Fifty minutes later, Bet arrived in Ellensburg. On the way, she called Alma on her cell phone and reassured her she didn’t recognize the victim.
“That’s a relief.” Bet waited in silence, knowing Alma had something else to say. “Still someone’s daughter, though, isn’t she?”
“We’ll figure out who she is. I promise.”
Alma hung up without another word, though Bet could guess what troubled her: Bet in charge of the investigation. If Jane Doe had died by another’s hand, this would be Bet’s first homicide investigation as sheriff. While it was possible the woman had died from natural causes, an accident, or suicide, someone had disposed of her body, and that was still a crime.
If this was a homicide, with no obvious crime scene, no identification for the victim, and a watery dump site, the investigation wouldn’t be easy. Bet didn’t want her first homicide to remain unsolved. She’d taken on the election in her father’s place when her dad was in no condition to run. Collier was her responsibility now.
Before his death, her father had voiced legitimate concerns about Deputy Dale Kovač.
“Dale isn’t sheriff material,” he’d said as part of his plea for her return to Collier. “He doesn’t have your experience. Or your instincts.”
It was true. Both had been through training academies, but Bet had four years on the streets of Los Angeles and a lifetime of her father’s wisdom. Dale had a year in Spokane and a few years working for her father in Collier. He hadn’t been in the trenches like she had.
But she’d never solved a homicide by herself, either. What if her father’s belief in her was misplaced?
Bet sat at one of the few lights on Ellensburg’s main drag, thinking about how he’d convinced her to come home.
You knew exactly what would happen if I came back here, didn’t you, Dad? she said. You knew I’d feel compelled to see this through.
Admit it, she could hear him say. You want to solve this case and prove you can follow in my footsteps. Bet turned up the radio to drown out the conversation taking place in her head.
A few minutes later, the hospital appeared. It was a modern building of gray concrete that stood out from the ubiquitous brick buildings and false-front architecture of downtown Ellensburg. Incorporated in 1883, the town showed its western history, though not to the extent Collier did. Founded on trapping, mining, and trading with the local tribes, Ellensburg only hinted at its past; it didn’t dwell in it. Hayfields and cattle still took up much of the valley, but the lines of wind turbines that marched down the surrounding hills gave testament to technological advancement and the ever-present wind.
Pulling into the hospital lot, Bet drove around back and parked. She called the medical examiner and waited for her to come up to the loading dock to escort Bet to the morgue. Carolyn Pak appeared, a colorful tie-dyed shirt under her white lab coat, black hair—peppered with gray—pulled into a tight ponytail.
“Hey, Red.” She gave her usual greeting and reached out for a handshake. “Nice to see you.”
Bet had been coming to the morgue since she was a child, first during the summertime when her father didn’t want to leave her at home alone. Once just after she’d moved back to Collier and a person died from natural causes unattended by a physician. But the last time she’d walked these halls was when her father died. She hadn’t watched the autopsy, but she stood vigil in the hallway.
“How’s the new job treating you?” Carolyn’s eyes were kind.
“I’ll let you know after the election.”
“You know if I could vote in your area, you’d have mine.”
As part of unincorporated Kittitas County, Collier had its own sheriff, voted in by town residents.
“I appreciate that.”
No one visiting a sick loved one wanted to see sheet-covered bodies on their way to autopsy, so the morgue sat in the basement, outside the areas of public view. Carolyn walked down various hallways to an elevator most people didn’t know existed, Bet jogged to keep up with her fast stride.
Arriving in the morgue, Bet saw that Carolyn had already removed all the ropes keeping Jane Doe trapped in her shroud. Peter had cut through only one to reveal the woman’s face.
“Those are interesting,” Carolyn said, pointing to the knots laid out on another table.
“Someone knows more than a basic half hitch.” Bet inspected them. “Do you know what kind of knots these are?”
“Nope. Knots are not my specialty. Maybe one of your deputies was a Boy Scout.”
