Death on a Small, Dark Lake

  Chapter 6

  He was big and he had a mustache and we sat on the deck and I talked.

  He was a cop. Of course.

  We were squeezed onto the seats of a picnic table outside the little restaurant at the Hawk Lake Lodge, facing each other.

  I guess "restaurant" is going a bit far. You could get a hamburger there, and fries, and a toasted bacon-and-tomato sandwich, which is the third most wonderful food on the planet.

  And soup of the day, of course, which was mostly "no soup today,", or canned or soup with some local additives (like whatever hadn't sold yesterday).

  I longed for the toasted sandwich with the passion that Romeo longed for Juliet, but I still had the headache I'd woken up with, and there was nothing in a bacon-and-tomato sandwich but the tomato that wouldn't aggravate my headache, so I had an order of French fries.

  Good French fries, actually, which I didn’t expect.

  And I had an interview with the cop. He was being polite to me because he was supposed to be. I was being polite to him because he was a cop, and could take this mess out of my hands.

  If my head weren't pounding and my canoeabout hadn't been shot all to hell, I might have even smiled.

  He made notes in a little notepad. I spelled my name for him, and he held out the pad for me to check it. “How did you pronounce that?” He asked.

  “’Win’ for ‘Winter’,” I told him. “’Szczedziwoj’ I usually pronounce ‘Cheh - Gee - Voy’,” I said, “although adding an “sh” at the front makes it a bit more accurate.” He raised an eyebrow, meaning how many times have I had to spell that one out in my life, a question I couldn’t answer.

  Then I told him about George and Thomson Lake and my catch of the day. He took notes. I told him about the people I'd met and our route back. He took more notes.

  When I stopped talking there was a long silence at the picnic table. In the restaurant someone was asking for ketchup. Two guys were filling a gas can at the pump on the dock. A motorboat was coming down Hawk Lake.

  The lodge was made up of a motley collection of buildings scattered between a gravel parking lot and the lake. The center was a two-story building containing a general store and café on the ground floor and living quarters above. Some of the items in the general store were cheaper than you could get them in town, because they’d been sitting on the shelves, prices unchanged, for years. There were a lot of desperation items, like anchors and gas tanks, for people who lost or arrived without them.

  A small gasoline shed sat beside the gas pump at the main dock. It leaned a bit, but had been painted purple for some unknown reason. A cracked concrete ramp, the boat launch, dipped into the water beside the shed. Various signs warned against blocking the ramp.

  Along the shore and up the rock hillside, among the trees were six rustic cabins. They may not have started out rustic, but they were getting more so each year. There was a small parking area for the two larger cabins.

  Beyond the parking lot and beyond the launch point, across the bay rose a ridge of land. It looked like a carefully-made rock garden on a large scale. Green pine trees stood among orange-leaved oaks and a few small bright red maples. Cottages dotted the shores of the lake, with wide gaps between them.

  A blue garbage-and-recycle truck was emptying the lodge’s garbage.

  Tied to the docks were several aluminum fishing boats, most with 20-horsepower motors and small windshields.

  An inner tube lay on the tiny sand beach among a scattering of toys. Around the parking lot were faded signs: STOP AND REGISTER AT STORE. GOOD CAMPERS ARE CLEAN CAMPERS. AVOID NOISE AND LITTER. NO SOAP IN THE LAKE. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. CAMPERS MUST REGISTER AT HAWK LAKE INFORMATION BEFORE STARTING OUT. PARKING $25 FOR ALL SEASON, $5 FOR ONE DAY. ATTENTION BOATERS; DON’T TRANSFER ZEBRA MUSSELS.

  There were birds. No doubt Bob could have identified them. There were still a few dandelions and buttercups along the edge of the parking lot.

  In the parking lot, Ned DeVincent and Patrick Ireland were loading their canoe onto a gray Volvo. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and didn't need to talk.

  The cop looked across the lake and said. "This Mr. Marten; you met him when you were coming from Thomson Lake?" I nodded.

  "So Mr. Marten was on his way to the lake?" I nodded again.

  The cop was still looking down the lake, more or less over my shoulder, so I guess he could see me. He nodded, and closed his book. "You'll be here?"

