Page 251 of It Happened on the Lake

While Craig smoked, Rambo nosed around the lower deck where a kayak and patio furniture were stored. Nearby was a stack of firewood and a scarred stump that was obviously used as a chopping block. An ax had been buried deep into the stump. In her mind’s eye Harper imagined Craig with an ax in his hand, throwing his shoulders into swinging the heavy blade downward to split chunks of fir. She imagined the split pieces spinning and flying across the deck and into the yard and Craig stacking them next to his house.

She thought about the empty bins in her own basement, where once firewood had been stored.

Craig knew this house like the back of his hand.

He and Beth had financial issues.

He wanted to renovate her house.

His wife wanted to sell it.

Both of them profiting if Harper hired Craig’s construction company to fix up the place and then Harper sold it through Alexander Realty.

Still looking through the telescope, she watched as he drained his beer and flicked the butt of his cigarette into the air, its red tip arcing, then dying as he stalked into the house again. He made his way to the front hall where he picked up his jacket, then headed down the stairs to the basement.

Now what?she wondered, her gaze glued to the scenario playing in front of her.

Within seconds she saw him storming across the yard and into the boathouse.

Not a minute later the boat churned out of its berth and into the lake where Craig, at the helm, turned it, pointing the prow directly toward Dixon Island.

Harper smiled. “Well, come on then,” she said aloud, her racing heart belying her calm words.

She headed down the stairs quickly, stopped on the first floor where she’d left the shotgun, and carried it down another flight to the basement even though she knew shooting it in a confined area was dangerous. Possibly deadly. Shotgun pellets would ricochet everywhere.

Threatening to fire the shotgun was a bluff at best.

Actually pulling the trigger, a last resort at worst.

For backup she grabbed the poker, then positioned herself so she could view the chute. Sitting on the gritty brick floor, her back propped against one of the old furnaces, she held the gun across her lap.

Then she waited.

Chapter 65

With Chelle looking over his shoulder, Rand stared at a new set of photographs laid out across his desk in his office. They had been at it for hours. It was late, the day shift having been replaced by the night crew hours before, the office illuminated only by overheads and desk lamps, the station quiet except for an occasional phone ringing or the undertones of a conversation, but at this hour, closing in on midnight, only a few officers were in the building.

The pictures they were viewing had been developed from the stash of old film canisters and cameras they had discovered in the Musgraves’ cabin. The film was primarily black and white, the shots grainy, but he and Chelle had pored over the developed still pictures while the film from the old movie cameras was still being processed.

Though Trick might have had state of the art equipment in 1968, film technology had advanced in the past twenty years and it was taking a while to develop the 8mm film for what were, essentially, home movies. In the case of Trick Vargas, though, Rand expected the reels weren’t of happy kids splashing in wading pools or marching in Fourth of July parades or opening presents on Christmas morning.

No, he expected the film from the movie cameras would prove to be moving images of what happened on the lake, the secrets of people in their private lives, secrets they would pay to keep hidden, secrets never meant to be exposed.

For now, though, until those movies were available, he and Chelle looked over the photographs.

There had been mountains of pictures to sort through, day and night shots, mostly of the activity on the lake. Nothing that meant anything. There were other photographs as well, of people who had come and gone to the Musgraves’ home, shots taken from the peephole cut into the floor of the attic. Images of drug deals going down or couples or threesomes engaging in sex.

Rand figured some of the photographs were used for blackmail.

Others Trick might have seen as insurance so that no one would complain about activity at the house if they themselves realized they’d been caught on camera.

It had taken hours, but Rand and Chelle had sorted through them to come up with shots from the night Chase Hunt had disappeared. They had arranged them in sequence, according to the negatives, which showed each photo taken in succession.

Those photos were spread in a time line across the wide surface of his desk. The interesting thing, he noted, was that Trick had been busy that night. Many of the images were of the Hunts’ dock, pictures snapped of the fight between Chase and his father. There had been just enough illumination from the street light and through the window of the Hunts’ house to make out what happened, though some of the images on the pictures were blurry and useless. Those were set aside.

That night, Trick hadn’t confined his spying to the Hunt family. His expensive equipment had captured images of people in houses across the lake and, more specifically, on Dixon Island.

And those images told a story.