The People Next Door (13 page)

I think that was the moment I knew something had gone wrong for the families. The families who would change everything, including
us.

On Friday Mick stood on the northeast corner of the dam, watching a handful of boats gather and fold the surface of Boulder
Reservoir into silken green bolts. Further along the sloping rock wall, a Latino father and son duo cast their red-and-white
bobbers and patiently awaited a response. It was a typical June day, the sky vast and populated by a scattering of cotton
balls that tumbled and burned away from the sun. Standing as close to the accident as was possible sans watercraft, he expected
to feel something more – fear, anxiety, additional flashes of insight that would point the way back to the mystery that had
unfolded here – but so far there was nothing. It was the same lake he had known all his life, not the dormant monster that
had almost ended it.

He had come home late last night to find Amy sleeping in the guest room, so he had escaped confrontation until this morning,
when she scolded him for working too much. He had not found the words to describe the things he had experienced his first
day back at work; telling Amy would only pile more stress on her. And anyway, he couldn’t be sure that any of these ‘insights’
were real, at least not until he confronted his accountant. Instead, he had pretended he was tired, worn out and chastened,
promising to lay low today. She seemed to buy it.

He walked the long path, the sun loosening him up, and thought about Roger Lertz and his mistress Bonnie. The real Roger,
and the hideous version that had visited him in his dreams two nights ago. That had been an absurd but terrifying nightmare,
but what would it mean now if the police came to him and informed him Roger was actually dead?

Before leaving the house that morning, Mick called Sergeant Terry Fielding to schedule an informal statement and got rolled
into an anonymous department voicemail box. He supposed his old police buddy would get back to him in his own time, when there
was something worth sharing, but the fact that the police had not visited him yet was unsettling.

What had Kyle really seen? Roger attacking Bonnie? And then what had Mick seen on the boat? He couldn’t remember anything,
but the idea of Roger trying to drown Mick (a possible witness to Bonnie’s attack or murder) didn’t feel right. Roger had
always been a loose ball bearing, a party guy who could not grow up, but Mick couldn’t figure the dentist for a murderer or
even an attempted murderer.

You’re in a lot of trouble
, the dentist had said in his dream.
I’m free of all my addictions. Now it’s my turn to help you
.

Far more likely, Roger had been drunk or coked up
and got into a skirmish with Bonnie, the two of them had seen Mick coming back for them, and somehow slipped away from the
most-likely-borrowed vessel. Nobody had been murdered. Roger was too jolly for homicide. Roger. Jolly. It gave Mick a smile
and he decided right then to go for a swim.

He hadn’t brought a suit, but he doubted anyone would mind if he went
au natural
. He had almost drowned here; he deserved to re-baptize himself at the scene. He peeled off his T-shirt and jeans, wadded
his underwear, and kicked his sneakers off into a pile amid the dam’s fortification stones. He stepped down into the water.
The father and son fishermen gave him a strange look and then ignored him, no doubt recognizing a Boulder progressive wing-nut
when they saw one. When the water reached his knees, Mick took the plunge, pulling himself in broad strokes toward the northwest
corner.

It was a good swim of perhaps a hundred meters and Mick reached the dock with energy to spare. His body, so leaden this morning,
felt nimble and greased, gliding through the lake in a consistent surge, his shoulders thick with reserves of harnessed power.
This felt really good. Why didn’t he swim more? He spent his entire summer indoors, on his feet, while less than a mile away
from home the natural splendor of the lake waited for him. He became a human torpedo, thriving, daring the lake to take him
back.

He slowed as the orange wood of the dock bobbed a few meters off. He paused, treading water for a minute,
enjoying the sun on his face. The sun reflected across the surface, twinkling, and a silver glare hit him like a flash.

