Beneath Still Waters Read online

  mentary school—eighth grade, 1939. A teacher stood

  at attention beside thirty or more of her charges, all look-

  ing uncomfortable, the girls in spanking clean dresses and

  the boys in their Sunday white shirts.

  One boy’s face was circled.

  A short fellow with bright eyes that looked right at the

  camera.

  “Billy Leeper,” Winston said, almost gently. “He was

  there that day. With Jackie. He saw what happened.”

  Winston touched the boy’s picture, as if reaching across

  the decades. “He was there and he got out.” Winston looked

  at Dan. “If anyone knows what happened to Jackie Weeks

  and the town of Gouldens Falls, it’s Billy Leeper.”

  E I G H T

  “Not a minute too soon,” Dan said, sliding up next to Susan.

  “Oh. I thought you were going to miss the show.”

  He looked around at this circus, this carnival of thrill

  seekers gathered around the lake. “The old reverend was a

  tad more interesting than you might imagine.”

  “Step back, folks . . . behind that barrier.”

  Some well-padded fellow, wearing an Ellerton Volun-

  teer Firemen windbreaker and clutching a heavy-duty

  walkie-talkie, was gesturing at them to step back.

  “Back a bit more,” he barked, eyeballing Dan.

  “We can’t stay all the way back there,” he said quietly,

  leaning close to Susan. “Let’s see if we can get closer.”

  The southeast corner of the dam was flooded with spot-

  lights, giant klieg lights that gave every slack-jawed busy-

  body standing within their glare that illusion that they were

  part of the action.

  Everyone loves a crisis, Dan thought.

  “I don’t think we can—” Susan started to say.

  But he grabbed Susan’s arm and guided her past the

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  barrier. “Just walk like you know what we are doing and

  direct me toward the police chief.”

  Susan shook her head. “You’re crazy, Dan. But he’s

  over there. His name’s Paddy Rogers. A tough Irishman.

  Over—”

  “I see him.”

  The chief was standing near the edge of the water. There

  was a beached boat beside him, filled—almost dangerously,

  it seemed—with electronic equipment.

  Damn, this could be perfect. If he could just go with

  them now.

  “Introduce me,” he said. “Build me up.”

  He dug into his pocket for his business card and found

  one, which turned out to be a bit too dog-eared to use to

  make an impression. He steered Susan right next to the

  burly chief.

  Rogers turned around and stared at both of them.

  “Susan? What are you doing here? I told my boys to—”

  Dan could sense the bum’s rush coming, and leaped

  into the fray. “Chief Rogers, I’m Dan Elliot.” He grabbed

  Rogers’s hand and gave it an unwanted shake.

  “He’s a writer for—”

  “Lots of places. The L.A. Examiner, Time, Playboy . . .

  you name it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Elliot, you’ll have to move back over

  three with everyone else,” he said, gesturing. “Behind—”

  One of the divers came up to the boat, threw his flippers

  in, and turned to the chief and said, “We’re all set to go.”

  “Fine,” Rogers said, turning away from Dan. “Just give—”

  Dan quickly checked the diving team’s equipment.

  This was no Sunday diver gear here, no AMF flippers and

  toy snorkels. The wet suits were German-made—the best

  available—with an extra thermal layer. Real toasty. And

  the regulators, like the oversize tanks, were state of the

  art.

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  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  But the sonar gear could put a small sub to shame. It

  filled about half of what was a flat-bottom New York police

  boat. A large chunk of the floor space was taken up by a

  two-way radio.

  They’d be able to talk with the divers between gulps of

  oxygen.

  He had to be there. By tomorrow the whole reservoir

  might be out of bounds.

  “I’d like to go,” Dan said, touching Rogers on his shoul-

  der. “I’m a diver, registered and all. I could help—”

  “Out of the question, sir,” Rogers snapped. “Susan,

  would you please escort your friend back—”

  One of the divers, not more than twenty years old, came

  up to Dan. “Where have you dived?”

  “Name it,” he said. “Everywhere from Cancun to a

  nasty frozen lake outside of Yellow Knife, Canada. I also

  did a piece on skin diving in the Amazon River.”

  The cop grinned. “Oh, yeah . . . I read that. Great stuff.

  Made me glad that all I had to deal with was the East

  River.”

  “I hyped it a bit for the reader, you know, about the pira-

  nha and all. But—”

  “C’mon,” Rogers said, taking him by the arm. “That’s

  enough. These fellows have work to do—”

  The city cop interrupted. “Chief, if you don’t mind, we

  might be able to use him—topside, that is. It could help to

  have another diver there . . . in case there’s a problem. It

  would free Jack up to check the sonar.”

  Dan grinned, but Rogers still held his arm.

  So close, he thought.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  The other diver, somewhat older, called for his partner

  from the front of the boat. “All set. Let’s get moving.” He

  started the throaty inboard engine.

