Page 36

I did sit up then, but all I could see was a tree-lined dirt road in front of me and clouds of roiling dust behind.

Through the grate, I saw the officer’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.

Except I felt certain at that point that she wasn’t really a police officer.

I glanced around for anything I might use as a weapon and that was when I noticed the lack of handles on the insides of the back doors.

There was no way for me to open them, effectively trapping me in the backseat until someone opened the doors from the outside.

My captor might not have been a real cop, but that car had features like a real police vehicle.

I knew because I’d ridden in one before, just two years earlier, when my parents had been murdered.

Was my captor armed? I turned my head sideways, leaned into the grate, and studied her waist.

She was wearing a belt, but I couldn’t see any weapon on it.

Nor could I see the front of her uniform fully.

I tried to remember what she’d looked like when I’d answered the door.

While I didn’t recall seeing a weapon, I also knew that I hadn’t been totally focused.

Between my guilt over my attempted break-in to Jon’s locked room and the sense of urgency I felt from what the woman had told me, my brain hadn’t been concentrating on what it should have been. I mentally slapped myself for not realizing sooner that something was off. Then I tried to figure out what to do next.

“Where are you taking me?”

My question was answered with stony silence—she didn’t even look in the mirror again—and I decided to use whatever time I had left coming up with a plan for my escape.

I sat back in my seat, and as my arms fell to my sides, I felt something hard in my right pocket.

That was when I remembered the dinner knife.

It wasn’t sharp, but it did have some small serrations on one side.

My eyes wandered back down to the floor and the heel of Will’s shoe sticking out from beneath the seat.

If I removed the shoelace, maybe I could create a garotte with it and the knife. The woman driving the car wasn’t big. I had a couple of inches and several pounds on her, and she’d have to let me out of the car eventually.

I tried to imagine what I’d have to do.

It wouldn’t be easy to get into the position I’d need to make use of a garotte.

Still, the more options I had, the better.

I was about to reach down and grab the shoe, when my captor brought the car to a stop.

Up ahead I saw a small cabin nestled in a clearing, and beyond that, through the trees, I could see light sparkling on water.

The woman turned the car’s engine off, got out, and walked up to the cabin, disappearing inside. I briefly considered trying to kick out one of the car windows and attempting an escape on foot, but before I could even change position, the woman emerged from the cabin accompanied by a man. I was now outnumbered.

As they drew closer, I realized I knew the man.

He was the fellow who had bought the antique Ouija board in my store a week earlier.

I didn’t know his first name but recalled Devon saying that his last name was Devereaux.

The duo walked up to the driver’s side of the car and Devereaux looked in the window at me.

He sighed and showed me the gun he held.

With the other hand, he opened the back door of the car.

“Out,”

he said, waving his gun hand.

I got out and stood next to the car as the woman got back in it and drove away.

“What is this about?”

I asked, trying to play dumb. Bad move.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Devereaux said irritably.

“Roger already told me what you told him, so I know you’ve figured out what we’re doing.

And now, thanks to you, we’ve had to abandon one of our boats, which should be burning into oblivion out on the water as we speak.

All unfortunate circumstances for you, I’m afraid.”

He shook his head and tsked me.

Then he gestured toward the cabin with his gun hand.

“Let’s go.”

So much for my hope that the guys who had kidnapped me had been captured.

“Who is Roger?”

I asked over my shoulder.

“Is he the DNR guy?”

“I got Roger a job with the DNR, yes.

He’s my nephew.”

He let out an annoyed breath and then added, “On my wife’s side.”

“Hey, I have no skin in this game,”

I said, stopping near the back corner of the cabin where a gas generator was humming away.

I turned to face him on legs that shook.

“I was hired on as a consultant solely to rule in or out the presence of a lake monster.

I can safely rule that out now, and I’m happy to write up a report that says so.

What you do with your gold and your shipwreck is no business of mine.”

It was a statement born of desperation, one that had little hope of working, though I decided to juice up my offer a bit, figuring it couldn’t hurt.

“Though if you find any interesting pieces down there on your wreck or trinkets amongst your gold that would fit in with my store’s inventory, I’d be happy to make you an offer.

Just let me know what you have.”

I was babbling, talking too much and too fast, but I felt helpless to stop myself.

“I’ve got money.

Lots of it.

I’d pay handsomely.

You don’t even have to sell me anything.

I’ll just pay you. I’m sure we can work something out.”

He scoffed, shaking his head woefully.

“I don’t need your money,”

he said.

“You don’t have any idea who I am, do you?”

“I know you’ve been a customer of mine, Mr.

Devereaux.”

His eyebrows arched up in surprise when I said his name.

“Good memory.”

“I make a point of remembering my customers.

Do you really have a mother in Mississippi who holds séances?”

He looked mildly impressed with my ability to resurrect this tidbit about him, maybe because I hadn’t been the person who waited on him.

“As a matter of fact, I do,”

he said, “though holding séances is just what she does to amuse her friends.

Most of her talents these days are reserved for more sophisticated situations, like exorcisms, tarot card readings, and ghost hunting.”

