Caller ID shows it’s my best friend from Stillhouse Lake, Kezia Claremont. She’s a police detective, one of just two that the tiny town of Norton employs. “Kez?” I blurt out the second I have the phone to my ear. “What’s wrong? Is it your dad?”
“Nothing like that,” she says. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
I swallow the panic and manage a hollow laugh. “Not remotely. I’ve been up the better part of an hour already. Bad dreams and a kid who doesn’t believe in curfew.”
“I had a feeling you’d be awake,” she says. There’s no humor in her voice; I don’t think I’ve heard her this grim in quite a while. “I caught a case. Now I’m out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere in the dark and it’s just . . . it’s bad.”
Kez has rarely shown me soft spots or vulnerabilities. It worries me to hear a tremble in her voice.
“What’s going on?” I lean my elbows on the desk, lean into the conversation. I hear her take in a deep breath on the other end.
“First glance, it seemed nothing much. Accident, most likely. But not anymore.” She doesn’t want to tell me. I feel that tug on the hair at the back of my neck again, and a cold chill comes with it.
“Prester isn’t there?” Detective Prester is her partner, a good man, steady, with the eternal eyes of a cop who’s seen it all. Twenty-five years her senior at least.
“No,” she says. “I’m trying to let him rest; the old man hasn’t been looking too well lately. It’s just me and a coroner out here. And a pretty useless sheriff’s deputy.”
“You need some company?”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask,” I tell her. “But I’m on the way.”
2
GWEN
Eerie. It’s the first word that comes to me as I top the rise on the no-name back road and see mist coming off the pond, curling and twisting like a living thing. The whole scene is painted in the red-and-blue light bars of the vehicles assembled: a county sheriff’s cruiser, Kezia’s unmarked car, and a coroner’s van that looks as if it might date back to the 1970s, at least. I roll to a stop behind Kezia’s car. This place is narrow, a barely passable road into the dark, and it occurs to me that the more cars are here, the harder it will be for any of us to get out. But the important thing right now is the haunted quality in Kez’s voice. She called. I had to come. She’s shown up for me, more than once, when I needed help. Especially when my kids were in real danger. Kez’s quiet support means the world to me, and if I can repay that, even in a small way . . . I will.
I park and get out. The early-morning chill gnaws at me, and I zip up the fleece jacket I put on and raise the hood. I don’t normally mind the cold so much, but now? It just adds to the surreal feeling of dread. There’s something very, very wrong here. Maybe it’s the darkness, the mist, the pervasive smell of mildew and rotten, stagnant water. This isn’t close to Stillhouse Lake, but it isn’t far away, either; it occurs to me, as I try to fit the geography together, that I couldn’t be more than five miles from the compound that the Belldene family calls home. And I have to suppress a real shiver. The Belldenes and I have a truce, but that truce is very contingent on me not being up in their business, or bringing more attention to the area where they make their home and run their illegal drug trade.
I’d rather not open that hopefully closed chapter of my life again. But I can’t shake the feeling of being watched from those dark trees, and it’s deeply disturbing.
Kezia meets me before the lone county officer—lounging in his cruiser—even spots me. We hug briefly, and that’s a rare concession from her in a professional setting. It’s over so fast I don’t think anyone else sees. I spot the strain in her too-composed face when she draws back. The coroner is setting up some portable work lights, and we both flinch a little as they blaze on, casting a milk-white clarity over what this place is.
Just a pond, I think. But I know it isn’t.
“What happened?” I ask her.
She gives me a sharply professional timeline. “County got a call from someone who said they thought they saw something suspicious happening out here. Didn’t leave a name. Deputy Dawg over there didn’t see anything special, but then he happened to park here to take a leak. That’s when he saw the car.”
I look around. “What car?”
She points to the pond, the one with mist twisting on the surface. I send her a questioning glance, then step up on the rise just enough to see what the work lights are illuminating. The water is dirty green, verdigris with a ground of rust, but it can’t conceal the car under the water. It smells of mold and algae and a reek of dead fish.
I hear a sneeze from the cruiser and see the deputy wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. It clicks with me that the man looks wet, miserable, and stained from the water. He went in. Looking for survivors. But there’s no ambulance here, just the coroner’s van driven by a young African American man who’s suiting up in crime scene coveralls. Nobody’s in a hurry.
“So there is a body inside?” I guess.
“Two,” Kezia says. She casts a look at the deputy. “He went in on the chance someone was alive. They weren’t.”
“Two.” Well, that’s bad but she’s seen worse; it’s rural out here, and prime meth territory. Mostly, I’ve
