Lake of Tears (9 page)

“Sure, glad to help.”

“Both you and your mom have said that she’s done this before. Why? What does she do, exactly?”

“Well, Tammy Lee likes to party and she has a lot of friends. In Minneapolis, all over the place. Sometimes she’ll go out with friends and Mom won’t hear from her for a few days.”

“Does she do drugs?”

“Probably. She and I don’t talk about that stuff much, we don’t hang out with the same people, but I’ve seen her when she seems kinda messed up. I wouldn’t say she has a problem, but I doubt she says no to anything that’s offered.”

“Has anything been going on recently that would cause her to disappear?”

“Well,” Bria sighed on the other end. “I hate to tell on her, but you know she’s getting married soon, right?”

“Yes, your mom said before Thanksgiving.”

“Tammy Lee and Terry have been going out for a while. He popped the question early this summer. They picked a date and everything. Then Andrew Stickler came back to town.”

“Andrew? Why, I work with Andrew.”

“I heard he got a job with the sheriff. Anyhow, Tammy said that he’d been trying to see her and all. I don’t think she ever got over Andrew. So now she’s having mixed feelings about Terry.”

“You mean you think that she might call off the wedding?”

“She’s been hinting at something like that, but she’s so changeable. One day she’ll say she can’t stand Terry, the next she’s buying her wedding dress. I didn’t think too much of her indecision. At one time she and Andrew were real tight, but then when he left, well, Tammy Lee’s not one to wait around.”

“So she broke up with him?”

“I guess she texted him to say it was over. Isn’t that awful. Here he is, halfway around the world. Sounds worse than a Dear John letter to me. But I was surprised when she did it, because she was pretty whipped on him. Even after she claimed they were through, she would still talk about him. She got real patriotic and everything. She threatened to join the service herself. Thank goodness she didn’t take it that far. Although maybe the military would have been a good thing for her, teach her some life lessons.”

“When was the last time you talked to your sister?”

“I think it was Thursday night. Yeah, it was and now I remember, she said she was meeting Andrew. She sounded real excited. She said she was going to meet him at that big fire they do down at the lake. What’s it called again?”

“Burning Boat.”

“Yeah, she said she was looking forward to watching it all go up in flames.”

Claire stared at the x-ray that Dr. Pinkers had slapped up on the lightboard. Ghostly teeth shone out of a black background.

This was why she had driven the dental x-rays to Dr. Pinkers’ lab herself, even though it was an hour away. She wanted to see how he did this, she wanted to know how he matched them or didn’t. Plus she wanted to know the news right away, to know if they had found the person the bones belonged to.

“Very good,” Dr. Pinkers said. “This full-mouth x-ray should give us all the information we need.” He pointed back toward the table she was standing by. “There’s our comparison.”

Claire moved in closer and looked down at the teeth and jawbones that had been gathered from the burn site. While there was some darkening of the bones, the teeth remained fairly clean. Or maybe Pinkers had cleaned them. “I’m amazed how good they look. Doesn’t seem like the fire hurt them at all.”

“Oh yeah, teeth last through almost anything. They’re the hardest part of the human body, the last thing to go. That little fire didn’t come close to destroying them. They can last in blast furnaces up to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit.”

He walked up to the x-ray, took off his glasses and stood inches away from it, staring with the intensity of a creature ready to pounce. “These are going to serve the purpose.” He pointed at the x-ray with his glasses. “These are decent x-rays, which will make my work easy.”

“Can you always get a positive ID?”

“Not always. If we have a strong suspicion, if the teeth have been damaged in some way and we’re not sure, we can extract DNA from the pulp and make a positive ID using that method.”

Pinkers went back to staring at the x-ray. Claire stared with him. She could see the eye sockets floating like ghoulish orbs above the flattened jawbone—the teeth were lined up like a rock wall with the roots stretching out above and below them. The whitest objects on the screen were the bright almost-twinkle of the fillings. She counted eight white splots, mainly in the back teeth.

“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked. “What do you concentrate on to do the match?”

“I study the arrangement of the teeth, the fillings, and other dental work. I count the teeth to see if any are missing. I look for any anomalies—broken teeth, noticeable crookedness. Every mouth is different. Even the bite marks are recognizably different.”

“I know about that. I’ve worked on cases where we’ve had to take an imprint of a bite mark from an assailant.”

“Yes, that can work.”

“What do you think?”

Dr. Pinkers circled the x-ray with his finger. “Looks like she had braces. Her teeth are pretty regular and evenly laid out. But she has a lot of fillings. Must have eaten candy when she was a kid.”

“Who didn’t.”

“I don’t really care for candy myself.”

Somehow she was not surprised. Claire stepped back and watched him. He continued to look at the x-ray from very close range, his eyes traveling up and down the film, his mouth moving with no sound coming out as if he was holding a private conversation with himself. He snuffled through his nose; he nodded his head; he turned and put his glasses back on.

“I would say that the teeth that we have found definitely match the teeth in this x-ray. What did you say her name was?”

“Tammy Lee Johansen.”

“And her family filed a missing persons?”

“Her fiancé.”

“Sad. She will not be getting married. But at least they can bury her, knowing what has happened.”

“Not everything. Not who did this.”

Doctor Pinkers stared at Claire in the same way that he had been looking at the x-ray, close and concentrated. “My work is done. That is your job.”

