Stuart Woods - Under the Lake

“That’s right. We went together since high school, then started making plans to marry after I got out of the service. I was working for the county by then – I was a deputy – and that meant Eric Sutherland to Donal O’Coineen. He was pretty much of a hard case. Anyway, the whole business about the lake started to get in our way. Old Donal looked at me as being on the other side, which I guess I was, technically, but I never went against him; I stayed out of it. Still, things got tenser and tenser, and finally, Joyce backed out of the engagement. I guess it got to the point where she figured she had to choose between her family and me, and she made her choice.”

“How long was this before O’Coineen finally sold out?”

“A couple or three weeks, I guess. Less than a month, anyway.”

“And you heard from them afterwards? Personally?”

“That’s right. A couple of weeks after they left the county I got a letter from Joyce – her little sister wrote it for her.”

“Kathleen?”

“That’s right. She was Joyce’s eyes in a lot of ways. Anyway, I got this letter from Joyce saying goodbye. It was postmarked in Nashville, and she said Donal was taking them further north, maybe Virginia or Kentucky, to look for some land, and we wouldn’t be seeing each other again. Donal had money in the bank here, of course. What Sutherland had paid him for the land. But Joyce said he was bitter and wouldn’t touch it. He’d drawn out just about everything else he had – and believe me, he was pretty well off – several months before he left. They’d stopped doing business in town, they took Kathleen out of school, and they just wouldn’t have anything to do with anybody local anymore.”

“And the money’s still in the bank, I hear.”

“So it is, and with a lot of interest on top of it. ”Course the bank don’t give a shit if Donal never turns up and asks for it. They got a nice, fat deposit, just sitting there.“

“Bo, is there any possibility that somebody else could have written the letter? I mean, since it wasn’t in Joyce’s handwriting, couldn’t somebody have forged it to make you think the family was still alive?”

“No, no. It was in Kathleen’s handwriting. She’d written all of Joyce’s letters to me when I was in Korea. There must have been a hundred of them. I’d know that handwriting anywhere.”

“Then there’s no chance at all that the O’Coineen family could have been drowned when the roadbed gave way and let the lake in?”

“Absolutely none. Look, John, now I see what all this interest in the maps was about. People like to think the worst, and that story has been making the rounds periodically for years, but I’m in a position to know the truth of things. First of all, I know the money’s in the bank; I’m a director of the bank. Second, Joyce communicated with me after the family left, and I know for a fact the communication was genuine. I was in a position to know; there was some personal stuff in that letter, stuff that only Joyce and me – and Kathleen – could have known.”

Howell felt badly deflated, and he must have looked it.

Scully leaned forward. “John, I can see how this tale of the O’Coineens must’ve looked pretty sexy – especially with somebody like Eric Sutherland being the villain. But there’s just nothing to it. Oh, Sutherland was the bad guy, all right, putting pressure on people to sell land they’d owned for generations, but he did it legally all the way, and at the end of it all, it’s meant a whole new world for the people who live here. And let me tell you something else. If I thought for a minute that Sutherland had been involved in something like a murder, I’d of had him long ago. I respect the man, but I don’t like him much, and I loved Joyce. I wouldn’t be a party to covering up her murder. I hope you believe me.”

Howell did believe him and said so. “I’m sorry, Bo, if I’ve ruffled feathers around here with all this, especially Sutherland’s. I know that can’t make life any easier for you.”

“Well, you’re right about that, John. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sutherland quite so riled. Look, I’m going to run down this credit card – like as not there’ll be some perfectly logical reason why it was there, somebody from out of town at the party, I expect – then I’ll do what I can to quiet him down. I don’t know if you were in there the other night, but even if you were, I think I understand why, and the hell with it as far as I’m concerned. So just forget this visit, okay? But listen, if you get the old man flustered again, he’s going to start making life difficult for me, and I can’t have that, and I’ll have to do something about it. Do you understand me?”

“Sure, Bo. Believe me, I don’t want to make life difficult for you.”

The sheriff left, and Howell went to the phone.

Scotty moved through the files with almost reckless speed. She knew she might miss what she was looking for at the rate she was going, but she also knew that, with events closing in on her, she might never have another chance. Still, after three quarters of an hour, she was only finished with one drawer and half finished with another. She was aided, though, by the neatness of the files. Nothing seemed mixed up or out of place. Finally, it was color that led her to what she wanted.

In a file marked “Miscellaneous,” full of one standard form used for domestic disturbances, peeping toms, and other minor concerns, she saw something green. Everything else in the file was white. She fished half a dozen sheets of loose ledger paper from the file and looked at her watch. Ten past two. She had been luckier with time than she could have dared wish for. The telephone rang.

“Sutherland County Sheriffs office.”

“It’s John. Sutherland found your credit card outside his office.”

“I know, you sonofabitch. Bo has already written to Neiman’s to find out all about it.”

“He was just here, asking questions. Just so our stories match, I told him we cooked a steak and got to bed early.”

“You told him I slept there? Thanks a lot.”

“He asked, but I told him it was none of his business. We had what you might call a very frank discussion about what’s under the lake, and I think maybe I’ve been on the wrong track.”

“Well, judging from what I’ve got in my hand, here, I’m not on the wrong track. There were some ledger pages stuck in a file where they shouldn’t be. That’s not like Bo.” She glanced quickly through them. “There are a lot of figures on them.”

“Well, you’d better get a copy of them quick. Bo’s already been gone from here a couple of minutes, and if he’s headed for the office, that means you’ve got very little time.”

“See ya.” She hung up the telephone and ran for the copying machine. It hadn’t been used yet that morning, and it took a couple of minutes to warm up. She drummed her fingers restlessly on the machine, waiting for the green light to go on. She had copied only two of the pages when the front door opened. She froze. The filing cabinet was still unlocked, the file was on Bo’s desk, and papers were in her hand that shouldn’t be.

“Thanks, sugar, how do I look?” Mike, the radio operator sauntered by, stroking his hair.

“Slick, Mike,” Scotty managed to croak. She kept making copies. “You’re gonna knock ‘em dead.”

“You know it, sugar,” Mike said, arranging himself in his chair and opening a Playboy.

Scotty grabbed the last copy and, as quickly as she could without seeming to hurry, walked back toward her desk. When she was around the corner and out of Mike’s sight, she ducked into Bo’s office, stuck the sheets back into the file, got it into the drawer, and locked the cabinet. She had been back at her desk, the copies safely in her purse, for five seconds when Bo walked in.