The Innocence Game (8 page)

“Me, too.”

“Good.” She leaned across and kissed me lightly. Easily. It tasted like citrus and sand. Then she was on her feet.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“For a swim.”

“Bullshit.”

She turned and padded silently toward the water, shedding clothes as she went. I got up and followed. I’d have been a fool not to.

The man with yellow eyes sat on the beach, a hundred paces south. Might as well have been a mile away for all they knew. He could tell they were drinking and imagined how the rest of it might go. But that didn’t interest him. Unless he decided to kill them. Then everything changed.

The girl got up and began to run in his direction, at an angle toward the water. He watched her strip off her shirt. Then her shorts. The boy sat in the sand, like a fucking idiot. Finally he got up and hobbled, almost bent at the waist, toward the surf. The man with the yellow eyes understood now what he’d sensed in the woods. All in all, it made perfect sense. The man crept forward, drifting like a dark sigh along the water’s edge and taking a small inhale before slipping beneath a wave. He stroked to within fifty feet of the two of them and surfaced. Then he treaded water. And listened.

I could just see her as she hit the surf, body arched, cutting into the face of a wave as it broke and popping up on the other side. And then she was swimming, a strong freestyle stroke, up and over the next roller. Best I could tell from the trail of clothes, Sarah Gold still had her bra and panties on. Part of me was disappointed. Part was relieved. I stripped down to my underwear and tested the temperature.

It was barely July in Chicago. The lake hadn’t warmed up a whole lot when the sun was out. At night it was out of the question. Except, apparently, for Sarah. I put a foot in and gasped. She was maybe twenty yards out now and turning to look back. Cold be damned, I ran until I was waist-deep. I couldn’t feel my legs, but that was okay. She rose up out of the water and waved. I took a deep breath and plunged into a wave. Sarah was waiting on the other side.

“Sobers you up, huh?” She whipped her head free of water and tucked her hair behind her ears.

“Freezing.”

She ducked into a wave and paddle kicked back out. “Stay in the water. You’ll keep warm.”

I wasn’t much of a swimmer, but I followed anyway. I was fairly certain I’d follow Sarah Gold all the way to Canada if she had a mind. Or die trying, with a big smile on my face. We paddled past the line of surf. The water wasn’t as rough out here, and we bobbed up and down, treading water as the rollers swept past.

“I used to lifeguard every summer,” Sarah said, her voice lonely in the lake at night.

“Where?”

She nodded in the general direction of Michigan. “Harbor Springs.”

I knew about Harbor Springs. Or at least had seen the pictures. Clear blue water, deep, sandy beaches, and carpets of thick grass rolled up to gabled homes with long sweeping porches and wicker furniture. Men with white teeth and heavy gold watches. Women with flawless complexions and wide-brimmed hats. Everyone tanned, living forever, and drinking gin and tonics.

“Heard it’s nice,” I said.

“It’s where I’m from.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It’s just that everyone’s from somewhere, and you wear it like a second skin. Anyway, it’s a long way from Chicago.”

“Yes, it is.”

We treaded water for a while longer. The sky was black and deep, impossibly huge, with a handful of pale stars tossed across it. A breeze kicked up around us, and I felt my body spasm in the cold. Sarah seemed immune to it.

“I’m not the greatest swimmer,” I said.

“You’re doing fine.”

A wave caught me on the chin, and I spit out a little water. “Yeah, well, it’s fucking cold.”

She laughed. “Come here. I’ll warm you up.”

Sarah moved close and wrapped her legs around mine. I could feel the strength in her thighs as she gripped me.

“In lifeguard training they taught us how to share body heat.” She spit a small bit of water from her mouth.

“Oh, yeah?” I could hear the strain and catch in my voice.

“Yeah.” Sarah moved closer, rubbing her entire body against mine. The water temperature might have been sixty degrees, but things were happening. And Sarah couldn’t help but feel it. “It’s critical that we stay warm,” she said. Her face was inches from mine, both arms draped around my shoulders.

“You think so?”

