| |
JARVIS LAKE WASN’T a place that I’d ever heard of before yesterday, at least not that I could remember, but it echoed in the chambers of my mind. I looked out the window of the fuel truck, and my lips moved inadvertently. I whispered, “I’ll find who did this to you, Chief.”
“Did ya say somedin’?”
I turned, breaking free from my thoughts of revenge and said, “Thinking out loud.”
“I do dat all da time. Well, actually I talk ta ole Link here, but he don’t say much back.” Hank let out a chuckle, and Link looked up after hearing his name.
“Good boy, Link,” Hank said.
The dog wagged his tail.
I gazed out across the horizon through the front windshield. The land was mostly flat and covered with tall pine trees. I calculated that we were getting close to the off-ramp for Black Rock.
I stared out above the trees. Portentous, dark clouds filled the sky, foreshadowing bad events ahead.
Great. It looked like those clouds would turn into a thunderstorm.
It was the month of May, and Mississippi was a rainy place in late spring and through the summer. It was a part of that hurricane belt and experienced a lot of rain from the Gulf.
The old guy stared out at the horizon. He squinted his eyes, and then he said, “Whew-wee. Looks like a storm rollin’ in.”
I stayed quiet.
“Son, good ding ya ridin’ wid me ta Jarvis. I’m stayin’ in a nice cabin on da lake while I wait fer Mr. Caman ta arrive.”
“Caman?”
“Da rich fella wid da flyin’ boat. His name is Caman. He won’t be arrivin’ till tomorrow or da day after dat. I’m headed dere early so I can get in some fishin’. I wanted time ta use his cabin. I’ve never stayed dere before, but he said it would be okay. I saw it on the internet. It’s two stories wid four empty bedrooms, so I’ve got plenty of room. You could stop in wid me and stay until da storm passes.
“I can’t imagine dat he’d object ta dat. He’s a foreign fella, but he sounded real nice on da phone.”
I thought for a moment. A home base would be advantageous while I started to get the lay of the land.
“Link and I’d be happy ta have some company. Dese storms usually only last a night. In da morning, dere will be some good fishin’. You could help me reel some in. I got an extra rod.”
I looked back out at the clouds. A silvery lightning bolt flashed across the underbelly of one of the bigger ones, and the thunder cracked a split second later. It echoed with plenty of sound and fury through the sky like a ripple through the water.
I looked back at Hank and said, “Sounds great.”
He smiled.
We saw the off-ramp to Black Rock and took it. We drove about two miles through a heavily wooded area. Magnolias grew on both sides of a dusty, old road. It wasn’t a rocky road—the drive was smooth enough—but I could tell that it hadn’t been blacktopped in over a decade. The road ended in a fork, less than a mile from the southeast corner of the lake, where the lake branched off from the main body and snaked inland for a half mile.
To the right-hand side and up on a hill there was a sign that read: This way to Jarvis Lake Houses. To the left-hand side of the fork, a sign read: Black Rock/Jarvis Dam.
Up on the right-hand side past the signs, there was a small compound, like one of those I’d seen on the news whenever the ATF or the FBI or the DEA was there and gearing up to raid the place. It was a series of scruffy mobile homes and crumbling buildings bunched together like a giant wagon train, with no fence and no signs of life.
The mobile homes were perched way back and away from the street. Past them, farther east and toward the trees, there was a new-looking white brick house with hunter green shutters. It looked like it could have been the headquarters for the whole thing. In the back and sloped way down about forty yards from the house was a large, freshly painted white barn. It was brand new, like a new addition to the compound, and there was a long, dirt track running up to it from the road. The barn had shiny new motion sensor lights installed high up on the corners that glimmered and reflected sunspots like flashes from a distant handheld camera or sniper scope.
The most striking part of the compound was an enormous Confederate flag flying high above the trees, right in an open field near the track. It was attached to a gigantic steel flagpole. It looked as if the people living here had spent their life savings on it—and no money on their mobile homes.
The flagpole was massive, soaring above the magnolias, pine trees, and even the heavy oaks. The steel was polished to a shine that glimmered with or without sunlight. In a way, it was the most majestic flagpole I had ever seen, and I had seen plenty of them on bases all over the planet.
“Da lake is dammed up on da west side. We’ll be drivin’ across it if we go inta town, but we’re headed dis way ta da cabin,” he said and pointed to the right-hand side.
I nodded.
He turned the steering wheel and headed up the hill on a road that was paved but falling apart. It had been pushed up and cracked all over the edges by the roots of a patch of big oak trees growing side by side.
