Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Cold Waters by Brendan DuBois

Brendan DuBois is better known for hard-edged thriller novels and stories than for the intriguing sort of cozy he’s produced for us this time out. He’s a two-time winner of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award and he penned two heart-pumping stand-alone thrillers, Resurrection Day (Putnam 1999) and Betrayed (St. Martin’s 2003). His latest novel, Buried Dreams (St. Martin’s) features series sleuth Lewis Cole.

When the services were over and the people had gone home, I stood on the dock by the boathouse, in a steady rain. Out before me were the wide and dark waters of the lake where I had grown up. If I squinted my eyes some, I would see what it had been like here years ago, with fewer homes and more trees. It had been awhile since I had stood on this worn wood. The house and the land and the dock and the boathouse had once belonged to my parents. Now, after today, it all belonged to me.

I turned as I listened to the creak of wood from the dock. My wife Angie approached, wearing a dark green raincoat, hood up over her black hair. She said not a word, came up to me and slid her warm hand into mine.

We stood in the rain, watching the mist float across the still waters of the lake, and she squeezed my hand and said, “You doing all right, Pat?”

“Doing okay,” I said.

She leaned into me. “It must have been wonderful living up here.”

I smiled at the memory. “Sure was. Except...”

Angie turned to me. “Except what?”

I shrugged. “Except one summer, when I was twelve.”

“What happened then?”

I turned back to the gray waters. “It wasn’t so wonderful anymore.”

“That’s something,” Angie said. “When things aren’t so wonderful. Guess it explains why you never liked coming up here that much.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She squeezed my hand again, staying quiet, as she often does when she knows my mind is working way at the back, like a miner in a deep cave, probing and tapping. I squeezed her hand back, said, “I think I owe you more.”

“You sure?”

I took a breath. “Yeah, I’m sure. I think it’s time.”

She squeezed my hand again, spoke quietly. “Only if you want.”

“I guess I want,” I said. I went into the boathouse, pulled out a wooden bench, and sat down. I patted the worn wood next to me and Angie sat down, too. Behind us oars, paddles, life jackets, and other odds and ends hung from wooden pegs. Shelves were filled with old paint and varnish cans, worn-out batteries, and other debris from years of boating on this lake.

“Thanks,” she said. “My ankles are killing me. So. What do you want to tell me?”

“Everything,” I said.

That summer Patrick Dow was twelve, and even at that age, he knew how special it was, living by a lake. He was an only child, with a second-floor bedroom whose large windows oversaw the wide cove that his home was on, at Lake Woodward. His parents’ bedroom was down at the other end of the hall, the two rooms separated by a spare room his mom, a children’s book illustrator, used for an office. His dad owned a restaurant in town and tried to spend a lot of evenings and most weekends at home, either working on the lawn or the dock or taking the three of them out on a motorboat ride across the wide waters of Lake Woodward. He also belonged to a couple of civic groups, including the town’s planning board and historical society. The town was the same name as the lake, Woodward, and it was pretty small, with a cool downtown that had a couple of ice-cream shops and a video-game parlor.

But living on the lake, there was always more fun — more things to see and do on the lake than anywhere downtown. Pat was right there by the lake when it iced over, and he could skate across the wide coves. He was there in the fall, when the bright leaves were so colorful that when the sun was right, even the water was red and orange and yellow. And he was there in the spring, when the ice melted and the otters played among the ice floes, the mergansers came back, and the first green buds came to life.

Then there was the summer, long and warm and glorious. At the start of this particular summer, before the bad things began, Pat woke up in the middle of the night, comfortable and warm and safe in his bed. The day before had been the last day of school, and he had gone to bed tingly and happy with anticipation of the months of vacation that stretched before him like an endless journey. The idea of school again, in the fall, was as distant to him as trying to imagine what it would be like when he finally got his license and could drive. No, what was ahead for him was months of swimming and fishing and canoeing, pickup baseball games on the town common with his buddies from school, ice cream and barbeques and fireworks, and no homework, not ever, not for a long time to come.

