Chapter 2 Warsaw Creek
Warsaw Creek
Waterlogged and stunned, I trudged up to the house as a black SUV pulled into the driveway, blocking the ambulance.
Car doors slammed, and a man shouted. These must be the parents. The father was wearing a sport coat and the woman was in a dress, but their clothes read more “business” than “date night.” Leah must have called them.
“Where’s my son?” The woman’s fists were clenched, and I could see terror on her face.
I made my way past the flagstone walkway, past uplights casting shadows of Japanese maple branches on white-painted brick.
“You need to let the ambulance pass,” I told the man.
The man turned his glare on me. His breath reeked of alcohol, but I wasn’t about to try to pop him for a DUI tonight. “Do you have any idea who I am? I’m Jeff Sumner!”
The name didn’t ring any bells. “There was an accident, in the pond—” I began.
The mother shouted at Sumner. “That stupid fucking pond! I told you that we didn’t need that stupid fucking pond to impress your idiot fishing buddies!”
The husband wheeled on me. “Where’s Leah? How in the hell did she let this happen? She was supposed to watch him!”
“Where’s Mason?” the wife roared. Her terror was palpable. It took me aback. Maybe because my own mother never reacted that way when I got hurt as a child. Mom would’ve lit a cigarette and patted me vaguely before turning on the television.
A paramedic at the back of the ambulance shouted: “In here! One person can ride with us. Now, get that car out of the way!”
Sumner didn’t budge. “What are you doing to him?”
“He needs a hospital!” the paramedic barked. “He’s going to die if he doesn’t get help.”
Sumner shook his head. “We can’t—”
His wife shoved him, hard. “Fuck that stupid church and its stupid rules! Our son is going to die if we don’t get him help.”
I stepped forward. “You can’t obstruct an emergency vehicle.”
Sumner growled, “I get to make the medical decisions for my son, and I don’t believe in Western medicine to—”
“He’s my son,” the woman hissed. “He’s my son and I’m giving permission for him to be given medical care. Get out of the way.”
I grabbed the man’s elbow. I was ready to arrest him if need be. “Sir, you have to let the ambulance pass.”
Sumner shook my hand off and went to start up the car.
The mother scrambled into the back of the ambulance, breaking the heel of her shoe. She leaned over Mason, tearfully stroking his hand as the paramedics finished intubating him.
This display of emotion over a child was foreign to me. I wrapped my arms around myself. My father had loved me, in his way, but he was a monster. My mother…She never had.
My gaze fell on the child’s foot, illuminated by the harsh ambulance lights.
Scratches curled around his ankle, terminating at the sole of the foot.
The blood there was red, fresh. If I hadn’t felt something pulling on him in the water, I would’ve wondered if the boy had cut himself running into the pond.
I recalled the resistance I’d felt as I’d tried to haul him out of the pond. What had held him down? What—
The doors slammed shut, and the ambulance, with full lights and sirens, howled up the driveway to the road.
The father lunged out of his SUV. “What the hell happened?”
I took a deep breath. “Mason was found in the pond, and he wasn’t breathing. They managed to get his breathing going, but he needs the hospital. You should be there with them.”
“How in the hell did this happen? Where’s Leah?”
I lifted my hands in a calming gesture. “Leah is safe.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Monica escorting Leah inside the house. Sumner saw her, too, and barreled toward her.
“You were supposed to watch him!”
I got between Sumner and the babysitter, putting my hands on his chest. “Whoa. Take a deep breath, now.”
He flung my hands aside and tried to shove past me. “I want to know what the hell she was doing if she wasn’t watching my kid!”
I grabbed his wrist. “Mr. Sumner, I cannot allow you to talk with her right now.”
That didn’t stop him. He lurched forward, and I turned his arm behind his back. I hated having to do it; he was out of his mind with grief. Deputies converged and pushed him back.
Sumner bellowed: “Get out of here, all of you! This is my house. I pay for it and I’m in charge here.”
“Mr. Sumner, I’m afraid that this is an active crime scene—”
He snarled at me, “Get the fuck out.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I told him. “You need to calm down and go to the hospital to be with your son.”
He struggled against me, then stopped.
“All right?” I said.
I released him and he shrugged away, casting off my hands in a sullen fit. He stomped off to his car, cranked the engine, and disappeared down the driveway.
I exhaled, relieved that he was gone.
