Page 5 of Heartbreak Bay

“No sign of anybody. They were justbabies.” Her voice shudders on that last word, but doesn’t break. If anything, it hardens. Her eyes take on a shine like metal, and she doesn’t blink. “I want this asshole. Bad.”

It’s hard to think past the coldness of the moment, the oppressive atmosphere of this place. When I blink, I imagine I see drowned babies in that car, and I feel sick. The cold, wet stench of the pond makes me dizzy. “You think one of the parents ...?”

“That’s the thing. I just don’t know. Could be the driver had car trouble and got abducted, then the kidnapper pushed the car into the pond to conceal it. Might not have ever seen the kids.” She sighs, and I hear the frustration. The anger. “I’m just guessing. We have to evaluate all the evidence up here. It’s pretty clear where the car went in; forensics will tell us whether it was pushed in or driven.”

I clear my throat of the taste of this place. “It could be that the driver—mom, maybe—made it out but couldn’t get to her kids. She could be injured, wandering around in these woods.”

“Could be, but it’s not likely. Deputy Dawg left one hell of a mess coming up out of that water; he swears that bank was undisturbed when he went in. Nobody crawled up out of there without leaving a trail.”

I hate having that possibility closed off, and I can see she does too. If the mother were wounded and wandering, it would have been an accident. A tragedy, yes. But this makes it so much worse. Sinister and terrifying.

“You calling in state?” I ask.

“Have to. But I’m going to try to make it my case. This pond is just inside Stillhouse Lake boundaries.”

“Half the pond,” the sheriff’s deputy says from where he’s shivering in his car. I wouldn’t like to get the look she gives him. “Other half is county.”

“Car’s in my half,” she says. “I’ll work with county and state. But Iwantthis.”

I nod. I still don’t know why I’m here, not really. I’m a private investigator, not a cop. I’m a friend, yeah, but the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation won’t take that for much. So I say, very gently, “Kez? Did you know them?” It’s the only thing I can think of that would make her this ... invested. But she shakes her head. “Then why ...”

She doesn’t want to tell me, and it takes her a long moment to find the words. “Javier and I have been talking about having kids for a few months now,” she says. “Just took the test yesterday, and ...” She lifts one hand, palmup, and her smile has an edge of sadness. “Turns out I’m pregnant. When I got this call, I was happier than I’ve ever been, and now, seeing this ... I don’t know, Gwen. I just know I can’t let this go. I can’t.”

I take her hand, though I don’t think that was what she was offering, and her fingers lock around mine.

She takes in a sudden breath. “I haven’t even been able to tell Javi yet. I didn’t want to just send an email. Our scheduled call’s coming up in a little while. God. I’ll probably still be here. With this.”

I can’t imagine the chaos of emotion she’s feeling right now. I try to put all the compassion I feel into my voice. “Is there something you need me to do? Off the books.”

“We’re going to be chasing up the owner of this car,” she says. “But I need a name and address for the 911 caller who called in the tip. Our system’s so old it’s practically antique. I know you’ve got much better tech to put on it.” She takes out her phone and types, and in a few seconds I feel my own phone vibrate. “I just sent you the full recording and data we got. The caller ID didn’t register a name, just a number and general location. I’m guessing it was a pay-as-you-go.”

“I can check,” I tell her. “You’re thinking if the person who called was out here, they saw more than they said?”

“Or it was the killer himself. Sometimes they do that. Play games.”

I shudder, a fine little contraction of my insides, because she’s right. Melvin Royal was a game player; it amused him to no end to taunt the police with clues that led nowhere. But mostly what makes me uneasy is the mental image of someone—someone who is just a shadow right now—making that call, enjoying his moment, while the mother of two murdered children struggles in the back of his car, or his trunk. It’s horrible, but I’d rather think of her as abducted and endangered than complicit.

The coroner comes over, and Kez straightens up. Visibly putting on her professional demeanor. I don’t know if he notices. “We’re ready to drag the car out, Detective. I’ve got all the pictures, including the bank on all sides,” he says. “And we need room on the road to preserveand sort evidence, whatever the water’s left us. Going to have to move all these cars.”

Kezia nods. “Tow truck’s on the way. How long do you think the car’s been down there?”

“I’ll tell you once we get the bodies out, but not long. Couple of hours, maybe. Cold night. That’s good, but the faster we can get the victims out of the water, the better.”

I realize that my vehicle is the last-in-first-out piece of the traffic puzzle; they’ll need me gone to squeeze the tow truck into position. “Kez, I’ll do whatever I can,” I promise her. I’m still a step removed from this horror; I haven’t seen the bodies. I desperately don’t want to get closer, because dead children hold a special kind of trauma, of heartbreak. A heavy weight of responsibility for those who bear witness. “Call me later?”

She just nods. Her attention is back on the pond. The car. The babies hidden from view.

I imagine myself in her shoes: newly pregnant, with a boyfriend deployed on reserve duty. Facing this horror. I would have done anything for Kez before coming here, but now ... now I’ll do anything andeverything.

Because I know she will give this her whole heart and soul.

I back out carefully; it’s nerve-racking on the narrow gravel road, and I find myself holding my breath and praying I don’t put a tire in a ditch. It feels like relief when I spot a dirt side road, and I quickly three-point a turn so I have headlights to illuminate the way out.

Behind me, the pulsing red-blue glow of the flashers looks like the start of a forest fire, something that will consume everything near it.

Who could do this?

Why?

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