He rolled over in bed. He wondered what had woken him. Sometimes there were noises coming from Mom and Dad’s bedroom, and he was old enough to know what was going on, though he didn’t see what the big fuss was all about. But the house seemed quiet. He looked out the windows. A half-moon was up in the night sky, lighting up the waters in the cove. He could hear the chatter of crickets and the low rhythm of frogs bellowing. Out on the main lake, there came the haunting screech of a loon, calling out to its mate. He shivered. Maybe that noise had woken him. He shivered again, feeling the wind move across his hair and watching it make the drapes move against the wall.

There. That noise. A frantic, low hoo-hoo-hoo of an owl out there, hunting. It gave him a tingly feeling that while he was safe and warm in bed, something out there was being killed. He lay awake, waiting and listening, until he couldn’t hear anything except the soft murmur of a boat engine moving slowly out onto the lake waters. That was when he fell asleep — and a few hours later was when it began, when the first body was found, floating in the cold waters.

In the morning, his mom was downstairs in the small dining room, looking out to the main lake, binoculars in her hands. His dad stood next to her, yawning. “What’s going on?” Dad asked.

“I see lights, over there near Twombly Cove.”

“So?”

“Red lights. And blue ones, too.”

Dad stood next to her, quite close. Pat said, “Police? Is that it?”

“And the Marine Patrol,” Mom said, her voice quiet.

“Let me see,” Pat said, and his mom turned and was going to say something when his dad gently took the binoculars from her hands and passed them over to Pat.

“Henry,” she said sharply.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Let the boy look.”

Pat took the binoculars and brought them to his face. He adjusted them to fit his eyes and saw the low-slung Boston Whaler of the Marine Patrol, close to shore, two conservation officers standing by the gunwales, looking over the side. A police cruiser and ambulance were by the low brush on the shoreline, near a vacation cottage that was still boarded up. He could barely make out the people by the shore, who looked like they were waiting for the conservation officers to do something.

“My turn, sport,” Dad said.

He gave up the binoculars to his dad’s strong hands, and Dad looked out to the lake water. Mom stood still, arms crossed. Dad sighed.

“What is it?”

“A body,” Dad said. “They’re pulling out a body.”

Mom put a hand to her face. Pat couldn’t help himself; he smiled. Maybe he could get down to his canoe and with some serious paddling, make it out there while—

It was as if she could hear his mind working. She turned quickly and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

“Hunh?” Pat asked.

“I said, don’t even think about going out there. You’re staying right here, mister.”

“But I was going to go fishing before breakfast, Mom, c’mon.”

Dad lowered his binoculars. “Tell you what, bud. You can go fishing, but don’t leave our cove. All right?”

“Dad, I was thinking about—”

Dad said gently, which was sometimes scarier than when he raised his voice, “Not negotiable, Pat. Our cove or noplace.”

He nodded. Dad handed the binoculars over to Mom, who shook her head and went into the kitchen.

Later in the morning, he was out in his canoe, fishing. The canoe was bright red and was comfortable, with two seats made of woven leather strips. At his feet was his tackle box, and in his hands was his Shakespeare fishing pole, hanging over the port side. It was still early in the morning and he hadn’t had breakfast yet, but that was fine. It was fun to be out on the water by himself, before the water-skiers and the party boaters and everybody else got up and started playing in the waters of Lake Woodward. The cove he was in was a small one, compared to other big coves in the lake. Including his house, there were three houses in this cove — meaning people who lived here year-round — and four cottages that were only opened up after Memorial Day, and were rented by the week or the month.

But even with the homes and the cottages, the cove was quiet. It was still pretty early. When he had first started drifting along the shoreline, faint wisps of mist had hung there, like see-through shower curtains, but now, the mist had gone. He had cast and recast his lure over the past hour, slowly drawing the fishing line back in, listening to the faint click-click-click of the reel doing its work. He looked over to his house. Mom was probably upstairs working while Dad was probably getting ready to head into town, to the restaurant. By now the canoe had drifted out near the waters of the main lake. He looked over at the cove where the Marine Patrol boat was still moored, and the lights of the police cars and the ambulance still flashed.

