Page 50 of It Happened on the Lake

Her heart probably stopped due to natural causes. Jesus, who could survive what she had been through?

Yet . . .

A coincidence?

Probably.

But it just didn’t feel right.

He drove down the hill from where the hospital had been built and into the town where he’d lived most of his life. Almsville had grown in the past few decades. No longer a small town on the shores of a lake, it had become a larger bedroom community of Portland, more houses being built on the shores of the lake, newer businesses crowding into neighborhoods.

“So where’s the crime?” Brown wanted to know.

“Don’t know yet.”

“Because maybe there isn’t one.”

“Maybe.” He slowed for a stoplight, waited as cross traffic passed, and noted the Sold sign plastered over the For Sale sign in a window of the old Tastee-Freez where he and his buddies had biked for dipped cones and vanilla Cokes.

“You couldn’t possibly think Cynthia Hunt was murdered. Everyone we interviewed so far says the same thing: she set herself on fire on her boat.”

“I know.” The police had talked to the boaters who had arrived on the scene and a few neighbors who had caught sight of the conflagration in the middle of the lake. Their stories had been much like Harper’s.

But it didn’t sit well with him. From what he’d pieced together, Cynthia had somehow escaped from the facility where she was being treated for her dementia, found a way back to the family home. Once there she’d retrieved the key to the boat, then driven it, along with all kinds of memorabilia she’d loaded into it, to the middle of the lake. Oh, and she just happened to have an extra gallon of gas and a lighter to set herself and everything in the boat on fire. And just after Harper Reed had arrived at her grandmother’s house and looked out the window, she’d witnessed the fire. Harper had the common sense to call 9-1-1 but then tried to rescue Cynthia and ended up nearly drowning before being rescued.

He didn’t like anything about it.

Brown cut into his thoughts as the light changed and he made the next turn to the tree-lined street where the station was located. “If you ask me—”

He hadn’t.

“—I think Cynthia Hunt’s heart attack is a damned blessing in disguise. I mean, what kind of a life was that woman gonna have? Jesus, did you see her? What do you think she looked like under all those damned bandages?”

Unfortunately, he would probably find out. He always visibly appraised the bodies of the victims in his cases. Cynthia Hunt’s death wasn’t yet classified as a homicide and hopefully never would be. Nonetheless, Rand viewed all of the bodies in the deaths he investigated. And already he was looking into the circumstances of her bizarre death. He knew some people thought him morbid or that he might even get his jollies by viewing cadavers, but that wasn’t it. Not at all. It was a ritual he placed upon himself.

Ever since his tour in Vietnam, he’d forced himself to survey the grisly effects of man’s inhumanity to man.

Just to remind himself. Keep his thoughts clear.

“There’s a chance,” she said, “that you’re overthinking this. Because it’s personal. I know your dad and Cynthia’s husband were tight. Worked together, here,” she said, nodding at the station as it came into sight. “And you were neighbors, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So don’t let it cloud your judgment.”

He sent her a look meant to tell her to back off, but he wondered if she got the message. “I wouldn’t. I just want to check things out.”

“Okay. Fine. We just don’t need to make more of it than there is.”

“Agreed.” But he wasn’t going to let her tell him how, when, where, or why he was going to investigate. He parked in the lot adjacent to the station. It was a patchwork of a workplace, originally three separate buildings that had been linked together over the years as the town had grown. City hall, the police department, and the local jail were all connected by a series of hallways and staircases.

Brown was out of the car before he cut the Jeep’s engine.

She didn’t much like him, but he didn’t take it personally. She was bristly and smart, a girl who had gotten into police work because her own father had been murdered, the case unsolved and now cold as an arctic winter. Nonetheless, she was young enough to believe that by sheer will and determination she would be able to solve the case and bring her dad’s killer to justice.

He didn’t blame her.

Probably would do the same if he were in her shoes.

---