Stillhouse Lake

  Silence. Prester doesn't break it this time.

  "When I looked into that wrecked garage and saw the truth, something changed. I could see. I could understand. Looking back on it, I saw the hints, the little things that didn't fit and didn't make sense, but I know there was no way I could see them at the time, coming from where I was, what I believed." I take another swallow of the water, and the plastic cracks like a pistol shot. "After my acquittal, I reinvented myself, and I protected my children. You think I'd ever want to do anything for Melvin Royal again? I hate him. I despise him. If he ever shows up in the flesh, I'll put an entire fucking clip of bullets in his head until there's nothing left to recognize."

  I mean every word of that, and I know the detective has an instinct for the truth. He doesn't like that, but fuck what he likes, I am fighting for my life. For the fragile safety I've managed to pull together.

  Prester says nothing. He just studies me.

  "You have no evidence," I tell him finally. "Not because I'm some Hannibal Lecter level of clever, but because I didn't do anything to that poor girl. I've never seen her before. I'm sorry for what happened to her, and no, I can't explain why it happened where I live. I wish to God I could. I mean, Mel has followers who worship every word he says, but even then, I don't know how he convinces someone to do that for him. He's not Rasputin. He's not even Manson. I don't know what makes a person that sick. Do you?"

  "Nature," he says flatly. "Nurture. Brain injuries. Shit, the worst of them got no excuses at all." He's said them, not you. I wonder if he recognizes that. "Why don't you tell me what made Melvin like that, since you've had such a close-up view?"

  "I have no idea," I say, and I mean it. "His parents were lovely people. I didn't see them often, and they were always so fragile. Looking back on it now, I think they were afraid of him. I never realized that before they died."

  "Then what makes you rip up young girls like this?"

  I let out a sigh. "Detective. I married a monster and I wasn't clever enough to recognize it in time. That's all I did wrong. I didn't do this."

  We go around and around for about four hours. I don't ask for a lawyer, though I think about it; the quality of help I'd get in Norton isn't what I'd call promising. No, I'm better off sticking with the truth. For all his skill, Detective Prester can't convince me of a lie. He might have managed it in the old, impressionable Gina Royal days, but this isn't my first go-round, and he knows that. He has nothing. He's got an anonymous call implicating me, and that could be from a troll who's discovered my identity, or another person my ex has paid off to stir the pot. Still, his instincts are right . . . It's no accident, this poor young woman being slaughtered in such a familiar way and dumped in the lake just beyond my home.

  Someone's sending a message.

  It has to be Mel.

  In a strange, uneasy turn, I actually hope it is, because at least I know Mel. I know where he is. But he has help, I think. Help willing to do exactly what Mel asks. And I won't lie, that frightens me deeply. I don't want to find Lanny dead next. Or Connor, slaughtered in his bed. I don't want to die at the end of a wire noose, burning in unspeakable agony from being flayed alive.

  It's the wee hours when Prester sends me home. Norton is a ghost town, not a single other vehicle on the empty streets, and the deep night gets darker and darker as the squad car turns for the lake. It's Officer Lancel Graham driving me--I suppose because that means he can head straight home afterward. He doesn't talk to me. I don't try to start a conversation. I lean my head against the cool glass and wish I could sleep. I won't sleep tonight, or probably tomorrow, either. The photos of that murdered young woman will flare into horrific color against my eyelids, and I won't be able to blink them away.

  Mel isn't haunted by his victims. He always slept soundly and woke rested.

  I'm the one who has nightmares.

  "We're here," says Graham, and I realize that the sedan has stopped, that somehow I closed my eyes and drifted off after all, into an uneasy doze. I thank him as he comes around and opens the door. He even offers me a hand out, which I take for politeness, and then I am unsettled when he doesn't let go immediately. I can see him--no, feel him watching me.

  "I believe you," he says, which surprises me. "Prester's on a bad trail, Ms. Proctor. I know you have nothing to do with this. Sorry, I realize it's tearing up your life."

  I wonder how much Prester has said, and if the news about my other name, about Gina Royal, has started to leak already. I don't think so. Graham doesn't have the look of someone who knows about my ex-husband.

