The Storm King(45)

“I’m not planning an ice storm or a fire or flood or anything like that,” he said. “Actually, I’m planning a gift.”

“A gift?” Lucy asked.

“For you.” He grinned at her as he pulled them the last lengths to the Vanhoutens’ dock. “This last one will be just for you.”





Nine

The chief maneuvered the cruiser to avoid the crest of another toppled tree. The ribs of its branches bristled like the skeleton of an alien creature.

Nate finally broke the silence within the car. “Has there been much damage?” The sun should have crowned the mountains, but the day was monochrome. The lake and its forests bled together in gradations of gray, the bleakest of watercolors.

“Some flooding. Downed trees. Parts of the foothills lost power.”

“Maybe they’ll reschedule the funeral.” Surely a murderer wouldn’t bring up his own victim’s funeral.

“Fourteen years. Don’t think they want to wait any longer.”

It seemed absurd for anyone to venture out into this weather. But for Lucy’s funeral, the backdrop was fitting. The town’s cemeteries were inland, but Nate imagined a gravesite prayer along the shore. Clinging black suit pants coated with mud to the knees. Dark umbrellas inverted and whisked away to join the clouds. A wall of the lake’s colorless water surging for the assembled. To wipe them away. To wipe them clean.



“Tom told me Mr. Bennett will be there,” Nate said. As hard as it was to believe, Mr. Bennett had hardly entered Nate’s mind in years. This was one reason why learning that the man had been released from prison had been such a shock. “Have you seen him since he got out?”

“The Lake’s too small to avoid someone like that.”

“Grams must have seen him, too.” Nate hated the idea of her running into him in the hardware store or at the grocery.

“Your Grams is a good woman. That man paid for what he did. That’s what she told me when he made parole.”

“Do you believe that?”

“More interested in what you believe, Nate.”

“I’m not angry at him anymore, if that’s what you mean. I’m not going to cause trouble. But I don’t plan to shake his hand, either.”

“That family’s been through a lot.”

“There’s a club for that. I’m on the board.”

“Money was always a struggle for them,” the chief continued. “Mrs. B did her best, but she wasn’t the same after Lucy disappeared.”

Three weeks ago, the chief would have said “run away” and not “disappeared.” The discovery of her body in the headlands had changed everything. In the span of a single wet afternoon, one of the Lake’s most treasured stories had taken another twist. The details of its ending were yet to be determined.

“I gave her boy odds and ends to do at the station. He was grateful, too. It takes character to take charity and be truly grateful, don’t you think?” Nate detected a hint of insinuation there.

“I’ll keep my distance, just the same.”

“The man’s burying his daughter today. Death rips people apart, but it can bring them together, too.”

A laugh erupted from Nate. Trapped within the confines of the car, it was a terrible sound. A father, husband, healer, and upstanding member of society didn’t make a noise like this. This choking gasp of scorn came from the darkest and deepest place inside him.



“Something funny?”

“My grandmother might not live out the day. We’re about to bury my high school girlfriend. And you want me to make nice with the man who killed my family? Yeah, that strikes me as just about hysterical.”

The chief took his eyes off the road long enough to look Nate over. “It really does, doesn’t it?”

They traveled in silence the rest of the way to the Greystone Lake police station.

The wipers couldn’t match the deluge that fell from the seething sky. From the side window, Nate saw that the sewers were already overflowing. Torn leaves and branches accumulated along the curbs like detritus on a beach.

The chief pulled into his reserved space. This was as close to the station’s entrance as one could get, but every part of Nate not protected by his black raincoat was freshly soaked by the time he got inside.

The little station had been renovated since he was last here. There was wood laminate where there’d been linoleum. Light fixtures had been upgraded from fluorescents to the slightly warmer shade of LEDs. There were artificial plants, and an open plan had replaced rows of high-walled cubes.

Nate followed the chief through the reception and down a hallway. Apart from a single officer at the front desk, the place looked abandoned.

“In here,” the chief said.

It was an interrogation room.

“Sit,” the chief told him. “Be right with you.” The man closed the door, leaving Nate momentarily alone.

Nate didn’t like the small room. The chair was uncomfortable, and its seat was too low. The air was stale and the walls too close. This was all by design, of course. No one seated here was supposed to feel at ease. It irritated him how well it worked.



He wanted to talk to Meg. He needed to hear Livvy’s tiny voice. He needed them to help hold together this version of himself he’d constructed. But his phone’s display barely deigned to light.