“Clayton, maybe,” Bet said. “I can’t see Dale being quite that regimented.”
Carolyn removed the canvas, and Bet had her first full look at Jane Doe. She swallowed hard, relieved the body showed little trauma. The first time Bet attended an autopsy, she’d thrown up in a trash can—a detail she didn’t share with her dad. By now she knew what to expect, and the clinical nature of the process made it easier to stomach than a crime scene, though she never would get used to the smell.
Someone had stripped Jane Doe naked before wrapping her up and abandoning her in the lake. Carolyn clucked sympathetically over the youth of the dead woman.
“I’m guessing somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five,” Carolyn said. “But you know that’s just speculation on my part. She could be a few years on either side of that.”
“I know, nothing is verified until you’ve done the autopsy. We’ll move forward with the assumption she could be a minor.”
After Carolyn turned Jane over, they could see a hole in the woman’s back.
“Looks like a gunshot wound,” the medical examiner said.
So this was going to be a homicide. Now Bet had to discover who had committed the crime and whether or not it was intentional. She might have missed the detective exam in LA, but there were no homicide detectives in Collier to swoop in and take over the case. Finding the perpetrator was up to her.
“Was her death instant?”
“I’ll find out if there’s any water in her lungs. Despite her hair having spilled out here at the top, she was sealed up pretty tight. It’s possible water couldn’t reach her even if she was still breathing when she went into the lake. Look at this, though.” Carolyn gestured toward the fabric. “There’s almost no blood inside. You said she was floating? There must have been pockets of air caught by the canvas to keep her from sinking. If she was still bleeding, we’d see it here.”
“Could it have seeped out?”
“Maybe, but we’re talking about a lot of blood, and there’re no bloodstains on the body.” Her fingers rubbed the material as if she would learn something tactually. “This canvas is waxed to be waterproof, which is also a little strange.”
“Strange how?”
“If you want waterproof fabric, the synthetics are a lot better, lighter weight, more efficient. Waxed canvas went out of favor decades ago. I’ll send a sample over to the lab and see if they can trace any information about where it might have come from or what it was used for.”
Bet felt relief that the girl had been dead long before Peter Malone found her. If she’d died solely from drowning, Bet would have been haunted by the thought she could have been revived.
Standing five feet four inches tall and weighing one hundred five pounds, the young woman had not been a large person in life. Reduced to a corpse and lying on the cold, metal table in the morgue, she appeared even smaller. Her features, what Bet could see of them despite the rigor mortis pushing her face into that awful grimace, were dainty. A slight, upturned nose, a spray of freckles scattered across her cheekbones, and wide-set eyes combined to create a pixielike girl.
“How long do you think she’s been dead?”
“Cold slows the rigor,” Carolyn said, referencing the stiffened muscles of a corpse. “Hours, sometimes even days.” She shrugged.
How long had Jane Doe floated out there? It was possible someone else had seen her on the lake, not realizing she was anything other than trash.
Carolyn made a noise under her breath as she looked down at the wound to the left of Jane Doe’s spine. “There’s no exit wound, but something’s odd about this track. I think the killer dug the bullet out of Jane here before getting rid of the body.”
“Smart killer,” Bet said.
“Certainly a careful one. Probably small caliber, not to go through her, though she could have been shot with something larger from a distance. If the bullet is gone, you know I can’t guess the type of weapon or compare ballistics even if you do find the weapon your shooter used.”
“But you’re sure it was a bullet that made that hole.”
“Safe bet, Bet,” she said, smiling at the comment she always made to assure Bet of one of her findings. Carolyn had enough experience for Bet to trust her judgment. “I’ll know more once I cut her open. But I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds in my day,” she said. “It looks like the bullet came in at an angle and embedded itself in her vertebrae. Interesting, but probably not useful.”
“What’s wrong with her fingers?” Bet asked, looking down at the girl’s hands.
