Blur (Blur Trilogy) (10 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY

The da
y
was languishing under a somber gra
y
sk
y.
Thick clouds threatened rain, but held back, as if the
y
were waiting for some signal before dumping on the lake and the surrounding forest.

Although some of the trees were changing color, none were vibrant in the overcast da
y,
and most of those that weren’t pines were just a rubbed-out, lifeless brown, making it look like the area was alread
y
tired of autumn and read
y
to get on with the next season.

When Daniel parked near the boat landing, there were no other cars in the lot, but as he closed the door behind him he noticed Stac
y
waiting for him near the shore, wearing a charcoal gra
y
raincoat.

When she heard the door close, she turned and smiled at him.

“Parents drop
yo
u off?” he asked.

“I decided to walk. Like I said, it’s not far.”

A trail encircled the lake, and as the
y
hiked toward the inlet where Emil
y’
s bod
y
had been found, ever
y
so often the
y
came to abandoned campsites with chunks of charred wood l
yi
ng in makeshift campfire pits surrounded b
y
heft
y
rocks from the nearb
y
shoreline.

On weekends, kids came out here to part
y,
and man
y
of the fire pits were cluttered with glass shards from liquor bottles and scrunched, blackened, half-disintegrated aluminum beer cans that would never completel
y
burn up no matter how hot the campfires might get.

One of the pits was still smoldering, probabl
y
from kids hanging out last night after the football game. The dull, soot
y
smoke wisped upward, then quickl
y
disappeared, torn apart b
y
the stiff breeze coming in off the water.

B
y
the time Daniel and Stac
y
arrived at the inlet, the wind had picked up even more, and ragged waves were surging toward them across the lake.

The
y
came to a sixt
y-
foot stretch of beach that la
y
in sharp contrast to the rock
y
shoreline that surrounded most of the lake.

This area was well-known to the kids who lived in the area, and in the summertime when the lake warmed the
y
would come here to swim in the afternoons, or at night in the moonlight, or when the northern lights were shimmering and flicking in their anxious, eerie wa
y
across the sk
y.

The lake bottom dropped off quickl
y
after about twent
y-
five feet, and there were stories of people showing off b
y
jumping off Wind
y
Point there, where it was supposedl
y
deep enough to survive a fall like that, but Daniel had never met an
yo
ne who’d actuall
y
done it. When he’d asked his dad about it, neither had he.

Daniel stood beside Stac
y,
and as the
y
looked across the lake, he felt the brisk wind brushing against his face like tin
y
invisible claws.

A shiver slid through him. He suspected it wasn’t just from the wind and the weather, but also from being here near the place where a girl had actuall
y
died.

“It was right over there.” Stac
y
pointed toward a stretch of shallow water off to their right. “That’s where the
y
found her. I read about it. The
y
had a photograph in the pape
r—I
mean, not of her, but of the lake, the place where the fishermen were when . . .” She let her voice trail off.

He remembered seeing the article. “Right.”

It began to sprinkl
e—s
harp pinpricks of rain falling with unusual energ
y
in the wind that had now started kicking up whitecaps on the lake.

Daniel gazed at the sand around him, the cattails that grew near the wind-bent grass that fringed the woods. A dead fire pit la
y
on the edge of the forest.

“What now?” Stac
y
asked.

“I’m not sure.”

The
y
both took a little time to stare quietl
y
at the water and the untamed wilderness surrounding it. The silence that passed between them seemed appropriate to Daniel, almost like a small wa
y
of honoring Emil
y’
s memor
y.

Eventuall
y,
as the rain picked up, Stac
y
flipped her hood up over her head and Daniel turned up his jacket’s collar.

“Ma
yb
e we should go,” she suggested.

Sta
y
on this. Seek the truth. Learn what happened.

“Let me look around first.” He indicated for her to wait beneath one of the looming pines that lined the shore, then he paced across the beach.

He suspected that the footprints alread
y
in the sand were from people who’d been out here when the
y
were recovering Emil
y’
s bod
y,
or ma
yb
e kids coming out to the fire pit. Other than that, he saw nothing out of the ordinar
y.

For a few minutes he scrutinized the area, looking for an
yt
hing that might help him make sense of the events of the last few da
ys
, of the ghostl
y
apparitions he’d seen, but all he saw were the rough waves of the lake, the distant shore, the empt
y
swath of dark, rain-splattered sand.

No ghosts.

No dead bodies rising from the water or approaching him or speaking to him or grabbing him or pulling necklaces through their necks or beckoning for him to join them in the lake.

No apparitions at all.

Thankfull
y.

Go back home. There’s nothing out here.

He walked to the shoreline one last time and noted a few sticks that had washed onto the sand, as well as some clumps of leaves and sogg
y
tangles of weeds from the lake’s bottom. From the line of debris it was clear that the waves hadn’t reached farther up the beach in a long time.

Finall
y,
when Daniel found nothing, he decided Stac
y
had been right. It was time to leave.

He’d taken two steps toward her when he noticed the pair of glasses in the sand near the woods.

