The Girl in the Lake

Book 3: Holmes, Margaret & Poe

by James Patterson, Brian Sitts

Genres: Private Investigators; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

At a frozen lakeside crime scene, a corpse carries an accusatory note: “If anything happens to me, arrest Brendan Holmes.”

Mysteries trail Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple, and Auguste Poe wherever they go. At a remote lodge in upstate New York, the embattled private investigators have taken refuge from the assailant who bombed their sleek city headquarters. When the discovery of a body in the lake puts the detectives back in the headlines and under suspicion, the elusive killer issues his despicable orders: stop solving crimes—and start committing them.

“Patterson ... will have readers checking their locks twice.” –Booklist

“Patterson’s latest thriller keeps readers guessing ... a fine chase.” –People 

Release date: October 6, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Sample

HER FATHER WOULD have killed her.

Or at least grounded her.

Fortunately for Ava Delune, her daddy was in Rochester for a trade show, believing that his teenage daughter was sleeping over at her friend Emma Fry’s house.

Instead, Ava was near the northern tip of Cayuga Lake, sitting in her family’s ice-fishing shack on a frigid February night.

Emma was seated right next to her, sucking on a vape pen and stamping her feet, trying to warm up. It was her first time out here. “Jesus!” she muttered. “Is it always this damn cold?”

“Nah,” Ava replied. “It’s usually worse.”

As far as Ava was concerned, her father had only himself to blame for her love of the rugged outdoors. He’d started taking her on winter hikes as soon as she could walk, and from the first time he’d brought her out ice fishing, she couldn’t get enough. The smallmouth bass and perch she pulled out of the lake were hardly trophies, but there was something about the shelter of the shack and the thrill of the catch that drew her. As soon as she could, Ava started sneaking out to the shack on her own, behind her father’s back.

Like tonight.

The ice beneath the girls was five inches thick. The hole in front of them was six inches across. Only Ava was fishing. Her line ran from her fast-action rod through the hole and down into the black water. She watched the line as she huddled on a nylon folding chair, alert to the slightest tremble from underneath.

The temperature on the lake was far below freezing, and the wind was picking up. It made tiny whistling sounds as it slipped through the cracks in the wood siding of the shack. The only light inside was from a rusted camping lantern. Outside, it was pitch-black.

“Hungry?” asked Ava.

Emma nodded. “Starving. Can we order pizza?”

Ava laughed. With her free hand, she pulled a cheese sandwich in a plastic bag from under her parka. She handed half of the sandwich to Emma. Emma took it gingerly with her gloved fingers. “It’s not frozen?”

“Hell no. I’ve been warming it up in my armpit.”

“Gross, Ava!”

A fresh burst of wind hit the shack, rocking it slightly and making the sides creak. The girls shivered and bit into their sandwiches.

Suddenly something banged against one wall of the shack. Emma jumped up from her stool and spun around. “What the hell was that?”

Ava chuckled. “Calm down. It’s just the wind.”

Another bang, a little louder and from another spot on the wall.

“No way,” said Emma, dropping her sandwich. “Something’s out there.”

Now there was another sound. Slow tapping against the side of the shack. Like soft knocking—or fingers drumming. Terrified, Emma held her breath. Ava pulled the boning knife out of her tackle box and inched toward the plywood door. She pushed it open slowly and motioned Emma back. “Stay here. Don’t move.”

Ava stepped out onto the snow-dusted ice and let the door close behind her. She gripped the knife and peeked around the side of the shack. The wind whipped against her cheeks. She could feel her heart pounding under her parka.

She took another step. She raised the knife, ready to strike.

And then she saw it.

The intruder.

Ava burst back into the shack holding a three-foot-long elm branch, coated in ice. She waved the frozen tip in Emma’s face. “See? I told you.” Ava was laughing now. “The wind blew it across the ice from shore. This is what you were wetting your pants over.”

Ducking the stiff branch, Emma turned her head toward the hole in the ice. “Hey, look!”

Ava dropped the branch. Her line was trembling!

She grabbed her gear and started pulling. The rod bent into an arc.

Emma, suddenly enthusiastic, clapped her gloves together. “Omigod! You caught the Loch Ness Monster!”

Ava wrinkled her nose. She knew the darting feel of a fish underwater. This wasn’t it. “I think I got snagged.” This part of the lake was filled with sunken logs and other debris. At least once every fishing trip, Ava and her dad had to cut the line free and start over.

But now there was a little give. A sense of lift. Maybe it was a fish after all. Or a piece of trash small enough that Ava could bring it up and at least retrieve the hook. She handed the reel to Emma. “Hold this!” She dropped to her knees over the hole and grabbed the line with her hands, feeling the tension through her gloves. Not a fish, but not a log either. Whatever it was, it was shifting. Rising.