  "I just live in Lakefield, I pointed out"

  "We'll need you to help us find the body." He folded the notebook and put it into an inside pocket.

  "When does that happen?" This was going to be a long day.

  "As soon as we can get a helicopter up here. They're trying to get one from the air base."

  I reached into my pocket and hauled out a folded piece of paper and a pen. "I'd better get your name."

  "Seth Daily. Sergeant Seth Daily. Golden Lake O.P.P."

  I held out my hand across the table. "Pleased to meet you."

  Expressionless, he shook my hand, like an ambassador from a far-off country.

  We got up. As he started back towards the cruiser, I followed. He stopped. "I'll get back to you. When we get a copter."

  "It's not that." I didn't know how to put it. He waited in the brown-dirt parking lot. A pickup with an aluminum boat came in. A late-season mosquito circled in, looking for lunch.

  "Well," I began. "I'd like to make sure it was an accident."

  He lifted one eyebrow. "There'll be an autopsy, of course. Do you have any reason to think it might not have been an accident?"

  "No. I just want to be sure, before all these people leave."

  He turned to look me in the eye. "When you met Kele. Could he have been coming from Thomson Lake, too?"

  That gave me pause. I thought a bit. "I was resting by a tree. I suppose he could have been just ahead of me and done a U-turn. I didn't think so at the time."

  When I didn't offer any more, he folded himself into the front seat of the cruiser and started talking on the radio. I went back to the dock and watched a small bass.

  At the end of the dock the world was a slightly better place. A dock reaches into the wilderness as far as it can. It points like an arrow away from civilization. It reached away, in this case, from a cop calling for a helicopter.

  The helicopter would lift a dead man high into the sky. This so human hands could lower him deep into the ground. Two journeys he probably had not intended to make.

  The dock was also a long way from whatever back room of the lodge the widow of George wept in. Somewhere she was being comforted, no doubt. It was more than I could do; I'd known her husband only a short time. Our interaction had been brief and unsatisfactory.

  A small white cat nuzzled me, then lay down beside me. I rubbed its head.

  It was getting close to supper by this time, so I ambled back to the restaurant, ordered some more fries, and opened a can of cola. Then I phoned Aisha.

  My wife answered on the second ring.

  "Hi," I said.

  "Oh! Hi. So who drowned."

  My mouth dropped. "What?"

  "Nobody drowned?"

  "Well, yes. But how did you know?" A brief vision of my wife eliminating people who interfered with her husband's quest for solitude.

  "You never phone without a reason. If you were dead, you couldn't phone. If you were hurt, someone else would phone. Or at least your voice wouldn't sound like you were in a restaurant somewhere pigging out on French fries.

  "So I figured someone must have died, and you thought I might hear about it. And assume it was you. So drowning in a canoe seemed a good guess. Close?"

  "Oh, yes. I'll tell you about it when I get back." In the distance, a female voice called out, "Your fries are ready."

  "Knew that was French fry guilt in your voice," she said. "They're not good for you, and they won't help your headache."

 
I got off the line before she could tell me to change my damp shoes.

  Daily got back to the picnic table just as I got my fries. I offered him the plate. He took one.

  "They've got a helicopter coming in from Trenton a couple of hours," he said.

  I ate a fry.

  "We need you to come with us," he said, reaching for another fry. I nodded, and he took one. He put a squirt of ketchup on it. I don't use ketchup, being a vinegar man.

  I nodded again, not having anything else to say.

  "To show us where the body is," he added, unnecessarily.

  "I'll be around. Somewhere." I added a bit of vinegar to the last of the fries. Aisha says I use the fries to hold the vinegar. "I'm not about to put the canoe on my head and go running down the road." He raised his eyebrows. "My car's down at McFriggit Lake," I explained.

  "I'll drive you there after the helicopter," Daily said.

  There wasn't anything I could think of to say, so I went back to the lodge, thought the better of it, went out to the parking lot, thought the better of it, almost ordered some more fries, then went back to the water near the dock. At least there I was a little closer to an escape.

  Do I sound like a restless person? Do I sound like I could write a book on the joy of French fries? I found my change purse, sorted through the nuts and bolts and "You Won a Free Coke" tabs, and found a couple more codeine tablets I'd stashed there.