I saw where locals had cut down the limbs of the trees so that they didn’t grow into each other. Only the limbs that faced outward away from the road grew into long, majestic tentacles that reached toward the sky.
The old gears of the fuel truck whined and clanked as Hank shifted them to climb the hill. A small part of the hill shot up steep, but once we climbed over it, the land became flat again.
We drove down a winding lane that hugged the corners and curves of the lake for about five miles, and then I saw the water from the road. A razor-thin beach, comprised of sand and rocks, knotted the shoreline. The water reflected the stormy sky like an expensive painting that hung in a cheap southern diner somewhere.
Another lightning bolt crackled overhead, lit up the lake, and was reflected on the water. For that two-thirds of a second, the entire lake was bright white until it died back to the dull reflection of the dusky clouds.
“We’d better hurry up and unload everything as soon as we get there,” I said.
Hank nodded.
We arrived at the house. It was hidden from the road by a patch of thick trees. Tangled behind the trees in the shrubbery and vines was a black, iron bar fence, cutting off access to the backyard. But behind the trees, there was a walkway next to a small clearing of green grass.
My eyes landed on what Hank had called a cabin, but in truth was more like a huge lake house. I imagined a cabin as a tiny one-bedroom log-built thing with a brick fireplace, but this house was huge and mostly constructed of brick. Hank had said it was on the large side, but he should have said it was massive. It must have been four thousand square feet.
The building was brick on the front, but the rest of the house was made of wood, probably real and probably oak. It looked sturdy like it could withstand hurricane conditions, but I doubted that full-blown hurricane force winds blew this far north, not category five winds, anyway.
The rain from a hurricane could make it here, but not the strong winds. By the time a hurricane blew this far inland, it was reduced to a tropical storm by the distance and the amount of water it released over the land.
Hank pulled the truck up to the side of the house on a small gravel driveway. He threw the gear into neutral and stomped on the emergency brake, locking the vehicle in place. Then he killed the engine.
He said, “Do ya mind unlockin’ da house fer me? I need ta bring in my gear.”
“I can carry your stuff in for you.”
He nodded gratefully, and we exited the vehicle.
Hank held his door open a little longer than I did to allow Link to crawl out. The dog’s black-and-white fur blew in the wind as he walked behind his master.
The storm approached our position fast. The air smelled like wet, stale rain, and a sea smell hung in the breeze as if we were out on the open water.
I looked up over the horizon of the lake and saw that the clouds had closed in. I could see a blanket of rain on the far shore. It had already started raining on that side, over the town of Black Rock.
I went to the driver’s side of the fuel truck and opened the door. I pulled Hank’s seat forward and grabbed all the gear behind it. I grabbed a suitcase in one hand and the fishing rods and tackle box in the other. Then I closed the door and walked up the gravel driveway to the side door that Hank had left open for me. The door led into an enormous kitchen area with a big island countertop in the middle of the room. There was expensive cabinetry with black chrome handles on everything. There was a gas stovetop and a refrigerator built into the wall. The doors were constructed with a new wooden finish, and they matched the walls, virtually blending in.
It was a spectacular kitchen.
Hank said, “Just put dat fishing gear down by da door. I’ll use it tamorrow.”
I nodded and set everything down. Hank came over to me and took his suitcase. It was one of those wheeled suitcases with a handle that popped out of the top, good for airports. He set it down, the little wheels touching the floor like the landing gear for a jet. Then he pulled the handle up, extended it to its full length, and walked off with it. The wheels rolled across the tile, clicking as they hit the grout lines.
“I’m goin’ ta bed. I’m gettin' up early in da morning, so I can get some good fishin’ in. Hopefully, da rain will have let up by then. Please join me out on da dock behind da cabin. Dat’s if ya want ta fish,” Hank said in a cheery voice like he was talking to his grandson, which I could have been—technically.
“See you in the morning.”
“Ya can sleep in any of da rooms upstairs dat ya want. I’m going ta sleep downstairs. Back bedroom. Da stairs aren’t good on my knees.”
He yawned a loud, old-guy yawn, his open mouth exposing his missing teeth again. He turned and left me alone in the kitchen.
Link barked at me like he was saying goodnight and scurried behind his master. They disappeared together down the darkness of a long hallway and into the bowels of the house.