“I need more light!” Ava called out.

Emma pulled a flashlight from her pocket and flicked it on. She leaned forward, her head next to Ava’s, and pointed the beam down into the black water.

Ava pulled and pulled. “Don’t snap, don’t snap,” she mumbled to herself.

The flashlight beam caught a flash of white.

Emma dropped the flashlight and screamed.

Ava scooped up the flashlight and bent down until her nose was almost touching the water. Then she rocked back in horror.

Staring up at them was a human face.

What was left of it.

IN THE VILLAGE of Archer’s Branch in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, one of the few lights in the center of town came from the basement of a Unitarian church. The congregation’s denomination didn’t matter, though, for this particular gathering. At least half the attendees were nonbelievers, including the two newest members of the group:

Brendan Holmes and Auguste Poe.

The Alcoholics Anonymous meeting moderator leaned forward in his folding chair. He was a round-bellied guy named Buck Gregson. His khakis and sweatshirt gave him the look of a high school football coach. Gregson was a former drunk. He was also the local sheriff.

“Who wants to go first tonight?” he asked.

Holmes fidgeted in his chair. He preferred to get this part over with. He raised his hand. “Hi. I’m Brendan, and I’m a drug addict.”

“Hi, Brendan!” the others called back in unison. All five of them. At this open AA meeting, anyone with an addiction problem, not only alcoholics, was welcome.

“Anything to share tonight, Brendan?” Gregson asked.

Holmes shook his head. “Nothing special, except that as of this moment I’m five months and two weeks clean.”

“Well,” said Gregson, nodding at Holmes in encouragement, “I’d say that is pretty special.”

There was a smattering of applause. Holmes held up his palms, embarrassed by the attention. And, as always, he preferred not to dwell on his recovery.

“Who’s next?” asked Gregson.

Holmes turned to Poe, his closest friend, and elbowed him until he spoke up.

“I’m Auguste,” Poe mumbled finally, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Auguste!” the rest of the group called out.

And so it went, around the small circle. By now, Holmes knew all the others’ stories by heart. For somebody accustomed to dealing with criminals and deceivers, it was an unusual group. Holmes couldn’t detect a whiff of deception in any of them. Their forthrightness bored him to tears.

Dean, the local auto-repair shop owner, had been sober for two months. Rick, the town pharmacist, had recently kicked amphetamines. Father Alan, the retired parish priest, had drained his last bottle of altar wine a decade ago. Solid citizens all.

Though Holmes was the only Black man in the group—virtually the only Black person in the whole town—the other members of the AA ensemble commented more on Poe’s dark mustache. “You look like a gunslinger,” Father Alan had teased one night.

“Maybe I am,” Poe had replied.

When the group broke for coffee and snacks, Holmes huddled with Poe on one side of the room and pulled out his pocket watch, a 1911 Audemars Piguet. “Dear Lord, how much longer?” he mumbled.

Poe took a bite from the middle of a glazed cruller. “I know, I know. But maybe it’s helping.”

Holmes had his doubts. He had never been much for group therapy. He was mostly there to support Poe. Misery loves company, or something like that. “Well,” he said, “at least it gets us out of the house.”

The AA meeting was a weekly distraction from why he and Poe were in this tiny hamlet in the first place. They were temporarily in seclusion, far from their home in New York City and from their usual occupation, which was solving unsolvable crimes.

At the moment, they were keeping their distance from Oliver Paul, a psychopath who had almost killed them last fall. The others in the twelve-step group knew their first names and their addictions but almost nothing else about them. Holmes intended to keep it that way.

He didn’t want to admit it, but for him the meeting had another purpose. It was a way for him to temporarily avoid Margaret Marple, the woman he loved. Though at the moment they were practically strangers to each other. Partners in name only.

Poe polished off his cruller. “Oh, God. Here it comes.”

Gregson was waving his hands at the front of the room, beckoning the group to return to the circle. Holmes hung back with Poe as the others migrated toward their seats.

Suddenly the basement door burst open. A young man in mechanics’ coveralls rushed in and headed straight for Gregson. “Sheriff! Sheriff! They need you!”

“Calm down, Bud,” said Gregson. “What’s up?”

The young man paused to catch his breath, then delivered his news. “Archer’s Point! Body in the lake!”

THE ANNOUNCEMENT THREW the small meeting into turmoil. Sheriff Gregson jumped up and grabbed his uniform jacket off a hook. It took Dean, Rick, and Father Alan a few moments to realize that the twelve-step session was over. They stood up and milled around, gathering their coats and gloves.

