The Lakehouse

THE LAKEHOUSE

Joe Clifford

The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Joe Clifford

Cover and jacket design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-951709-10-5

eISBN: 978-1-951709-32-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937779

First hardcover edition September 2020 by Polis Books, LLC

www.PolisBooks.com

44 Brookview Lane

Aberdeen, NJ 07747

CHAPTER ONE

SUMMER

The last thing Tracy Somerset feels like doing on Wednesday at midnight is driving two towns over to Wal-Mart in a thunderstorm. But the cramps are getting the best of her, showing no signs of surrender. Tracy checks every cabinet for pain relievers. Upstairs, downstairs, center console in the Honda CRV. Nothing. She’s tried fish oil, herbal tea, Vitamin B1. The meditative techniques her psychiatrist, Dr. Bakshir, gave her aren’t working. Following thirty minutes of lying in the pitch black, alternating between total sensory deprivation and the “Calming Sounds of Oceanic Friends,” hot compresses and digging knuckles into her skull, Tracy gives up. She needs chemicals. Midol, Advil, a goddamn aspirin, anything to alleviate the pressure building in her abdomen and skull so she can get some relief.

Tracy knows better than to wake a sleeping toddler, it took long enough to get Logan down, but the only person to call, her best friend Diana, isn’t answering. No surprise. After her nightly wine and Ambien, Diana is dead to the world.

Nothing in Covenant is open after ten o’clock, so Tracy rouses a confused Logan and sets out for the twenty-four-hour superstore in Cromwell. She prays the sudden pulsating headache isn’t the onset of a stroke at thirty-two.

Tracy isn’t having a stroke. But after ten minutes stalking the witching-hour aisles at Wal-Mart, weaving between gangly weirdoes and ladies in flesh-colored tights, she isn’t sure she’s any better off.

And she’s forgotten the stroller.

Logan is slung over her shoulder, an industrial sack of mulch from the gardening section. At almost two years old, Logan is a stout, solid boy, like his father, Brett, the cheating bastard. Yeah, she got her body back after giving birth. But no amount of Zumba or spin class can prepare you for the extra twenty-two pounds strapped to your back while navigating menstrual cramps in a sea of sleepless zombies. The padded weight presses on her spine and grinds down her knees, adding pulsating fuel to the intestinal fire.

That’s when she sees him.

It is the eyes that get her at first. Otherworldly blue, brilliant cobalt, teeming with life. An odd thing to notice at a time like this, but right now, the pain unbearable, exhausting, Tracy has passed socially acceptable mores, bordering on hysterical. She can’t stop staring. The romantic comedies she’s been binging on are cheesy, the way they tease a spotlight when that special someone appears. But she swears he shines center stage. He notices her too.

“Let me help you,” he says, reaching for Logan, before retreating when she instinctively snatches back her son. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” The man holds up his hands. “Yeah. Strange man. Wal-Mart. Give me your kid.” He covers his face, turning red. Embarrassingly cute.

“No, it’s okay,” she says.

“You look like you are having such a hard time.”

Tracy feels like crying. It is more than the cramps, the headache. Sometimes the weight of the world conspires to drag you down. Divorced single mom in a small town, Tracy knows she is never leaving Covenant. Logan is her life, she loves being a mother, but the loneliness, the lack of options, the confinement gets to her. Innocuous at first, this sensation has been squeezing tighter, a boa constrictor working its way up methodically, immobilizing the legs, squeezing the diaphragm, and now it is crushing her skull with death-grip precision.

The man holds up a finger before taking off in a brisk walk, which turns into a fast jog, in the opposite direction, his exit one of the more bizarre ways she’s been ghosted. Never mind how attractive he may’ve been, Tracy promises herself she’ll never, ever run out of Ibuprofen again.

A moment later he returns pushing a new baby stroller, price tag rippling in the breeze.

“They’re having a sale in aisle forty-seven.”

Tracy lays down her sleeping boy. The relief to her spine instant, immediate, like unloading grocery bags stuffed with canned goods and gallons of milk. Logan doesn’t open his eyes, lost in dreamland. Enjoy it while you can, kiddo.

She thanks the stranger, takes a deep breath, arches her back, stretching her vertebrae, willing her spine to realign. “You have no idea how much that kid weighs.”

“I can imagine.”

Tracy looks him over again, trying not to be too obvious about it. Her initial assessment wasn’t wrong. He is a handsome man. In good shape, still has his hair, rare for these parts, around her age. What is he doing here? If anything, he is too good looking, overdressed for Wal-Mart, ironed Oxford and pleated pants. A professional. Not a man you find often in Covenant or its surrounding boroughs. Her eyes drift to his naked ring finger. She catches herself, pretending to be captivated by a sale beyond his hips.

