Chapter 19 Missing
Missing
Something soft brushed my face, tenderly, caressing…and then a bright pain dragged along my ribs.
I spat out the mouthpiece and struggled to orient myself, flailing against that grip twisting into my side. A stream of bubbles trailed to my right…That way must be up. I kicked hard to rise to the surface of the water.
Something snagged my right fin. I thrashed until it came free. Lopsidedly, I rushed upward, where my bubbles led me. My lungs burned, and my vision narrowed.
A hand grabbed me under my arm, hauling me up, up into the light.
I broke the surface, gasping.
Jasper’s face bobbed beside me. It was his hand under my arm, not the Rusalka’s. “Are you okay?”
I coughed up water and nodded, giving him the thumbs-up.
“Let’s get to shore.”
I flopped to shore with Jasper’s help, relieved to reach the beach and feel land under my naked foot. Jasper placed the bag of heads beside me and sat on my other side.
“Take long, even breaths,” he advised. He reached for my severed hose, and stared at my foot, missing a flipper. Blood was trickling down my bare foot from the wound in my calf. I’d popped some stitches. The neoprene on the right side of my suit was perforated, and there were scratches on my tanks.
“What the hell happened?” Jasper asked.
“I don’t know. Something was around my throat.” I unzipped the neck of my suit. I wasn’t bleeding anywhere else, at least.
I didn’t want to tell him about the Rusalka. “I…must’ve gotten hung up on some debris down there. You saved my bacon.”
“You’ve gotta be careful down there, Koray. It’s dangerous.”
My gaze fell to a random spot on the beach, and I crouched before something shiny.
I picked up a river pearl, green and blue, and iridescent in the sunshine.
—
I drove out to the Lister house to break the news. I’d been told to leave Sumner alone, but I had not been explicitly told to keep my distance from Lister. I was hoping that since he knew me, he might be willing to open up to me about more than the cousins.
As I drove, I passed a billboard for the sheriff’s reelection campaign. Sheriff Wilson grinned in his dress uniform before an American flag, exhorting voters to Keep Law and Order in Bayern County.
I made a face as I passed. I had never had any particular feelings about the sheriff before, positive or negative, until he told me to leave Sumner alone. Fuck that, and fuck him.
When I glanced up at the billboard, I saw in my rearview mirror an advertisement for Mark Lister’s car dealership.
Call Mister Lister for the best deals on trucks.
Mister Lister! Mark stood in a suit before three shiny trucks, giving two thumbs up to the viewer.
Those trucks probably were at the bottom of the sinkhole.
Lister’s house sat in a pleasant suburban development. An HOA clearly ruled: all the two-story houses had the same beige color scheme and exactly the same carpet of weed-free grass. They were apparently allowed three hostas and a single hydrangea bush, but no more vegetation.
I pulled into the Lister driveway, where a basketball hoop had been set up. I wondered how Ross was doing. I didn’t see a ball or a bike in the driveway.
I knocked at the front door.
I waited, scanning the porch, not seeing any doorbell cameras, but noticing that mail was halfway stuffed into the mailbox. One envelope contained a bill and was marked Past Due in red.
The door eventually opened. Lister was in a rumpled T-shirt. He didn’t look like he’d shaved or combed his hair in days.
“Mr. Lister, I’m sorry to bother you.”
He crossed his arms and narrowed his gaze. “I thought I told you to leave me alone.”
“I have some bad news, and I wanted to tell you in person.”
“More bad news?” He seemed too exhausted to fight me. He looked like he hadn’t slept, and maybe I could use that to my advantage.
“Is there somewhere we could sit?”
“Yeah. Come in,” he said at last.
The house was painted in shades of fashionable gray, with a living room that seemed to be missing some furniture. There were blank spots on the walls, where paint had faded around absent pictures. This was décor I’d come to associate with divorced dads.
I sat on a recliner opposite a large television, and Lister sat on the couch. Neither one of us touched the gaming chairs on the floor.
“Before I begin…can I ask how Ross is?” I asked.
A cough echoed behind me. I turned to see Ross in the hallway, dressed in a T-shirt and basketball shorts.
“Hi, Lt. Koray,” he said.
“Hi, Ross. I hope you’re doing well.” I was honestly surprised he remembered me, given his delirium when I last saw him.
“Getting better. Doc says I should be back to normal in a week or so.” He gave a half smile.