A body!

Poe was already on his feet. As always, he lit up at the prospect of a mystery—especially a mystery corpse. It was in his DNA. Fully energized, he followed Gregson toward the door, pulling at Holmes. “C’mon, Brendan! Let’s go!”

But Holmes shook him off and hung back, sullen and silent. Last summer, Holmes had quit the investigative firm he’d founded with Poe and Marple, and had taken his name off the door. He was completely done with the detective business, he’d told them. The work had nearly destroyed him, mentally and physically. And it had almost brought death to everybody he loved.

For a few agonizing moments, Holmes paced the floor, wringing his hands. He watched the other attendees exit, until he was left alone in the church basement. He heard car engines firing up in the parking lot, then the initial bleats of a police siren. His heart started beating wildly. He started sweating. Am I having a panic attack?

He clenched his hands into fists and closed his eyes. He took deep breaths, in and out. He wanted nothing more at this moment than a narcotic fix. Something to even him out, settle his mind, put him to sleep. Not exactly the right coda for an AA meeting.

Holmes stared up at a painting of Jesus hanging on the wall. The eyes seemed to be following him.

“Leave me alone!” Holmes shouted. Then he grabbed his overcoat and sprinted outside just as Poe pulled to a stop at the curb, revving the engine of his ’66 Pontiac GTO.

The muscle car was a total misfit for the frigid upstate weather and slippery roads, but it was one of Poe’s personal treasures, and he had insisted on bringing it up from the city. When he leaned over and pushed open the passenger door, Holmes felt a blast of warm air.

“Get in!” shouted Poe. “No rest for the weak and weary!”

Holmes appreciated the poetic reference, but it didn’t persuade him. On the other hand, Poe was his only ride. What was the alternative? Calling an Uber? Not likely.

Holmes slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “All right,” he said, “I’ll come. But only to keep you company.”

As he stared out the frosted windshield, Holmes could see the flashing lights of Gregson’s patrol car disappearing down the village’s main road. The sound of his siren was fading into the distance.

Holmes buckled in and braced himself. He was familiar with Poe’s driving.

Poe jammed his left foot down on the clutch as he shoved the gearshift knob into first, then eased off the clutch as he hammered the gas. The tires spun on the frozen pavement, then gripped, and the car shot out of the parking lot like a bullet.

Holmes was flattened against his seat. Within the space of a few seconds, Poe closed the distance between them and Gregson. He hung tight behind the patrol car’s bumper as they sped in tandem along the curving road that led to the lake.

Poe glanced over at Holmes but said nothing. No words were needed. The two men had a silent understanding in moments like these, racing toward some unknown gloom. They each wrestled with different demons at the AA meetings. Poe’s vice was booze; Holmes had a weakness for heroin.

But deep in their souls, they were both addicted to this.

FIFTEEN MILES EAST, deep in the woods, snow swirled and drifted around the porch of what was once the grand Meade Lodge. It was a rambling log structure, two stories tall, with a steep A-frame roof over the main entrance. The building wasn’t just rustic. It was a semi-ruin. The furnace was ancient. The windows were leaky. Most of the heat came from wood-fired cast-iron stoves. The lodge had been built in the 1930s, and abandoned in the 1980s. Only the efforts of the local historical society had kept it from being torn down altogether.

Nobody had occupied the place in nearly half a century. But now Meade Lodge was a residence again.

A hideout, actually.

Upstairs, in one of the small, drafty bedrooms, Margaret Marple was bundled up against the chill in a pair of flannel pajamas, wool socks, and a flower-patterned robe. The room held only a small single bed, with a stack of cookbooks on the side table. For the past month, Marple had been sleeping there alone, aside from her black cat, Annabel.

The fat feline was not her bed companion of choice.

Brendan Holmes was.

After working closely for years as private investigators, she and Holmes had finally confessed their love for each other almost five months ago. The first few months had been heady, stimulating, bed-rocking bliss. But more recently Marple had felt her partner pulling away for reasons she didn’t fully understand. Was it boredom? Disappointment? Too much intimacy? Too little?

Even with all of Marple’s people skills, Brendan Holmes remained largely a mystery to her. His needs, his worries, his fears—they were often too deep for her to plumb. She was beginning to understand what her beloved Agatha Christie had meant when she wrote, “No one human being knows the full truth about another human being.”

So true. So sad.

Marple had been looking forward to life as a couple with Holmes after he quit the firm. And for a short while, her dream was a reality. She’d willingly followed Holmes here from New York City. Far from her network of friends and supports. Now, sadly, it felt like a mistake.

