Salvage (23 page)

"You and me both." He patted Owen on the shoulder. "Hey, listen, you doing anything right now? I could use someone to talk to. Or
at
, I guess."

Twenty minutes later they had crossed town in separate vehicles and were sitting in a small, bright, under-populated diner close to where the Trent River opened up to Little Lake. Where Chapel Lake had a church steeple at its center, Little Lake had a large fountain, its white spray caught in a strong wind while Jet Skis zipped back and forth through the rainbow it created.

A grumbly server brought their bills with the coffee, slapping them down on the wobbly table overlooking the lake. A tuft of thick black hair rose from the back of his white T-shirt, his apron stained with grease and blood.

"You know, most places, it's kind of expected cops get their coffee free," Selkie said with a seemingly smug grin.

"Don't I pay your salary? I gotta give you free coffee, too?"

The server wandered back to the grill, where he cracked some eggs and turned sausages for the only other paying customer, an old man sitting at the counter reading the paper.

"The guy's a grumpy old bastard, but I'd take his coffee over Timmie's, any day."

Owen raised his mug in a half-hearted cheer, and blew on it while Selkie poured sugar into his own. "You know, there's a lot of folks in town who think that lake is cursed." As if predicting a reaction from Owen, he held up a hand. "Not me, of course. I love the lake. Used to get drunk on Camp Island just about every weekend with a bunch of crazy kids from school. Even got my first hand job from a trailer park girl in a rented canoe on Heron Bay." He laughed at the memory. "This old dude trawled through on a fishing boat and just about lost it when he saw this girl, I don't even remember her name, with her bikini top yanked down pushing up her tits, jerking on my dick like she was pulling a stubborn boat motor."

The both of them chuckled at that, though Owen did so mainly to be genial.

"So no, I've never thought it was cursed. But some of the older kids had stories. Weird stories. Shit you wouldn't believe—
couldn't
believe, if you wanted to keep your sanity, you know what I'm saying?"

Oh, I know
, he thought, and said, "I think so."

Selkie chuckled scornfully, like Owen had no idea. "My dad," he said, "he always thought the Blessed Trinity people were murdered in that lake. He was a cop, too. Got a cop's mind. Always on the lookout for trouble."

"Murdered?"

"My dad was watching the flood, like everyone else, but he got this funny idea in his head, like he wanted to sit in that old wooden boat of his while the valley filled up. Like a rubber duck when some kid's running a bath."

Owen flashed to the tub, Crouch standing over him, pushing him under while the Blessed Trinity watched. He shuddered unintentionally.

"Anyway, funny idea, right? He was floating for a while, just enjoying himself while the current took him from door to door, all the houses and buildings people had been too poor or too cheap to move up the hill. You know, bouncing back and forth like a pinball, pushing himself off with a paddle so he wouldn't beach himself on someone's porch. Ma thought he was nuts, and I guess he probably was a bit nuts by then. He got shot on duty, the bullet lodged near his spine, not paralyzing him, thank God, but bad enough he had to go on Disability. He woulda got fired for drinking on the job eventually, if he hadn't, most likely, and after that, he just loafed around most of the day watching
Barney Miller
and reruns of
Dragnet
. You remember that one? With the song?
Duhhh duh-duh duh
," he sang unmusically. "So the old man's probably drunk as a goddamn skunk, probably giggling his ass off down there, when he sees two or three guys come out back of the church and head up the hill. He thought nothing of it, thought maybe it was the Trinity people coming back to get something they'd forgotten in the church before it was underwater for good. But a little while later, he thought he heard a gunshot."

"A gunshot?"

"Just one, real faint, so as it could have been the wind, or his imagination, or one of the little kiddies up there on the hill, for all he knew. It didn't occur to him until later, when Crouch and the others were found missing—that's a weird expression, huh? '
Found
missing.' Like 'living dead.' It's a, what do you call it?"

"An oxymoron. Your father didn't report it?"