“What are you doing here?” Less sleep-deprived, fewer contractions, she’d have more tact. “That was rude. Sorry. I’m out of it right now.”

“I get it. Conversation doesn’t come natural in an all-night Wal-Mart. Especially after a stranger tries to grab your kid.”

“You were trying to help.”

He smiles, perfect teeth, and points through a wall of bicycles, out the doors and into the still-warm night. “Just moved. Been a while since I had to shop for a single man. Who knew apartments don’t come with toilet paper and shampoo?”

And she laughs. Less because it’s funny and more because he feels as self-conscious as she does. This is the first conversation she’s had with a man since Brett. At least one she isn’t paying to fix her brakes, change her oil, or take Logan’s temperature. This realization makes her pause, lament she’s too late. Has she missed out on it all, college, spring break, girls’ trip to Aruba, a rite of passage? A time when you are supposed to go wild and have fun. She married Brett so young. And they were together long before that. Which probably causes her to make a face, because then he makes a face, and it’s weird again.

She reaches past him, up on the shelf, pulling down the tub-sized jar of Aleve she’s been eyeing.

“I know how hard kids can be,” he says.

“Do you have any?” Tracy is already twisting the top, spilling three into her anxious palm.

“No. Planned to ... didn’t work out.”

Tracy stops digging around her purse for the water bottle she doesn’t have, looking up, mortified. “That’s none of my business. I don’t know why I asked that.” She jams her fingers in her eyes, pressing so hard she sees spots. “It’s this headache. I don’t get them often. But when I do...”

“No, it’s all right,” he says. “I lost my wife.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We wanted kids, talked about having them. I spent so much time preparing to be a dad, I guess I feel like one. Does that sound strange?”

“Not at all.”

Tracy can’t invent a water bottle, and she needs something to wash down the pills. Ever since she was a little girl, the thought of dry-swallowing medicine makes her gag.

The man points past her shoulder, toward the cashiers. “There’s a café over there. Will you let me buy you a coffee? Or water?” His blue eyes light up. “In a totally normal, non-creeper way.”

Is she really getting hit on in a Wal-Mart at one a.m.? With her sleeping son by her side?

Why not? she thinks. What’s the worst that can happen?

CHAPTER TWO

Mist hovers above the water of Shallow Lake, a lazy fog that whispers of yesterday’s ghosts. Detritus and debris clutter the shore. Shorn tree limbs knocked down from last night’s storm, broken boat hulls, jagged stones lapped by waves, the scene tinged cadaver grey, all bloodless flesh and unearthed bones. Or maybe Covenant Chief of Police Dwayne Sobczak knows what’s waiting for him at the bottom of the ravine: the first homicide victim in Covenant in twenty years.

Then again, twenty years ago, Todd Norman didn’t live here.

Sobczak glares across the water. Halted mid-construction, the lakehouse remains incomplete. Batter boards and corner stakes, craters dug for the septic, plumbing pipes laid. Foundation, studs, sill plates. A work in progress. But eventually the house will be a home. And then trouble will take up permanent residence.

Sobczak climbs down the shelf, rappelling with the thick roots of a felled oak spat back from the earth.

On the beach, he kicks though leftover party favors. Beer bottles and wet matchbooks, cardboard take-out from 7-Eleven. Weeks’ old trash. High school kids come to the lake to torch bonfires, drink beer, and screw around. Sobczak doesn’t begrudge harmless teenage fun, but have some civic pride and clean up after yourself.

Sobczak steps over crinkled chip bags stomped in the mud, tangles of fishing line, coffee tins used as chew spittoons. He makes a mental note to call Gus Spires, who oversees community service. Tell him to bring a bum from the drunk tank, put him on litter patrol. Unsightliness rankles the chief.

The dead girl, soaked tee shirt and underpants, ribboned with frogbit, lies beside the charred, black remains of a campfire. Woman, not girl. A quick glance puts the victim in her early thirties. But it’s hard to tell. Are the creases gouging her flesh the result of age or something worse? Chief Sobczak knows everyone in his town. He does not know this girl.

He crouches, inspects. If not for the blue skin, she could be asleep. Midnight swim? Dragged down by a tide pool? In the pouring rain? Despite her proximity to the water, she does not appear bloated. Rules out drowning. People in their early thirties don’t drop dead, half naked, for no reason. Looming over, Sobczak notes the bruising on her inner thighs, the flecks of blood, and now he must consider the possibility of sexual assault.

A handful of department employees, most of whom are volunteers, duck between the cleanup van, squad cars, and low-hanging branches. Covenant is too small to employ a permanent staff. Only the chief is full time. Mike Armstrong hands out white placards to the crew. Yesterday, he made Sobczak’s grinder at the Main Street Deli. Rick Ingalls waits with the two witnesses who found the body. Weekends, Rick tends bar at the Pine Loft Pizzeria off Route 13. Tom Kies, Chief Sobczak’s deputy, rolls out the yellow ticker tape and erects a sawhorse blockade.

