Ekelin Lake

Constable Smith

When the call came in at 9 AM July 28 about a missing five-year-old at Ekelin Lake, Constable Kathy Smith was an hour away—or half an hour, if she used the siren, which she did. Policing the land of lakes meant constant driving on secondary highways that carved through lush green forests and around placid lakes and over gurgling rivers. Today, the scenery was a blur. Nine times out of ten, kids were found in the first hour. This one had been gone for two hours going on three.

When she arrived, the parents Brent and Courtney Green were already organizing search parties with nearby cottagers. In Smith’s experience, the parents were usually too panic-struck to think straight, but there they were, showing around a photo taken yesterday: a winsome five-year-old, dark blonde hair, gray eyes. Her face was sunny and open, her teeth were small perfect pearls. She was last seen wearing purple pajamas, of the style known as baby-doll.

“We often take our morning coffee down to the lake,” Courtney told Constable Smith, her voice quavering. She was the last person known to have seen Ellie. “She knows where to find us. But we’d had a late night, slept in a bit. I woke up to an open door—and no Ellie.” She took a moment to compose herself.

Parents waking to an open door. How many times had Smith heard this in her 19-year career? What was it, the excitement of summer mornings—or the restlessness of somnambulation—or the terror of nightmares? She needed to get a fuller picture of Ellie’s tendencies but when she began to probe, Courtney shrieked, “Some psycho stole my daughter—and you want to know about sleep habits!” Worried faces from nearby searchers turned toward them.

So much for the cool “organizing” exterior. Smith didn’t take it personally. “We receive missing person reports every week, Mrs. Green. We have a systematic approach that’s been proven highly successful. Out here, the greatest danger to a child is the lake.” Smith thought, but did not say: the second greatest danger is the child’s parent.

“Does she ever go in the water unsupervised?” Smith asked, remembering to use the present tense.

“I tell her all the time,” Courtney said, “you must swim with a buddy.”

Smith had learned to listen closely because people often state what they wish to be true, not what the reality is. “Ah, so she sometimes… goes in water unsupervised?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Well, maybe. Once or twice,” Courtney said defensively. “But she knows she shouldn’t.”

“Could you take me from here, the doorstep, to the lake—on the path Ellie would have taken to the beach?”

Courtney did so. At the lakeside another search group was assembling. Brent told them to “take five” and jogged over to put an arm around his wife and answer Smith’s questions. “Courtney was the first one up—I mean, after Ellie.” Brent seemed barely holding it together, Smith noted, from the way his moustache trembled as he squeezed Courtney’s shoulder.

Smith radioed for patrol cars to set up roadblocks. Then she spoke further to Brent alone. He didn’t seem to be blaming his wife (a common reaction). No, it was the fault of the nanny who, “even though we paid her double, refused to stay out here in cottage country. Can you believe the ingrate?” Brent said. “Practically abandoning a defenceless child.”

Smith made note of the nanny’s name and number. And Brent’s peculiar phrase.

Rick O’Shea

The same morning, Rick O’Shea was trying to sleep late but kept hearing shouts across the goddamn lake. He put the pillow over his head but the next thing he knew, someone was banging on his cottage door.

“Go away,” he growled. “I’m not home.”

“Search party, Rick. The Greens’ kid.” The voice was familiar, but in his fogginess, Rick couldn’t recall the name.

“Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen,” Rick lied. Anything to get a little more shut-eye. Times like these, he wished Rosie was there to run interference. Lately she stayed in the city to be close to their little granddaughter. Rick loved the cottage life; he loved sitting out there fishing and enjoying a brewski. He groaned and rolled over. These damn millennials invading the place. Why were they bugging him to go out and look for some kid the gutless parents couldn’t keep track of? Wait, wasn’t that part of natural selection? If you can’t keep tabs on your young uns, maybe you shouldn’t have so many.

Rick was positive the kid would turn up—they always did, out there at Ekelin Lake. Kids fell asleep in boathouses. They had sleepovers at Suzie’s and forgot to tell Mommy. Or they wandered off in the woods and stood bleating and whimpering until someone arrived. But he didn’t want to look like a slacker neighbor, so he threw on yesterday’s clothes and paddled his canoe over to the Greens’ pier and joined the search around 11 AM.

“We’re checking both water and woods,” the search organizer said. “Try not to use your motor—we’re listening for Ellie.”

Rick said his was an “unmotorized canoe” but the joke fell on deaf ears. He volunteered to check the inlets with his canoe. Five brooks fed into the lake on the west side. He had brought his fishing pole and tackle box so he could do some fishing once the kid had been found.

On his way to the second inlet—peering left, right, down, up in a constant pattern—he saw Norm’s rowboat going by in the opposite direction. “Hey, wait up!” Rick called. “Come join the search.”

“I’m headed to town,” Norm said. “All out of toilet paper.”