Another look to the house. Mom and Dad could be looking at him right now, or they could be busy... Would it hurt to paddle over, just a little bit, toward the other cove? He lifted up his paddle and then heard Dad’s voice again, in his head: Not negotiable, Pat. Our cove or noplace. And the tone of Dad’s voice told him everything he needed to know.

He started paddling the canoe deeper into the cove, and away from the lights and the boat and the body that intrigued him so. He had another half-hour or so of fishing left to do, and even though he hadn’t caught a thing, he was enjoying it so, on his first real day of vacation.

After dinner that night, Mom and Dad went out to the rear deck, and he joined them, working a crossword from a puzzle book. He was doing crosswords now that were designed for adults, not kids like him, and he liked being able to solve the tougher puzzles.

Mom and Dad talked to each other as he held the pencil and puzzle book in his hand, and he kept quiet. Sometimes they talked and sort of forgot he was there, if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t raise any attention.

Mom said, “You got that planning-board meeting tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, I do,” Dad said, his voice sounding tired.

“The Oyster Bay project,” she said. “Am I right?”

Dad shook his head and took a sip from his after-dinner glass of wine. “Yeah, you’re right. Stupid fools. This is a lake. There ain’t no oysters in there. That’s what you get when you deal with flatland developers.”

Mom smiled. “Don’t be harsh, Henry. You used to be a flatlander, too. And you’ve got lots of family down south — especially in and around Boston — who might take offense to that.”

“Then let them,” Dad said, his voice just a bit loud. “Guys like these developers come up here, don’t appreciate the lake... it’s going to be a problem.”

“Oh?”

He looked out to the lake, and Pat kept his pencil still, wondering what was going on.

Dad shook his head. “These developers... we’ve tried everything, by the book and not by the book, to block and delay, and it looks like it doesn’t matter anymore. No matter how long we’ve lived here, no matter how much we love this lake and want to protect it, there’s not much we can do. Theu’ve got the funding lined up, and they’re ready to tear up half of the most undeveloped lake in the state, for fifty new homes. Can you believe that? Fifty new goddamn homes.”

“Henry,” Mom said. “Your language.”

“Oh, sorry. Well.” His dad turned to Pat and said, “How goes it, sport?”

“Not bad.”

“Running out of puzzles?”

Pat smiled. “Not today, that’s for sure.”

He asked, “How was your fishing?”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“Catch anything?”

“Lots of weeds.”

Dad laughed. “Well, at least you tried. Going out tomorrow?”

“Probably,” Pat said. “Can I go out to the other coves?”

“Sure,” Dad said. “I don’t see why not. Just be careful.”

Mom said quietly, “Anything new about that body they found this morning?”

Pat kept still again, hoping that his dad wouldn’t say something like, “Well, we’ll talk about it later,” or, “No, nothing,” but Dad pulled through and said, “Yeah, Chief Poulton came over, needed some sandwiches ‘to go’ for his folks. Guy they pulled out was old, maybe in his eighties. No identification on him. Dressed in just a pair of pants and a T-shirt. And the chief said, well, that the medical examiner found something strange when he looked at the body.”

“What’s that?” Mom asked.

Dad looked over at Pat, who was desperately pretending to be working on a puzzle.

“The old guy’s lungs,” he said.

“What about them?”

“They didn’t have any water in them.”

“So? They didn’t have any water and... oh. Now I understand.”

They were silent for a moment, and Pat couldn’t stand it. “Dad?”

“Yeah?” His father lowered his wineglass.

“What... what does it mean, what you said there? That there wasn’t any water in his lungs.”

Dad looked at Mom, and Mom looked at Dad, and then Dad said quietly, “It means the old man didn’t drown.”

Pat looked at his parents, and Mom went on. “It means, dear, that the poor man died, and then somebody put him in the lake.”

