Voluntary Departure

You salt the windowsills.

You feel ridiculous doing it, kneeling on the bathroom tile at one in the morning with a canister of table salt from the welcome basket, pouring a careful white line along the sill. Then the doorframes. Then the kitchen window, the one that looks at the lake.

You don't sleep much. Around three, you could swear you hear someone humming outside, very faintly, from the direction of the water. In the morning there's nothing in the yard but frost on the grass and a single loon out on the lake, crying.

"You're in early," Arlene says.

"Couldn't sleep."

She pours you a coffee without asking. Hagedorn's office door is shut and his cruiser isn't out front. On the corkboard behind the radio desk there are notices for a church bake sale, a lost beagle and a snowmobile safety class. No missing posters. Not one.

"Arlene," you say, "how many people have gone missing from Ninebark?"

She sets the pot down very carefully.

"Missing?"

"Tourists. Seasonal workers. Anyone. Say, in the last ten years."

"Oh, people come and go, hon."

"In October," you say.

Arlene looks at the closed office door. Then she looks at you for a long time, and you watch her decide something.

"The state has a database," she says quietly. "Missing persons. Every department reports into it, even little ones like us. Reino never touches the computer." She picks up her knitting. "I'm going to go to the bakery for ten minutes. Don't break anything."

The bell over the door jingles behind her.

The station computer is ten years old and wheezes when you wake it. Your state login still works. You search by jurisdiction. Ninebark, Ninebark Township, Ninebark Lake.

Nine results.

You scroll. Your skin prickles.

October, nine years ago. A twenty-two-year-old woman, seasonal staff, Vanderslice Lodge. October, eight years ago: Saima Aho, waitress, twenty-six. October, seven years ago: a hitchhiker, male, last seen at the Northern Lights Diner. A lodge cook. A camper. A local man of twenty-four. A woman on a fishing trip with her husband, who swore she walked out of their cabin in her nightgown. Two more.

Every report is a page long. Every report has the same closing code in the same field.

Voluntary departure. Case closed. R. Hagedorn.

Nine names. Nine Octobers. Not one search party. Not one dive team. Not one call to the state police.

The first report's name field has been left blank. Just a date, an age and the lodge.

You print everything. Your hands are not quite steady.

When Arlene comes back with a bag of cardamom bread, the printer is still warm and you are standing at the window looking at the lake.

"Did you know?" you ask her.

She puts the bread down. "I didn't want to," she says. And then, more softly, "Eat something, Ava."

Noon comes and goes. Hagedorn spends the afternoon at a county meeting and doesn't radio once.

At dusk you drive out to the public boat launch. It's at the east end of the lake, a concrete ramp and a gravel lot surrounded by birches. On Caleb's map, three of the red pins were stuck right here.

His green truck is parked in the trees, half-hidden.

You find him at the waterline, crouched, looking at something in the mud.

"It's past noon," you say.

"It is." He doesn't look up. "You going to put me in his cell?"

"I haven't decided."

That gets a glance. Something like approval, maybe. Then he points.

"Look."

At the edge of the ramp, where the concrete gives way to dark sand, there are footprints. Bare feet. Narrow, a woman's maybe, or a slim man's. They come down from the gravel lot in a straight line, unhurried, evenly spaced, right to the water's edge.

And they keep going. You can see them under the surface, pressed into the lake bottom, getting deeper. Ankle. Knee. Gone.

There are no prints coming back.

"These are fresh," you say.

"Last night. While it was talking to you." His voice is flat. "It walks up out of the water and back down. Practicing, I think. Or looking around. It gets restless before the Hunter's Moon."

"It."

"I don't have a better word." He stands. He's taller than you remembered, and he smells like woodsmoke and cold air. "The families have one. I've heard them use it. They call it the Tenant."

"Which families?"

He doesn't answer that. He nods north instead, up the long gray length of the lake, to the white buoy floating alone near the far shore.

"That's the bell buoy. There's a town under there. Old Ninebark. Drowned when they built the dam in 1938. The church is still standing on the bottom, forty feet down. Locals say you can hear the bell ring." He pauses. "I've heard it."

The water at your feet goes very still.

Then something turns over beneath the surface, maybe ten feet out. Something long and pale, like a body rolling in its sleep. You see the gleam of it for a second, white as a fish belly, and then it's gone and the ripples are spreading toward your boots.

You step back so fast you almost fall. Caleb catches your elbow. His grip is warm and very steady, and he lets go the second you're balanced.

"Don't come here after dark," he says quietly. "Not without me."

"I'm the deputy. You're the trespasser."

"Then arrest me in the daytime." He takes a pen out of his jacket, takes your hand without asking, then stops with the pen above your skin and looks at you. Asking now. You nod. He writes ten digits on your palm in small, neat numbers.

"I'll be in the tree line along the east shore tonight," he says. "All night. If you hear anything, if anybody calls you from that water, you don't go to it. You text me."

"Not call?"

"Text. I won't always be able to talk." He's already walking backward into the trees, the dusk swallowing him. "And keep your sills salted, Ava."

You stand alone at the ramp until the light is gone, staring at the footprints that walk into the lake.

You get back in the cruiser. You lock the doors. Your phone buzzes before you even start the engine.

this is underhill. lock your door. text me when you have.