Snapper (9 page)

Dr. Goode shook her head. She had not known any of these children. They were all before her time. Yet she had a close call on her hands now. Ian Copeland easily could have joined the roll call of the dead, though not because of drinking and driving, but because of whatever it was that was lurking in the lake.

Deena didn’t think the current situation would require outside counselors. Ian hadn’t died. But there was no denying there had been a loss. When she thought of the tall lanky boy without his right foot, she shuddered. It was too horrible to imagine.

The students in the hallways that morning had looked stunned, as if they’d been turned into zombies overnight. Nobody was talking. Everybody looked down at the ground, as if they were ashamed – or guilty – of something.

After a fitful night spent tossing and turning, JJ had come downstairs that morning to find Police Chief Rudolph waiting for him in the kitchen.

“I hate to bother you again, JJ,” he’d said, “but I just want to go over a few things from last night one more time. Just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

By the time Chief Rudolph left, it was past ten.

“You’ve been through hell, JJ,” said Judd. “Why don’t you stay home today? I’ll stay home with you.”

“Thanks, dad,” said JJ. “But no
–
I think I want to go.”

JJ couldn’t say why, but for some reason, he didn’t want to stay home. He wanted to go to school, maybe to get the whole thing over with. What did his grandmother use to say?
Meet it, greet it, and beat it
.

As Judd pulled up in front of the high school, he asked JJ one last time.

“Are you really sure you want to go, JJ?”

JJ nodded.

“Don’t worry, dad,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

JJ got out of the car and walked in through the front entrance. He walked past the glass case filled with trophies, then headed down the hall toward his locker. Students in the hallways parted as he approached. He felt like Moses walking through the Red Sea. Whenever JJ looked toward anyone, they dropped their eyes to the ground. Even Bobby Savarese looked down when JJ passed.

JJ opened the door to his biology class. The lesson had already started. Mr. Martinetti was at the blackboard again, this time drawing dendritic cells. He had planned to have a lab class today on paramecia, but he had changed his mind. Paramecia could grow back lost body parts. It seemed the wrong day for a lesson on regeneration.

“Dendritic means tree-like,” said Mr. Martinetti, looking up suddenly as JJ entered the room.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” said JJ.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Mr. Martinetti.

Mary Robinson fixed her eyes on JJ the moment he entered the room. When their eyes finally met as he walked toward his desk, Mary held his gaze. As he sat down next to her, she reached over and covered his hand with hers.

“I’m so sorry about what happened, JJ,” she said.

There were tears in her eyes.

She gave JJ’s hand a squeeze. Then she pressed a small, folded square of paper into his palm.

Suddenly, the phone on the wall rang. Mr. Martinetti walked over and answered it.

“Hello,” he said.

Then he looked up and glanced over at JJ.

“Yes,” he said, into the receiver. “He’s here.”

A moment later, Mr. Martinetti hung up and turned to JJ.

“That was Dr. Goode, JJ. She’d like to see you in her office.”

JJ gathered his books back up. He gave Mary a small smile as he stood. Mary looked up at him and silently mouthed something, but JJ couldn’t make out what it was. He was a lousy lip reader.

Out in the hall, JJ unfolded the square of paper that Mary had passed to him. There was a phone number on it. Beneath the number, Mary had written, “Call me.”

Now JJ understood what Mary had been silently mouthing.

“Call me.”

Chapter 11

PATERSON 1928

“Do you remember what you said to me when you bought this land?”

Wilhelmina Andersen was in the middle of excoriating her husband.

“Do you remember your words, Owen Andersen? Because I do!”

Wilhelmina had worked herself up to a froth.

“You said you were going to build a house on it – with your own two hands! Those were your words, Owen. ‘With my own two hands!’ you said. So now what are you going to do? Build a house with one hand?”

Owen sat at the kitchen table with his wife looming over him. His greatest concern was the rolling pin that she kept pounding into the palm of her left hand. Owen kept one eye on it, just in case. Meanwhile he wondered if her tirade had finally run its course, but he suspected it hadn’t. Once Wilhelmina got started, there was no telling when she would stop.

“And what about work?” she said, starting up again. “You think a bottling plant needs a man with one hand?”

“Don’t worry about work,” said Owen. “I’m a supervisor. I’m not a line worker.”

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” said Wilhelmina. “But for now, I want you to promise me that you’ll get rid of that useless piece of land. When people get wind of what’s in that lake, it won’t be worth a plug nickel.”

Owen said nothing.

“Come on, Owen,” Wilhelmina prompted. “I want to hear you say it: ‘I’m going to sell the land.’”

“I’ll say no such thing,” said Owen. “We’re keeping the land. I’m going to finish the cabin and I’m going to get that beast.”

“You! The man with one hand! You’re going to chop down trees, split logs, drive nails, and slay a monster?”

“No, Billy, not me, the man with one hand,” answered Owen. “Me, the man with three hands.”

“So now what?” sneered Wilhelmina. “Can you no longer even count – or are you planning to grow back extra hands?”

“I’m growing back nothing,” said Owen, looking his wife squarely in the eye. “And what I’m counting on is Isaac. His two hands and my one make three.”

Up in his bedroom above the kitchen, Isaac knitted together the fingers of his two hands. He was praying that his parents would please stop arguing. Even with his door closed, he could still hear every word they said – or at least every word his mother said.