“Oh,” Pat said, the pencil in his hand feeling useless, the puzzle book no longer attractive. He was fascinated by what Mom and Dad had just said, but knew if he said any more, they would shut him out of any other news. “Wow,” he said. “That’s pretty strange.”

Dad nodded. “Yep. Pretty strange.”

And two days later, another body was found, at the other end of the lake, at Pinkham’s Cove. The cove was way on the south side of the lake, a place that Pat had only canoed to once before. Since it took three hours to paddle over there in a straight shot, with three hours for a return trip, it didn’t leave much time to catch one’s breath and do some fishing. The cove was clustered with small islands with tall pines, stretches of swamp, and boulders barely awash from the lake water that caught unwary speedboats roaring through. Pat had never liked Pinkham’s Cove, and when Dad had told him about the body being found there, he shivered. It made sense.

Dad was late for dinner, but made up for it by bringing steamed lobsters from the restaurant for the three of them to eat. Again, they were out on the back deck, cracking open the shells and dipping the lobster meat into drawn butter, when Dad announced that another body had been found.

“Stranger and stranger,” Dad said. “Another old person this time, but a woman. Wearing only a cotton nightgown. That’s it. No identification or anything else.”

Mom gently wiped at a drop of butter that was on her chin. “I don’t like it, Henry. I don’t like it at all.”

Dad shrugged. “Who does? Sounds like some wacko out there, dumping bodies in the lake for no reason. And the funny thing is, neither of them seemed to have any trauma. It looked like they died naturally.”

“The lungs,” Pat said.

“What?” Dad asked.

“The lungs,” Pat said. “Was there any water found in the lungs?”

Dad ate another piece of lobster. “Nope. It looks just like that poor old guy they found two days ago.”

Mom looked at Dad and then at Pat. “You... you better stay in our cove from now on,” she said. “Until this gets straightened out.”

“Mom!” he protested. “Our cove is so small, and the best fishing is out on the main lake, and I haven’t caught hardly anything this summer yet!”

Dad started to speak, but Pat kept on going. “I’m good enough to go fishing by myself, I should be able to—”

“Pat,” Dad said.

He stopped. Dad was using that tone of voice again. Pat lowered his head, the lobster not tasting that great. “Okay,” he said.

The day after the second body was found, Mom drove down to Boston to visit her mother and other relatives in the area. She had also gone down the week before, and both times, Pat had begged off going down with her. Pat had been down to Boston exactly three times to visit Mom’s side of the family, and except for side trips to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park, he hadn’t enjoyed it much. Boston was too big and loud and noisy, and Mom’s relatives were a loud bunch, too. There were uncles and aunts and cousins whose names he could hardly keep straight, and most of them worked for the city in the police department or fire department or public works or other places like that. They drank a lot of beer and talked about the job, though the way they pronounced it was “The Job.” Every time he visited them, he could hardly wait to get back home to the quiet of the lake.

Mom had asked him to come along, but when he had put up a fuss, surprisingly enough, she hadn’t argued back. He’d planned to get some fishing in while Mom was away, but the day started off with rain, and so he went to Dad’s restaurant. It was right in the center of town and was called Hanson’s Pub and Grub, and Pat spent most of the time in the kitchen. He put on a white apron and helped empty the large automatic dishwasher of silverware and plates. Dad didn’t pay him in cash, but he did pay him in restaurant credit, so he could stop by every now and then for a Coke or a burger.

Today it was humid, with the rain falling steadily, and the restaurant was pretty busy. He wiped his hands on the apron and went looking for Dad, to see if he could take a break, and Dad was in his upstairs office, talking to some guy. The guy didn’t seem happy.

Pat could barely make out what the two of them were saying. The guy had a loud voice, but Dad was speaking real low, low enough that Pat couldn’t catch what he was saying.

The guy said, “...should be on the agenda for a final vote, and you know it...”

Dad said something and the guy shot back: “...just another delaying tactic, and you know it. That development’s going in...”

Another murmur from Dad, and the guy’s voice changed a bit, as if he was pleading: “...screwy going on, and the funding just might...”

