Shadow Lake

Dr. Brubaker rubbed a hand over his face. “The only way the boy might have survived is if there’s a trapped air bubble. Stranger things have happened.”

Walker studied him for a long moment wondering if the doc really put much store in that. “Mac’s gonna get his biggest tow truck up there at soon as it gets light. He’s not sure he has enough cable to pull the car out though. Might have to borrow a newer towing rig from one of the large towns. Your patient say anything else?”

Doc shook his head. He definitely looked older since his wife had died. Walker thought about the rumors he’d heard that Doc was dying. He didn’t put much stock in them though. Rumors were always circulating in Shadow Lake. And just because Doc was getting his affairs in order, so what?

Like the rumor going around about Police Chief Nash’s pretty young wife, Lucinda. But who the hell married a woman half his age and thought she’d be faithful? Walker had learned the hard way about infidelity during his one and only marriage. Not that he was bitter. Much.

Shadow Lake was a hotbed for affairs, especially during the long cold winter months when the population dropped. There was a standing joke that the residents who wintered-in here switched wives and girlfriends and then held a roundup in the spring to divvy up the kids. He used to think that was funny.

“Were you able to reach her husband?” Doc asked. He sounded tired and he certainly hadn’t been looking well lately. But Walker figured that was to be expected given how many years he and Gladys had been together. He imagined it must have been hell for Doc to watch his wife waste away like that and in so much pain.

“No answer at the husband’s house,” Walker said. “I left a message, but for all we know the husband was in the car too. Hell, he might have been the one driving.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Doc said. “All I could think about was the little boy.”

It was too bad Doc had never had any kids of his own, Walker thought.

Fortunately Anna Collins had been in a vehicle with an in-car emergency system that had notified the police department the minute her air bag deployed and tried to raise the car’s occupant on the built-in cell phone.

When no one responded, the operator had given the police dispatcher the location of the car via the in-car global-positioning system and the Shadow Lake dispatcher had radioed the police department where Walker had taken the call.

Walker pulled his pencil from behind his ear, touched the tip of it to his tongue and opened his small notebook. “You said she just stumbled up to the hospital?”

Dr. Brubaker nodded. “Half drowned, good-size knot on her left temple. Sheila was on duty and heard the alarm go off, looked up and saw her collapse just inside the front door. She said the woman regained consciousness, mumbled something about her car crashing into the lake before she passed out again.

“That’s when Sheila beeped me,” Doc said in an exhausted voice. “I called you right away and was told you’d gone out to the crash site.”

Walker had been taken aback when he’d seen where the woman’s car had left the road. “No way could she climb back up to the highway, so I guess it makes sense that she would come out on the beach. That would have put her out with the hospital being the closest building.”

“That’s probably what had saved her life,” Doc said. “Given the temperature of the air and the water, if she’d been out there any longer she wouldn’t have made it. She was already hypothermic when she reached us.”

“Did she mention her son when Sheila found her?”

“No.” The doctor poured himself more coffee. “She was confused and scared.”

Walker nodded. “I called her in-car emergency provider. The car is a blue Coupe de Ville Cadillac registered to her and a—” he consulted his notes “—Marc Collins, presumably her husband. The address is Seattle. No answer at the primary residence, but I had a black-and-white go over to see if anyone was home. She said her son’s name was Tyler, right?”

Brubaker nodded. “She became so hysterical I had Sheila give her a sedative to calm her down. Anything I’d have said would have only upset her more. She just assumed that her son was here at the hospital.”

“You can’t miss the spot where her car went off the road,” Walker said. “Right there by the cliffs. No sign of the vehicle. But lots of small trees down. Couldn’t have gone off at a worse place if she’d planned it.”

Doc looked up. “You don’t think she—”

“Purposely drove off there?” Walker shrugged. He’d long ago given up trying to guess what a woman might do. “There weren’t any skid marks that I could see. But it was raining, so I couldn’t tell if she tried to brake.”

