Under the Lake

by Stuart Woods

  “And I want the gun. Now.”

  Scotty pulled back. “I don’t know…”

  “Listen, the heat’s off with Bo. You can only get yourself into trouble with that gun.”

  She turned her eyes to the floor for a moment and thought. “Oh, shit, all right,” she said, finally. She went to her handbag and fished out the little revolver.

  Howell unloaded it and put it and the bullets in his desk drawer. He felt better, now, but they only had three days, and he had the feeling that if he didn’t resolve the O’Coineen question by that time, he might never have the chance again. He had a lot to do in the meantime.

  30

  Bo left the office and drove slowly through the town. He had been relieved when John Howell had come clean about Scotty, but now something felt wrong. He knew from reading Howell’s investigative stuff and his book that he was a clever and tenacious reporter, and Bo felt himself getting off a little too easily where Howell was concerned. His description of Scotty as a green cub rang true, and he now felt little fear of her, but Howell was another matter. Bo was worried.

  He had nearly a million in Switzerland, and if he was going to stick it out here, what was the point of taking this risk for another eighty thousand bucks? He was greedy, God knew, but he wasn’t stupid. Alarm bells he didn’t even understand were going off, and he was listening.

  He reached the parking lot outside Minnie Wilson’s grocery store a couple of minutes before the hour and sat in the car for a bit. When there was half a minute left, he got out of the car, went to the pay phone in the parking lot, dialed a number, fed the phone some quarters, and waited. The phone was answered before the first ring was complete.

  “Okay, I got your message.”

  “We’ve got problems; I’m canceling.”

  “What problems?”

  “There’s a reporter up here sniffing around.” Bo didn’t feel it necessary to mention that the reporter had been working in his office for more than three months. “Apparently, there have been some rumors.”

  “Does he know what, where, and when?”

  “No, but – ”

  “No buts. We’re on.”

  Bo began to sweat. “I say whether we’re on or not. It’s off.”

  “Scully, let me tell you something. This delivery has been in the works for nearly a year. The stuff has been stockpiling in a jungle for that long. What we’ve been bringing in in light planes the last couple of years is nothing compared to this. A lot of time and a lot of money have been invested, and the people who invested it are expecting a big return. Why do you think your end is eighty?”

  “Now, listen – ”

  “Ours is the third of three aircraft to be used to keep the feds off the track. We’re on a tight schedule; we have to pick up on time, and we have to deliver on time. My plane left this morning; it picks up tomorrow; it delivers when you were told it would. If you’ve got problems on your end, solve them. You understand me? Listen, because I’m telling you this like a friend. You confirmed a week ago. Everything is in motion, now. If that load doesn’t deliver and distribute when we said it would, you will be the only reason. The people we’re dealing with won’t let you live an hour. You think there’s no backup at your end? They’ll be there. That plane lands, unloads, and takes off on schedule, or you’re a dead man. There, on the spot. Is that plain enough for you?

  Sweat was rolling out of Bo’s armpits and down his flesh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “No guessing. We’re on as confirmed, right?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Say it. Confirmed.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “I’ll tell them you said so.” The connection was broken.

  Bo hung up and pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the phone booth. He had never thought they’d have anybody on the ground here. Maybe that was a bluff, but probably not. If what his contact had said about the load was true, backup on the ground made a lot of sense. It was the sort of thing he’d do himself, if he were running things. He took a couple of deep breaths and resigned himself to what was coming. He’d just have to make sure it went smoothly.

  Bo got back into the car and started the engine. As he started to pull into traffic, he glanced down the road and saw something that interested him. A few hundred yards away, in the little hilltop cemetery, were two men. One was on his hands and knees, doing something to some shrubbery, the other stood over him, watching him work. Bo put on the emergency brake and reached into the glove compartment for his binoculars.

  The man tending the Scully family plot was the filling station attendant, Benny Pope. The man reaching into his pocket for money and paying him was the lawyer, Enda McCauliffe.