He strained and strained his ears, but he couldn’t make out what Dad was saying. He could have moved in closer, but the thought of Dad and the guy catching him, well, he didn’t like that at all. Pat wiped his hands on the soiled apron and went back to the dishwasher.

The day after he saw the man in Dad’s office, he walked by his Mom’s office, where she was sitting in a special chair that could be raised and lowered with lots of switches and levers. Mom had warned him never to touch that chair, and after one unfortunate incident two years ago that ended up with Mom falling backwards onto her butt, he had always listened to her.

Today she was hunched over her large artist’s board, sketching what looked like a toad piloting a rocketship. Sometimes he liked to watch her work, watch how she sketched something out based on the writer’s story, and if Mom was in a goofy mood, she would sometimes make a quick sketch of him or Dad. Two of those sketches were framed and were hanging on the wall, and that was the neatest part of the office. Other sketches were there as well, all of them showing Lake Woodward. Everything else was a pile of papers, boxes, books, folders, sketches, and overflowing wastebaskets. Dad called Mom “Miss Pack Rat of Lake Woodward” and Mom laughed and never disagreed. Every other week, Mrs. Beaudoin came in to clean the house, and she was forbidden to touch anything in Mom’s office. There had been another unfortunate incident last summer, when Pat had refused to clean his bedroom. After all, he had said, Mom’s room was messy. Why couldn’t his room be messy? And with that, Dad had taken the canoe out and chained it to a tree. Pat went to work that afternoon cleaning his bedroom, and the canoe had reappeared at the dock the very next day.

Today when he stopped in to see what she was doing, Mom folded her arms and looked out at the lake before she turned to him and smiled. He walked over, and she rubbed his head. “Going out fishing today, bud?”

“Don’t know,” he said, now realizing that he was beginning to hate to have his head rubbed. “There might be thunderstorms coming through. I don’t want to get wet.”

“Sure,” she said, and then she hugged him with her strong arms, and he didn’t know what to say. But Mom just smiled and said, “You’re a lucky boy, to live right here. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And your Dad works very, very hard to make sure you have this nice place.”

“I know.”

“Good,” she whispered, squeezing him again. “Don’t you ever forget it.”

Dusk on the cove, and Pat was miserable. He had forgotten to bring bug repellent and half the time he was fishing he was slapping at either mosquitoes or black flies. He knew he could have paddled back in, but Mom sometimes had the bad timing to grab him when he came back to dock, to do the dishes or mow the lawn or weed the garden. So he stayed out, casting and recasting, and didn’t catch a thing.

He scratched at the back of his neck, saw one of those low-slung and powerful fishing boats out on the main lake. Those boats were mean-looking, with big, booming engines that could get them to the other side of the lake within ten minutes, when it would take him three hours to do it in a canoe. There were two guys in the fishing boat and they waved at him. He waved back.

Pat drew in the line, waited, drew it in again, and then—

Something tugged at the line. He waited, then pulled in tight. Something seemed to fight against the line and he tugged again, and the tip of the fishing pole bent over. Finally!

He reeled in the line slowly and steadily, feeling his heart thump just a little bit. He wondered what he might have caught. Pickerel, maybe, or a bass. Or a trout! Just a few seconds more, and he leaned over the side of the canoe, looked into the clear waters, and then—

Sat down.

“Damn it,” he whispered, knowing that while sound carried out on the water, he had said it quiet enough so Mom couldn’t have heard him. He shook his head and pulled in the line, holding up his trophy for the world to see: a broken pine branch with soggy needles, which had probably sunk to the bottom a week or two ago. He undid the line and the hook and was going to throw the damn thing back, and then, thinking better, dropped it on the bottom of the canoe. If he threw it back into the water, there was a chance he might catch it again tomorrow. Or next week. Or even next month.

God. Next month. A whole month could go by and he’d still be stuck in this cove, while the grownups tried to figure out what was going on with the lake and those dead people. He had read the newspaper stories about the whole thing and there was nothing there that Dad hadn’t said before: an old man and an old woman, not from around here (since nobody had reported their grandpa or grandma missing), and who had been dumped in the water after they had died.