I took out my burner smartphone and switched it on. The screen lit up. I saw more missed phone calls. Probably LeBleu was calling to check on where I had gone. But I couldn’t tell him. After all, I wasn’t here to arrest anyone. I was here to find my mother’s killer and the missing girls. If possible.
I checked the missed call log and confirmed it was probably LeBleu because the area code matched. I put the phone back in my pocket.
I started to think about what my life would be if I lived this way permanently. A drifter. Off the grid.
I’d be a hard man to find. I would have no phone. What for? And I don’t have a Facebook page, no LinkedIn, no social media, no usual email, no mailing address—I had nothing.
Most people wouldn’t understand the attraction to that kind of life, but I did.
I knew exactly the feeling of being trapped and wanting nothing more than to leave. The first half of my life, I’d had the burning desire to get up and go—forward momentum. I never felt right unless I was going forward, but this part of my life had been stationary. I had grown up and lived my life in the back of nowhere in Mississippi. I had never known what else was out there in the world, but I had always wanted to.
One day, my mother told me the secret about my father and that she’d lied to me. We fought, and I left. Never looked back. But the ugly truth of it was that I used my anger for an excuse to leave and I never called. I should have.
I closed my eyes and stared at a picture of my mother in my memory of the last time that I had seen her sixteen years ago. I let this image linger for a while. I opened my eyes and switched off the phone to conserve the battery. I hadn’t thought to bring a charger. I could buy one tomorrow. It’d give me a purpose to walk around and survey the town.
I walked up the stairs to the second floor and entered the first bedroom that I came to. I collapsed on top of a made bed. I didn’t turn it down or anything because I was beat from the very long day. I didn’t even take off my shoes. I just slept on top of the covers.
*****
WARM SUNBEAMS FELL across my face through the window. I opened my eyes sharply and was wide awake. I sat up in bed and reached over to the nightstand, picked up the phone, and switched it on. The battery was still charged. The phone powered on, and the same missed number of calls and text messages showed. No change. It was 6:35 a.m. I left the phone on and slipped it into my pocket. I kept it on silent and left it that way.
I got up and straightened out the bed from where I had rumpled the comforter by sleeping on it. I left the room as I had found it.
I walked downstairs and found that Hank and Link were gone. The fishing gear was gone as well. They must’ve gone out on the dock.
I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. It was stocked with bottled waters, sodas, and condiments, but no food. I wasn’t going to take the food anyway, but I didn’t think anyone would mind if I grabbed a bottle of water. There was plenty of it—two cases.
I picked up a bottle, opened it, and gulped it down in about sixty seconds. I stopped for breath just once. I was parched. Afterward, I looked for a trashcan and found it near the corner closest to the sink, hidden in a cupboard that pulled out. I pulled on the handle, and the whole thing came rolling out on a cheap-looking, white plastic track.
I crushed the bottle and trashed it. Then I stopped and eyeballed the side door that I had entered through the night before. It was on the far wall just in front of an entrance to another room. I glanced at another door at the rear of the house. That one had to lead to the backyard. I walked over to it, exited the house, and closed the door behind me.
Outside, the air was nice. A cool breeze blew in from the lake. I stretched my arms out to full length in the morning sunlight, walked farther into the yard and gazed out over the horizon. Closer to my line of sight, a single tree grew tall near the edge of the property line. There was a long shadow trailing from the roots off in a westward direction. A stoned-in grill stood at the edge of the house on a long cement slab, with steps going down a short hill to the grass. The sky was clear and deep blue and sunny with no storm clouds or clouds of any kind. The high trees created a green barrier around the lake like an old fortress wall, thick and reinforced in some places and eroding in others. Rows of low buildings outlined the northwest corner of the lake like a painting of an American landscape.
That was the small town of Black Rock.
A good-sized dock, big enough to anchor a seaplane and as new as the house, protruded from the shoreline out over the lake. Hank sat on the tip of it, loosely holding a fishing rod that extended up and out over his head. The fishing line disappeared far off into the water. He sat, hunched over, on an old cream-colored bucket. The lid appeared to be tightly sealed underneath his small frame. His elbows were planted near the tops of his knees. The end of the fishing rod’s long handle was firmly planted into a large gap between the boards on the dock below him.
His dog rested behind him. It was curled up as it had been in his truck. I liked dogs. I always had. Dogs were an important part of small-town life.
The edge of the water was about a hundred feet from the back of the house, and the dock began about fifteen feet before that. It stretched out about sixty-five feet across the water. There was no railing to keep someone from slipping in, but I doubted that anyone would need it. I could see the bed of the lake from where I stood. The water was shallow, at least this close it was.
