A Child's Garden of Death by Richard; Forrest

wall. A table fitted into the wall near the door, and beyond that a stove, cabinets and small bedroom to the front of the trailer. In the diffused light, Lyon could see that a blotchy film inundated everything in the trailer, a combination of algae and rust rising to thin knobs in certain sections, but easily wiped away.
    He started with the back bedroom. A triangular-shaped object rested by the bed, and he wiped his hands across the covering growth. A peaked roof, a little window, a door, a doll house. He turned away from the tiny room with revulsion.
    They opened the cabinets in the kitchen area. Food cans, still retaining their shape, but the contents unrecognizable, filled one cabinet. A set of dishes in another, and another set, oddly enough, in the final cabinet. Rusted silverware in two drawers, a gas stove with three eyes, stove ring missing from one eye.
    Above the rear settee-bed was a bookcase filled with rotting books. Swimming upward, Lyon ran his hands along their spines. The books crumpled and disintegrated before him and pieces of pulp floated before his eyes. At the end of the shelf he found a large volume bound in calfskin and gently removed it. The print was unreadable and fell from his touch, but he could make out one word of the title on the spine, “Das …”
    The police diver grasped Lyon’s shoulder and gestured to their air gauges. Only a few minutes left. They swam through the trailer and together, at the bottom of the clothes cabinet, dragged out a large tool-box. The police diver pried the lip open with his crowbar and they looked into the rusted contents. The tools were alien to Lyon, rusted metal in odd shapes and forms. He picked up one small piece, a gauge of some sort, but its readings were rusted through, and he let it fall back into the box.
    Gesturing to the police diver to continue the search, he let himself float free. His back came to rest against the trailer roof, giving him a draftsman’s view of the trailer as he bobbed gently. There must be a pattern, an indication of life style in the things he had just seen that would fit together to, form a living picture of the people who had lived here. There was not the slightest doubt that this was the house trailer of the three victims found on the ridge. The room of a little girl, the remains of artifacts and clothing belonging to a man and woman; obviously three people lived here. A man, wife and child. Now, what else … Lyon Wentworth had a great deal of thinking to do.
    Why was Rocco Herbert standing waist deep in lake water with all his clothes on? Why was Rocco holding him by the back while other troopers carried him to shore?
    They laid Lyon on the bank and began to strip off the diving equipment and wetsuit. Large hands wrapped him in a blanket. A few feet away, near a pine, the police diver bent over and retched.
    Captain Norbert was yelling at Chief Herbert, which somehow, Lyon thought, seemed to be the natural order of things.
    â€œIf he had died my ass would be in a sling, damn it!” the captain said.
    â€œHe didn’t die, Captain,” Rocco’s quiet voice returned. “The guy’s got a charmed life.”
    â€œNo more. No more dives except to attach the cables. We’re hauling the whole mess up.”
    â€œAll right, for Christ’s sake.” Rocco left the captain and bent over Lyon with a plastic cup. “Brandy. Good for what ails you.”
    Lyon drank greedily, feeling the warmth spread to his feet. “That is good. What happened?”
    â€œYou bastard,” the big man’s quiet voice said. “You are now officially a menace on land, sea and air. Not only did you almost drown, but that young trooper almost bought it bringing you out. What in God’s name were you doing down there?”
    â€œDoing? Why, thinking.”
    â€œThinking. Jesus Christ! If the kid hadn’t been an expert diver, you’d be thinking for eternity. Your tanks were