A tickle at the back of his neck and he slapped back there again. He was hungry and tired and there were probably a good half-dozen fresh bug bites on his neck, arms, and legs. Time to head back in. He reeled in the lure and snapped it in place on his fishing pole, and gently placed it down on the canoe’s bottom, next to his trophy pine branch. He picked up the paddle, started heading back home, and then he let his strokes slow down. Something didn’t seem right.

Mom and Dad were by the boathouse, and it looked like... well, it looked like they were arguing. Arms were being waved around and Dad’s face seemed red, and Mom looked like she was about to cry.

Pat stopped paddling. What to do?

Another slap on his arm. The bugs were getting worse, and he bent down and resumed his paddling, not liking what was going on there, not liking it at all, but maybe it had been his imagination, for when he got to the dock, they were both smiling. Dad helped him tie off the canoe and Mom helped him with his tackle box, and they both laughed at him when he showed them the pine branch he had caught.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” he said. “I’ve got feelings, too, you know.”

And Mom and Dad had laughed again, with Mom kissing the top of his head, and Dad rubbing his shoulder.

Early morning, in bed. He yawned and stared up at the white plaster ceiling. His arms still itched but all in all, he had slept okay. Sometime during the night, another noise had woken him, but it had just been the murmur of a boat engine, that’s all, out there doing some night fishing or something. He looked over at the digital clock. Just after four-thirty in the morning, and look how light it was out there! He scratched his arms and rolled over, thinking that maybe he’d get back to sleep and get up with Mom and Dad at six-thirty, get some more fishing in before breakfast and—

He rolled over again. Mom and Dad. They were asleep, no doubt about it. And he was awake. And if he was very, very quiet, he could probably sneak out and get at least ninety minutes of fishing in... And if he timed it right, well, okay, he’d be breaking the rules a little bit, but nobody would know. He could go out to one of the other coves for at least an hour, try fishing someplace else, and maybe he’d stop getting skunked.

Who would know?

Nobody, that’s who.

He got slowly out of bed, and dressed as quietly as possible.

A few minutes later, he was down at the dock, yawning, but feeling a little bit excited about what he was doing. He put his fishing pole and tackle box in the canoe, got in, and shrugged on a life jacket. He undid the two lines that held the canoe to the dock, and then gently pushed away from the dock with his paddle. He smiled. He had been bugging Mom and Dad for over a year now to get him a small boat with an outboard motor, and this morning, he was glad they hadn’t come through for him. It would have been hard to sneak out with an outboard churning along.

He dug in the paddle, looked out at the lake water, which was flat and still. Glass water, Dad always called it. He paddled slowly, making hardly any noise, as he slowly made his way out onto the main lake. It was cool, and he had on shorts, T-shirt, and a thick gray sweatshirt. He checked his wrist watch. Just before five A.M. When he got to the cove he was heading to — Walker’s Cove — he’d stay there just an hour. Sixty minutes, and then he’d make his way back.

Pat looked around at the shoreline of the lake, at the homes and docks and moored boats. He shivered. It looked as if he was the only one out at this hour, and he was glad. The Fourth of July weekend was just two weeks away, and by then, the lake got busier, the waters got crowded with other boats. Now it seemed that the lake belonged to him, and him only.

He rounded the point of land that jutted out into the lake, saw his own house and dock disappear from view, and thought about Mom and Dad, safe and warm in their bed, and he shivered again, feeling that tingly feeling that came when he knew he was doing something he shouldn’t. Just sixty minutes, he thought. Just one hour.