We bobbed up and down on a wave as she nodded. I felt myself falling toward her. This kiss was the real thing, long, deep, and wet. I could feel her breasts against my chest, her nipples hard through the fabric. We pulled apart but kept our bodies touching. Her eyes were closed, face upturned and edged in moonlight. “That was nice.” Sarah opened her eyes and splashed me. “Race you back.” Then she was gone again, ducking under the water and knifing away.

I followed her back in, the waves pushing us home. She streamed up and out of the water. I struggled in the surf, which, truth be told, wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I needed a little time for Mother Nature to settle before stepping onto the beach. So I wallowed and watched. Sarah walked without a trace of self-consciousness. Body, tanned and cut. Legs, lean muscle, perfectly proportioned. She was beautiful. As beautiful as she’d ever be. And I suddenly felt sad because of it.

Sarah picked up her clothes, found a rock to sit on, and got dressed. When it was safe, I came out of the water. She was waiting up the beach.

“That was fun.” She handed me the vodka, but I wasn’t as interested. “Fun” wasn’t the word I was looking for, although I certainly would have accepted it an hour ago. Had the stakes shifted? Sarah Gold and Ian Joyce? A couple? I chuckled and changed my mind about the bottle.

“What are you laughing at?” she said.

“ ‘A man’s reach should never exceed his grasp.’ ”

“Robert Browning. And that’s not what he said. Or meant. In fact, quite the opposite.”

“Excuse me?”

“The quote is: ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ I was an English lit major, with a concentration in English poetry.”

“I stand corrected.”

She gave me a playful push. We started walking, hands linked loosely. Not meaning much, except everything. After about a hundred yards, we sat down again. I thought I saw a shadow along the water’s edge, but it was just a breeze off the lake. Sarah found a smooth stone and tossed it into the darkness.

“It won’t be like this for much longer, you know.”

“Be like what?”

She flicked a hand at a scatter of lights in the distance. “Like this. Northwestern. College. Grad school. Make-believe.”

“That’s what you think this is?”

“Absolutely. And a lot of people freak at the prospect of it ending.”

“You don’t seem like the type that’s gonna freak.”

“No?” She rolled over on the flat of her stomach and played sand through her fingers. “First semester, freshman year. I’m sitting on a bench outside Norris. All by myself. Middle of the day. People walk by. I smile. They don’t know I’m alive. I tell myself everything’s going to be fine. I’ve always been popular. Then I look down at my hands. They’re clutching my purse in a death grip. Heart’s beating a tattoo through my chest.”

“Why?”

“My world was getting bigger. Would I measure up?”

“You measure up just fine, Sarah.”

“Four years later, sure. But there’s always the next step. The next level.”

“You afraid of that?”

“Sometimes. Other times, I’m desperate for it. For anything real.”

A wild shiver of wind ran through us.

“It’s getting chilly,” I said.

“What happened today, with the two detectives, you think that’s something…”

“Real? Hard to say. Sure felt like it.”

“Havens scares me a little,” she said.

“He probably should.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay.”

She rubbed the edge of her foot against mine. “I’m glad we took a swim.”

“Me, too.” I paused. “Maybe it should be our secret.”

“Are you ashamed of me, Ian Joyce?”

“Please.”

She kissed me on the cheek and traced the curve of my face. “It would never work, anyway.” Her voice hovered now, barely above a tipsy whisper.

“I know.”

“But it could have been fun.”

“Maybe it’s better not to talk about it.”

She was quiet again, and we listened to the surf.

“Friends?” she said.

“For sure.”

We sat in the dark and watched the waves, a mostly empty bottle and our stillborn romance lying on the sand between us. After a while, it got too cold, even for Sarah. I offered her my jacket, and she took it. We held hands and walked the rest of the way back to campus. I made sure she found her car. Then I walked home. My head hurt from the alcohol, and I wondered how well I’d sleep. But it wasn’t a problem. I closed my eyes and the waves were there, heavy and thick, sweeping me into the deep reaches of the lake, where I waited for the rip to take me under.

I woke to the sound of a knock downstairs. Jake Havens was at my front door.

“It’s Sunday morning, Havens. What do you want?”

“Thought we’d pick up Sarah and grab some breakfast. Unless, of course, she’s already here?” He shot a playful look up the stairs.

