by Alex Archer
It wasn’t what she’d originally planned, diving the lake. She’d intended to go back to the conference and attack the murder investigation head-on. But as she looked out over Rock Lake, choppy in the slight breeze cutting across it, she considered that this was the right thing to do.
“What’s down there, Edgar,” she mused, “that maybe got you and Dr. Papadopolous killed? And how was Mrs. Hapgood involved with this?”
It was all somehow connected, wasn’t it?
Lost in thought, she stood and stared so long her legs ached from not moving. The moon came out from behind a cloud, reflecting against the tiny waves and making it look as if sequins had been scattered atop the lake’s surface. Lightning bugs appeared in the reeds along the shore, and the mist that she’d noticed near the bed-and-breakfast had crept to the edge of the water. There was a boat out there, not far away, small and with red and green bow and stern lights. From the shapes, it looked like father and son fishing, maybe for walleye, which fed primarily at night. This setting seemed wrongly tranquil and falsely placid, looking on one hand as if it could be displayed on a postcard, and on the other as if it could appear in the next top-grossing horror movie. “Come to Rock Lake,” Annja thought that postcard might read. “Enjoy the scenery and watch your step.” In her mind she saw Edgar’s body broken and twisted, lying at the bottom of the stairs.
A beam of light along the shore caught her attention. Someone with a flashlight, not tall enough to be Detective Rizzo. She couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman; the figure stood under the sweeping branches of a cedar that hung out at a sharp angle over the lake. The beam swung toward Annja, held on her and then went dark. In the moonlight, she could still see the figure, up against the trunk now, the mist wrapping around the person’s knees.
Maybe it was nothing...someone else visiting the lakeshore on this early-June evening. It was a little bit of a tourist town, and it was a Friday night. Maybe not much else to do here other than find a tavern or visit this lake.
Still... Annja peered into the shadows, trying to separate them and make out more of the figure’s features. Something prickling the back of her neck told her it wasn’t a tourist.
There was a splash and a yip. She didn’t turn her head, but she guessed that someone in the boat had caught a fish. Voices carried over the water.
“Reel it in, son!”
“I’m trying!”
A loon cried, melodic and poignant, a long note that was answered by another and another.
“Look, it’s a keeper, Dad!”
The figure didn’t move.
Annja took a step toward the tree, the lake on her left and a couple of dark cottages on her right. Her shoes sunk into the sand as she went.
“Hello?” she called softly, moving closer.
Still, the figure didn’t move.
Her cell phone chimed, startling her. Keeping her eyes on the figure, she reached into her pocket and brought it up, flipped it open and put it to her ear. It was Rembert.
“Where have you been?”
She quickly told him. “Do you have enough video for Doug?”
“Yeah, I guess. Why?”
She told him she would be in Rock Lake for likely all of tomorrow.
“Good,” he returned. “No reason for you to attend a conference you registered for, right? No reason for you to show up for your Saturday panel, right?”
“You can go back to New York if you want.”
“I think I’ll stay for another day at least,” he told her. “Room’s paid for through Monday morning. Still have some money on my expense account. I could use a few days away from the family.”
“Fine,” she said. Annja hadn’t intended to sound terse; she was just focused on the mysterious figure. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Maybe.”
The line went dead.
The loons sounded again.
“Hello?”
The figure said something, words, but foreign and a language she didn’t know. It was a husky voice, and so she guessed it was a man. Some part of her told her to leave, that she’d be coming back here tomorrow morning when the sun would be out and the shadows wouldn’t hide anything. But Annja was curious.
“Everything is connected.”
The voice came again, the incomprehensible words rushed and beautiful sounding. The figure stepped away from the trunk. Closer now, Annja saw more definition to the shape—a woman, either with hair very short or tied back. A very small woman.
“Hello.” Annja tried one more time.
The reply was clipped, and Annja sensed anger.
Leave, that part of her mind told her. Find Manny and get out of here. Instead she went ever nearer, until she was practically beneath the big cedar’s branches.
More words came that she couldn’t comprehend. But Annja clearly understood the slashing motion the woman made with a knife that had come out of nowhere.
What the hell is going on in Wisconsin?
Annja felt the sensation of her sword’s pommel against her hand as she called it, the blade looking like liquid silver in the moonlight that stretched down between a gap in the clouds. She thought the figure might run, but instead it crouched, as if to meet her, and made the slashing motion again.
Annja had no intention to fight, taking a defensive stance. But she did want to get a good look at the woman, find some way to communicate. Discover what—if anything—this woman’s presence might have to do with Edgar.
“Everything is connected.”
The woman—girl, Annja realized, probably a teenager—darted forward, slashing, hugging the shadow the tree provided. Annja backed up, calling to mind the three circles—not the gold coins, but fighting reach. The first circle was as far as her arm stretched out from her body. The second was how far her reach went with the sword in her hand. The third was how far that extended with one step. The woman’s weapon was a knife, and so her three circles were much smaller than Annja’s. The woman was forced to be quick, to dance in and out of Annja’s circles, slashing viciously and retreating.