I felt something leaning against my thigh. Gibby gazed up at me and whined. I absently rubbed his ears. In that moment, I felt leaden and cold, covered in algae.
Lights and motion blazed around me, and I felt myself receding from the churn and voices. I needed a moment to gather myself. Tonight had rattled me, and I felt myself mentally pulling away from the scene.
Gibby took my hand gently in his teeth and led me away to the quiet dark.
—
I drank coffee, sitting on the back patio of the house, with Gibby at my feet.
Crickets sang, but the bullfrogs were silent.
Gibby’s ears were pressed forward, and he stared at the pond.
I couldn’t look away from it, either. My eyes followed each rill as if I expected the boy to climb out of it, whole and unharmed.
Only a full moon danced on the surface. The morning news had reported that the summer solstice was tonight, the shortest night of the year. It felt far too long already.
I was scared. I was afraid of that green flash I’d seen, and of the memory of my mother that had come bubbling up from my subconscious.
Here, in the dark, I felt as if I was in that liminal space that belonged to dreams and visions of my father: his mutterings of dark gods, his prolific murders, and the terror I felt when trying to make sense of it all.
I wasn’t going back there, I vowed. I wouldn’t.
“Lt. Koray.”
I looked up. Deputy Detwiler, a fresh-faced guy who looked to be all of twelve, handed me another coffee. I took it gratefully.
“They’re questioning Leah.” He hooked a thumb through the French doors to the kitchen.
I nodded. I’d changed clothes, and I had dried off enough that my hair wouldn’t drip on the travertine floors.
I followed him into the kitchen, gleaming with stainless steel appliances and with a chandelier hanging over a granite island larger than a dining table.
The house was at least a century old, but the interior had been gutted for modern amenities, the ceilings lifted with stylish beams. But there was still original plaster in places, and I could feel spots in the floor that weren’t perfectly level.
My initial impression was that the Sumners were the type who would build new, all-custom designs and bear none of the headaches of old construction blistering through copper pipes and horsehair plaster.
I wondered what had drawn them to this place. Sentimentality?
Leah sat at a bar stool before the island, hands clasped in front of her. She twisted a small pearl ring on her left hand. Her tears dripped onto the granite. A bit of eyeliner had smudged beneath her eye. Poor kid.
Monica sat beside her, patting her back. “Deep breath. Just tell me what happened.” She wasn’t going to tell the girl that everything was okay, because there was no way it was ever going to be.
“Mason was playing with his Spider-Man in the living room.” Leah sniffled, gesturing to the living room, where a whole bucket of large blocks had been dumped on the hardwood floor.
A Spider-Man action figure lay in the center of the explosion of blocks.
“I had to go to the bathroom, so I went down the hall…”
Light streamed from a half bath beside the kitchen. I peered into the bathroom. Water speckled the bottom of the glass vessel sink, and the hand towel was damp. That checked.
“I was only in there for maybe five minutes, tops.”
“Did you have your phone with you?” Monica asked. Time flew if you were texting.
“Um. The family has a no-phones-except-for-emergencies rule.”
“What if you need to call for help?”
“I did. They just tell me to put the phone on top of the refrigerator.”
I made a mental note to check phone records to verify.
“What happened then? You were in the bathroom?”
“Yeah. I was washing my hands, and I thought…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“You thought what?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Nothing is ever stupid.”
Leah’s brows drew together. “I thought…I heard someone calling my name. From outside.”
“From the driveway?”
“No. I don’t think so. I heard it through the window.”
I ducked into the bathroom to inspect the window.
It was too high for a young child to reach, but it was slightly open at the bottom.
It hadn’t rained recently, but the sill was wet.
Not soaking wet, like after a storm, but there were droplets on the outside sill, and on the screen. Beyond the window was the pond.
“I got kinda creeped out and went to check on Mason. I came out to the living room and didn’t see him. I called his name, thinking he was playing hide-and-seek.”
“Where did you look?”
“He likes to hide under his bed. I checked there first. Then the playroom…” She recited a list of places she’d looked.
“Did you think he could get outside?”
“No? I mean, I always make sure the doors are locked and the alarm is set when I’m here.”
I crossed the kitchen to the door to the garage, where there was an alarm panel. I noticed that the readout said Fault Zone 16. I flipped open the panel and saw that zone 16 was labeled Kitchen Door. That door had been open when I arrived.
“Did you have any trouble arming the system?” I asked.
“No. I always do it right when his parents leave.”