He checked his watch. A half-hour, and already he had caught two trout! They had struck his line in the very first minutes of fishing, and he almost laughed out loud, it felt so good to have the fish take the lure so hard and fast. He had cast out his line, had slowly drawn it back in on the reel, and then came the sudden tug. He fell into his tactic of waiting a few seconds, and then pulling the line taut, setting the hook into the fish. Then came the tension, the tip of the rod bending over, as he reeled in the fish. He had grown used to the feel of the line, being able to sense how heavy the fish was before he brought it into his canoe. And this time was no different; he had figured each trout would be about three pounds. He could actually see each of the trout emerge from the darkness of the lake water, wiggling furiously, trying to get away. And each time, he went through the motions of wrapping it up: scooping the fish up with a small hand-held net, removing the hook — these two times were relatively easy, just pushing the hook out — and then releasing the trout back into the lake water. The second time he had done it this morning, he wondered if the trout could talk to each other, and if maybe they told stories about being brought up into the place of no water, where it was so hard to breathe and strange creatures captured and released you.

Pat checked his watch. Just a few minutes more, and that was all. He didn’t want to risk getting caught out here in this cove, or the channel. If he cast out his line one more time, he’d have plenty of time to paddle back to his home cove without any problem. This cove was studded with boulders and there were only two cottages on the shoreline, and it didn’t look like either of them was open yet.

He flicked the fishing rod, saw the tiny plop in the water as the lure went in. He slowly reeled in the line, the faint sound of the click-click-click almost a comfort as the line came in. Out on the main lake came the faint, mournful call of a loon. He wanted to see if he could make out the familiar shape riding out there on the smooth water, and as he turned to look, there was — a tug. That’s all. A tug. He pulled the line in and it held, and the front of his rod bent over. He started reeling in and man, did the fishing pole bend over! It felt like he had the biggest trout ever at the end of his line, and he kept on reeling the line in, and then he noticed suddenly that it was wrong.

Everything was wrong.

He stopped, his hands suddenly shaking. Pulling in a fish like this, especially one that seemed really big, the line would tense and relax, tense and relax, as the fish fought to get free. But he didn’t get that feeling here, not at all. He took a breath, suddenly wished that Dad was coming around the point of land in the powerboat, looking for him. For he knew right away that he didn’t have a fish on the end of his line, and he knew that he hadn’t gotten caught up on a snag or piece of branch.

He took a deep breath. He knew what he had caught, what was there at the other end of the line.

What now?

What if he started screaming, or dragged in what was at the end of the line? What then, if people found out? He’d be grounded for the rest of his life.

He kept ahold of the pole with one hand and fumbled around in his tackle box with the other. There. His knife. Using his teeth, he unsnapped the top of the leather scabbard and managed to get the knife out by shaking it to the bottom of the canoe, where it made a heck of a rattle. His hand shaking again, he picked up the knife and nearly broke a thumbnail getting it open. He took the knife and brought it up the strained, taut fishing line, and—

Waited. His legs were now trembling and a scared little voice inside of him was yelling, Cut the line! Cut the line! What are you waiting for?

He leaned over the side a bit to look into the dark, cold waters of the cove. Nothing. The line just extended into the darkness. He could cut the line now and go home, but he would never know. Never know exactly what it was he had caught. Oh, he had a good idea, but he remembered something his Dad had said about being scared. Yeah, that’s it. It wasn’t the things we knew that scared us, Dad had said, but the things we didn’t know. The unknown was always scarier than the known. He took another deep breath, wondering if that would make his chest stop hurting.

Dad always knew. Always. He balanced the open knife on his knees as he continued drawing the line in, reeling it in slowly now, not with the happy and triumphant feeling he got from nailing a perch or a bass or a trout. He wanted to look away and he couldn’t, and he did all right, he really did all right, until the shape came into focus, too quickly into focus, and before he could take the open knife to the fishing line, a man’s old and puffy face was looking up at him through the lake water, the hook from his line caught on a T-shirt. The sight of it scared him so that he almost forgot to cut the line, but cut it he did. He then pulled his pole back, dropped the knife onto the bottom of the canoe, and waited.

Would the body float up? Would it sink back down?

There was the softest, gentlest thud as something bumped into the side of the canoe, near his legs, and the nausea came through so fast, he thought he would throw up.

The loon hooted again.

He couldn’t look at the water. He lowered his pole, picked up the paddle, and slowly started paddling away. The cold water was flat and still, but it no longer looked inviting. It looked slick, slimy, polluted.