Annja made no move against her, other than to defend herself. She turned her sword so the flat of it caught the woman’s knife, the long blade flexible and absorbing the impact. “Never meet edge with edge,” she remembered Roux telling her. “Edges are not so flexible, and they are easy to chip and break.” But once broken and re-formed, would Joan of Arc’s sword break again? Annja parried blow after blow, inching back and trying to draw the woman out so she could get a look at her under the moonlight.
Finally, she was successful, and the appearance of her opponent surprised her.
The term teenager was generous. In her midteens, at best, Annja guessed. Very young—too young to be knife fighting. Her hair was like ink, shiny and looking as if it was pulled back so tight it was painful. Her eyes were dark, wide and angry, the pupils big. Maybe on drugs, Annja considered; it could explain the wild behavior and the babbling that she had at first took to be a language.
The girl was dressed in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt that would have been baggy had it not been tied in a knot just above her waist, exposing a pierced navel. The writing on the T-shirt was faded.
“We don’t have to do this,” Annja said, meeting another blow. The girl was not as skilled as she, but was fast and agile.
“Yes, we do,” the girl returned. The words were thick, making Annja wonder if she was indeed on drugs.
“I didn’t mean to trespass.” Annja wanted to keep the girl talking, get her farther away from the tree. “If I was on your property...” But she suspected from the sign it was a city-owned beach. “If I upset you—”
The girl had no answer to that; she just sprang in close and made a slash that cut Annja’s waist. The knife went through her blouse as if it was paper and drew blood. It could have been worse had Annja not stepped away. The girl had meant to kill her.
That changed things, though Annja still had no desire to hurt the teen. She brought her sw
ord down and around in an arc, the tip extending her third circle and forcing the girl back. She followed it with another swing, up and around and hitting the knife, trying to knock it from the girl’s grip.
More unintelligible words came from the teen’s mouth. It was a language, a Native American dialect perhaps; the girl had a tan complexion. Annja tried to remember pieces of it, a word or two she could repeat later in front of someone who might identify the language.
Annja stepped in, swept shoulder high, turning the sword so the flat side would catch the girl in the arm...hurting but not cutting. If she could get the girl to drop the knife, she could dismiss the sword and tackle her, reason with her.
“You must die!” The girl caught the blow and stayed upright, kept her hands on the knife. “Die now!” She spun and dropped into a crouch, grabbing up a handful of sand. She flung it at Annja.
The grit filled Annja’s vision and settled in her eyes, stinging like hornets. She hadn’t been prepared for that, was concentrating too hard on not hurting her opponent. Annja had underestimated the girl and was paying for it.
The girl dashed forward, circling, coming at Annja from the side and jabbing. The knife tip went into her side, stopping at a rib. Annja clamped her mouth shut and didn’t cry out.
“Hey! What’s going on?” It was Manny’s voice.
Annja blinked furiously and through her clouded gaze saw the girl race madly away. Annja would have chased her if the detective hadn’t shown up, would have run her into the ground and fought against the sand in her eyes with every step. She would have gotten answers.
Now all she had was more questions.
She dismissed the sword to the otherwhere and dropped to her knees, bringing her arm in close to her injured side, one hand pressed to her waist where she’d been cut the first time.
“Annja!” The detective’s feet thumped across the sand, his breath ragged. He stopped in front of Annja, gulping in air. “Was someone swinging a sword at you?”
Small favors, she thought. Manny hadn’t seen just who had the sword.
“I think it was a big knife.”
“Damn big knife.” The detective looked in the direction the girl had run. “Don’t see him. Fast sucker.” He knelt in front of Annja. “We have to get you to a hospital. This place is too small, probably doesn’t even have a clinic open this late. Want me to call an ambulance? I can take you in my car just as fast. Sirens and lights and—”
Annja gave a furious shake of her head. “I’m not hurt that bad.” It was a lie, but she always healed quickly. “Got a first-aid kit in your car?”
He stood with some effort, then helped her up. “I dunno, Annja, that’s a good amount of blood. I think I’m going to—”
“—show me that first-aid kit.”
He escorted her from the beach. He’d parked about a block away at an empty spot near Copper Beach Cottage. She sat in the passenger seat, door wide open, feet on the gravel drive. He fumbled in the trunk and brought out a first-aid kit the size of a large tackle box.
“I can manage this,” she told him as she picked through the contents and found eyewash. She used that first, working the sand out. She could see much better now, but her eyes would bother her for a while.
“Somehow I get the idea this sort of thing has happened to you before,” Manny said. “Getting injured. Crocodiles, maybe. Snakes. Angry natives.” He went around to the driver’s side while she worked, thumbed his mic, said he was “too old for all of this” and called central dispatch to report the knifing. He was shocked when Annja told him it was a young woman but that she couldn’t describe the girl, didn’t get that good of a look at her.
Manny hadn’t, either.
“I think she was on drugs, a teenager.” At least, she believed that was true. “I think I just was in the wrong place at the wrong time, intruded on her private party, and so she came after me.” Annja knew there was more to it than that, but saw no point in speculating or talking about hunches.
