When the girl climbed into her car, DeMarco took a step away from the officer’s. “You pulling second shift tonight?” he asked.
“Overtime,” the young man said. “Just waiting for you actually. We’ve only got a three-man force here.”
“Well, thanks for hanging around.” He glanced at the officer’s left hand. “I guess I kept you from your dinner, right?”
The officer shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time I had to eat cold meatloaf.”
“Give your wife my apologies.”
“No problem. Comes with the territory.”
DeMarco leaned down to look at him. “Nah, really, tell her I’m sorry. Tell her you’re sorry too. Tell her how much you missed her. How much you love her meatloaf.”
“Okay,” the officer said and smiled crookedly.
“It’s important,” DeMarco told him. “Don’t wait till you’re my age to learn that.”
But he recognized that look in the young man’s eyes, the smile that was almost a smirk. Okay, pops, the look said. Whatever you say.
The look lingered with him even after the officer was gone, as DeMarco sat in his own vehicle again, watching past the gas pumps as car after car moved through the intersection, the light changing ceaselessly from red to green to yellow to red. He knew he was accomplishing nothing by remaining there, that Huston could be miles away by now. He was out by the lake somewhere, somewhere along those miles of ragged coast. Maybe already with his Claire. With his family again, if that kind of thing were possible. DeMarco had no idea what was possible and what wasn’t. He was only sure that in this lifetime, at least, he never would know.
The Ohio troopers knew the area, and they were out there patrolling it, cruising the back roads, looking for a campfire in the woods. Huston would need a fire tonight to keep him warm. If, indeed, he had any intention of lasting through the night, which DeMarco doubted. The troopers had DeMarco’s phone number and were supposed to call him if they spotted anything. A light in an abandoned building. A solitary pedestrian. A body in the water.
DeMarco kept his window rolled down despite the chill. He liked the vague scent of water in the air, the damp scent of night. He thought it might be nice to live up there, so close to the water. It might be nice to have a boat that he could motor out a mile or so and shut off the engine and listen to nothing but the water, feel nothing but the movement and the low lap of waves.
He laid his head back against the headrest and turned his face to the open window and closed his eyes. Christ, he was tired. Now that he admitted it, he could feel the heaviness in every limb. His neck and shoulders ached, his spine felt stiff. The air smelled of concrete and water.
When the phone rang in the distance, he thought he was at home and tried to push himself up out of his chair. He rammed his chest into the steering wheel and that brought him awake. Now he thought the ringing was coming from the public phone mounted on the corner of the building, so he threw open the door and stood and only then felt the vibration in his pocket. But by the time he had his cell phone out, the call had gone to his voice mail. The number looked familiar, but he could not remember whose it was. He immediately tried to call it, but it went straight to voice mail without ringing, and when he heard the greeting of “Hi, guys, this is Danni,” he hung up and waited for the beep that would tell him that Danni had completed her message to him and hung up. He did not bother then to listen to her message but called her back. She answered on the first ring.
“He just called me!” she said. “Just three minutes ago, he called me.”
“Thomas Huston called you?”
“Yes. Didn’t you listen to my message?”
“No, I didn’t want to wait. What did he say?”
“The first thing he did was to ask if I like poetry. Then he recited a poem for me.”
“‘Annabel Lee’ again,” he said.
“What?”
“The name of the poem he recited. ‘Annabel Lee.’”
“No, he said it was called ‘The Lake.’ And that’s what it was about. The loneliness of the lake.”
“Danni, listen. Was it about anything else, anything having to do with death?”
“I think so,” she said. “There was something about a grave in it.”
“Do you have a computer?”
“Yes.”
“Can you go to it now? While I have you on the line?”
“Sure, it’s right here.”
“Okay, go online and see if you can find a copy of ‘The Lake’ somewhere.”
“I don’t even know who wrote it,” she said.
“Try Poe. Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Okay, give me a minute.”
DeMarco walked from one side of the parking lot to the other. He returned to his car, stood there a moment, then started walking again.
“Okay, I have it,” she said.
“Read it to me.”
She did so.
“That last part,” he said. “Starting with the word death. Read that part again for me.”