dark eyes flat, relentless—“or ridiculous in any line of questioning related to the murder of a man—a family man—who devoted twenty-eight years of his life to this department. And what’s more, Oscar Balderach was a friend of my husband’s, a good friend for a lot of years.”

  Ruby rocked back, stung by the sharpness of the woman’s voice. But she wasn’t about to meekly tuck her tail and quiver. “I get that, and I’m sorry. Sorrier than I can ever tell you about his friends and family having to deal with this. But I won’t apologize for keeping my focus on my family, because they’
re all I have now. And because I believe with all my heart that they have to be alive.”

  She held the sheriff’s gaze, defying Wofford to contradict her.

  Instead, the sheriff blew out a loud sigh. “I won’t argue that point, Mrs. Monroe, because I think there’s a good chance you’re absolutely right. We know Ms. Bailey took the money last week—”

  “I’ve already told you that’s a lie, or a mistake at least. Misty’s friend, Crystal, said the same thing. We both know—”

  “You want to see the video?” Wofford challenged. “I’ve got it, from the bank. She came in alone, said she was unhappy with the customer service, so she was moving the accounts.”

  Maybe it was on video, but the sheriff—everybody—had misinterpreted what they’d seen. “Then that must be what she did.”

  “The branch manager tried to talk her out of it. I don’t have audio on the recording, but the woman said your sister acted nervous, upset. When I asked if Ms. Bailey might’ve been on something—”

  “Do you honestly think I’d have left my daughter with my sister if she used drugs?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” Wofford countered, “not before you left, at least. But from everything I’m learning about Ms. Bailey, there have been signs, major changes in behavior. The branch manager was concerned, especially considering your sister’s insistence on cash instead of some safer option. And my deputies have checked with every other bank in town. Ms. Bailey didn’t open an account in any of them.”

  Ruby huffed out a frustrated sigh, her denial smacking up against the brick wall of the sheriff’s facts. “When she took out the money, my daughter wasn’t with her?”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “But she wasn’t at day care, either. And I know Crystal Kowalski wasn’t watching her.” Ruby shook her head, eyes welling. “So where was Zoe?”

  “That’s an excellent question, Mrs. Monroe,” said the sheriff. “I’m hoping your sister’s phone records will help us find the answer.”