  He just seems sorry and a little concerned.

  I thank him again, more warmly, and he lets me go. Javier steps out onto the porch as I approach, and he's juggling his car keys in his hand. Impatient to be gone, I think.

  "The kids--" I begin.

  "They're fine," he says, cutting me off. "Asleep, or at least, pretending to be." He gives me a sharp, merciless look. "He kept you a long time."

  "It's not me, Javier. I swear that."

  He murmurs something that sounds like sure but is hard to hear as Graham fires up his cruiser again in the background. The flare of taillights paints Javier's face crimson. He looks tired, and he rubs his face like a man trying to scrub away the last few hours. I wonder if this will drive him away from being my friend, as surely as it has Sam Cade. As surely as it will Officer Graham, once he knows my past--not that he's truly a friend. Just friendly.

  Nobody stays, I should know that by now. Nobody but the kids, who don't have a choice in the matter because they're mired in this bog just as I am, up to the neck.

  "Lady, what the hell are you into?" Javier asks me, but I don't think he wants to know. Not really. "Look, I told you, I'm a reserve deputy. I like you, but if it comes down to it . . ."

  "You'll do your duty, just like you did tonight." I nod. "I get it. I'm just surprised you agreed to help me leave town in the first place."

  "I thought you were running from an abusive ex. I've seen the look plenty of times. I didn't know . . ."

  "Didn't know what?" I challenge him directly this time, staring right into his eyes. I can't read him, but I don't think he can read me, either. Not completely.

  "That you were involved in something like this," he says.

  "I'm not involved!"

  "Doesn't look like that."

  "Javi--"

  "Let's keep this real, Ms. Proctor. You get cleared, we're cool. But until you are, let's keep some distance, okay? And if you want my advice, you get the guns out of your house and turn them over to the range for safekeeping. We can hold them for you until this blows over, and I can swear out an affidavit for the PD. I just hate to think--"

  "You hate to think about the cops coming and me having a small arsenal in here," I say softly. "About the collateral damage that could cause."

  He nods slowly. There's nothing aggressive about his body language, but there's strength underlying it, a kind of calm, masculine strength that makes me want to believe in him. Trust him.

  I don't.

  "I'll hang on to my weapons until I see a court order telling me to surrender them," I tell him. I don't blink. If he thinks it's aggressive, so be it. In this moment, in all moments now, I can't afford to be seen as weak. Not for myself. I have two children in the house, and I'm responsible for their lives--lives that are never safe, never secure. I will do anything I must to defend them.

  And I'm not giving up my weapons.

  Javier shrugs. The gesture says he doesn't care; the regretful slowness of it says he does. He doesn't say good-bye, just turns and walks to the white van he's driven up in, the one I came so, so close to escaping in. Before I can speak, he rolls down the window and pitches me the title for the Jeep. He doesn't say the trade is off, but then, he hardly has to.

  I watch him drive the big cargo van away, title in my hand, and then I turn and go back into the house.

  It's dark and quiet, and I silently double-check everything as I res
et the alarm. The kids are used to the tones, and I don't think it will wake them . . . but as I walk down to check on Connor, Lanny opens her door. We stare at each other in silence for a moment in the gloom, and then she gestures me in and shuts the door behind me.

  My daughter curls up on her bed, knees up, arms circling them. I recognize the posture, though she might not. I remember finding her many times like this in the months after my release from jail after my trial. It's defensive, though she makes it look natural enough.

  "So," she says. "They didn't throw you back in."

  "I didn't do anything, Lanny."

  "You didn't last time, either," she points out, which is flawlessly true. "I hate this. Connor's scared to death, you know."

  "I know," I say. I ease down on the bed, and she scoots her toes back so she isn't touching me. It breaks my heart a little, but I'm eased a bit when she doesn't flinch as I put my hand on her knee. "Sweetheart, I won't lie to you. Your father knows where we are. I was planning to get us out of here, but--"

  "But now there's this dead girl, and the police know who we are, and we can't go," she says. Smart child. She doesn't blink, but I see something glimmering like tears. "I should never have said anything about it. If I hadn't--"

  "Honey, no. You did the right thing, all right? Never think that."

