Stranger in the Lake(10)
He cranes his head back to look at me. “How you holding up?”
I shake my head, pressing my face into his chest. “Paul’s on a run.”
By now Micah knows me well enough to hear all the words I’m not saying. That my husband’s not here at the worst possible time, that he doesn’t know what happened because he never takes his dang phone, that I could use a little emotional support. He holds me for longer than he has to, waiting for me to be the one to untangle us.
When I do, he digs out his phone, pulling up the number for his father on his screen. “Hey, you think you could get some of your guys to sweep the roads around Nantahala Peak for Paul? He’s gonna need some advance warning before coming home to a crime scene.”
I smile a silent thank-you. Micah’s father is police chief—the only cop in the station from this side of the hill. Both men know that a house full of cops would trigger old trauma in Paul.
Micah’s conversation with his father turns testy, a regular occurrence whenever those two talk. Never mind that Micah is the best underwater criminal investigator in hundreds of miles, he’ll never be good enough for Chief Hunt, who, from the sounds of things, would rather wait for a team of divers he’s called in from Asheville to move the body. Micah turns up the heat, arguing he’s already here, standing by in his wet suit, and I flash a grin at his little white lie. Another reason why I like Micah Hunt; his daddy issues are even worse than mine.
He hangs up, tossing his phone onto the counter. “You know, I’m really starting to wonder if he’s been paying any attention at all. He just told me to send him my qualifications.”
I laugh, because Chief Hunt only need consult a newspaper. Weighted-down bodies, weapons flung from a bridge, some rusty hunk of metal that solves a forty-year-old crime. If it’s down there, Micah has dredged it up and held it up for some camera. He’s semifamous, and not just in these hills. Last year, USA TODAY ran a front-page feature on Lake Hunters for their Life section.
I hand him his coffee, and he sinks with it onto a counter stool. “So, you want to fill me in on what happened?”
“Okay. Well, when I got up this morning, I realized I left a couple of things down in the boat, so—”
“What time was that?”
Behind me on the kitchen charger, my cell phone springs to life, buzzing with a string of incoming texts. I ignore it, and so does Micah.
“What time was what, when I got up?”
“No. When you went down to get whatever it was you left in the boat.”
“Oh. Sometime just after six thirty, I think. The sky was still dark, but it was beginning to lighten up at the bottom. I yelled for you on the way up the hill, but I’m pretty sure you were already gone.”
He sips his coffee and nods, both as confirmation and as a sign for me to continue.
“Anyway, I didn’t see her until I was climbing out of the boat. She was facedown under the dock, and like I told the operator, she looked like she’s been there a while. I didn’t touch her.”
My cell phone starts up again, the ringtone for my brother, and Micah tips his head in its direction. “You need to get that?”
I shake my head. “It’s just Chet.”
Micah knows Chet, too, and he can probably guess what he’s calling to say. A long-winded account of some self-inflicted disaster, a desperate plea for a loan—and he always calls it a loan even though everybody on the planet knows he’ll never pay me back. Like everyone else in this mountain town, Chet thinks I’ve hit the jackpot.
I step around the counter to my phone, tap the screen to Ignore and flip the side button to Silent. Two seconds later, it lights up again.
I let it clatter back onto the charger just in time for Micah’s next question. “Were y’all home last night?”
“Yes. We got home around five, I think. Maybe a little later. We came by boat, and before you ask, she wasn’t there when we docked. Paul was driving, and he would have seen.”
I think back to how carefully he slid the boat up to the dock, how he leaned over the edge to tie the ropes and hoist me out, and I’m sure of my answer. I didn’t notice anything in the water, but Paul would have. He pays attention to everything.
“Okay, so how about once you were inside? Did either of you hear anything out of the ordinary on the lake? Voices. Splashing, maybe, or the hum of a boat engine?”
“It was cold, and there aren’t that many boats still out on the water, so I definitely would have noticed the sound of an engine.” I pause, trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Did you?”
The question is a valid one. Micah’s house is at the top of the cove, and though it’s tucked behind some trees and sits back farther from the waterline, the back deck offers an uninterrupted view down the length of the lake. If anybody’d been out there on the water, or even smack in front of our dock, he would have seen and heard it, too.
“No. Didn’t see anything, either. No boat lights, or the flickering of a flashlight.”
Again, I shake my head. “But we went upstairs earlier than usual. I don’t know what time, exactly. It was dark, I remember that much.”
Dark falls early behind the pines, but still. Thanks to our champagne celebration, we went to bed soon after supper.
Micah is gearing up for his next question when the front door opens and in runs Paul, covered in sweat and mud. He sees me and skids to a stop, leaving orange and brown smears on the hardwoods. The mud is caked down his entire right side, from his hair all the way down to his shoes like he slid feetfirst down a clay slide, and there’s a cut above his right eye, smack in the middle of a nasty purple lump.