“Toilet paper can wait,” Rick said. “This is someone’s kid.” He laughed self-consciously. Listen to him, a regular Boy Scout. Norm and Rick had grown up together on small farms in the Ekelin Lake area, during the time when folks still broke their hearts trying to eke out a living from the stony meadows. First the boys were “scamps,” and later “hellions” who shot squirrels and stabbed toads for entertainment. Once they even tried setting outhouses on fire. (Too damp to burn well, they concluded, but the fires majorly pissed off the urbanites who were just discovering cottage life.) They’d left Ekelin Lake decades ago, moved to have careers and families in the big city, and had eventually attained a veneer of civility.

When Rick broke the news it was the Greens’ kid, Norm hooted. No love lost between Norm and the Greens, everyone knew that. In general, Norm hated lawyers (which they were) and in specific he hated Brent’s sneer and Courtney’s entitlement.

“You better wipe that smile off your face,” Rick said, “or you’ll get arrested for indecency.”

“Do I have to?” Norm said.

Rick knew Norm had a bone to pick with the Greens. Ever since the Greens had bought the lakeside property a year ago, they’d banned Norm’s shortcut to his parking spot anymore. No, that would take him through “their” water and across their precious beach. They threatened to sue for trespass.

“You’re an old dog but you can learn new tricks,” Rick had said, jollying Norm along until he got over it. His pal had grumbled but eventually toed the line. The property line. That had been last year.

“You go speak to the search organizer,” Rick said. “I’m headed thisaway—I told them I’d check the inlets.”

“It’s a waste of time.” Norm scowled at the Greens’ pier, where people were coming and going. “They’ve already got loads of people.”

“You’re not just an ordinary searcher. You’ve got a good hunter’s eye, better’n mine… better’n most people’s.” Rick regarded Norm evenly. “Seriously. Take the high road, man.”

“If you say so.” Norm sighed, glanced at his tarp and tackle. He paddled with one oar to turn his boat. “Hey, why’n’t you drop by my place to watch Friday’s game?”

“Sounds good.” Rick laughed. Soon this would be behind them.

An hour later Rick was checking the fifth inlet—still nothing—when he heard the flare go off at Johnsons’ pier. Yelling, splashing, motors revving, people began making their way to Johnsons’ pier as fast as possible. He was glad the kid was found. Bonus: that meant he could get straight to fishing.

Norm Bitz

Norm Bitz rowed to the Greens’ pier after he spoke to Rick. What a bloody circus. The mayor of Ekelin, a former reservist, was talking to a group, telling them to broaden the woodland search. Norm offered to do another search of the shoreline. Since he had the rowboat.

“Sure, Norm, why not,” the mayor said, his condescension pricking Norm’s ego.

“I was a sharp-shooter back in my army days,” Norm said. He was getting on in years and his eyesight likely wasn’t so hot, but he kept mum on these points.

“Which way’s the current going today?” the mayor said.

“Westerly,” Norm said, “therefore I plan to go west along the shoreline,” he said, speaking with military efficiency. “I met Rick O’Shea on my way over. He’s searching the inlets. I plan to examine in detail every single pier and boathouse along the lakeshore—property ownership rights be damned.”

“Of course,” the mayor said, blinking. “This is an emergency.”

Norm set out. The fifth pier was Johnsons’ pier.

Norm later explained how it happened. He had spotted a “patch of purple” among the twigs and dead leaves and foam that washed up on shore. A kid’s shoe. With his sharpshooter’s eye, he surveyed everything nearby: the water, the stony outcrop, the dark pines that loomed near the edge. He took a closer look at the pier, which was the floating type, like a series of overturned shallow boxes. He thought he saw something.

He fired a flare and started waving madly at Greens’ pier, until people began jumping into boats.

Two divers in a motorboat roared over to join him at Johnsons’ floating pier, the sound ripping the air like a torn-up promise. “Yep, something’s trapped under these slats,” one said, and they went below. They resurfaced with a pale lifeless creature—Ellie, it turned out.  The next few minutes were slow-motion chaos: divers doing CPR on the body while people were running off through bush or crossing water. The circus had turned tragic.

Norm watched it all unfold. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, he thought.

The mayor, in a canoe, hollered for Norm to pull up at the shore.

“That’s a helluva westerly current,” the mayor said, as he went ashore. “Just stay put for a bit… I believe the constable wants a statement.”

Norm was shaking his head, clearly not in a conversational mood. “Oh yeah. They always do.” Just his luck to get stuck with a cop and a politician.

They waited together until Ekelin Lake’s finest came roaring across in someone’s motorboat. Constable Kathy Smith got out, all brusque and businesslike. She turned to the boat driver and the mayor and said, “We need some privacy, guys.” They wandered off in the direction of the Johnsons’ cottage.

Smith turned to Norm with her routine questions. He complied, giving minimal answers, except for phone number. “I don’t keep one out here. Just drop by my island if you need me.”

“Okay, will do.” She tucked the notepad into her pocket and made like she was ready to return. Norm felt as light as a head of draft.

