Lake of Tears (10 page)

“Andrew Stickler. The new deputy.”

Rich nodded. “Well, that’s good. Then she’ll be safe, won’t she?”

“I’m not so sure about that. I haven’t talked to Andrew yet since I found out that the bones were Tammy Lee’s, but he has some explaining to do. Like where he was Friday and Saturday night.”

This was not sounding good, but at least Meg could clear up one of those nights. “I know where he was Saturday. I saw him at the Burning Boat event. That’s where I met him.”

“Lord,” her mom said. “So he was at the Burning Boat. I don’t like any of this one bit.”

“What? Explain.”

“I can’t talk to you about this, Meggy. But I don’t want you to see Andrew until I get a few things straightened out.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too complicated.”

“Tell me.”

“Meg, I can’t. I will when I can. You have to just do what I ask you to do.”

“Mom, I’m almost nineteen. You can’t treat me like a child anymore.”

“Yes, but you’re still living in my home and I’m the boss.”

“Mom,” Meg whined in spite of herself. She knew her mom never responded to that.

Claire stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. Her eyes were fierce and sad at the same time. “Just give me a day or two. I don’t mean to come down on you so hard, but this is important. I’m asking you to not see him until I tell you it’s okay. Can you do that?”

Meg nodded, and also decided it might be time to call Andrew herself.

“Doug, I made some dinner. You hungry?”

He rolled over and tried to figure out where he was. The wallpaper looked familiar—small roses with twining vines. It made him happy. The voice was his grandmother’s. For a time, he was safe.

“Yup,” he said and sat up. His head felt like it had a weight attached to it and his hands were shaky on his knees. “Give me a sec.”

“Take your time. Nothing fancy. Just grilled cheese and tomato soup out of a can.”

He wondered what time it was. Grandma always ate on the early side. Farm time, they called it. It was dark in the room he was in, but he could see sunshine through the open door. She walked back into the kitchen, and he stood up.

The room stayed quiet. He stood still for a moment, getting his bearings. He used to be able to jump out of a dead sleep and be ready to shoot someone. Now he could hardly walk, let alone pee, which was what he really needed to do.

He made his way out of the room, blinking in the sunlight, and then shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom. A cat wound around his legs, but he just let it. Didn’t hurt nothing.

After he peed, he went to the sink and washed his hands. How had they gotten so dirty? All he’d been doing was driving.

Then he lifted his head up and looked at his face. Wasn’t good. Eyes rimmed with red, pouchy looking. Beard a few days old, never amounted to much. Hair growing out. Had to be a good four inches long, in his eyes.

Even though he wanted to get done what he had come to do, maybe he’d take a day and recoup. Clean up a bit. Hang with Grandma. Go walk out on the land that his grandfather had farmed, even though it was now sold to the neighbors.

He knew where his grandpa had kept the gun in the barn. He’d check and make sure it was still there. There was no hurry. Andrew wasn’t going anywhere. He’d checked on him when he came through Durand, driven by Andrew’s house, talked to people in a bar, gotten info out of the girlfriend.

Not quite as pretty as in her picture, but not bad. She said she and Andrew had broken up but were getting back together. She bragged about him—said he was a cop now. Which made it all just perfect. A cop, protecting and defending his community. Too bad he hadn’t been able to do that in Afghanistan.

Doug didn’t mind waiting. Things had been set in motion.

His mission was always there in front of him, pulling him along.

Maybe he was afraid to do it, ’cause then what would he have to keep going?

On her drive to work, Claire tried to figure out how she would approach Andrew. She liked the guy. He was a great addition to the sheriff’s department—knowledgeable, levelheaded, knew the territory, which often came in handy. He was already accepted by the community, welcomed, in fact. By most, he was seen as a hero.

But true heroes are few and far between. And they often came with fatal flaws. She had heard about the contretemps he had had in the parking lot with Terry Whitman, although the deputies who saw it had assured her that Andrew hadn’t been at fault.

Claire tried to pull her thoughts away from the conversation she would try to have with Andrew as soon as she saw him this morning. The fall weather was holding, cool and crisp, but sunny. The leaves were just past their peak of color, swathing the bluffs in shawls of muted paisleys. But Claire felt in her bones what was pushing behind all this glory—winter, the season of the dead. Beautiful in its own spare way, but definitely monochromatic. She tried to breathe in the color, store it in her body for those bleak days to come.

As she turned up Highway 25, she drove through rolling farmland, away from the Mississippi and along the Chippewa River. The grasses and hay fields were golden and glowing in the early morning sun. These days, she met the sun on the way to work. Soon it would not appear until after she had arrived at the Government Center.

