“Okay, I need to show you something.” The sergeant scrawled a rough sketch on a fresh sheet of paper from his notepad, using the main street of the town for reference. “I’m no cartographer, but this should give you a sense of where we are and where the accident happened.”
As Mallory looked at his drawing, a few details returned to her from the map Betty Barber had sent. Her property was a rectangle with a long backside of shoreline. Her house, which the sergeant had marked with an X, was located close to the western edge of the property. The sergeant’s drawing indicated that the chain-link fence she had seen circled the entirety of the wooded area, as Betty had noted. The rest of her property extended all the way behind the shops she had seen on Main Street, right to the highway, encompassing Sled Beach on the eastern side. Of course the small beach she had stopped at on the way in belonged to her. How could she not have realized that? She tried to cover her shame with a sigh and a smile.
“It has been a long day, Sergeant. I did receive a deed and a map. It’s coming back to me now. I think it was just a shock to see you and to hear your news,” she said.
“Yes, it was a shock to us all.” He shifted back into his seat. “Did you stop anywhere along the way? Or push on through?”
She paused, knowing that her frequent withdrawal from the conversation must be making her seem odd, but she needed time to gather her thoughts. She worried that mentioning the fact she had stopped on the beach in question would make her seem involved in whatever had happened. Besides, the whole journey was becoming so fuzzy in her mind she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to talk about it.
It had taken her two days to get to McNamara from Vancouver. After a frustratingly late start on the first morning due to her inability to locate her wallet, which she had sworn she left by the door the night before, she had been relieved to get into the car. As she drove, the busy streets of the city had become a major expressway that cut through fields recently devastated by the fall harvest. About five hours past Vancouver, the road narrowed again into a single-lane highway that wove and pitched through mountain passes already treacherous with ice and the threat of snow. Higher and higher she had climbed, stretching her jaw frequently to pop her ears, marveling that she had never seen the peaks she was passing by though they were less than a day’s drive from the city where she had lived all her life.
When the mountains dived into a green valley and the hills around her began to purple like a bruise, she pulled over at a cheap motel after eight hours on the road. Its sign boasted “Cheap Beds and Cheap Eats,” which seemed more like an insult than a promise, but she had been too tired to risk staying on the road after dark to search for another place. Besides, Mallory had heard that Prince George, the small city where she spent the night, was the major outpost for McNamara and all the tiny towns to the north that had flecked her map like the dark bugs that had fallen prey to the force of her windshield. It seemed sensible to get a feel for it.
She had been proud of her adventurous spirit as she slipped under the thin sheets, telling herself that a true traveler wouldn’t worry about the greasy feel of the tan quilted comforter that lay on her shoulders. Sure enough, she slept well for the first time in weeks. She was finally free of the seemingly endless demands of her husband’s death: the paperwork, cleaning, and planning. For a few hours, she didn’t have to worry about the tasks and facts that kept sliding through her mind like wet sand through open fingers. Despite its flimsy walls and the rattle of footsteps outside her door, the cheap motel room seemed safe. She had finally shaken the sense that something was creeping up behind her.
After a quick breakfast of coffee and toast at the diner attached to the motel, she was back on the road at 7:00 a.m., driving straight north as the sun rose cautiously on the right side of her car, where a passenger would have sat if she had not been alone. She had passed through Turner in the late afternoon, roughly an hour and a half before arriving in McNamara. She wasn’t sure what level of detail the sergeant required, so she summarized the journey as succinctly as possible.
“I stayed the night in Prince George,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, writing it down.
She felt like she had passed a verbal exam. It made her bold enough to ask a question of her own.
“Can you tell me anything about the drowning?”
He looked at her carefully, then seemed to reach a positive conclusion. “Sled Beach looks pretty enough, but that spot is deceiving. We had a storm this morning, and best guess is the high volume of water caused a rip current.”
“Is that like a riptide?”
“Yes. Loss Lake is big enough to generate waves under the water that are strong enough to pull a person out into the deep. You’ve got to be careful here after a storm. The wind pushes a lot of water up on the beach, and, when it recedes, a strong current can be created. It’s temporary, usually only lasts a day or so, but if a person’s not aware of it, it can be fatal.”
“And that’s what you think happened today?”
He gave a slight shrug that seemed to be more of a dismissal than an answer.
“Like I said, the coroner is on her way, and she’ll probably bring somebody with her to suss out the weather conditions. But yeah, that’s my best guess. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“That’s awful.”
“As far as the victim goes, we don’t have an identification yet. No one local. Someone passing through on the highway. My deputy is running the plates now. Could have stopped to cool off on their way through. It’s strange to take a dip in early October around these parts, but it’s warm enough today. Did you hear or see anything unusual when you arrived? Might have been right around the time you pulled in.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“The wind was probably kicking up in the wrong direction for you to hear much back here,” he said.
Suddenly, Mallory remembered the unusual sound on the wind. She felt sick.
“Wait. I did hear a noise as I was unloading. Oh God. Do you think that could have been the person calling for help?”
The sergeant’s expression sharpened. “What did it sound like?”
Mallory closed her eyes and willed herself to remember. “It was high-pitched, like a child. A sudden shriek.”
“Close by?”
“Yes,” Mallory answered. “It sounded like it came from across the lawn, near the edge of the forest. But I could be wrong.”
The sergeant shook his head. “I’ll look into it, but that sounds more like a hawk.”
“It didn’t sound like any bird call I’ve ever heard.”
“No, ma’am. What I meant was that it sounded a lot like the sound a bunny makes when a hawk dives. They often scream right before the talons sink in.”
Mallory was embarrassed and unnerved. “Maybe.”
“The truth is most drownings are silent. This one might not have been discovered at all if it wasn’t for a dog walker who saw a shape far out in the water and reported it. That stretch of beach isn’t too busy this time of year.”
She was taken aback at his casual admission that other people used her property, but she tried not to show it. The last thing she wanted was to break a small-town custom before she understood how things were done in McNamara. Maybe private property didn’t mean the same thing when people had so much to spare. The sergeant continued.