"He did, but no one believed him. He was drinking a lot by then. They told him it was probably just a tree branch cracking under the water. Anyway, it didn't hit him until the rumors started going around, you know how those busybodies are, and the paper that week with this big headline, 'Whatever Happened to the Blessed Trinity Cult?' Then he started thinking it could have been the scream of someone drowning, down there in the church. Can you imagine? I mean, I'm not saying I believe it, but if it's true—how could God let something like that happen?"

Owen thought to say
The Lord works in mysterious ways
, but after what had happened in the lake this morning, he thought better of it. "Your father, is he still around?"

"No sir."

"Dead?"

Selkie laughed. "
My
dad? Dead
broke
, maybe. Last I heard he was living with some bar skank out near the casino, spending every red cent of his disability on video blackjack."

"So what do other people think about it?"

"They think the Mission just skipped town, and I agree with them. They were fighting a losing battle: against the government, against the bank—hell, against just about everybody in town. If they ran off, all the better, right?"

"The police didn't look into your father's allegations?"

"They led dozens of dives to that church. Eventually they sealed it up when it got too dangerous. Some kid died down there during a dive trip with his folks. Hundred pound Crucified Jesus fell right on top of him. Crushed the poor kid's head in. After that, nobody was allowed to go inside the church, and I guess the police gave up looking. I was just a kid myself when it happened, for the record."

"Of course. What about the others? The rest of the church—they didn't believe your dad, either? Skip Wickman—"

Selkie nodded. "And my father-in-law, who you've met."

"Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, why not?"

Owen took Howard's photo from his pocket and put it face-up on the table. "Can you name these people for me?"

Selkie slid the photo beside his coffee, took a sip, and flipped it over. "July, 1979. Isn't that when disco died?" Owen shook his head, not getting it. "Never mind. Looks like this was taped to something. A photo album, maybe." He indicated a piece of torn tape stuck to the top, peeled and black at the edges as if someone had tried to remove it. He flipped it back face-up and pointed. "That one there, that's Howard." He pointed again. "And there's your mom, but you probably already guessed that."

Owen silently agreed.

"I guess that'd make this kid you. The other kid, the girl, that's Crazy Jo, the one your sister was talking with. I heard you and her had a little run-in yesterday, by the way. She's a scary one, huh?"

The diver
, Owen thought.
No wonder she's on my case about the church
. "She's interesting, I'll give her that."

Selkie pooched out his lower lip, considering Owen's response. "This guy," he said, pointing to the slim black man with a short afro and muttonchops, "is Wickman, of course. I guess that'd make these two the Dunsmuirs, Jo's folks." He bent to give it a closer look. "These three, I dunno," he said, pointing out the elderly man Owen remembered from the lake, and two young women, one looking chubby in a sundress, the other dour-faced in black pants, like Crouch, and a chambray work shirt. "The Poindexter is Dink Deakins," he said, pointing to a lanky guy with Buddy Holly glasses and brown hair pomaded to the side. "He was good friends with my father-in-law, back before the flood. They've drifted apart, since. And this kid here," he'd pressed his finger down on a teenaged boy with bad acne, "I think that's Beau Parish. He runs the gas bar on the county road." He slid the photo back to Owen. "You know, your sister was asking questions just like this. What is it the two of you are looking for?"

"One of these men might be my father."

Selkie laughed again. "Well, if it's one of those guys, my bet's on Senior. Dink Deakins probably never got laid before he met his wife. And it's probably not Skip, not unless you're hiding a big black dick in those pants."

Owen thought to point out the offensiveness of Selkie's joke, but doing so would have been counterproductive. "It's not Howard. He said my mom and him were just friends."

"Oh, yeah?" Selkie shrugged. "Well, hell, I guess it could be anybody then."

"Yeah," Owen said, disappointed again. Then he thought of something, something that had bothered him since he'd woken up in the middle of that first night at Fisherman's Wharf. "Hey, did your dad happen to say when he heard those screams?"

"Yeah, he did. He remembered because he checked his watch right before. It'd been about two or three hours since the flood started, and his boat was only floating about ten feet from the ground. He was wondering how long he'd have to sit there before the damn lake filled up entirely."

"And the scream…?"

