by Jeramy Gates
“Do you remember anything about the crime scene?” Tanja said. “Any blood, or equipment out of place?”
“Just the wrench the killer used on her. Everything was just the way we left it, except for the body floating in the cream. I always kept this place spotless, not that you’d know it now. That didn’t matter to the health inspectors. Once the murder happened, they just wanted to shut me down, that’s all.”
“Neither of you knew the victim?” I said.
“Nope. We’d never seen her before. She was a pretty girl. They say she was a cheerleader. There was a big write-up about her in the Press Democrat.”
“We’ll have to check the archives,” I said. “Might make it easier to track down her family and friends.”
“I’ve got the paper,” Shelly said. “You can have it if you want.”
“Are you sure you have it? That was five years ago.”
“It’s in my file cabinet. Stuck it in there the weekend they shut me down. Ain’t looked at it since. Hang on, I’ll go get it.”
Shelly wandered back in the direction of the office. Tanja and I took a minute to look the place over. We didn’t find anything but rust and cobwebs. As we walked out of the building, I noticed that one of the hills across the road looked unusual. From the higher vantage at the end of the parking area, I could see that it had a broad, flat top. When Shelly returned with the paper, I asked her about it.
“Oh, that’s not a hill, that’s our reservoir,” she said. “There was a pond up there originally, but back in the eighteen hundreds, the farmer who owned the place expanded it into a reservoir. He used it for irrigation in the summer. My family never did any farming but we used it for drinking water for the cattle. Dad used to fish trout up there, too, just between you, me, and the fencepost.”
“Why?” said Tanja. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“It takes a special permit,” I said. “You can’t store water without being licensed, and you can’t stock fish, or catch them.”
“Even on your own property?” she said.
“Especially on your own property,” Shelly said with a laugh. “If you’re gonna fish without a license, best do it on somebody else’s land. Dad didn’t care about that, though. The reservoir was legal, but he didn’t have a permit for stocking fish. I guess it doesn’t matter, now that he’s dead and the place is sold.”
“I see,” said Tanja. “Well thank you very much for your help, Mrs. Smith.”
“Sure thing.”
“Do you mind if I go up there and take a look?” I said.
“At the reservoir? Suit yourself. Just close the gate on your way out.”
“Will do,” I assured her. “Enjoy Alaska.”
“You bet your booty I will.”
We drove a few hundred yards down the public road, to the access point for the reservoir. I jumped out to open the gate. Tanja offered to do it, but I wasn’t about to let my pregnant wife go tromping through the mud. After pulling it open, I jumped back in the Suburban and drove up the narrow road to the top of the slope.
Tanja stayed in the car while I got out to look around. I stood on the embankment looking down at the water’s edge. I turned my head slowly, taking in the view. The reservoir was surprisingly large; big enough to call a lake. We had parked at the southern end. Trees and bushes sprouted up along the western edge on my left, and north of the lake rose a tall, oak-covered hill. To the east, I could just barely see the roofs of the dairy buildings. Tanja rolled down the window.
“What are you looking for?” she said.
“Becky’s car was never found, right?” I said.
“You think her car’s in there?”
“I don’t know.”
I climbed down the slope to the level of the water. I peered into the reservoir, but couldn’t see anything in that murky water except the choppy reflection of the sky and my own shaved head. Tanja crawled out of the Suburban and stood at the top of the embankment, looking down on me. She gazed out across the water, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.
“Did the file say anything about this reservoir?” I said.
“Not a word.”
I started pulling off my boots.
“Joe, what are you doing?”
“Just taking a look.”
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about going in that water. It’s freezing. And disgusting!”
“It’s too hazy to see anything up here,” I said. “And we don’t have the time or money to sweep the whole pond.” I pulled off my shirt and dove into the water.
I instantly regretted it. Tanja was right about the water’s temperature. It was somewhere around forty-five degrees, but it felt like ice. The second I went under, my entire body went rigid and every instinct I had told me to gasp for breath. I fought the urge, forcing my limbs to move as I paddled towards the surface. I broke through, sucked in a huge gulp of air, and forced myself to dive back under.
Keep moving! was all I could think. It would warm up eventually. It had to.
I dove deeper, paddling cautiously because the sunlight couldn’t penetrate more than a few feet of the hazy green water. The last thing I wanted to do was slam my face into a piece of rusty old metal, and cut myself to shreds. I’d be facing a whole slew of shots and antibiotics if I did.
I surfaced again, and treaded water for a few seconds. My lungs were burning, my breath coming in short, abrupt gasps. My skin was beginning to tingle. I told myself it was just my body adapting to the new temperature and not the early stages of hypothermia. My teeth chattered, and I could only stop them by clenching my jaw.
“Do you see anything?” Tanja called out. I shook my head and dove back under.
I spent about ten minutes total in the water. I swam along the banks, where it seemed most likely that the killer might have pushed the car in. When I didn’t find anything there, I moved out towards the middle of the lake, thinking perhaps that the vehicle had floated out a ways before sinking.
