Lake of Tears Read online

  She wondered how the other kids’ pots had turned out. Holding her bowl carefully, she walked back to the burned spot. As she stood to one side and the sun shone on the ashes, she saw a weird pattern of white sticks in the charred remains of the fire.

  Emily put her pot down in the sand, took her willow wand, and poked at the white sticks. As she rubbed away the flakes, her stomach turned.

  A finger was pointing at the lake. The white sticks were bones. Something clicked in her mind and Emily knew she was looking at a whole skeleton, stretched out in the ash.

  “They’re taking me to Mayo,” Sheriff Talbert told Claire as she sat close to his bed. He had a private room in the hospital in Durand, which was right up the hill from the county offices. He was whispering and seemed to have aged ten years since she’d last seen him two days ago. “Quadruple bypass surgery.” He held up a hand with four fingers pointing skyward.

  “Can’t do stents?” Claire asked.

  “Too far gone. They need the big guns for me.” He gave a throaty chuckle that turned into a cough.

  “How long will you be out?”

  “They can’t say. I pushed ’em, but they want me to do therapy and all that crap. I hate to think what this will cost.” His big meaty hand fell on Claire’s and he grabbed her hand tight. “But I want you to be in charge of the department. I’m appointing you sheriff in my absence.”

  Sheriff. She had thought she might like that title in front of her name someday, and she wasn’t getting any younger. She could retire in four years if she wanted to, and she had even considered it. “What about Stewy?”

  “He don’t want to be sheriff. Hell, he just wants to retire next year and buy a motor home. That’s all he talks about these days. I can’t ask him to take this on.”

  “Well, I don’t mind stepping in for you, but it won’t be for long, will it?”

  “Who knows. Maybe they’ll tell me I need less stress in my life. Ella has been saying that to me for years.”

  Ella had stepped out for some coffee a few minutes after Claire had arrived. Claire was pretty sure she just wanted to give them time to talk alone. She probably knew what her husband was going to ask Claire.

  “She wants to go to the Grand Canyon. She’s always wanted to, but somehow it didn’t happen when the kids were young, and then the job got in the way, and I don’t know where the time went.” He rubbed his stubbly face. “I think it’s time we went to the Grand Canyon. I’m kinda afraid of heights, but she hasn’t asked that much of me over the years. I figure I can do this for her.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “So you can be in charge?” he asked her.

  “Until you get back on your feet.” Claire wanted to reach out and pat his leg, but he was not a touchy kind of guy. “Just so long as you don’t fall into the canyon.”

  “Who knows how this is going to turn out,” he said, patting his chest gently.

  “It will turn out fine. You’re going to the best place. They really know what they’re doing at the Mayo.”

  “Yeah, but they’re going to have to cut open my chest. I’ve never been cut open before. Gives me the willies.”

  “You’ll be better than ever.”

  “I guess.” His voice dropped.

  Ella stepped back into the room. “I think that’s enough talking for now. He’s got to rest up for his trip. They’re taking him by ambulance this afternoon.”

  “You’ll keep us posted?” Claire asked.

  “I’ve talked to Shirley at the department three times today already. She’ll come and find me if I don’t call.”

  “When’s the surgery?” Claire asked.

  “Next week. Sooner the better, I say. Get it over with.”

  The sheriff had fallen asleep. Claire and Ella looked down at him. Ella’s face was tight. “I just want him to be okay.”

  Amy hated to leave her bed on Sunday morning, one of the few times John didn’t have to get up before her. His lips barely moved when she kissed him goodbye, then he rolled over and started to snore. It was everything she could do not to climb back in bed with him.

  She started her shift at eight a.m. and rolled through Durand, checking things out, then circled back to the department for another cup of bad coffee. The big news this morning had been about the sheriff. She still couldn’t believe it. Shirley said it was lucky he was alive. If his lights wouldn’t have still been on, who knows when they would have found his car, buried deep in the corn.

  Two teenagers had seen the lights and called it in. At the moment the car was sitting out front in the parking lot. Looked fine. But she heard the sheriff wasn’t doing so good. She wondered briefly who would be in charge while the sheriff recovered. One thing she knew for sure was it wouldn’t be her.

  Shirley hollered back to her. “Got something you better check out in Fort St. Antoine. Some kid found some bones.”

  Bones, that sounded good. Something to do. It had been awful quiet lately. School had started; less time for kids to get in trouble.

  “Where in Fort?” Amy walked up to the front desk.

  “Down in the park. Claims they were in that burn they had there last night.”

  “You mean that big ship they set on fire?”

  “I guess so.”

  Nice morning for a drive up the river. Few people on the road. Those who she passed were probably heading to church, and drove slowly and thoughtfully. The backwaters of the Chippewa and the Mississippi looked like the dark steel of an old knife in the early light.

  Fort St. Antoine was one of the smallest towns in the county, but one of the busiest. Located in the far northern section, it was the closest to the Twin Cities and pulled a lot of tourists down with its interesting shops and arty activities. The Burning Boat celebration was the latest idea. Build a big boat, then burn it down. Lots of people didn’t think it was such a good idea, but Amy thought it was kinda cool. She would have gone last night, but she had gone to dinner at John’s mother’s house. Since she and John had moved in together, they’d made it a point to get out to see her at least once a week.

