CHAPTER NINETEEN
C HAPTER N INETEEN
Bree stepped out of her vehicle and scanned the gray clapboard home. A matching detached garage sat on the other side of the driveway. Considering Jager’s loud personal style, the house was unexpectedly low-key. The county administrator lived at the ritzy, semi-isolated end of the lake, as opposed to the end where the public boat ramp and various campgrounds were located.
They walked to the door and knocked. Jager answered the door, teetering on pointy-toed, spike-heeled pumps. Poofy, unnaturally red hair sat atop a super skinny body, giving her a lollipop look. Her eyes widened. She almost looked surprised, but her eyebrows and forehead were Botoxed into full paralysis. “Sheriff, I’m surprised to see you here.”
Jager gave Matt a more appreciative full-body scan. “Mr. Flynn.”
“Ms. Jager,” Matt said.
Everything about Jager rubbed Bree the wrong way, like petting a porcupine backward.
Be nice.
“I promised to come personally.” Bree smiled, the expression feeling as brittle as spun sugar. “These creatures can be elusive. I’d like to see it for myself.”
“I appreciate you attending to my call personally,” Jager said. “Even though it took so long.”
Bree pressed her lips together to hold back the retort. She was in the middle of a murder investigation. “Can you show me where you saw it?” she asked.
Jager conceded with a nod. She pushed the door farther open. “Come in. I’ll change my shoes. I just got home.”
Bree and Matt followed her down a hallway into a great room. Leather pub chairs faced a massive stone fireplace. The kitchen shone with the warm tones of butcher block, brick, and copper. The entire rear of the house was floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the lake.
Jager changed into a pair of boat shoes and led the way through a sliding door. The back of the house sported a two-tiered deck. “I was drinking my coffee out here this morning when I saw it.” She pointed toward the dock, where a small sailboat bobbed on the quiet water. “There. Near the dock.”
She led the way down a flight of wooden steps to the sunburned lawn. Grass crunched underfoot as they walked past two kayaks stacked on a rack.
Matt gestured toward a muddy sluice on the bank. “It made itself a little slide.”
“What is that?” Jager sounded tired.
Matt walked forward and crouched. “The spot where it drags itself in and out of the water. There’re claw marks here too.”
Jager gave him an exasperated look.
Matt stood. “It means it’s come up on the bank here more than a few times. Is your house empty all day? If it’s truly a gator, they tend to be elusive and shy away from human activity.”
“So I should make more noise?” Jager asked.
Matt shook his head. “No. It’s good to know where it’s living. We don’t want it to move on. We want to catch it.”
“I suppose it would be bad optics for me to shoot it,” Jager said.
“Probably,” Bree responded. “I’ll call the zoo. They’ll have an expert that can help us trap it.”
Matt turned to Jager. “Do you have pets?”
“No.”
“Good,” he said.
Bree scanned the lake. No sign of a big-toothed, three-foot lizard. “Do you have security cameras out here?”
Jager shook her head. “Do we have to tell the public? I don’t like negative news, though I guess we’re at the end of the summer season.” She was always obsessed with optics and tourism.
“Unfortunately, yes.” Bree propped a hand on her duty belt. “But how do we keep the locals from having alligator-hunting parties?”
Matt pulled his shirt away from his chest, as if cooling himself. “We deal with more than enough hold my beer moments as it is.”
“On that we agree.” Jager nodded.
Bree imagined a flotilla of canoes full of locals armed with shotguns and flashlights. “Problem is, we can tell them a hundred times not to hunt the gator, but we all know some will anyway.”
Jager stared at the muddy slide in the lake bank. “It’s the last thing I want to do, but we should tell the public. Someone could get bitten.” She shuddered.
“Let me talk to the zoo before we make an announcement,” Bree said.
“Make sure that happens today, before this thing eats somebody’s toy poodle. We don’t need that kind of bad press.” Jager turned back toward her house. “Thankfully, it’s the end of the season. Otherwise, we’d risk losing our summer crowd.”