“He’s taking his horse pills on schedule,” Lister confirmed.
Ross made a face. “I have to take these steroid pills, but I haven’t turned into the Incredible Hulk yet.”
“Give it some time,” I said. It sounded like he was being treated, and he had plenty of color to his face. I was relieved.
Lister nodded at his son. “I need to talk to Lt. Koray. Would you be okay with giving us some privacy?”
“Sure.” Ross gave an awkward wave and drifted off down the hallway.
I waited until I heard a door close before speaking again.
“I wanted to tell you that there’s been an incident involving your cousins Amos and Patrick.”
He leaned back against the couch and crossed his arms over his chest. “No, I’m not gonna bail those guys out if they’re in trouble again.”
I looked askance.
“My family treats me like a cash cow,” he admitted. “I’m not doing it anymore. I have a son to look after.”
“I understand. It’s nothing like that, Mr. Lister. I’m afraid Amos and Patrick have died.”
He blinked, and froze. I waited for him to speak again, watching the knowledge register on his face. “Dead? What…what happened?”
“We don’t have the details yet, but they were found in the quarry.”
He sagged forward and covered his face with his hands. “Oh no.”
“I’m so sorry. Were you close?”
“No. I saw them, like, twice a year, at holidays. It…” He shook his head. “Do their parents know? They live out of state. I probably have an address for them, somewhere…”
“Our office will take care of notifying them. I just wanted to talk with you about it.”
He exhaled into his hands. “How did it happen?”
“That will be for the coroner to say, but there were signs of violence. Did they have any enemies?”
He removed his hands from his face and stared at the ceiling.
“No. They’re party boys. Most of the trouble they get into is just for stupid pranks—drunk and disorderly, that sort of thing.
Took some cars from the dealership, joyriding.
They got arrested once for stealing the statue in front of the diner in town. ”
I remembered that diner. It had a giant sculpture of a boy in overalls holding a plate of pancakes. At some point, it disappeared in the night and reappeared in a cornfield.
“Everyone likes them,” he whispered. “They never do anything really wrong, just dumb shit.”
He was referring to them in the present tense, which suggested that the news of their deaths was indeed a surprise. I waited in the silence, hoping he would speak more.
When he didn’t, I ventured: “There have been several suspicious incidents involving water lately. They seem to center around you and Jeff Sumner and Quentin Sims. I have to ask you if you’ve made any enemies I should know about, in order to protect you and your family.”
He slipped his hand over his mouth and shook his head. “No. There’s no one you can protect me from.”
It was bad form to interrogate someone during a death-notification call, but I pressed further. “I know the three of you were accused in the disappearance of a girl twenty-five years ago. I can’t help but think that someone blames you and is looking for revenge.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath and stood. “Thank you for telling me, Lt. Koray. I have to go make some calls.”
I stood and nodded. “Please call me if you think of anything. I’m so sorry for your losses.”
He stared into the distance, looking haunted. “So am I.”
—
I needed answers from Viv, answers to questions that I couldn’t ask anyone else.
Was there something lurking in the depths of the water, this Rusalka? Was she real? Though it defied rationality, I couldn’t deny what I felt.
I had been willing to accept that my father’s Forest God was real, after a fashion. Was this another face of the same entity? Or was this something different, an adversary? The Forest God demanded women as sacrifices. The Rusalka took men. What other hungry spirits might exist in the shadows?
I rolled up her driveway, and the hair on the back of my sweaty neck stood on end.
Viv’s front door was wide-open.
After radioing my location for backup, I crept up the porch quietly, then knocked on the doorframe. My right hand rested on the butt of my service pistol.
“Viv, it’s Lt. Koray. Are you home?”
I sucked in my breath as a snake crawled out of the darkness of the house.
I held my breath as the four-foot-long rat snake crawled over my shoe.
Its spine made nervous ripples as it moved over me and across the porch, to disappear in the lattice underneath.
For that time, the only sounds were the rasp of its scales against shoe leather and wood, and the thundering of my heart.
I stepped inside, mindful not to touch anything else. “Viv?”
I stood in her dark parlor. The place had been tossed. Photographs on the walls had been dashed to the floor, and my shoes crunched on the broken glass of their frames. I frowned—no burglar would do that. This was personal.
The cages that had contained the opossum and raccoon babies were empty, and my heart leapt into my throat…the animals. There was no sign of the opossum joeys and raccoon kit, or of the fox.