Coldwater Confession: A Coldwater Mystery

Prologue

Lightning blasted the top of a tall royal palm and hurled it through the windshield of the parked rental car. Cacophonies of thunder and colliding debris overwhelmed all other sound and thought. Andrew Ryan watched the swirling carnage from the window of the vacation cottage, heard his wife scream, and did nothing.

Annnnn—drew!

Peevish bleats, pitched to dramatize minor annoyance no longer penetrated the young man’s consciousness. But the timbre of genuine terror is hard to fake, and his wife’s cries eventually broke through. The swollen bathroom door yielded to his shoulder. The screaming woman careened through the opening. Behind her, a pale reptilian tail slithered through a gap where the bathtub and wall did not quite meet. A wave of adrenaline surged through Andrew’s already overloaded system.

I’m out of here, his wife shouted. But when she spotted the severed tree rising through their rental car windshield, she froze. ANNNN - DREW!

It’s okay, he whispered.

"There’s a HURRICANE out there! We’ve got to get out."

Not until it’s over.

"But there’s a SNAKE in there! I saw it."

And tree limbs outside flying through the air at a hundred miles an hour.

I CA…CAN’T STA…AY HERE!

Andrew pressed the cottage telephone to his ear, tilted his head, and then tossed the mute piece of plastic to the chair. It’s dead, he said. His wife wilted to the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees, and began to rock back and forth, moaning softly. The sound that seeped out of her then was more ominous to Andrew than anything howling outside or coiled in a corner of the bathroom. It started as a low-pitched wail, like a Muslim call to prayer. Only it wasn’t spiritual.

Ah-yeeeee. MMmmmmm.

Karen? he demanded. Did you take your medicine?

Ah-yeeeee. MMmmmmm.

Karen? Did you take your Thorazine?

Ah-yeeeee.

Andrew lifted his moaning wife and laid her on the couch before searching her suitcase. Where did you put your pills, Karen?

Ah-yeeeee. MMmmmmm.

Karen, don’t do this.

Ah-yeeeee.

Did you pack them? His wife’s eyes were unblinking…scared and defiant at the same time.

I don’t like the way they make me feel, she whispered.

Her husband’s oath was an amalgam of despair, resignation, and foreboding. There’re some sleeping pills in my bag. You’d better knock yourself out before this gets ugly.

Will you stay with me?

Of course.

* * *

Andrew Ryan lay in bed, listening to the sounds of lethal nature and mulling an ordinary marriage turned by slow degree to tragedy. Or maybe it wasn’t slow, and he was just slow to notice. A file of overlooked clues lay open against the back of his eyelids:

Late for their first date, the tanned coed in a white halter-top boasted of getting caught in a speeding trap on her way there, peeling out and losing the startled cop in a tire burning chase through the residential hills. Aroused by the exotic combination of recklessness and sexuality, Andrew Ryan assumed that she was making it up. She wasn’t.

Later came the serial drama of post-graduation employment disasters, masked for a time by the carnal pleasures of twenty-something life in the big city. Months between jobs lengthened into seasons. The fade from lioness to recluse accelerated.

The year the popular magazines were touting biological clocks ticking toward their final countdown, Karen announced that it was time for her to have children. She could do it all, she promised. Andrew was tempted to note that she had yet to do anything, but he stalled at the possibility that this might be the missing piece, the thing that could fix whatever it was that had gone so badly wrong.

But he was mistaken about that, too. The daily responsibilities of motherhood made no claim on Karen. Day-long trances behind her drawing table matured into nighttime hallucinations. The doctors first said it was a hormone imbalance, easily remedied by medication. But Karen resisted being balanced, and she forgot to take her medication. The cops and the EMT drivers became frequent visitors at the Ryan house. They had their own professional diagnosis. Psycho and stoned have a lot in common, they told Andrew. Some of their charges simply liked how it made them feel.