  I bought a Pepsi in the machine, because I didn't want to win any more free Cokes, and washed the pills down. Then I went to the end of the dock.

  There was an old orange tabby cat there, sleeping in the sun. He looked mean enough to bring down a moose, and wise enough to know better. He blinked one brown eye at me, then went back to sleep. I took my shoes off and sat beside him, my feet hanging over the edge, just above the water. A couple of small sunfish and a tiny bass darted out from under the dock, then retreated.

  I looked at the sky. It was a better sky than I'd seen for a couple of days. It was a better place. It had no dead men in the water and no turkey vultures in the air.

  I'd been there only a couple of minutes when some footprints pattered up the dock to me. I wasn't in the mood for looking around, so I didn't. They were short-step footprints, and I figured some kid might have come out to try for the bass. One thing about kids; ignore them and they'll go away in a week or two.

  "You don't want me here," said a woman's voice. A cloud drifted in front of the sun. "But I don't have any ethics, so I'll join you anyway." There was a laugh, and a pair of feet, sandal-clad and pale, appeared beside mine.

  I looked around. I'd thought she'd be in her teens, from the sound of her voice, but now I guessed she was in her mid twenties at least. She was very short, and very pale, with bright red hair. She wore faded jeans, a red T-shirt, and round glasses. She was slightly pudgy. She had a tiny mouth, puckered up as part of a questioning look at me. I said nothing.

  "People," she said, "who sit alone at the end of the dock do so to get away from other people. It's a fact. I mean, Hawk Lake's a getaway as it is, that's a fact, and the end of this dock's the getaway's getaway, which is another fact. End of the line, sort of."

  "But you're not going to let me get away." Suddenly Thomson Lake didn't seem so bad. You can always keep your conversation on the right track with dead people, and they don't interrupt.

  "Nope, I'm not," she said, smiling brightly. "I have no feelings for people, for anybody but myself, so I'll just amuse myself in your antisocial despair."

  I gave her the eye. I'm good at that. It didn't work. I thought about hiding under the dock with the bass, but I'm not great at holding my breath.

  "It's true," she said, putting her hand on my arm. "I'm basically your sweet little psychopath. I'll lie, cheat, steal and kill if I think I can get away with it. No feeling, no morals, no ethics."

  "And you like to tell people about it, I see."

  "Keeps me laughing," she said, then looked down and added, "I wish I had bigger tits."

  "Kill many people lately?" I asked, changing the subject and pulling my arm free at the same time. Her tits were just fine for her body.

  "Haven't killed anybody since I was fifteen. Too hard to get away with it nowadays. You see, I'm smart, and I'd really have to want something bad to kill for it. It's a fact. A lot of things amuse me, but prison wouldn't, and that's why my parents send me up here every summer. It’s easier to keep an eye on me, and if anybody gets killed, well, I'll be the first person they check out."

  "You're not lying to me, I hope?" A bass came up beside my foot and took a struggling insect off the surface of the water.

  She laughed. "Of course I am! I lie half the time, more or less. It drives people nuts because they can't tell when I'm doing it. You can't tell, either." She took off her sandals and set them beside her.

  "I hope that amuses you." I found I was smiling. I'd been in a mood so downright... off that this bubbly nut case was actually doing me good.

  "Oh hell, yes!" She giggled and looked at the sky. "They won't let me torture cats any more, so I get my kicks out of people's misery." She picked up a beetle and dropped it into the water. The bass took it in a swirl.

  "Anybody ever tell you you look like a fuzzy bear? A teddy bear?"

  ""About three hundred," I said. "Anybody ever comment on the black nailpolish you put on your fingers and toes?"

  "A lot of people, " she said. "But I like the way it goes with my red hair and pale complexion. Makes me a bit spooky, which isn't easy for a short person. You've got to be tall to be properly spooky. Uncle George was tall, but not spooky. Did he look spooky when you found him?"

  I tried my best scowl.

  "Good scowl," she said. "A seven point five on the scowl meter at least, but I’m afraid it doesn't affect me. Can't scowl down a psychopath, that's a fact, you know. We're above all that."

  "Or below it," I added.

  "Nope. Way above. You see," she said, "I figured it out. God's a psychopath, just like me."

  "Oh." I'm good at monosyllables, but there had been times in my life when I'd thought the same about the Old Guy Up There. I guess most of us have.

