Page 18 of It Happened on the Lake

D etective Rand Watkins’s day had spiraled from bad to worse. Cynthia Hunt had given up the ghost.

Just before she was to be transported to Mercy General Hospital in Portland, Cynthia had suffered a massive heart attack and died. Right here at St. Catherine’s. On a standard-issue gurney.

Code Blue.

And it appeared there was a fuckup involved.

Shit.

He walked out of the hospital for the second time that day and told himself that his suspicions were way out of line, that he’d been shaken by the events of the past twenty-four hours because he’d been thrown back into a time he didn’t want to remember.

Because of Harper Reed.

Because she was back in Almsville, which was now his jurisdiction.

And how off the wall was it that nearly the minute Harper showed up, Cynthia Hunt managed to put on a violent, self-mutilating display in the middle of the lake? One more tragedy for the Hunt family and another problem for Rand and his department.

And this one cut too close to the bone.

It didn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that because of Cynthia’s bizarre death, all the old scandals and secrets would be dredged up again. Already he’d received three calls from reporters wanting information about the Hunt family.

He climbed into his Jeep and started the engine. Waited. Letting the engine warm in the cold October air.

Why did he feel that this was going to be a shit show?

He spied his partner hurrying out of the main doors of the hospital and put the Jeep into gear.

Michelle Brown was his latest partner. Green as the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day but smart as hell.

Flipping the hood of her jacket over her head at the imposing statue of St. Catherine, she glanced up at the sky, then hurried his way.

As she slid into the passenger seat, he turned on the windshield wipers.

“Get anything?”

She shot him a what-do-you-think glance. In her late twenties, she was athletic, with smooth mocha-colored skin, black hair pulled into a tight ponytail, hoop earrings, and an attitude that wouldn’t quit.

He put the Jeep into gear and pulled away from the curb.

“The only person who checked in on her since her arrival, other than hospital staff, was her son. Levi Hunt,” she said.

“He was there this morning but left without actually going inside the ICU. Talked to the doctor in charge, a Dr. Frank Costello. People called in, inquiring, and I’ll get those numbers from the phone company.

” As he pulled away from the curb, she asked, “Do you really think something’s going on here?

I mean, the woman had burns over half of her body.

Don’t you think nature just took its course? ”

“Probably.” The autopsy would show as much. But it was odd that Cynthia Hunt had been left alone in a hallway before the transport could pick her up. Worse yet, in that particular area, there were no security cameras.

Her heart probably stopped due to natural causes. Jesus, who could survive what she had been through?

Yet . . .

A coincidence?

Probably.

But it just didn’t feel right.

He drove down the hill from where the hospital had been built and into the town where he’d lived most of his life.

Almsville had grown in the past few decades.

No longer a small town on the shores of a lake, it had become a larger bedroom community of Portland, more houses being built on the shores of the lake, newer businesses crowding into neighborhoods.

“So where’s the crime?” Brown wanted to know.

“Don’t know yet.”

“Because maybe there isn’t one.”

“Maybe.” He slowed for a stoplight, waited as cross traffic passed, and noted the Sold sign plastered over the For Sale sign in a window of the old Tastee-Freez where he and his buddies had biked for dipped cones and vanilla Cokes.

“You couldn’t possibly think Cynthia Hunt was murdered. Everyone we interviewed so far says the same thing: she set herself on fire on her boat.”

“I know.” The police had talked to the boaters who had arrived on the scene and a few neighbors who had caught sight of the conflagration in the middle of the lake. Their stories had been much like Harper’s.

But it didn’t sit well with him. From what he’d pieced together, Cynthia had somehow escaped from the facility where she was being treated for her dementia, found a way back to the family home.

Once there she’d retrieved the key to the boat, then driven it, along with all kinds of memorabilia she’d loaded into it, to the middle of the lake.

Oh, and she just happened to have an extra gallon of gas and a lighter to set herself and everything in the boat on fire.

And just after Harper Reed had arrived at her grandmother’s house and looked out the window, she’d witnessed the fire.

Harper had the common sense to call 9-1-1 but then tried to rescue Cynthia and ended up nearly drowning before being rescued.

He didn’t like anything about it.