The floor of the world seemed to drop out from under him, and he was falling in the lake as high stone walls rose around him
on all sides. The land above disappeared in shadows and the water around him was silver, the mercurial surface shrinking in
diameter, the walls closing in. He panicked, thrashing his limbs, and someone was pulling on his legs. He kicked and frothed
in the lake (but it wasn’t really the lake any more, it was another body of water entirely, a world away) and felt the fingers
grasping his ankles, their fingernails scratching his thighs, trying to take him down.

Mick swallowed water and coughed, pure terror animating him now as he imagined them down there, maybe Roger and Bonnie, maybe
other people, faceless forms with alabaster skin from lying in the depths, blind with cataracts, groping for him while the
sun shrank into a speck and disappeared behind tropical clouds.

He was drowning again, and it struck him with cold certainty that the people drowning with him, pulling him under, were his
own family. Amy and Kyle and Briela were already dead, lost down here in this hellish hole in the world, and they did not
want to stay here alone.

No. You can’t take them. You can’t take me. We will live
.

He kicked their hands away, slipped free of their cold slippery fingers, scissoring himself to the surface. He reached out
and his hands fell upon the dock. Solid wood, the scent of stale Astro-Turf. Something tangible,
from the real world. He twisted in the water, balled his legs up, and kicked off the edge of the floating dock. The stone
walls around him were gone, the sun was out, and once again it was just a lake, the lake he had always known.

He began to stroke his way back to the dam, going all out, as if unknown forces were surging from the lake bottom, intent
on dragging him back down.

Briela leapt from the couch and declared it was time to go swimming.

Ingrid agreed to sit and read a magazine while her charge paddled around and ordered her to count how long she could hold
her breath underwater. This made Ingrid think of Mick’s drowning, but surely the girl was not making the same connection,
and neither Mick nor Amy had forbidden B from swimming, so that was no big deal, right? As long as Ingrid kept a close eye
on her.

She plastered B in SPF 30 and made her wait at least fifteen minutes, but she could still see the iridescent lotion slicks
trailing across the pool’s surface. The temperature climbed into the low nineties, and soon Ingrid was thirsty and regretting
not bringing her suit. B refused to come inside for lunch, so Ingrid told her to stay in the shallow end while she went in
for some iced tea and maybe a snack. Amy always kept a stash of frozen goodies – pound cake or ice-cream sandwiches, bags
of Reese’s cups – and during the lulls between paychecks, Ingrid considered these treats one of the main perks of the job.

She kept checking the kitchen window overlooking the back yard. B was paddling back and forth in horizontal laps, and she
was a good swimmer, but Ingrid was taking no chances. Briela’s mood swings or episodes left no time for distraction. As much
as Ingrid liked Mick and Amy, and cared deeply about Briela’s well-being, she only needed to get through the summer, at which
point none of this family’s problems would be her problem. She was moving to Portland at the end of August. Justin and Sara,
two of her friends from her Ft Collins college days, had relocated there last fall and they said the art and music scene was
amazing, not to mention the cheaper and better medicinal weed.

She refilled an ice tray at the sink and looked out the window. B bobbed up and spat a stream of water, her blonde hair a
dorsal fin. She began to hop in a circle, taking long, moonwalker strides, babbling in the way of a girl who is used to having
an audience at all times.

Ingrid put the ice tray back in the freezer and gathered up her iced tea and a plate of mini Klondike bars. She elbowed the
sliding glass door open, but turned back when she realized she had forgotten her sunglasses. She set the plate down, put her
glasses on, got the plate under control again, and made her way out onto the patio.

Briela was still in the pool, more or less where Ingrid had last seen her, but she wasn’t moving. She was standing with her
back to the house, staring off into the distance. Ingrid set the plate and tea on the short table next to her lounge chair.

‘B, I brought you a Klondike bar. Better get one before they melt.’

The girl did not acknowledge the offer.

Ingrid looked over the property, trying to follow B’s gaze. Beyond the pool house, the grass ended in a wide oval that bordered
another three acres of mown hay, and the white stucco border fence the new people had built around their house. Ingrid didn’t
see anything of interest as she scanned from one corner of the lot to the other.

