Page 60 of It Happened on the Lake

Brady said, “That stuff’ll be the death of ya.”

“Not yet.” Gunn took a sip. “Chase and Tom were like oil and water, ya know. Couldn’t get along. Not since the kid went off to college and got involved with the antiwar movement or whatever. Tom, he was a World War II vet, decorated and all, survived Normandy, but his kid didn’t want to go to Vietnam, had a thing against that war, but flunked out of college, so was up for the draft. If you ask me, Chase Hunt turned tail and ran. Just took off.”

Brady eyed him. “And left his family to wonder about him?”

Gunn shrugged as he drank from his cup. “Been known to happen.”

“Maybe,” Rand said, “No one knows for sure.”

“That’s right, but what I do know is that the boy was missing. Never heard from again.” Gunderson’s face crumpled, his lips pursing, his eyebrows nearly touching. “It just about killed his father, maybe did in the long run.”

“Ancient history, Gunn,” Eleanor Brady said as she turned her attention back to the open page in front of her, then glanced up quickly to pin Rand in her uncompromising stare. “But your dad should know all about it. He lived through it. Tom and he were tight, right? Isn’t that what I heard?”

“Yeah.”

“Had to be tough on all of them. All of you.”

Amen, Rand thought,more than anyone knows.He kicked his chair back then topped off his cup.

Chelle had slipped away.

Good. Carrying his cup, he left the break room.

In his office, he found Chelle already at her desk. She was working busily on the contents of an old case file, as if she’d been at it for the entire time he’d been gone.

Yeah, right.

He caught a glimpse of Harper’s name on a note pad and his gut twisted.

Chelle didn’t know the half of what happened that night, he thought as he settled into his desk chair.

But she would. He read the determination in the set of her jaw.

What’s the old saying?The truth will set you free?

Maybe, in this case, it was just the opposite.

1968

Chapter 16

Rand was going out.

No matter what his old man said.

Not that Gerald Watkins could say much.

Rand was in the army now, had completed a tour in Germany, and was, after this brief leave stateside, on his way to Vietnam. So his old man couldn’t really tell him what to do anymore. Not that he wouldn’t try. At six foot two, Gerald Watkins was all muscle. He’d been a sergeant in the army during World War II, and, as a reservist, had again served in the Korean conflict. Afterwards, he’d become a police officer. Gerald Watkins’s adult life had all been about law and order.

So he’d been certain his son would be following in his footsteps.

Which, Rand thought,was bullshit. And yet here he was on his way to Vietnam.

But not yet.

In a black T-shirt and faded jeans, Rand yanked on his old pair of Converse high-tops and glanced in the mirror where he’d tucked a few pictures into the frame. He focused on the photo of himself in his football uniform from a couple of years back. A gangly boy then, not the man in the reflection tonight. He’d grown three inches and gained twenty pounds since his junior year at Almsville High. Now his hair was buzz-cut, his beard shadow beginning to show.

The kid holding a football helmet tucked under one arm, with pimply skin and wild black hair, was from another lifetime. An innocent, with free time before he’d gone through basic at Fort Lewis in Washington, then been shipped to a base in Germany where life had been regimented but relatively safe.

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