In the center, I went down three times, each time pushing myself farther, hoping to find the car, or at least to find the bottom. I didn’t find either one, but I did manage to make my ears pop so painfully that I cried out. When I finally gave up and returned to shore, I was shaking uncontrollably, and my skin had taken on an unhealthy bluish pallor.
“What were you thinking?” Tanja said as I donned my dry shirt. I climbed into the passenger seat, turned on the heat, and pushed my hands and feet pushed up to the heater vents.
“H-h-had to l-l-look,” I stammered.
“Had to give yourself hypothermia is more like it. What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re not twelve anymore, Joe. You could have given yourself a heart attack.”
“N-nah,” was all I could manage.
Tanja took over driving duties, even though she hated driving when she was pregnant. She guided the Suburban down the slope very cautiously, because she couldn’t see the edges of the road. At the bottom, I hopped out to close the gate. I grimaced as the sharp gravel on the road bit into my bare feet. It was then, as I latched the gate and limped back to the car, that I realized she was right. I was an idiot. Not that I was going to tell her that.
We were halfway home by the time my fingers were warm enough to lace my boots back up. Tanja was about to turn down our street when I stopped her.
“Wait,” I said. “Let’s pay Grandma a visit.”
“Now?” she said, mystified.
“Yeah. I just thought of something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll show you when we get there.”
Tanja rolled her eyes, but followed my instructions. She knows it’s a waste of time arguing with me when I get in these moods. I tend to spring things on her all the time. That’s because things never work out when I plan ahead. Sometimes, it seems like there’s some universal force out there listening to everything I say, just waiting to screw up my plans as soon as I announce them.
I never plan
camping trips ahead of time, for example. If I talk about it, something will go wrong. It always does. One of us will be called into work, the weather will turn stormy, or something else will go wrong. So, instead of planning ahead, I wait until the night before. I tell her we’re leaving early the next day. Tanja hates it of course, but she has learned to trust my instincts. She’s seen the stupid things that happen when I don’t act spontaneously.
When we pulled off the road leading to my grandmother’s property in Alexander Valley, I had two things in mind. The first was to find out if she’d kept grandpa’s old aluminum fishing boat. If she had, I wanted to take it back to the reservoir and use the fish finder to search for underwater objects. That was the only way to be sure if that car was on the bottom of the lake or not. The second was to tell her that I’d had a talk with Sheriff Diekmann and that she didn’t need to worry about me. I’d be just fine.
As we pulled into the drive, I saw Diekmann’s truck parked in front of the house and I forgot everything else. My mind instantly assumed the worst. Grandma had fallen down… or, God forbid, had a heart attack…
“Oh, no,” Tanja said. “Joe, I hope Grandma’s okay.”
I didn’t say anything. I had my seatbelt off and the door open before she could even stop the car. I jumped out, ran to the front door and burst in without knocking. Standing in the entryway next to the living room, I shouted, “Grandma! Are you okay?”
“Just a minute,” she called from upstairs. “I’m getting dressed. I’ll be right down!”
I frowned, wondering what the heck Grandma was doing without her clothes on at four o’clock in the afternoon. Then I remembered Diekmann’s truck parked outside.
Chapter 6
Joe
Half an hour later, I was on the redwood deck out back, flipping burgers on the barbecue and staring out across the vineyards. I was sipping a beer. It wasn’t my first and it wouldn’t be my last. Diekmann wasn’t drinking; he was just staring guiltily at the mountain range to the north. Tanja watched me with a quiet, discomforting gaze while Grandma was somewhere inside, cutting tomatoes and sautéing mushrooms for the burgers.
That was how it had been for an hour. Quiet, uncomfortable, the only words spoken done so in haste as if every syllable might potentially set off a bomb. They were all walking on eggshells, and it was because of me. I knew it, but what was I supposed to say? Sure, Grandpa had been dead for ten years. It was only natural for Grandma to crave companionship… but Sheriff Diekmann?
And this wasn’t a game of bridge or teatime with her lady friends. This was sex. My stomach churned. She was seventy for God’s sake. Seventy-year-old grandmas don’t have sex. They. Just. Don’t. And no one would ever convince me otherwise.
“How are the burgers, Joe?” Grandma said through the kitchen window.
“A few more minutes.”
After another long silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. I stared at Diekmann.
“We visited with Shelly Smith this afternoon,” I said.
“Smith?” he said, gazing into the distance. It took a few seconds for him to remember. “The dairy farm owner? Don’t tell me she was any help.”
“Not really. I would like to get a closer look at that reservoir, though.”
“What reservoir?”
I told him briefly about my exploration of the frigid lake. Tanja added in her bit about me acting like an idiot and diving right in, which Diekmann found amusing but managed not to laugh.
“I think sonar might do the trick,” I said. “I’d like to go back there tonight.”
“I’m sure my men would have considered that at the time.”
“There’s nothing about it in the file.”
He considered that. “They wouldn’t have overlooked something so obvious. More likely, they checked the area for tracks and didn’t find any. Or, the water was so low at the time that it wasn’t even suspect.”