Isaac turned his head to the side. That way his mattress could muffle one ear while his pillow could muffle the other. He gazed out the window. The Andersens’ house was set on a rise on the east side of town. From his bedroom, Isaac could see the moonlight gleaming on the domes and spires of Paterson. Just beyond loomed the dark black mass of Garrett Mountain, the first rise in a range of mountains that rippled and swelled from the Passaic River to the Pennsylvania border and beyond.

Somewhere out there, in one of those moonlit valleys, was Turtleback Lake. In the woods on its western shore was the foundation of an unbuilt log cabin while in the lake itself an angry turtle patrolled the depths, swimming from side to side and end to end with the handle of an ax jutting out of its back.

Chapter 12

TURTLEBACK LAKE JUNE 2006

When the phone didn’t stop ringing, Deena was sure it was Judd. When she picked up the receiver, she was ready to tear his head off.

But then the voice she heard wasn’t Judd’s.

It was someone else – somebody she’d spoken to once before, but only once.

It was, she knew, before he could even tell her, August Andersen.

She had heard his voice only that one time on the phone – when she had made the arrangements to rent his cabin for the summer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Well, whoever that someone else is,” said August, “I wouldn’t want to be them.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” said Deena. “I just let myself get a little too worked up over nothing. But tell me, how are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” said August. “And I hope what I’m about to ask won’t upset you. If it does, please just say no and I’ll completely understand. But what I was hoping to do was to stop by the cabin for a couple of hours to address a few maintenance issues.”

There was something about August’s voice that Deena found instantly soothing and calming. Moments before she had been practically throttling the receiver. Now she relaxed her grip. Then she switched the receiver to her left ear because her right ear was still a little sensitive. Judd’s nibbles the afternoon before had gotten a little rough.

“I hope it’s not anything that I need be concerned about?” said Deena.

“No, not at all,” said August. “Just minor maintenance. But since I’m going to be in the area, I thought I should
carpe diem
.”

Carpe diem
, thought Deena. Clearly she was dealing with a learned man.

“When were you thinking of coming?” asked Deena.

“This weekend, actually. I’m going to be in New York for a conference and I was hoping to shoot out there for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon.”

“That’d be fine,” said Deena.

“Well, great,” said August. “So figure I’ll just show up, probably around one or two.”

“Sure,” said Deena. But she didn’t want the conversation to end so quickly. She wanted to keep it going.

“I remember the last time we spoke you mentioned you were a teacher,” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what do you teach?”

“I started out in marine biology,” said August. “But now I specialize in the study of fresh water bodies.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Deena.

“Not everybody thinks so,” laughed August.

“Well, I do.”

“Well, maybe then we can trade notes on Saturday,” said August. “Didn’t you tell me you were renting the cabin so you could work on your dissertation?”

“You’ve got a good memory,” said Deena. “Maybe if you’ve got a few extra minutes you could even give it a quick look!”

What a difference a voice made! Yesterday, she was a lioness ready to decapitate Judd just for asking to take a peek. Today, she was a lamb, ready to open her books to a total stranger.

While Deena was keeping August on the line, Judd paced back and forth in front of his window. He had tried to call Deena – he’d found the phone number of the Andersen cabin in the Turtleback Lake directory – but the line had been busy – both times he called. Who could she possibly be talking to for so long? So much for all of Deena’s talk about wanting to remain reclusive and
‘incommunicado.’

As Judd stewed, Deena was feeling a strange exhilaration from the conversation she had just concluded. Though she was usually drawn to a certain physical type, she had always had a hankering for something completely different: a tweedy, Volvo-driving, Ivy League-ish intellectual with patches on the elbows of his herringbone jacket and tortoise shell glasses framing probing, intelligent eyes.

Deena’s imagination had already turned August’s voice into the embodiment of just such a man. Maybe tomorrow this elusive intellectual would finally walk into her life. But she was getting ahead of herself. She had to hold her horses. She had to remember what she was here for. Not for a man – even if he was Mr. Right. She was here for a doctor – a
Dr.
in front of her name.

Deena was reminding herself of her priorities when the phone started ringing again. Instead of dispelling the last bits of her reverie, it stirred them up again. It was probably Professor Andersen calling back with something he’d forgotten to tell her. She reached for the receiver.

“Hello,” she cooed.

“Well you’re a hard one to contact.”

At the sound of Judd’s voice, anger flooded back into Deena.

“And so?”

“So nothing,” said Judd, wondering why Deena was so quick to anger. “It’s just that I’ve just been trying to call you and the phone’s been busy – for quite a while.”

“And?”

“And nothing,” said Judd. “I was just a little surprised after what you said about wanting solitude and seclusion.”

This was absolutely too much! Deena did not know Judd’s little broker trick for calming down by counting backwards from ten to zero.

“Look, Judd – I don’t think I have to explain to you or anyone what I’m doing on the telephone.”

“Whoa!” said Judd. “I didn’t mean anything. I just called because after yesterday I was just kind of hoping that maybe we could do something today – maybe go out to dinner or something.”

Deena had made up her mind even before Judd was finished. Yesterday clearly had been a mistake. She wasn’t going to repeat it – at least not with Judd.

“Look, Judd, I’m sorry, but yesterday was yesterday. Starting today, there’ll be no more yesterdays. I’ve got to get back to what I came here for. I’m sorry, but that’s it. Goodbye.”

Then she hung up the phone.

Chapter 13

PATERSON 1928

The only thing positive to be said about Owen Andersen losing his hand was this: it was his right hand.

For most people, this would have been bad news. But not in Owen’s case. Owen was that one in ten: he was a lefty.