Beneath the Surface

by Lynn H. Blackburn

She arrested the thought. She knew better than that. God wasn’t trying to kill her. Get her attention? Maybe. But kill her?

  No.

  More memories surrounded her as she shoved the too-long sleeves up her arms. Her dad’s rich baritone singing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Her mom’s alto joining in perfect harmony. Their lives hadn’t been easy. Years of barrenness. Years of begging God to give them a child. The long road to accepting that God’s choice for them was to complete their family with a little boy from Bolivia and a little girl from China.

  Getting there had nearly destroyed their faith and their marriage. Leigh knew the story, but she’d never personalized it to her situation. God didn’t give them what they wanted. Or what they thought they wanted. Both of her parents always said if they’d had any idea what it was like to live out adoption, they would have done it earlier. But then they might not have found her, so they knew God’s timing was perfect.

  Was his timing in all this perfect too? Was he working for her good even though it looked like he was dropping the ball?

  Instead of seeing the bruises on her neck as evidence that he didn’t care, should she instead see that he did care? That he had protected her from an unknown enemy yet again?

  Could she trust him to keep her alive? Or trust him if that wasn’t his plan at all?

  Snatches of long-lost memory verses meshed with random things her mom and dad would say and joined in with sermons heard and songs sung.

  The tug in her spirit, the one she mostly chose to ignore, refused to be shoved to the side.

  The walls she’d worked so hard to erect shook. And why wouldn’t they? They rested on a shaky foundation of fear and lies.

  She knew the truth. She’d known it all along.

  But believing God truly loved her, truly had her best interests at heart even when it didn’t look like it? She didn’t know if she could muster that kind of faith.

  The best she could do was whisper a humble “Help me.”

  Somehow she knew that would be enough for now. That he heard her. That he wasn’t waiting for her with a long list of grievances. That he was running toward her, longing to hold her close if she’d let him.

  “Help me,” she whispered again as she opened her door.

  Ryan all but fell into her room. “Sorry,” he said as he caught his balance. “I came to see if you were okay.”

  Was she okay? No. But she was better than she’d been thirty minutes ago.

  “Leigh?” Ryan glanced around the room, then back at her. “Is there anything I need to know?”

  She could see the worry in his eyes. Hear the desire to protect her in his voice. But how could she explain what had happened over the last few minutes when she wasn’t even sure herself?

  “I’ve . . . I’ve been praying. Sort of.”

  She tried not to laugh at the expression on his face.

  “Good,” he said. “Although I’m not sure how you sort of pray.”

  “Me neither,” she said. “It’s been a while since I made praying a priority. I guess I’ve kind of lost my way over the years. Or maybe I quit believing God would listen to anything I had to say. Or that my prayers could make any difference.”

  “And now?”

  “Honestly? I’m still not sure. I mean, I know the Sunday school answer. God hears and answers our prayers. But where does that get you when your dad dies? Or your mom dies? Or you think you’re going crazy and it turns out you have a patient stalking you? Or now, when someone is quite literally trying to kill you? Why hasn’t he stopped it?”

  She took a breath. Talking that much at once was extremely painful, and her voice was so rough and low she wasn’t sure if Ryan had been able to understand a word she had said.

  “I get it,” he said with a grim nod. “Why does he let your nephew have autism? Or how do you deal with it when your sister, who scrimped and saved and sacrificed to get your worthless brother-in-law through medical school, has to deal with him when he cheats on her and leaves her and his two kids? What’s up with that?”

  Wow. So she wasn’t the only one who’d asked these kinds of questions. And not the only one who didn’t have solid answers for them.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I realize those things aren’t the same as loved ones dying or having a maniac try to strangle you.”

  “No,” she said. “They’re all different kinds of deaths. Deaths of loved ones. Deaths of dreams. Deaths of relationships.”

  “And so death entered the world,” Ryan said under his breath.

  “What?”