The dock consisted of a platform, the wooden pillars beneath it, the boards, and the nails. I kept thinking of it as a dock, but I wasn’t sure if it was considered a dock or a pier. I was sure that no one would call it a wharf. It could have been a pier, but it was thick enough to anchor a seaplane to the end, so I thought that a small dock was a better description.
Hank had invited me to join him in fishing, but I didn’t want to fish. I had no interest in it. If I ever wanted to eat fish, I would just look for a seafood restaurant and order from the menu. I hung back near the house and took a moment to plan my next move.
My phone started to vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was reminding me that I had missed calls and voicemails—five of them. I didn’t even bother to look through them. Instead, I touched the screen and opened the settings menu. I switched the phone to airplane mode. Now no one could call me. I clicked the power button on the top of the phone, and the screen went dark. It was now in standby mode. I slipped the phone back into my pocket.
I started thinking about my next move, where to start, and quickly concluded that the best thing for me to do was to walk around the lake, the southwest side, back down the road to the fork, and take the road into town. I was already here, so it made sense to take a look at Black Rock.
In town, I could buy new clothes and a cell phone charger, plot out my route, and get a bite to eat. I could find out about the local sheriff, too. I needed to make contact at some point.
I made it down to the edge of the lawn and the beginning of the dock. That was when I noticed a hiking trail worn in the soil from foot traffic. It looked like it might go all the way around the perimeter of the lake. I didn’t know the actual stats for Jarvis Lake, but I could see that it was long. It wasn’t like one of the Great Lakes, but it was a big lake for Mississippi.
I looked left, looked right, and then I paused. Running straight toward me was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Not just in real life, but in movies and the Internet, too. She was breathtaking. She jogged the track at a brisk pace.
She looked like a gazelle. She was tall, maybe five feet, ten inches tall, and she was lean—flat stomach, muscular shoulders, and strong legs. She looked like a professional runner, like an athlete, and I thought she should have been in one of those fitness magazines. She must’ve been a runner her whole life, probably track in high school and then college.
As she neared me, I realized I had been staring straight at her. My gaze had never let up, not for a second. In normal situations when I’d been caught staring at a woman, I quickly looked away like I had only been glancing. This trick wouldn’t have worked here because she had seen me staring at her from just a few yards away, and she hadn’t flinched, not even a little bit. She kept on running toward me. She was probably used to guys staring at her. In fact, she probably expected it.
She wore a tight gray-and-white outfit, runner’s clothes. The tight gray pants stopped just below her knees, and her tight white short-sleeved top accentuated her shape. She had incredible breasts, not too big but far from small—perfect. Her white-and-red laced-up running shoes looked brand new, still stiff from never being worn and clean like they were straight out of the box.
Her hair was long and blonde and pulled back in a tight French braid. She had long bangs, and the tips touched the top of her eyebrows. She had an Eastern European look about her. If she hadn’t spoken to me, if she had just run right by without saying a word, I would’ve thought that she was from Eastern Europe. For sure. No doubt about it.
She stopped three feet from me. She continued to run in place, shuffling from one foot to the next, and then she bent over and placed her hands on her knees. She panted hard with long recovery breaths, then stood up tall and pulled earbuds out of her ears. She held the ends in one hand and stared at me.
She must’ve been around forty years old, an older woman, older than me anyway. I hadn’t considered forty to be old, after all, I was thirty-three. Seven years wasn’t much of a difference.
Her lips moved, and she gave me the biggest smile—all white teeth.
She was magnificent. Her eyes were green and bright, and her skin was tan and smooth. She took good care of herself; that was for damn sure. She was so beautiful that I became overwhelmed with the urge to bow to her like I was some peon and she was royalty. She was the queen, and I was nothing but her servant.
She said, “I haven’t had a man stare at me so hard since I was in college.”
I gasped because, to me, it seemed like the whole experience had been in slow motion. From the second that I saw her to this moment, I had been suspended in time. I couldn’t speak. The only thing I could do was stand there breathing like I was the one who had just run miles around the lake.
She said, “Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?” She smiled at it like it was a joke. I wasn’t sure why.
I recovered, and then I said, “Widow. My name is Widow.”
She said, “Sheldon.”
Then she paused for another deep breath and asked, “Are you here fishing?”
I shook my head.
“Visiting?”
I shook my head again.
“Tourist?”
I said, “Kind of.”
There was a pause between us and then she said, “Okay. Well, nice talking to you, or not, such as the case may be.”
