Lake of Tears (16 page)

“I’d say she was carrying a torch for you,” Amy remarked.

“Well, that’s not what I wanted.”

A knock came at the door and Amy opened it.

Mrs. Johansen stood there, looking in. She was wearing a denim jacket and jeans, and her blond hair was sticking up all over her head. “You found the ring?”

“We might have,” Claire said.

Andrew stood up and offered his chair to the woman. She sat down without looking at him. Claire wondered if she had recognized him.

“I’m glad you could come down, Mrs. Johansen. I know this is hard. We found this ring and wondered if it might have been Tammy Lee’s.” She held out the bag for the woman to take.

She held the bag up close to her face and stared at it as if it would tell her something. “It looks like her ring. Small size and only a half-carat diamond. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I bet the jeweler where they got it could tell. But I’m pretty sure that it is hers.” She looked up. “Where did you find it?”

Without meaning to, Claire’s eyes went to Andrew, who was standing behind Mrs. Johansen.

Mrs. Johansen turned and looked at him. “Andrew?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “The ring was in my car.”

Her voice shaking, Mrs. Johansen asked, “What did you do to my little girl?”

Claire had both Andrew’s car and Terry Whitman’s vehicle brought in and called the crime lab to come and go over them for fingerprints and blood splatters. Also, she’d ask them to check out the Burning Boat crime scene more thoroughly.

After much thought, she decided she had to put Andrew on a leave of absence until the case was resolved. He hadn’t lied to her about seeing Tammy Lee. He had told her that the first time they talked about her. The ring could have fallen off, or for that matter, Tammy Lee could have slipped it off and dropped it in his car on purpose—a good reason to see him again. And Claire didn’t feel she had anything in the way of evidence or motive that told her Andrew might have killed Tammy Lee.

However, for the family and for the department, she felt like she needed to ask him to step down for a while.

She caught him as he was leaving work. They were standing in the hallway. When she told him that he would have to be on leave indefinitely, she thought for a moment that he was going to cry.

“You understand I have to do this, don’t you?” she asked.

“Sure. I’d can me if I were in your place.” He talked down to the floor, not looking up.

“You’re not canned. Won’t go on your record. View it as a break. But you might want to get some help.”

“What do you mean?” Now he looked at her.

“I can put you in touch with a counselor.”

“What for? I didn’t do anything. I had nothing to do with Tammy Lee.”

“You scrapped with Terry Whitman, which tells me you might have some anger issues. After all, you were in the war. You seem on edge to me, and I think it might do you good to talk to someone about this. No matter what your feelings were for Tammy Lee, her death has got to be hard on you, too.”

He looked down again and nodded. “It is. I’m surprised, but I’ve been remembering the good times. She just liked life so much.”

Claire felt the urge to reach out and pat his shoulder, but didn’t think it was what a sheriff should do. Maybe if she had been just another deputy, his equal. But right now she wasn’t.

“You want the name of that counselor?” she asked.

“Let me think about it. I just need to clear my head.” He shifted his weight.

Claire stood in front of him, even though she could tell he wanted to go. Finally she said, “You know, I saw a therapist for a while. This job is hard on a person. We all can use some help.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.”

She stepped out of his way and then turned to watch him leave. Yes, she saw some hidden rage in him, but more than anything she saw a well of sadness.

Amy drove out with the crime lab technicians to pick up Terry’s car. His parents had said he was working for the next day or so and she could come any time to get it, although they didn’t sound eager.

Once the car was loaded up on the transport, she drove a few blocks to talk to the Whitmans. They lived in a small apartment above a closed store downtown. The Chippewa River was just a block away. She parked on the street and pushed at the street door. There were buzzers, but the door was open. There was a very small entryway with six mailboxes, and then a steep flight of stairs.

She walked up the stairs and turned left to go down an uncarpeted hallway to the far end. Number Six: The Whitmans was hand-printed on a card stuck to the door. A Halloween sticker of a witch was stuck to the door above it. Amy wondered how many years it had been there.

Her knock was answered immediately by a woman that couldn’t be fifty years old. She had dark red hair, a color that usually came from a bottle, and deep set blue eyes that looked worried. Small and stocky, she seemed soft. When the woman saw her uniform, she gave a quiet yelp—“Oh!”—and backed up into the apartment. Amy followed her in. “Mrs. Whitman?” she asked.

“Yes, I guess. But I’ve been divorced now for ten years. Just never bothered to change my name back. You can call me Betty.”

The front windows looked out over main street and gave them a view of the river flowing by. It was one of the few nice things about the apartment. The couch looked more like a bed, piled with pillows and blankets and newspapers. A cat strolled through the room, but from the smell of the place, Amy guessed there were more.

“Betty, we took the car and we’ll return it very soon.”

“Terry will need it when he gets home.”

“Just tell him to call us.”

“Why are you doing this?” Betty asked. “Isn’t it bad enough his fiancée dies, but then to blame him? I just don’t get it. He’s the last person who’d want to kill Tammy Lee. Why, he was crazy about her.”

“How long had they been going out?”

“Long time now. I kept waiting for the wedding, but they wanted to save up. I can’t help them much, you know.”

“Was Terry jealous of her ever?”