  “What you said, about the deaths, it made me think of that verse where it says that when sin entered the world, so did death. I guess I’ve always seen it as physical and spiritual death, and of course it is, but all those other deaths are also the result of sin.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “I don’t have any answers, Ryan. I’m starting to talk to him again. I think he’s listening, but sometimes I’m not sure what to say.”

  “I don’t think he cares so much about what we say. I think he mostly just wants us to talk to him.”

  “For now he’s going to have to deal with me whispering,” she said.

  Ryan chuckled. “I’m ready to rip someone to pieces and you’re making jokes.”

  “It’s a coping mechanism,” she said. “And not the most healthy one, I might add.”

  “What, the jokes or the desire to dismember someone?”

  “Neither.”

  He sighed dramatically. “I guess you’re right.”

  They stood for a few moments in silence. It wasn’t strained. Was he praying? Should she?

  Lord? She reached out in her mind. I don’t know what’s happening. Please help me. Help me process it. Help me trust.

  “Ryan? Leigh? Could you come down?” Gabe called up the stairway. His voice carried a sense of urgency but not fear.

  “Think he’s got something?” Leigh asked.

  “Let’s find out.”

  She pulled the neck of the shirt a bit closer as they descended the stairs.

  “You’re fine,” Ryan whispered.

  He was lying, but she appreciated the gesture.

  When she entered her kitchen, she barely recognized the place. Adam and Gabe both sat at the kitchen table with laptops, tablets, and notepads. Computers and cords stretched all over the island and there was even one propped on the stovetop. That didn’t seem like the best idea, but the young woman in the middle of it all didn’t seem perturbed by it.

  She stretched out a hand. “Sabrina,” she said. “You must be Leigh.”

  “I am. It’s nice to meet you.”

  This was the brilliant computer forensics professor they’d brought in? She looked like she was twelve.

  But then she started typing some sort of code. Her fingers flew. Her eyes flashed.

  “We have something you need to see,” she said.

  17

  Ryan had no idea how Sabrina Fleming did the things she did. In minutes, she’d taken the footage from multiple houses and somehow spliced them all together.

  “We’ve scanned hours of footage, and of course there are hundreds of hours more we could look through, but with what we were able to obtain today, I think we have enough to show the boat came from the east, stopped, turned around, and then returned in the direction it came from.”

  With a few keystrokes, the video came to life. Sabrina narrated the video footage, her glasses in one hand, the other pointing to the screen. “As you can see, based on the video surveillance we’ve been able to obtain, we have proof a boat was in the water at 3:08 a.m. I ran a few calculations and determined it wasn’t going particularly fast. Maybe five miles per hour.”

  She chewed on the end of her glasses. “Hazarding a guess, I’d say either the driver didn’t know where they were going, which is not my first choice of theory by the way, or they were being careful to keep the boat noise to a minimum. At five miles per hour, it’s unlikely people sleeping in these houses,” she s
aid, pointing to the houses on either side of the lake, “would have been disturbed.”

  The screen went blank. “The boat falls off the radar, so to speak, for four minutes, fifty-three seconds before it reappears for a few seconds in this neighbor’s footage, and then we get several seconds from your video feed.” She nodded toward Leigh. Blips of light flickered on and off the screen for another few minutes, then the video stopped.

  “We’ve received a few bits of video footage from several houses further down the lake that don’t have any sign of the boat. That doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there though. The lake widens considerably, and if the driver kept the boat in the middle of the lake, nothing would show up. However, I recommend checking with the owners of the houses at Two, Six, Eight, and Ten Porter Trail.”

  Ryan glanced at his notes. “We have video footage from Two, Four, Six, and Ten.”

  “Yes, but I want you to check their boats.”

  “Their boats?” Oh. “You think someone stole a boat?”

  “I don’t know,” Sabrina said. “I think we have to consider it. Certainly there’s a chance the boat came from any number of places. It’s even possible they put the boat in the water at a boat ramp, drove it over here, dumped the body, and then meandered around the lake and pulled it back out of the water. They could have done it anywhere.”

