Hidden Vices by C.J. Carpenter Page B

to let her sit up.
    As a Homicide detective, Megan had dealt with many predators in her work, but none sat after a fight with pointed ears wagging their tail. This dog looked wide awake and ready to play. She opened the gate pointing toward the top of the street. “Go home. Go on. Go.” Her attacker whimpered and walked in circles. Megan noticed he had no collar and, after further inspection, no tags. She looked at dog-with-no-name, and then back at the lake house. He again cocked his head. Megan had seen men in the past make the same motion, but they didn’t want shelter—they wanted much more. She sighed. “You can’t stay out here, you dope; you’ll freeze. Come on.”
    He ran to the door in seconds.
    Megan picked up her gun and put the safety lock on. Heading back toward the house, she couldn’t help but stop and stare into the dark back yard wondering if an overzealous dog was all that had awoken her.

Ten
    Wayne Clarke drilled a hole through the four-inch-thick ice. The small cove had been frozen over for nearly two weeks, early for the season, but this was the first morning he’d had a chance to do what he loved most: ice fishing. Wayne was fifty-one, but he knew he looked like he was going on seventy. He figured his three ex-wives were responsible—not the two heart attacks, the pack-a-day smoking habit he’d started when he was fifteen, or his love of whiskey.
    Wayne led a predictable life, and that’s how he liked it. He still lived in the house he grew up in. He worked contracting for the towns surrounding the lake, mainly paving and construction. Every Thursday was pub night, every Saturday was the Elks Lodge. Every Sunday he attended Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church. The latest service available; it’s not as if he were drinking lemonade at the Elks on those Saturday nights. He had a theory that if he attended church at a location on the lake, maybe God would grant him a few good catches. He was a simple man, with simple needs.
    He set up his equipment, poured his coffee, added a shot of Jameson into his cup, and lit a cigarette. He wore the necessary gear for a particularly cold early-December day: insulated pants, gloves, boots, bright black and orange checkered winter coat, and the raccoon fur bomber hat an ex-wife gave him for Christmas one year. He couldn’t remember which ex, but it was the best gift he’d gotten from any of them and certainly warmed him more than they ever had. All of this would keep his outside protected, but the whiskey, he told himself, is what kept his blood warm, Another one of his self-indulgent theories. He may have been on to something, given the expected high for the day was going to be eighteen.
    The lake was filled with an assortment of fish. Trout, bass, largemouth bass, walleye, pickerel. Wayne held the state record a few years ago for a rainbow trout nearing thirteen pounds, but the following year some New Yorker beat his record by a pound or so. Not that Wayne cared, because it wasn’t someone from the great Garden State of New Jersey, so to him, it didn’t count. It wasn’t about the catch today; just being outside, alone, listening to the sound of the wind and the birds pleased him. The patch of ice he fished on was as clear as if he were seated on a sheet of glass covering the lake. The water was nearly still beneath him. Wayne lit another cigarette and checked his watch: a little after nine thirty in the morning. He’d arrived at five, and still no catches. The coffee was long gone, but the whiskey was holding out well. He scratched at the gray stubble on his face, contemplating packing it in and heading to the pub down the street since it opened at ten, when he felt a tug on his fishing pole. Shifting his cigarette to the corner of his mouth, he began to reel his catch of the day in. “About fucking time.”
    Wayne struggled with the line. The catch was heavy and it fought against