"Woulda been right after that. He paddled home when he ran outta booze. He never followed through with a damn thing in his life, except a bottle. Got home around…" He thought back. "Three, maybe? I remember, because he sat his fat ass right down in front of the TV to watch
Dragnet
, and
Dragnet
started at three. Three?" he asked himself, then nodded. "Yeah, three. Eyewitness testimony," he said, and shook his head derisively.

"So what would that make it? A little after two when he heard the scream?"

"Jeez, now you're starting to sound like the cop." He grinned. "Yeah, I guess it musta been around two. Does it make a difference?"

A little after 2PM. When the watch he'd found had cracked, when the clock in the house had stopped, and when the reading lamp had flickered, waking him from his dream of Lori.

"Not really," he said. "Just curious."

2

Back at Fisherman's Wharf, Owen stood on the cement steps at the foot of the lake. He hadn't bothered to put on the wetsuit, which still lay on the porch railing, and hadn't brought the tank and equipment down from the kitchen. As badly as he wanted to find the "Blessed Trinity Cult," as the Chapel Lake paper had called them when the remaining members had disappeared, he knew he couldn't bring himself to go back in the water. He'd narrowly escaped death twice, but the third time was always the charmer. He couldn't go down there alone.

He'd tried to look up Jo or J. Dunsmuir in the phone book, but neither name was listed. Jo and his sister had been working together, according to Selkie—he needed to know what Crazy Jo had told Lori, and how much the two of them together had known. He could also use a competent diving partner, someone who knew the lake better than he did. A dark part of him worried that Jo—who he supposed must be the same blonde girl he vaguely recalled from dreams—would suffer the same fate as Lori, as Howie; the same fate Jo had spared him the other day, racing him away from the homicidal Revered Everett Crouch.

Crouch wanted him dead, him and all the rest of the Blessed Trinity exiles and their kin—they'd taken Howard's son, Margaret's daughter.
The Lord is merciful and forgiving
, or so it was written, but Crouch was unforgiving, merciless; he'd obviously forgotten that famous Biblical verse,
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord
. The Blessed Trinity had sacrificed themselves for their church, so far as Howard and Constable Selkie's father believed. Those who had abandoned them in their time of suffering would soon be reunited with the congregation they'd left for dead.

Owen slipped his shoes back on and headed up to the house. Lori's journal awaited, along with a cold bottle of root beer. He brought them both out to the deck and read, finding more revelations almost immediately: Lori wrote of a faceless man dressed in black from head to toe who'd stood over her bed. Owen shuddered reading this, thinking of his own dream the night before, and the wet spot Crouch had left on the bedroom floor that Owen had dismissed as rising damp.

It was rising damp, all right
, he thought—
only this damp rose all the way from the grave.

He laughed bitterly.

On June 24th, Lori had come to the same conclusion Owen himself had only a short while ago:

He's there in that church, Owns. The preacher's there, I know it! But I can't prove it if I don't find his remains… This is a bad place. There are ghosts in Chapel Lake, and I don't mean skeletons in the closet. I'm starting to think all of the things that happened to me in this house—the power flickering, the shadows and creaks in the night, the clocks all stopped at 2:06 no matter how many times I set them and change the batteries—can't just be explained away anymore. Either I'm going absolutely crazy, or this place really is haunted.

The trouble is, I don't believe in ghosts! Ghosts can't exist in the same world as God. Either God exists and our souls are saved or damned, or our spirits carry on in this world, haunted by our own transgressions, haunting the living in the dead of night. Purgatory is a made-up place. It's not even mentioned in the Bible—I guess you'd probably know, since you were part of that church. Did Everett Crouch teach you these things? Did Crouch ever explain to you about the difference between the spirits of the Bible and what we call "ghosts"?

It doesn't matter. I don't know what to believe anymore. Last night I dreamed he came back, only this time he led me down to the water—

The same dream
, Owen thought.
How could we have the same dream?

Because it wasn't a dream
, he answered himself
. Crouch came for us, he lured us down to that lake. He's had his hook in me ever since that night in the tub, and he's been reeling me in.