Karen stirred under the blanket and reached a hand to stroke her brooding husband. Come here, she whispered, her voice soft and come hither though the sounds of the storm had, if anything, gotten louder. Andrew slipped beneath the covers and snuggled close. Strange, he mused, that while everything else had fallen apart, this one thing still worked. No deception. No false promises. They came together like ice dancers to a music they heard instinctively. Or was he kidding himself about that, too?

You lost weight in there, he said. You look good.

They should call it The Club Med for the Head Diet, she answered. Institutional food and major drugs.

How do you feel now?

Scared shitless of that snake in there, thank you. I was hallucinating them so much in the hospital that they had to strap me down. Most of the time it’s kind of interesting, you know? But I really thought I was going to lose my mind this time.

Andrew looked away.

You don’t like to hear this, do you?

"I don’t like to hear you call it ‘interesting,’" he said wearily.

I’m an artist, Andrew. How could I not?

"Because your doctors have warned you a million times, not to find it interesting. Quote: ‘Down that path lies madness.’ Quote: ‘One time too many and you may not be able to come back.’"

I can come back any time I want, she snapped. Then, You want to hear why they had to strap me down? Andrew stared at her, but said nothing. There was this long, pale slimy thing under my bed that kept trying to poke through the bottom of the mattress. It scared the living shit out of me. But you know what my doctor said it was? She said it was you, nagging at me to ‘get out of the wagon and start pulling.’ I suppose she got that charming phrase from one of her chats with you. She says that you should quit acting so disappointed all the time. That you’re supposed to forgive me.

I do, said Andrew automatically.

Karen snorted. You don’t even know what you’re supposed to forgive me for. Andrew closed his eyes and mentally perused a fat catalog of forgivable misdeeds:

Wandering the neighborhood at 3:00 a.m. in your Victoria’s Secret nightgown, ringing doorbells at the homes of neighbors with teenage boys. Maxing out on a half dozen credit cards I didn’t know you had. Getting shit-faced at a dinner party with my boss and passing out on your plate. Leaving our two-year-old daughter alone in the house all day while you’re out driving the interstate, lost in the buzz of your latest medication—or refusal to take it. The jumble of images collaged a multi-year sabbatical from the responsibilities of adult life, but they did not explain it.

Of course I forgive you, said Andrew.

Bullshit.

Karen tossed the covers aside and strode unclothed and unselfconscious toward the mini-bar. Andrew stared after her, mindful of Aristotle’s aphorism about a pretty face being the best ambassador. Despite the abuse she had put it through, his wife had somehow managed to preserve the body of a twenty-five-year-old. In rare moments of frank self-examination, Andrew wondered if he would have put up with half of her crap if she hadn’t. Watching her fondle a handful of mini booze bottles, he suppressed a familiar surge of frustration. Don’t, he said. You’ll just make it worse.

I’m just having one.

Is that likely?

Karen looked at him straight and wrung the cap from the bottle with a closed fist. We have to talk.

Here we go, he thought. You’ve had group and individual therapy twice a week for two years, and now you’ve just had six weeks of it twice a day. The excuses get more polished with every rehearsal. But your behavior keeps getting worse. And now there’s a child. I’m listening, he said.

Karen smirked and then opened her throat for an exaggerated gulp. No, you’re not. Nothing I say or do gets through to you anymore. You’re numb. You don’t feel anything, you don’t see anything, and you certainly don’t listen—unless it’s about Maggie. Andrew’s chin floated warily toward the horizon. See? said his wife. Now you’re listening. Andrew opened his mouth to protest and she stuffed it with, You don’t love me anymore. I know it, and so do you.

Andrew expelled a hiss of pent-up breath and asked, as if to a child who has done her sums wrong once again, Then what am I doing here? How many men would stick with a partner through all this?

Oh, you’re a rock, all right, she said. Pride yourself on that. But somewhere along the way, you switched girls. You’re here for Maggie now, not me.