  "If I hadn't said anything we'd be gone by now," she continues doggedly, right over me. "We'd be homeless again, but at least we'd be safe and he wouldn't know where we are. Mom, if he knows--"

  She stops talking, and the tears glisten harder, fatter, and break free to run down her cheeks. She doesn't wipe them away. I'm not even sure she's aware it's happening.

  "He'll hurt you," she says in a faint whisper, and she tilts her head forward to rest her forehead against her knees.

  I move up next to her and hold her, my child, and she is a hard knot of muscle and bone and grief. She doesn't relax against me. I tell her it'll be all right, but I know she doesn't believe me.

  I finally leave her there, silent, closed into her protective ball, and go to check her brother. He seems asleep, but I don't think he is. He looks pale, and there are dark, delicately lilac smudges under his eyes like the aftermath of bruises. He's so tired.

  So am I.

  I close the door quietly, go to my own room, and fall into a vast, dreamless sleep with the silence of Stillhouse Lake pressed drowning-deep around me.

  In the morning, there's another girl floating dead in the lake.

  8

  I'm woken by a scream. I come bolt upright in bed, scrambling out even before I'm aware of being awake, stepping with the efficiency of a firefighter into my jeans and pulling a T-shirt on as I step into shoes heading to the door. I realize as I come out of my bedroom that it isn't either of my kids screaming; their doors are flying back, too, Lanny looking bleary in her flannel robe, Connor still bare-chested in pajama pants with his hair sticking up on one side.

  "Stay here," I shout at them, racing to the front room. I sweep the curtains back and stare out at the lake.

  The screaming is coming from a small rowboat drifting about twenty feet from the dock. There are two people inside it, an older man wearing a fisherman's hat and utility vest, and a woman older than me with ash-blonde hair who's recoiled against him. He's holding her, and the boat's violently rocking, as if she's thrown herself backward so suddenly she almost swamped it.

  I turn off the alarm and run outside, feet pounding on the gravel and then the wood of the dock, and I slow down when I see the body.

  It's come up from the darkness. This one is naked, floating on her stomach, and I can see long hair drifting like seaweed on the surface of the water.

  The raw-chicken color of exposed muscles looks nauseating in the dim morning light, but it's unmistakable. Someone has taken off most of the skin from her buttocks and the small of her back, and a broad stripe up to expose the alien white growth of her spine. But not all her skin. Not this time.

  The woman suddenly stops screaming and lunges to lean over the side of the craft to vomit. The man hasn't made a sound, and his move to steady the boat is automatic, the reaction of a man who's been on the water most of his life but isn't really here. Shock. His expression's blank, and he stares straight ahead, trying to process what he's seeing.

  I take out my cell phone and dial 911. There isn't any choice. This is at my door.

  As I listen to the rings, I think about the inescapable, horrible fact that the body has been down there under the surface, waiting, slowly rising like a lazy, ghostly bubble until it finally breaks the water's smooth hold. It floated there last night while I talked to Javier. It floated there while I slept. It might have been lurking farther below the surface on the night I sat on the porch with Sam Cade and drank beer and talked about Melvin Royal.

  The woman in the boat throws up again, weeping.

  I finally get an answer on the emergency line. I don't think about what I'm saying, but I describe the scene, the location, give my name. I know I sound too calm, and that will hurt me later when people review the recording. They ask me to stay on the line, but I don't. I hang up and pocket my cell instead as I try to think.

  One dead, horribly mutilated woman could have been an awful coincidence. Two have to be a plan. The police will be here soon, and when they come, I'll be taken in. This time the questions will come in earnest.

  I'm going to be arrested.

  I'm going to lose my kids.

  A text alert sounds, and I take out my phone to see it's from Absalom's anonymous number. I swipe to read it.

  It's just a link. I click it, and watch as the screen fills with the blocky design of a message board. I don't take note of which one, I just blow up the text to read the initial post.

  It's about me.

