Page 5 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)

Fertile, Minnesota

Once Steve and his mother moved in with Gramps, a miracle happened. From first grade on, Steve was an excellent reader—always in the blue bird reading group rather than red or yellow. When Gramps saw the A+s in reading on Steve’s report cards, he didn’t seem at all surprised.

“You must take after your grandma Joan,” Gramps said. “That woman never had a spare moment when she didn’t have her nose buried in a book.”

As far as Steve knew, Grandma Lucille never read anything—not even the newspaper.

A few months after moving into Gramps’s house, when Steve went up to the attic to bring down the Christmas decorations, he discovered a large box filled with books—twenty or so.

At dinner that night, after lugging the decorations downstairs, he asked about the books.

“Those belonged to your grandma Joan,” Gramps explained. “When Grandma Lucille moved in, she didn’t approve of having them in the living room, so she boxed ’em up and stored them in the attic.”

“Would it be okay if I brought them down to read them?” Steve asked.

“Sure,” Gramps said. “Why not? All they’re doing now is sitting around in the attic gathering dust.”

Once Steve carried the box downstairs, he found a treasure trove of twenty-six books in all—a dozen Ellery Queens, thirteen Agatha Christies, and a thick one called The Complete Compendium of Sherlock Holmes .

On the inside cover of each book, Steve found an inscription that said either Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday to Joanie, Love, Ori.

Gramps’s first name was Orson, and that’s what most people called him, including Grandma Lucille, but for Grandma Joan, he’d been Ori, and she’d been Joanie.

Reading those inscriptions made Steve feel as though he’d just uncovered a long-hidden family secret.

Of course, Steve read more than just the inscriptions.

Using a flashlight under his bedding at night, before Christmas vacation was over, Steve had raced through them all.

When school started up again, he did an oral book report on Murder in the Calais Coach .

Miss Beach, his seventh-grade teacher, gave him an A, but she took Steve aside and quietly explained the correct pronunciation of Hercule Poirot’s last name.

With all the books, though, and especially with the Sherlock Holmes stories, Steve concentrated on the details, poring over the tiny mistakes killers made that ended up giving them away and helping them get caught.

As someone who had gotten away with murder once, not getting caught was Steve’s first priority.

As far as he could tell, most killers were caught because they murdered people they knew—lovers, spouses, family members, or business associates.

That meant that, in order to solve the crime, all the investigators had to do was go through the victim’s circle of acquaintances to find the murderer.

Given that, it didn’t take long for Steve to realize that he’d been extremely lucky to get away with taking out Grandma Lucille.

More often than not, the person who found the body and reported it turned out to be the one responsible.

He was the one who had called the cops about Grandma Lucille’s body, but the fact that he’d been eleven at the time had worked in his favor.

No one could imagine that a kid that young could possibly be a cold-blooded killer.

The other thing going for Steve was the fact that there were absolutely no witnesses to the crime and no physical evidence, either.

If the fishing line had cut into her skin, things might have gone differently, but the string that tripped her had caught on the top of her boot, and no one had ever found the fishing string in the bottom of the burning barrel primarily because no one ever went looking.

While Steve studied the murder textbooks that had come to him by way of Grandma Joan’s book box, he continued to listen to his voices.

They had all applauded what he’d done in getting rid of Grandma Lucille, but for the time being they seemed to be of the opinion that, although he had started down the path to his destiny at a very young age, for right now he needed to bide his time.

So that’s exactly what he did—he waited.

In 1961, when Steve turned sixteen, Gramps handed his 1956 GMC pickup over to his grandson and bought a new vehicle for himself.

For the first time in his life, Steve Roper was free as a bird.

He no longer had to depend on his bicycle, his friends, his mother, or Gramps to get around.

He could go wherever he wanted completely on his own, and that suited him just fine.

In August of that summer, Steve went to the opening day of the Polk County Fair.

He knew it was a hunting expedition, but he wasn’t sure what he was looking for.

He showed up in the middle of the afternoon and hung out around the midway.

While there, he saw a few of the kids he knew from high school, but he didn’t really mingle with any of them.

As evening came on and it started to cool off a little, the midway got more and more crowded. Eventually Steve saw what he wanted—a little kid, probably seven or eight, dressed in a Cub Scout uniform. He was standing alone by the merry-go-round, crying his eyes out.

“Is something the matter?” Steve asked.

“I had to go to the bathroom,” the kid said. “When I came back everyone was gone—my den leader and everybody. I don’t know where they are.”

“Come on,” Steve said kindly, taking the kid’s hand. “Let me help you find them.”

“Okay,” the little boy agreed, stifling a sob and wiping away his tears.

“What’s your name?” Steve asked.

“Brian.”

“Do you like cotton candy, Brian?”

The little boy nodded.

“Okay then, let’s get some.”

At the cotton candy stall, Steve bought two sticks of the gooey stuff, one for Brian and one for himself.

As they strolled through the midway side by side, Steve kept an eye out for anyone who looked like a Cub Scout leader and also for anyone he knew.