  "Sure. Look at it. A few billion years of evolution and ninety-nine point nine percent of the time on this earth, what's it been? It's been stupid animals killing other stupid animals. And to what point, I asked myself. Why would God spend a billion years watching a show like that? Because it entertained him! It's obvious, once you think of it."

  "But look," I said, turning to her. "You think people are part of God's... soap opera?"

  "Seems to fit. The Old Bastard got tired of watching Animal Kingdom and created Days of our Lives. Intelligent animals are a lot more entertaining than stupid ones because they think up really creative ways of suffering.

  "Take Aunt Sally, back in the lodge." She waved vaguely down the dock. "There she is, crying her eyes out over Uncle George, and she's been screwing the Indian for at least a year now."

  This was news. "Kele?"

  "Damn straight. That's a pun, by the way. He could probably paint a landscape of Aunt Sally's bottom from memory."

  "You're sure about this?" I asked.

  "I peep in windows, among other things. They were together half the time Uncle George was out guiding people who don't need guides. I'm surprised she's not too sore to walk, considering all the humping they did."

  While I was trying to think of something appropriate to say (and it was hard to think of anything), she changed the topic by reaching for the cat and hoisting it onto her lap. It didn't seem to object.

  "Here," she said. "Pet my pussy."

  I figured the safest thing to do was to scratch the cat under the chin and say nothing. So I did. He swung his big orange head around and closed his eyes. He looked like he seriously considered purring for a moment.

  "You're a quiet one," she said. She might have meant me or the cat. "My name is Pica, which is an unusual name, I kn
ow, but my father was a printer and when I was born I was very small, and my mother didn’t have any idea what to call me since she was convinced I would be a boy, so my father named me the first thing he could think of. The cat here is named Hank Dayton, which is also a strange name, at least for a cat. People around here say that a hot-air balloon came over this way once, and dropped off the cat to lighten their load, or maybe because the cat was biting people every time the gas furnace fired. The name was around his neck, on a tag, and by a vote of five to three they decided that it was the name of the cat, not the owner. So that's what they called him."

  "You never found his owner?"

  "Nope, not that anybody ever tried very hard, seeing as Aunt Sally always said anybody stupid enough to go hot-air ballooning in the middle of a forest didn’t deserve a cat. He's happy here, anyway, as far as we can tell, since it’s hard to be sure when a cat is happy or not. Hank Dayton drinks beer at night, when people have evening parties on the lawn, in the summer, and he mostly sleeps in the day and hardly every bites anyone anymore, so I guess he’s happy."

  "Beer?"

  "O, God yes. He loves the stuff and will drink half a bottle if you let him, although it’ll take him an hour to do it, between going pee so much. But it's the only time he purrs, even if he’s got a purr like a sick calf. Of course, some nights he walks off the dock and we have to drag him out of the lake and dry him off while he’s trying to take a chunk out of your arm. I always laugh when he comes in soaking wet.

  "He was Uncle George's cat, mostly," she added. "Now somebody else will have to empty the litter box in the winter."

  "You're going to miss your uncle?" I asked.

  She gave me a sideways look. "Don't be silly. I don't know how to miss people. We had a couple of good times in bed, but a nine-inch dick isn't everything."

  "Excuse me," I said. "You slept with your uncle?" A motorboat appeared around the island in the lake, and buzzed towards us, towing a kid on an inflatable tube.

  "Why not?" Pica said. "I'm totally amoral and one hundred percent omnisexual and that's a fact. I've done Kele and that big geologist and even Aunt Sally a couple of times until Kele made me stop. Some of the clients at the lodge come back every summer just so they can undress me out in the blueberry patch. It’s better than going into to town to watch a film." She watched the boat approaching.

  Now, I'm inclined to take people at their word, but this was getting a bit unlikely, even to the non-skeptical among us. And she'd boasted she told a lot of lies. She had a definite Peterborough accent, where a “film” becomes a “fillum” and an “elm” becomes and “ellum” and any “un” becomes “on”.

  "I bet you're a virgin."

  "Hey!" she said. "Who told you?" Then she started laughing again.

  From far away, I heard the thwopping of a helicopter. "That'll be my taxi," I said.