Dark Waters (6 page)

Patty nodded. “He mentioned them, didn’t he?”

“Like he knows about them,” Rachel said.
Like he
knows
them
, she wanted to add.

“Maybe he was just being poetic,” Patty said. “ ‘Spirits,’ you know, like a nature religion, like paganism.”

“Maybe,” Rachel said. Then, gathering herself with an effort, she added, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll get my guitar,” Patty said, and scurried off.

Rachel wrapped her arms around herself. She felt different—wrong, somehow—as if the encounter with the strange man had upset her internal bearings. But she hadn’t touched him or even spoken to him; all they had shared was a momentary glance.

In that moment, though, she felt as if she’d been laid bare for him. And perhaps the discomfort swirling in her now was because he had seen her for what she was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

R
ACHEL AND PATTY
parted at Duncan Street. Patty walked up the tree-lined avenue to her student apartment, blithely whistling “Indian Reservation,” and Rachel headed back to the diner. By the time she got there, Helena and Roya had already cleaned up and prepared for the next day, and Jimmy was just locking up. There was too much competition for the dinner crowd, so the diner served only breakfast and lunch. Rachel took a cursory look at the register receipts, saw no problems, and went upstairs.

After carefully locking her door, checking her blinds, and feeding Tainter so he’d stay off her lap, she took the computer from her closet and got online. The Lady posted a quick recap of the events at the park, and she was careful to phrase it so that it sounded like it might have come from someone involved, not just a spectator.

When she finished, she reread what she’d written and yawned. Then she deleted most of the adjectives, leaving only “handsome” and “scantily clad” to describe Kyle Stillwater. Otherwise it read like the overheated writing in a romance novel.

Yet even as she did this, she felt her own body shimmer with attentiveness. Just the memory of the way he’d walked across the grass, his body gleaming, his white hair billowing behind him, got her blood racing. She wondered if all the other women and girls were experiencing the same thing. If so, there were going to be some awfully lucky husbands and boyfriends reaping the benefits.

But not for her. Not yet, at least. She glanced at the clock and sighed. It would be hours before she could do anything about the nagging desire coursing through her.
Hours
.

ETHAN BOUNCED THE
basketball against the ground and made an easy jump shot from what would have been the top of the key on a real court. He’d gotten better at it since his tour in Iraq; in high school he’d set an unofficial record for missing the most open layups.

He turned as the gate on the privacy fence squeaked open. A dark-skinned Asian man, much shorter and slighter than Ethan, entered the enclosed yard behind Ethan’s house. He wore jeans and a faded Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt.

“Hey, Marty,” Ethan called to his brother.

“Got a beer?” Marty Walker asked.

“In the fridge.”

Marty went inside and grabbed two bottles. He gave one to Ethan. “I hear you had some fun at the ground-breaking today.”

“Yeah, you could say that. Some lunatic in a diaper tried to disrupt things.”

“I also hear you ran into Rachel Matre.”

Ethan frowned suspiciously. “And who told you that?”

“I’m a cop. I hear things.”

“Yeah, well, I did, but that was all it was.”

“So you didn’t talk to her?”

“I was
working
, Marty.”

Marty’s face remained deadpan, but he clucked loudly like a chicken.

Ethan turned and shot the ball at the hoop, but it bounced impotently off the rim. “She said she’d call me when she was ready, Marty, and she hasn’t called.”

“Was she with anybody?”

Ethan caught the rebound, shot again, and this time missed entirely. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I also saw Julie there, so why aren’t you asking about her?”

“Because I thought you were smart enough to stay away from
that
.” Marty set his beer on the patio table and caught the hard pass Ethan tossed at him. “I just can’t believe you haven’t at least called her. You’re taking the whole keeping-my-word thing a bit too far, if you ask me.” He jumped, shot, and hit nothing but net.

Ethan caught the ball on the first bounce. “Yeah, well, nobody asked you.” But Marty’s words only reinforced his own decision. It was time to stop waiting and take action. He dribbled to what would’ve been the three-point line on a real court, turned, and shot. This time, like his brother, he hit nothing but net.