Carolyn picked up the girl’s right hand, looked closely, then swore under her breath. She reached over and picked up her left hand, inspected it, and swore again. Carolyn raced over to a cabinet and pulled out the materials needed to take fingerprints from a corpse: black powder like that used at crime scenes, tape to lift them, and cards to mount them on.
“What is it?”
“I’m going to guess some kind of acid. Possibly poured on to destroy her fingerprints.”
“Postmortem?”
“I’ll have to do more tests. First I’m going to get whatever is left of her fingerprints and scrape under her nails. Of course, the acid will impact that evidence as well.”
Bet watched Carolyn work on Jane Doe’s hands. After attempting to recover fingerprints, she scraped under Jane Doe’s fingernails, placing the residue in evidence bags. Bet hoped Jane scratched her attacker, leaving DNA under her nails.
Carolyn finished and shook her head at Bet’s unasked question. “I’ll let you know what I find, when I find it. There’s always a possibility the killer left latent prints on the body. I’ll look for those before I do the autopsy.”
Next, Carolyn inspected the young woman’s head, looking for other signs of trauma. “Definitely strange. Look at this.”
“What?”
The medical examiner pointed to a section of Jane’s hair. The woman’s long tresses hung matted in sections, still wet from the lake. Carolyn carefully pulled apart some of the tendrils. “Unless there’s some new hairstyle I don’t know about, someone cut off a hunk of this girl’s hair.”
Bet and Carolyn exchanged a glance. Everyone in law enforcement knew signatures were the sign of a serial killer. Hair and fingers were common body parts for a serial killer to keep as trophies. With Washington State being one of the top five producers of serial killers, it was the kind of crime Bet had to consider.
“Could that have been through rough handling? Gotten caught on something in the water? Or during transport?” Bet asked.
“Could be. The hair was clearly cut with scissors or a knife. See how sharp the line is? Not torn. But it could have snagged on something and someone cut it to get her untangled.”
“Let’s hope so,” Bet said under her breath. She craved more action than Collier provided, but that didn’t mean she wanted people to die so she had something to do.
Bet left the morgue knowing Carolyn would do everything she could to identify Jane. The girl had been young, pretty, and—other than the bullet wound—apparently in good health. Someone would be looking for her.
Whoever had killed Jane hadn’t panicked. The killer had probably removed Jane’s clothing either because it gave an indication of how to identify her, such as an affiliation or a location, or to minimize the chance of any transfer from their body to hers. Carolyn would check for signs of sexual assault, but Bet’s intuition said this wasn’t a crime of passion or rape turned murder. It felt more like an execution. Psychopaths were out there who killed for fun, but it happened a lot less than the crime shows on television would have people believe. Jane Doe might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Bet hopped back into her SUV and headed up Highway 97 toward Blewett Pass and the two-lane turnoff to Collier. She’d already asked Dale to block off the two roads on either side of the lake. Alma had given Dale the rundown on what happened that morning, so Bet didn’t have to explain the situation. Bet had also made sure Alma described Peter to Dale. Peter could come and go on his bicycle. She had already compared the tread on Peter’s Suburban and trailer, and they matched the tracks she found on the eastern road. Dale could block it off completely, as no one needed to travel on it; it ended not far from Peter’s camp and no one else lived in the area.
Bet had requested that Dale look for tire tracks on the road at the west end of the lake. There wasn’t much traffic on that road either, as it led to the empty Collier house and the home of the caretaker, George Stand. If anyone in the community asked about the blockades, Dale would report a mountain lion had been sighted and they were taking precautions.
The valley was filled with wildlife wandering around, and with tourists still in for the end of Labor Day weekend, Lakers would understand Bet’s concerns. If the rumor took hold, it would keep people out of the woods.
