Page 189 of It Happened on the Lake

“The Reed family? Is that what you’re talking about?” Gerald demanded. “Holy Kee-Rist, Rand, you know what happened! Evan got stupid, high on LSD, and decided to play Russian roulette. And as for Anna, you were there when we pulled her out of the drink. That whole family had a problem with drugs and alcohol, and they paid the price. Those cases are closed. Plain and simple.” He took a final drag, then jabbed out his cigarette in a standing ashtray near the door.

“You and Tom were the lead investigators.”

“Hell yeah, we were. We were theonlyinvestigators.”

“Chase was the victim,” Rand pointed out. “His father shouldn’t have been involved in the case.”

“The department wasn’t what it is now. It was much smaller. We made do.”

“Even so.”

Gerald glared at his son. “What the fuck is this all about, Rand? Don’t you have enough to do, trying to keep the peace? Protect and serve and all that? Why the hell are you doing this?”

Two men pushed open the door from the locker room. They were deep in conversation but glanced up. The bigger guy, in plaid pants and windbreaker, raised a hand. “See ya next week, Gerry.”

“Yeah.” Rand’s father gave a chin-up nod. “Sure.”

The other guy, skinnier and wearing rain gear, sketched a salute.

Then as the two men dashed to their cars, Gerald took hold of his son’s arm and propelled him out of earshot. He pushed him under the canopy of branches of a huge fir tree where the smell of damp earth reached his nostrils. “Why don’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?”

Rand yanked his arm from his father’s punishing grasp. “Because they’re not sleeping, Dad. Not only are they waking up, they’re fucking barking.”

“Then what? You came out here to . . . what’re you saying here, boy?” But he’d already guessed. “That I didn’t do my job? That Tom and I did what? Screwed up the investigations?” His eyes thinned to slits, his face was shadowed, all blades and angles deepened by the dim light coming from a few high windows of the locker room.

“I’m saying that we’re taking another look.”

“We’re?” Gerald repeated, scrabbling in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “Who else is in on this, whatever the fuck it is?”

“My partner.”

“That little slip of a thing?” He scoffed and lit up again, shooting a geyser of smoke from the side of his mouth. “Well, good luck!” Gerald said, disbelieving. “Tom and I, we did everything by the book.”

“Did you?” Rand tossed out. “Because I’m not so sure.”

Gerald pointed to the bulge beneath Rand’s jacket. “Jesus, Rand, are you packin’? To talk to me? What the hell?”

“I talked to Mom.”

Gerald was about to take a draw on his cigarette, but he stopped for a second, just long enough to confirm Rand’s worst suspicions. “Oh, did ya?” his father said, as if it was no big deal. “How is she?”

“Clearheaded,” Rand said, watching for the telltale tic near his father’s eye, a pulsing throb that always appeared when he was agitated. So far, Gerald was calm. “She remembers. About the fact that you weren’t home when Chase went missing. That the boat was gone.”

“And—?”

No tic. “Levi told me that Tom and Chase got into it that night. Both of them tearing into each other. The fight got out of control.”

His father took another drag as a gust of cold wind swept through the branches overhead, causing them to groan and sway. “Is there a point to this?”

“Cynthia left a note for Levi.”

The tic appeared, a tiny pulse beside his father’s left eye. “Is there a point to this?”

“The note said, ‘They killed him. They killed Chase. Make him pay.’”

“Sounds like gibberish to me,” Gerald said. “Doesn’t make any sense. You know she’d lost her marbles.”

“And when did that start? With Chase’s disappearance?” Rand asked, every muscle in his body coiled. “Or with Tom’s suicide?”