Page 29 of The Mermaid Murder

They walked away from the stream, and its gurgling song quieted. Insects whirred their songs on the night air, and Misty thought again how much Eva must have loved living there.

“We’ll go to that window first,” she said, pointing to the window that was still dark. The one with the moonlight illuminating it was around the corner from it.

“We have to cross open space,” Zig said. “Stick to that strip of shadow, from the trees.”

“Fast and low,” Misty said, nodding. “On three.”

Zig rolled her eyes and took off in a running crouch. Misty followed, and then they were hunkering low against the side of the cabin beneath the small, dark window. Misty’s heart was pounding. Not from the run. She was in excellent shape, thanks to mermaiding. It was sheer adrenaline that made her blood rush hot through her veins and her skin tingle with awareness. She was having the time of her life.

She turned to face the cabin and rose just enough so that she could see inside. “Holy shit.”

Beside her, Zig rose, too.

Inside the small room, illuminated by moonlight flooding in through the opposite window, was a wall entirely covered in small photos, scraps of paper, and news clippings. The photo in the very center was of Eva Quaid. They were too far away to see details of the other photos, but Eva’s shot was bigger. There was no spiderweb of string crisscrossing the items, but there were handwritten notes scrawled across several of them.

“We have got to get a closer look at that.”

Zig aimed the camera and snapped a shot, but then shook her head. “Not enough light,” she whispered. “Maybe we can lighten it up, enlarge it.”

“We gotta get inside. Look, there’s a computer, too.”

“We can’t just take it,” Zig said.

“I have a flash drive in my pack. If there’s anything on there, we can download it.”

“We will. When he leaves. Tomorrow.”

“What if he doesn’t leave?” Misty asked.

Zig grabbed her arm and pulled her down low and a few steps away. “You don’t mean we should break in now, while he’s there!”

“No.” Misty frowned, twisted her lips to one side, mulled for a moment, then said it again, “No, we probably can’t do that.”

“Probably?”

“But let’s come up with a plan to get him out of there just in case. Maybe a fake call from the cops asking him to come down to the station to answer a few new questions… ten years after the fact. Weak, but it might work.”

Zig raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

* * *

RACHEL

The smell of chlorine took me back to swimming lessons with Sandra when we were kids. I was eleven, and entirely blind, sitting on the edge with my feet in the water, and I was overwhelmed by two sensations. The chlorine smell and mind-numbing fear.

I’d been swimming before, lots of times. But I could see then. This was the first summer after I’d gone completely blind. But there was Sandra, my kid sister by a year, standing close enough to touch, only she was in the water.

“You don’t have to come in,” she said. “But everything is exactly the same as when you could see. Promise.” She took my hands, but she didn’t pull. “We’re in the shallow end. You can touch here.”

I slid into the water, and it felt good, cool and refreshing against my sun-warmed skin. I was terrified, shaking even, but my sister had me. I trusted her. And as long as she was with me, I knew I’d be okay.

“So, Aunt Rache, you uh, ever seen anything like this before?” Christy asked.

It shook me out of the past and back into the present, where I was standing in a large room with a pool in its center beside my niece, who wanted details about my dream or vision or whatever. She was still wearing her Misty wig. She said that for performances, even Misty wore the wig, tucking her own hair up in a waterproof cap to protect it from the pool chemicals.

“Nothing just like this, no,” I said.

Beside me, Mason squeezed my hand, like he knew I’d been on a little journey.

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