Lake of Tears (7 page)

“My flannel PJs.”

He pulled back and looked down at her. “Flannel? Already? It’s not winter. It’s barely cold out.”

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to wear them if you were more generous with the covers.”

He started to unbutton her top. “I’ll keep you warm.”

“So if it turns out that the boyfriend had something to do with her missing, I want you to be my witness that I suspected him all along.”

He opened up her pajama top and wrapped his arms around her. He stretched out on top of her. “Warm enough?”

“Mmm,” she said. Amy could feel his heart beating in her own chest. Like they were one creature.

“I know some ways to make things even a little hotter,” he murmured.

Rich fell asleep right after they had made love. Not so unusual for him, but for some reason, tonight Claire wanted him to be awake next to her as she was worrying about so many things: the sheriff, his job, the bones, her daughter. Somehow she felt shaken by life lately, like something really bad was going to happen and it was going to rip everything she knew apart.

She twitched and turned, sticking a foot out from under the covers, then pulling it back in, lying on one side, then shifting to the other. No position was comfortable, no temperature felt right. Thoughts pulsed through her head with a dangerous energy. There was no gentle drifting to sleep.

This unease was unusual for her these days. Since she had moved through menopause, Claire had reclaimed her previous easy sleep patterns, maybe sleeping a little less, but falling asleep quickly and waking up with the alarm, not the middle-of-the-night sweats.

What was getting to her? She had had bad anxiety years ago, after her husband had been killed, but then she’d seemed to get over it, be able to rock and roll with the best of them.

Claire thought her anxiety had to do with seeing the bones. There had been something so vulnerable about them. Lying in the ashes, bereft of the protection of their skin, they seemed delicate and fragile.

For most of the day, she had sat on a log by the shore watching as Dr. Pinkers gently lifted bone after bone, putting them in individual plastic bags, labeling them. There was no hurrying him. Somehow his work felt sacred, the lifting of the bones, the naming of them. Maybe she should have left him to it, but she felt like she needed to be there—both for the legality of chain of possession and for the honoring of the dead.

But watching the doctor work with the bones made her feel like she had seen what was inside herself, just this delicate necklace of ivory trinkets, too insignificant to carry the weight of a body. How did one manage to continue to move in this world, day after day, carrying on?

Claire hated waiting for the forensic evidence to come in. When Dr. Pinkers left, the bones all safely packed in bags and then tucked into a foam container, he said he’d call her as soon as he knew anything. When she pushed him and asked when that might be, he squinted his eyes as if looking far off into the future. “I’ll know something before the week’s out.”

She sat at her desk, not really waiting for the phone to ring but hoping it might, and at the same time getting some of her mountains of paperwork done. While Annette had suggested she move into Sheriff Talbert’s office, that felt too uncomfortable—she told the secretary just to route all his calls her way.

There was always this weird lag time that happened after the very beginning of an investigation. On the first day there was the franticness of securing the site, interviewing witnesses, taking photos, gathering evidence. Then they would be done, and all the bits that they had pulled together would go off to the experts. She so wished it was like it was on TV, that it would take only as long as a commercial break for the information to come back to them.

The forensics were especially important, as they had a body with no name, no identity at all. No story. Wasn’t that the worst of it? No sense of what had happened to this person?

Then there was the missing woman—Tammy Lee Johansen. Amy knew her from high school, said she was a bit of a flake, wouldn’t be surprised if she was just out partying. Still, they had to take the report seriously. And what if she turned out to be the bones?

Claire looked down at her hands, seeing the bones push up against the skin more than they used to do when she was younger. Her nails were blunt cut so that she could work with them more easily. She wanted to get her hands dirty in this case, find out who those bones belonged to.

The bones were haunting her.

Andrew Stickler sauntered into the office, then came toward her desk, looking very happy with himself. She wondered what that was all about. He was generally pretty much a keep-your-head-down kind of guy. Behavior he’d probably learned in Afghanistan. Survival technique.

He stopped right by her desk and she looked up at him, couldn’t help smiling back. “What’s up with you?” she asked.

“I don’t know if Meg had a chance to tell you last night. I know she got in kinda late,” Andrew started, then stopped.

“What about Meg? I was asleep when she got home, but I heard her. What do you know about it?”

“Well, I was with her last night.”

“Did you run into her some place?”

“No, we went out.”

She sat up straight and asked more sharply than she intended, “You went out with Meg?”

“Yeah, it just happened. We met at that Burning Boat event. I didn’t know who she was. Just hit it off. Then I found out she was your daughter. I hope you don’t mind.”

Claire didn’t know what to say. Her daughter was eighteen years old, way too young to be going out with the likes of Andrew Stickler, who was mature in the ways of the world that she didn’t want her daughter to know anything about, have anything to do with. At least, not yet. “I think I might mind.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, Andrew, what are you thinking? You’re way too old for her. She’s still a teenager.”

“I didn’t realize how young she was when I asked her out. I thought she was in her twenties.”

“I think you need to think twice about this, Andrew. She’s not even going to be here for much longer. She’s going off to school in Madison.” Claire hated that she was saying this, but the words came out of their own volition. “She’s not ready for someone like you.”

