Bones of Echo Lake

Bones of Echo Lake A Detective Jake Cashen Novel Declan James Copyright © 2023 by Declan James Books All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Special Preview of Red Sky Hill About the Author Also by Declan James Stay in Touch with Declan James One Echo Lake Twenty-five years ago … She wasn’t the first to die here. In 1973, a boy had gone fishing with his father, waded in too deep; his foot stuck in the muck, he had panicked. For him, it felt just like going to sleep after the terror ebbed. A few years later, a drunk driver took the curve on Lakeshore Road just a little too fast and lost control of his Plymouth Duster. He hit the water going over seventy miles an hour, the cops said. He had struggled, trapped in his seatbelt as the car sank and silt and water filled the vehicle. They said he lived for several minutes, trapped on the bottom of the lake, thirty feet of water over his head, before he too simply fell asleep. There were other deaths, of course. Some say the lake got its name from the cries of a lost lover. As the legend goes, a Shawnee princess, a young widow, had walked out until the water covered her head and let herself sink just a few feet from where that Plymouth Duster came to rest some three hundred years later. They said sometimes, when the wind was still, you could hear her mournful cries echoing across the placid surface of the water. And so it became Echo Lake. But this time, this soul, she was the first to die here by murder. First, she fell. If she’d had time to think of it, to remember what happened that day, she might have wondered if things could have turned out differently if only she hadn’t tripped on that piece of black driftwood. But she had, and her knee went out. She tumbled down a small incline, landing on her stomach. Move! Run! Don’t look back! All those thoughts slammed into her brain, but for a single moment, she felt frozen. As if her legs had grown roots, tying her to the ground. Then the air went out of her lungs as a heavy weight fell on her back. Crack. Pop. Pain seared her side as one of her ribs snapped. This couldn’t be happening, she thought. It was a dream. It felt like that. The kind where you can’t make your legs move. You try to scream but can’t make a sound. “Help,” she thought, wanting nothing more than to shout it. It came out as a weak croak. “Please. Stop!” The weight lifted from her back. Her arm was wrenched upward, forcing her to flip over onto her back. Her hand throbbed. She’d punched her assailant. Hard. For a moment, she thought it would be enough. But it stopped nothing. The moon was full. For some reason, that mattered to her. She could count the stars here. They were so much brighter than what she saw at home. She had a thought toward the end. The stars were watching her. They saw. They knew. She tried to reach up as fingers closed around her throat. So much pressure. Then the stars seemed to multiply and spin. She kicked once. Flailed. There was something you were supposed to do. What was it? Her head smacked hard against the ground. Had it been anything harder than wet sand, it might have cracked her skull. She tried to cough. No air. Her head filled with cotton. It hurt. Let me go. You don’t have to do this. I’ll disappear. I am nothing. I am no one. I am worthless. The stars blinked. A cold, hard, unfeeling stare. They would be there after she was gone. They would witness every other death to come just as they’d witnessed all that had come before. I’m sorry, she thought. So sorry. For her minor sins, yes. But also for the greatest one she had yet to commit. Because at the very end, as death finally came for her in its lonely, brutal grip … she let go. Her pain floated away. The bruises. The broken bones. Her crushed throat. Gone. All gone. There was nothing left but stars and sand. Her broken right hand splayed out, she felt the water as it met the shore. And then the stars went black. * * * It was over. She was gone. The killer sat on her chest for seconds only. Or maybe it was hours. Every detail of her face seared into the killer’s memory. She hadn’t made eye contact. That seemed strange. Instead, her now vacant eyes stared at the sky. The stars reflected in them, making them twinkle like two gemstones. Soon, the killer knew her eyes would go milky-white. The killer touched her face. Still warm. Still beautiful. Full lips. Her