Authors: Jon Land
Dead Simple (6 page)
T
he two divers moved silently to the water’s edge. A third man followed them to the softly lapping currents, pushing a cart that held equipment too bulky to carry even the short distance from the staging station slightly up the hill. The divers walked into the lake up to their ankles and then reached back to the cart for the last and most important parts of their gear.
he two divers moved silently to the water’s edge. A third man followed them to the softly lapping currents, pushing a cart that held equipment too bulky to carry even the short distance from the staging station slightly up the hill. The divers walked into the lake up to their ankles and then reached back to the cart for the last and most important parts of their gear.
A gunshot split the night, freezing them even before a bright floodlight caught them in its glare and a voice boomed out from a small motorboat fifty yards away.
“That’s far enough, fellas,” warned Liz Halprin. “The pool’s closed for the evening.”
She held the twelve-gauge Mossberg pump comfortably in one hand, aimed at nothing in particular. The floodlight was in the other, aimed straight at the divers. She shifted it slightly when a figure approached the shore from beyond the rise where she’d seen the divers climb into their wet suits. The man held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden wash of light, his olive-green suit seeming to shine in its glow.
Liz lifted a foot casually to the small craft’s gunwale, and it wobbled beneath her. “Plan on taking a swim too, Max?”
Maxwell Rentz came as close to the water as his five-hundred-dollar Italian loafers would allow, still shielding his eyes. “You’re in no position to tell me I can’t, Ms. Halprin.”
“No, right now I’m in a position to shoot you dead.”
“And what would be your reason?”
“Trespassing.”
“In my own lake?”
“I believe, Max, that is the item currently in dispute.”
“Why don’t we let my divers go down and see if they can find something to help resolve it?”
“I believe we agreed in court to accept the findings of an impartial underwater survey team.”
“
You
agreed. I pointed out I couldn’t afford a three- or four-week delay.”
You
agreed. I pointed out I couldn’t afford a three- or four-week delay.”
“That’s what they make appeals for, Max. And the delay could be plenty longer than that, since it promises to be hard to find any diver from these parts who’ll go down there.” She rotated the floodlight from Rentz to his divers, then back again. “Wait a minute—I’ll bet you didn’t tell them what happened the last time somebody dove this lake, did you, Max?”
“He wasn’t working for me.”
“Good thing, or you’d owe him a ton of overtime—since he’s still down there.” In the beam of light, Liz could see Rentz’s two divers look at each other.
“Rumors,” Rentz said.
“Not according to his family. I’d make sure your men’s insurance was paid up, if I were you, considering the legend.”
Maxwell Rentz abandoned the pretext of conciliation and returned to his usual caustic tone. “If you were me, you wouldn’t be planning to build the region’s largest resort on this site, either. But I need this lake your farm just happens to abut.”
“From where I’m sitting, the farms you’ve swallowed up just happen to abut my lake.”
Rentz stepped closer, until the currents eddied around the soft leather of his shoes. “Either way, I need your farm to complete my project. And if I can prove you’ve got no claim to this lake, you’ll have no choice but to sell it to me, because I’ll rescind your water rights. That means no irrigation for your fields, Ms. Halprin. My offer’s on the table until my divers tell me I don’t need to be so generous.”
Rentz nodded at his men, who exchanged a nervous glance before reaching toward the cart again for the last pieces of their equipment. Liz made sure they could see her turn the shotgun on them.
Rentz glanced up the hill. “Two Preston policemen are right up there watching everything, Ms. Halprin. I believe you’re committing a flagrant firearms violation right now.”
“Virginia law gives a person the right to defend her home.”
“And when you prove this lake is part of your home, you can shoot to your heart’s desire. Otherwise, as a federal officer …”
“
Ex
—federal officer,” Liz corrected, wanting very much to turn the gun on Rentz and shoot him instead.
Ex
—federal officer,” Liz corrected, wanting very much to turn the gun on Rentz and shoot him instead.
“Forgive me,” Rentz taunted. “You got trigger-happy last month, didn’t you? Cost a schoolteacher his life and cost you a career. I guess you always wanted to be a farmer anyway.”