He straightened up a bit and stuck his chin out.

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I come from a long line of well-established con men and women dating back to the early 1900s.

It’s how our family made their millions initially, and my mom is old-school, still practicing the family’s earliest talents.

She does quite well with it, though most of the family money nowadays comes from land we own and our riverboat casinos.

I was pitching a lake boat casino here, thinking it would be a good idea, albeit rather seasonal.

But then I found the gold and put things on hold.”

“You think you can steal Napoleon’s gold?”

“It’s not stealing.

I found it.

That makes it mine.

Besides, Napoleon has no use for it these days.”

He chuckled at his own joke.

“Roger said he was the one who found the gold.”

“A technicality,”

Devereaux said with an equivocating waggle of his hand.

“He found it with my equipment in a spot where I told him to look.

Hell, that’s the only reason I brought him up here from Florida.”

“Ownership aside, you’re murdering people.”

“Yes, well, it’s not like we went out of our way to kill anyone.

If Mr.

Sykes had simply minded his own business, he’d still be alive.

But he happened upon our sub while he was scuba diving on our site.

The mechanical arms are quite adept once you get the hang of operating them.

We were able to rob Mr. Sykes of his gear while keeping him below, and unfortunately, he drowned.”

I understood now why Oliver had been found barefoot.

They wouldn’t have wanted to leave his body with any hint of scuba gear, because that might have directed authorities to start looking into other things.

So his fins, tanks, respirator, and buoyancy device had all been removed.

“As for the second fellow, it was the storm that did him in.

I mean, it wasn’t our fault that he got knocked out of his boat, even if our sub did come up beneath it rather quickly.

Of course, once he saw the sub, his fate was sealed.

We couldn’t have him spreading tales, now, could we?”

“The ME said Will Stokstad drowned.”

“Yes, he did,”

Devereaux said mockingly.

“With a little help from our sub.

We had to use one of the mechanical grips to grab his arm and hold him beneath the surface.”

He paused and frowned.

“That resulted in a bit of an unexpected problem,”

he added.

“Because then we had to figure out a way to hide the mark left by our grasping claw.”

Will’s body had demonstrated a crush injury on his arm as well as on his torso.

Was this why? Had they crushed his arm the same way they did his torso in an attempt to hide the marks left behind by a submersible clamp?

“What about Martin Showalter?”

I said, my voice breaking slightly as I said his name.

“Roger murdered him in cold blood.”

“Again, if he’d just minded his own business . . .”

He shrugged.

“A minor glitch in our plan, that’s all.

Things would have been fine if Flanders hadn’t gotten that crazy idea to hire you.

He’s one of those cops with a more modern way of thinking when it comes to a police department’s relationship to the community.

He’s all about transparency and open communication, community involvement .

. . yada, yada, yada.”

He rolled his eyes.

“As soon as that Sykes guy’s body showed up, Flanders decided he wanted to involve key people—he called us stakeholders—in the decision-making process.

I was a part of that group, since I’m a big contributor to the island in many ways and own more than twenty rental properties here.

As a local DNR warden, Roger was also included.”

He sighed, shaking his head in disappointment.

“Damn if the group didn’t decide we should keep the information about the nature of the injuries from public knowledge.

I wasn’t too happy about that.

I wanted the word to get out.”

“To scare off the tourists.”

“Of course.

The last thing we needed was more nosy people poking around.”

His cavalier attitude angered me.

I wanted to keep him talking even though I feared all I was doing was postponing the inevitable, so I decided to play to his ego some more.

“I’m impressed that you found Napoleon’s gold.

People have been looking for that for more than a hundred and fifty years.

How did you figure it out?”

He shrugged.

“Honestly? It was a bit of a lucky accident.

I’ve been diving in these waters for years and I used to travel to Florida every winter.

Roger got me into cave diving down there.

I started exploring around this area a couple of years ago because these islands are full of undiscovered caves.

Last year, I discovered an underwater tunnel on the north side of Rock Island and decided to explore it. Imagine my delight when I discovered a decent-sized cave that sits above the waterline only twenty feet in. I think the tunnel provided above-water access to the cave thousands of years ago because I found some ancient tools carved out of animal bones in there, evidence of early man.

“Last fall, Roger got laid off and came up here because I knew I could get him a job with the DNR.

We were using scuba jets to examine a search grid around the tunnel entrance, thinking we might find more artifacts.

I was off skimming along the coastline, and while I was doing that, Roger was exploring some wood debris that turned out to be remains from the long-lost Plymouth.

He got excited when he realized what ship it was, and then he saw something glimmer and discovered a gold brick.”

“Napoleon’s gold,”

I said, a statement, not a question.

“Estimated to be worth around four hundred million.”

He nodded.

“Sounds like you’ve done your homework.”

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Unfortunately, our find happened late in the fall, and by the time we found a reliably private way to have the gold brick verified as being from the stash Napoleon sent during the Civil War, winter had arrived, so we couldn’t dive anymore.