Not somewhere, he thought, and his mind unprompted screened a tape whose every sad and scary frame he knew by heart:

Arriving home from work and finding Maggie tearing through the house in a filthy diaper, screaming for a mommy who wasn’t there. Trying to calm the hysterical child while he phoned the familiar round of police, hospitals, and doctors. Father and daughter keeping vigil at the front window late into the evening. The child falling asleep in his lap hours past bedtime, awaking finally to the sound of a car scything through the mailbox at the bottom of the driveway and Karen stumbling through the front door. The child running to her mother and clutching her leg until almost the top of the stairs before losing her grip. Andrew staring, frozen as the frenzied toddler hurled her tiny body again and again against the closed bedroom door, screaming for a mommy who either didn’t hear or didn’t care. While through the door he could hear his wife on the phone with her latest doctor calmly asserting that she was not really sick at all and that she was not going to take any more goddamn medicine!

That was six weeks ago.

Karen, he said, his voice almost without expression. It’s not a contest between you and Maggie. Kids her age are helpless. You have to feed them, change them, play with them—keep them away from hot stoves. None of that is optional.

Mr. Mom! His wife poured another miniature bottle of booze down her throat. You think you’re a better parent than me?

Most of the time, I’m the only parent, Karen.

Not for long.

Goosebumps erupted on the surface of Andrew’s arms and across the top of his scalp, heedless of the moist, tropical air.

I’ve met someone, she announced.

In a psychiatric hospital? The surge of incredulous anger took Andrew by surprise, but it made no visible impact on his wife. Some crack-head biker?

A cop, she said proudly. And he’s only mildly depressed. Andrew looked at his wife over the top of his glasses, wishing at that moment that she was wearing something more than flaming nail polish. The irony is, I did it for you.

What?

Motherhood. I did it for you…to keep you…

Right.

You don’t get it, his wife hissed. You never have. I LOVED YOU! she shrieked, and then grabbed her crotch like a ballplayer. "But all you ever loved was this!"

That’s all you’ve left me to love, thought Andrew, while the rest of his mind split and tumbled down a dozen different paths at once. Can I afford to quit work and stay home? Can Karen get medical insurance on her own? Is my mother too old to come and help take care of Maggie until things settle down?

Karen watched the play of emotions ripple her husband’s face. Let me guess, she said. You’re thinking about me. About how you’re going to fight for me and win me back, no matter what.

Her husband sighed. I don’t know what to think, he admitted.

I’m so surprised.

A rumble of receding thunder filled the silence before he could respond. What are your plans? he asked, noting wearily the puzzled expression that was his wife’s only response. You haven’t had a full-time job in over five years and your knight in shining armor is a patient in a psychiatric facility, he explained. What are your plans, Karen?

His wife opened another mini-bottle and took a defiant pull. We’re leaving as soon as Tom gets out.

We?

Maggie and I.

Andrew Ryan’s throat clamped shut over lungs that fought to surge their way up and out.

She needs her mother.

You’re joking, Andrew stuttered. You’re not fit.

My doctor says I am.

"When you lie to her! ‘Yes doctor, I am taking my medication. No doctor, I haven’t had any hallucinations in quite some time.’ And what happens when you crash and burn?"

You’ll come to the rescue. That’s your role. Remember? ‘The Rock.’

I’m worn out with it, Karen.

Then you’ll come for her.

Andrew sat hard on the rattan couch and waved a hand at his naked wife. Put some clothes on, will you?

Oh. Karen looked around as if there might be a suitable change of costume nearby. I guess I thought we might be making a fresh start on our romantic weekend. I thought I owed you one last chance, at least. You blew it, Mr. Perfect.

The long-time lovers stared at each other, the one numb, the other uncertain but vaguely triumphant. Then the telephone trilled back to life. Andrew picked it up. His face, which a moment ago had been flush with blood, drained abruptly and then slowly engorged again. "Jesus Christ!" He pressed the receiver to the side of his head and cupped the ear on the opposite side with his free hand.Get her to the Emergency Room! Whirling on his naked wife, and in a calm more menacing than fury, he explained, "It’s the babysitter, Karen. Maggie found your ‘candies’ and ate them. What the hell was an open bottle of anti-psychotics doing in the nursery—on the nightstand—next to her bed?"

