Page 196 of The Woman By the Lake

“I will,” he muttered, tucked her closer…

And then he was out.

That night, Riggs walked down the stairs after putting Ledger to bed. His boy had fallen asleep between them while they were watching TV, and he’d done this two hours before his bedtime.

Riggs had started to carry him up, but like a determined sleepwalker, Ledge had kinda woken and demanded to be put down. Still in hilarious sleepwalking mode, he’d gone through the motions of getting his pajamas on and making a pass at cleaning his teeth before he fell dead into bed.

Riggs pulled the covers up and tucked him in. Gia settled with a groan at the side of the bed, Riggs gave her a pat on her head, turned out the lights, and now he and Nadia could properly celebrate it was over.

But when he got downstairs, he saw the show they were watching was paused, she was stretched out on the couch, had her phone to her ear, and she was saying, “You were almost totally right, Maribeth. It was the assistant!”

After they woke from their naps, he’d filled her in.

Considering they were clearly going to celebrate later, Riggs changed trajectories to go get a beer.

He was uncapping it when his phone rang.

He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

He took the call, “Hey, Harry,” then sucked back some beer.

“FYI, brother. Got word. Considering recent developments, Seattle PD is reopening the file on Lincoln Whitaker’s supposed suicide.”

Standing in his kitchen, hearing that, Doc Riggs smiled a very slow smile.

FORTY-TWO

Aftershocks

Nadia

The cracking of the Mystery of the Hauntings by the Lake didn’t end with a whimper.

It exploded in a variety of bangs.

The people of Misted Pines were now dab hands at the media descending when a high-profile case sprung up in their illusory, quiet and charming (but still quaint) small town.

Though, Kimmy told me, even with me being who I was and a minor player in all of this, it didn’t garner near as much as the Ray Andrews and Crystal Killer cases. Maybe because Delphine Larue was a bigger name than mine (she’d been involved in the Ray Andrews nightmare). Maybe because people were experiencing Misted Pines fatigue. Maybe because, even if the outing of Roosevelt, Lincoln and Sarah Whitaker’s unconventional way of life could be salacious, in the end, the cases were old, the population was growing more and more cynical with decades of the constant barrage of a news cycle…

And fortunately, much bigger celebrities were embroiled in a bitter, ugly divorce that was hogging the national limelight and lighting TikTok up with a salvo of new content.

Even so, what happened that night at the stables wasn’t going to fade easy in a starry, mountain night.

Not even close.

It, and what happened after it, was going to cause loads more drama, and trauma, and get way more interesting.

It begins here…

Unsurprisingly, Jefferson Whitaker immediately started pointing a finger right at Sharon Swindell.

At first, she didn’t speak a word.

But Jeff had a lot to say.

The first twist was, he claimed he did not shoot his uncle and mother.

No.

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