Before Bet left the hospital, Jane Doe’s features relaxed, providing Bet the opportunity for a better photo to use for an ID. She planned to print out copies from the computer at the station to show around town. People died in the backcountry every year from falls, exposure, hypothermia. Bet would let people believe Jane Doe’s death had been an accident while they worked to identify her.
No use asking around about the sound of gunfire without a time of death. Gunshots weren’t unusual. A firing range sat in the valley outside town, and the loud, popping sounds echoed because of all the granite peaks, making it hard to guess the point of origin. Even if anyone heard the report of a distant shot, most people would assume it came from the range. If someone had thought there was anything suspicious, they would have called it in already.
“One step at a time,” she said as she drove up into the mountains. “You’re the sheriff. You can handle it.” Her mind went over everything she’d learned as she prepared for the detective’s exam. If this investigation went well, it would help her career, even if she was currently stuck in Collier.
Bet arrived to find Dale, solid as an International Harvester, in place at the west end of the lake. Her deputy stood an inch shorter than Bet but was twice her width, all muscle. The dark hair of his Croatian heritage dropped over his forehead and stood up in the back in a hairstyle Bet thought they called a “duck butt” back in the fifties; however, she never said that out loud. Dale had a sense of humor, but not about his hair.
Dale put in his bid for sheriff when Bet’s father grew ill. That action prompted Earle’s call to Bet. Arriving just in time to submit her application to run in her father’s place, she found Dale stoic about her slipping into the role of sheriff. He’d been her father’s deputy, and now he was hers. But she sensed him biding his time, resentment quietly building up.
After six months of working with him, however, Bet agreed with her father’s assessment. Dale wasn’t ready for the responsibility that came with the job.
A few tire tracks lined the western road where it turned onto the dirt-and-gravel parking lot next to the lake.
“Holiday weekend; probably people using the picnic area,” Dale said, passing his cell phone over for Bet to scroll through the images of tire tracks. “Eating hot dogs, no doubt.” Dale shook his head. “Do you know how many chemicals are in those things?”
Bet thought about the hot dogs she’d eaten for dinner last night.
“At least we can compare these tracks to a vehicle if we ever come up with one.” She handed the cell phone back, wondering why he didn’t use the camera in his vehicle. He knew his phone could be subpoenaed just as well as she did.
“Clayton is on his way in.” Bet referenced the part-time deputy she regularly called in from the nearby town of Cle Elum when she needed an extra pair of hands. “Did you explain the ROAD CLOSED sign to George?”
“Yeah. Found him in town before I headed over here. He was on Django, so he doesn’t need to drive a car on the road.”
Django was George’s big red quarter horse. Caretaker for the Collier estate and handyman and manager for all the buildings the Colliers owned, George often traveled on horseback. He could cross the valley easily on a horse, rather than the long way around that the road required.
“Tell him the story about a mountain lion sighting?” Bet asked.
“Yep.”
At least Dale agreed with her use of the story to keep people out of the woods.
“Route calls back to your cell?” he asked.
“Please.”
Routine calls went to Alma’s desk and emergency calls routed to Bet’s phone, or Dale’s if she was off duty or out of the area. Dale turned his attention to his phone and made the switch.
“Hey, before you go, I have a question for you.”
Dale looked at her, his expression neutral.
“I’m wondering why you used your cell phone for photos instead of the digital camera.”
He waited a beat too long to answer. It wasn’t a challenge, exactly, but it was close.
“Judgment call. I don’t think any of the photos I took here are going to be part of a court case.”
She understood his reasoning, so she let it go. But for her, he’d gone with convenience over what would be better in the long run. It was the kind of detail her father would have used to assess Dale’s fitness for the top job—cutting corners on the easy stuff. More proof Bet shouldn’t leave Collier in Dale’s hands.
Dale hopped into his patrol vehicle, parked to the left of the ROAD CLOSED sign, and started it up. The biodiesel he always bought made his SUV smell like french fries, and Bet felt her stomach rumble with hunger. She swung back into her SUV, and they headed into town.