We tried ice diving, but a good portion of the wreckage, and presumably the gold, is resting at the bottom of an underwater cliff that drops down nearly one hundred and thirty feet.

We were forced to wait, and I used that time to strategize.

I realized that diving wasn’t the most practical way to retrieve the gold, so I bought the submersible and had some very specific alterations made to it.”

“You designed it to resemble a Loch Ness Monster,”

I said.

“Not the greatest deterrent.

Rumors of a Loch Ness Monster in these waters could attract people rather than scare them away.”

His chin jutted out and a hint of a scowl came over his face with my criticism.

“Which is why Roger came up with the brilliant idea to create victims with the fish and deer carcasses.

The human victims that followed weren’t planned, but they were effective.

And if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that you need to seize the moments when they happen.”

I had to respect the brilliance of Devereaux’s scheme, awful as it was.

“You gave the submersible an appendage that resembles a long neck and another that resembles a tail,”

I said.

“And glowing eyes.

All to make it look like a lake monster.

It seems I’m not the only one who has done her homework.”

He smiled, clearly pleased.

“Yes, it was a stroke of brilliance, if I do say so myself.

There are two headlights that can be dimmed or brightened, and I had them made to look like eyes.

And the appendages, as you call them, are fully retractable mechanical arms that are operable from inside the sub, which can hold two men at a time.

The gold is heavy, and it’s a slow, cumbersome process: digging to find it beneath pieces of the shipwreck or the muddy bottom, and then transporting what we do find to a secret location.

I have to say, the guy I ordered the sub from did a magnificent job of retrofitting the thing. It wasn’t cheap, but it will be well worth the expense if I get four hundred million in gold in return.”

“How did you manage to hide delivery of a vessel like that?”

“Ironically, it followed much the same route that was taken by Napoleon’s gold, transported on a semi through Canada and then on a ship into Lake Michigan.

We simply offloaded it from the ship out in the middle of the lake.

That was the sub’s maiden voyage.

Once it was in the water, the cave I found made a perfect hiding spot.

The tunnel leading into it serves as a natural airlock and it and the cave are both big enough for the submersible.

Roger and I dive into the cave, man the sub, do our thing, and then return to the cave.”

“I don’t understand,”

I said, shaking my head.

“If you’re already as well off as you claim, why go through all this?”

“It’s not about the money,”

he said, his tone mocking.

“It’s about the thrill of the hunt, the prestige of finding a long-lost treasure that so many others have looked for and failed to find, though I daresay Roger wouldn’t agree.

His side of the family hasn’t been as successful in finding ways to make money without ending up in jail.”

“It would seem you’re having the same problem.

You’ve murdered three people.”

“Soon to be a fourth,”

he said with horrifying delight.

Seeing the terror on my face, he sobered and said, “Yes, well, I admit I did underestimate the determination of the tourists who come here, and I think I underestimated you, too.

Flanders assured us that you would get to the bottom of what was going on, but I calculated it as a long shot.

I tried to scare you off, but clearly that didn’t work.”

“That’s why you came into my store, isn’t it? To check me out?”

He shrugged, looking pleased with himself.

“In part, though my mother will truly love that Ouija board.

My main reason for coming to your store was to make sure you didn’t have any security cameras.

You know, to make sure no one saw me leave you that little warning that you chose to ignore.”

“The note?”

I said, remembering the attack on Devon.

He cocked his head to one side and smiled.

“Come on now.

Admit it.

The delivery method was quite clever of me, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t answer; I just glared at him.

“Where were you when I came back, by the way? I expected my message to be delivered a bit more personally.

I had to settle for your employee instead.

That was rather rude of you.”

“You’re insane,”

I said, appalled.

“Whatever,”

he said dismissively.

“I think we’re done with the chitchat.

Let’s go inside.”

A shiver shook me as I stepped over the threshold and into the cabin, in part because it was cold in there, but also because I was keenly aware of that gun aimed at my back.

The interior of the cabin was basic and rustic with no furniture, no curtains on the two grimy windows, and a dirt floor.

Electrical cords snaked along the walls and the floor leading to two bare-bulb lights that hung from the ceiling.

The light they emitted was dismal, but Devereaux left the cabin door open, allowing some daylight inside.

It helped to highlight the only other thing in the room.

It took me a moment to figure out what the hell it was, between the carved wooden base, the hydraulic pistons, and the giant lid.

It resembled one of those large presses that dry cleaners use.

Or a giant coffin.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

Devereaux said as I stared at the structure.

“I’m quite proud of the design.

It turned out larger than I’d initially intended, given that it was meant to be used on animals, but that proved to be a lucky mistake because, in the end, we needed it to be big enough for people.”

I stepped closer and studied the underside of the raised wooden lid.

Part of it had been carved in a pattern that resembled teeth— crushing, molar-type teeth—and it appeared to mesh with a similar pattern carved into the top surface of the base.

It was a pattern I’d seen before, in the bruises and indentations left behind in the dead flesh of two men.

It seemed I’d found my lake monster after all.