  He watched as McCauliffe walked back to his car and drove toward town. Bo put the car into gear and followed. The lawyer parked in front of his office, put some money into the parking meter, and walked down the street to Bubba’s. Bo parked and followed him in.

  “How you doin‘, Mac?” Bo asked as he slid into the booth opposite the lawyer.

  “Not bad, Bo.”

  Bo ordered coffee and stirred in some sugar. “Mac,” he said, gazing out the window into the middle distance, “I was out at the old cemetery the other day – first time in a real long time – and I couldn’t help but notice that my family’s plot was very nicely taken care of; even had some fresh flowers. I was surprised, because I never did anything to the plot myself, and everybody who’s related to me around here is buried in it.”

  Bo stopped for a reaction. There was none. The lawyer sat, looking at the table, drinking his coffee.

  Bo continued. “I was surprised especially, because just about all the other plots, your family’s included, were rough and grown over. And yet, just a few minutes ago, I saw you out there, paying Benny Pope to work on my family’s plot. Now, I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I sure am curious as to why you would do something like that for my folks when you wouldn’t do it for yours?”

  McCauliffe took a sip of his coffee and put down the cup. “I’m sorry, Bo, but I can’t talk to you about that.”

  Bo sat and looked at the lawyer in amazement. “Why not?”

  McCauliffe put a half dollar on the table and got up. “Coffee’s on me, Bo, but I can’t talk to you about the cemetery. Please don’t ask me again.” He turned and walked out of Bubba’s.

  Bo sank back into the booth and watched the lawyer leave. He sat in the booth, drinking coffee for nearly an hour, letting his mind drift around the problem, and finally, something occurred to him – just a fleeting idea. As he considered it, it began to make sense; all the known circumstances fit, and if there was anything at all to what he thought, he had a new reason to sit tight in Sutherland County, and the hell with Switzerland.

  A crunch was coming, he could feel it, and, he reflected, in a crunch Bo Scully had a way of protecting himself. He had learned a long time ago about his instinct for self-preservation – in Korea and afterward – and he had no doubt that, when the time came, he would do whatever was necessary to survive again. It wouldn’t matter who got hurt. It hadn’t mattered before, although he still sometimes dreamed about it, and it wouldn’t matter this time, either. He would do what had to be done.

  Enda McCauliffe let himself into his office, hung up his coat, and flopped heavily onto the new sofa. He wondered how he had let himself land in the middle of all this. He got up and opened his new safe, got out the file and read through the document again. He didn’t want to know all this stuff. If he’d had any idea what had happened so many years ago, he might never have gotten mixed up in this, but now he knew nearly everything and suspected more. He stared at the other envelope in his safe, Bo’s signed and witnessed document. With some difficulty, he resisted the urge to rip it open and read the contents.

  He knew that Howell was onto something, too. The priest, Father Harry, had told McCauliffe about his visit to the cabin and the questions asked. He hoped the lec
ture he had given the old man had put a stop to any more idle chatter from him. And to think it was he himself who had first put the flea in Howell’s ear. What a stupid, mischievous thing to do; but he hadn’t known that at the time. He had been out just to annoy Eric Sutherland, to pick at his scabs. If only he’d known more at the beginning, instead of now. If only Sutherland had told him the truth sooner.

  The genie wasn’t going back into the bottle, he could feel that. Maybe he could, somehow, limit the damage. He didn’t see what else he could do.

  31

  Howell was as nervous as a cat. It was the morning of the ninth; Bo Scully’s shipment was due to arrive at three-thirty the following morning, and nothing was going right. He wished he had a few more days, another week, maybe, to bring it all together. The goddamned film hadn’t even arrived, and without it, Scotty wasn’t going to get any photographic evidence; in the circumstances, she could hardly use a flash. He had called Atlanta twice and had been assured it was on the way.

  But what worried him even more was that he was stuck on the O’Coineen mystery, absolutely stuck. He had thought that, somehow, he could bring that to a head along with Scotty’s evidence against Bo, but it wasn’t happening. He was losing; he could feel it.