PATTY PATILIA LAY
on her bed in her underwear, the window open and an oscillating fan blowing across her sweaty skin. The afternoon had grown hot and still, and the scent of the lake drifted up from the shore. It reminded her of Dewey, and that in turn reminded her of their night together. It also brought back the vivid memory of the mysterious man who’d interrupted the ground-breaking ceremony. But even more, it recalled Rachel’s story of the spirits living in the lake.

Patty had not been simply polite when she said she believed Rachel. As a child, Patty had regularly seen ghosts and faeries, and even as an adult she tried to stay open to the presence of the unseen. If someone as levelheaded and apparently normal as Rachel Matre believed there were spirits in the lake, then Patty had no problem accepting that.

And the
kind
of spirits Rachel described excited her.

She wondered, if she approached them and offered herself, if the spirits would come to her in the same way. The thought was alternately exhilarating and terrifying, but after her experience with Dewey, she
wanted
to have a regular lover. Her sexual experiences had been infrequent and seldom matched her expectations. Now she was ready to be shown again how a woman
should
feel under her lover’s hands.

She rolled onto her side and retrieved her cellphone from the nightstand. She pulled up Rachel’s number and was about to dial when she changed her mind. It seemed like the wrong subject for a mere phone call:
Hi.… Whatcha doing? … Oh, really? … Say, do you think your supernatural lovers might have some available friends?

Instead she sat up, stripped, and went into the shower, turning up the water as cold as she could stand it. She was supposed to accompany another songwriter at a local coffeehouse near midnight, and at the moment she was too distracted to concentrate. As the icy water pattered against her skin, she took long, deep breaths and tried to think of nothing but music.

THE AFTERNOON GAVE
way to an evening that, for Rachel, seemed to draw on forever. At this time of year, it stayed light until nearly ten o’clock, and people stayed on the streets—and in the parks—until even later. There was nothing to do but wait it out—which was more and more difficult as the darkness fell. She felt both tense and lethargic, and the desperation for contact with her spirit lovers was tempered by a sense of impending, inexorable doom.

Her cellphone rang at ten-thirty. She recognized the number and said, “Hi, Becky,” as cheerily as she could.

“Hey,” Becky said neutrally. “I hope it’s not too late to call.”

“I’m wide awake.”

“Me too.” She sighed—a sound that Rachel knew very well. “I’ve been going over the disaster in my head all day.”

“ ‘Disaster’?”

“At the park,” Becky said impatiently. “In case you didn’t know, that was a big deal for my boss, which makes it a big deal for me.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Have they found that guy yet?”

“No, he hasn’t popped back up. And he hasn’t made any statements to the media.”

“Maybe it was just a prank.”

“No. Garrett has a lot of enemies, and I’m sure one of them is behind it. We just have to be ready for the next offensive.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie.”

There was a pause. When Becky spoke again, her words had their normal bitterness, but the tone was somber. “I have a problem of my own too. I don’t know if you want to hear about it.”

“Of course.”

There was another pause. “I think I’m …”

The connection hissed so long that Rachel was afraid they’d been cut off. “Becky?”

“Nothing.” Becky sighed wearily. “It’s my own problem. I’ll deal with it. I’m sorry to bother you, Rachel.”

“No bother,” Rachel said, but Becky had already hung up.

She stared at the phone in her hand and considered calling her back. But their relationship didn’t work that way. They spoke when Becky wanted, and only about Becky’s problems.

And at the moment, Rachel had enough problems of her own.

CHAPTER EIGHT

D
ETECTIVE LAYLA MORRISON
sent the uniformed officer to the back of the apartment building to watch the patio doors. She’d seen too many suspects bolt out the back door when cops knocked on the front, and wanted to be certain this one wouldn’t escape. Mayor Ciarimataro had personally told the chief to handle this quickly, and lucky Layla got the job.

She knocked firmly—the cop knock that everyone in these low-income apartments knew all too well. “Mr. Stillwater,” she called, “it’s the police. Open up.”

It took a moment, but eventually the porch light came on and the door opened. A young man, clearly Native American, squinted out at Layla. “Yeah?” he said sleepily.