He paddled home as fast as he could, stopping a couple of times to wipe the tears away, his slick hands now slippery on the canoe paddle, refusing to look back at where he had been.

So there I was, in the shelter of the old boathouse. Angie squeezed my hand and said, “I knew where this story was going, the moment you started.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “When you started out about the bodies being found in the lake... you poor boy, I knew you would find one. Just knew it.”

“Guess I’m a lousy storyteller,” I said.

“Did you... did you tell anybody?”

“Eventually.”

“Who?”

I looked at her concerned face. “You. I went back home, and later that day, the body washed up on a beach near that cove. I didn’t say a word. And that was the last one that summer. Just the three.”

We sat quietly for a moment, and Angie said, “And I think I know something else, too.”

I squeezed her hand. “Go ahead.”

“Your dad... he was behind it, wasn’t he? The bodies being dumped in the lake. I don’t know why, but it had something to do with your dad. And the development that was being planned.”

I kept her hand in mine and said, “The development never got built that summer, or any summer after that. I didn’t know the whole story, but I guess the financing was pretty shaky. And when the news of this pristine lake in New Hampshire being a dumping place for bodies got out... the finance people pulled out. And the development collapsed.”

“I see,” Angie said.

“Yeah,” I said, looking out at the waters of the lake. “And that’s not the only thing that collapsed.”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “The rest of that summer... I pretty much stopped fishing. I was always scared that another body would come up. Mom and Dad... there was a coolness there. Hard to explain, but even as a kid, I could tell something had changed between them. They still loved each other and it was still a happy home, most times, but there was a... a coolness there, a politeness. It was as if the lake had changed as well. It was no longer a place of peace.”

Angie said, “You think your mom found out, then, what your dad was doing.”

I gave her hand another squeeze, stood up, and went to the rear of the boathouse. Reached up to a shelf that held old paint cans, paintbrushes, and other collected debris. There was a loose panel of wood there, where I reached in. I took out something and went back to Angie. Her face seemed to pale as she examined the three pieces of cardboard, each with a long piece of stiff wire at the end.

“Here,” I said. “I found this two years after that summer.”

“Is this... I mean... Pat...”

I took her free hand again. “Yes, that’s what they are. Toe tags, from a morgue. From the three bodies dumped in the water. You said, did things change when my mom found out what Dad was doing. No, it was the other way around. I think my dad found out what my mom was doing. My pack-rat mom, who couldn’t throw anything away.”

I reached over and took the toe tags from Angie’s hand. “I never had the nerve to find out the whole story, but I think I knew what happened. Mom was just as concerned as Dad was about the development coming in, and she knew Dad couldn’t do much more on the planning board. But she could. You remember when I told you that she had lots of relatives in the Boston area working in the police and fire departments, and other places?”

Angie just nodded. I went on. “One other place was the county morgue. Best I figured, Mom was able to... well, bodies of elderly people who died alone, with no relatives. They’d be buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere. I guess... well, she had a plan. She’d go down there alone and come back... not alone.”

Angie whispered, “How horrible.”

“Yeah,” I said, letting the old toe tags drop to the floor. “How horrible. And the most horrible thing was... it was that in trying to save the lake and what it meant for our family, Mom did exactly the opposite. Which is why I haven’t been back here in years, hon.”

Angie looked to me. “It’s our place now.” And she moved her raincoat about so that I could see the swell in her belly that meant the start of something new and wonderful and terrifying for both of us.

“True,” I said. “But the memories...”

And my wife rubbed her belly. “We could start new ones, you know. It wasn’t the lake’s fault. We could move here, start something new, something wonderful. We could, you know.”

I didn’t say a word. I just looked out at the cove, imagined a young boy, twenty years earlier, paddling like mad, trying to get home, home to a place of safety. Oh, you poor kid, I thought.

“Pat,” Angie said.

I cleared my throat. “Look,” I said. “It looks like it’s going to stop raining.”

Copyright ©; 2005 by Brendan DuBois.