Beneath Still Waters Read online

  He loved watching her dress and undress. Slowly.

  And she knew that too.

  “Hey, I’ve gotta go, sweetheart. I’ll probably catch hell,

  anyway.”

  “Sure, Max. Go ahead before you turn into a pumpkin

  or whatever.”

  He hesitated. “Need any cash? If—”

  “No,” she answered quickly, sharply. “I’m fine.”

  A touchy moment navigated. “Right. Okay, I’ll run,

  then.” He walked over to her and kissed her cheek, sud-

  denly feeling almost paternal.

  Or maybe this one was running out of steam.

  He opened the door and walked out to the parking lot,

  looking back and forth, checking to see if anyone was lurk-

  ing about who might spot him.

  But then again, who’d be coming or going at a motel

  at this hour? It would have to be another pillar of the

  community like he was. Still, this was a moment when

  his stomach tightened. He had to walk to his Porsche (parked

  discreetly around the back, near the overfilled dumpster),

  and calmly, casually get in (Don’t run, man!) without some

  local yokel spotting him and screaming out—

  “Jesus H. Christ! There’s our ever-lovin’ mayor! Now

  what in the hell do you think he’s doing here? You don’t

  suppose . . .”

  Step, step. A hot-rod Camaro took the nearby corner too

  fast, tires squealing and screaming in protest, before the

  driver straightened out and gunned the car. Step. Step. The

  low, throaty hum of a truck echoed out of the distance and

  grew in intensity. Step. Step. He turned the corner of the

  motel just as the truck passed.

  Now all the driver could see was the back of his head.

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  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  And there was his cream-colored Porsche, waiting for

  him, mottled by the dark shadow made by the fat old maple

  tree standing right next to it.

  Made it. Safe and sound. Yeah, folks, once again Max

  Wiley risked his fame, fortune, and an upcoming shot at a

  congressional seat for his number-one passion in life.

  He unlocked his car, opened up the door, and saw the

  car phone flashing.

  A dozen creepy thoughts went through his head. His

  house was burned down, maybe, and his family trapped.

  Sure, happens all the time. (Wouldn’t that make for some

  wopping guilt? Oh, yeah. Wouldn’t that be fun to live with?)

  He quickly slid into the black Leatherette seat and

  pressed the button. The phone buzzed briefly and he picked

  it up.

  “Hello.” His throat felt tight and dry.

  “Max, it’s Paddy Rogers. I’m at the Kenicut Dam, and I

  thought I should let you know what happened. Besides, I

  think I’ll have to call the New York police for some help.”

  It was rare for Ellerton’s police captain—six months

  away from retiring, thank God—to call him. Only one call

  in the past four years, just once when that crazy Henderson

  kid locked himself in the high school and began destroying

  it room by room.

  “What happened, Paddy?” The captain was one of the few

  people he respected. No, respect was not quite the right word.

  He was nothing less than a local version of J. Edgar Hoover,

  with the meaty head of an Irish cop on the beat. Rogers

  knew, it was rumored, everything about everyone in town.

  Which meant he probably knew how the mayor spent

  his free time.

  “Tommy Fluhr went for a swim . . . at the reservoir.

  Emily Powers was there.”

  “Yeah.” Max knew Tommy Fluhr’s dad. They both were

  good for two martinis. No more, no less—at the Embassy

  Club.

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  43

  “Something happened to him. Our best guess is he got a

  cramp and went under. Emily Powers was with him, but

  she didn’t see anything.”

  Wiley started the car. No point sitting at the motel wait-

  ing for someone to come cruising by and spot him. He

  lodged the phone in his shoulder, backed the car to the left,

  and pulled it out of the lot. Gravel sprayed backward as he

  eased onto the road.

  “What do we have to do, Paddy?”

  “What we have to do, Max, is get a N.Y.P.D. diving

  team up here. We can use two Westport cops I know, but

  they don’t have any electronic equipment. If he drowned,

  we need a body.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if ’?”

  He heard the cop pause.

  “Nobody saw him drown, Max. Nobody knows what

  happened to Tommy. He wasn’t drunk. They hadn’t eaten

  yet. And he was a champion swimmer.”

  Then Wiley thought of the celebration. The biggest

  event in Ellerton. The fiftieth-anniversary celebration of

  the dam and the reservoir. Speakers, parades, all ending in

  a grand celebration on Saturday night with fireworks, pic-

  nics, and—

  The perfect way to launch his congressional bid.

  This, though, was bad news. Nasty news. A mysterious

  drowning in a local lake. He didn’t want his name con-

  nected with the drowning.

  Dammit. Something had to be done. It had to be . . .

  contained.

  “Paddy, let’s hold off a bit. I’ll be right there and we’ll

  see what’s what. Maybe the body’s floated to the top, some-

  where off to the side. Do you have some boats coming?”

  Paddy grunted affirmatively.