“Tom,” Sobczak calls, pointing up the ravine wall. “Extend that perimeter to Svea Road. Once the Herald and Inquirer hear about this… I don’t want anyone touching a thing until Holland gets here.”

Holland County has already been called. A larger municipality, Holland will be overseeing the official investigation. Covenant lacks the resources and manpower to deal with something as serious as murder.

Sobczak’s particularly proud of Tom, his young deputy. Directing traffic, toting buckets, taking charge of the situation. Sobczak can also admit another reason for the soft spot: Tom is married to Sobczak’s daughter, Amanda.

For Sobczak, there is nothing strange about working with his son-in-law, Covenant one big family to the chief, who takes pride getting to know members of the community. Every day, he takes to the streets to say hi, do outreach. He makes conversation whenever he stops for gas, coffee, a sandwich. He strives to be friendly, shake the absurd Hollywood stereotype that cops are somehow the “bad guys.”

A pair of Holland’s finest, one woman, one man, descend the mossy banks. Sobczak made the call but he’s never worked with this pair before. Then again, he hasn’t needed Holland’s help in a while.

“Couple kids called it in,” Sobczak hollers over the gurgling sounds of tributary brooks. “Came down to fish before their shift. Found her like this.”

“Detective Stephanie Ronson,” the woman says. She nods at her partner. “Steve Crasnick. Kids? How old? Where do they work?”

“Young men, I should say. Everyone’s a kid to me these days.” Sobczak points up the ridge, where two young men wait with Rick by the squad car. “Kelly Harwood, Rob Pandolfo. Known them my whole life. Work over at American Goods, the paper mill. Good kids. They didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Crasnick pops a piece of gum from its aluminum seal. “How long she been here?”

“Hard to say,” says Sobczak, trying to act like he’s still running the show, even though everyone knows he’s not. “EMT says at least a few hours judging by the way the blood’s settled. I’m guessing your examiner will be able to pinpoint a more precise time of death.

Ronson steps between the two men, squats by the dead woman. She’s starting to snap on the latex gloves, when she stops, stands back up, rips them off.

“What’s the deal, Steph?”

“10-18. Overdose. Check the tracks. Between the toes.” Ronson sounds almost disappointed.

Like Sobczak isn’t even there.

“Excuse me, detectives. There’s blood on her thighs.” Sobczak hasn’t gotten to the juicy part: the identity of the sociopath building the lakehouse up the beach, Todd Norman. Sobczak has concerns, theories. He doesn’t get a chance to share either.

“Post-mortem,” Ronson says. When Sobczak doesn’t move fast enough, she gives the old chief a rudimentary lesson in police work, big-city cop condescending to two-bit yokel. “Blood coagulates in a certain way.” She points at the dried blood on the thighs. “That isn’t from vaginal trauma. It’s splatter from being cut on jagged rock. Check the backs of her legs. When they were dragging her down here, they weren’t gentle.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Drug buddies.”

“She’s not wearing any pants.”

Ronson shrugs. “Probably wasn’t when she OD’d.”

“We don’t have a drug problem in Covenant.”

“Drugs are everywhere.”

“This girl isn’t from town,” Sobczak says.

“Then she’s from out of town. In any case, she didn’t die here. She was dumped.”

Without a goodbye, Ronson turns, heads back up the ravine, toward the witnesses, agitated over having been woken for this.

Crasnick slaps a hand on Sobczak’s shoulder. He points at the woman’s feet. “Tracks between the toes are signs of a secret user, long-time abuser. When we ID her, we’ll find she had a job, an apartment, kept up appearances.” Crasnick opens his palms, a religious offering. “Last night, she took a hotshot, strong shit going around, dope mixed with fentanyl, junkies dropping like flies. Whoever she was with, friends, boyfriend, dealer, didn’t want to be on the hook for accessory. Prosecutors have been charging anyone in the room. Serious prison time.”

Sobczak points up the shore. “You know who is building that lakehouse?”

“Yes, Chief, we know all about Todd Norman.”

“You don’t think it’s coincidental?”

“I doubt anyone checked an address first. They picked the lake because it’s out of the way. A man smart enough to beat a high-profile murder rap in New York City isn’t going to be stupid enough to start dumping bodies in his backyard.” Crasnick pans over the crowded wooded hills. “You don’t get a lot of drug-related deaths. Ronson and I cover our share. This is an overdose. Nothing more.

“We’ll be in touch after the official report.” Crasnick shakes Sobczak’s hand goodbye. “Trust me,” he says, walking away. “We all got eyes on Todd Norman.”