Doc shook his head and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure it was just an accident.”

Walker was never sure of anything. “She didn’t say what she was doing driving up here at that hour of the night?”

“No. She should sleep for a while. I’m hoping her son is found and I will have good news for her by the time she wakes up.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Walker said, studying the doctor again. Since his wife’s death, Doc Brubaker had been trying to find a doctor for the town. Few doctors wanted to live in such an isolated town, let alone make so little money and work such long hours. Along with being on call for the town, the local doctor saw to the small nursing home facility attached to the hospital.

Doc hired young interns for the summer months to give him a break, but none of them had shown any interest in staying once the first snowflake fell.

Walker knew Brubaker had talked about retiring even before his wife had died. He figured it wouldn’t be long and Shadow Lake would be without a doctor. “You all right?”

Doc opened his eyes, seeming surprised by the question, then uncertain as he glanced toward the darkness beyond the windows. “It couldn’t have been a suicide attempt. Not if the boy was in the car with her.”

Obviously the doc didn’t read the papers. Not having any children of his own, Doc Brubaker had no concept of what parents could do to their children.

Walker stood and noticed he’d left a puddle of rainwater on the floor in front of the chair where he’d been sitting.

“Don’t worry about it,” Doc said, following his gaze. “I’ll get someone to clean it up. Find the boy. I don’t want to tell that young woman that her son is out there in that lake.”

BRUBAKER CLOSED HIS EYES as Walker left. Sheila would come for him when he was needed.

But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Well, he thought ruefully, it wouldn’t be long and he’d get plenty of rest.

He got up and made another pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night and making the coffee gave him something to do. Not that it could take his mind off the woman down the hall. He was worried about her. The cold of the lake had caused heart rhythm disturbance. Sheila had said the woman seemed delirious when she’d been found, suffering from hypothermia.

But he suspected that was the least of it. He’d seen a look in Anna Collins’s eyes that had been painfully familiar.

He hated to think how many times he’d seen that look in his patients’ eyes over the years. More recently, he’d seen it in his wife’s. Defeat. Surrender. A lack of will to live.

With Gladys it had been the pain and knowing what the future held for her. He squeezed his eyes shut remembering the feel of his wife’s hand in his as she met his eyes that final night.

He shoved away the memory and considered the woman down the hall, bothered by the fact that she couldn’t be more than thirty. He realized he could have had a daughter her age if Gladys had been able to carry the baby they’d conceived to term.

Another painful memory to be shoved to the far corner of his heart.

He wondered what had happened to the woman down the hall that had put that look in her eyes.

Most patients were surprised to wake up in a hospital. She hadn’t appeared to be. He could only assume it was because she’d been in a hospital, not that long ago, from what he would guess had been a severe head injury given the sizable older scar that ran from her forehead up into her scalp.

And now she had a cut and goose egg on her temple from her car accident tonight, along with water in her lungs.

He could only guess what this woman had been through. Or what she’d been doing on the lake road this time of year, late at night in a rainstorm. He just hoped she’d been alone in the car, and confused due to her two recent head traumas.

Brubaker couldn’t stand the thought of what it would do to the woman if her son had been in that car.

WHEN ANNA OPENED HER EYES, she found a man about her age slumped in the chair next to her bed. Her heart began to pound as she saw that he wore the blue uniform of a cop.

He had removed his hat. It now dangled from the fingers of his left hand. His dark hair was too long at the nape and his features were rough, his nose obviously having been broken more than once. And, even though his eyes were closed and his breathing deep in sleep, there was a scowl on his face.

Blinking in confusion, she touched her temple and found a small bandage. A mixture of fear and hope filled her as her fingers quickly rushed to touch her forehead, praying that the horrible scar wouldn’t be there.

It was. Tears sprang to her eyes, all hope gone that this was the first time she’d awakened in a hospital, leaving her body like a ghost, her mind and heart again in agony.