Bree thought the gator-in-the-lake news would attract more people than it would repel, but she said, “I’ll keep you updated on our plans.” She turned to leave.
“You need to hold a press conference about that double homicide too!” Jager called to her back.
“I will.” Bree waved a hand without turning around.
“Don’t blow this off, Sheriff,” Jager warned. “The public has a right to know.”
In the SUV, Bree called the zoo director. “You’re on speaker. Matt Flynn is also here.” She explained about the alligator.
The director said, “That’s two calls from your department in two days. First a wolf pup and now an alligator.”
“How is that wolf pup?” Matt asked.
“Being treated for worms and malnutrition,” the director said. “We’ll keep him in quarantine until we’re sure he’s disease-free. Then we’ll look for a permanent placement at a zoo or sanctuary, depending on what the DNA tests show.”
“What do we do about the alligator?” Bree asked.
“You have a juvenile alligator on your hands. It was probably a pet that got too big for its enclosure, so the owner dumped it in the lake. Best course of action is to catch it. I’ll send a handler out to assess the situation. We should be able to devise a trap.”
“Is it likely to be dangerous to the public?” Bree asked.
“At three feet in length, the animal will primarily consume fish, frogs, snakes, turtles, maybe birds.”
“Small dogs?” Matt asked.
“Possibly. In the wild, they’re not likely to approach a human unless they feel threatened. They’re shy, but if this one was a pet, it’s been fed by humans. It might have no natural fear. We don’t know how it will behave.”
“OK.” Not good.
“Best case is that we remove it from the lake,” the director said.
“I agree, but what happens if we can’t find it? It’ll die over the winter, right?”
The director hesitated. “Not necessarily.”
“Wait.” Bree pressed both hands to the wheel. “I thought alligators couldn’t survive winter.”
“Theoretically, they can. In cold snaps, I’ve seen them in frozen swamps in the Carolinas. They put their snouts above the waterline and the water freezes around them. It’s the freakiest-looking thing.”
“So if we don’t catch it, it hibernates and wakes up again next spring?” Bree did not need this on top of a double homicide investigation.
“Brumation is the form of hibernation used by alligators,” the director corrected. “But we don’t know what would happen. This wouldn’t be a cold snap. A prolonged, harsh winter would make them vulnerable to all sorts of issues. That said, alligators haven’t changed in eight million years. In fact, they didn’t look much different thirty million years ago. They are survivors, practically dinosaurs.”
Wonderful.
Bree didn’t want the animal to suffer. It wasn’t the alligator’s fault some dumbass let it loose in a New York lake. But it did not belong here. She did not want to deal with this alligator next year. If it survived, it would grow larger. “I’d rather not test any theories.”
The director laughed. “We’ll do our best. You’re sure it’s only one?”
A few seconds of silence ticked by. Bree wasn’t going there. “Can I give your name to the press? They’re going to have questions once I issue a statement.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” Bree connected him with animal control, instructing her officer to keep her in the loop. After ending the call, she dictated a statement for the press into her phone while she drove.
“You’re not going to do a press conference about the alligator?” Matt asked.
“I don’t have time for that.”
“You’re going to get nonstop calls from reporters.”
“Yep, and every citizen that spots a floating log will be calling in.” Bree had a headache already. “Let’s hope we can catch it before everyone loses their mind.”
Matt’s frown said he doubted it.
She sighed in resignation. “I’ll talk to the press tomorrow.”
They stopped at the station to see Lindsay’s car in the rear lot, where Bree had instructed her to park so Claire could be moved with the least exposure. Inside, Bree handed Claire her bag. Bree wrestled with keeping secrets from Claire. But what good would telling her about her parents’ fake charity or lack of legal licenses do? The girl looked beaten down enough. Bree decided to hold off until she had some answers to go along with the bad news.
Marge stood in the back hall, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag. “The press has been calling nonstop.”
