Page 76 of The Devil Knows Her Name

“What do you mean, you lost it?”

“It’s like a bog back there, all thorns and prickers and mud. Didn’t realize it until it was too late. Whole thing sank, nearly pulled me in with it.”

Broder swung around to me accusatorily, then realized whatever he wanted to say would sound insane. Instead, he crooked his head and barked into his radio.

“Where are we on that diving equipment?”

“On our way.”

After a moment, we heard another vehicle approaching. The branches and briars were animate now, a constant movement in the darkness of the trees, and as the van made its way through, the crackle of branches was interrupted by the shriek of wood scraping metal and glass. The other officers were starting to break through the trees too, most of them on foot, as if the sanctuary were herding them all here. They’d already begun to shout and snap at each other, unnerved by the forest and the things they didn’t want to believe they’d seen.

Only two of the wetsuits survived the short walk between the van and the pond; the third was torn open from hip to knee on a pricker cane. “I ought to come in here with a machete!” Broder snarled to no one in particular.

As the divers descended into the pond, a cloud went over the sun. The water suddenly lost all reflective quality, and the divers paused, staring into a motionless black void. One reached back to tug on their retrieval ropes. “You sure these are secure?”

“They are,” Broder barked. “Let’s get to it.”

They bobbed out into the pond, diving for minutes at a time and resurfacing a few feet from where they went under. Broder paced a track behind me, his radio occasionally letting out a hiss of static, while I silently watched the faint ripples from the divers.

Any moment could be the end.

Every time they resurfaced, I braced myself for a shout. With every bubble that rose to the surface, I expected the orange inflatable marker they took down with them. But it never came.

Barely thirty minutes had passed when they surfaced and struck back toward the shore. Broder muttered under his breath and went to the water’s edge as if he would head them off. “Out of air already?”

“No,” one of them panted, pushing up his goggles, “but it’s like snorkeling in an oil pan. We can’t see shit. Haven’t even found the bottom.”

“It’s a pond!” Broder protested. “How deep can it be?”

“I don’t know. I dropped a measure to find out and it just kept going—must be an underground current or something.”

Broder whirled on me and advanced. “How deep is the fucking pond?”

“How the hell would I know—”

“How deep is—”

There was a splash and a cry from behind him. One of the divers had slipped in the shallows. He raised his arm out of the water and red poured from his forearm, a deep, vertical gash like a suicide wound. In the hood of his wet suit, his face went gray.

“Oh, fuck,” he said. “I think that’s pretty deep.”

The other diver caught him under the armpits and heaved him to his feet. “Help him!” he shouted in exasperation at the rest of the officers, who were standing on the shore like cats afraid to get their feet wet. They stretched out their arms for him, only a few venturing even ankle-deep.

“He needs to get to a hospital,” one said.

“Then somebody take him!” Broder roared. “And nobody else leaves. I’m calling in a dredge.”

He stormed over to the van and made a series of irate calls. I was too far away to hear the replies, but he clearly didn’t get the answer he wanted. After a few minutes he emerged again, face flushed as he fought for calm.

“I will have that dredge tomorrow,” he said, pointing a finger in my face. “So don’t you think about going anywhere.”

I could have fainted with relief. One more day felt like a lifetime, more than enough to figure something out—to move the body, or call a lawyer and get the search warrant revoked somehow, or plant evidence that pointed them in a different direction. I could find a way.

The cops retreated slowly, picking their way around the edges of the pond, driving the remaining vehicles back toward the meadow in cautious fits and starts. Broder remained behind me, a sweating, heaving mass just beyond my peripheral vision, as the others disappeared into the trees one by one. I turned on an angle, making sure to keep the forest at my back rather than the pond.

Broder stared at me silently for a long time, as if he’d never quite seen me before. There was genuine curiosity rather than bluster and impatience in his gaze, and that made my skin crawl with a warning.

“You know, Tess, I really didn’t think you had anything to do with it,” he said. “It’s no secret that I don’t like you any more than you like me, but murder? I would’ve said, ‘Nah, not her. Not with her little bleeding heart for the animals.’ When Shim brought me that little piece of plastic he found here, I was sure it was just some bit of trash. Even when the DNA came back, I thought there must be some good explanation, because what would Tess Wynne have against Pastor Zeke? Sure, he wants to build a church up here, but a good offer to buy the land isn’t anything to get mad about, right?”