  “Yeah, we’ll just sit tight a bit until we can look things

  over.” A disturbing thought crossed his mind. “Any reporters

  there?”

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  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  “No. It’s a bit late for them to be listening to the police

  radio. By tomorrow morning, though, we should have a

  crowd of them.”

  “Right. Well, by tomorrow everything might be all ex-

  plained. I’ll be there in a few minutes, Paddy.”

  He hung up and quickly dialed his home number.

  After three rings the answering machine clicked on, and

  Wiley left a message, glad that no one was waiting up for

  him.

  With no one waiting, there was so much less guilt.

  By the time he pulled off Kenicut Drive to the small park-

  ing lot near the dam wall, he saw that Paddy Rogers had

  two enormous klieglike lights scanning the surface of the

  dark reservoir. He stopped his car, pulling right next to the

  captain’s personal patrol car (a jet-black Chrysler with a

  blue bubble light spinning around). There were two boats

  in the water, each with small lights swinging this way and

  that. A faint fog seemed to be slowly rolling off the nearby

  hills, and Wiley felt cool, with just the thin sport coat to

  keep the damp chill off.

  He looked around for the captain and saw him standing

  near the open gate leading down to the water, talking to

  two of Ellerton’s finest.

  “Captain,” he called. Rogers finished his instructions

  and walked, not too quickly, over to Wiley.

  “Find anything yet?”

  Roger
s shook his head. “No, Max, I’ve got two boats out

  there, going back and forth looking for the body. And there’s

  teams of cops circling the reservoir, checking the shore.” He

  looked right at Wiley. “So far, Max, they’ve found nothing.”

  Wiley nodded. Got to contain this. Keep our cool. Just

  an unfortunate drowning. A tragedy. Nothing, though, to

  get bent out of shape over. Happens at the Jersey Shore

  every summer. Right, it’s just a freak accident.

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  45

  “It . . . I mean, the body, will pop up eventually, right,

  Paddy?”

  Rogers rubbed his cheek and looked to his left. One of

  the klieg lights seemed to pause a moment, as if its trolling

  of the surface had picked up something.

  “Got something?” Rogers called out to the guy operat-

  ing the light.

  “No, Captain, just a funny wave. Water’s a bit choppy.”

  Wiley looked at the reservoir. It looked positively sinis-

  ter. He never liked it. Big, black, now with a whispery fog

  starting to creep over the surface. The boats, with their

  small lights, seemed alien, probing. And the water was un-

  believably choppy, the wind whipping over the surface,

  causing tiny whitecaps to appear.

  He pulled his jacket tighter.

  “Sure, the body will probably surface tomorrow,” he

  repeated.

  Rogers looked at him, and Max could feel the captain’s

  withering glance. And he wondered, What does this red-

  nosed bastard know about me?

  “Bodies tend to pop up pretty quickly, Max. You see,”

  he said, turning away and walking down toward the shore,

  “they’re buoyant. They float. Unless something else hap-

  pens. If they’re punctured, then water can get in and weigh

  them down. They get soggy . . . like a piece of bread. Or

  sometimes, like in a plane crash, they get snagged on some

  metal. Or they just stay strapped to their chairs.” He

  laughed. “Especially if the fasten seat belts sign is on.”

  “Then sometimes they pop up later, all filled with gas, a

  puffy human raft. I saw one once when I was a rookie in

  New York.” Rogers looked right at him, apparently enjoy-

  ing telling the story. “Yeah, somebody reported a body in

  the East River, and we went there with these long poles

  with hooks at the end for pulling it in. They reached out,

  Max, and punctured it, and pulled the fucking thing in. It

  popped like a balloon.”

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  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  “Nice.”

  “One of the young cops said, joking, ‘Look what I

  caught.’ But nobody laughed. Not when the damp body

  balloon rolled over, eyes wide open, Max, and some green

  shit was lodged in its mouth—”

  Wiley felt the evening’s steak au poivre begin to rumble

  around, eager to begin a return journey up his gullet.

  “And I had to get my ass down near the water and haul

  the thing up, actually grab an arm and lift the bloated thing

  onto the dock.”

  Rogers paused, rubbed his lips back and forth (as if get-

  ting rid of an unwanted taste or flavor, Wiley thought), and

  looked out at the reservoir and his boats.

  “If Tommy Fluhr had a cramp and drowned, we should

  see his body soon. But—”

  The captain started walking away from Wiley, along the

  shore, and Wiley followed. “I don’t think that’s going to

  happen here.” He followed Rogers around the reservoir’s

  edge until they came to the remnants of a cozy little shore-

  side picnic. A checkered tablecloth. A six-pack of Heinekens

  (minus one). A crumpled bag of chips.

  Tommy Fluhr’s clothes were scattered around, probably

  growing damp now just sitting on the ground. A heavy-

  duty lantern was stuck in the crotch of a tree, aimed down

  at the scene.

  “So what do we do?” Wiley knew his voice sounded

  distant, hollow.