As quietly as possible, she turned toward the window, not wanting to rouse the police officer. She’d awakened before with a policeman next to her hospital bed. It had been the worst news of her life. She couldn’t imagine how it could be worse this time.

Daylight spilled through the large first-floor window. Beyond the rain-streaked glass, clouds hung in the pines. Past them, she could see more pine trees and what appeared to be rocky cliffs rising out of the rainy mist.

She had no idea where she was. All she knew for certain was that she’d never seen this place before.

She closed her eyes. Earlier she’d fought the bottomless sleep of the dead, thinking there was hope.

Now she knew better and gladly welcomed oblivion.

“Mrs. Collins?”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Mrs. Collins, I know you’re awake.”

She slowly parted her eyelids to find the cop had walked around the bed and was now standing over her. She hadn’t heard him and suspected he’d wanted it that way.

As she looked up into his face, the warm brown eyes startled her. They didn’t go with the hard leanness of his face.

“I’m Shadow Lake Police Officer D.C. Walker. I need to ask you a few questions.”

She tried to remain calm as she watched him take a small notebook from his breast pocket, pluck a pencil from behind his ear and pull the chair closer to her bed.

He flipped to a page in the notebook and squinted down at it as if he couldn’t read his own writing. “Your name is Anna Collins?”

She nodded, then realized her mistake. “No. Drake. It’s Anna Drake.”

He frowned. “You told the doctor it was Collins and your in-car emergency service has the car’s primary driver listed as Anna Collins.” His attention went to her ring finger and the large diamond next to her gold wedding band.

“I was Anna Collins. I’m only recently divorced. I just haven’t taken off the ring yet or changed my name on the car.” She felt her face flame and cringed at the way she sounded. Pathetic. And still wearing the ring. A woman unwilling to accept reality. That was her.

The cop looked as if he would doubt anything she told him after this. “I understand your car went off the road last night and into the lake?”

She felt a jolt. “Is that what happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

She started to shake her head but stopped herself. Any movement caused excruciating pain. She ran the tip of her finger along the scar from her forehead into her hair, then retraced the line as she had a habit of doing whenever she was trying to remember.

“No, I do remember being in the lake.” She shuddered as she had a flash of memory—water rising over the hood of the Cadillac.

He studied her, then asked, “Who was in the car with you?”

She swallowed and straightened the covers. “No one.”

“What about your son? You told the doctor your son was in the car with you.”

Her throat closed. “I was confused. He wasn’t in the car.” She touched the old scar again then, realizing what she was doing, quickly brushed her bangs back down over it and curled her hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking.

“I just want to make sure you know what you’re saying. Ms. Drake?”

She hadn’t been Anna Drake for almost ten years. Why had she insisted on taking her name back? She could no more go back to being the woman she’d been before she’d married Marc Collins than she could change the past.

“My son wasn’t in the car with me.”

“Tyler, right? You’re sure he wasn’t in the car?”

“Yes. I told you I was confused earlier. I thought—” She turned her face away. “I was wrong.” Tears burned her eyes. “Please, I’m really tired.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “Where were you going when you had your accident last night? Were you headed to Shadow Lake to visit someone?”

She shook her head, the pain almost comforting compared to the fear that quaked through her. History was repeating itself. She couldn’t remember last night. Nothing.

“I don’t know where I was going. I…I don’t remember.” She closed her eyes. “Please, I just need to be alone.”

“Where is Marc Collins?”

“I don’t know. I told you. We’re divorced.” She squeezed her eyes tighter, her fingers gripping the sheet until they ached. She heard the cop swear under his breath and could sense him still sitting there watching her. After a few moments, she heard him close his notebook. But he didn’t leave. Please, just go away.

“Is there someone I can call? Family? A friend?”

“No,” she said, without opening her eyes. “There is no one.”

She waited until she heard the door close behind him before she let it out, the anguish, the tortured grief. Tyler. My baby. Oh God, Tyler.

