Flat Lake in Winter by Joseph T. Klempner

enter his initial plea of not guilty.
    From start to finish, the entire proceeding took just over two minutes. Not that its brevity prevented Gil Cavanaugh from spending the next half hour on the courthouse steps, posing for the cameras and telling every microphone in sight that the citizens of Ottawa County could count on him to uphold the law of the land. “It is my duty,” he intoned at one point, “my solemn, sworn duty, to see that we send out a message, for all to hear, that the good men and women of this county will not tolerate this type of animalistic barbarianism. Scripture teaches us that it’s God’s will to take an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Though, in this case, unfortunately, that’ll still leave us one life behind. But we’ll do what we have to do, I promise you that. I don’t know how many of you know it, but I’m a grandparent myself.”
    Nobody had ever accused Gil Cavanaugh of using few words where many would do.
    MATT FIELDER USED his second sit-down meeting with Jonathan Hamilton to ask Jonathan to tell him what he knew about the stabbings. He was prepared to back off if Jonathan showed any signs of balking; he didn’t want to undo the trust he’d worked so hard to establish at their earlier meeting. But Jonathan didn’t balk - that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that his recollection of the events was so spotty.
    “I remember waking up in the m-m-middle of the night,” he said. “But th-that’s all. I can’t remember anything else about it. Then I woke up again, later. It was just starting to get l-l-light out, just a little bit. I n-needed to go to the bathroom, and I had to f-feel my way there. In the bathroom, it was even d-d-darker, ‘cause there’s no window there. But I d-didn’t want to turn the light on, ‘cause it would hurt my eyes. I p-p-peed. When I went to flush, the handle was all sticky. I thought m-maybe I missed the b-b-bowl. I was thirsty, too, so I w-went to the sink. The f-faucet was sticky, too. I made a c-c-cup with my hands.” He demonstrated to Fielder how he’d done that.
    “When I put my hands under the sp-spout, the sink was full. I d-d-didn’t know why. So I turned the light on.”
    Jonathan didn’t seem to want to go on. Fielder had to prompt him. “What did you see?” he asked.
    “The w-w-water.”
    “Yes?”
    “It was all r-r-red.”
    Jonathan’s first thought was that somebody had been painting. There was red paint in the bowl, red paint on the outside of the sink, on the mirror, on the wall, on the light switch, on the floor - everywhere. In the bowl, it was a light-color red, like somebody had been washing out a paintbrush. Everywhere else it was dark red. In some places it was so dark it looked black.
    “I t-t-touched it,” he said. “I held it up to my nose, so I c-could smell it. It didn’t smell like paint. So I put some on the t-t-tip of my tongue. It was s-salty.”
    After a while his eyes had got used to the light. He saw that there was a trail of red, leading from the bathroom to the front door.
    “Did you know what it was by that time?” Fielder asked him.
    “B-b-blood?”
    Fielder nodded. “What did you do next?”
    “I w-went to check on Grandpa Carter and Grandma Mary Alice.”
    “And what did you find?”
    Jonathan didn’t answer.
    “What did you find, Jonathan?” Fielder asked it as gently as he could.
    “Th-th-th-they was all cut up.”
    That’s when he’d made the phone call, and reached Bass McClure.
    BACK AT HIS CABIN that evening, Fielder changed out of his lawyer clothes and back into jeans and a sweatshirt. He’d gotten over his initial annoyance at having to drive an hour and a half - and that was one way - for a two-minute court appearance of no consequence. But his meeting with Jonathan had certainly been interesting enough. Even if little had come of it in terms of factual revelations about the killings themselves, at least he’d got Jonathan to talk about what he did remember.