Even though the
y
were half-buried, he recognized them immediatel
y—
t
he
y
were the ones Emil
y
Jackson had been wearing in the photos at the front of the church during the funeral.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

Heart slamming hard against the inside of his chest, Daniel approached the glasses.

Emil
y
told
yo
u to find these. When she sat up in that casket she told
yo
u to find her glasses!

Rivulets of rain trickled down the sloping beach and emptied into the lake. One of them passed beneath the glasses and had washed some of the sand awa
y
in a narrow trench, making them more visible.

He picked them up.

One of the earpieces was twisted sidewa
ys
and the left lens was missing, but the
y
were definitel
y
the same st
yl
e as the ones Emil
y
had on in the photos, the same ones he’d seen her wearing at school before her disappearance.

“Stac
y,
over here.”

A moment later she was beside him. “What is it?”

Daniel held them up. “The
y’
re Emil
y’
s.”

“Are
yo
u sure?”

“Prett
y
sure. I mean, I can’t be positive, but the
y’
re the same kind she wore.”

“The
y’
re broken,” Stac
y
pointed out, with a trace of uneasiness.

“Ma
yb
e someone stepped on them.” But that wasn’t exactl
y
what he was thinking.

“Ma
yb
e.” Stac
y
didn’t sound convinced either.

“Well, we haven’t had enough rain to raise the water level this high, so the
y
didn’t wash up onshore. And the location isn’t right, I mean the distance from Wind
y
Poin
t—u
nless someone with a better arm than I have threw them off.”

He suspected that the cops would have looked around here, but the glasses were near the highest point on the beach and had been half buried, so it was possible that even if his father and his deputies had investigated the area, the
y
might have missed them.

Stac
y
said, “She might have taken them off and left them here if she went swimming.”

As if on cue, a gust of wind slapped cold rain against them. “It’s wa
y
too cold to swim,” he replied. “It was even colder last week. Besides, she never would have worn her jeans and shoes if she jumped in the water on her own, would she?”

“I don’t know.” And then: “What do
yo
u mean, ‘on her own’?”

“I mean she wouldn’t have decided to go in the water dressed like that.”

“On her own.”

“Yes, on her own.” He just went ahead and said it: “Unless someone pushed her in.”

“Or held her under.”

That was almost the same wa
y
Ronnie had put it the other da
y
when he was talking about his suspicions concerning his sister’s death.

Daniel looked at Stac
y
oddl
y,
unsure wh
y
she would have phrased it like that. “Yes. Exactl
y.
”

She peered at the nearb
y
bluff towering from the water. “Remember, the
y
were sa
yi
ng she might have fallen off there? The current could have carried her here into the inlet.”

“But then wh
y
would her glasses be all the wa
y
up the beach, if the water hasn’t risen that high?”

“But if she didn’t take them off, or if the
y
didn’t get washed up onshore after she drowned . . .”

Daniel had the sense that Stac
y
was thinking the same thing he was. “The
y
might have gotten broken if she was fighting with someone.”

“And she might not have drowned accidentall
y.
”

“No. She might not have.”

For a long time neither Daniel nor Stac
y
spoke. At last she said, “We should tell
yo
ur dad.”

“Let’s have one more look around first.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I guess the other lens, or ma
yb
e an
yt
hing else that might show us there was a struggle.” He slipped the glasses carefull
y
into his pocket. “Or whatever looks like it doesn’t belong out here.”

Then a thought.

“Look for a necklace,” he said.

“A necklace?”

“Yes. It has a silver chain and a locket.”

She gazed at him curiousl
y.
“That’s prett
y
specific.”

“Just a hunch.” He avoided e
ye
contact. “I mean, Emil
y
was wearing one in the pictures the
y
had at the funeral. I’m just wondering if it might have washed up onshore.”

“Don’t
yo
u think ma
yb
e we should wait for
yo
ur dad or the cops or whatever to get here?”

“Well . . .” He pointed to the water running off the beach and into the lake. “If the rain keeps up, it might wash stuff awa
y
before the
y
could arrive.”

“You don’t just mean stuff. You mean evidence.”

“Yes.” It was a little unnerving to sa
y
it. “Evidence.”

The
y
spent the next fifteen minutes crisscrossing the beach and the nearb
y
rock
y
shore, then examining the fire pit and the grass
y
areas nearb
y,
and even the cattails, but found nothing unusual. The other lens remained missing. Nothing else indicated that there might have been a fight there on the beach.

“Oka
y,
” Daniel said. “Let’s head back. I’ll take these glasses to m
y
dad, see what he thinks. Ma
yb
e he’ll be able to find out if an
yo
ne else has handled them. Fingerprints, that sort of thing.”

He was well aware that, though cops on television almost alwa
ys
tested for DNA, that didn’t happen so much in real lif
e—a
t least not out in a rural count
y
like this.

Not that there were man
y
violent crimes in the area an
yw
a
y,
but it was just too costl
y,
and besides, Daniel’s dad had mentioned to him one time that there was a huge backlog of DNA tests at the state level that had been requested b
y
law
ye
rs tr
yi
ng to get cases retried for people who’d alread
y
been convicted of crimes.

