Los Angeles feels very far away. If I got in my car and started driving, I could be there in less than twenty-four hours. But it’s more than geographical distance that keeps me here in Washington State.

My life has not gone as planned. As I sit in the Collier Sheriff’s Station looking out at the last of the summer tourists walking by, I imagine them traveling south like the geese and wonder if I should go with them. Get my life back on track? Or stay and face my responsibilities.

I grew up here, in this tiny town, high in the Cascade Mountains. Founded on coal, an explosion in the mine sent Collier on its way to becoming just another ghost town. If it weren’t for our small but steady tourist trade, it would have become like Ruby or Franklin, nothing more than a few tombstones turning to rubble on a rocky hillside.

But it survived. A tough little town, full of hardy folks who call themselves Lakers because they live on the edge of a dark and bottomless body of water that sits at the mouth of our valley. You can’t leave the area without passing along one edge of the lake, which holds our secrets in its icy depths like a bear trap pinning a leg in its iron teeth.

After college, I moved to Los Angeles to make a mark of my own, rather than ride the coattails of Earle Rivers, my father, the Sheriff of Collier. Sheriff, like his father before him and his father before that, stretching back to the very first Sheriff Rivers at the town’s beginning.

It was just the two of us for a lot of years. My mother died young, her suicide leaving me alone in a quiet house with a man unaccustomed to paternal responsibility.

Mostly, I was Dad’s sidekick, but I was also his shadow. I could have come home after college and been his deputy, but then I’d never know who I could be without him.

I had a plan. The Los Angeles Police Department, patrol officer, rise to detective, rise to . . . something auspicious and not in my father’s footsteps.

Then dad got sick. Cancer.

I’ll be fine, he said. Come home and fill in, he said. It’s temporary, he said.

It would be the first and last time my father ever lied.

So here I am, sitting in the sheriff’s station. Another quiet afternoon as summer fades. The tourists will shift from hikers to snow shoers as the weather changes. Instead of search and rescue for people who have fallen off a trail it will be search and rescue for people lost in the snow.

I know the job. I know the routine. I should go out and do a check of the valley. Visit the campgrounds. Make my presence known. The election is coming up and I have to either fight for my seat or flee. But people forget there’s another option.

Freeze.

Which is what I seem to be doing now. I need something to push me one way or the other, but unless something floats up from the depths of the lake, I’m not sure what that something would be.

From my office chair, I can see the smooth surface. Today, it reflects back the deep blue of the sky. The bottom remains hidden, even though the water is crystal clear. Just a few feet out from shore, it drops off like the deep end of a swimming pool. It’s not safe to boat or swim in. We have other places around the valley for that.

There are a lot of rumors about what might be down there. All the things that go missing around town. Perhaps an entire train. Things we blame on the miners ghosts. But I have another secret. One the lake holds and the rest of the town doesn’t know.

Something could rise from the depths, breaking the surface and the town’s placid history. Something that might keep me here, shake me out of my malaise and turn me into a better detective than Los Angeles ever could.

I wonder, every day, if today will be the day that the shrouded figure will break loose from its watery grave and float up into the light.

Maybe it will. Maybe it will today. Maybe today, I’ll learn what I’m really made of.

Giveaway: Leave a comment below for your chance to win one (1) print copy of All We Buried, limited to U.S. residents. Giveaway ends April 9, 2020. Good luck everyone!

All We Buried is the first book in the NEW “Sheriff Bet Rivers” traditional mystery series, released April 7, 2020.

For fans of Julia Keller and Sheena Kamal, All We Buried disturbs the long-sleeping secrets of a small Washington State mountain town.

Interim sheriff Elizabeth “Bet” Rivers has always had one repeat nightmare: a shadowy figure throwing a suspicious object into her hometown lake in Collier, Washington. For the longest time, she chalked it up to an overactive imagination as a kid. Then the report arrives. In the woods of the Cascade mountain range, right in her jurisdiction, a body floats to the surface of Lake Collier. When the body is extricated and revealed, no one can identify Jane Doe. But someone must know the woman, so why aren’t they coming forward?

Bet has been sitting as the interim sheriff of this tiny town in the ill-fitting shoes of her late father and predecessor. With the nightmare on her heels, Bet decided to build a life for herself in Los Angeles, but now it’s time to confront the tragic history of Collier. The more she learns, the more Bet realizes she doesn’t know the townspeople of Collier as well as she thought, and nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover.

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About the author
Elena Taylor lives on the banks of the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River in a town made famous by Twin Peaks. When she’s not writing or working one-on-one with writers as a developmental editor, she can be found hanging out with her husband, dog, and two cats. Her favorite place to be (besides home) is the stables down the road, with her two horses Radar and Jasper. Visit Elena’s website at elenataylorauthor.com.

All comments are welcomed.