Lake of Tears Read online

  LAKE OF TEARS

  A Claire Watkins Mystery

  MARY LOGUE

  F+W Media, Inc.

  “War is a big and sprawling word that brings a lot of human suffering into the conversation, but combat is a different matter.

  … There is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly.”

  Sebastian Junger, War

  Contents

  Afghanistan, Konar Province

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Copyright

  AFGHANISTAN, KONAR PROVINCE

  He was so tired he could hardly walk when zing, a shot screamed by. Sounding like the zip of a mega-mosquito, or maybe like a rusty door hinge moving fast, or like that inhalation of breath when you hit your toe and don’t want to scream.

  Back at the outpost, they’d always talk about what a bullet sounded like when it came close. It was like a contest, trying to name the sound.

  First he was falling out, then he was on fire. The whole valley exploded. They were caught on a ridgeline, a hell of a place to be. An ambush, major contact. Sounded like the enemy was all around.

  He started running; he’d never known how fast he could move with sixty pounds of gear. Another zip and he went to a low crawl. Then he was pinned down by gunfire. Caught. His buddies were there, then gone, sliding down the side of the mountain, ammo from an M2 tearing them up.

  When he got hit, he knew it but couldn’t believe it. Like he got punched in the head. From nowhere. Nasty.

  All he could do was watch the other guys getting blasted. Falling.

  One over the cliff, hanging on.

  The world darkened. He was counting on the promise to never leave anyone behind, to never let go.

  Promised with blood and swearing.

  Then he saw those hands falling away.

  He saw it all, then he, too, was gone.

  CHAPTER 1

  The tattooed flames on the man’s shoulder were illuminated by the fire. He was standing right in front of Meg. She wanted to touch it. In truth, she wanted to put her lips to it. The roundness, hardness of the flesh that held the flames drew her. Had she turned into a moth?

  She was standing just to the side of the man, packed in the crowd. Everyone had pushed toward the beach as the longship was set on fire by the torches that had been carried triumphantly through the crowd as the sun set.

  The tattooed man stood about a head taller than her. He wasn’t thin, but he wasn’t fat. His muscles pushed at his skin, shouting energy. She had caught glimpses of his face, but couldn’t tell how old he was. Maybe a few years older than her, but not too many. She guessed mid-twenties.

  Meg hadn’t thought she’d come down to the beach for Burning Boat, this weird, kind of new-agey thing some artists did annually down on the shore of Lake Pepin, which was actually part of the Mississippi. Her mom was all jazzed about it, but it had sounded kinda pseudo-cool to her. Like what old folks thought was far out. Build a Norse longship out of recycled pallets, and then burn it. Come on, a Norse longship? Where did that come from?

  But Meg had nothing else to do. All her friends had gone off to college. Curt had left two months ago. Because Madison was so expensive, Meg had decided to postpone going to college until winter so she could earn more money at the Harbor View—the best and most lucrative season at the restaurant was fall, when the leaves turned.

  After her mom and Rich went to the park, Meg had reluctantly followed them, walked down to the beach, figuring she could just go home if it was too boring.

  But there was something about the ship on the shore that had grabbed her. It had been built on a small peninsula that stuck into the bay of Fort St. Antoine. As the sun set, the ship stood out in silhouette. Brave and alone, it awaited its fate, the dragon head facing the lake.

  She had moved in closer, joined the throng that gathered on the sand close to the shore. Even though it was late September, the night was warm and still. People were wearing little. As the fire was lit, she noticed the shoulder of the man in front of her. The blue and red flames etched into his skin drew her eyes.

  He shifted his weight and bumped her hip. He turned toward her, squinted his eyes, and said, “Sorry.”

  “S’all right,” she said, and couldn’t help smiling. He looked like a farm boy, with broad cheeks, ruddy skin, sun-kissed short blond hair. And so healthy. Like he drank a gallon of milk a day, and ran ten miles, and harvested wheat in his sleep. But a smart farm boy, who knew his way around a barnyard and knew how to coax animals to do what he wanted.

  “Cool, huh?” He nodded his head toward the fire.

  “Absolutely,” she said, and it was.

  “It’s going to go fast,” he said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “I know fire.”

  And Meg believed him. He was that kind of man. He didn’t brag, but he let you know what he could do.

  “That why you have it on your shoulder?” She reached out and did what she had longed to do—she touched a finger to his flames.

  He jerked. Then he was embarrassed and moved back toward her. “I just had it done. Still tender.”

  “So it’s brand new?”

  “Yeah, last week.”

  “What inspired you?”

  “To remind me of something. You know. Couldn’t do it before, it was against regulations.”

  “What regulations?”

  “Army. Got out a few months ago.”

  That’s why she hadn’t seen him around. “How long were you in the army?”

  “Four years.”