Along the way she passed a DALE KOVAČ FOR SHERIFF sign. She hated the politics and the situation, but she didn’t see an easy way out. In addition to her belief that Dale wasn’t up to the job, if she went back to Los Angeles now, she might not have the opportunity to step into the job later as she’d always planned. She would be the woman who abandoned Collier after her father died, which might not be forgiven. If Dale took the job, it could be for life.
Arriving at the station, Clayton’s battered silver Isuzu Trooper pulled into the lot behind them. The big man unfolded himself from behind the wheel.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Clayton greeted her. She’d given up trying to get him to call her Bet months ago.
Easygoing, broad shouldered, and blond, Clayton looked like an all-American farm boy. But the guileless innocence in his smile masked a man who could kill with one finger. With a black belt in tae kwon do and a few other martial arts Bet had never heard of, Clayton could drop a drunk-and-disorderly to the ground with the simple twist of a wrist.
The three of them headed into the station, where Alma pulled out the extra chairs and they circled up around her desk, the best place for all of them to meet as Alma took notes on her computer. Once everyone settled, Bet went over the events of the day. She passed around the photo of Jane Doe, unsurprised that no one recognized her.
“The first thing we need to do is identify our victim. Without a crime scene, determining her identity takes priority.”
“Don’t you want to look for the crime scene too?” Dale asked. “Check out the lake?”
“We’ll do that first thing tomorrow morning,” she said to him. “You and I will do a circuit of the lake once it’s light. We’re unlikely to have success in the dark, and I want to talk to people in town first.”
Dale usually worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and Monday and Tuesday during the day, along with all holidays and special events. Because he’d had to work Thursday night this past week, he should have tomorrow off.
“We’re going to have a lot of overtime on this,” Bet said. “You’re free to work extra hours, right?”
Dale nodded, pulling out his cell phone and sending a text. “Yep.” He put the phone back in his pocket. Bet thought he might have a new girlfriend but had yet to meet the woman.
Bet was in the office Wednesday through Sunday during the day and on call every night. Today both Dale and Bet worked, but a loud-music complaint had taken Dale out to a campground several miles away when Peter arrived at the station. Bet felt relief she’d been the one at the station to take the case.
Investigations in Collier mostly constituted finding a lost hiker in the woods, not violent crimes. Bet called backup if she needed it, such as to break up a domestic disturbance. A lot of people in the area exercised their Second Amendment rights and Bet didn’t walk casually into anyone’s house, even if she’d known them her entire life.
Between the two of them, Bet and Dale covered over five hundred square miles of isolated communities, campgrounds, roads, and trails. Though they had help from the National Forest Service and the other sheriff substations in the area, they relied primarily on each other and Clayton.
Turning back to Clayton, she said, “Depending on what we find, I may need you to work extra hours as well.”
“I’ll negotiate with Cle Elum.” Clayton worked part-time for her and part-time for the sheriff in the small town thirty minutes south of Collier. “I could use the extra hours.”
“Still trying to recover from last year’s fires?” Alma asked. Clayton and his wife Kathy owned an organic farm that she managed. A severe fire season last year had impacted their yield, the smoke so thick it blocked sunlight and limited crop production. The health hazards of the air had kept farmworkers from picking ripe crops on time.
“A little.” Clayton shook his head. “But that’s not the real problem. We hope Kathy can work less. We weren’t going to say anything yet, but … Kathy’s pregnant again. Her doctor wants her to take it easy.”
They all knew how much Clayton wanted children. Over the last few years, Kathy had suffered multiple miscarriages, and the subject remained a painful one.
Everyone congratulated Clayton, but Bet could see the news wasn’t entirely positive.
“Everything is okay, though?” she asked, after Alma finished telling Clayton she’d get busy knitting booties. It crossed her mind Kathy might want Clayton to leave law enforcement and help her on the farm.
“So far, so good,” Clayton said. “We just don’t want to get too excited until she gets past her first trimester.”