Karen Ryan did not respond, but the look on her face was chillingly familiar. Neither guilt nor fear. Andrew remembered it clearly from the very first time they met. Oh, my god, he whispered. You left it there on purpose.

* * *

Karen stared through the cottage window at the tow truck that was hauling away the wrecked rental car and at the men who had driven over the replacement vehicle, who were exchanging papers with her husband. Waves of nausea oozed through her pores in emulsions of heat and sweat. Radio says there’s another one coming right behind this, she heard one of them say. You got maybe twenty minutes. Waiver says it’s your nickel for any damage if you get caught in it. The brew inside Karen’s gut heaved suddenly and her legs propelled an unwilling head toward the bathroom. With her face half-buried in the toilet, she heard thunder roll again. Then Andrew appeared in the doorway, keys to the rental car protruding from the side of his clenched fist.

Do you have any idea how terrified Maggie must be? he asked, in a voice that was no longer the patient instrument of reasoned persuasion she had come to resent. Lying on a gurney, surrounded by strangers. One of them shoving a tube down her throat to pump her guts out, and no mommy or daddy there to calm her? Karen gave him the deer-in-the-headlight mask, but nothing else. You don’t, do you?

Kids are tough, she blurted.

Andrew shook his head—not in disbelief, nor in resignation, but finally and irrevocably, in dismissal. Hesitating for only a moment, he pulled the door between them firmly shut.

Annnn-Drew!

The voice on the other side of the door was arctic. All those times you left her alone, Karen—scared, hungry, reeking in her own filth—how long is a day, when you’re two years old and Mommy has suddenly disappeared? Again.

"ANNNN-Drew! There’s a SNAKE in here!"

I can’t let you take Maggie, Karen.

ANNNN-Drew! Don’t do this!

Can you feel now how Maggie must have felt? Can you imagine how she must be feeling right now?

A-A-ANDREW! Karen tried to stand, but the panic that inflated her lungs had also jellied her limbs. I’LL GO MAD!

Her husband’s voice was a frozen whisper. But you can come back. Remember? ‘Any time you want.’

A staccato rip of lightning plunged the cottage into darkness. In the silence between the woman’s screams, the sound of spinning tires on crushed shell driveway masked the hiss of something close, but unseen.

ANNN-DREW!

Chapter One

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

Tom stripped off his sweat-soaked shorts and T-shirt and stood at the edge of the rocky ledge high above the freezing waters of Pocket Cove. With temperatures stuck in the 90’s for most of the month, he had taken to ending his island workday with a regimen of cold water skinny-dipping, followed by a few cold beers. The ritual began with a leap from Forty-seven—so named by some long-forgotten liar who had declared the outcropping to be exactly forty-seven feet above the cove. When Tom leapt from it for the first time at age eleven, egged-on by his sheriff father, Thomas MadDog Morgan, the height and plunge felt more like a hundred feet. Jumping from it now seemed only slightly less perilous than it had then—his favorite parts being more vulnerable to trauma and hypothermia than they had been at age eleven.

Still, the sensation of moving naked through water is something Tom’s body recognized as one of nature’s gifts. Gazing across clear cold water that stretched uninterrupted for a dozen miles to the Canadian side of Coldwater Lake, and feeling the sway of giant beach trees behind and above him, Tom raised his arms, wrapped his toes over the lip of stone, took a deep breath and leapt.

Whoosh! Splash! Pulse pounding, sinus-clearing, gonad-shrinking Brrrrrrr! Beyond his outstretched hands was only darkness. The icy, skin-tightening sensation felt exhilarating.