She held up her badge. “Detective Layla Morrison. Are you Kyle Stillwater?”

He looked puzzled. “Yes. Why?”

“May I come in?”

“Um …”

“I come in, or you come downtown.”

“Okay, okay. It’s just … I wasn’t expecting company.”

That proved to be an understatement. The tiny apartment was filled with pizza boxes, fast-food bags, and soda cans crushed flat and placed in paper bags. There was a TV, an old Xbox, and a few paperback copies of famous plays. On one wall hung the only decoration: an 8×10 professional glossy of Kyle Stillwater, his shirt open to show his chest and his long, shiny black hair. Across the bottom, written in bright blue ink, was the word “Super!”

Stillwater, dressed only in tight blue jeans, kicked aside enough detritus to expose the couch. “Have a seat.”

“No, thanks. Is anyone else here?”

“No.”

“Are you an actor, Mr. Stillwater?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you own a white wig?”

He blinked. “Huh?”

“How old are you?”

“Um … twenty-three.”

He looked it, too. The man who disrupted the ceremony, though, had been at least ten years older. Could it have been makeup? “Where were you this afternoon between twelve and three?”

“Here. I was sick, I think.”

“You think?”

“No, I was sick.”

He didn’t sound guilty or stoned, just sleepy and confused. He also wasn’t anything like the sex god described by the women who saw him at the park. Then again, he was an actor. “Someone who called himself Kyle Stillwater disrupted a civic event in Olbrich Park.”

Stillwater looked like he had trouble following her statement. “Someone …”

“There aren’t a lot of Kyle Stillwaters in the area. In fact, there’s precisely one.”

“Well, it wasn’t me!”

“Can anyone corroborate that?”

He looked confused at the word “corroborate.”

“Can anyone give you an alibi?” she repeated patiently.

“No, I’ve been sick. I told you.”

He wasn’t old enough to be the guy from the park, she thought, and he certainly seemed legitimately sick, or at least out of it. She could haul him in for questioning, see if he was on drugs, but her gut told her this wasn’t the guy. “All right, Mr. Stillwater, it looks like some weird case of identity theft. Someone used your name. But I’m going to leave my card so if you hear anything you can call me. You’ll do that, right?”

Stillwater took the card and looked at it. “Yeah, sure.”

WHEN THE POLICEWOMAN
left, Kyle Stillwater put the card under a magnet on the refrigerator, stumbled back to the bedroom, and was unconscious before he hit the mattress. In his dreams he swam without any need to breathe, past the faces of others similarly engaged.

AT MIDNIGHT, RACHEL
could stand it no longer. For discretion and safety she wanted to wait until later, but the need was simply too great. She’d been pacing her apartment, naked, for an hour.

The parks all closed at eleven, and since the Korbus kidnappings, the police had been extra-diligent about chasing people away. They also made frequent patrols during the night, but that wasn’t a problem. She needed only a small window of time unobserved. Once she got into the water, she’d be fine.

She put on her T-shirt, running shorts, and tennis shoes; locked the door behind her; and started down the street toward Hudson Park. The air shimmered with humidity, making halos around the pink streetlights. Insects swirled about them, and when she began to jog she felt tiny midges against her legs and face.

The sidewalks were deserted, and most of the houses were dark. She ran silently through the neighborhood of big lakeshore homes, breathing methodically and enjoying the feel of fresh sweat on her skin. The whole Arlin Korbus affair had made her slightly paranoid; she checked often for pursuit and perused shadows for unexpected movement, but she could accept this small-scale PTSD. Korbus was dead by her own hands, and the chances that another of his ilk lurked nearby were astronomical.

“Rachel!” someone called out.

She jumped, startled, and would’ve sprinted away had she not recognized the voice. A young man emerged from one of the side streets, also dressed for running. His hair was dyed jet-black with lighter tips, and he had huge hoop modifiers in his earlobes. She’d met him once before, on a night when she was too busy to stop and talk. “Ace, right?”

“That’s it,” he said with a grin. His inherent shyness overcame his attempt at blasé cool. “Ace is the place. Mind if I run with you?”

Something about his boyish friendliness made her smile. “Okay, for a bit. But part of the reason I run at night is for privacy.”

