Page 21 of In Her Grasp

“I’m sorry, Mary, but your husband is dead,” she said, steadying her voice as she spoke to the dead man’s widow and brother. “We found his body yesterday.”

Mary’s hand shot out, gripping the edge of a nearby shelf for support. Her eyes widened, a ripple of shock passing over her features.

Jenna added as gently as she could, “His body was in the Sablewood Reservoir.”

She watched as the reality of her words sank into Mary’s understanding, leaving her ghostly pale. It was a reaction that Jenna knew all too well—the piercing blade of sudden loss that carved hollows into the living.

Across from them, Tommy’s response was less visible as he questioned, “His body, you said …”

Jenna noted his practiced control. It was the same kind of deliberate calm she’d seen viewing herself in mirrors after Piper’s disappearance.

The room lapsed into silence, punctuated only by Mary’s ragged and sharp breaths. Then Mary’s features contorted with a mix of confusion and despair, her lips parting to ask the question, “How... how did he die?”

“That’s what we’re trying to determine, Mrs. Larson. We were hoping you might be able to help us understand Mike’s state of mind before he disappeared.”

Jenna’s inquiry was gentle, almost coaxing, designed to unravel the truth without inflicting further wounds on Mary’s already battered spirit. But she knew the implications of her next question could shatter the fragile veneer of composure Maryclung to. Jenna hesitated the specter of her own sister’s unsolved disappearance lurking in the depths of her conscience.

“Do you think Mike might ever have considered... suicide?” Jenna posed the question carefully. At this point she wanted to get their opinions without revealing the backpack full of rocks they’d recovered—a detail that might shape their answers, and that she also thought would be cruel to disclose before she knew more about what that fact signified.

“Not Mike,” Mary whispered quickly as her gaze dropped. “I can’t even imagine him doing anything like that.”

Jenna could see that the idea of Mike succumbing to his inner turmoil was alien to his widow. She thought that the staunch resolve that underpinned Mary’s grief came from the same resilience that must have sustained her through two years of not knowing what had become of her husband—and before that, many more years of marriage to a difficult man.

“Mike? Suicide?” Tommy’s voice emerged from deep within, rough and tinged with indignation, as if the very thought were an affront to Mike’s character. “No way. He was too ornery and stubborn. Mike would never have given up like that.” His certainty resonated in the cramped stockroom, reverberating against the shelves lined with overstocked goods.

Nodding in agreement, Mary added, “Mike had his problems, sure.” Her voice was steadier now but layered with weariness. “But he always faced them head-on. Giving up wasn’t his style. He was a fighter, through and through.”

“Look, I’m not saying that Mike wasn’t self-destructive,” Tommy added. “The way he was drinking about the time he disappeared, he wasn’t going to live a long, healthy life. You could see that in his face, hear it in his voice, the toll it was taking on his health. But suicide? No way.”

Jake leaned forward, expressing the gentle yet persistent pursuit of truth that Jenna had come to recognize in him. “Whatabout enemies? Was there anyone who might have wanted to harm Mike?” It was a question that needed asking, despite the discomfort it always brought.

Tommy’s scornful reaction filled the space, his laughter bitter as it resonated against the boxes of stock that surrounded them. “Mike had plenty of enemies in Colstock, but murder? That’s not something folks around here would do, no matter how much they disliked him. This isn’t that kind of place. We put up with a lot in our town.”

Jenna noted the underlying tension in his voice. It was the kind of tone used by someone who wanted to believe in the decency of their community—a wishful thinking that often blinded people to the darker undercurrents of small-town life. Jenna’s experience had taught her that every place, no matter how idyllic it appeared, could harbor malice capable of spilling into violence. Her sharp eyes maintained a steady gaze on Tommy, trying to read what lay beneath his dismissive words.

Just as Jake opened his mouth to respond, Petey, a young store employee, appeared at the door. “Mrs. Larson? Mr. Cummings says he needs you back at the checkout. There’s a line forming,” he said, his voice carrying the unease of someone who didn’t want to be the bearer of interruptions.

Jake made a move as if to keep the conversation going, a protective instinct to maintain the flow of information. But Jenna caught his eye. With an almost imperceptible shake of her head, she conveyed her strategy without words. She needed Mary out of the room; she thought that Tommy might reveal more without his sister-in-law’s presence. Perhaps it was her innate intuition whispering to her, or maybe it was the years spent unraveling the patterns of human behavior. Either way, Jenna trusted her hunch.

Mary, still clutching the edge of the shelf, glanced between Jenna and Tommy before nodding at Petey. “I’ll be right there,”she said, her voice steadier than before but still tinged with sorrow.

Her form rigid with the weight of grief, Mary started to walk away, but then she lingered in the doorway. She leaned against the wood as if clinging to a lifeline in a sea of turmoil.

“You know, I’d started to think... well, I thought maybe Mike had found out where Sly went and joined him,” she murmured, her voice brittle like thin ice over a winter lake. “They were best friends, after all. It was the only explanation that made sense to me. But now—well, now I know how wrong I was.”

With those words, she stepped away into the brighter light of the store, leaving her brother-in-law behind in the dim stockroom with Jenna and Mike.

Sly?Jenna thought.Another name to check up on.

She turned to face Tommy, “Tell us more about your brother, Mr. Larson. What was he really like?” Jenna asked, her tone even, betraying none of the empathy she felt.

“Sheriff, you had some run-ins with him yourself, didn’t you?” Tommy replied. “Back when you were deputy, didn’t you participate in some of his arrests?”

Jenna thought back to those nights when she and Frank had driven to Colstock to scoop up Mike and take him to the jail in Trentville. The truth was, Mike hadn’t made much of an impression on her. He’d seemed like just another small-town drunk.

“I don’t want to rely on whatever I saw back then,” she replied. “I need to hear about him from a more personal perspective.”

Tommy exhaled deeply, his breath stirring the dust motes in the air. He dragged his hand through his hair. “Mike was... complicated,” he began, and Jenna noted the weariness in his voice. “Always angry, always ready for a fight. Nobody reallyknew why he was like that. Our mom used to say he was born with a chip on his shoulder.”

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