Cause to Fear

“Stacy, what’s the matter?”

Then Denice saw the shape under the ice.

It was a woman. Her face was a pale shade of blue and her eyes were opened wide. She stared up through the ice in a frozen state of terror. Blonde hair snaked this way and that from her skull, frozen in a position of disarray.

The face that stared back up at her, all wide eyes and pale skin, would revisit her in her nightmares for months to come.

But for now, all Denice could do was scream.

CHAPTER ONE

Avery could not remember the last time she’d shopped so recklessly. She wasn’t sure how much money she had spent because she’d stopped paying attention after the second stop. Actually, she’d barely even looked at the receipts. Rose was with her and that, in and of itself, was priceless. She may feel differently about it when the bill came, but for now it was worth it.

With the evidence of her extravagance in little trendy shopping bags by her feet, Avery looked across the table to Rose. They were sitting in some trendy place in the Leather District of Boston, a place Rose had picked out called Caffe Nero. The coffee was outrageously priced but was the best Avery had tasted in quite a while.

Rose was on her phone, texting someone. Usually, this would anger Avery, but she was learning to let things go. If she and Rose were ever going to get their relationship right, there had to be some give and take. She had to remind herself that there were twenty-two years between them and that Rose was becoming a woman in a very different world than the one she had grown up in.

When Rose was done with her text, she set the phone down on the table and gave Avery an apologetic look.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No need to be,” Avery replied. “Can I ask who it is?”

Rose seemed to think about this for a moment. Avery was aware that Rose was also working on the give and take aspect of their relationship. She still had not decided how much of her personal life she wanted to let her mother into.

“Marcus,” Rose said softly.

“Oh. I wasn’t aware he was still a thing.”

“He’s not. Not really. Well…I don’t know. Maybe he is.”

Avery smiled at this, remembering what it was like when men were both confusing and intriguing all at once. “Well, are you dating?”

“I guess you could call it that,” Rose said. She wasn’t offering much in the way of words but Avery could see the red hues creeping into her daughter’s cheeks.

“Does he treat you well?” Avery asked.

“Most of the time. We just want different things. He’s not a very goal-oriented guy. Sort of directionless.”

“Well, you know I don’t mind hearing about things like this,” Avery said. “I’m always willing to listen. Or talk. Or help you trash guys that are hurting you. With my work…you’re just about the only friend I have.” She cringed internally at how cheesy it sounded but it was too late to take it back now.

“I know that, Mom,” Rose said. Then, with a smirk, she added: “And I can’t tell you how sad that sounds.”

They shared a laugh at this but secretly, Avery was awed by how much Rose was like her in that moment. The instant any conversation became too emotional or personal, Rose tended to shut it down with either silence or humor. In other words, the apple hadn’t fallen too far from the tree.

In the midst of their laughter, a dainty little waitress came over, the same one who had taken their orders and delivered their coffee. “Refills?” she asked.

“None for me,” Avery said.

“Same here,” Rose said. She then stood up as the waitress took her leave. “I actually need to get going,” she said. “I’ve got that meeting with the academic advisor in an hour.”

This was yet another thing Avery was afraid to make a big deal of. She was excited that Rose had finally decided to go to college. At nineteen, she’d made the moves and had set up appointments with advisors at a Boston-based community college. As far as Avery was concerned, that meant that she was ready to start making something of her life but was also not quite ready to leave familiar things – potentially including a strained yet fixable relationship with her mother.

“Call me later to know how it goes,” Avery said.

“I will. Thanks again, Mom. This was surprisingly fun. We’ll have to do it again sometime soon.”

Avery gave a nod as she watched her daughter leave. She took the last gulp of her coffee and stood, gathering up the four shopping bags by her chair. After bundling them up around her shoulder, she left the coffee shop and headed for her car.

When her phone rang, it was quite an ordeal to answer it while carrying the shopping bags. She felt silly with the bags, actually. She had never been one of those women who liked to shop. But it had been a great mending exercise with Rose, and that was what was important.

After shifting all the bags around on her shoulder, she was finally able to reach the cell phone in her inner coat pocket.

“Avery Black,” she said.

“Black,” said the always-gruff and rapid voice of A1 Homicide Supervisor Dylan Connelly. “Where are you right now?”

“The Leather District,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I need you over at the Charles River, just outside of town over near Watertown, as fast as you can.”

She heard the tone in his voice, the urgency, and her heart skipped a beat.

“What is it?” she said, almost afraid to ask.

There came a long pause, followed by a heavy sigh.

“We found a body under the ice,” he said. “And you’re going to have to see this one to believe it.”

CHAPTER TWO

Avery arrived at the scene exactly twenty-seven minutes later. Watertown, Massachusetts, roughly twenty miles outside of Boston’s city limits, was just one of the numerous towns that shared the Charles River with Boston. The Watertown Dam sat upstream of the Watertown Bridge. The area round the dam was mostly rural, as was the crime scene she was currently parking in front of. She estimated that the dam was still a good fifteen miles away, as the city of Watertown was another four miles up the road.

When she walked down to the river, Avery ducked under a long strip of crime scene tape. The crime scene was quite large, the yellow tape making a huge rectangle from two trees along the bank to two steel poles that the police had jammed into the solid ice on the river. Connelly was standing on the bank speaking with two other officers. Out on the ice, a team of three people were hunkered down on the ice, looking in.

She passed Connelly and gave him a wave. He glanced at his watch, gave an impressed look, and waved her on.

“Forensics can fill you in,” he said.

That was fine with her. While she was growing to like Connelly more and more with each case, he was still best taken in small quantities. Avery made her way out onto the ice, wondering if those few times on a rink during her pre-teen years might serve her well. Apparently, though, those skills were long gone. She walked slowly, careful not to slip. She hated to feel vulnerable and not fully in control but the damned ice was just so slippery.

“It’s okay,” one of the Forensics members said, noticing her coming toward them. “Hatch fell on his ass three times getting out here.”

“Shut up,” said another member of the team, presumably Hatch.

Avery finally made it across to where the Forensics guys were huddled. They were hunched down, looking into a cleanly broken portion of ice. Beneath it, she saw the body of a nude woman. She looked to be in her early twenties. Pale and partially frozen skin aside, she looked quite striking. Gorgeous, actually.

Forensics had managed to hook the body beneath the arms with plastic poles. The end of each pole had a simple U-shaped bend to it, coated with what looked like some sort of cotton. To the right of the broken ice, a simple insulated blanket waited for the body.