  The crowd’s chattering faded, and the boat’s engine

  sputtered to life in the shallow water. The radioman climbed

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  in, and a puff of smoke was suspended over the crowd’s

  heads.

  C’mon, man, Dan thought.

  Rogers looked right at Dan. “Okay.” He looked at the

  divers. “This is your show. But no pictures, Mr. Elliot. Not

  tonight. Not until we know what happened here.”

  “I’ll leave my camera right here,” Dan said, smiling, un-

  slinging it and handing it to Susan.

  He again pumped the chief ’s unenthusiastic hand.

  “Thanks.” He jumped into the boat, eager for them to

  pull away from the shore, before the stubby police chief

  changed his mind.

  The plane touched down rockily, rudely slapping the run-

  way at JFK. People clapped. Others began to cry, tears of

  relieved happiness. Most sat in numb silence.

  Karen listened to the head attendant calmly tell the pas-

  sengers to please wait until the plane had taxied up to the

  tentaclelike exit ramp. But they ignored her, popping off

  their seat belts, scrambling to pull down their too bulky

  carry-on luggage.

  Standing. Waiting.

  Oh so eager to get off the plane.

  Each and every one standing behind Martin Parks (who,

  she saw, carried only the slimmest of attachés).

  The plane rolled to the ramp, taking, it seemed, so much

  time, crawling up the ramp. Outside, the air was fill
ed with

  the sound of planes roaring into the sky like clockwork.

  And still their plane rolled, creeping up to the American

  Airlines terminal. Then it stopped. The captain (and she

  wondered what kind of shape he was in) flipped off the

  seat-belt light.

  The main exit door opened.

  And Parks looked back at her.

  Smiled at her.

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  And held it for just a moment. A horrible moment.

  Then she slowly slid into a vacant seat. Her skin was

  cold. She brushed feathery wisps of hair away from her

  face, her cheek, wisps that weren’t there.

  Her stomach spasmed and she began coughing, then

  vomited. Over and over, as if trying to scrape some horrible

  poison out of her insides.

  The passengers ignored her.

  They just wanted out.

  But all Karen could think about (again and again, like

  some terrible, nagging dread that just wouldn’t go away)

  was . . .

  Who was Martin Parks?

  And, God help them, where was he going?

  The New York cops made Dan feel totally welcome.

  The two divers, he learned, were Tom Flaherty and Ed

  Raskin, veterans of four and eight years respectively. The

  dour sonar man was Jack Russo.

  “Nice of you to invite me,” he said.

  “I liked your article,” Tom said, smiling. “Besides, Jack,

  here, can get a bit fussy watching all his dials. Tends to for-

  get about us bobbing around down below.”

  “I do not.”

  “Easy, just kidding, Jacko.”

  The other cop—who didn’t seem as lighthearted—was

  beginning to put on his tank and weights. “Let’s get started,

  Tommyrot. It’s body-bag time.”

  “Ed’s been having a bit of a time eating after work.” Tom

  grinned. “Too many gooey bodies have put him off his . . .

  what’s your favorite dish, Ed?”

  “Linguine with clam sauce. And dry Chianti.”

  After cruising out into the lake for a few minutes, Russo

  put the boat in neutral. He then hit a button and an anchor

  slid noisily into the water. Tom turned on the radio. “Dan,

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  it’s as simple as pie. Just press here to talk, otherwise leave

  the line open. Jack, here, tends to chatter a bit much, so it’ll

  be a pleasure to—”

  “Be careful right under us,” Russo said. He was scan-

  ning the sonar screen. “There’s something pretty large

  about thirty feet down. A building, most likely. There’s a

  good-sized drop-off about twenty feet to each side.”

  All this easy banter . . . graveyard chatter, Dan thought.

  Helps to keep the willies away, probably. “Why start here?”

  he asked.

  “In river work you go back and forth,” Tom explained.

  “Assuming, of course, that what you’re looking for hasn’t

  been carried out to the ocean. But a lake’s different.”

  “We’ll work in semicircles,” Ed said. “In the center of

  that circle is—”

  Dan could figure that one out. The spot where Tom Fluhr

  vanished.

  “Right,” Tom said.

  He watched them finish suiting up. All in black except

  for the shiny tubes leading to their tanks.

  Oh, the pictures he could have gotten! But being here

  was better than being on shore (with every beered-up geek

  from miles around). And if the body turned up, and if it

  was a simple case of drowning, he’d be home free.

  They’d probably love the publicity. Love for him to take

  pictures of the Town that Drowned.

  Sure they would.

  If they find the body.

  Yeah, and if it turned out that Tom Fluhr had, indeed,

  just drowned.

  Claire always knew it was a dream.

