Lake of Tears

by Mary Logue

  “I’m her fiancé. We’re getting married right before Thanksgiving. She said she’d give me a call last night. Never heard from her.”

  “Okay. But what’s your name?”

  “Terry. Terry Whitman.”

  Amy didn’t recognize the name. “And where do you live?”

  “Here in Durand. I moved here a couple years ago. Used to live in Woodbury, in Minnesota.”

  “And who’s missing?”

  “Tammy Lee Johansen.”

  The name buzzed through Amy’s brain. She knew Tammy Lee. A couple years ahead of her in high school. Big blond girl with lots of teeth. Pretty, but not super bright. “Does she live with you?”

  “No, not yet. We’re trying to find a place, but she still lives on her own. We thought we’d wait until after the wedding. I think her folks would like that. But we see each other nearly every day.”

  “So the last time anyone saw her was on Friday?”

  “Yeah, that’s what it looks like. I thought she was at her folks’, her folks thought she was with me. So no one missed her until late Saturday when I called over there. Her mom said she hadn’t come home Friday night. We both figured maybe she had gone into the Cities to see her sister. She does that sometimes. Couldn’t get in touch with her sister. So we weren’t too worried. But then her mom talked to her sister last night, and Tammy wasn’t there. We started checking around. Nobody has seen her since Friday. Her mom’s not too worried, but I am.”

  Amy couldn’t help but think of the bones they had found. But Tammy had probably gone to see a friend for a couple of days. She must be in her mid-twenties, with the big wedding event happening, and decided to take a break from life. Amy felt like that once in a while.

  “Why don’t you come in and fill out a missing person’s report?” Amy suggested, as he seemed somewhat calmer.

  “Okay. She could be hurt or kidnapped. I mean, what if something really bad has happened to her?”

  “We will start checking into it. Have you called the hospital? Other friends? Does she work?”

  “She isn’t supposed to be at work until tonight. She works at the Pump and Dump. I haven’t checked the hospital. Figured they’d call us if something bad happened. I’ve tried a few of her friends.”

  “Does she have her purse?”

  “Yes. Her mom checked her place and it’s not there, so she must have it.”

  “What about a car?”

  “Her car is gone, too. It’s an old Chevy, nothing special.”

  “Listen, come on in. We can’t do anything until we have all the information. I’ll be here all morning. We can go over the contacts you should try that will help you find her.”

  “Okay. Yeah, I’ll be over.”

  Amy didn’t know why she asked, but sometimes she didn’t know when to leave things alone. “Did you two have a fight or anything recently?”

  “What?” The snarl came back into his voice. He yelled, “You think this is my fault?”

  “Just asking. I know a wedding can be a stressful time. Even a small quarrel can sometimes cause someone to take off for a few days.”

  “Tammy and me aren’t like that. I wouldn’t hurt her in a million years. We’ve never had a fight.”

  How unusual, Amy thought.

  Sitting in front of the TV, watching Oprah with his mom, Andrew knew he had to move out of his parents’ house. He couldn’t believe he was nearly thirty and back home again. But he was finding it so hard to do anything constructive, and the thought of all that was involved in moving out stymied him—finding a place, dealing with a landlord, new furniture, cooking. But maybe worst of all, being alone.

  He hadn’t had a minute to himself for years. In Afghanistan, he had bunked with a whole slew of guys, shoulder to shoulder sometimes. As bad as the situation had been over there, you were never alone.

  When he was alone the bad feelings were the worst. They would swarm him. He felt like that girl Pandora who opened the box. If he didn’t have something to take his mind off of what had happened, it all came rushing back at him, biting, insisting on taking over his mind.

  At least at his parents’ he could hear them moving around, his mom cooked great meals for him and was constantly talking, the TV was always going, Dad had his radio on downstairs, the dog was in and out of the house. The house was never quiet. He was reminded, all the time, that he wasn’t over in Afghanistan anymore. No more war. He was finally home.

  “I think she’s gained a few pounds again,” his mom said.

  “Who’s gained weight?” he asked.

  “Oprah, she really struggles with it.” His mom slapped her full stomach under a knitted sweater. “I know what that’s like. But not you. You’re still skinny. I thought after a few months of eating my food, you’d start to put some back on.”

  “I have, Mom. About ten pounds.”

  “Man, you were thin when you came home. Andrew, what did they feed you over there?”

  “You don’t want to know, believe me. Just packaged stuff that we could scarf down. Different colors, but tasted all the same. Good old MREs.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  He laughed. “The army never likes to say the full words to anything. Everything’s always a code or an abbreviation. MRE stands for Meal Ready to Eat. A typical MRE would have some meat, a starch, peanut butter, always peanut butter, and then your candy. Oh, and moist towelettes. Can’t forget those. Don’t want to get your hands dirty.” He could feel his anger rising in him, just talking about the food they ate. No wonder he didn’t say much to his parents about what had gone on over there on his tour of duty.

  Andrew stood up and walked to the back door. Being scared had made him hungry, and being hungry had made him scared. His mom wasn’t the best cook in the world, but he was so happy to be eating her meatloaf again.