  “With your permission I’m going to request a diving

  team, Ed Koch’s best, complete with sonar and dredge

  equipment, though what good it will do, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean . . .‘what good it will do’?”

  The captain’s walkie-talkie crackled, and he picked it up.

  One of the boat teams reported finishing its crisscrossing

  search of the reservoir.

  “Then do it again,” Rogers ordered. He looked back at

  Max. “There’s not much of a muddy bottom for us to dredge,

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  47

  Max,” he explained. “There’s no way to do much digging for

  Tommy’s body. There’s a fuckin’ town down there, under the

  water, Max. A town . . . with streets, buildings, . . .”

  Wiley looked out at the water, the other shore almost in-

  visible now as the fog became even more dense. Rogers

  put a hand on Wiley’s shoulder—not a friendly gesture,

  Wiley thought. “And if that’s where his body is, the divers

  will have to go down there to find it.”

  Wiley looked at his watch. One a.m.

  And he hoped the body popped to the surface. Before

  sunrise. Before the reporters came.

  Before the divers had to go down to look for it.

  Already Dan was behind schedule.

  Thanks to sleeping too late at the fabulous Ellerton Mo-

  tor Inn (due, no doubt, to his last and totally superfluous

  Jack Daniel’s double), he barely had enough time to crawl

  into yesterday’s clammy clothes and rub a toothbrush across

  his teeth.

  Breakfast was a lost cause (with tantalizing images of

  pancakes, syrup, and melting pats of butter, of course, very

  clear), and he was still going to be late to meet Susan Sloan.

  He didn’t need a map to get back to the reservoir. Years

  of shooting photographs in dense forests and honest-to-

  God jungles where a wrong turn could mean more than a

  missed deadline had taught him to pay real close attention

  to signs, directions, and broken twigs.

  Still, when he arrived at the site engineer’s office, he

  thought he might have made a mistake.

  The gravel pull-off—that’s all it really was—was filled

  end to end with police cars, both state and local. Braces of

  dogs were barking hungrily, eager to give chase to some-

  thing. And he saw boats in the reservoir, long, squat things

  almost like the lobster boats that he spent a week shooting

  in Stonington, Connecticut.

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  m a t t h e w j . c o s t e l l o

  Something, quite obviously, was up.

  He slowed, then noticed a narrow space just wide

  enough for his Land Rover. He pulled in and hopped out,

  looking around for Susan.

  He saw her, down near the open gate to the reservoir,

  steno pad dutifully out, talking to some middle-aged cop.

  He waved to her and she smiled. (Just a small smile but a

  smile nonetheless.) He walked over to her, brushing his

  mustache with his fingers, trying to arrange it into some

  kind of orderly conf
iguration.

  “By this afternoon, maybe even at the latest. We’re still

  not too sure—” The police captain (or maybe general, for

  all Dan knew, judging from all the decorations on his coat

  pocket) stopped talking.

  “Oh,” Susan said, smiling. “Captain Rogers, this is Dan

  Elliot. He’s writing a magazine article about the dam and

  the town of Kenicut.”

  The captain looked at him, not exactly a friendly stare.

  “What happened?” Dan asked.

  Susan quickly filled him in on the details of Tom

  Fluhr’s disappearance.

  The only thought he had then was a guilty one. Was this

  going to screw up his story somehow? Already he saw po-

  lice barriers going up, and it probably wouldn’t be too long

  before the whole areas was closed down tight.

  No story. No sale. No money.

  “That’s terrible.” He looked at Susan. “We were hoping

  to tour the dam today, as background to my story. I even

  wanted to dive in the res—”

  “That’s out of the question. For now, anyway. Not until

  we find the body.”

  A young cop came up and said something quietly to

  Rogers. “I have to go. If we find out anything more, Susan,

  I’ll be sure to let you know.” He gave a small nod to Dan,

  turned, and started to walk away.

  “Captain . . . sorry, but do you have any objection to our

  b e n e a t h s t i l l w a t e r s

  49

  going on with the tour?” Dan gave his most cooperative

  grin. The future of his story lay in the captain’s hands.

  “No . . . that’s okay. Just keep away from the shore . . .

  for now, at any rate.” He walked away.

  “Great timing,” Dan said.

  Susan brushed some stray hairs off her forehead. Unlike

  himself, she looked fresh and professional. “Don’t tell

  me,” he said. “I look like shit.”

  “You don’t look great. Did you have some trouble get-

  ting back to your motel last night?”

  “Sort of. Look, I know you’ve probably got to file some-

  thing on this, but can you still help me with this Fred Mas-

  setrino? He might prove a bit more cooperative with a real

  live local reporter along.”

  “No problem. There’s nothing much to report on the

  story, anyway. Some divers will be coming this afternoon,

  but that’s about all the news. I’m still doing background on

  the celebration.”

  “Divers. From where?”

  “New York. A special police team. The crew that nor-

  mally gets the plum East River jobs. You know, floating