Neither Here Nor There

 "Oh my Lord, honey!" Bea exclaimed as she gripped my shoulder. "Do you want me to head up there with you?" She offered.

"No, that's alright, you stay and... and just get whatever thing you were gonna get done and I'll start on my way there now," I told her. I hope that this was perceived as a gesture of selflessness, but truly I just did not want the hassle of having someone else come along with me for such an unpleasant task. After all, finding out if your boyfriend is dead or not isn't exactly a social occasion.

 It took me a good while to get up to the pond since I had been in town when I got the call, but I wasted no time. As soon as my trusty old van reached just the right spot on County Road 20 I slammed on the brakes, put it in park, and hit the ground running. The pond wasn't far off from the road and it only took me about a minute of running to get up close to it and see that I had unexpected company waiting for me.

 I was a bit taken aback to see the private investigator I had met when I went up to my sister's apartment complex when I first heard she was missing. It had only been days, but considering the strange circumstances, it felt like ages ago.

 "You sure seem to have a habit of showing up at the worst times, Mr. Pierce," I stated with a glance in his direction.

"Actually," Officer Shafer began. "Mr. Pierce here is the one that found the car and called the station."

"Well, I enjoy fishing for sport and I heard this was the best fishing hole around," he explained after I cast my questioning gaze in his direction. "Plus, my sister and I are new in town, so I wanted to get familiar with the area. Have to admit though, wasn't expecting so much excitement in this kind of town."

 "Alright then," I accepted his explanation exasperatedly. "Lemme see it." With that I moved closer to the edge of the small pond. No doubt about it. That was Malcolm's car. The last I had seen of it had just been a blur of taillights sailing past my window.

"We're gonna have someone out here to dive down here and... check it out soon," Officer Shafer informed me. I knew perfectly well that "check it out" meant see if my boyfriend was down there getting chewed up by fish or not.

 "What do you mean get someone out here? It ain't like you're gonna need a goddamn scuba diver, look at it for Christ's sake, the roof's barely got water over it!" I fumed at the officer. I swear to God above the people in this town, police included, were the laziest bunch of idiots on the planet.

 "I'll do it," Mr. Pierce spoke up. "She's right, I could get down there and be back up in a minute."

Shafer started to say, "Now, that's not really according to protocol, Mr. Pierce-"

"Jesus Christ, Shafer forget protocol, Malcolm could be dead down there!" I snapped. "So you can either let him go down there, or I can do it my God damn self and you can lock me up when I get through!"

 Before Shafer could protest any further, Mr. Pierce was already just about through getting undressed. He kicked off his shoes and wiggled out of his jeans, gave a little stretch, and started his way over to a large rock hanging over the pond.

 As I watched him plunge into the pond from the peak of the rock like some sort of Olympic diver, I concluded that Mr. Pierce was just one of those people that had to add a little extra flair to everything they did. He dove into the deeper part of the pond and a large splash of water leaped up off the surface of the pond.

 I seated myself next to his clothes and watched intently as his figure wiggled down to the bottom of the pond. I saw him get right up next to the window, but I couldn't read the look on his face through the reflection of the sky on the water.

When he finally emerged, he wore a puzzled expression on his face. The tension threatened to overcome me in the seconds that I waited for him to speak.

"Nobody's down there," he said, and I felt my whole body relax. However, this created more questions than it answered. If Malcolm's car was at the bottom of the pond, where was he?