  That wasn’t the scary part. There was no way she’d be

  tricked into thinking it was like real or something. It was

  just a dream.

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  She knew that.

  A dream.

  The same dream all the time.

  But that didn’t help her. It almost didn’t matter. It was

  like being forced to sit through the same yucky movie, night

  after night, knowing when all the bad scenes were going to

  come.

  And it always started with her swimming.

  It was some kind of beach, she guessed, though she never

  recognized it. Or any of the dumb-looking people standing

  knee-deep in the water (so cold!) with their brats flopping

  around, screaming, “Look at me, Mom, look at me, Dad!”

  She’d walk past them. Past the happy families, feeling

  the icy water climb up her legs, covering her tummy, dar-

  ing her to take the plunge.

  Which, after one long look at the blue sky and the puffy

  little lamb clouds, she did.

  She loved it under water. Kicking seallike, harder and

  harder, as if it were the most important thing in the world,

  to just keep moving, farther and farther, until she surfaced.

  And then she saw that the sky had changed into a dark,

  dull gray. (“Lightning weather,” her mother always said.

  “Better come out now, honey.”)

  She turned. (Knowing it was a dream. Just a dream.)

  And everybody was gone. No moms, no dads, no brats, no

  beach towels, nothing.

  Just little Claire going for a swim. All by herself.

  So she’d leave the water. Staying on the surface now (the

  better to see the lightning come, she’d think, kicking and

  stroking while her eyes kept searching the clouds for the

  first nasty yellow streak).

  Then she’d see them. Coming onto the beach. The people.

  Who weren’t people. People don’t walk that way, she

  told herself. (In this just-a-dream.) No, people don’t stum-

  ble around like wounded animals, growling, looking as if

  they’d like to bite someone.

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  She always felt that there was a place that she could stop

  the dream. Some magical point at which she could say,

  “Okay, that’s enough, let’s wake up now. Maybe pee. Get a

  slug of apple juice.”

  It was too late. Now. Maybe always.

  Suddenly she knew she’d have to get away from them,

  and she turned around.

  (Horrible moment. It was the one picture that could

  make her go all cold and sick the next day, even when she

  was reading in bright sunshine surrounded by hundreds of

  kids.)

  Dozens more of them—these grayish “not-people”—

  were behind her, coming from the lake, right toward her.

  Led by—

  (And, of course, she knew this was coming. Knew it. It

  always came.)

  Her mother. Reaching out for her, her gray and slimy

  face still just recognizable. She opens her mouth.

  (“Don’t talk,” Claire wants to beg this mom-thing.

  “Don’t—”)

  Something slithers out of her mouth, lizardlike, leaping

  from between the brown, rotted
teeth, plopping down to the

  water.

  And if she’s lucky, really lucky, her real mother hears

  her screaming out loud, hears her cries, and comes in and

  shakes her harder and harder to end the dream for this

  night.

  But the real mom doesn’t come. Not tonight. Only this

  dream thing, which comes closer, resting an oily hand on her.

  And pulls her down, into the water, down with all the

  other not-people. Down where lizards crawl into open

  mouths (and no one minds!). Down.

  But she never gets there. She awakens. Crying, moaning

  into her pillow, her fist tight, bunching up the sheet, trying

  to pull away.

  Awake. Screaming. But awake. In minutes she stops.

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  A regulator clock ticks off seconds in the hallway. A car

  passes. In a few moments, when her breathing slows, she

  hears the loud hum of the refrigerator.

  Her bed is wet again. An accident. At eleven years old!

  But she doesn’t cry.

  She just wonders when she’ll stop having this same

  dream.

  Over and over and over. She gets up and wedges her

  chair against the door.

  He stared at them. With envy, with a crazy kind of itchiness

  that only another diver would understand.

  “Can you hear okay . . . through the headphones, I

  mean?” Tom asked.

  “Clear as a bell. If they work that well under water,

  then—”

  “They do,” Russo said, turning to Dan. “Just don’t blast

  their eardrums by getting too close to that microphone.”

  Their masks nearly covered their whole head. Their

  mouths were completely free to talk, and the regulator—

  which automatically kept a supply of fresh air pumping

  in—was just below the chin.

  It was great stuff—the ultimate diving technology.

  He had used a radio once. Just once. In Lake George. In

  the middle of the winter.

  To use it, the diver had to talk like Cloris Leachman in

  Mel Brooks’s movie High Anxiety. She managed to speak

  through the whole movie with clenched teeth (telling a

  feverish Harvey Korman, “I’ll let you wear my under-

  wear.”) Took practice, that’s all. It was a freakin’ night dive

  too. Night, ice, and a goddamn body hunt.

  Only that time the body was about six years old.

  Jesus. He remembered downing a few shots of Jack

  Daniel’s before going out. Had to keep the old blood

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  circulating. Wet suit or no, he knew the icy water would