“Gonna have to fill out a report on this, too,” Manny said. “I’m not going to miss all the paperwork. Two more weeks.”
On the way out of town, Annja got the detective to stop at the diner again. After ten o’clock now, it was still open, with a dozen customers inside, all of them men, all wearing baseball caps and in T-shirts and patched blue jeans, of varying ages, but likely all from a softball team that had played earlier. Lakeside Hustlers many of the shirts read.
Manny hadn’t gotten much information from either the managers of the bed-and-breakfast or the cabin, he’d told her. But it was a few more pieces for the puzzle.
Annja asked about renting one of the motorcycles on the lot as the waitress gave her a serious up and down over the bandage and the bloody blouse. “I’m coming back out here tomorrow,” she told Manny. “And the bike will suit me better than a rent-a-car.”
He pulled out of the lot after making sure her selection indeed ran: a 1964 Suzuki, the blue paint all flat and faded, and sad looking under the yellow parking-lot light.
The diner owner poured in a few gallons of gasoline from a can. “That ought to be more than enough to get you back to Madison.”
She gave him a ten for the gas.
At one time the bike was probably a beauty. She paid a hundred dollars for it and would leave it at the airport or in the Arms’ parking lot when she was ready to return to New York. The bike hadn’t come with title or registration.
“Not good with paperwork,” the diner owner said.
Apparently no one in Wisconsin likes paperwork, Annja thought. She slowly drove out of the lot, listening to the engine cough and spit. Everything Runs. She hoped it would keep running until she was indeed ready to go back to New York.
Chapter 16
Saturday
The wet suit was almost too snug, but Annja squirmed into it, put on the hood and neoprene boots, the latter being a little too big, so they stuffed the toes with old cloths. She pulled on the gloves and checked the bright yellow tank.
“Air is good for thirty minutes, forty at the outside,” said Robert Wolfe—Bobby, as he wanted to be called. “No longer because the lake’s almost thirty meters deep here.”
Annja nodded her understanding and inspected the tank regulator. He handed her a small bail-out tank to strap to her belt. It was a backup, in case they were down too long or the primary tank failed. He was a professional; she understood why Edgar had relied on him. He told her on the phone last night that in addition to teaching diving in Lake Michigan, he worked occasional rescue and recovery dives for the police department.
Bobby finished putting on his gear while she looked over a map of the lake he had brought with him. It was similar to the one Edgar had in the folder, but had been encased in sturdy vinyl. Manny wouldn’t let her hold on to anything overnight, worried that he needed it all back in place before his morning meeting with the chief. She hoped that meeting went well, and she hoped to get another look at the contents of the folder later to compare Edgar’s map to this one.
Bobby had brought his own boat, a ten-foot flat-bottomed aluminum one in which the center seat had been removed to make it easier to stow all the diving gear—including ten air tanks. He pointed to a spot on the map.
“We’re anchored here. This is the last place Dr. Schwartz had me dive. Found some stuff for him and got some pictures. Hard to believe he’s dead, you know. I just saw him last week. He wanted to go down with me this last trip, but the shop didn’t have a suit that would fit him, and I told him that this early in the season the water was too cold to go without one. I didn’t want the liability, an old guy like him getting sick. Lawsuits and stuff, you know. Can’t take the chance.” Bobby shuddered. “Should’ve let him come anyway, huh? If he’d caught a cold, even pneumonia, what would it have mattered? I feel bad, not letting him go down with me.”
Bobby had brought a pouch with him, filled with pictures he’d taken for Edgar last week. He’d used an underwater digital camera and had printe
d up the best images. “Dr. Schwartz was going to come to my shop Monday or Tuesday to pick them up. He paid me in advance. Guess you can have them.”
Annja glanced at them. They were shadowy, sections of mossy stone, no definition to them, and blurry—though that might have been sediment stirred up around them, not the camera’s focus. She’d give them a closer look later. She was paying Bobby by the hour to dive, not to sit here while she tried to make sense of his photographs.
The spot he’d pointed to was roughly in the center of the largest section of lake. The map, marked with depths and asterisks to indicate a few topographical features, showed the lake to look roughly like a figure eight. The south part was labeled a protected marsh, and near it—Annja had discovered from a walk she’d taken early this morning—was a long stretch of vegetation that reached well out of the water and was the favorite haunt of the local loon population. The northwest area boasted a big sand bar where there were two fishing beaches and a series of docks for people who owned lakefront property and for one of the resorts. It was near where she had her run-in last night with the teenage knife-wielder. Manny had called her very late last night to say the sheriff’s department had come up with nothing regarding the girl, and no one else had reported seeing her.
One more piece of the puzzle, Annja thought.
“Here,” Bobby said, pointing to the south section. “This is the Glacial Drumlin State Trail. It runs across an old railroad bridge. A pretty walk, if you have the time. The trail is a sort of dividing line between the protected marsh and the rest of the lake. The first time I dived for Dr. Schwartz, it was near this bridge. It was too cold for him then, too.”