‘B? What is it, honey?’

Briela looked back over her shoulder, her expression vacant.

‘What?’ Ingrid said. ‘You see a prairie dog?’

‘There was a man,’ Briela said.

‘A man.’

‘He climbed over the fence and was coming up here but now I can’t find him.’

The remark sent a jolt through the sitter, snapping her attention back over the lawn. No man in any direction, and it was
a clear, bright day. She wondered if Briela was having another one of her hallucinations.

‘What did he look like?’ she said, moving closer to the pool. The temperature seemed to have climbed another ten degrees.
‘Was he maybe one of the workers? Like the people from last spring?’

Briela turned toward the yard again. ‘He was handsome, with light blond hair, and he was smiling.’

Smiling. How would she know this from such a distance? How close had this smiling man gotten to them before disappearing?

‘So … where did he go?’ Stay calm, don’t freak her out.

‘I don’t know. I guess he vanished.’

‘Why don’t you come inside for a minute so we can eat our ice cream.’

Briela leapt away, plowing a wave of water. ‘I don’t want ice cream.’

Okay, well, whatever she had seen, or thought she had seen, it clearly hadn’t scared her. No reason to be alarmed. Still,
the idea of some man climbing a fence, walking over to chat them up for God knows what. No, they should go inside.

‘Your skin is starting to prune and you need to eat some lunch,’ Ingrid said. ‘Come on, just for a few minutes.’

Briela exited the pool and stuck out her tongue. Ingrid brought the plate and her tea in, then locked the sliding glass door
behind them. She went to the bathroom to fetch B a towel and locked the front door on her way to the hall, pausing in the
living room to check the lawn through the windows. She saw no one outside.

When Ingrid got back to the family room, B was dripping water on the couch while she scrolled through the channel guide. She
settled on a movie they had watched seven or eight times already this summer, and Ingrid made her scoot onto the towel. Briela
changed her mind about the ice cream and they worked their way through all six of the mini-bars as they melted. Every few
minutes Ingrid pretended to busy herself in the kitchen while she checked the backyard, but half an hour later no one had
materialized.

B fell into an ice-cream stupor and soon was asleep on the couch. Ingrid turned the movie down and kicked back on the love
seat with her magazine. There was an article about The Ten Things He Really Wants You to Do But is Afraid to Ask. Ingrid decided
she would do six, but the other four were out of the question. The air conditioning hummed and the house cooled. She was nodding
off when Briela mumbled something.

Ingrid twitched and the magazine slid to the floor. ‘What’d you say, honey?’

‘He came back,’ Briela said through a yawn.

Ingrid sat up. B was still lying on her side, her face aimed at the TV. There was no way she could see out back, and Ingrid
would have heard her get up. Ingrid’s own back was to the windows and she couldn’t decide which was worse now – B’s creepy,
imaginary warnings or the possibility that when she turned around, the man would be there, on the patio, watching her through
the window.

‘That is so not funny,’ Ingrid said, turning around. The windows were clear, the yard empty. Maybe the girl was just talking
in her sleep.

The doorbell chimed.

When Mick reached the dam, he was spent, his arms shaking. He felt suicidal for attempting such a swim so soon after his trauma.
He clung to the rocks a minute, then climbed out slowly, feeling less like a man than some primordial creature forged in mud.

I panicked. Scared myself with a little flashback to that nightmare
.

We’re fine now. It doesn’t mean a thing
.

His clothes were not where he had left them.

‘Jesus H. Christ,’ a man growled. ‘That is about the last thing I needed to see today.’

A bundle of denim flew at Mick and he caught most of his clothes before his shoes fell to the ground. Dennis Wisneski was
sitting astride a green four-wheeler, scowling from behind his wrap-arounds. A cotton ball was bandaged over one ear but otherwise
Coach looked to be in his usual surly element.