Bet could tell he didn’t want to talk about it further, so she turned the conversation back to the investigation. “We should start showing the photo around town. We also need to search for abandoned vehicles. Jane Doe might have driven up here alone and left her car somewhere.”
On the drive home from Ellensburg, Bet had considered various lines of investigation. Now she laid out her plan.
“Let’s do a grid search for abandoned cars downtown. Clayton, you start there. Also flag anyone with outstanding warrants for violent crimes or drugs. While you’re at it, take a copy of the photo into the open businesses and see if anyone remembers seeing her. If she made a credit card purchase somewhere, we can get her name. State her death is accidental for the time being. Ask that people not talk about her, as we haven’t identified next of kin.”
Clayton asked how long she wanted him to search.
“Search until nine. It’s going to be slow running plates and talking to store personnel. Most places are closed by nine, so you can pick back up in the morning.
“Dale. I want you to search the campgrounds. Check for any vehicle or campsite that appears abandoned. I’ll contact the ranger station, but we both know they’re even more understaffed than we are.”
Alma piped up from behind her computer screen, “What should I be doing?”
“Print off copies of Jane Doe’s photo for us to take with us. The photos are already uploaded onto our server. Then head home. We’ll all reconvene in the morning, and you can run a background check on Peter Malone.” She turned to her deputies while Alma worked on the prints. “But call me immediately if anything suspicious turns up.”
She kept her eyes pinned on Dale until he acknowledged her request with a nod. The thought that he might use the investigation in some way to get ahead in the polls troubled her. She might have mixed feelings about the position, but the town deserved her full attention.
“What are your plans?” Dale asked as he prepared to leave.
“I’m going to have another chat with the good professor and check in with George and the Collier estate.”
This time she could bring Schweitzer. Her heart lifted at his excitement to go with her instead of staying behind under Alma’s desk.
“Good boy, Schweitz,” she said as he danced at her feet. His happiness felt like progress.
As she paralleled the lake on her way to his campsite, Bet spotted Peter paddling to shore. The tall peaks cast shadows across the water. She guessed the fading light had ended his workday, too.
Not to mention that the physical challenge of navigating the canoe and equipment around the rough lake all afternoon, on top of the stress of his morning find, had likely worn him out.
She reached his trailer as Peter dragged the canoe onto dry land. The bottom scraped loudly against the ground, the layer of sand thin over the granite. Bet let Schweitzer out of the SUV, and he bounded down to the edge of the water in delight, wading out on legs so long his belly stayed dry.
Peter scratched Schweitzer under the chin before he leaned over to lift his equipment out of the boat.
“I meant to ask you what kind of dog that is,” Peter said.
“Anatolian shepherd.”
“Good-looking dog.”
“He knows it.” Schweitzer stood out in the lake, halfheartedly lapping up some of the cold water. “Want a hand with that?” Bet gestured toward the equipment still in the boat.
“Sure. Take this.” Peter handed her a monitor while he carried the camera. Schweitzer followed them to Peter’s trailer.
“What’s it look like down there?” Bet hoped to be invited inside so she could have a look around without a warrant.
“You can see for yourself in a moment,” Peter said as they reached the door.
While Bet was in E’burg, Peter had disconnected the Suburban and leveled the trailer with jacks. Bet could see propane tanks on the tongue of the hitch and a generator nearby, ready to provide power.
Peter unlocked the door and secured it open with a hook on the side of the trailer.
Stepping inside, he held open the screen door to usher her in, exactly as she’d hoped. Bet gave Schweitzer the hand signal to sit/stay, and he stretched out in the shade of a small pine tree to wait.
Bet stooped automatically to get through the doorway. Once they were inside, however, even Peter stood upright easily. Bet planted her back to the door and surveyed Peter’s tiny kingdom. She didn’t expect to find obvious signs of a struggle or blood spatter on the walls to prove Jane Doe had died here, but she’d love for something useful to come to light. Peter didn’t appear nervous to invite her inside, but he could still have something to hide.