CHAPTER FOUR

POLICE CHIEF ROB NASH bolted upright in the bed in an unfamiliar motel room, his clothes sweat-soaked to his skin and a cheap synthetic second-rate motel pillow clutched in both fists as if he was trying to strangle it.

His heart raced as last night came back in a wave of nausea. Hands shaking, he threw the pillow across the room and fell back on the bed to stare up at the water-stained ceiling.

It all came back like a swift kick to his gut. His cheating wife. The wild drive to Pilot’s Cove. The rain and darkness and falling-down-drunk pity party he’d thrown for himself.

He’d awakened a motel clerk demanding a room sometime after four in the morning and been forced to show his badge to keep the clerk from calling the cops on him for disturbing the peace. Kind of like the run-in he’d had at the Past Time bar and liquor store where he’d gotten the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

The memory made him as sick of the smell of fear and alcohol permeating the motel room.

Nash had heard about men hitting bottom. He’d seen his share that were certainly on their way if not already there. He’d just never thought he’d be one of them as he reached for what was left of the Jack Daniel’s and plotted how to kill his wife and her lover.

OFFICER WALKER OPENED the door to the doctors’ lounge to find Doc Brubaker nuking a frozen beef burrito. On the way in, he’d passed Sheila leaving. She’d gone off duty, leaving the elderly Connie Danvers at the nurses’ station monitoring the small hospital’s only patient.

“I thought doctors ate better than that,” Walker said as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.

Doc shrugged. “She told you?”

He nodded. “She swears she was confused when she woke up earlier and thought her son was in the car with her, but that he wasn’t.”

“You don’t believe her?”

Walker shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I’m not even sure she knows.”

“Which wouldn’t be unusual given her head trauma.”

“Which is why I haven’t called off the search.” He pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “I called the Seattle Police. They’re canvassing her neighborhood to see if they can get some information. But it’s one of those neighborhoods where the houses are a quarter mile apart and the neighbors don’t know each other. I’m also trying to find out if maybe there was a custody problem with the kid. So far nothing. I’m afraid her son is out there somewhere in that lake and she knows it and just doesn’t want to face it.”

“Understandable. That’s a hell of a thing to have to face.”

“Especially if she panicked and left him down there to drown.”

The doctor grimaced. “Maybe she couldn’t get him out of his car seat. Or maybe he’s with family or friends or even his father, alive and well, and nowhere near Shadow Lake.” He sighed. “Let’s hope that’s the case.”

Walker glanced out the window toward the cliffs, unable to shake the bad feeling he had. “What I’d like to know is what the hell she was doing on that road at that time of the night. The divers found the car, but the water down there is so murky they couldn’t see shit. Even if the kid’s car seat is in the back, it doesn’t prove he was with her—or that he was even strapped in.”

“Still no luck reaching the husband?”

“Ex-husband. She says they recently divorced.” Walker took a sip of the horrible coffee. If anything the coffee was worse than the cup he’d had earlier, and the smell of the burrito as the microwave dinged was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

“She’s still wearing the ring though,” he said. “There’s something there that’s not right. Did she say how she got that awful scar?”

“I haven’t asked. But I think whatever pain the woman is in isn’t necessarily visible,” Doc said.

“Yeah? Well, we’re all in pain, aren’t we.” He finished what he could of the coffee, needing something to keep him going. As he rose to rinse out his coffee cup, he said, “The towing crew should be getting to the site any time now. See what you can get out of Anna Collins, Drake, whatever. But I gotta tell ya, she’s lying about something.” His cell phone rang. He apologized and took the call.

DOC BRUBAKER WATCHED WALKER pull out his notebook to jot something down, worried. He felt bleary-eyed. His lack of sleep was starting to hamper his ability to think clearly. Only his concern for his patient was keeping him here.

An added concern was Walker. He’d delivered Walker, had watched him grow up in Shadow Lake, seen him change into the cynical, angry man he’d become after his wife left him and his best friend died.