Mick pulled his shorts and pants on, his T-shirt, smirking at how similar this scene was to their old locker-room days. ‘Sorry,
Coach. I looked for you earlier around the boat house. Didn’t expect you to be back to work so soon.’

‘All these years, you ever known me to be sitting on my ass at home watching
Family Feud
while you have all the fun?’

‘I guess not.’

Coach spat into the dirt. ‘I see you had yourself another swim. Was it pleasant?’

‘Matter of fact it was. At first.’

Wisneski’s mustache arched as he rose to full height and dismounted his steed. ‘You always did look like a drowned rat, Nash.
Never figured you’d go ahead do the job proper, though. What in
the
fuck did you want to go and do that for? And today? What is it? Once wasn’t enough for you? You know goddamn well swimming
outside of the designated beaches is against my rules and since when do I make allowances for brain damage?’

Mick laughed. He loved the Coach, he realized, always had. Loved him the way you love any tyrannical family member once they
were dead and gone.

‘Thank you for saving my ass, Coach. That was a damn brave thing you did the other day and if you ever need anything from
me—’

‘You can stop smokin’ that peace pipe right now.’ Coach removed and waved his sunglasses angrily. His eyes were horribly red,
inflamed and puffy, as if he’d been crying for a week. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you, you fortunate bastard, so don’t
go getting all sentimental on me.’

Mick gave up on his socks and stepped into his tennis shoes, bracing himself for bad news. He felt now like he had on so many
occasions when Coach had taken him
aside before a match and whispered some nasty secret about his opponent, late reconnaissance about some deadly move the other
weasel was bound to put on you.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mick said.

‘You wouldn’t, would you? The spill you took, you shouldn’t oughta be out walking around let alone swimming. But here you
are, dumb as God made you. Point is, I didn’t save you. That other fella did, and I want to know who he is, because that sonofabitch
disappeared on me and he left a good goddamn number of questions I need answered. He a friend of yours or that asshole Roger’s?’

‘What friend?’ A small wave of nausea rolled through his belly.

‘Blond guy, about your age or a little younger, thin, goes around in a chambray work shirt?’

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

‘You don’t remember seeing anyone else?’

‘I remember nothing about that day. Just tell me what happened, Coach.’

So, Wisneski took him through it, and it was a pretty neat story with no real surprises until Coach dove into the water. Soon
as Mick dropped the family off, Amy put the kids in the truck and told Kyle to watch Briela while she walked over to the boat
house. She told Coach there was an assault or some kind of violent struggle on Roger Lertz’s boat. At which point Wisneski,
who was shorthanded – his supervisor, Jimmy Redding, a hotshot lush of a sports management and kinesiology major at CSU who
worked summers at the res, had called in that day
with a gargantuan hangover – saddled up and drove out alone.

‘I was about two hundred yards out when I saw you go ass over head into the drink,’ Coach said. ‘I fixed your position as
I pushed the throttle full-tilt. When I got there I radioed SOS, man in the water. There was no one on either boat, no one
on the nearest floating dock some fifty yards due west. I want you to remember that for a moment. We were alone, you understand,
and the dam was at least a hundred yards east, also empty.’

Mick nodded.

‘I dropped anchor and dove in after you. Visibility was typical, no more than ten, twelve feet on a sunny day, far less below
the first ten feet. I dove three times, to depths of ten, twenty, and possibly twenty-five feet. Bottom’s about thirty in
that neck of the res. Each time I went under, I swam in a half-circle, hoping to cover a total surface area of about a hundred
square, but after three free dives I didn’t see you and I was tiring. I’m an old fuck, Nash. My left shoulder has a tendon
like pair of torn pantyhose and my right knee’s full of gravel.

‘I was coming up from that third dive, moving through maybe eighteen feet of water, when my lungs heaved once like a hiccup
and the change in pressure made something in my left ear pop like a champagne cork. My sense of direction went a little fucky
on me. I could see the sunlight, but all the sudden
up
took me right and when I tried to correct to the left I was swimming down.’