  “Why those houses?”

  “Because that’s where we lose the lights.”

  “You’re thinking our killer could have stolen a boat, eased it into the middle of the lake, and hit the lights sometime after they got to number Twelve Porter Trail?”

  “I’d like to check to be sure,” Sabrina said.

  “If someone took their boats, it would have shown up on their video footage. Eight’s the only one we’re missing, but they don’t have any cameras on their property.”

  “None? That’s unusual.” Leigh’s brow furrowed.

  Ryan flipped through his notes. “It is, but they are an older couple who’ve lived there forever and still operate under the blissful delusion that Carrington is as safe as it was fifty years ago. The husband is in the hospital, but his wife has been very cooperative.”

  When he said the words out loud, Gabe’s and Leigh’s heads swiveled away from Sabrina and to him.

  Leigh’s face registered the greatest level of concern.

  “Leigh, is something bothering you?” Sabrina’s quiet question hushed the room.

  “Yes,” Leigh said.

  “I’m not a law enforcement officer,” Sabrina said with an encouraging smile, “but my experience is there’s nothing too small to mention. Did you see something that doesn’t make sense? Is there a hole in my theory?”

  Adam chuckled, but Sabrina cut him off with a dark look. “I do make mistakes, Adam,” she said. “And even if I didn’t, if there’s something unclear to Leigh, I’d like to hear it. I may find myself presenting this information to a jury at some point. I need to see the flaws in it now, not then.”

  “It isn’t anything you said,” Leigh said. “It’s the people at Eight Porter Trail.”

  “What about them?”

  “Why is he in the hospital?” Leigh directed her question to Ryan.

  “Mr. Gordon had a stroke.”

  “When?”

  “About three weeks ago,” Ryan said.

  “Any family around?”

  “Mrs. Gordon has refused to leave his side. They have grown children, but I didn’t meet them. They live in the area.”

  “Where are you going with this, Leigh?” Sabrina asked.

  “When he had his stroke, did he go to the Carrington emergency department?”

  Ryan looked at Gabe and Adam. “I don’t know. Either of you?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Why are you wondering that, specifically?” Sabrina was watching Leigh like she was the most fascinating creature on the planet. Which, she was.

  Leigh made eye contact with Sabrina. “They”—she pointed first to Ryan, then to Gabe—“have a theory that the killer may be connected to the hospital.”

  Ryan noticed she didn’t mention the part of their theory that the killer was after her. Maybe she didn’t want to think about it. Maybe she didn’t believe it. Either way, probably best not to mention it at this point.

  “If someone at the hospital is responsible for this, they would have known eleven months ago that Mr. Cook was in the hospital and his property was untended, giving them time to drag and bury a body there without anyone knowing.”

  “Yes!” Sabrina’s face lit up with understanding. “And they might also have known that the couple from Eight Porter Trail was at the hospital and wasn’t leaving anytime soon.”

  “We need to pay Eight Porter Trail a visit,” Ryan said. He pulled his phone from his pocket. It was three o’clock. “I need to get into the office and see if we can get a warrant.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Gabe said. “Let me grab my stuff.”

  “Go,” Adam said. “Sabrina and I are here for the rest of the day.” He looked at Leigh. “Assuming that’s okay with you. We just got everything set up.” He pointed to all the computers and devices.

  “It’s fine,” Leigh said.

  Ryan hated to leave Leigh like this, but she was surrounded by officers, and Adam was no slouch. She’d be fine.

  But the pull to stay was strong.

  He forced himself to walk to the door. Leigh followed him.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  “I’ll be here.”

  Her eyes held so much—strength mingled with fear, confidence mingled with confusion—and still she smiled. She’d make a great cop’s wife.

  Where had that come from? He wasn’t in the market for a wife . . . but the idea refused to release its hold.