It saddened Brubaker, even though he knew that life shaped a person. Walker had been through a lot, but nothing more than other people faced every day. Brubaker worried that Walker was taking this case too personally, that he’d seen similarities between his ex-wife and this woman and that ultimately, it would cloud his judgment.

Doc finally got up to retrieve his burrito from the microwave, hoping it would be cool enough to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew if he didn’t keep something in his stomach, he’d regret it.

Walker snapped his phone shut. “The divers are going back down to hook up the cable from Mac’s tow truck. I need to get up there.”

“Let me know what you find. As soon as I eat, I’ll go down and see our patient.”

Walker nodded, frowning. “I’ll be at the accident site if you need me.”

Doc ate part of the burrito, forcing what he could down before tossing the rest in the trash. When he pushed open the door to Anna’s room, he found her awake and staring up at the ceiling, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She didn’t seem to hear him come in. He studied her for a moment before approaching her bed.

“How are you feeling?”

She said nothing when she looked at him, her eyes hollow as he drew up a chair.

“Do you remember your car going off the road and into the lake?” For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. There was a frightening dullness to her eyes.

“It was raining,” she said in a distant tone.

He watched the pupils of her eyes and saw that she was starting to recall the accident.

“I lost control of the car.” He could see the fear, hear it in her voice. “Water was coming over the hood, filling the car…” She shuddered. “That’s all I remember.”

He nodded but wondered if she hadn’t remembered more than she was saying, from the way her eyes filled with tears.

“That must have been terrifying.” As he put his stethoscope in his ears and moved closer to check her heart and lungs, she brushed back her bangs to run her finger along the old scar on her forehead.

When he was finished, he stepped back and she pulled her hand away from the scar almost guiltily.

“That’s a lonely stretch of highway to be traveling, especially that late at night alone,” he said. “I doubt there was much traffic with it being off-season and raining. Were you on your way to Shadow Lake or leaving town?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him, the admission clearly painful. “I’ve tried to remember, but…”

“Don’t worry about. You’ll remember when the time comes.” He reached over to brush back her bangs. “How did you get the scar?”

Instantly, she looked self-conscious. “I’ve been told it was from a car accident eight months ago.”

He weighed that information. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced memory loss then. “Were you unconscious for long from the accident?”

“I was in a coma for six months.”

He tried not to let his surprise show. Six months was a long time, but probably not for a head injury of that magnitude. He asked, although he already suspected the answer, “And you’ve never regained your memory of that accident?”

“No.” Her tears boiled over. He noticed she had hazel eyes. “I only know what I’ve been told about it.”

He could see the pain of whatever burden she bore in her face and reached for her hand and squeezed it.

She turned her face toward the window but held tightly to his hand, as if anchoring herself for a moment.

He followed her gaze to the window. It was still raining; the dense fog that had enveloped the lake and shore earlier had lifted. Walker would be up on the road with the tow truck getting her car out of the lake. What if the boy was inside the car?

“Do you want me to close the blinds?” Brubaker asked.

She shook her head as she turned back to him and let go of his hand to touch the bandage on her temple. “Is this why I can’t remember now?”

“Probably. Because of your earlier head injury, it’s possible to have some memory loss even if the second injury wasn’t nearly as severe. I would suspect the memory loss this time will only be temporary.”

“I will remember everything then?” she asked, and his heart fell at the sheer terror he heard in her voice.

IT SURPRISED HER WHEN the doctor didn’t leave. She was used to people keeping their distance. Doctors at the hospital, after she’d come out of her coma, had seemed to have little time for her.

Even complete strangers gave her a wide berth, as if they could smell the misery on her. Just as she could smell their fear that if they got too close they might catch it.

She wiped at her tears, surprised that she still had tears to cry. She felt raw inside, but then she had since the moment she’d awakened from her coma two months ago. The memory was like a knife piercing her already bleeding heart.

What was new was the terror whenever she thought of last night. Hadn’t the worst that could happen to her already happened? And yet she still felt as if something horrible was going to occur.