Brown cut into his thoughts as the light changed and he made the next turn to the tree-lined street where the station was located. “If you ask me—”

He hadn’t.

“—I think Cynthia Hunt’s heart attack is a damned blessing in disguise. I mean, what kind of a life was that woman gonna have? Jesus, did you see her? What do you think she looked like under all those damned bandages?”

Unfortunately, he would probably find out.

He always visibly appraised the bodies of the victims in his cases.

Cynthia Hunt’s death wasn’t yet classified as a homicide and hopefully never would be.

Nonetheless, Rand viewed all of the bodies in the deaths he investigated.

And already he was looking into the circumstances of her bizarre death.

He knew some people thought him morbid or that he might even get his jollies by viewing cadavers, but that wasn’t it.

Not at all. It was a ritual he placed upon himself.

Ever since his tour in Vietnam, he’d forced himself to survey the grisly effects of man’s inhumanity to man.

Just to remind himself. Keep his thoughts clear.

“There’s a chance,” she said, “that you’re overthinking this. Because it’s personal. I know your dad and Cynthia’s husband were tight. Worked together, here,” she said, nodding at the station as it came into sight. “And you were neighbors, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So don’t let it cloud your judgment.”

He sent her a look meant to tell her to back off, but he wondered if she got the message. “I wouldn’t. I just want to check things out.”

“Okay. Fine. We just don’t need to make more of it than there is.”

“Agreed.” But he wasn’t going to let her tell him how, when, where, or why he was going to investigate.

He parked in the lot adjacent to the station.

It was a patchwork of a workplace, originally three separate buildings that had been linked together over the years as the town had grown.

City hall, the police department, and the local jail were all connected by a series of hallways and staircases.

Brown was out of the car before he cut the Jeep’s engine.

She didn’t much like him, but he didn’t take it personally.

She was bristly and smart, a girl who had gotten into police work because her own father had been murdered, the case unsolved and now cold as an arctic winter.

Nonetheless, she was young enough to believe that by sheer will and determination she would be able to solve the case and bring her dad’s killer to justice.

He didn’t blame her.

Probably would do the same if he were in her shoes.

A cold wind cut through the town, a promise of the coming winter as he followed her inside.

He hung his jacket in the locker room, then walked along a hallway where pictures of officers lined the wall, his father’s portrait included.

As if the old man were watching his every move.

Ignoring the picture of a much younger Gerald Watkins, Rand made his way through a rabbit warren of cubicles on the way to his office.

Which, for the meantime, he shared with Michelle Brown.

At least until Chuck Fellows retired this summer.

Neither Rand nor Brown much liked the situation, but for the foreseeable future they were stuck with it.

Brown had already shed her coat and was seated at her desk.

It was slightly smaller than his own and had been pushed under the window next to a short filing cabinet.

The windowsill was now covered with houseplants and pictures of Brown either hiking, riding horses, or canoeing on the lake.

Beneath the trailing ivy or whatever the hell it was, her desk was strewn with empty coffee cups, Diet Coke cans, and messy piles of paper, some of which had migrated onto the filing cabinet.

His desk, set at an angle to hers, was neat, file folders stacked in one corner, his in-basket on the other, phone and computer in the center.

He settled into his chair, logged onto his email, a new addition to the department, and was scrolling through when the phone rang and he scooped up the receiver.

“Mrs. Prescott is here, Detective Watkins.”

Mrs. Prescott, aka Harper Reed.

“She says she’s here to give a statement regarding Cynthia Hunt.”

“That’s right. Give me five, then bring her back to Interview 2.”

“Got it.”

He gave Brown a heads-up about Harper Prescott giving her statement, then slid his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and grabbed a legal pad, pen, and pocket recorder as he made his way down the short hallway and around a corner.

He’d just sat down when Officer Suki Tanaka, the front desk officer, escorted her in.

“Come on in,” Rand said, up on his feet again and noting that she’d changed into jeans and a sweater, her shoulder-length hair now down.

Though she was still sporting a bandage covering her chin and one higher on her cheek, she’d applied enough makeup to partially disguise the bruise around her eye.

But she hadn’t been able to hide the swelling or the broken blood vessels. “Have a seat.”