Chapter 16
The fishing line went slack.
Michael Torres had been watching it for twenty minutes, the thin monofilament cutting across the surface of Hollow Pond in a gentle arc, catching the late-afternoon light.
The water was still. The dock was warm beneath his chair.
His tackle box sat open beside him, lures arranged by size the way he always arranged them, and a thermos of coffee steamed near his feet.
He came here most Tuesdays. The property belonged to a client who traveled in the fall and didn't mind if Torres used the dock as long as he locked the gate behind him.
It was the kind of afternoon that made you forget things. The sky was clear, the mountains were reflected in the lake, and the only sound was the occasional slap of a fish breaking the surface thirty yards out. Torres leaned back in his chair and let the rod rest against his knee.
His phone sat on the armrest beside him.
He had been scrolling through the news earlier, between casts, reading about the sniper investigation the way everyone in the county had been reading about it.
Both names he knew. Both names had crossed his desk at one point or another during his years as a deputy.
He picked up the phone. He wasn't sure who he was going to call. Maybe the Sheriff's Office. Maybe nobody. The thought was still forming, still taking shape, still half a feeling and half a—
The fishing rod jerked out of his hands.
He didn't hear the shot. He didn't feel himself fall forward. The thermos tipped and rolled off the dock into the water. The tackle box stayed open, lures glinting in the sun. The phone landed face down on the wood, the screen still lit.
The lake settled.
The rod floated for a moment, then sank.
Noah got the call at 5:47 PM.
He was at his desk at Ray Brook, working through the last of the overlap files, when Callie's number appeared on his phone. Her voice was controlled but the edges were tight.
"We've got another one."
He didn't ask who. He didn't ask where. He grabbed his jacket and his keys and was in the Bronco before she finished giving him the address.
Hollow Pond. A private dock on the southeast shore, off a gravel access road that wound through state land.
Twenty-five minutes from Ray Brook if he pushed it.
He pushed it.
The road narrowed after the turnoff, gravel giving way to packed dirt, the forest closing in on both sides.
A patrol car was parked at an open gate, lights flashing.
The deputy waved him through. Noah followed the dirt track through a stand of white pine to a gravel lot where Torres's truck was parked.
His driver's door was closed, the windows were up.
A real estate company magnet was stuck to the door.
He parked and walked toward the water.
The dock extended about forty feet into the lake, a simple wooden structure with no railing.
At the end of it, Torres was slumped in a folding chair, his upper body angled toward the water, one arm hanging loose, the other draped across the armrest. A tackle box sat open beside the chair. A phone lay face up on the planks.
Noah walked the dock slowly. His footsteps sounded hollow on the wood.
The late light came across the lake in long gold bands, catching the surface of the water and throwing it back in broken patterns.
It was beautiful. It was always beautiful in the Adirondacks.
That was part of what made the violence feel so wrong.
He reached the body and stopped.
Michael Torres was in his mid-fifties. He had gray at the temples.
That day he was wearing a polo shirt and khakis, the standard wardrobe for selling lake houses.
The entry wound was in the upper back, left side, just below the shoulder blade.
The round had passed through him. A dark stain spread across the front of the polo and onto the wood beneath the chair.
Noah looked at Torres's face. The eyes were half open, unfocused, still aimed at the water. His expression was not pain. It was surprise. Almost as if he’d been thinking about something and then wasn't.
Noah knew him. Not well. Not personally.
But he knew the name and the history the way everyone in law enforcement in the county knew it.
Michael Torres had been a deputy with the Adirondack County Sheriff's Office.
He had worked major cases during a decade of service.
He had resigned quietly after an affair with a married woman became public. The married woman was Rebecca Hale.
Torres had been the first person investigated when the Hale murders occurred.
Half the town believed he was the killer.
His alibi held. Then Travis Rudd became the focus, but Rudd disappeared before he could be arrested.
The case went cold. Torres was cleared but the damage was done.
He moved into real estate. Kept his head down, and fished on Tuesdays.
Noah stood at the end of the dock and looked across the lake.
The far shore was a wall of spruce and hardwood, dark green and impenetrable. Above the tree line, a ridge rose sharply, rocky and exposed at the summit. Five hundred yards. Maybe more. The longest shot yet. Through open air, across flat water, into a man sitting in a chair on a dock.
Noah heard vehicles on the gravel behind him. Doors closed. Callie appeared at the head of the dock, McKenzie behind her. Two forensic technicians followed with their equipment cases.