  Still hours to go until he could pick Meg up. He hadn’t had a woman in his arms in way too long. He’d have to watch himself so he didn’t eat her up. She had seemed as fresh and sweet as a strawberry the other night. Andrew wondered what she was really like; he wondered if he would find out.

  He sat down on the stoop and watched the farmer in the next field haying. His dad was talking about taking another pass through the fields. The weather was staying pretty good. Wasn’t supposed to rain again until next weekend. That would give the hay enough time to dry in the field.

  His shoulders slumped. Often he felt like he was still carrying something on his back. Hard to get over that feeling after always having gear hanging off of you. And he still had unfinished business he had to take care of.

  The first thing he swore he would do when he got home was get in touch with Doug, and he hadn’t even done it yet. Andrew had dialed the number for Doug’s parents a couple of times, but then he’d hung up before the call went through.

  Doug had been his best buddy over there. Doug, and Brian. They had been the reasons he had made it through. Without them, he would have lost it. He was sure of that. They made him laugh. Especially Doug. He could just be unbelievably funny, rude as all get-out. Infantile fart jokes, raunchy sex jokes, stupid knock-knock jokes. Whatever it took.

  He had to know how Doug was doing, after what had happened, but he was afraid to find out. He wasn’t even sure Doug would talk to him. He wasn’t even sure Doug could talk.

  When a guy got shipped out for medical reasons, they often got no news of them back at the outpost. It was like they just disappeared off the face of the earth.

  That was the thing about Afghanistan that most people didn’t get. It wasn’t the United States. Being over there wasn’t like real life. More like one of those weird horrible episodes of The Twilight Zone where nothing is the way it’s supposed to be, and just when you think you’ve got it figured out and you wake up or you escape, then it gets even worse. Then you know you really might not make it out alive.

  “Can I do anything to help?” Claire asked as she watched Pinkers carefully step up to the site of the bones an
d then curve over the area, his back forming a perfect U-shape. In that moment, he so reminded her of an egret—even the slow and deliberate way he moved was like a bird picking his way through the shallows.

  “Please stand back,” he said without turning in her direction. “I can use your eyes, but I need to do this myself. I’m going to take a few quick photos of the site and then I’ll start to remove the bones.”

  “We’ve taken extensive crime scene shots already.”

  He turned his head toward her without changing his position. “I understand, and I’m sure they’re of higher quality than what I will take, but I need to have my own record. I know what I’m looking for. This will help me recall the position of all the bones so I can reassemble them in the lab.”

  “Right.” She trusted him. His very weirdness made her trust him more. She could tell he was so focused on his work right now that he didn’t even want to talk to her. Time to be quiet and just watch him.

  She took a couple of steps back and surveyed the whole scene. A crisp fall morning by the lake. The thermometer had read just above freezing when she checked it at six. But the sky was clear and the sun was well above the bluff line. The day would warm up nicely, maybe even get into the sixties.

  Claire had never worked with only bare bones before. Not only did she not know who the murder victim was—and murder was what she was starting to think it had to be, why else would someone try to destroy the body?—but she didn’t know how or where the murder had taken place.

  All she had in front of her was the end result of what must have been a nasty crime, like the period at the end of a sentence. That’s all she knew, and somehow she had to work backward and try to begin to make out the words that came before it: the people, the fight, the reasons, the actions that led to this small pile of bones lying on the ground in the cold air.

  Dr. Pinkers had pulled a digital camera out of one of the many pockets that dotted his vest. He started at the head and was slowly taking shots, moving down the length of the body.

  Interesting that the body had been placed so its head was toward the front of the boat. This placement showed a kind of care that made her wonder about the relationship between the victim and the killer. Or was it just habitual, done without thinking? Like putting a body on a bed; even in haste one would naturally put the head toward the head of the bed.

  When Pinkers finished taking photos, he stepped away from the site and pocketed the camera.

  He lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Did you say something about coffee?”

  “Two thermoses,” she told him. “Even brought a mug for you.”

  “Some coffee would be lovely. Don’t let me drink too much or my hands start to shake, and that’s not good in this line of work.”

  Claire pulled a mug out of the pack in the back of the car and filled it for him, then refilled her own. “How long do you think it’s going to take you?”

  He glanced back at the site. “This is almost as easy as it gets. The bones have been seared clean. And they’ve not been disorganized. The structure of the body is still there. I’ll start by collecting the skull, and work down to the feet.” He looked out over the lake. “In another hour or so the light should be very good here. That will make all this even easier.”

  “Are you seeing anything new?”

  “All I can tell so far confirms my feeling of yesterday that these are the bones of a female human. The skull size, the width of the innominate bone.”

  “What bone is that?”

  “Sorry—that partially comprises the pelvis, as I mentioned before. We used to depend on the skull to tell sex, but that’s not proven to be as reliable. I will know more as soon as I remove all this to the lab.”

  “How soon?”

  “I should be able to give you an approximation of age and a definitive answer on the sex within a day or two.”

  “That’s great.”

  He lifted his head and shook it as if trying to keep an irritant away. “But I do have some sad news.”

