“What’s so special about this place?”
“Nothing. You ask me, Steve never wanted to rejuvenate it, turn it back into some farm or something. He’s never done much of anything above board. But he told Joe that there were some people who wanted to lease it, all under the table. And at one point, Joe told Rita. He was considering it, just to get Steve off their backs. This all happened over the course of a few years, okay? We were all haggard, and Victor saw the toll it was taking on his mother, and so did I. I thought Joe needed to be more forceful with Steve, and Joe wasn’t. Most the time he just ignored it. And so that’s why Rita and I took action, and why Victor was upset.”
Unburdened, Terry slumped into the chair at the kitchen table and stared into nothingness. Mike took a moment and looked at the flowers decorating the room. They were beginning to wilt.
When Terry spoke again, his voice was low, getting hoarse. “I heard something about homicide detectives once. I have a cousin who does what you do, down in Florida. He said to me once that a homicide detective works for God.”
Mike waited.
“I guess the idea is that the dead are with God,” Terry said, “and the homicide investigator is doing the work of punishing whoever killed them. God’s justice – if you believe in that. But to be honest this whole thing feels more like the Devil.”
Mike held the man’s watery gaze, then said in a quiet, sympathetic voice, “If you find that letter, let me know, okay?”
Terry nodded once, eyes averted, and then buried his face in his hands. Mike wanted to console the guy, but he sensed it was better to leave. He rose and headed toward the front door, hearing the dogs round the house, moving to the same spot. He opened the door and they were there, but kept a distance. They seemed to ease up a little as he emerged, and wagged their tails. “It’s alright, guys,” he said softly. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
Twenty-One
His day off; Saturday. He might’ve worked through it but he’d barely spent any time with Kristen so far. They’d gotten up to weeding the garden together, not talking so much as just sharing time. The day was muggy, storms brewing in the east. After about an hour of pulling crabgrass, the rain came, spattering through the yard. Then the main front hit the property, and he and Kristen ran for cover.
The towels in the linen closet had that damp, mite-ridden smell. He pulled a couple hanging from the bathroom hooks instead, tossed one to her, and they dabbed at their wetness. He got the stereo cranking next, feeling this high of being with Kristen, the storm now pummeling their little house in the country, trying to forget the broken man that was Terry Fogarty, and how he’d hurt him.
“What’s this?” She tilted her head to the blasting music.
“‘The Usual Place.’ Don Covay, 1960s.”
“He sounds like Mick Jagger.” She brought a couple of glasses down from the cabinet over the sink, loaded them each with ice from the spout on the refrigerator.
“Well, you know why? Jagger covered his songs. Chubby Checker, Jimi Hendrix – they all owe it to Covay, man. You know how he started out?”
“I’m dying to.”
“He was in a family choir group.”
“You mean before taking up the devil’s music?”
“Much to the pain and anguish of his loving parents.”
“Uh-huh.” She ducked into the fridge, withdrew with a couple of St. Pauli Girls, poured them into the pint glasses, sprinkled a little salt.
Mike watched, realized his mouth was hanging open. “Ice and salt?”
She handed him one. “That’s how we roll.”
The music changed and Ben E. King warbled, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’
“Is this Pandora for senior citizens?”
“A-ha! You think I’m old.” He got next to the laptop on the shelves that was playing the music, hooked into a speaker system he’d distributed throughout the house. It was a very bachelor thing to do, something he hadn’t allowed himself until almost two full years past Molly’s death, but he hadn’t regretted it. “How about this?”
She listened, staring. There was a smudge of dirt from the garden across her forehead, a dot of it on her nose.
“Come on,” he said, “tell me you know Nirvana. This is the unplugged version of ‘Come as You Are.’”
“Still old,” she said, picking up her glass of beer for a drink. She was looking at him in a funny way. “Something going on with you?”
He tried one more track. “Soundgarden?”
She nodded; she knew it, but she was still staring. “Dad… what’s going on?”
He felt the fa?ade start to crumble, but there wasn’t much he could tell her anyway. Maybe that he worried his drive to solve this case had upset a widower, a man he’d nearly accused of killing his wife. His phone vibrated on the kitchen counter before he could say anything. He’d left it inside and there were several missed calls. The incoming text was from Reggie Hume.
Hikers found a body. Call me.
“Shit,” he said.
Kristen set down her beer, worried now by the edge in his tone. “Work? Thought you weren’t on-call today…”
Mike stripped out of his dirty shirt and grabbed a dark blue V-neck off the back of the living room couch. “I’m sorry honey – I gotta go.”
“You wore that yesterday,” she said about the V-neck as he slipped out the front door.
* * *
Eric O’Toole and his girlfriend Katherine Kendall had hiked the glacial esker out at Spring Pond Bog in Tupper Lake and decided to cool off with a swim on their walk out. There was a nice spot where the river going out formed a series of water slides over the rocks. And a body in the oily water below.
“Ninety miles from Watertown, thirty miles west of Lake Haven,” Mike said on the car ride there.
Lena was holding the handle above the passenger door because he was going fast. “Mike, easy…”
“They think it floated a ways. It was tied down, but the rope rotted and broke, and it relocated a bit, but this is the general area where the body was sunk.”
They turned off the main route, drove a hard side road then stopped when they reached a group of law enforcement personnel and vehicles clustered against the trees. Pierce County deputies had brought in all-terrain vehicles, and Mike commandeered one. Lena grabbed him around the waist and they headed in via the lower part of the hiking trail, rough going all the way, jumping tree roots and rocks, Lena’s grip like an iron clamp.
They got to the lake in one piece, Mike’s hands vibrating, Lena’s hair tousled.
Deputy Myer, the first officer on scene, pointed to where the body floated a few yards off the muddy shore. The remains of the rope was tied around its ankle, about three feet of it leading to a frayed end. “Probably a concrete block down there on the bottom somewhere around in here,” Myer said. “Divers will find it.”
The divers were already suiting up. Above, a helicopter thundered in the air. Mike felt another rush of excitement; the rushes were coming in waves: It was Corina Lavoie. No question. Even though she’d been submerged in water all that time, she was still eerily recognizable.
“Talk about timing,” Lena said. Her own excited, worried expression said it all: This was a huge break, the best thing for their case, but a terrible tragedy at the same time. They’d been right. All of their work to correlate Harriet’s death with Lavoie’s disappearance was vindicated. Someone had murdered at least two caseworkers, part of a series.
Mike walked away from the water’s edge, feeling that same mix of elation and sadness, got on the phone, called Eddie Roth with the Search and Rescue team. Roth was one of the guys who usually looked for missing hikers. Mike explained the situation, having to talk over Roth, who was peppering him with questions. “Eddie, Eddie – listen: We need to look at everything around Spring Pond Bog. Signs of a guy coming in, maybe dragging a body, or maybe killing her out here, but she could be struggling along the way.”