Page 99 of It Happened on the Lake

“Doesn’t look okay,” she said, still viewing him with a critical eye. “Let me help you bandage it up.”

“Nah, I’m good.” He yanked his arm away, slipped into the small bathroom, and locked the door. He didn’t want to answer any more questions. He didn’t want to lie.

In the medicine cabinet, he found the Mercurochrome bottle, opened it, pulled out the stopper, and swiped the glass applicator over the cut above his eye. Then he attended to the scrapes on his arms and hands. The medicine stung. Not like iodine, but still. He sucked in his breath with each application until the burn slowed. Now he really looked like shit, his cuts discolored.

Great.

When the pain subsided a bit, he recapped the bottle and jammed it onto the shelf next to the tin of Band-Aids and Mom’s jar of night cream.

Just as Old Man Sievers’s dog started barking his fool head off.

Again.

“That miserable mutt!” his father muttered, scraping his chair back loudly on the linoleum as Rand came out of the bedroom and headed for the stairs.

“It’s irritating, but just a dog,” Mom countered, as Rand started up the steps.

Gerald scoffed. “Been a helluva morning. First the damned woodpecker and now—”

A frantic pounding on the front door stopped him short.

Bam. Bam. Bam!

“Watkins! You in there?” a gruff male voice yelled as the dog kept up his crazed barking. The incessant pounding continued.

Rand paused midway up the flight.

The voice came again. Insistent. “Watkins!”

“Yeah, yeah! Hold your horses.” Irritated, Gerald walked straight to the front door and opened it wide.

Old Man Sievers stood wild-eyed on the doorstep. He was unkempt as usual in camo pants and a battered army jacket, his graying hair standing straight up, his face white, his eyes wild.

“Can’t you get your damned dog to shut up?” Gerald said.

“No!”

“There are laws—”

“She’s dead!”

“What?” Gerald Watkins froze. “Who?”

“Don’t know,” Sievers said. “But she’s out in the lake.”

“What?”

Mom had come out of the kitchen. “Gerald?” she said weakly. “What’s going on?” She eyed the wild-eyed man and clutched the tie of her bathrobe.

“I’m tellin’ ya,” Sievers said to Rand’s father. “There’s a dead woman in the lake! Jesus H. Christ! You’re a damned cop, right? Go look for yourself!” Through the still open front door, Sievers’s dog kept up the incessant barking and growling against the fence.

“Oh dear God,” Mom said as Rand came slowly down the stairs.

The whole scene was surreal. Never had Sievers shown up at their door. The way everyone told it, the old man held a grudge against the police and had a reputation for hating cops. But that didn’t matter now.

Dad was already sprinting to the back door and flying outside. Rand was right on his heels, the cold air hitting him hard in the face. Then Rand saw it—the body—a woman—floating face down.

Rand’s stomach turned over.

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