“About the murders or the alligator?” Bree asked.
“Both,” Marge said.
Matt gave Bree a Look.
“OK, OK. I’ll do a press conference in the morning.” Bree headed for the door. “Tonight, I need an hour to clear my head.”
Matt led the way to the exit. “I want to work 24/7 until we catch this scumbag, but it’s not possible. Hopefully, we’ll be able to look at the case with fresher eyes after a little downtime.”
She drove to the farm.
Dinner with the kids proved to be the best distraction. Afterward, Bree and Matt followed Luke out to the barn to feed the horses.
“I’ll bring them in.” Matt grabbed a lead rope and headed for the pasture.
Bree measured grain while Luke climbed into the loft and tossed down a bale of hay. He jumped off the ladder and pulled a pocketknife from his pocket to cut the baling twine. “I texted Claire Mason today, but she didn’t answer me.”
“It was nice of you to reach out. I’m sure she appreciates it, even if she can’t respond.”
Luke nodded, sorrow brimming from his eyes. “I thought I probably understand better than anyone what she’s going through.”
Bree dumped feed into Cowboy’s bucket and met Luke in the aisle. “Are you OK? This must bring back bad memories.”
“It does.” He tossed hay over his horse’s half door. “But it’s not like I don’t think about Mom most days anyway.”
Bree put a hand on his shoulder. “I think about her all the time too.”
Luke brushed a single tear from his face. “I try to think good thoughts about her—to remember all the fun we had—but I still get sad.”
“Me too,” Bree said.
“Sometimes, when I’m having fun or I haven’t thought about her for a day or two, I feel guilty.”
“She wouldn’t want that.” But Bree understood survivor’s guilt very well.
“I know, but I can’t help it.”
“I understand. I feel guilty for not being here when your mom needed me.” Had Bree ever admitted that to Luke before? Probably not. It hurt to think about it, let alone talk about it. But if she wanted him to process his emotions in a healthy way, she had to model that behavior, right?
Adulting—parenting—was fucking hard.
“You do?” He brightened.
“Yes. We feel what we feel, even when those emotions aren’t always based in logic. If we suppress our feelings, they don’t go away. They become more twisted.”
Luke gave her a solemn nod, the look in his eyes far too wise for his years. “I wish I’d been older, so I could have protected her. That’s not very logical.”
“And I wish I’d been here, even though I couldn’t have predicted or prevented her death.” She squeezed his shoulder. “We know in our hearts that neither of us was responsible. But her being gone hurts so much, we want her back. We want the impossible, and knowing we can’t have it hurts all over again.”
“It’s better now than it was last year.”
“That’s good. We will move forward. We have no choice but to live. You mom would have wanted you to have the best life.” Pain speared Bree’s heart as she thought of her own guilt over the happiness she’d found after her sister’s murder. Erin’s death had forced Bree to open her heart. She often felt as if she’d stolen Erin’s life and happiness. Another emotion not based in logic but solidified in her heart just the same.
“Anyway, I’ll leave Claire alone unless she wants to talk.”
“That’s probably a good plan.” Bree released his shoulder. “And I’m glad you talked to me. You can always talk to me, OK?”
“You too,” Luke said.
Their conversation was interrupted by Matt bringing his Percheron, Beast, down the aisle. Luke finished distributing hay and helped Matt bring in the rest of the horses. After Luke returned to the house, Matt leaned against the barn wall and scratched Beast’s neck. “Everything OK with Luke?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I think he’s more mature than I am.” Bree did not always process her emotions in a healthy way. In her past, she’d done the very thing she’d warned Luke about. She’d suppressed everything—good and bad—and stuffed it into a deep, dark recess of her mind, where it thrived and grew like a mushroom.
And now, according to her therapist, because she’d never allowed herself to actually feel those emotions, she had to open the doors and windows and let in the light, to accept the good and bad memories, and experience her trauma all over again.