His body rose and drifted, suspended and numb. Goosebumps erupted along outstretched limbs. The fatigue of sun-baked manual labor eased, and the mental fog that still clouded his head after nearly a year, slowly lifted. Rolling to his back and paddling toward the dock, he counted strokes and thought of nothing. The distant buzz barely penetrated his consciousness, until a part of his mind recognized the metallic sound as an outboard engine closing fast at speed.

Dive! Dive! Dive!

The wail of marine engines bearing down at close range was seared into Tom’s memory, thanks to a near-death encounter with Pocket Island’s former owner who had tried to run Tom over with a stolen powerboat. Tom had survived that murderous encounter only because the boat’s undercarriage was torn off when it hit a shelf of submerged rock just shy of its target. There were no hidden obstructions in the deep, clear water of Pocket Cove. And as far as Tom knew, the would be killer, Dr. Hassad, was still enjoying the hospitality of Homeland Security and could not possibly be at the helm of the boat approaching overhead. But the memory of his near-death experience was powerful, and Tom’s reaction was Pavlovian. Dive! Dive! Dive!

Breath in a vise, he listened to screaming engines close fast and then abruptly reverse to a wave churning stop. Overhead, twin steel props twirled at idle. The long white hull to which they were attached, freshly painted and unmarked, rocked back and forth in the clear, cold water. The PT 109 charge through the mouth of Pocket Cove and the brake of reversing engine was the final clue. Tom allowed his body to float upward and surface beside the new Coldwater patrol boat. The maniac driver at the helm was Joe, Tom’s brother.

You’re looking kind of shriveled there, Tommy.

Tom squinted at the familiar silhouette, backlit by the nearly setting sun. You catch my looters yet?

Did better than that. Joe Morgan stepped aside and extended an arm. Tom leaned back, shading his eyes with one hand and treading water with the other. Whoa! his brother cautioned. Watch your waterline. A second silhouette appeared beside Joe, shorter, sleeker, and unmistakably feminine.

Charming shade of periwinkle, Mr. Morgan. Confident, musical voice. Jet black hair. Porcelain skin. If-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it black bikini. Tom submerged.

There is no force or satisfaction to cursing underwater. Words feel like they sound: garbled and gelatinous. Slithering beneath the hull, he surfaced on the other side. Let the sun shine on someone else’s bragging rights, he thought.

Joe and his passenger came to the other rail and continued the introductions. "Tommy, this is Maggie Ryan. She starts teaching at Our Lady of the Lake School in September. Maggie, this is my brother Tom. My older brother."

Ch..ch..armed.

Miss Ryan also paints. I found her on the other side of the island last week trying to sketch Washington’s Head from a canoe. She said she wanted to do the fancy house above Pocket Cove, but didn’t know who to ask. I told her I’d make the introduction.

The vision in the black bikini raised a slim white arm to shade her eyes from the sun. You look like your turning to ice, Tom. Should I come by tomorrow when you’re…?

D-ressed?

Joe laughed. I brought you another present, too, to help with the looters. At Joe’s whistle, a large black Labrador bounded from the boat’s cabin. Go with Tommy! The dog yelped twice and then leapt over the transom. His name’s Brutus. Jack Thompson says he’s yours for the summer, if you want him. He’ll wake you up if you have any nocturnal visitors. But he won’t go after them. According to Jack, he’s pretty much a coward. Mostly, he just eats and sleeps.

Tom forced words through chattering teeth. Bonnie called.

Joe’s smile flipped like a power switch. Yeah?

She wants to meet me for breakfast tomorrow at Trudy’s diner.

Joe raised his chin. That’s not your business, Tommy.

* * *

Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t believe in air conditioning. For ten months a year that didn’t make much difference in Coldwater. But summer on the big upstate New York lake could be as hot as August in Atlanta, and by the end of the day, the glass and concrete structure at the top of Pocket Island was stifling. Tom had taken to sleeping outside in a hammock. Tonight he put out a rug and a bucket of water for Brutus, then settled down to enjoy the evening symphony of lapping waves, clicking insects, and the whoosh and flutter of the