No one has seen seventeen-year-old Stacy Cooper in a year.
It was a warm spring day just like this one—the anniversary of her disappearance—that Stacy vanished without a trace.The blond had attended an after-hours cheerleading practice in the back field of the high school, but never made it home to her parents’ house in Grand Bend, which is a thirty-seven-minute drive from Rachel Mackenzie’s office at the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Clinton.
It seems almost impossible that they should get this phone call today, of all days.Too coincidental.But it’s folly to jump to conclusions or fall for superstitions in this line of work.Rachel isn’t paid to think fanciful thoughts about the missing and murdered and maltreated.Her job as a detective is to assess the facts, which are all tacked on a corkboard on the wall of her windowless office; a confused constellation of witness and suspect photos, dates, location pins and minutiae connected by black and red threads—some weaker than others.
The lead detective on the case, Gary Green, who is also her supervisor, doesn’t like that she continues to pursue it.They arrested the girl’s father a few months after she disappeared, and he’ll be on trial for her murder next fall.As far as Green is concerned, it’s a done deal.Except for the fact that, as Rachel frequently reminds him, they still haven’tlocated Stacy Cooper’s body, and there was seemingly no motive for her father to kill her.By all accounts, they had a good relationship.Strained at times, like that of all parents and teens, but nothing out of the ordinary.Yet Green seemed to justknowit was John Cooper from the day he and Stacy’s mother reported their daughter missing—which is bad police work, plain and simple.Rachel’s told him that, too, more times than she can count and certainly more than are good for her career.
So when their office got the call today from a rattled staff member at the tiny Millgate Cemetery who claimed there was an unidentified body buried in their graveyard that maybe-sorta looked female, the detachment exploded into a chaotic uproar, and Rachel and Green leapt into their cars.
They’re now careening down the two-lane highway toward Millgate, a town of about a thousand people just southwest of Clinton.
Red lights flash on the car in front of Rachel’s squad, and she hits her brakes, then dips out into the oncoming lane, craning her neck to see what the slowdown is.Though she knows exactly what it’ll be this time of year, in farm country.Sure enough, the enormous outline of a planter comes into view three car-lengths in front of her, crawling along at thirty clicks, its green and yellow arms extended out like some giant Tolkienian arachnid, kicking up a haze of beige dust from the gravel shoulder.She ducks out again to check for oncoming traffic, but she can’t get a long enough break to flick on her siren and overtake this glacially paced country parade.She taps the steering wheel and sighs, accepting the momentary delay and the extra time it gives her to consider what this alleged discovery might mean.
It’s the anniversary of Stacy Cooper’s disappearance, and so her name is in the air today—quite literally: it’s on the radio.Everyone is thinking about her, wondering, and guessing guessing guessing.It’s the most sensational case the community has seen since Rachel’s own family gave them plenty to talk about a decade ago.Everyone’s got a theory.Everyone’s got an opinion.
What was it that happened, a year ago today, to push John Cooper to murderand dispose of his daughter in the depths of Lake Huron, the newspaper said this morning,where the remains of over a hundred doomed ships languish in the rocky darkness, the lake bed their final resting place?
Oh, please, thought Rachel.Detective Green had gathered the best sonar and technicians from across North America to search the lake last summer because he was “absolutely sure” they would find Stacy’s body there.
They didn’t.
Who are these people who claim to have seen Stacy since her disappearance?Can they be believed?a radio DJ asked the airwaves.
Possibly.
Is she working the streets of London, prostituting for drugs only an hour down the road?
Also possible.
Did she run away?With whom?Her boyfriend, they say…
Well, her friends saidmaybe.But then why did she leave one hundred dollars, untouched, on top of her dresser?Wouldn’t a runaway take the cash?
Was she murdered?
Green says yes.Rachel’s eyes flick to her rear-view mirror and she sees him in his squad car behind her, his mouth a sour knot.
Well, of course she was, her father’s in prison for it, isn’t he?The police must have had enough to charge him on.
They didn’t.They really didn’t.
Rachel half expects this call at the cemetery to be some kind of prank or obvious misunderstanding that any rational human could explain easily—an oddly shaped series of white sedimentary rocks, or frail animal bones—though a small part of her hopes it’s the remains of Stacy Cooper, and that her body might provide more evidence than the thin layer of dubious crumbs Green used to nail her father for murder.But another part of Rachel hopes it’s not the girl, that she’s still alive somewhere.Though there are some options for her whereabouts that are arguably worse than death.
Rachel still isn’t convinced John Cooper did it, not by a stretch.But the lack of evidence and answers is driving her up the wall.She’s the one whostill gets the calls from Stacy’s tormented mother, Tamara, who has lost her only child to God knows what fate, and her husband to what might well turn out to be a bogus prison sentence.Tamara doesn’t believe he did it.And if the police service doesn’t close this off, if they don’t deliver some kind of real justice based on actual evidence, Rachel fears they might find Tamara Cooper’s own body in the lake someday soon.And who could blame her?
“Finally,” Rachel mutters as the planter makes a turn onto a side road and the line of cars picks up speed again, like a faucet freed of a stubborn clog.Millgate is a tiny town, just a handful of shops and houses clustered around the old Millgate Methodist Church and its adjoining cemetery.It’s all one neighbourhood, fifteen minutes from the lake, but without the waterfront price tag.Rachel knows it well.
She pulls into the laneway leading to the church, then parks the car near the cemetery office as Green pulls in right beside her.After taking a moment to prepare herself for this visit, she pastes a neutral expression on her face, hops out of the car and grabs her kit from the trunk, heart fluttering.
“Do you think it’s her?”she asks Green.
He clears his throat, doesn’t answer.Rachel wants to push him to, to make him acknowledge that itcouldbe; that maybe he’s wrong and Stacy Cooper isn’t at the bottom of Lake Huron after all.But he says nothing, because in Rachel’s experience, men are allowed to just say nothing when they’re wrong.Women are always forced to apologize, defend themselves.
They make their way toward the far end of the cemetery where a woman and two men are standing beside a mini excavator at the base of a towering maple tree.Rachel recognizes the woman, an old classmate named Julie Jamieson—now Randolph.Rachel runs into everyone she went to school with who stuck around the county—not that there’s very many of them.Most moved to Windsor, London, or Toronto as soon as they got the chance after high school or university.She knew Julie worked at Millgate Methodist, but had forgotten until now; Rachel’s always keen to avoid the place.But she liked Julie well enough.They had homeroom together and both played flute in the high school band.Rachel rememberedher as an anxious type, so she can only imagine what this morning’s discovery has done to her.
“Oh, Rachel—Detective Mackenzie, sorry,” Julie stammers when she sees her.“I thought it might be you coming, and I’m so glad it is.”
Rachel nods at her.“Hey, Julie.”