The Johansens lived just on the outskirts of the small town of Arkansaw, only about a ten minute drive from Durand. Pretty country, rolling hills, with a creek running right through town.

By the time Claire got to their house, the sun was setting and she could see the ghostly light of a TV flickering in what she guessed was the living room. Claire knocked on the front door, staring right at an orange pumpkin head that had been hung at eye level. Yes, Halloween was on its way.

A woman with straw blond hair and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth came to the door. She looked to be in her forties and dressed like she was in her twenties: tight jeans, tight top with writing on it, and her hair pulled close to her head.

She took the cigarette out of her mouth and said, “Yeah,” then did a double take when she took in the uniform. The woman sucked in her breath. “Tammy Lee?” she asked.

“Mrs. Johansen?” Claire asked.

The woman nodded, but didn’t step back inside the house. Then she said, “Bobby, you can call me Bobby.”

“Is your husband here?”

“He’s not home yet. What about Tammy Lee?”

“May I come inside?”

“You’re going to tell me bad news.” Bobby still didn’t move. She held her cigarette like it would burn her.

“I’m sorry,” Claire started.

Bobby crumpled. She jabbed the cigarette into her jeans and then fell to a heap on the floor. “Not Tammy Lee.”

Claire reached down and tried to help her up. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know what happened to her. Can’t you go away?” Anger and fear mixed in the woman’s throaty voice.

If it were only that easy, Claire thought. She got Bobby on her feet, took her into the house, and sat her on the couch. Because there was no chair close by, Claire perched on the end of the coffee table. The TV was going on about the specials at the Furniture Barn.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I know how hard this is, but I must tell you that we are quite sure that your daughter is dead. I’ve just come from a positive identification of bones found in Fort St. Antoine as belonging to your daughter.”

“Bones? What’re you talking about?”

Claire hated to have to tell her about the bones. She reached out and put a hand on the woman’s knee. “Tammy Lee was knocked unconscious and then put into the Burning Boat. Her bones were found in the ashes.”

Then the screaming started. Bobby opened her mouth and a high piercing shriek came out that wavered, then went on even louder. Claire couldn’t stand it. She stood up and went into the kitchen to get Bobby something to drink and find something to wipe her face.

Even though Claire didn’t want to hear the screams, she respected them. They were the last gasp of motherhood, trying desperately to get a child back, trying to scream her back into existence. When they stopped, Bobby would have to face the truth. So Claire let her scream a while longer, then walked back into the living room to tell Bobby what she knew.

Meg sat at the kitchen counter, cutting up carrots for Rich. She had to keep her hands busy while she was waiting for the phone to ring. She hadn’t heard from Andrew all day yesterday, and now most of today had passed as well. Curt and she had always talked every day when they were a steady thing. At least a check-in call. It didn’t have to be very long. But since that was the only relationship she had been in, she wasn’t sure what was normal, especially with an older guy.

“You know, I went on a date the other night,” Meg mentioned casually as she handed the bowl of carrot coins to Rich.

“So that’s why you were out so late.” Rich dumped the carrots in the pheasant broth. “Anyone we know?”

“Mom knows him,” Meg said, not sure she was ready to tell Rich she was going out with a deputy.

“I hope that doesn’t mean he’s a felon.”

Meg laughed. “Hardly. He was in the army over in Afghanistan.”

Rich looked at her. “That’s tough. How’s he doing?”

“He seems good. He’s in super good shape.”

Rich laughed. “I don’t need to know about that.”

Meg giggled. It was nice to talk about Andrew with someone. Odd how she could often talk more easily about things with Rich than her mom. “He said the countryside was really wild and dangerous. He said the mountains were so rugged it looked like someone had taken really long fingernails and just dragged them down the side, making these deep ravines.”

“Did he see much action?”

“Not that he’s mentioned. But I think he was in a difficult spot, some sort of outpost in the hills.”

Just then her mom came stomping in the door. Meg checked her out to see what kind of mood she was in.

Claire had her mouth clamped shut, the stomps a little harder than necessary, not good signs.

“We waited on dinner for you,” Meg said as her mom flung her jacket on a chair. “You look tired.”

“I had to go to Eau Claire to get some forensic testing done. But it was worth it. We found out who the bones belong to. Someone from around here, I’m sorry to say. Then I had to go tell the family. It’s never any fun to get that news. I’m glad to know, but sorry it’s someone from our community.”

“Who was it?” Meg asked.

Her mom looked at her intently. “Tammy Lee Johansen. The name mean anything to you?”

“Nope. Should it?”

“She went out with someone you know.”

“Curt? I don’t think so.”

“No, someone more recent.” Claire looked up at Meg and pinned her with a hard stare. “Someone you’re going out with now.”

Meg had a bad feeling. She had meant to tell her mom about Andrew, but she hadn’t felt like the time was right yet. Her mom didn’t look very happy. “I was going to tell you.”

“When? After the whole county knew?”

“Whoa, let me in on this.” Rich pulled a beer out of the fridge and handed it to her mom. “What’s this about, Claire?”

Her mom took the beer, but just held it in her lap. Another not so good sign. “Do you know who Meg went out with the other night?”

“She was just telling me about it—but she hadn’t divulged his name yet.”