To her right was a table with bench seats. Directly across from her, a child-sized stove, sink, and refrigerator took up the middle section. To her left, the section where ATVs and motorcycles usually parked had been converted to a mobile science lab. A big monitor to edit digital video sat alongside extra storage shelves. All manner of equipment Bet couldn’t guess at was secured for safe transport. As she looked around, Peter took the camera out of its waterproof housing and hooked it up to the computer. It would be tough to shoot someone or wrap up a body in such a tight space.
“I have a couple marine batteries to power all this,” he said with a wave of his hand. “And that generator outside to recharge the batteries.”
“Very efficient.” Bet wondered what benefactor footed the cost for his research. She didn’t think college professors paid for their own research projects, and even one as simple as this carried a price tag.
“This is a great travel trailer,” she said to explain her snooping around. “I’ve always wanted one of these myself.” She peered under the table as if marveling at the clever design. “This folds out into a bed?”
“It does.” Peter didn’t look up from his equipment. “It might be more comfortable than my bed at home.”
Bet could see dust on the floor. While it wasn’t proof Peter hadn’t just cleaned up a crime scene, it did make it unlikely, especially combined with his nonchalance about letting her inside.
Finished hooking up cables, Peter turned on the computer. Bet saw a warped image of the scientist fill the screen. The camera caught a shot of his face as he lowered it into the lake. Through the film of water, the camera pushed his features out of proportion, face rippling and changing. Peter’s eyes scrunched together, teeth gritted in concentration. His mouth and jaw stretched out until they filled the screen.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two personalities in one body. A tingle of apprehension shot down her spine. She turned abruptly to look at the scientist but saw only his open, friendly face intent on the work in front of him.
Once it began to descend, the camera slipped past the choppy surface and into the crystal-clear water below. While light spilled through from above, the only objects the lens could find were occasional specks.
“What are those?” Bet stood behind Peter and pointed to the tiny spots on the screen.
“Fine grains of rock.”
The two continued watching as the camera dropped one hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet. No fish or plant life save an occasional leaf sinking slowly into the depths. A flash of something white made Bet gasp, only to have the camera focus in and reveal a plastic grocery bag making its way to the bottom.
“How deep did you end up?” she asked, after a few minutes revealed nothing different.
“Three hundred and twenty feet or so. And I was nowhere near the middle of the lake.” His voice held awe, and Bet felt the stirrings of his excitement.
“How deep do you think it goes?” Bet’s mind turned to all the objects rumored to have disappeared under the water.
Peter shrugged. “It could certainly go much deeper than I went today.” Clearly the professor hoped it would.
“Does it look like a cirque?”
Peter laughed. “That’s not how this works. I have to map the entire bottom, do a number of calculations, analyze the composition of the rock. I won’t be announcing my findings anytime soon.”
“Is it surprising no scientist has ever come out here before?”
“Not really,” Peter said. “There are a lot of lakes in these high altitudes and not enough of us to study all of them. Even an easily accessible body of water like Lake Chelan, which is considered the twenty-fifth-deepest lake in the world, by the way, still hasn’t been fully researched.”
On the monitor, the equipment found the bottom. As the camera moved slowly across the plateau, Bet could see the pristine condition of the stone. No algae, no plant life at all, just patches of sediment that looked like the same sand as on the shore. The light on the housing illuminated only a few feet, so despite the clarity of the water, visibility remained minimal in the dark.
“Did it all look like this?”
“Yep. I covered this area of the lake bottom, and it all looks the same. It does slope off toward the middle of the lake, but that’s all I know. Nothing to see but rock, sand, and water.”
“What were you hoping to find today?” Bet anticipated something about glaciated surfaces. Peter looked at her with a grin on his Muppet face.
“Might be fun to find the train.”