  When Amy reached the park, she saw there were still two motor homes tucked under the cottonwood trees—the last of the season’s campers. A pickup truck was parked on the shore near to the leftovers of the burn. Amy pulled the squad car in next to it and got out.

  A tall, angular man and a small round girl were standing near the burned spot on the piece of land that stuck out into the river. As Amy walked up the man helloed her, and the girl stood a little closer to him.

  “Jake Jorgenson,” he said and held out his hand. They shook. He then put his hand on the little girl’s head. “My daughter, Emily.”

  Amy held out her hand to the girl. Emily hesitantly reached out her hand, which felt like a soft animal in Amy’s palm. Amy gave it a gentle shake. Emily’s face broke open in a smile. The young girl was missing one of her bottom teeth.

  “What did you find here?” Amy asked.

  “Some bones.” Emily twisted her mouth, then said, “But I didn’t touch anything.”

  Mr. Jorgenson nodded toward the charred remnants of the boat.

  At first all Amy could see was the burned rubble of the fire, but as she walked closer and studied it more, she began to make out what looked like the shadow of a body, lying on its side. From there she was able to visually pick out the pieces of bones, even though they had been discolored by the fire.

  “Emily found this when she came looking for her pot,” Jorgenson explained.

  “We stayed here to keep other people away,” Emily piped up. “So nothing was disturbed.”

  “That was good. You’re a big help,” Amy said. She looked up at the Jorgensons again. “Any chance this was part of the deal? Part of the Burning Boat show?”

  “Not that I know of, but you’d have to talk to the organizers. I just came down when Emmie told us what she’d found, after I called the sheriff.”

  Amy walked in a little closer. The structu
re looked like human bones, a small person or a large child. She hated to think about who it might be. Hopefully no one she knew.

  “I didn’t touch anything,” the young girl repeated, stepping out from behind her father’s legs. “I just came to get my pot.”

  “So what’s this about a pot?”

  “Mrs. Adams, that’s my teacher, she helped us to make pots and then we put them in the bottom of the boat. Well, really on the ground, kinda under the boat. That way when the boat was set on fire the pots would get baked and be real hard.”

  “When did you do that?”

  The young girl looked up at her father. He nodded and said, “Go ahead, Emily. Tell her what you know.”

  She continued, “I think it was about three o’clock on Friday. I’m pretty sure, because we did it right after school and school gets over at ten to three. The guy who was the boss of the fire said we could do it when they were all finished with the boat. He showed us where to put the pots so they would be in the fire.” She pulled a dark round object from her pocket and held it out in both hands. “This is mine and it didn’t break or nothing. It’s supposed to look like that, dirty and all. That’s what Mrs. Adams said, and it’s called raku.”

  “Very nice. So your whole class came down with your teacher and put the pots in the boat on Friday?”

  “Everyone except for Ricky Jordan. He had to go home and help with the chores. Dinky Baker put Ricky’s pot under the boat though.”

  “You didn’t see anything unusual when you did that?”

  “You mean like a body or anything?”

  Amy stifled a burp of a laugh. “Yes, I guess that’s what I mean.”

  “No, just a lot of willow branches. They were, like, all woven together. It made like a fence, and the boss guy said they would burn good.”

  “Okay, so you were here between three and four on Friday.”

  Emily squinched up her face and stared at Amy. “Does that give you a clue?”

  “It does.”

  “Is this like a mystery?” Emily asked.

  “So far, it is. But maybe there’s a logical explanation.”

  “I know what that means. Logical means, like, understanding it. That it makes sense.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Otherwise this might be somebody who’s dead and you would have to find out who did it.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “That’s enough, Emily.” Her father wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We need to get back home and get ready for church.”

  Amy squatted down so that her eyes were at the same height as Emily’s. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll take it from here, but I might be talking to you again.”

  Emily’s face flashed a smile and she looked up at her father. “Sometimes I talk too much, but sometimes that can be good, right?”

  “Yes, often it can be good.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The lull of the summer was over. Claire knew that before she even saw the burned bones. She knew that their respite was done when she saw the way Amy was standing to the side of the large burned spot on the small spit of land that stuck out into Lake Pepin. Amy shifted her weight back and forth, her shoulders lifted up. She had already started carrying the crime.

  Claire took her time getting out of the squad car. No hurry. The bones weren’t going anyplace. At least this scene wouldn’t be bloody. That was a blessing. She walked down to the beach, jumped over the small stream of water that separated the peninsula from the mainland, and stood next to Amy.

  Amy pointed.

  Claire followed her hand down, and at first just saw burned ends of sticks and grass scorched around the periphery of the fire. Then her eyes adjusted and the sticks turned into bones, turned into a body curled into the darkness of the burned-out fire. From what she could make out, the body had been lying on its side, arms pulled in to its chest, legs tucked up to its body. The posture looked like the fetal position, except for the hands, which weren’t turned toward the chest, but stuck out defensively.

