Murder at Sunrise Lake

Stella kept her gaze on the lake’s surface as the colors went from those beautiful shades of purple to various shades of red. She glanced up to the sky. Clouds had drifted, just little lacy formations, nothing threatening. White and gray, they took shapes in the sky. Little fingers of fog crept from the mountains, emerging from the trees, coming toward the lake in strange ghostly arrows of fine mist. Was that some sort of portent? Did she even believe in things like that?

“Stella, you’re as sane at it gets. Talk to me.”

She opened her mouth twice to tell him because she really needed to share. It wasn’t like Sam talked to anyone. She closed her mouth both times and shook her head. He didn’t say anything encouraging. He just waited in silence. A fish jumped and plopped back in the water close to the reeds jutting out of the water by the rocks where Sam had been pulled under. If Stella looked close enough, she’d swear she could see a smear of blood on one of the rocks. Her stomach rebelled. She put her coffee cup down and wrapped her arms around her middle.

“I think there’s blood on that rock, Sam.” She whispered it.

“Most likely, Stella. We’ll have to show the sheriff. We have to report this.”

She closed her eyes. She knew he was right. This was going to be a storm she wouldn’t get out of. “I sometimes have nightmares.”

That was such a great start. Nightmares. She had seen hell in Sam’s eyes on more than one occasion and she was fairly certain he knew what real nightmares were.

“I’ve only ever had these kinds of nightmares a couple of other times in my life. I was four the first time. Four. Five. Six years old. The nightmares were in fragments at first, but then as I got older and the dreams were more frequent, they would be in more detail. By the time I was seven, I could see the details enough to draw them and write some of them down.”

She frowned, trying to think of a way to explain. “I didn’t realize at first, because I was a child, but the dreams came in a five-day pattern. The first day I would see a small glimpse of a scene as if a clip of a movie or video was playing. Each night the lens would open wider. I was actually seeing a serial killer murder a victim. I would never see the killer, only the setting and sometimes enough of the victim to identify him or her.”

She buried one hand in Bailey’s fur, needing the comfort of the Airedale. Bailey responded by shoving his big head in her lap. She could feel Sam’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look at him. She had to find a way to tell him this in her own way.

“Usually, two days after each nightmare, someone would be murdered in the way I would see it in my dream. I was a little girl and had no idea the nightmares were coming true. I told my mother, but she never told me they were coming true. Later, when I asked her why she didn’t go to the police, she told me no one would take the word of a child and she didn’t want to turn our lives upside down.”

Stella rubbed her hands on her legs. She braced herself to look at Sam. To see the condemnation there. The killings had spanned four years. There had been a lot of murders in that time. She should have known Sam would never have judged that little girl. His features showed no emotion. He was all planes and angles, that dark masculinity that whispered he had his own stories to hide.

“My mother wasn’t telling the truth. I would tell her”—she lowered her voice even more—“Mommy, Daddy’s doing the bad thing again. She would get so angry with me. She didn’t want me to say that. Or tell anyone. We were very well off and she had so many friends, luncheons to attend, tennis games to play. She couldn’t be bothered with nightmares that couldn’t be real, even if she knew they were. She fired my nanny so I wouldn’t talk to anyone about Daddy doing the bad thing again.”

Stella looked down at her hands. “All those lives that maybe could have been saved over those years. The cops most likely wouldn’t have listened to a little kid, but maybe one of them might have. My mother started drinking. I was seven when one of my tutors listened to me and took me to the police department. Eventually, my father was caught. My mother drank herself to death. By that I mean she committed suicide. After the media circus died down and there was no one willing to come forward to take the daughter of a serial killer, I was put into foster care.”