Claire was also trying to figure out all the reasons that it bothered her that Meg was going out with Andrew—aside from the fact that his ex-girlfriend had been murdered. She just thought there was something wrong with her young daughter going out with a man who worked with her mother, who was her colleague. Then there was Andrew’s age, not to mention his experiences. If Meg were thirty, Andrew being eight years older wouldn’t matter so much, but at her current age the life experience was much greater. Then there was the factor of him being an ex-soldier. Claire had such mixed feelings about that. Some of the very things that made her want him as a deputy worked against him going out with Meg—the atrocities he might have seen, might have been a part of. The psychological problems that the experience of being in a war zone carry with it.

The good news was that Meg wasn’t going to be around much longer, which was also the bad news. How would she let her darling daughter go? Send her off into the world with all the good blessings she could manage.

First things first. Find out where Andrew was Friday night. That would settle most of her worries, and that was her job. Whatever happened to Tammy Lee had probably happened on Friday night.

Claire pulled her vehicle into the Government Center lot and looked over the squad cars. Seemed like Andrew was still here. Good. She wanted to get their conversation over with so she could get on with the day.

The more she thought about it, the more she doubted he could have had anything to do with it. Even though she knew it was silly to think such a thing, Andrew had such an open face, was still such a farm boy … how could he have killed anyone?

Andrew was sitting hunched over his desk trying to fill out a form when he saw that Claire Watkins had walked in. He felt her eyes on him, but he didn’t look up.

“Hey, Stickler,” she called out. “Meet me in the sheriff’s office when you finish with that.”

He slapped his hand down on the form and looked up at her. Might as well get it over with—whatever it was. He knew she wasn’t happy about him seeing Meg, which was one of the reasons why he hadn’t called her daughter again. Maybe he shouldn’t be seeing the girl. He stood up. “Right now would be fine. I’m tired of trying to figure these forms out. They’re worse than what we had to fill out in the service.”

Andrew followed her into the sheriff’s office and watched as she took one of the two chairs that were sitting in front of the desk. He sat down in the other one. She didn’t seem ready to claim her job as sheriff. He understood. Might seem too disrespectful, or might be too hard to give it up once the sheriff was back on the job. He didn’t know Claire that well, and she was a hard woman to read.

“Yup,” he said, folding his hands on his belt.

“I have some bad news.”

So many things flashed through his head: he was fired, Meg had gotten hurt, they had found out what had happened in Afghanistan, Claire didn’t want him to see her daughter. He managed to ask, “What?”

“Tammy Lee Johansen. You knew her, right?”

“Yes, we knew each other in high school and went out a few years ago. Before I left town.”

“She’s dead. You heard about the bones we found in the fire. They’ve been identified as hers.”

He didn’t really feel much and he knew his face was blank. Tammy Lee had been fun, a great girl to hang out with before you left to fight for your country, a party girl. But he hadn’t known her that well, really. Her death made him fear something more. What if it was all coming back to get him?

“How?” he asked.

“Well, it appears she was hit on the head and then put in the bottom of the boat before it was set on fire.”

“Any ideas?” he asked.

Claire stared at him, then asked, “Where were you Friday night?”

She couldn’t really be asking him that, suspecting he had something to do with the murder. Stay calm, he told himself. He had to think. “At home. I’m staying with my folks. We watched TV. They went to bed. I stayed up and watched until I fell asleep.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah, nothing much happened,” he said, but he remembered the two phone calls. The first from Tammy Lee, asking him to meet him at the Burning Boat. He had to tell Claire about that one. If not, she would find out some other way and it would look very bad for him. “Except I did get a call. From Tammy Lee. We had run into each other at a bar a few days earlier and she had wanted to talk. We decided to meet at the Burning Boat.”

“You didn’t see her before then?”

“No. I wondered when she didn’t show, but that was like Tammy Lee. Couldn’t really count on her.”

“You mind if I talk to your parents?” she asked as a courtesy.

“No, that’s fine. Of course. Check with them.”

“I’m sorry to have to do this, Andrew,” she said. “Also, as a favor to me, would you not see Meg until we get this straightened out?”

Andrew didn’t say anything right away. Not see Meg. The only person he had found comfort with since he had returned home. But why involve her with this whole mess. “Sure.”

“She’s leaving soon for college.”

“I know,” he said, and then thought he shouldn’t have. Shouldn’t reveal how much he knew about Meg already.

“Thanks,” Claire said and stood.

Andrew stood and left the room. When he sat at his desk, he felt panic surge over him. He wrapped his hands together so they wouldn’t shake. He would never get out of it. He hadn’t told Claire about the second phone call, the one that came later, after his parents had gone to bed, from Doug.

That phone call had bothered him so much he had left the house and gone for a long walk. He had gone out without his coat or gloves or hat. He had walked in the darkness of the country roads and felt like he was back in Afghanistan, cold and tired and weary of something more than exhaustion, weary of the stink of scared men and his own fear that ate away his bones.

He had wished so hard that he could make everything right again. He didn’t know what time he had stumbled back into the house.