Lake of Tears Read Online Free Page A

alive a couple days ago. Claire had the urge to touch the delicate finger bones of the hand, but resisted.
Do not disturb them.
Before this was over, she would have her fill of these bones.
    After the photos today, they would need to get a forensic crew down to sift through all the ashes. Maybe they’d luck out and find a ring or some other piece of jewelry that would help identify the body. These days, not many people walked around without jewelry on. She looked at her own hands. Her wedding ring, which, even though it was bad luck, was a river pearl. That’s what she had asked for. And she wore a simple pair of gold hoop earrings.
    Just as Claire was pushing herself up, surprised at how creaky she felt today, she heard a shout as Amy yelled at someone to stop. A forty-something man wearing a baseball cap and jeans was trying to climb over the crime scene tape.
    Amy grabbed him by the arm and he put his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. Just wanted to know what’s going on here.”
    Claire recognized him as Stewart Richards, one of the artists who was in charge of Burning Boat. “It’s okay, Amy. We need to talk to him.”
    “What’s going on?” he asked. “Someone lose something?”
    “How late where you here on Friday night?”
    “The night before the burn? We quit on the early side. For once everything was ready on schedule. Doesn’t happen very often. I’d say we left the site at about eight-thirty.” Stewart screwed on his hat more tightly. “Why? What’s happened?”
    “I’m sorry to say we have found the bones of a body in the boat. Any ideas of how it got there?”
    He swore into his hands. “Sorry. For real? What do you mean, a body? An animal?”
    His surprise seemed genuine. Claire looked him in the eyes and said, “A human body.”
    “Geez. And they burned?”
    “Incinerated.” Claire decided she might as well ask the next question. “Anyone missing from your crew? Anyone not show up who worked on this project?”
    “I don’t think anyone’s missing. I have to confess that I wasn’t in the best shape yesterday at the burn. Pretty exhausted. Pretty torqued from the burn. Hard to keep track of everybody. There were students who came from the college I teach at, to work on the piece. I’d have to check around. My wife, Ellen, might have a better idea. She’s back at the house.”
    “Why don’t you give her a call and ask her to come down here? What are you doing here now?” Claire asked.
    “Just checking to make sure the fire was out and to see what kind of mess we had to clean up.” He shook his head. “You know, this is horrible, but we joked about the funeral pyre we were building. I can’t believe it came true.”

    When Doug woke up, he found himself in his car with his head leaning forward on the steering wheel. Watch showed ten hundred hours. Aching. Cold. Stiff. But safe and in his own car in the United States of America. He had to remind himself of this blessed fact. No enemies. No crazy mofos jumping out of the bushes.
    He wasn’t really sure where he was, but he knew he was not far from his grandma’s house in Winona. That was where he was aimed. Didn’t have any other place to go. His folks had thrown him out a couple weeks ago. After he lost his job, after he freaked out on them one too many times.
    He pushed back the car seat, felt in his pocket for a cigarette. When he lit it, he let the match burn down until it was a moment away from his fingers. Just for practice. How close can you get without dropping it, without letting it get you. He’d spent hours in the OP doing that, staring at the flame before it burned him. Trying to not think about what was all around him. Not to think about the biggest monster he had ever known, a monster with a million legs, like a grubby old centipede, climbing over the mountains and coming after them. It spit fire, that monster, it chewed up rocks, nothing stopped it.
    He needed to clean up a little before he went to his grandmother’s.