“Fuck you.” I pushed him into the kitchen. “Wait here while I get dressed.”

I pulled on some clothes, listening for footsteps as Havens explored my house. But I found him right where I’d left him, at the kitchen table, reading the morning
Trib
.

“Still nothing about the body in the cave,” he said and pushed the paper across. “By the way, why do you have me copying things when you have a photographic memory?”

“I don’t have a photographic memory.”

“Show me what you came up with.”

“What about Sarah?”

“She can wait.”

I pulled out my notes. Havens pored through them while I made coffee. When he’d finished, he stacked the pages into a neat pile and folded his hands over them.

“Good stuff, Joyce. Stuff I can use.”

“I’m thrilled.”

Sarcasm appeared to be yet another thing that had no effect on my classmate.

“You want to see what I’m working on?” he said.

“Lead on.”

We walked out to his car. Havens popped the trunk. Inside were three Bankers Boxes. I lifted one out. Heavy. Scrawled in Magic Marker on the side were names, dates, and case numbers.

“I’ve been busy,” Havens said with a grin.

“No kidding. What do we got here?”

“Let’s bring them inside.”

We lugged the boxes into my living room.

“Did Sarah tell you about the records center?” I said.

“She said everything in the files was cut up and blacked out. Tell me about the cops that stopped you.”

I gave him the firsthand account. Havens listened closely.

“Someone’s worried,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly.”

He opened one of the boxes and began to remove files.

“What is all this?” I said.

“Ever heard of ViCAP?”

“No.”

“Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It’s an FBI program that analyzes crimes and sorts them into different categories.”

“What kind of categories?”

“All kinds. Guys that like to tie up their victims. Ones that like to use a knife. Strangle. Different variations of sexual assault. ViCAP identifies the signature of a crime and then matches it up with similar cases. Gives the police a way to look for patterns.”

“And you have access to ViCAP?”

“One of my law profs at Chicago does. I told him I wanted to get a jump on the assholes from Evanston.” Havens winked. “He let me run Harrison’s case through the system. Pretty interesting.”

Havens pulled out a laptop and powered it up. “I punched in all the signature details I could think of. Age of the victim. Kidnapping. School. Proximity to water. Strangulation, drowning. Some evidence of a knife.”

“Yeah?”

“Then I ran a search in the Chicagoland area. Anything within a five-year window of Skylar Wingate.”

My head felt heavy, and my skin itched. I wanted Havens to get to the punch line. The barrister in him, however, was nothing if not methodical.

“I picked five years because I thought it was a reasonable amount of time to expect a killer to be active. If you look at the research on most serial killers—”

“What did you find, Jake?”

Havens pointed to two case numbers highlighted in a document he’d opened up on his laptop. “Two cases. Within three years of Wingate’s death.”

“How close are they?”

“You tell me.” Havens reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a folder with a green tab. On the cover was a picture of a kid, smiling in his Little League uniform. “Nineteen ninety-six. Billy Scranton from Indiana. Ran away when he was thirteen. Six months later, they found him partially buried in the forest preserve. Maybe a mile from Skylar. He’d been drowned. Possibly strangled.”

A second jacket hit the table. On the cover was a blurry shot of a black kid.

“Ninety-seven. Richmond Allen. Fourteen. Another runaway, from Texas. They found him in a wooded area on the South Side. Twenty miles from Caldwell Woods, but near a lake. He had a rope around his neck. Just like Skylar. And water in his lungs.”

“No one ever connected the cases?”

Havens shook his head.

“And they’re still unsolved?”

“That’s where it gets interesting.” Havens opened up a second box and pulled out a stack of red-tabbed folders. Where did he get all this shit? And where did he get the time?

“Both cases were ‘solved.’ ” Havens made quote marks in the air with his fingers. “Remember, this was still the early days of DNA. Very difficult. Very expensive. Barely understood.”

“So no DNA requests in either case?”

“That’s right. In the Scranton case, they nailed the guy with fibers that allegedly came from his car and his coat. Wayne Williams sort of thing. Guy from Atlanta.”

“I know who Wayne Williams is.”

“In the Allen case, it was blood typing.”

“What about witnesses?”