Liz cringed, felt her blood overheating. “You finished?”
“Actually, I’m also told that the incident led to your husband being granted custody of your son pending a hearing. Can you imagine the boy testifying in court about what it felt like when his mother almost shot him in the middle of class?”
“Too bad he’s not here to see me shoot you.”
“The police officers have their guns trained on you, Ms. Halprin. My men are going to dive. Let’s see what they find down there.”
“Or what finds them,” Liz said, just loud enough for the divers to hear. In that moment all the legends of this lake she had heard since she was a little girl flashed through her mind. Her grandpa setting her on his knee and telling her of the ghosts that haunted the water. The ghosts of Yankee soldiers from the Civil War, he said, who died making sure something they were protecting stayed safe forever.
About those days and the farm Liz had always maintained the fondest of memories. There was plenty of sadness mixed in for good measure, like the time her mother sat her down on the dock and told her that her parents were splitting up.
Both her grandparents’ wakes had been held on this farm, and it had been after the second one, shortly before Liz graduated college, that her mother broke the news that she was putting the farm up for sale. There was no one to run it anymore, no reason to keep it, and financially it was a losing proposition. Liz had argued against the sale vehemently, passionately, unwilling to let go of the last of her youth and the fading memories of the days when the family had been together. Since it was doubtful they’d so much as break even on the sale, her mother agreed to let Liz pay for the taxes and minimal upkeep. She had done that ever since, never really intending to move back to the farm but wanting the option nonetheless.
She had finally exercised it three weeks before, in the wake of the Bureau’s response to the gunfight at her son’s elementary school, which had claimed a teacher’s life. Her bullet had been identified as the one that killed him, according to the forensics report leaked the day before her scheduled hearing. After Waco and Ruby Ridge, patience at the Bureau was low and tempers were high. She was given a choice of going through the disciplinary review process and being fired, or avoiding further complications by simply resigning.
Liz ran the events through her head over and over. What she could have done differently. How much longer she could have waited for the police to arrive. Liz knew, the day she walked out of the Hoover Building
after accepting the review board’s offer, that she would never work in law enforcement again. Lost her career and her kid the same day, and as her lawyers grimly informed her, getting Justin back under the circumstances was going to be as tough as regaining her badge.
after accepting the review board’s offer, that she would never work in law enforcement again. Lost her career and her kid the same day, and as her lawyers grimly informed her, getting Justin back under the circumstances was going to be as tough as regaining her badge.
So she had driven west out of Washington along Route 66 toward Preston, Virginia, located between Culpeper and Warrenton, where people still lived off the land and lived simply as a result. She needed simplicity now, needed to feel she belonged somewhere. She could make a home here for herself and Justin, once the courts came to their senses. She could rebuild her life on the very foundation where it had been built.
Liz had returned intending to do most of the touch-up work on the house herself, only to find it and everything else in worse disrepair than she could possibly have imagined. The idea of taking over the site of her strongest, and happiest, childhood memories was so appealing that she failed to consider seriously enough the task she was taking on.
What, after all, did she know about farming? Her two thousand acres of fields were run-down, the soil was exposed and superheated to a hardened clay instead of being the friable mixture she had spooned her fingers through as a little girl.
After only three weeks, the dollars spent were adding up, along with the hard work. She’d have to hire a couple of good hands, and that was assuming she could have the place up and running by next season. A task she looked forward to with excitement as well as trepidation, whatever doubts she was experiencing balanced by the security of feeling she was home.
Then millionaire developer Maxwell Rentz had shown up waving dollars, and she learned of his plans for building the region’s largest resort. Disney had abandoned a similar notion in the area, opening the door for any number of entrepreneurs to capitalize on the same intention. Rentz had seized the opportunity first. He had somehow determined Preston to be the ideal site and had already bought the three farms adjoining hers. But he needed Liz’s farm in order to stretch his visionary resort all the way to the highway, and thought finalizing its purchase was only a formality. It should have been a no-brainer; sell and cut her losses. Actually realize a sizable profit in the deal.