  FOUND: ONE MURDERING BITCH! YA BOY, I TRACKED DOWN MELVIN'S LITTLE HELPER! PICTURES AND EVERYTHING. SOLID INTEL. HIS SPAWN ARE WITH HER, SO SHE DIDN'T DROWN THE LITTLE BASTARDS YET. EVEN BETTER: THERE'S A MURDER!!! DEETS LATER.

  There is a flood of replies, hundreds of them, but the original poster is teasing the info, giving nonanswers, hints, denying rumors. And then, about five swipes of my finger down the scroll, he drops one deadly piece of solid fact.

  BITCH IS HIDING OUT IN THE VOLUNTEER STATE.

  That must have sent at least half the readers scrambling for Google, but I know it instantly. He knows I'm in Tennessee. That means he almost certainly knows I'm at Stillhouse Lake. He likely has the same pictures that Melvin has seen, or he's the original source of them.

  My chess move didn't work with my murdering ex-husband. He's dropped the hammer, and right now I imagine him lying on his bunk, laughing. Imagining my safety being stripped away, like strips of skin. Masturbating at the thought of it.

  The agony of it is breathless.

  I feel weightless for a moment. Not quite falling, not quite stable. It's out. We're out. All my work, all my running, all the hiding . . . it's done. The Internet is forever.

  Trolls never forget.

  I hear sirens in the distance. The police are on their way. The dead girl floats in steady dips and bobs, hair twisting and swirling like slow smoke. The rowboat is now moving away, making for the dock; the fisherman must have finally snapped out of his trance. When I look up, I see his face has gone a sickly, pre-heart-attack color, and he's rowing with furious strength. His wife is slumped against him, looking nearly as bad. These are people whose safe, normal world has broken underneath their feet, and they've fallen into a darker place. The place where I live.

  I can see the police car lights cresting a distant hill, heading out from Norton.

  I text Absalom. Doesn't matter now. I'm about to be arrested.

  There's an endless space before his reply comes with a sharp vibrating buzz to announce it, like an angry wasp before the sting. Fuck. Did you do it?

  He has to ask. Everyone has to ask.

  I text back No and turn off the phone again. As the rowboat bumps hard against the dock
--almost a crash--I toss a line to the fisherman. It hits his wife, which I didn't intend, but she doesn't seem to even notice.

  I sense someone else watching now, and I turn my head.

  Sam Cade is standing on his porch, about two football fields away. He's wearing a red-and-black checked bathrobe and slippers, and he's staring at me. At the traumatized boaters. I sense his attention move to the body in the lake, then back to me.

  I don't look away. Neither does he.

  He turns and walks back into his cabin.

  I help the older woman out of the boat, then her husband, and sit them down on a bench nearby as I run back to the house for warm blankets. I'm pulling those around their shoulders as the first police cruiser scrapes to a halt a few feet away, lights strobing urgently but siren silent now. Behind it comes the boxy sedan, and I'm not surprised to see Detective Prester behind the wheel. He looks like he hasn't slept at all.

  I feel dead. Numb. I straighten up as he exits the vehicle. Two other younger uniformed officers get out of the cruiser. Neither one is Officer Graham, but I recognize them from around the Norton beats. There are more on the way, a whole stream of cars heading toward us now. There's a feeling of inevitability about this dawn. I know I should be afraid, but I'm not; somehow, all that fear has gone away after seeing this poor woman in the lake, abandoned and destroyed. As if this has been coming all along, and on some level, I've known it.

  I see Prester approach, and I turn to him to say, "Please make sure my kids are all right. Someone's leaked our location to the Internet. They've had death threats. Real ones. I don't care what happens to me right now, but they have to be safe."

  His face is set and hard, but he nods quietly. He pauses next to me and looks at the two unfortunates who were in the boat. I turn away as he questions them. I look at Sam Cade's cabin, and before too long, I am rewarded; I see him come out again, dressed in faded jeans and a plain gray T-shirt. He locks his door--both locks, I notice--and slowly descends the steps to walk toward us. The patrol officers haven't managed to set up a cordon yet, and there's not really a need. Sam walks straight across and stops just a few feet from me. We don't speak for a moment, and he puts his hands in his jeans pockets and rocks back and forth, staring not at me, but at the bobbing body in the lake.