Betty looked out the window. “He could be, you know. She was a little flirt sometimes, but nothing serious. They maybe had a tiff, but then the next day they were all lovey-dovey again. It’s natural, that sort of thing.”

Amy knew Claire wanted her to get some sense of Terry’s history, if he had been in trouble as a boy. “How did Terry take your divorce?”

Betty looked startled. “Well, he was just a kid. His dad could be awful hard on him. Terry didn’t say much, but I think he was glad his dad was gone. Still, they made him go see his dad every other week. He didn’t complain, but I don’t think he liked it much.”

“Was he a good kid?”

“Oh, yeah. Terry was fine. Didn’t do that well in school, but could always fix things. He just didn’t like to sit still, was his problem. He wanted to be on the go. That’s why working for the railroad is perfect for him.”

“He ever get in trouble when he was a teenager?”

“Oh, you know, the way kids do. He got caught shoplifting some candy bars one time, I remember. Boy, I laid into him about that. Then he’d stay out all night as he got older. I did worry about him. But he turned out fine. I just don’t know how he’s going to get over Tammy Lee’s death.”

Another cat came out from under the couch and rubbed against Amy’s legs. “Nice cats.”

“Oh, they’re my loves. I have six of them. But can’t let the landlord know. He said two’s the limit. They tend to hide when anyone comes over—which is good. They must like you. Terry doesn’t care for them much. He’ll take a swat at them if they come too close.”

“Did they have a date set for the wedding?”

“I thought they did. They kept saying it was going to be the first week in the new year, but then Terry said something about Tammy Lee changing her mind again. That girl, not very steady. I was ready, though. I picked out a dress and everything. I guess I’ll never wear it now.”

She picked up a cat and put her face in its fur, tears filling her eyes. “I was so looking forward to that wedding. It would have been a happy time.”

Grandma was sleeping in the La-Z-Boy recliner. She slept in that chair a lot these days. Doug wasn’t even sure she used her bed anymore. She didn’t move around much, and when she did it looked like every step hurt her.

Not like before, when he was a kid and she was a bundle of energy, cooking for everyone, doing laundry, taking care of the farm, the chickens, gardening.

Doug looked around and saw that the farm was just about done for, and she could hardly manage the house anymore. The floors were dirty, the counters stacked with papers and dishes. He took out the garbage and couldn’t even fit it in the garbage can. She must be forgetting to bring the can out to the road for pickup.

His time here was almost done. He had slept some and eaten some good meals. He felt ready for his last step. But he worried about Grandma, with no one to care for her or even worry about her. She had always been so good to him.

When he got back in the house, he went right to the phone. He dialed a number he had memorized. It was late enough that Andrew should be home from work. If one of his parents answered, he’d just hang up.

“Sticklers,” Andrew answered.

“Hey, Stick-man. How’s it blowing?”

“Doug, I’ve been trying to reach you. Where are you?”

“I told you I’d come for you. I told you I’d check in when I was feeling better. So here I am.”

“Are you feeling better?”

Doug looked at his grandma sleeping in the recliner, then he glanced over at the gun leaning in the corner of the kitchen. “Yeah, I’m stoked.”

“What for?”

“You know, our little get-together.”

“You want me to come to where you are?”

“No need, my man. I’ve got it all mapped out. You know I’m good at that. Mapping the territory. I’ve reconnaissanced. I know where you live. I know where you work. I even know where your little friend is.”

Silence, then Andrew asked, “What little friend?”

“That one you talked about—Tammy. Showed me her picture when we first met. Cute as they come. And I bet she comes pretty often, hey, Stick-man.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Just what you told me. But when can we get together?”

“The sooner the better. I’ve got some days off work.”

“Okay, I’ll call you when I get closer to your place. Hasta la vista, Stick-man.” He hung up the phone even though he could hear Andrew was still talking. Let him talk. Let him try to persuade him to not do what he planned on doing. But a vow is a vow, and he knew he had to carry it out.

“You have to remember, this took place in a far-off land with mountains taller than the clouds and ravines deeper than the sea.” Andrew watched Meg’s face in the shadowy light of the campfire. He felt like he was telling her a fairy story, and to her it might be, but to him it was more real than where he was sitting right now, and would always and ever be a nightmare.

“The people who live there,” he continued, “it’s hard to describe them—how much they are like us—and how different. We were there to fight for them and they hated our guts.

“Most of the time we stay huddled in the outpost, cleaning our guns, smoking, trying not to think. You make friends, good friends, with guys you would never even talk to normally, never even know. That’s how Doug and I and this other guy named Brian came together. We just hooked up. We palled around. We almost always went out on forays together. We were tight, very tight.”

Meg nodded. “Good buddies.”

“But it’s more than just that. It’s like we counted on each other to stay alive. More like brothers, maybe even more than that. And we watched out for each other, always. And everything was a clue as to what would happen next. If the moon was full, if the wind was from the south, if it rained, which it hardly ever did—everything was a clue to be read as to what our fate might be. If we would make it.”

“But you did.” Meg leaned into him.

“Yes, I did. But Doug’s in pretty rough shape. Or at least, he was last I saw him. He went off the deep end. Couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, carried his gun everywhere he went, slept with it. Finally the higher ups noticed and he got pulled. Sent to Germany. Haven’t seen him since.”