  There were a couple of things he wanted to know, sure. But he didn’t know how to find them out. He had been to see the priest, Father Harry, but the old man had clammed up tight, after accepting a bottle of good Irish whisky. He suddenly didn’t want to talk about the O’Coineens again. Somebody had been at him, Howell thought.

  He walked up to the mailbox and found a special delivery notice. At least the film had arrived; that lazy bastard of a postman might have brought it down to the house. Special delivery, my ass, Howell thought. Still, he didn’t mind going into town; he was too nervous to work. A letter had been forwarded from Atlanta, too: a New York Times envelope, hand addressed, the name “Allen” written in the upper left-hand comer. His old boss. Not like him to send personal notes, Howell thought. He ripped it open. “Dear John,” it said. “Don’t know what you’re doing with yourself these days. Nairobi’s opening up next month. You want it?” No closing; it was signed “Bob.”

  Howard crumpled the letter and threw it as far as he could. Nairobi! The place that had been a running joke between them for years as the place in the whole world he would least like to work. You could always go back to the Times once, they said. This was that sadistic bastard Allen’s way of saying if he wanted to go back, he’d have to crawl. The letter wasn’t even worth replying to; Allen could go fuck himself. That sort of aggravation was all he needed today, with everything else on his mind.

  The station wagon wouldn’t start. Howell tried repeatedly before he was able to admit to himself that he had let it run out of gas. He pounded silently on the steering wheel a few times, then he called Ed Parker’s filling station; Ed promised to send out some gas right away.

  After a few minutes, Benny Pope pulled up in Ed Parker’s pickup truck and unloaded a five-gallon can from the back. “You run right out, did you?” he grinned. “Well, that’s what we’re here for.”

  Howell watched the man empty the can into the station wagon’s fuel tank. He got behind the wheel and, after a few tries, the engine came to life again.

  “Well, I’ll be getting back,” Benny said, and turned to go to the truck.

  “Hang on a minute, Benny,” Howell said.

  Benny stopped and came back, his usual grin in place. “Yessir, anything else I can do for you?”

  “Benny, you don’t like it around here, do you?”

  Benny looked puzzled. “Why sure,” he said. “I’ve never lived anywhere else. I was born and raised right here. I like it fine.”

  “No, I mean right here, around this cabin, around this part of the lake.”

  Benny’s grin disappeared.

  Howell kept his voice friendly and gentle. “I remember a while back, you said you didn’t want to come up here at night, and the day you brought the outboard out here, you wouldn’t get onto the water. Why was that?”

  “Well… the cove just makes me nervous, that’s all.”

  “Something happen to you here, Benny, in the cove?”

  “Yessir,” Benny said with no further hesitation, “you could say I’ve had a couple of experiences around here I wouldn’t want to go through again.”

  “Something to do with the O’Coineens?”

  Benny looked surprised. “You know about the O’Coineens?”

  “Not as much as I’d like to. Tell me about your experiences.”

  Benny leaned against the fender of the pickup and pointed out over the lake. “Well, I was out there one night, right out there, fishing, and I seen under the lake.”

  “Benny,” Howell said, “I know it’s early, but let me buy you a drink.”

  They went into the house and Howell poured them both a generous bourbon. Half an hour later Howell knew that he and Benny Pope had been sharing a vision; only for Benny, it had been the real thing.

  “I know you’re sure it was Eric Sutherland’s car, Benny, but are you sure he was driving it?”

  Benny screwed his face up tight with the remembering. “Well, now you mention it, I can’t say that I am. It was Mr. Sutherland’s car; I just reckoned it was him driving it.”

  Howell leaned forward in his chair. “Now, Benny, what happened after the car drove away? Do you remember that?”

  “Well, sir, you understand I was a little bit worse for the wear that night. I’d been at some shine for quite a little while. I used to come up here to the picnic place and have a few some nights.”

  “Do you remember anything at all after the car drove away?”