  “Wow. That’s a long time.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  The longship was all afire, fore to aft. An amazing sight, as if a dragon had licked its tongue the length of the vessel. Meg watched it, but she was even more aware of the man standing next to her, only inches away.

  “Where did you go?” she asked.

  “Where?”

  “In the army.”

  “I was in it deep. Afghanistan.”

  “Really?” While Meg knew about the war, knew that they had been fighting there for years, she hadn’t really given it much thought. “What was it like?”

  He had been smiling. He had been looking down at her with an amused look. But now he turned away, saying, “Too long to tell.”

  She felt like she had made a mistake. They had been talking so comfortably, and then she had asked the wrong question. Maybe it was private. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about it. She had touched his tattoo, and it had hurt. She had asked a question, and that had hurt, too. Time to move to comfortable ground.

  “Nice fire,” she said.

  “Not bad,” he said, and gave her a quick glance.

  The sound of crackling filled the air. The sky grew darker, and the ship sparked high in its light and flames. The orange and white flickering against the dark, the brightest yellow.

  Meg could feel his body heat next to hers. “I’m Meg.”

  The tattooed man, the army man, turned to
her and leaned over, his face close to hers, his smile a hint, and said, “I’m Stickler. Andrew Stickler.”

  Andrew, she thought. Not a bad name. Kind of old-fashioned, but that was okay. Her name was, too.

  “You live around here?” he asked.

  Meg took this as a good sign. She was glad he asked. She didn’t have a boyfriend anymore. After almost three years, Curt and she had decided to release each other from their going-steadiness, as much as it had hurt. This decision had seemed very grown up at the time, two months ago. But she had been feeling very lonely since he had left, and looked forward to his frequent e-mails. Now she was glad that she was free.

  “Yup. Just outside of town.”

  “I live by Durand. For the time being.”

  Not far away. Still in the county. “Oh, yeah.”

  The ship began to sink into the fire. The dragon’s head tilted, then fell. The crowd sighed and moaned with the conflagration. Meg felt small jolts inside her body. Andrew was standing closer than he needed to be, closer than the crowd demanded. He was a hair’s breadth away from her. She had touched him.

  “Can I get your number?” he asked.

  “Sure. You got something to write it down with?”

  He pulled a pen out of his jean pocket, but had no paper. He offered his hand to her, and she wrote her cell phone number on his palm.

  “Don’t take a bath,” she said.

  “Not before I call you,” he said.

  The ship collapsed. Something inside her was falling, too. She wanted to get away. She couldn’t stand being so close to him but not touching him. She didn’t know why. This had never happened to her before. Like she was in lust, in rut, whatever you wanted to call it. Maybe it was the heat of the day, the fire, but whatever it was—she wanted him.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “I’m going to head out.”

  “Be careful,” he said. He reached out and tugged on a lock of her hair. “Don’t get lost in the dark.”

  “I love this ritual—offering a bonfire to the gods—but it reminds me we’re losing the light.” Claire leaned her chin on Rich’s shoulder. He rubbed the top of her head as they watched the fire burn down to embers.

  “The autumnal equinox. Yup, the nights are winning.”

  “But it was a nice summer. Nice and uneventful,” Claire sighed. The worst crime that had been committed since April was a kid who had gone on a crime spree and stolen three computers from the high school. They’d caught him the next day when he tried to sell them on Craigslist. She called that a pretty good season.

  “Don’t jinx it.”

  “Maybe we should try to get away for a long weekend. Go up north now that the leafers are gone. Meg can take care of the pheasants.”

  “Claire, she can’t take them to market.”

  “Just a couple of days?”

  “If we went before next weekend I could squeeze it in.”

  “I’ll find us a cozy cabin and we can snuggle for a few days. Leave the daughter alone.”

  “She seems a little lost without Curt.”

  “I know. It’s sad. I was afraid that she would follow him to his college in Vermont when he couldn’t get in to Madison. I’m proud of her decision to go forward with her own plans.”

  “Oh, she takes after her mother—too self-sufficient.”

  Claire thought of Meg, how she had seemed to bloom in the last year or so, growing her wavy brown hair into a long braid down her back, wearing clothes that suited her lanky body, even putting on a dab of lipstick once in a while. Her awkwardness was fading as she grew up. Too bad she couldn’t find a new boyfriend for the next few months, someone to gang around with, to show her that there were more men in the world than Curt. Although Curt had been perfect for her in high school and might be perfect again, Claire wanted her daughter to know more men, to choose a man to be with because he was the best, not because he was the only.

  As she watched the fire settle down to embers, she couldn’t help but think what a nice burial it would be: wrapped in a cloth, laid in the bottom of a vessel, and set out onto the water in a shroud of flames.

  As Sheriff Talbert drove away from the Burning Boat spectacle, he felt like something was stuck in his throat. Maybe he had inhaled too much smoke. But for a few weeks now he hadn’t been feeling that good—out of breath, nauseated, achy. He figured it was something that was going around. He had to watch that he didn’t complain too much to Ella, or she would get on him to go to the doctor.

