because she wasted so much time with my dad. I figured a smart woman would have gotten out early. His death pushed us even further apart. She certainly hadn’t killed him, but she had kept herself and me strapped to the kamikaze plane that was his life. I wished more than anything to be able to go for a walk with her right now, smelling the perfume of summer flowers, feeling the breeze in the sweaty hairs stuck to my neck, and hearing gravel crunch under my feet. Instead, my world narrowed like that of a carnival goldfish in a sealed bag of water. The tiny circle of light in my brain grew brighter, and I remembered that my eyes were closed.
I opened them and saw a mirage of the sun reflected through a watery mirror, and I could almost feel its heat on my face. I reached out, and my hand brushed against something warm and soft. I grasped at it desperately, hungry to hold something solid. My hand slid off once, and I dug my nails in and pulled myself up.
I was welcomed by the glory of the warm sun on my water-soaked head as I clutched at my inner tube and surfaced weakly. I hung onto the side and vomited lake water and gasped for air, grateful for the providence that had brought me up near my life preserver. My whole body was trembling, but my mind was rejoicing. I was alive. I began to ineffectually kick for the shore. I wanted to get as far away from that dead body and its soggy grave as I could, and quickly. That could have been me. I had a feeling my exploratory diving days would be over for a while. Unless I knew exactly where that Star Tribune box was and dead bodies weren’t, I wasn’t going back in.
My childish kicks were bringing me away from the little stretch of beach I had started out on and closer to the public access, and soon the diving crew I had spotted earlier was beside me in their pontoon. I was dragged aboard, and I poured out my story between heaves. The dive crew untied their anchor, secured it to my inner tube as a marker, and took me ashore. They offered me an oversized Smurfs beach towel and a canteen of stale drinking water and told me they were from the Twin Cities, in Battle Lake to find the planted diamond. They had been scoping out the area when they saw me pop to the surface and start puking.
As their lukewarm water scraped down my raw throat and I absorbed the hot sun of an early June afternoon, my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything all day. In hindsight, that was good. I didn’t want to feed the fishes, either with my body or its contents. It wasn’t long before the Battle Lake police were on the scene, and the county water patrol arrived shortly thereafter.
It was time to tell my tale again, this time to thirty-eight-year-old Battle Lake Police Chief Gary Wohnt. Chief Wohnt had been on the Battle Lake force of two for over a year, and I had first met him when I’d discovered Jeff’s body in the library in May. I had a paranoid feeling that he was going to blame me for this corpse.
There was no love lost between the Chief and me. He was thick-necked and bossy, given to bouts of adult acne, and had perpetually shiny lips. As a pure bonus, he had dark, inscrutable eyes and one of those ominously quiet personalities that forced me to fill the silence with embarrassing small talk and unrelated confessions. Plus, he had a weird thing with Kennie Rogers. The man knew I was always watching him out of the corner of my eye, and he returned the favor.
“Ms. James.” His Frank “Ponch” Poncherello sunglasses made him appear impenetrable as he stood in front of me, one of his hips cocked higher than the other, his meaty hands hanging loose at his sides.
“Chief Wohnt.” I was sitting on the open rear of a diver’s Mitsubishi pickup, the Smurfs towel still held tight.
“Seems you were in the wrong place at the wrong time again.”
“Seems so.” Good thing I was too exhausted to stick my tongue out at him.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened here? Don’t
I opened them and saw a mirage of the sun reflected through a watery mirror, and I could almost feel its heat on my face. I reached out, and my hand brushed against something warm and soft. I grasped at it desperately, hungry to hold something solid. My hand slid off once, and I dug my nails in and pulled myself up.
I was welcomed by the glory of the warm sun on my water-soaked head as I clutched at my inner tube and surfaced weakly. I hung onto the side and vomited lake water and gasped for air, grateful for the providence that had brought me up near my life preserver. My whole body was trembling, but my mind was rejoicing. I was alive. I began to ineffectually kick for the shore. I wanted to get as far away from that dead body and its soggy grave as I could, and quickly. That could have been me. I had a feeling my exploratory diving days would be over for a while. Unless I knew exactly where that Star Tribune box was and dead bodies weren’t, I wasn’t going back in.
My childish kicks were bringing me away from the little stretch of beach I had started out on and closer to the public access, and soon the diving crew I had spotted earlier was beside me in their pontoon. I was dragged aboard, and I poured out my story between heaves. The dive crew untied their anchor, secured it to my inner tube as a marker, and took me ashore. They offered me an oversized Smurfs beach towel and a canteen of stale drinking water and told me they were from the Twin Cities, in Battle Lake to find the planted diamond. They had been scoping out the area when they saw me pop to the surface and start puking.
As their lukewarm water scraped down my raw throat and I absorbed the hot sun of an early June afternoon, my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything all day. In hindsight, that was good. I didn’t want to feed the fishes, either with my body or its contents. It wasn’t long before the Battle Lake police were on the scene, and the county water patrol arrived shortly thereafter.
It was time to tell my tale again, this time to thirty-eight-year-old Battle Lake Police Chief Gary Wohnt. Chief Wohnt had been on the Battle Lake force of two for over a year, and I had first met him when I’d discovered Jeff’s body in the library in May. I had a paranoid feeling that he was going to blame me for this corpse.
There was no love lost between the Chief and me. He was thick-necked and bossy, given to bouts of adult acne, and had perpetually shiny lips. As a pure bonus, he had dark, inscrutable eyes and one of those ominously quiet personalities that forced me to fill the silence with embarrassing small talk and unrelated confessions. Plus, he had a weird thing with Kennie Rogers. The man knew I was always watching him out of the corner of my eye, and he returned the favor.
“Ms. James.” His Frank “Ponch” Poncherello sunglasses made him appear impenetrable as he stood in front of me, one of his hips cocked higher than the other, his meaty hands hanging loose at his sides.
“Chief Wohnt.” I was sitting on the open rear of a diver’s Mitsubishi pickup, the Smurfs towel still held tight.
“Seems you were in the wrong place at the wrong time again.”
“Seems so.” Good thing I was too exhausted to stick my tongue out at him.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened here? Don’t
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