She smiled, returned her earbuds to her ears, then jogged away.
I watched her run off. I would’ve been lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I stared at her rear as she went.
She turned back to look at me only once, but that one look meant a lot. She was gorgeous, she had talked to me, and she had looked back at me, and it felt good. I smiled.
A voice from behind me said, “Aren’t ya glad dat ya decided ta stay on da lake wid me?”
I spun around and saw that Hank and Link were standing on the dock staring at me and having their own little chuckle over my behavior, Hank for obvious reasons, and Link because Hank was excited. They were about fifteen feet away, the old man with nothing in his hands but a pair of pliers, and the dog at his feet.
I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.”
Hank said, “Sit by me and fish.”
I said, “I’ll sit with you a while, but I don’t fish.”
Hank nodded. He returned to the edge of the dock next to his fishing rod, and Link followed and sat down next to him.
I joined them. Hank sat on his bucket, and I sat down on the dock. The bottoms of my shoes touched the water before my legs had even dangled all the way down, so I had to pull them up and sit Indian style.
Even sitting down, I towered over Hank and Link. It must have looked like Frankenstein’s monster sitting next to the elderly blind man that he met in that old black-and-white movie, except that Hank wasn’t blind.
I shook off the imagery and asked, “Catch anything?”
Hank said, “Oh, sure. I caught t’ree fish already. Look in da bucket over dere.”
I glanced in a second bucket beside me. Three huge fish were covered in ice.
I said, “Nice.”
No more words were exchanged for a while. I studied the water and then the opposite shoreline. There were trees and rocks and more trees. Next, I scanned the northwest side of the lake. I saw piers full of boats and watched as the vessels were launched into the water. I scanned past them and studied the low buildings. Most of the town seemed to be bunched up in the same rows of buildings. From this distance, I couldn’t tell what they were, but I knew that there must be banks, a fire station, bait shops, motels, bars, cafés, a school, a police station, a clinic or two, and, of course, a church. This was the South, and the South was a very religious place. I looked to the east of town and saw a group of buildings clustered together like a small military complex. One of the buildings was two stories, and the others were one. From this distance, they looked expensive. A shiny coil of barbed wire fencing surrounded the place like a prison fence. It created an impressive quarantine perimeter around the complex.
I asked, “Hank, what’s that compound across the lake? The one that looks like a prison.”
Hank raised his hand above his eyes like he was saluting. He used it to block out the sunlight and squinted to see across the lake.
He said, “No, dat’s da Eckhart Medical Center. It’s a research complex or somedin’. It’s one of da only other economies here. Da biggest group of da townsfolk make deir money from tourism and fishing. I would say about fifteen percent of da town works for da Eckhart Medical Center or gets deir business from dere.”
“Why the prison fence around it?”
Hank squinted again and asked, “How da hell are ya seeing dat detail? Dat fence is so tiny from here. I can’t even tell what it is fer sure.”
“I have perfect vision. And perfect hearing. I always have.”
Hank said, “I dink dat dey do research on animals dere or somedin’. Dey don’t want any escapin’ or any environmentalists breakin’ in. I’ve heard dat dey’ve had problems with activists in da past.”
He’d whistled every “s.”
I said, “Big fence. What kind of animals do they have in there? Bears?”
“I never really dought about it before.”
I shrugged. A moment of silence fell between us, and then I stood up. My legs had fallen asleep from sitting Indian style. I shook one and then the other, trying to get the blood circulating again.
I looked down at Hank. He hadn’t noticed that I had stood up until he saw my immense shadow move over him like an incoming predator. He stared directly up at me with his head completely cocked back.
He said, “Are ya leavin’ us?”
I nodded and said, “Thank you so much for the ride and a place to crash for the night, but I’d better be on my way.”
He put his fishing rod back down in the crack between two boards and stood up. He extended his hand for a handshake and smiled warmly.
He said, “Good luck, son. Come back if ya need a place ta stay tanight.”
I shook his hand as gently as I could and thanked him, then turned and looked at the back of the lake house.
I could walk around the side of the house, take the road back to the fork, and walk into town along the road, but I decided to take the jogging path that Sheldon had run along. It looked like it snaked all the way around the lake. This route had two bonuses that I could see—it was scenic, following the lake, and there was a chance that Sheldon would turn around and run back this way, in which case I could see her again. I walked and left Hank, Link, and the lake house, thinking I would never see any of them again.
Part of me wished that had been true.