Callie walked the dock and stopped beside Noah. She looked at Torres. She looked at the lake. She looked at the ridge across the water. Her face went through the same sequence Noah's had.
“So he fires across open water. No concealment between the firing position and the target."
"He didn't need concealment. At that distance, Torres wouldn't have seen him. Wouldn't have heard him. The suppressor and the range handled everything."
McKenzie crouched near the body. He examined the wound without touching it, his eyes tracing the angle of entry, the blood pattern on the chair, the position of the arms. He stood and looked across the lake.
"So same shooter," McKenzie said. It wasn't a question. "Same method. Same everything."
He turned to Callie. "Three hundred yards on the first kill. Four hundred on the second. Five hundred on the third. Each one longer. Each one harder. He's not just getting comfortable. He's showing us what he can do."
"Or he's running out of easy shots," Callie said. “It was a private dock.”
"No. A man who can hit a target at that distance across open water chose his location deliberately. He could have easily walked up to him. No one around. No. He picked the hardest shot because he could make it." McKenzie looked back at the ridge. "That's confidence."
The forensic team went to work. Trajectory markers.
Photographs. The search for the round, which had likely passed through Torres and embedded in the dock planking or fallen into the shallow water beneath it.
One technician knelt at the edge of the dock and peered underneath with a flashlight.
The other began documenting the scene from every angle, the tackle box, the coffee stain where the thermos had tipped.
Noah picked up the phone carefully with a gloved hand. The screen was still on, showing a half-dialed number frozen in place. Torres had been reaching for it when the shot hit. He’d been trying to call someone. The number was incomplete, only three digits entered.
He set the phone back down exactly where he found it and stepped away.
A second team would need to access the far ridge, which meant a boat across the lake or a two-mile hike through state land.
The shooter's position would be up there somewhere.
A rock shelf. A flat section of ground with a clear line to the dock.
The same kind of terrain he had used twice before.
By the time they reached it, the light would be gone.
The search would have to wait until morning.
Callie canvassed the area while Noah worked the perimeter.
The property was isolated. No neighbors within line of sight.
The access road was gated, the lock opened with a key Torres kept on his ring.
The nearest house was a quarter mile through the trees.
A couple living on the road heard nothing, saw nothing.
An older man walking his property line around five said he thought he heard a car on the access road earlier in the afternoon but couldn't give a time or direction.
The ghost was back again.
Callie came back from the canvass and stood beside Noah at the end of the dock. The light was dropping. The mountains on the far shore were turning from green to black. The water had gone from gold to gray.
"Michael Torres," she said. "Former deputy. Real estate after.”
"Everyone in law enforcement knows him. He worked this county for ten years,” Noah said.
"Any connection to the other victims?"
Noah kept his face level. “Obviously. They all worked in the same county for decades."
Callie nodded slowly. She was thinking. He could see it in the way she looked at the ridge, then at Torres, then back at the ridge. She was running the names, looking for the intersection.
"His file says he was investigated during the Hale case," she said. "He was involved with the victim."
"That was a long time ago."
"I know." She paused. "Still... it's the same case. And Maggie covered it."
“Yeah, along with hundreds of other stories. That's a lot of overlap." He turned to face her. "It's a small county. Everyone's name shows up on everyone else's files."
Callie studied him for a moment. She didn't push. She made a note on her legal pad and walked back to the forensic technician by the tackle box.
As time passed, Noah stood alone at the edge of the dock and felt a cold knot in his chest. The names sat in his head differently now. Closer together. Something was forming.
His phone buzzed. A text came in: McKenzie just got word. Aspen was at the Sheriff's Office this afternoon. Walked in voluntarily at 3 PM for a follow-up interview. He was in the building with two officers when the shooting occurred. At least if the coroner’s time of death is correct.
Noah read it twice.
Todd Aspen had been sitting in an interview room at the Sheriff's Office at the exact time Michael Torres was shot on a dock thirty miles away.
His alibi was airtight. Two officers were witnesses.
There were time-stamped entry logs. There was no version of reality in which Todd Aspen fired the shot that killed Torres.
Aspen was off the board.
The task force was back to nothing.
Noah pocketed his phone and walked back down the dock. The wood creaked beneath his boots.
They now had three victims. Something connected them.
Noah reached the gravel lot and stood beside the Bronco. The mountains were going dark. The first stars were showing through the gaps in the canopy. He put both hands on the roof of the truck and leaned forward, breathing slowly.
C’mon. What are you missing here?