  Fighting. It almost looked like the person had been fighting the fire.

  “I suppose this could have been an accident. Someone drank too much and crawled in here to sleep. But it doesn’t seem like it,” Amy said. “Oops, I accidently fell into a burning boat.”

  Claire felt like laughing. There was nothing funny about what they were looking at, but she often found laughter built up inside of her like some awful gas when she was faced with a heinous crime. Laughter trying to push away what she was seeing, what she might have to face—someone put another person into the bottom of the boat, hoping they would burn away to nothing

  at all.

  How could this have happened? How could one human being do this to another? And worse yet, it was probably someone she knew, passed in the grocery store, filled her car with gas next to them. Sometimes she hated the world, just hated knowing how bad it could be.

  She exhaled slowly out her nose, then filled her chest with new air. “Nope. Hope it was an accident, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “I called Petey. He’s grabbing the camera and he’s on his way.”

  “Good. I want lots of shots, and not just of the bones and the fire, but of the whole area.”

  “Got it.”

  Claire continued, “I don’t want anyone to touch anything. Nothing. Don’t move a twig until we get the forensics done on this. Let’s cordon off all the way to the road. Keep people away from the beach, too. Don’t let any campers come in and pitch their tents or park their three-wheelers. Although I’m not sure it’s worth the effort; after all, there were about five hundred people down here last night. Who knows what we’ll be able to find.”

  Amy glanced up at the sky. “I hate to tell you this, but it’s looking like it might rain.”

  Claire stared west, across the river, the direction their weather came from. A slow slurry of iron-gray clouds was moving in. At least the clouds didn’t look like they would produce a thunderstorm, but they still needed to act fast. “Shit. We need to put up tarps. Take care of that. I want the whole area not just cordoned off, but covered.”

  Amy craned her head up toward the sky and then asked, as if the clouds might know the answer, “What do you think? Do you think someone did this? Put the body in the boat?”

  “Could be. I’ve seen it before. Some guy murders someone and then tries to burn the evidence, thinking they can completely burn a body—which is pretty hard to do—and that if there is no body, they can’t be charged with a murder, which is not true either. In Minneapolis, some guy killed his wife, then put her body in the car and started it on fire. When they managed to put the fire out, he told the fireman that she had been drinking and smoking and probably set herself on fire. The medical examiner noticed the bone fractures in her skull when he was doing the postmortem. Traces of her blood were found in the kitchen on the rolling pin, of all things. Some argument gone very wrong.”

  Amy smiled at her. “Thus ends the lesson for this day.”

  “Okay, but you asked. Get on the horn and get some tarps down here. We need to get this area secured.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Claire looked at the ground around the burn site: trampled grass, weeds bent over, but surprisingly, not much of the surrounding area was burned. She had seen the fire department at the scene last night, the guys leaning against their red behemoth, enjoying the spectacle. Maybe they suggested to the crew of the Burning Boat project to wet down the grass around the boat before they lit it on fire. Wouldn’t be hard to carry water up from the lake.

  She walked up to the remnants of the fire and squatted down, getting her first real close look at the bones. They were not that easy to see, discolored as they were by the fire. If you looked for them, they almost disappeared. Like one of those Magic Eye games where if you squinted your eyes or blurred your vision, you could see the outline of the bones more easily that way.

  Claire leaned in and smelled the damp
smokiness of the burn. The skull looked like one of the malformed pots the kids had made, turned on its side, its eye sockets like holes in a bowling ball. It looked like a couple of the ribs were broken, and she wondered if this had happened as the boat had burned, wood collapsing on top of the body—or if it had happened before the body had been moved to the boat.

  A bundle of bones, that’s all that was left of someone who was probably alive a couple days ago. Claire had the urge to touch the delicate finger bones of the hand, but resisted. Do not disturb them. Before this was over, she would have her fill of these bones.

  After the photos today, they would need to get a forensic crew down to sift through all the ashes. Maybe they’d luck out and find a ring or some other piece of jewelry that would help identify the body. These days, not many people walked around without jewelry on. She looked at her own hands. Her wedding ring, which, even though it was bad luck, was a river pearl. That’s what she had asked for. And she wore a simple pair of gold hoop earrings.

  Just as Claire was pushing herself up, surprised at how creaky she felt today, she heard a shout as Amy yelled at someone to stop. A forty-something man wearing a baseball cap and jeans was trying to climb over the crime scene tape.

  Amy grabbed him by the arm and he put his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. Just wanted to know what’s going on here.”

  Claire recognized him as Stewart Richards, one of the artists who was in charge of Burning Boat. “It’s okay, Amy. We need to talk to him.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Someone lose something?”

  “How late where you here on Friday night?”

  “The night before the burn? We quit on the early side. For once everything was ready on schedule. Doesn’t happen very often. I’d say we left the site at about eight-thirty.” Stewart screwed on his hat more tightly. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “I’m sorry to say we have found the bones of a body in the boat. Any ideas of how it got there?”

  He swore into his hands. “Sorry. For real? What do you mean, a body? An animal?”