  He hated doctors. They poked him like he was a bloated cow and told him he should lose half the weight he was carrying. Fat chance. Not with the way Ella fed him—pie and cookies and bars. She had been raised to cook for the field hands and, even though he wasn’t a farmer, she fed him as if he were one.

  He wondered if any of those coconut-chocolate pecan bars were left. His mouth watered just thinking about them.

  Ella had ragged on him not to go tonight. “Why do you always feel like you have to be there? The deputies can handle it without you.”

  He didn’t dare tell her how much he still enjoyed standing in the middle of the road, telling the cars where to go and talking to everyone, his community in the best of moods, joking and laughing and having a good time. He wouldn’t miss it for anything.

  No moon tonight and it was dark as the bottom of a well, driving up the coulees toward the top of the bluff. He had the windows open, as it was just the right temperature to put your hand out the window and let it drift on the breeze.

  Just as he was turning at Pleasant Corners, he felt something stab him in the chest—a ripping feeling, as if an implement had been thrust into his insides and turned.

  He let go of the wheel and slapped his hands on his sternum to make the tearing stop, but the pain got worse and rose up into his mouth like a wave of bile. The car didn’t make the turn and plowed into a cornfield, the stalks ticking on the underside of the carriage and scraping the doors.

  The car came to a stop deep in the corn.

  He could hardly breathe, and the ripping pain made him feel faint. He tried to get out of the car, to get to the road, but he couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t even turn off the car. The lights shone through the corn and he felt like he was looking at soldiers marching toward him, the lines going on and on.

  CHAPTER 2

  The sound of the birds chirping outside her window woke Emily Jorgenson. The first thought that flew into her mind was, I hope my pot’s okay. She couldn’t wait to see how it had turned out. Just so long as it hadn’t broken. Mrs. Adams, her fourth-grade teacher, had warned them all that the pots might break in the heat or get smashed by the wood of the boat collapsing on top of them.

  She slipped off her nightgown and scrambled into her jeans and T-shirt. The sun was up already. She had to go to church later, but she could run down to the park before then and find her pot.

  After eating a bowl of cereal at her mom’s insistence, she was finally allowed to go down to the beach. “Be careful of that fire, Emmie. Use a stick to stir around in it. It might still be hot.”

  She promised to be careful and skipped part of the way down the hill, then ran until she reached the highway. Since she had turned ten, Mom let her go anyplace in town she wanted to. But she had to promise to look both ways at the highway. “Those cars and those darn motorcycles come whipping through town too fast for their own good,” her mom said.

  A couple of motor homes were in the park, but she didn’t see anyone outside. She loved having the park to herself, and was glad when summer was really over and all the campers went away. Then she could run around without feeling like she was disturbing anyone. Her mom said that the campers made money for the town and that was good, but Emily still wished they wouldn’t take over the park every summer, especially during the very nicest days.

  Emily could see the dark burned spot on the small island where the longship had been. Technically, the spit of land wasn’t an island but a peninsula, because it was sort of attached t
o the shore. She had learned that in geography.

  She wouldn’t waste any time this morning looking for arrowheads or agates, two of her favorite things to do. Once she had found a lovely pink piece of stone that had been worked all along one edge, and her dad told her that it was a part of a spear, because it was so large. Emily put it in her treasure box. But one of her biggest wishes was to find a real, complete arrowhead.

  She walked down the beach until she reached the path that went out onto the peninsula. A faint fishy smell wafted over her. She didn’t mind it. The lake smell was a mixture of all sorts of stinks—weeds, water, and even a sun scent.

  As Emily walked up to the burned spot, she held her breath—both because it was still smoky and because she was nervous about what she would find. She remembered exactly where she had put her pot—right under the dragon head on the longship—so she would be able to find it easily. She watched her step, walking just beside the scorched grass where rubble and charred bits of wood were strewn on the ground. There sure wasn’t much left of the ship.

  She pulled a willow branch off the ground and ripped the leaves off. It would be good for poking around in the ashes.

  Her pot was a small round bowl made out of tan clay, about the size of her fist. She jabbed at the area where she thought she had placed it. After using the willow branch like a rake, she uncovered what at first looked like a clod of dirt. She stepped nearer, watching where she put her feet. Squatting down, she looked at the dark object more closely.

  Emily could tell it was her bowl by the edging. She had pinched the edge just like her mom made pie crust. The pot had turned almost black, with a crack snaking down one side, but it was still whole. She gingerly touched it, but it wasn’t too hot. After hooking the willow branch into the middle of it to scoop it up, she carried it to the water and rinsed it off. Some of the darkness washed off but much of it stayed on the pot, making it look like the pattern on a cowhide. Her teacher had called this kind of pot making raku, and said it was a Japanese word.