Mick said nothing while the Coach paused to cough
twice into his fist, then drew a deep breath and continued, staring off at the highway and shaking his head as if trying to
see again what he had seen beneath the water.

‘Damnedest thing. Swimming in a circle like that. I felt like one of those goldfish my granddaughter brings home from the
pet shop, the ones that’ve had their genes all whirled up to make pretty colors and come out of the plastic baggie pop-eyed
and a tad retarded. Swim bladder all messed up. I’m tellin’ myself to stay calm else we’ll both wind up in the mud. I needed
air, and I figured I had one more dive left in me. Few seconds pass. I get my bearings and pop to the surface. I take five
good breaths and one huge one, and then I head back down.

‘I’m at a depth of about fifteen feet and diving at a forty-five degree, right under the boats, when I see him. This other
crazy shit. At first I thought he was a fish, a fucking huge striped bass or some goddamn thing. He was just a faded white
spot in the darkness, rising up. Then I thought it was you, because while it’s still dark down there, I can see legs kicking,
and it’s clearly a man. White face, blond hair bobbing like a jellyfish. Then the blue of his shirt. Fucker’s wearing a button-down
and khakis, his left arm just pulling water down as hard and fast as a man can.

‘You were folded over his right arm like a hundred and seventy pounds sack of potatoes and he’s pulling with the other arm
easy as dragging a wet towel. I saw your ugly face in less than ten feet of water, and if I am sure of anything, I’m sure
you were unconscious. Legs limp,
boat shoes still on your feet, and those khaki pants kicking in perfect scissor motion, driving the both of you to salvation.
Your eyes were half open and dead as catfish on a platter, your face was blue-white, and your mouth was open. You looked like
the textbook definition of a drowned man.

‘I kick after him, rising to meet him on the other side of the boats. I looked up and saw the hull of one of them, Roger’s
or your boat, I can’t say – they’re both white and I was still disoriented. I had no more than six feet of clearance as I
swam through, and by then the two of you were gone.’

‘Gone?’ Mick didn’t know how much longer his legs would hold him up. He realized he hadn’t eaten anything today and this story
was making him feel faint. ‘What do you mean “gone”?’

‘I mean you weren’t where you had been ten seconds earlier. I waited a bit at the surface, treading water until I realized
Blondie should have been up there, gasping for air like me. But he didn’t show up and when I looked under, turning in a complete
circle, there was no sign of either of you.

‘I panicked, and the water seemed to have dropped twenty degrees. For a moment it was like I had gone swimming in December,
like we’d gone through a hole in the ice. Maybe I was in shock, but I don’t think so. I was breathing ragged and my arms and
legs were palsied. Couldn’t go back down again. I’d a drowned myself.

‘Anyway, the second of my Lake Patrol boats was on its way, Chad Groeninger waving at me. He’d already
radioed 9-1-1 and your ambulance was on the way. He asked me if I was all right and I told him there was another man in the
drink. Mr Khakis. Chad dives in but don’t see dick. So he comes back up, and we’re treading water like a couple of goddamned
synchronized swimmers, and Chad heads back to the boat. I’m exhausted but I can’t bring myself to climb out of the water yet.
I can almost feel something warning me to keep my eyes open, and then I turned in a circle and about shit myself.

‘There you are, the two of you, crawling out of the water, right up on the dam. That’s a hundred feet away, Nash, and last
I saw you were D-E-A-D dead, but now the blond guy’s crawling out and you’re crawling out. On your own. He’s not helping you.
You’re on your feet, climbing over rocks just like I found you today, and then you plopped down on the path, right about where
we’re standing now, and you just stared across the lake at us. The blond guy, he bends down and whispers something in your
ear for a minute. Then he stands, looks over his shoulder at us, and continues over that steep hill, dropping out of sight.
By the time I got to you, he was gone. Chad never saw him, but he saw you. Khaki pants wasn’t in the field back here, and
he didn’t circle back to the boat house or loading ramp. He up and fuckin’ vanished.