“I understand. Me, too.”

They ran three blocks without speaking, their feet making smack-slip noises on the concrete. A carful of teens passed and hollered something, but it was drowned out by their thumping bass. When Ace and Rachel reached Williamson Street, where Father Thyme’s coffee shop and the Sparkler pizza place were still crowded, Rachel stopped, put her foot on a fire hydrant, and stretched her calf muscles. Ace did the same, and she caught him surreptitiously trying to peer down the neckline of her T-shirt.

She laughed. From most men it would be either threatening or insulting, but it endeared this boy to her even more. “Ace, do you really think my boobs are that different from any other woman’s?”

He looked down. “Well, they’re all beautiful in their own way.”

She mussed his hair like a child’s. “Ace, really. I’m too old for you. You should have a girlfriend your own age.”

He still didn’t meet her eyes. “I did, sort of. We just broke up. She just seemed so … immature sometimes.”

“She’ll grow up. And so will you.” She nodded toward the street that led eventually back to the lake. “This is where we split up, okay? I’ll see you around.” She crossed the street before he could say anything else.

Still smiling at the smitten boy’s sincerity, she passed the looming trees of big Martyn Park, where dozens of people lounged in the shade or tanned beneath the sun during the day, and continued around the curve to her precious refuge, Hudson Park—barely larger than the low effigy mound it existed to protect. Soon she would be naked, caught in the carnal embrace of her waterborne lovers. She began to tingle with anticipation.

But suddenly she froze. In the night’s silence, the squeak of her sneakers against the pavement as she stopped might as well have been a scream.

A tall silhouette stood at the top of the hill—
her
hill—beside the effigy mound. He gazed down at the hidden spot where she undressed and entered the water. And the stranger did not move or look back, even though he must’ve heard her approach.

The broad shoulders and narrow hips were thoroughly masculine. Her first hopeful thought was
Ethan!
If it
was
him waiting for her, knowing she would come to this park, she would throw herself in his arms and make love to him right there. And never let him go.

But the instant she had the thought, she knew it was wrong. The silhouette
did
look familiar, but it was definitely not Ethan Walker. It was also too broad and muscular for Ace. Who was it, then?

Except for breathing, she did not move. And for a long time, neither did the stranger. Then he crouched and did something with his hands near the effigy mound’s head. She drew breath to shout, but sweat trickled into her eyes. In the brief moment as she paused to wipe it away, he vanished into the shadows.

She walked slowly forward, alert for any movement. She crossed the damp grass and reached the spot by the effigy mound, every muscle tense. In the faint illumination from the streetlights, she saw a dozen small rocks arranged in a circle a foot in diameter. She picked up one and held it toward the pinkish lights. It was a normal rock—the smooth kind found in any garden, or pulled from any stream or lake—but painted on it was a strange symbol.

She carried it up the hill to see it better. It resembled the Christian ichthus symbol but instead of graceful curves it had sharp edges and points. When she touched it with her finger, she saw that it was drawn on with mud. Her touch smeared one line.

She was about to toss it aside but at the last moment felt a powerful compulsion to return it to the ring on the ground. After she did so, she took several deep breaths and looked out at the water, which was normally inviting and irresistible. Now, though, it seemed subtly repellent. Encountering the stranger here had somehow broken the mood.

She could still swim, she knew. Chances were the spirits, with their intimate knowledge of her moods and responses, would have her moaning within minutes. Or she could go to another part of the lake. The spirits would be there wherever she swam, but she just couldn’t muster the desire to act on those certainties.

Who had the man been? And why did he look familiar? She knew many men socially, most through the diner, but she could not place this one.

Then as a little shudder ran through her, she realized who he was:
Kyle Stillwater
. She’d watched the half-naked Adonis stride into the lake, and he’d looked exactly like this man in silhouette. But why in God’s name would he be here? And what did that circle of stones mean? Had he built it or just examined it as she did?

It was all too weird. She turned and jogged back the way she came, then cut up three blocks before turning back toward home. Her feet echoed oddly, as if someone followed and matched her stride precisely, but whenever she looked back, the sidewalk was empty.