The Tempest by James Lilliefors Page B

parking her Camry behind a line of four police cars, two marked, on the dead end of the road.
    A rusty chain blocked the entrance to Widow’s Point with the warning “No Trespassing.” It was a law that was almost never enforced. Hunter had seen city officials picnicking here.
    She walked a thin, well-­trod dirt path through the weeds to the open wedge of the overlook, which was lit up with floodlights. Two state police techs were processing the scene. A diesel engine ground away behind them, powering the lights; the air smelled like an old bus depot.
    Investigator Frances Neal came out to see her in an officious, slightly territorial manner. Neal was a large, slow-­moving woman who didn’t abide by the invisible hierarchies of Tidewater’s old guard. Hunter liked that about her. She and the other tech had been taking shoe-­print impressions by the edge.
    â€œAny sign of a cell phone or purse?” Hunter asked. “There’s nothing below.”
    â€œNope.”
    She showed her what they had found: a plastic bottle in an evidence bag. “Something sweet. Wine, probably.”
    â€œThe other sandal?”
    â€œNot here.”
    â€œAnything else?”
    â€œNope.” She could see from the twist in Frances Neal’s face, though, that something about the scene wasn’t sitting right with her.
    Hunter looked out at the Bay. It was a dramatic view: the moon a column of light, glimmering on the water; traffic moving silently back and forth over the twin arcs of the Bay Bridge. She tried to picture what had happened: Susan, sitting on the rock by the edge, or leaning over to set up a photo, had somehow tripped or lost her balance, and fallen over. There was nothing she could see, though, that she’d have tripped over.
    â€œHers?” she said, nodding at the bicycle leaning on a pine tree, taped off behind a police barricade.
    Neal turned and nodded. “Be my guest. We haven’t processed it yet.” Hunter walked over to look. It was a rental bike from Tidewater Cycles, she saw, a clunky old single-­speed 24-­incher. There was a basket hanging crookedly from the handlebars and a pouch below the seat. Hunter ducked under the tape. She lifted the pouch flap carefully with the edge of her finger, saw a paperback book inside. She looked out to the point, where the police techs were bent over, talking, neither paying attention to her. The diesel engine droned. The book, she saw, was a biography of photographer Diane Arbus. Hunter flipped through it, and found something—­a receipt, being used maybe as a place marker. She leaned down and looked closer: it was a sales receipt from a health food store in town called Cool Beans, date-­stamped that morning at 8:17. Susan Champlain’s breakfast: Egg biscuit and orange juice. On the back, someone had scribbled in swirling penmanship what looked like Kairos48 .
    Hunter closed the book and the pouch. She walked over to tell Frances Neal.
    â€œWe haven’t processed it yet,” she told Hunter, an unexpected note of irritability in her voice.
    Hunter thanked her and walked along the edge. She looked down at the emergency responders and spectators on the beach. Finally, police were setting up a partition to block the view of Susan Champlain’s crumpled body.
    Susan had bicycled here from her rented house before sunset. The book maybe meant that she had come to read, that it was still daylight when she’d parked her bike. Or not. Maybe the book had just been there, from an earlier bike ride.
    Returning to her car, Hunter recalled the only time she had spoken to Susan Champlain, if it could be called that: They’d crossed paths in a hot parking lot by the raw bar outside Kent’s on a weekday afternoon. Susan Champlain had said “Hi” with a surprising familiarity, as if Hunter were a friend. Maybe she’d mistaken her for someone else. Hunter had then realized that she was