Mick shook his head. ‘Wait. Back up. Amy said you rescued me.’

‘Then all due respect to your wife, but she doesn’t know what she saw. She wasn’t there on the lake when you crawled out.’

‘You told the police about all this,’ Mick said. ‘Gave them a description and all the rest?’

For the first time, Coach looked depleted, confused, as if someone had just bonked him over the head with a shovel.

‘No, I did not. Yet. I was having trouble hearing and some snot-nosed little shit paramedic insisted I be taken in, as if
I was the one who drowned. By the time I was asked to give a formal statement, I assumed this blond chap had come forward.’

‘Why would you hold back? What’s the big deal?’

‘Hold your horses, Nash. That’s what I’m getting at. I have one possible theory. It’s a weird one, but not so weird if you
know anything about extreme survival situations.’

‘Yeah, what?’

Wisneski crabbed sideways, putting his back to the sun. ‘You ever hear of the third man?’ Mick shook his head once. ‘I know
you think I’m a big dumb jock, but I read a lot of books. I liked that Shackleton story was all the rage a few years back.
That’s where I first read about him. My wife got it into her head nothing would make me happier than another survival story,
so for the past few years all I get on my birthday or Christmas is another one of these survival books. Writer by the name
of John Geiger wrote a book called
The Third Man Factor
. Very rare phenomenon. Happens on polar expeditions, solo journeys, men lost in the woods or at sea. POWs have experienced
it, even a few people involved with September Eleventh claim to have met this third man.

‘What it boils down to is a survival mechanism inside us that, in moments of deep distress – we’re talking right at the brink
of losing all hope – that emerges and comes to us almost as an alien presence, an entity separate of our selves. Some men
talk about it as a kind of divine intervention, a spiritual or mystical force. You’re huddled in a tent near the summit of
Everest, freezing your balls off, your toes are already done in, you’re loopy, half-starved, in shock, and the regular you
is thinking how nice it might be to curl up and go to sleep. Just let go. Die. But then this third man appears, or maybe you
don’t see him, but you feel him. He is like your new best friend, a buddy looking over your shoulder. He’s not afraid and
he’s calm, in control, and he’s got all the strength you wish you had. And in the darkest hour of your longest night, he leans
down and he whispers in your ear.
Here’s what you need to do
, he says.
We’re not giving up. We’re going to make it out of here alive. Just follow my instructions and stick with me and everything
will turn out right
. He’s comforting, the way Jesus might be to some. It’s a survival mechanism, but it feels like a stranger, a higher power.
The third man.’

Wisneski spread his hands, a lawyer wrapping up his closing argument.

‘That’s what you think?’ Mick said. ‘It was you who saved me, but your mind, under extreme duress, projected this other man?
You had an out-of-body experience and watched yourself, in the form of this other blond guy in khaki pants, rescue me?’

‘I did at first.’ Wisneski smiled a gotcha smile. ‘But in
the end, when I got my strength back, I decided that was bullshit. Because I wasn’t on death’s doorstep and I wasn’t ready
to give up. Hell, I’ve been through a lot worse than your little episode. I was in Vietnam, Mick. I crawled in those tunnels
and saw men cut in half. A good friend of mine in high school, Ted Millhiser, he rolled his dad’s Dodge out on Highway 36
and almost burned to death. I was one of the boys who put him out in the grass with a letter jacket. Ruined the jacket, but
it was some Fairview kid’s, so no loss there. Point is, I’ve seen some shit and this wasn’t that much shit, all right? I know
what I saw, Mick, and it was a real man. He saw you go in and he dove in after you. From there, one of two things happened.

‘One, somewhere between the water and dry land, God knows how, he revived you. None of this CPR horseshit. He brought you
back to life
en route
. Or two, you “woke up” and swam away on your own steam. Either way, he’s out there somewhere right now. I don’t just believe
that. I know it.’