Shadow Lake

Hearing the concern in her friend’s voice, Anna started to pour out her story about the accident, but she heard herself say “We?”

Mary Ellen’s voice softened. “Honey, Marc is really worried about you.”

Anna closed her eyes. It had been Marc’s voice she’d heard earlier in the background. Just as she wasn’t mistaken about the recrimination she now heard in her friend’s voice.

“I’m sure Marc has better things to do than worry about me,” she said. “We’re divorced. I’m not his concern anymore.”

An odd silence then, “Honey, Marc didn’t go through with the divorce. The papers were never filed.”

“What?” Hadn’t that been her hope, her prayer? Losing Marc had made Tyler’s death more real somehow. Anna had clung to the marriage because it was all she had.

“He changed his mind,” Mary Ellen was saying. “But, honey, I was sure he told you that last night.”

“Last night?”

AFTER OFFICER D.C. WALKER disconnected his call with Marc Collins, he had started to dial his boss when he noticed Mac was having a problem with the winch. He walked back over to the side of the mountain and saw nothing in the mist but water.

“Hook came undone,” the wrecker operator yelled to him. “Divers are down reattaching the cable.”

Walker stared at the lake with the rain clouds mirrored in it, still shocked by what he’d learned from Marc Collins. The gloomy gray day did nothing to lift his spirits. Where the hell was spring?

The news he’d received had left him angry and upset. What else was the woman in the hospital keeping from him?

One thing was for sure: he needed to let Chief Nash in on what was going on. He started to call him, but stopped as the divers reappeared below him on the shore and signaled to the wrecker operator that the car was ready again. Mac gave Walker a thumbs-up and the tow motor revved once again.

What worried Walker was how the chief had sounded earlier when he’d called. Was there some kind of trouble in Pilot’s Cove that his boss wasn’t telling him about? Or had the chief gone to the county seat to pick up the paperwork before he announced his retirement?

Walker brightened at the thought. He’d been waiting for twelve years for that job to open up. He couldn’t stand the suspense. He stepped away from the wrecker to call the Pilot’s Cove office.

“I was hoping to catch Chief Nash,” he told the woman who answered.

“Chief Nash from Shadow Lake?”

“Is there another Chief Nash I don’t know about?” He instantly regretted the sarcasm. “Sorry, it’s important I speak with him.”

“We haven’t seen Chief Nash in about four months,” she said, her voice as chilly as the lake below him.

“He was over there yesterday doing something with your department.”

“Afraid not. Maybe he was at Dam City or—”

Walker hung up when the engine on the tow truck let out an ear-piercing whine as the cable to the Cadillac began to grow taut again. The huge steel cable hummed.

Walker walked back over to stand next to the wrecker, still a little stunned. Chief Nash had lied. Walker couldn’t have been more shocked by that. He had great respect for the man. Nash was from the old school of justice, tough as nails, but fair and straight as an arrow.

There had to be another explanation.

The rear end of the overturned Cadillac broke the surface of the water. It looked like a blue turtle flipped over on its shell.

Walker stared at the path the Cadillac had taken down the mountain, a path of broken saplings, tire tracks and carnage. The same path the car would have to take this time, only on its top.

It was a miracle the woman had gotten out of the lake alive. Since talking to Marc Collins, Walker was even more convinced Anna Drake Collins hadn’t planned it that way.

Suddenly the whine of the wrecker’s winch intensified and then the cable snapped.

Walker watched the long snaking link of steel shoot like a rubber band back up the mountain—headed straight for him.

DOC STOOD IN THE DRIZZLE, unaffected by the cold and the rain while he talked to his dead wife the way he always did. It didn’t seem to matter what he talked about, just that he did.

Today he told Gladys about his latest patient.

“She’s pretty. She has hazel eyes that remind me of yours,” he said as he bent down to pull a weed that he hadn’t noticed before beside his wife’s headstone.

“I’m worried about her, but you know me,” he said with a laugh. “You always said I took on everyone’s worries because I didn’t have enough of my own.” His eyes misted over for a moment and he had to bite his lip before he could continue.

“Her four-year-old boy might have been in the car with her when it went into the lake. I’m just sick at heart at the thought. I don’t think she’s strong enough to take that news.”

He cleared his throat. “Walker is on the case.” Gladys had always been fond of Walker and his friends. She’d made them their favorite cookies and would call the boys up on the porch whenever they passed by. She liked to watch them eat a half-dozen cookies each, washed down by the homemade lemonade she kept for just such a visit. She’d ply the boys with treats in exchange for conversation.

It still hurt that he and Gladys had never been blessed with their own children. Gladys had loved children so. She would have been like a mother hen with Anna. Gladys could sense need in people. Gene had always thought it was one reason she’d married him.

“Walker’s afraid the woman tried to kill herself. I don’t believe it. Especially if her son was in the car. She wouldn’t do that. Not this woman.”

He brushed off rainwater that had puddled on top of Gladys’s stone. “I miss you.” He stopped, unable to continue. There was more he wanted to say, but he couldn’t find the words. Just as, for a long time, he hadn’t been able to tell Gladys she was dying.

But she’d known. She’d suspected it was cancer. Still, it had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, to tell her it was inoperable, to tell her she had only a short time left.

She’d taken it much better than he had. But then that was Gladys. She’d never worried about things she couldn’t change. He wished he could be more like her.

He looked down at his wife’s grave again. “Can you ever forgive me?” But it wasn’t Glady’s forgiveness he knew he was seeking. His wife had been the most forgiving person he’d ever known.

He brushed a hand over her headstone, tears blurring his eyes, his nose running. He made a swipe at his eyes, nose, looking to the lake. Summer felt a long way off. Doc had no plans to see it.

He cleared his throat. He needed to get on home. Soon he’d have to return to the hospital and make sure Anna was all right. She needed him. At least for a while.

CHIEF ROB NASH HAD TO take a piss. He’d lost count of the beers he’d drunk in an attempt to fight off last night’s hangover. It wasn’t working.

But as he passed the bed, he saw that he had another message on his cell phone from Walker. Nash picked up the phone, those old habits so conditioned it took everything in him not to return the call.

Walker could handle whatever it was, he told himself as he tossed the phone back on the bed and proceeded to the bathroom. He knew Walker wanted his job. And soon, he would get it.

Nash realized he should have retired a long time ago. He was past his prime and clearly couldn’t trust his instincts anymore. Marrying Lucinda proved that.

As he stood in front of the toilet, he caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked as if he’d aged overnight.

He was fifty-five years old. Most cops his age had quit a long time ago. He had his years in. He could retire on his pension. He’d worked hard his whole life, saved all his money, never really given retirement much thought. Because he knew he would go crazy within a week.

Standing there bent over the motel-room toilet, sick and tired and hurting like hell, he admitted he didn’t know what he was going to do. Which was strange because he couldn’t shake the feeling that a decision had been made for him the moment he saw his wife get into that car with that man.