But ma
yb
e this time, if there was enough suspicion that someone actuall
y
had killed Emil
y,
the
y
might take it seriousl
y
enough to do the tests.

As he and Stac
y
neared the parking lot, she shook her head. “It’s reall
y
creep
y,
yo
u know, to even think that someone might have killed her. It’s craz
y
enough that she drowned, but . . . who would do that?”

Once again he remembered what Ronnie had said about his suspicions that his sister had been murdered. “I have no idea.”

“Just thinking about it weirds me out.”

“M
y
dad will get to the bottom of it. For now, let’s not tell an
yo
ne about the glasses. If it’s even possible that she was killed instead of d
yi
ng accidentall
y
we need to let his department take care of it. Talking about it to an
yo
ne might not be such a good idea.”

“Oka
y.
”

When he mentioned bringing up the glasses to an
yo
ne, he couldn’t help but think about where ever
yo
ne was going to be tonigh
t—t
he danc
e—a
nd how eas
y
it would be to let something slip, especiall
y
about news this big.

And when the dance came to mind, he remembered telling K
yl
e earlier that he was going to ask Stac
y
to go with him.

But for some reason, it didn’t seem like this was the best time to do that, not after finding the glasses and wondering about the possibilit
y
that Emil
y
had actuall
y
been murdered instead of just drowning accidentall
y.

Another opportunit
y
would come to ask Stac
y.

When? The dance is tonight.

The
y
made their wa
y
past the final abandoned campfire pit and back to the parking lot where the
y’
d first met up. There was an additional car and a maroon SUV parked there now near the boat landing. Probabl
y
fishermen. No one was in sight.

As the
y
were about to sa
y
good-b
ye
to each other, their e
ye
s met for a moment too long. Just that fraction of a second when
yo
u know
yo
u should look awa
y,
that if
yo
u don’t,
yo
u’re communicating something more than just passing interest.

He bit his lip and gazed past her at the water.

After the moment had lengthened into something that spoke volumes, he glanced back at her. She peered at him expectantl
y
from beneath her hood.

He felt the urge to brush awa
y
a wet strand of hair that had curled down and la
y
against her cheek.

Go ahead. Ask her. It’s not that big of a deal.

He was about to clear his throat and go for it, but before he could, she spoke first: “Well, let me know what
yo
ur dad sa
ys
about the glasses.”

“I will.”

“Thanks for letting me tag along out here.”

“It doesn’t feel so much like closure, does it?”

“Not quite.” The
y
stood looking at each other in the rain that wasn’t showing an
y
sign of letting up. “Oka
y.
” She hesitated. “I’ll see
yo
u later, then.”

“How about I give
yo
u a ride home?”

“It’s oka
y.
I’m alread
y
drenched.”

“Seriousl
y,
I don’t want
yo
u to have to walk through this rain.”

“That’s sweet of
yo
u, reall
y,
but I’m alread
y
prett
y
wet.”

Time passed, flitted between them. And then it just came out. “The homecoming dance is tonight,” Daniel said.

“I heard.”

“Are
yo
u going?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

“Oka
y.
”

“I um, ma
yb
e I could . . .”

She took care of that wisp of hair he’d been wanting to brush aside. “Yes?”

“I mean, if
yo
u wanted to, we could,
yo
u and I . . . that is, I mean unless . . . ma
yb
e—i
f
yo
u’re not doing an
yt
hing?”

“Are
yo
u asking me to the dance, Daniel B
ye
rs?”

Oh, man.

“Um . . . Yes.”

“Huh.”

“We could meet there, if
yo
u want?”

She looked past him toward the woods and he thought that it was definitel
y
a bad sign, that she was going to tell him thanks, but no, thanks.

But she didn’t. Instead, she gazed back at him again through the rain. “That’d be nice.”

Yes,
ye
s,
ye
s!

“Reall
y?
”

“Sure. Yeah. Do
yo
u have m
y
number?”

He shook his head. “No.”

She gave it to him. “Call me this afternoon.”

“I will.”

Then she tucked her head deeper beneath her hood and walked briskl
y
across the parking lot toward a trail that led to the closest neighborhood, which was reall
y
just a cluster of a dozen or so homes off a dirt road that skirted the forest surrounding the lake.

Once Daniel was in the car, he called K
yl
e to let him know what was up with Stac
y.
His friend congratulated him on being brave enough to ask her.

“I knew
yo
u had it in
yo
u.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Actuall
y,
no, I didn’t, but it seemed like the right thing to sa
y.
”

“Oka
y.
”

K
yl
e didn’t even bring up the topic of how weird he thought Stac
y
had been acting last night. “Ma
yb
e
yo
u gu
ys
can hang out with Mia and me afterward?”

“I’ll ask her when I talk to her this afternoon.”

“Cool.”

Then Daniel left for his dad’s office to give him the glasses and tell him that he thought Emil
y
Jackson might not have died accidentall
y
after all.