Lotus Effect

The lights dimmed, denoting the bar was closed. I slugged toward the boardwalk. All my sad friends had vacated the bar. As I watched Cam leave with the bartender, a desperateness clawed at me from the inside.

What if the bartender had a girlfriend…or a wife? Had she even bothered to ask?

I used to be in the camp that believed men were solely to blame for their cheating ways. Now…? Chelsea’s blond hair and perky tits invaded my mind.

God, I loathed her.

My anger toward Cam and even Chelsea was unfounded, I knew that. I was a hypocrite. I had dated my college professor. A cliché deserving of my sad circumstance, as if I had asked for it.

Karma.

Maybe I deserved this pain, I thought as I stepped onto the wooden planks of the dock. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to walk out there. Maybe it was the dream. My biggest fear had already been realized. I’d already faced the hurt, the pain, that came from discovering the truth.

What else was there to fear?

Yet I wandered onto the pier wishing I could rewrite time—as if just being there was a challenge to fate.

So utterly illogical of me.

Love and pain make us irrational.

I wondered if Drew and Chelsea felt any of this heartache. My mind was going to dark, dark places. Every lecture from my psych classes was spinning in my head. No one ever succeeded in retaliation. And yet…

I wanted retribution.

I wanted both of them to experience this awful, humiliating pain.

Old, water-worn boards creaked beneath my feet. I couldn’t tell whether it was the pier swaying or me. I walked to the end of the dock and peered over, into the black water. Lotuses blanketed the inky lake top, their petals a strange iridescent white, dew refracting the light of the stars.

I dropped down, seating myself on the edge. After a while, my phone dinged with a message from the Uber driver. She was in the parking lot. I ignored the message and muted my phone. I didn’t care. I curled into a ball right there, the lapping sound of the lake against the boards a soothing calm.

I fell asleep. Or I passed out from hunger, exhaustion. I’m not really sure which. All I know is that I was staring out over the lotuses as the lake breathed them in and out with the rising tide, then…nothing. Blackness blots out that period of time.

There are flashes, glimpses of blood in the water. A red stained lotus. The crushing pain in my chest as I struggled to breathe. An outline of a man…his hand.

That’s all I have now.

Real, recovered, or false memories my mind fabricated to fill the blank.

The next thing I recall is waking up in the hospital.

10

Discovery

Lakin: Now

The Tiki Hive is just one of the many “tiki” establishments that scatter the Florida coast, and it was the last place of employment for the victim. Unlike other beach bars, with their cheap tiki torch theme, this one is a mix of refined beach life and elegance. A bar for the more affluent residents and tourists of Melbourne.

Sheer white curtains billow in through floor-to-ceiling windows. The scented breeze of ocean and coconut drifts inside, infusing the beachfront restaurant with a lively current of youth.

Mike Rixon was a person of interest further down our list, but Bethany Delany’s maternal instinct bumped him up to number one. He was originally questioned due to the flow of drugs around the food and beverage scene. With Joanna’s history of drug use, the case detectives already explored this angle, but we can’t write anything off; every angle has to be looked at again.

Joanna’s toxicology screen was clean of any known street drugs, but that doesn’t mean a drug link from her past can be completely ruled out.

Rhys and I are seated across from the restaurant owner at the bar as he dries tumblers. Slowly. Mike Rixon is taking his time, putting us off. He doesn’t realize that, with cold cases, he can take his sweet time. We’re in no rush. We’re the ones who take a fine-tooth comb to the case, going over details that may have been overlooked the first time during a hasty investigation.

After we left the crime scene—fled, more accurately—Rhys and I went door-to-door in the neighboring apartment buildings, seeking anyone who might have seen the victim the night of her murder. We turned up nothing. So we decided we’d take a lunch break at the Tiki Hive. Two birds, one stone.