The four of them stood staring at her. She still wore the schoolmarm outfit she’d been in the day before when Gretchen and Josie met her at the morgue. Her skirt flared in the water. Diamonds sparkled on her fingers and the pendant she wore lifted from her chest, suspended in the water. Even her Gucci boots were still on her feet. Her hair stood on end, gently swaying in the water. Her eyes and mouth were wide open. One of her hands floated down by her side while the other looked as though it was reaching up over her head.
Someone cleared their throat. None of them moved. Finally, Wilson said, “I tried to tell you it was mighty disturbing.”
Noah spoke first. “What time did you find her?”
“Maybe an hour before I called your detective, on account of I had to wake up my plant manager first and then he had to come out and take a look-see. Then I called that lady there.” He pointed at Josie. “Anyway, one of the plant alarms was tripped. I checked the cameras. There was someone out there.”
“Out where?” Josie asked.
“Outside where the fish lift sits.” He gave a frustrated sigh and reached over to a nearby penholder, grabbing a handful of pens. From the other side of the keyboard he took a legal pad. “This is the river here,” he said, pointing to the pad. “Okay?”
They all nodded. He laid one pen out horizontally on the desk, half of it on top of the legal pad—the river, in his analogy. “This pen is the building you’re standing in—the power station. It extends part of the way into the river.” He took the cap from one of the other pens and put it on the legal pad beside the pen. “Then you got a steel walkway that goes out and around the fish lift.” He positioned another pen perpendicular to the pen cap. “The fish lift goes downriver like so.” Finally, he placed a third pen on the other side of the cap, horizontally, reaching the rest of the way across the legal pad. “Then the spillway, which goes all the way across the river.” He pointed to the perpendicular pen representing the fish lift. “The fish lift has a top hatch that you can reach from the walkway. Someone was out there.”
The Chief said, “Out where? Out by the fish lift?”
Wilson’s head bobbed in agreement. His finger tapped the pen representing the fish lift. “Yeah. On the walkway. I’ve got them on video coming up onto the walkway from the river and throwing this body into the hatch.”
Noah said, “I thought the only access to the fish lift was through here, through the station, which is fenced off.”
Wilson said, “Yeah, it is, but that’s what I’m telling you: this person didn’t come through here. They came from the river.”
Gretchen finally spoke. “How could they come from the river and still access the fish lift?”
Wilson’s voice held a note of impatience as though he was talking to schoolchildren who just weren’t getting what he was trying to teach. Now his finger drummed against the yellow legal pad. “Because the fish lift is in the river. They came from downriver, not from here. Not from this building or the access walkway.”
“How is that possible?” The Chief asked.
“Kayak,” said Josie.
They all turned and stared at her. Gretchen said, “I don’t think that’s possible.”
Wilson shrugged. “Actually, she’s right. That’s probably the only way to get to it from on the river. The lift isn’t in operation during the winter. Only in the spring when the Shad migrate. It’s just sitting there. Anyone could swim up and access the top hatch.”
“Towing a body?” asked Gretchen.
Noah said, “It’s possible. If the body wasn’t too heavy and you were a skilled kayaker.”
“Even with the current taking them downriver?” the Chief asked.
“The power station blocks most of the water between the shore and fish lift,” said Wilson. “Makes a loch right there. No current. Also, this is a popular kayaking spot. Always has been. We try to keep ’em on the other side of the river. They like that water release chute over there ’cause it gives them the rapids, but we get them all up and down the dam. Pains in the asses is what they are. Couple of ’em died out there.”
“How deep is it out there?” asked Josie. “In the loch?”
“Right now?” said Wilson. “Hell, I don’t know.”
“Show us the video,” said Josie. “Then we’ll look outside.”
A few minutes later, they crowded behind Wilson as he sat at his desk, clicking away at his keyboard until he found the footage he was looking for, queuing it up for them. He pressed play and blurred gray images of a steel walkway appeared. The camera looked down from high above showing the walkway sandwiched between the power station and the spillway. It extended downriver, forming a long rectangle. Below it, matching its shape, concrete rose from beneath the river, boxing in some of the water. Together they formed a steel and concrete pier of sorts. The area closest to the dam held a metal contraption nearly the size of a small house with various cables, cages, and what looked like a very complicated elevator. Wilson pointed to the spot furthest downriver where the camera’s view receded into darkness. “This is where the top hatch is, down here.”
“I don’t see a hatch,” said Noah.
“Right,” said Wilson. “It’s too dark. But trust me, it’s there. Look, you see this line here?” He traced the edge of the concrete wall with one finger.
“Yeah,” said Noah.
“This is the wall. On the other side is the river except at this particular spot there’s an outcropping.”
“What kind of outcropping?” asked Gretchen.
“A shoal. Like a little island that butts right up against the end of the lift,” said Wilson.
The Chief said, “So Quinn was right. Someone could kayak from the shore, across the loch, to that little island with a body either on their own kayak or being towed behind them in a second kayak, drag the body up to the wall, and throw it over the top? Right into the hatch?”
“You got it, mister,” said Wilson. He pressed play. They waited several moments. Josie’s eyes were focused so hard on the line demarcating the wall from the river—or the small outcropping on the other side—that she jumped when a figure popped up like some kind of creature in a horror film. An arm and a leg came over first and then the person—nothing but a black smudged outline of a human—straddled the wall and threw their other leg over. They crouched and a few seconds later, two shadows appeared on either side of them.
“Those are the hatch doors,” said Wilson. “Now watch.”
The person disappeared to the other side of the wall for several minutes. Next, they climbed back onto the wall. For several minutes they knelt there, the footage too blurry make out what precisely was happening until a large object appeared along the top of the wall. Not an object, Josie realized, as the figure dragged it toward the hatch doors. Lydia Norris’s body. Once they’d dumped her lifeless form into the hatch, they closed the door and disappeared over the wall a final time.
“That’s it,” said Wilson. “I saw that, ran out there, but by that time, whoever it was had gone. Couldn’t see nothing downriver or out on the island. At first, I didn’t know what they threw in there. I called my manager, and he came in. We ran the lift and once it got up here to the counting room, well, that’s when we saw her.”
The Chief sighed. “All right, Detectives. Let’s make some phone calls.”
Thirty