“What does that mean?” Andrew’s body tightened up, his shoulders raised, his voice sharp.

“Andrew, it’s nothing against you at all. My concerns are all about Meg. She’s a young eighteen. She’s hardly been away from home. You’ve traveled, you’ve seen things. My God, you’ve been to war.”

“Yes, I have. I’ve served my country. And now I’m home, trying to find my way in this new life. Meg will have to decide. I’d like to see her again, but if she doesn’t think she’s ready for someone like me, then she can tell me that.”

Claire watched him walk away. That had not gone well. Somehow she had said all the wrong things. She’d have to talk to Meg and make her see that going out with Andrew Stickler was probably not a good idea right now. Maybe later, after she had gone to college, met some guys her own age, done some living of her own.

Right now, Andrew just seemed like too much man for Meg. Wasn’t a mother’s job to protect her daughter from the likes of such men? Who knows what he had seen or done in Afghanistan?

Andrew stood on the edge of the woods by the county building and smoked a cigarette. It was the one he allowed himself every day. He had gone into the service a nonsmoker, but that changed as soon as he hit the ground in Afghanistan. Everyone smoked. Babies there smoked, as far as he knew. Once he got home he quit. It was hard, but he didn’t want the memories that came with lighting up a cigarette. Then, after a couple of months without a single butt, he started smoking a single cigarette a day. Maybe so he wouldn’t forget. Maybe just so he could taste that world again.

He knew Watkins was right. He had no business going out with her daughter. Meg knew nothing of the world he lived in, had lived in, had pushed so deep into him that he wasn’t sure he would ever come out of it.

But she was like a peach. The sweetest, ripest, best-smelling peach he had ever tasted. And she wanted to be picked. He could feel that energy all along her skin. They had come close last night. Pulling himself away from her was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do—but once he had felt where they were headed, he had scrambled out of the car and pulled her out for their walk.

Things had calmed down then. They had sat on the very edge of the Maiden Rock and watched the barges coming up the river, the cars sailing by below on the ribbon of the road, and the trains threading through the trees. It had been good for him, sitting and talking about things that normal people talked about on a date—music, school, dreams. The way life used to be.

Meg was a very smart kid. Seemed quite determined. She claimed she didn’t want to be a cop like her mom—she apologized, not like him either. She thought maybe a lawyer.

“So like a super cop?” he had teased her.

“You think?”

“In a way. Just heavier artillery.”

She had laughed, tossed her long dark hair, and said, “Oh, yeah, you with the military metaphors.”

“Bother you?”

She shrugged. “It’s different.”

“Don’t you know any guys from school that went into the service?”

“Yeah, I know ’em, but I didn’t hang out with them.”

That statement hung in the air between them. He held out his hand to her. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get a burger.”

The rest of the evening had been light, fizzy almost. Andrew wanted to sit across from her in a booth and watch her eyes catch the bar light forever and a day. Truly.

He drove her back to her car parked by the Harbor View and got out to open the door for her before they could kiss again. Too dangerous.

But she had grabbed him at her car door and they had sealed the night with one more kiss. There had been no talk of seeing each other again. There was no question of that, he was sure. He could hardly keep from calling her right now, standing smoking a cigarette and looking at the woods.

He was flicking his cigarette off toward the trees when an arm grabbed him and swung him around.

There was no time for thought, just action.

Andrew rounded on the man and slammed a fist into him so hard he could feel the shudder of the body through his own.

Then he remembered where he was and stared down at the young man crumpled at his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gulping in air, shaking. He reached down to help the guy to his feet.

“What the hell?” The guy wouldn’t take his hand, crouched on the ground. He was about Andrew’s age, and wore a flannel shirt and jeans. His dark hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. He stared at Andrew like he was a madman. “Why’d you do that?”

“You startled me,” Andrew tried to explain.

“So you slug me?”

Andrew didn’t know what to say. They warned him something like this might happen, but he hadn’t quite believed it. “Jumpy. Just out of the service.”

The man stood, his face tightened. “You’re Andrew Stickler.”

“Yes, how did you know that?”

“I’m Terry. You’re the guy I’m looking for.” Then he pulled his arm back and slugged Andrew in the chest.

Andrew doubled over and staggered, trying not to fall. His breath came in wheezes. “What?”

“Where’s Tammy Lee?” Terry yelled at him.

Two deputies who had been walking out of the county offices came running up and grabbed Terry’s arms, holding him back.

“What’re you talking about?” Andrew gasped out, straightening up and breathing deep. “What about Tammy?”

“She was supposed to see you, and then she went missing.”

Andrew shook his head. “She never showed up. I didn’t think anything of it. It’s so like her.”

“Well, she’s been gone for over two days now, and you might be the last person she talked to.”

“She’s missing?”

“Yeah, like you don’t know. You don’t fool me.” Terry tried to shake free of the deputies. “Whatever happened to her is all your fault. You just wouldn’t leave her alone.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Even after she broke up with you, you kept bothering her.”