But Liz couldn’t sell. There was a challenge here for her, and a challenge was what she needed to get rid of the bad taste from her mouth that her lost career at the FBI had left. Beyond that, she was home. No amount of money waved before her would be enough to change that. The more Rentz had increased the pressure, the more she found herself standing firm. She was going to get her son back and raise him here. That thought kept her fighting.
Maybe she would have weakened in time. Come to her senses about how best to remake her life. But then Rentz had brought in the courts.
Bunch of bullshit about water rights and declaring tacit ownership of the twenty-acre lake that formed in the winter of 1863, when Bull Run overflowed and flooded the valley in the midst of a second raging storm in as many days. But whose land precisely had it flooded? Rentz claimed he was going to prove that none which lay beneath the water had ever been hers.
Bunch of bullshit about water rights and declaring tacit ownership of the twenty-acre lake that formed in the winter of 1863, when Bull Run overflowed and flooded the valley in the midst of a second raging storm in as many days. But whose land precisely had it flooded? Rentz claimed he was going to prove that none which lay beneath the water had ever been hers.
It was the disciplinary board all over again, men in suits she had no choice but to back down from. Take whatever they put on the table and go skulking off. She couldn’t give in again, though. There was still fight left in her, but if she signed on Rentz’s dotted line it would die right here on the land she had grown up on.
Liz was under no illusions. She knew full well that Rentz
owned
the courts in these parts. This was his county, more than one municipal building and hospital wing bearing his father’s name. Those kinds of favors gave him lots of political markers to call in.
owned
the courts in these parts. This was his county, more than one municipal building and hospital wing bearing his father’s name. Those kinds of favors gave him lots of political markers to call in.
But it felt good to fight him, fight for herself. This was the last dream she had left, and he was threatening it. It was either a shotgun or a pen, and right now buckshot made more sense to her than ink.
Liz gazed across to the shoreline opposite her farm, where Rentz’s divers were just about finished readying their gear. One of them switched on a powerful halogen light array, capable of putting out a million candlepower underwater. The other dangled an air bazooka, rigged by long hose to a compressor on shore, from his shoulder and tested the weight of what looked like an elaborate metal detector. Not that she could say what good such a device would do them in trying to settle a boundary dispute.
At least the halogens made sense. A person couldn’t see his arm if he stuck it in the water, never mind all the way down to the black bottom. She watched as Rentz’s divers sank below the surface, a trail of air bubbles left in their wake.
T
he divers swam deep, slowing as they drew nearer the bottom. The halogen lights cleared barely any visible path in the black, silty water after they had passed twenty feet. Their field of vision had shrunk to less than a yard when the molecular frequency discriminator began to flash. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster.
he divers swam deep, slowing as they drew nearer the bottom. The halogen lights cleared barely any visible path in the black, silty water after they had passed twenty feet. Their field of vision had shrunk to less than a yard when the molecular frequency discriminator began to flash. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster.
On shore, Rentz heard a rhythmic beeping in his headset. He eased the microphone piece into place in front of his lips.
“What’s going on?” he asked excitedly. “Can you see anything?”
“Not yet,” returned the voice of one of the divers. “But there’s definitely something down here.”
“Metallic?”
The beeping grew blisteringly loud in Rentz’s ears.
“No, wait a minute—this is a motion signal,” the first diver told him. “There’s something moving dead ahead.”
“It’s
coming straight for
us!”
wailed the other diver, who was holding the halogen light array.
coming straight for
us!”
wailed the other diver, who was holding the halogen light array.
The beeping sounded like one continuous shrill whine by that point, reaching a fever pitch, when, suddenly, it was replaced by a gurgling, frothy rasp, like someone trying to scream underwater. The sound curdled Rentz’s ears, as the currents lapped unnoticed over his shoes.
“Come in! Can you hear me? What’s going on down there?”
Behind Rentz on shore, something tugged on the bazooka hose and tipped the compressor onto its side. The two policemen grabbed the hose and began to pull on it desperately, just managing to hold their own.
Still seated in her motorboat, Liz watched it all happening, the stories her grandfather had told her of ghosts or monsters that dwelled beneath the lake’s depths no longer seeming so fanciful at all. She rose again and clutched her twelve-gauge tightly to her, as Rentz’s frantic voice echoed through the night.
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