  Claire was struck by the fact that he said “sad” rather than “bad,” showing his compassion for this victim. “What?”

  “I’m not sure she was dead when she was put in the boat.”

  CHAPTER 6

  What Meg wouldn’t have given for a shower. Work at the Harbor View had been hot and heavy that day, although making salads was her favorite station. If she had the time, each salad would be little works of art, but with this nice weather, the leaves at their absolute peak of color, it had been a mob scene at the restaurant, and the salads had looked instead like fallen leaves.

  After shrugging out of her apron, she went into the bathroom and wiped herself down as well as she could, then undid her hair, grown long over the summer, and let it fall way below her shoulders. She imagined Andrew’s hands in her hair and shivered.

  Calm down, she told herself. You might not even like him. He might be a total jerk. After all, he was a soldier, and you don’t even believe in war. Maybe that subject would come up right away, and whatever romance could have been possible would blow up in their faces.

  With this thought, she promised herself she wouldn’t bring up the war. At least, not tonight. She would watch herself and be on good behavior. Curt had been gone almost two months, and she was missing some male attention. Maybe she and Andrew could just have some fun, nothing serious.

  Meg leaned in and put on some eye shadow. She didn’t wear much makeup, but she thought a touch of shadow brought out her eyes, made them seem bigger and more mysterious or something.

  She pinched her cheeks, fluffed her hair, wiped her mouth, smoothed her eyebrows and declared herself ready.

  When she walked out the door, Andrew was waiting by his car. A slow smile came onto his open face when he saw her. He was even more attractive than she remembered.

  She felt like she was seeing him for the first time. At the Burning Boat, it had been dark and she hadn’t seen him face on. Here he stood in the sunlight, skinnier than she thought, leaning against a Jeep. She was amazed to see he was driving a real car, not a truck. All the guys in Pepin drove trucks. His vehicle was a Jeep Cherokee. Old, but it looked like a decent car. Clean. A point for him.

  Andrew was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. No tattoos showed. His hair looked wet, as if he had just showered. Wheat blond hair, wide blue eyes, a baseball cap in his hands he was playing with, nervously.

  As soon as Meg walked down the steps, he pushed off the Jeep with his butt and smiled, tossing his hat in the air.

  “Hey,” he shouted, then added, “Meg,” as if he was testing the taste of her name.

  When she was standing in front of him, he crowned her with his hat, but courteously, almost royally.

  “Hey, Andrew, you’re right on time.”

  “The service drills that into you.” He laughed as he opened the door for her. Meg slid in and noticed it didn’t smell like he smoked. Another point in his favor. He was racking them up.

  “You mentioned a hike,” he said. “You still up for it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not too tired after work?” He pulled away from the curb and headed out to the highway.

  “Not at all,” she lied. The back of her legs always ached after seven hours standing on her feet, but she knew that a walk would make them feel better. “What do you think?”

  “Yeah, sounds good. Haven’t been to the Maiden Rock since high school. Then let’s come back here for burgers at Ralph and Mary’s. I haven’t had one of theirs since I got back home.”

  “Perfect.”

  She looked down at his feet and noticed the big boots he was wearing. “Those your army boots?” she asked.

  “Yup. I’ve walked a million miles in them. I’m so used to wearing them it feels funny if they’re not on my feet.”

  “They look like they weigh a ton.”

  “Everything we wore in Afghanistan weighed a ton.” He said it like he was talking about more than boots and gear.

&nb
sp; Meg wanted to steer the conversation away from the war, so she asked the first question that came to her mind. “Did you work today?”

  “No, it’s my day off.”

  “I don’t even know where you work.”

  “Oh, I thought you knew. I work with your mom. I’m a deputy at the sheriff’s department.”

  “My mom?” Meg was having trouble taking this in. She was going out with a guy who worked with her mom. Not only had he been a soldier, but now he was a cop. This was starting to feel like a really bad idea. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  Meg shrugged, trying to sound easy. “I suppose not.”

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  “Kinda weird.” She rested her head back and looked out the window. The leaves were coming down. The day was on the edge of warm, but soon it would turn cold and the trees would be bare. Hopefully by the time snow fell, she would be going to school in Madison.

  “Well, I didn’t think Claire was old enough to have a daughter your age. How old are you?”

  Meg thought of lying, she really did, but then admitted. “Eighteen.”

  “Shit, no kidding. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to swear.”

  “Hey, these ears are not virgin. Not around my mom and dad.” She looked over at him. “Is that a problem?”

  “I had no idea. You seem much older.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Not that much difference.”

  He laughed. “Well, at least you’re legal.”

  “Yeah, I can have sex, get married, but I can’t drink. That’s what’s really weird.”

  “I know what you mean. You can be a soldier, kill someone, but you can’t drink either. What’s that about?”

  Neither of them said anything for a while, absorbing this new information about each other. Meg was really starting to wonder if this date with Andrew was a good idea. She couldn’t imagine what her mom was going to say. Andrew turned off the highway, and they drove up through the tall cottonwoods and black walnut trees that lined the bluffs, then came out on top in cornfields.