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But she can’t relax. Because she’s his mother, and she worries that his breaking into people’s homes – not out of greed, not to steal, but just to ‘look around’ – might indicate that there’s something wrong with him. It isn’t normal, is it? And those emails he sent from someone’s email account worry her. He wouldn’t tell her what they said. She hasn’t really pushed it because she’s not sure she wants to know. How messed up is he? Should he see someone? Some of the kids she knows are seeing therapists, for all kinds of things – anxiety, depression. When she was growing up, kids didn’t see therapists. But it’s a different time.
When they get inside, she retreats to the office upstairs and closes the door. She knows Paul won’t be home from his golf game for hours. She sits at the computer and types up a letter. A letter of apology, which she will not sign. It is not easy to write. When she’s satisfied with it, she prints two copies and puts them into two plain white envelopes, seals them, and then goes downstairs and places them in the bottom of her purse. She will have to wait until after dark to deliver them. She will go out late to run an errand at the corner store. Then she’ll slip around and deliver the letters. She won’t tell Paul and Raleigh what she’s done; she already knows they wouldn’t approve. But it makes her feel better.
After a moment’s consideration, she goes back to the computer and deletes the document.
Chapter Three
IT’S EARLY IN the morning on Monday, October 16; the light in the sky has been growing steadily stronger. The air is chilly. Detective Webb stands perfectly still, watching the mist rise off the lake, holding a paper cup of coffee that has long since gone cold. The surface of the lake, further out, is perfectly still. He hears a bird cry in the distance. It reminds him of camping as a boy. It would be a peaceful scene if it weren’t for the crew of divers and the various vehicles, equipment and personnel nearby.
The area outside of Aylesford is a lovely place for a vacation. He’s been out here before with his wife. But it’s first thing on a Monday morning, and he’s not here to enjoy himself.
‘You still drinking that?’ Detective Moen asks, looking sideways at him.
She’s his partner; a head shorter and a decade younger, late twenties to his late thirties, and sharp as a tack. He likes working with her. She has short brown hair and perceptive blue eyes. He looks at her and shakes his head, dumps the cold coffee out on the ground.
A local retired man by the name of Bryan Roth had been along here in his rowing boat at dawn, fishing for bass. He thought he saw something beneath his boat, something that looked like a car, not far from shore. He called the police. The County Sheriff’s Office Regional Underwater Search and Recovery Team had come out. They could see there was a car down there; now they need to find out what else might be under the water.
The divers have just gone down to take a look. Webb stands and watches the water, Moen beside him, waiting for the divers to surface. He wants to know if there’s a body in the car. Or worse, more than one. Odds are, there is. In the meantime, he thinks about the logistics of it. There’s a road behind them, a lonely road. A suicide spot, maybe? The car isn’t far from shore, but the water in this particular spot gets deep quickly. There’s a strip of beach, and then the edge of the lake. He turns and looks back again at the road behind him. The road curves here – if someone was driving too fast, or was drunk or high, could the car have missed the curve and gone down the slight incline into the water? There’s no guardrail to prevent it.
He wonders how long the car’s been there. It’s an out-of-the-way spot. A car that went into the water here might stay unnoticed for a long time.
His attention shifts to the man standing at the edge of the road. The older man waves a nervous hello.
Webb and Moen walk over to him.
‘You the one who spotted it?’ Webb asks.
The man nods. ‘Yes. I’m Bryan Roth.’
‘I’m Detective Webb and this is Detective Moen from Aylesford Police,’ he says, showing the man his badge. ‘You fish along here regularly?’ Webb asks.
The man shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t generally come down here. Never fished along this bit before. I was just floating along here’ – he points out at the water with a finger – ‘with my line in the water, and I felt it snag. I bent over to have a look and started pulling on it, and I saw a car.’
‘It’s good that you called it in,’ Moen says.
The man nods, laughs nervously. ‘It really freaked me out. You don’t expect to see a car under the water.’ He looks at them uneasily. ‘Do you think there’s someone in it?’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ Webb says.
He turns away from the man and looks back at the lake. At that moment a diver breaks through the surface and looks toward the shore. He shakes his head firmly, no.
Webb says, ‘There’s your answer.’
But it’s not the answer he was expecting. If there’s no body in the car, how did the car get into the water? Who was driving it? Maybe somebody pushed it in.
Moen, beside him, looks just as surprised.
Could be all sorts of reasons there’s nobody in that car. Maybe whoever was driving managed to get out and didn’t report it because they’d been drinking. Maybe the car had been stolen. They’ll get it out of the water and get the licence plate and then they’ll have somewhere to start.
Moen stands beside him, silently going over the possibilities, just as he is.
‘Thanks for your help,’ Webb says to Roth, and then turns abruptly and walks toward the lake, Moen falling into step beside him. The man stands uncertainly, left behind.
The diver is coming up to the shore now. The marine officers stand by; it’s their job to get the car out of the water. They’ve done this countless times. A second diver is still down there, getting things ready to lift the vehicle out.
The diver raises his mask. ‘It’s a four-door sedan. All the windows are wide open.’ He pauses and adds, ‘Might have been sunk deliberately.’
Webb bites his lower lip. ‘Any idea how long it’s been in the water?’
‘I’d guess a couple of weeks, give or take.’
‘Okay. Thanks. Let’s bring her up,’ he says.
They step back again and let the experts do their work. Webb and Moen stand in silence and watch.
Finally there’s a loud swooshing sound and the car breaks through the water. It’s raised a few feet above the surface when they see it for the first time. Water streams from the windows and out the cracks in the doors. It hangs there suspended from cables in the air for a minute, resurrected.
The car swings slowly over and onto the shore. It lands on the ground with a bounce and then settles, still leaking fluids. Careful about his shoes, Webb approaches the vehicle. It’s a fairly new Toyota Camry, and just as the diver said, all four windows are open. Webb looks in the front footwell and sees a woman’s purse peeking out from beneath the seat. He looks into the back seat and sees an overnight case on the floor. The car smells of stagnant lake water and rot. He pulls his head out and walks around to the back of the vehicle. New York plates. He turns to Moen. ‘Call it in,’ he says. She gives a curt nod and calls in the plate number while the two of them walk around the whole vehicle. Finally they’ve come full circle and stop at the back of the car again. It’s time to open the boot. Webb has a bad feeling. He turns and looks back at the man who first saw the car in the water. He doesn’t come closer. He looks as apprehensive as Webb feels, but the detective knows better than to show it.