  “Ready?” Gabe slapped him on the back and back to reality.

  “Yeah.” He stepped back from Leigh. “I’ll call you with an update.”

  He was making that call far sooner than he’d expected.

  Gabe had gone straight to Carrington Memorial Hospital to talk to the family and explain the situation. Mrs. Gordon had been surprised but more than willing to give her consent for them to search the house, dock, and boat.

  Judge Jarvis had been all too happy to sign the search warrant as he walked out the door. The news of the body found on Mr. Cook’s property had started to spread. It wouldn’t be long before some nosy reporter put two and two together, and then they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without a gaggle of cameras following them.

  When Leigh answered the phone, he could hear voices in the background.

  “Hey,” she said. “That didn’t take long.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not calling to tell you I’m on my way back. I’m on my way to the Gordons’ house. We’ve got consent and a warrant. Gabe’s meeting me there with the keys.”

  “What do you think you’ll find?”

  “No idea. Tonight we’re going to see if there’s anything obvious. Forensics will come out tomorrow. I’ve already called Anissa. She’s still planning on bringing pizza, but it may be more like nine than seven.”

  “We won’t starve,” Leigh said. “Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  He parked his car in the driveway. Gabe pulled in right behind him. The officers they’d requested to join them arrived moments later. He wasn’t going to take any chances. If they happened to find something, he wanted to have plenty of backup and a solid chain of evidence.

  He and Gabe pulled on gloves as they walked around the Gordons’ house. The yard had the look of a place that had once been immaculate and now needed a bit of attention. The split-level house was small for this part of the lake. They walked to the back. The house might be small, but the view was spectacular. The lake spread wide in front of them and on both sides.

  “Didn’t realize this place was on a point,” Gabe said.

  “Me neither. Look at the dock,” Ryan said. “It would be easy to back the
boat out. If the wind was right, you could almost float to open water before you’d need to crank the engine. And the security cameras from the lots on either side wouldn’t pick up anything.”

  He glanced back at the house. A large deck came off the top floor and shaded the spacious patio below.

  “Sliding glass door,” Gabe said with a disgusted shake of his head. “I guess it gives them a good view, but let’s encourage them to replace it with a nice set of French doors with a double-keyed lock.”

  “How much you want to bet they don’t have a broom handle in that thing,” Ryan said. It would be all too easy to open an old sliding glass door like that.

  “Let’s go find out.”

  “I want to look at the dock first,” Ryan said.

  “Fine by me.”

  They stepped onto the wooden planks. He loved docks. Loved the feeling of being on the water, the familiar way the dock swayed. The Gordons owned a nice double-decker dock, similar to Leigh’s. The bottom level was U-shaped with the boat resting in the middle. A set of stairs led to the top level. It would be a fabulous place to relax on a spring evening or drink coffee on a fall morning.

  During the summer, they didn’t need to keep the boat covered, but Mr. Gordon probably kept the pontoon covered during the winter.

  He and Gabe inspected the cover.

  “Does this look weird to you?” Ryan asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cover. I think it’s been removed recently.”

  Gabe tilted his head and studied the cover. “What makes you say that?”

  “The dents are in the wrong place.”

  “You are not making any sense.”

  “Look.” Ryan pointed out places where the cover had, at one time, been stretched over seats, but now those places didn’t match. “Someone has put the cover on backward,” he said.

  “I think you might be right.”

  Gabe let out an appreciative whistle as they pulled the cover off the boat. “Wow.”

  “Double wow,” Ryan said as he walked around the U-shaped dock. The Gordons might not have spent much money on the upkeep of the house, but they hadn’t skimped on the maintenance of the boat. The pontoon boat was one of the nicest he’d ever seen. It wouldn’t keep pace with a ski boat, but you could easily take twelve people out for a day on the lake with a boat like this. Everything about it showed how much Mr. Gordon—or one of his kids—loved this boat.