Fortunately he saw neither, and what could be more normal than two people, an older boy and a younger one, walking through a fairground in the semidarkness, both of them eating cotton candy?

“Here’s an idea,” Steve said, as they neared the place where he’d parked his pickup. “How about if I drop you off at the sheriff’s station here in town? You’ll be safe there. They’ll either take you home or call your mother to come get you.”

“Will I be in trouble?” Brian wanted to know.

“Nah,” Steve told him. “That’s what cops do. They look out for lost kids all the time.”

“Okay,” Brian said.

In the parking lot, Steve helped Brian climb up into the passenger seat. Once he closed the door, only the very top of Brian’s crew cut was visible through the window.

“So, you’re a Cub Scout?” Steve asked from behind the wheel.

Brian nodded. “A Wolf,” he answered. “Were you in Cub Scouts, too?”

Steve shook his head. “I wanted to but never did. Can I see your pin?”

“Sure,” Brian said. It took a moment for him to unfasten it and hand it over.

Steve made as if to examine it, then when passing it back, he dropped it onto the floorboard. Brian started to scramble down to find it.

“Just leave it there,” Steve advised. “It’ll be easier to find it once we stop.”

“Okay,” Brian agreed.

Clearly the day at the fair and the stress of being lost had worn Brian out. By the time they were headed north on Fertile’s main drag, the boy nodded off, with the remains of his ball of cotton candy stuck to the front of his shirt.

Needless to say, Steve drove past the sheriff’s station without slowing down. On the far side of town he turned right and headed northeast toward Arthur Lake. Before turning onto the dirt road nearest the lake, Steve doused the lights. As the car slowed, Brian awakened.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking around.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “I just wanted to show you something.”

Afraid the boy might bolt, as soon as Steve turned off the engine, he grabbed Brian’s wrist. “Come on,” he said.

But Brian tried to pull away. “No,” he said. “It’s dark out there. I don’t want to go.”

“I said come on,” Steve repeated, forcibly dragging the boy across the seat.

“No,” Brian wailed. “I don’t want to. I want my mommy.”

“You can’t have your mommy,” Steve snarled. “You’re stuck with me.”

By the time Steve had the squirming kid out of the truck, it was all he could do to hang on to him as he walked the two hundred yards from where he’d parked to the edge of the lake, but somehow he managed.

Steve knew Arthur Lake well. It was close enough to Gramps’s farm that he’d often gone swimming there alone on hot summer days.

On this occasion, he didn’t like having to walk into the water fully clothed, but with the kid fighting him tooth and nail, he didn’t have a choice.

The lake deepened gradually for the first twenty feet or so before a sharp drop-off. By the time Steve was waist-deep in the water, Brian had a death grip around his neck.

“Please, don’t drop me,” the kid begged. “Please. I can’t swim. I don’t know how.”

Those words were music to Steve’s ears. If Brian knew how to swim, Steve would have had a whole other set of problems, and he would have had to bodily hold the boy underwater.

Once far enough into the lake, Steve pried Brian’s arms loose from around his neck and then threw him as hard as he could into even deeper water.

Brian landed face down with a loud splash.

Moments later the boy’s pale arm and head emerged from the water.

“Help me,” he sputtered. “Please.”

But Steve didn’t help. He simply stood and watched.

Twice more the kid managed to kick his way to the surface, but after that third appearance, he disappeared completely.

Steve stood there for another minute or two, making sure it really was finished before turning on his heel and splashing his way back to the truck.

As he walked, Steve was relieved to hear the distant rumble of thunder. That was what he needed. If there were any telltale footprints or tire tracks left on the dirt track that led to the lake, a sudden summer rain squall would erase them completely.

Back at the truck, he searched the footwell until he found the Cub Scout pin. After shoving it into his pocket, he ripped off his pants along with his shoes and socks. If someone came looking, it wouldn’t do to have mud from Arthur Lake found in the footwell of his truck.

Back home, he rinsed off his soaked clothing in the metal watering trough by the barn and then tiptoed into the house.

His mom and Gramps were in the living room, listening to a major league baseball game on the radio.

Gramps was deaf as a post by then, and the volume was turned up full blast. As Steve made his way upstairs, they were completely oblivious.

Eight-year-old Brian Olson was reported missing the next day.

Everyone from the surrounding area, including Steve and Gramps, participated in the massive search effort that followed.

Three days later the boy’s body was found floating in Arthur Lake, still wearing his Cub Scout uniform.

If anyone noticed that his Wolf pin was missing, no one ever mentioned it, at least not in any of the newspaper articles Steve read about the case.

In the immediate aftermath, investigators regarded the boy’s stepfather as a person of interest, but eventually he was cleared.

After that, the case went cold and stayed that way.

As for Cotton Candy Boy’s Wolf pin? That went straight into Steve Roper’s cigar box, right along with Grandma Lucille’s wedding ring. It became the second item in his collection of treasures.