But no. She went to the shore. “Is this your rowboat?... Mind if I take a quick look?” Norm shrugged and she stepped into the boat. “Do you always travel with a tarp in sunny weather?” She pulled it aside.

“Yes,” Norm said, offence coloring his voice. “I always keep certain things in my rowboat—bungee cords, fishing tackle, tarp. I get tired of packing and unpacking stuff that I use a lot.”

“Why’s the floor of your boat wet?”

Norm picked up a tangle of rope and began untangling. “A slow leak.”

“I hear there’s bad blood between you and the Greens.”

He grunted a laugh. “Most of the old-timers here can’t stand them, either. They’re maybe better at hiding it than I am.” He wound the rope into big loops.

She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask about them. I asked about you.”

“The Greens act like they own the lake. But it’s a shared thing.” He tied a loop around the rope bundle and set it among his several items.

After a long minute, he said in a softer tone, “What, a man can’t have a disagreement with his neighbor?”

Rick O’Shea

On the evening of July 28 Rick caught the news and felt sad it was not a living child the searchers had recovered. But at least the parents had “closure,” whatever that meant. The next day, in line-up at the Bargain Tiger checkout, he found out that his buddy Norm—of all people!—had been the one to locate her.

Rick brought some premium-label brewskis to Norm’s place on Friday evening. Not every day that he was on drinking terms with a celebrity.

“Congratulations,” he said, raising a cold tall one and clinking it against Norm’s. “How’d you do it?”

Norm said nothing. Just shook his head and took a long swallow.

On the TV, the crowd noise of the ball game surged, and the friends watched avidly. During a commercial break, Rick muted the TV.

 “I’ll tell you how I found Ellie Green,” Norm said. “In the photo they took of her, she was wearing purple. Purple shirt, purple hair things.”

“Yeah, ‘Frozen’,” Rick said. “My granddaughter’s crazy for that Disney show.”

“Yeah?” Norm said. “Well, whatever, I just tuned my sights to purple—looking hard for that exact color. Sure enough, I saw a little patch of purple on the shore. It was her shoe.”

“And she was there, too?”

“No, just a shoe, but I began to look really, really hard close by—in the lake, on the shore, around the pier. And then I saw something lying under the floating pier.”

“No kidding.”

“I didn’t know for sure. The worst part was trying to figure out what to do next. How could I get their attention—to send someone over to help get it out. I didn’t want to touch it. You know what I’m saying?”

Rick looked at him for a long moment. “Already dead, eh?” He shuddered, feeling bad for Norm. The corpse. Not something you ever want to handle. Especially not a child’s.

Rick unmuted the volume and said, “Can you believe this team?”

Constable Smith

Three days later, the autopsy reports showed Ellie had drowned at 7 AM on July 28. That meant the child was already dead—before she’d even been noticed missing.

Constable Smith felt sick, like she had betrayed her best friend.

She took a water taxi to Norm’s island for a follow-up interview. The shadows were starting to lengthen and the island was remote, so she asked the water taxi to wait for her.

Norm was cooking ramen, leeks and fish when she rapped on the door of his shack. After brief pleasantries she got down to business. “I hear that you’re a morning fisherman, Norm.”

“Sure am. Best time to land a fish.” He showed her the crispy brown fillet in his frypan. “Like this one. He was swimming around Ekelin Lake just this morning.”

“Were you out on the lake at 7 AM on July 28?”

“Yes.”

“Were you near to Greens’ beach or Greens’ pier that morning?

“No, I was far away, at the second inlet west, which seems to have a fine run of Northern pike these days.” He gave an amused look. “No-one can confirm, I suspect, because no-one’s out on the lake at that hour.”

“Mr. Degrasse is often out for a morning swim. He says he did not see you that morning.”

“Pfft. Degrasse hardly sees me. He’s busy churning up waves with his exercise,” Norm said in a huff. “Me, I’m slipping through the water real quiet, picking up a fish for my dinner. Ask Rick. Rick calls me the stealth bomb. That’s the trick to good fishing.” He watched her write “Rick” on the pad.

“Did you see or hear anything unusual around 7 AM? A splash?”

“Nope.”

“Have you ever opened the door of the Greens’ cottage?”

“I do not like what you’re implying,” Norm said, his voice rising. Then he thought better of it, and said quietly, “Look, I happened to spot the body. Any one of the hundred people out there—well, if they’d had the training how to focus on details—could have done that.”

“It’s my job to ask questions,” she said neutrally. “Here’s another question. You saw the purple shoe. How did you know it belonged to the missing girl?”

“I didn’t, but the search team showed a recent photo—she was all done up in purple. That’s the color I was looking for.”

 “After you saw the shoe, you noticed something under the floating pier. Why didn’t you try to pull it out?”

“The pier is heavy, it would take another pair of hands.” Norm shrugged.

“In drowning, time is of the essence.” Smith stared hard at him.

“Okay, it wasn’t moving… And I—I was a little afraid of what I might see.” Norm had a sharp intake of breath and looked away—out at the lake—for the longest time.

He hoped this time she was convinced.