“That would make sense,” said Tanja, “but it would have been nice for them to note that in their reports. Unfortunately, we can only guess now as to what they did or did not do.”
Diekmann looked askance at me. “I think I’m being lectured.”
“Welcome to my world,” I said. Tanja threw her beer cap at me. I ducked, and it went sailing out across the lawn.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” said Diekmann. “But why tonight? What’s the rush? Becky’s been dead five years, and if the car has been in that pond all this time, it’s not going anywhere.”
“Shelly just sold the farm. The new owner is taking possession tomorrow. She gave us permission to investigate the lake, so I want to do it tonight, while she still owns it. We might not get another chance to check it out.”
“It’ll probably be a lot of work for nothing.”
“Maybe, but I’d rather know it was for nothing than have it nagging at me because I never looked into it.”
“All right, I’ll go with you.”
I glanced at Tanja and saw her smiling. I could see her gears turning. She thought this was some sort of male bonding thing. Bonding over the fact that Diekmann and my grandma were… ugh. Not bloody likely.
“You sure?” I said. “It’ll be cold and dark. Wouldn’t want you to catch pneumonia.”
“Very funny,” said Diekmann. “I may be old, but I’m not that fragile. I’ll give you a hand pulling that boat out of the barn after dinner. You’re not turning down an official escort by the sheriff are you?”
“I suppose not.”
“Good,” Tanja said with a radiant smile. “It’s settled. You two do that, and I’ll stay here with Grandma to catch up on the gossip.”
I bet you will, I thought with a grimace.
It turned out that Grandma had saved Grandpa’s boat all those years, but what she didn’t tell us was that Grandpa had stored it in the rafters of the barn. Not only that, but the rope and pulley system he’d used to get it up there had been rusting and rotting for ten years. Getting the thing safely to the floor without destroying the boat or hurting ourselves was like performing brain surgery with a machete.
It took an hour and a few minor bruises to get the boat down, and another to get it loaded safely on top of the suburban. The only good luck we had was that the sonar was still mounted inside, and after we’d changed the batteries, it appeared to be working just fine.
Diekmann and I finally got to the reservoir around midnight. By the time we had parked, a storm had begun to move in and we could see flashes of lightning over the mountains towards the coast. That was when my hip decided to gimp up on me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my cane because I had been doing so well for the last few days. My swim in the icy water earlier that day must have set it off, because suddenly I was walking like a pirate with a peg leg.
That meant the two of us -Diekmann, a sixty-eight year old man well beyond the prime of his life, and me, hobbled by my injury- had to unload the boat and get it to the water in the dark. We must have made quite a sight as the two of us worked frantically to get the boat unloaded and launched before the rain came. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so frustrating.
By the light of the headlights, we somehow managed to get the boat down to the shore. After that, I had to shut them off for fear of the battery going dead. I had to find my way back down the embankment in the dark, with my bad hip threatening to give out on me any second. Diekmann waited patiently at the shoreline, holding the boat halfway on dry land. As I reached him, the wind began to blow and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the rain started.
I steadied the old aluminum hull while Diekmann climbed in. I jumped in after him, and grabbed the oars. I got three pulls away from shore before it began to rain.
“Christ almighty,” Diekmann said as he fired up the sonar. “I don’t know what you did Joe, but you’ve got some bad karma.”
“Maybe it’s not me,” I grumbled. My frustration gave me strength I didn’t know I had. With a few more strokes, we were out in the middle of the lake. I started
to turn the rowboat, moving it in a slow circle around the reservoir as Diekmann watched the sonar display.
“I don’t blame you,” Diekmann said. “In your shoes, I’d be upset, too. But I think you should know you’re behaving like a spoiled brat.”
I pulled the oars out of the water and leaned forward, staring at him. “Come again? Last time I checked, you were the one taking advantage of your friendship with my Grandma to get laid.”
For a second there, it looked like Diekmann might reach across the boat and smack me. Instead, he turned his attention back to the sonar. “I understand why you said that. You’re angry. I want you to understand that it was your grandmother who reached out to me, not the other way around. I never would have initiated this, Joe. Your grandfather was too good a friend. I wouldn’t do that to his memory. Your grandmother is lonely though, and she has a right to move on. Both of us do, whether you want us to or not. Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean she should have to be alone the rest of her life.”
I grimaced, imagining the two of them in each other’s arms. “It’s her decision,” I grumbled. “As long as she doesn’t get hurt.”
“Oh, come on, Joe. Quit talking to me like a stranger. I’ve known you since you were running around the farm in diapers. You know that I’d never do anything to hurt you or your grandmother. You know me better than that. Or, at least I thought you did.”
I turned guiltily away, staring at the shore. “Fine. Can we talk about something else?”
He snorted and shook his head. “We’ve been around the lake twice and I haven’t seen anything yet. Why don’t you take her over by that clump of bushes? It looks like there may have been a dock over there once.”
I turned the boat and headed in that direction. At first, I couldn’t make out anything on the shore except for the shadowy silhouette of shrubs and small trees. As we got closer, the moon came out from behind a cloud and I saw two posts rising up out of the water, right at the water’s edge.