  “Just a noise. It was like a loud noise from a long way off. I guess I dozed off after that; I didn’t wake up until after daylight.”

  “Did you look at the O’Coineen house again when you woke up?”

  “Yessir, I did. Least ways I looked where it used to be. It was under the lake.”

  Howell picked up the film at the post office and signed for the package. Then he began to drive south through the town. There were only two people who could tell him what he wanted to know about that night in 1952. One of them had already lied to him about it, he thought; now it was time to go and see the other one.

  It would have only caused trouble to approach Eric Sutherland before, but now the Lurton Pitts autobiography was nearly finished; even if Sutherland got mad it couldn’t matter much. It occurred to Howell that if Sutherland had got rid of the O’Coineens, he might feel no compunction about getting rid of a nosy reporter. He felt it might be prudent to tell Sutherland that he had shared his suspicions with people in Atlanta. That would give him some sort of insurance. Confronting Sutherland might be an incautious thing to do, but Howell had the very strong feeling that it was now or never, that he was running out of time.

  He pulled into the circular drive of the big house and parked at the front door. The atmosphere was peaceful; the sun shone, and flowers bloomed. Howell wondered whether it would be so peaceful after he had bearded the lion in his den.

  He got out of the car and walked to the front door, which was ajar. He pressed the doorbell and heard the chimes clearly from inside. No one came to the door. Where was old Alfred? Off doing the grocery shopping? Wasn’t there a cook, too?

  Howell pushed the door open a foot and stuck his head in. “Hello!” he called out. “Anybody home?” He found himself hoping there wouldn’t be. He was still a little afraid of Sutherland. And he would dearly love a few minutes alone in his house.

  “Mr. Sutherland?” He pushed the door open further and stepped into the entrance hall. There was a small echo as his heel met the gleaming, mahogany floor. “Hello? Anybody home?” He walked boldly down the hall, straight through to the door opening onto the broad, rear veranda, with its commanding view of the lake. There was no one out back, either. He walked down the back lawn to the little office building he had once broken into. No one
there: the door was tightly locked, and he didn’t have a Neiman’s credit card, this time.

  He walked quickly back to the house and called out again a couple of times. He was, apparently, alone at the house, for however short a time, and it was tempting. He had already had a thorough look out in Sutherland’s office; he wondered, now, what might be in the study. Making no effort to be quiet, just in case someone was in the house, he walked toward the study door. As he approached it, he could see his own reflection in one glass door of the shotgun case. The other door was open. The next thing he saw was a bare foot.

  He stopped in his tracks and regarded it for a moment. It was a large foot, long and narrow, very white. The toes seemed particularly long. The foot of a tall man. It protruded from behind the chesterfield sofa. Howell took another step. The other foot was there, too, resting at an odd angle to its companion. Those, Howell said to himself, are the feet of a tall, white, dead man.

  Howell took two more steps into the room and made himself look at the rest. The body, clad in silk pajamas and dressing gown, lay as if it had slipped off the sofa, propped halfway up against the arm. The wall behind the sofa held a smashed hunting print, hanging at a crazy angle, and a substantial portion of Eric Sutherland’s brains. Howell looked back at the body. All that remained of the head was the lower jaw, attached to a partly scooped-out shell that had been the back of the skull. It still had ears.

  Howell stood still and tried to breathe normally. He had seen his share of corpses, but never one quite like this. And he had never been the first on the scene. He looked slowly and carefully around the room. A beautifully engraved shotgun lay near the body; alongside it was a yellow pencil. The desk seemed undisturbed. A small safe next to it was closed. Nothing else seemed out of place. Howell stepped to the desk, being careful not to trip over anything or step in anything. He took a ballpoint pen from his pocket, stuck it through the handle of the middle drawer and opened it. He poked around with the pen. Nothing unusual; paper clips, rubber bands, a checkbook. He opened the other drawers: a bundle of bank statements, some stationery, stamps. The sort of stuff he’d expect to find in anybody’s desk.