The lodge had been Holmes’s idea. He’d heard about it from a fellow patient when he was in rehab nearby last year. After the Brooklyn home and workspace that she, Holmes, and Poe had shared was destroyed by Oliver Paul’s bomb, this white elephant had become their temporary refuge.

The more temporary the better, as far as Marple was concerned. The place gave her the creeps. It made her anxious and jumpy, especially at night.

Suddenly she heard a rattle from outside. And a loud scratching. She pulled a pistol from beneath her pillow and checked the chamber. She opened her bedroom door and stepped onto the open balcony that overlooked the great room, which was cast in a yellow glow by a large antlered chandelier.

The front door burst open. “Anybody home?”

Marple let out a long breath of relief. She slipped her pistol into the pocket of her robe.

It was Virginia, the investigative firm’s young and dedicated assistant. Panting beside her was her white mastiff, Baskerville. The massive rescue dog was her constant companion.

A rush of cold air blew in as Virginia stamped the snow off her boots, then shut the door behind her and leaned a small pellet gun against the wall. When she lowered the hood of her parka, the light caught a stripe of magenta running through her dark-brown hair. Her latest tint.

Virginia had happily joined her displaced employers upstate after the bombing in Brooklyn. She was incredibly loyal and very capable, and though barely in her mid-twenties, she had a way of getting things done before anybody else even knew there were issues that needed to be handled. Sometimes, Marple felt, it was only Virginia’s cheerful efficiency that kept things running at all. Especially now that Holmes was out of the picture, work-wise.

Spotting Marple on the balcony, Virginia lifted her right glove into the air. Hanging from her fist was a dead rabbit. “Look! I got one!”

Marple shuddered at the sight. She couldn’t help herself. The only rabbits she appreciated were the kind that hopped through English gardens and British novels.

Virginia, who’d been raised by Quaker parents on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, loved animals dearly but made a practical distinction between pets and game. She was certainly no vegetarian.

From down the hall, another door opened. Marple looked over to see their fifth housemate, Helene Grey, make her way slowly out onto the balcony.

“What’s going on?” she asked in a groggy voice.

Recently retired as an NYPD homicide detective, Grey was now heavily pregnant with twins. She and Poe, the babies’ father, were still very much a couple, unlike Marple and Holmes. But Marple knew they had problems of their own. Like Holmes, Poe had difficulty handling relationships.

“Hi, Detective!” Virginia called out. “Look what I caught!”

Grey rested her hands on the railing and looked down. The instant she spotted the rabbit corpse, she blanched and turned away. “Nope,” she muttered.

She put her palm over her mouth and turned back toward her bedroom, retching loudly. Grey’s pregnancy had made her extremely sensitive—and perpetually nauseated.

It didn’t take much to set her off.

BRENDAN HOLMES AND Auguste Poe stood at the edge of the frozen lake as a young deputy in a thermal jacket chopped through the ice with an ax. He was about fifteen yards offshore. A portable scene light cast a long shadow behind him as he hacked away.

The flimsy fishing hut had been moved to one side. The hole was getting wider with each fall of the ax. A yellow rope dangled down to whatever—whoever—was underneath.

Sheriff Buck Gregson warmed his butt on the hood of his idling patrol car, lights still flashing. Two teenage girls sat in the back of the car, their eyes fixed numbly on their phone screens. The town ambulance idled alongside. For what? wondered Holmes. Frostbite?

When Gregson spotted Holmes and Poe, he came walking over, wearing the expression of a man straining to be polite.

“Maybe you didn’t hear, gentlemen,” he said. “Tonight’s meeting is over.”

Holmes instantly understood. He and Poe were welcome at the church, as fellow lost souls, but here they were interlopers. Not to mention out-of-towners.

Somewhere between the church and the lake, Gregson’s empathetic moderator persona had completely disappeared. Now he was all hard-ass cop.

Gregson pressed the point. “This is police business. No need for you to get involved.”

“We’re just a couple of concerned citizens,” said Poe. “And to be honest, it’s the first excitement we’ve had in months.”

Holmes pointed to the girls in the back of the car. “Are they the ones who called it in?”

Gregson nodded. “Two friends out ice fishing. Ava Delune and Emma Fry. Good kids. I’ve known ’em since they were toddlers.”

“You don’t think they might have been returning to the scene of the crime?” asked Poe, leaning toward the most ominous possibility.

Gregson stared at him. “They’re high school juniors. Their only offense is being out here when their folks thought they were home watching a Marvel movie.”

“Do the girls know who the victim is?” asked Holmes.

Gregson shook his head. “No idea. They bolted at the first sight of it.”

“Yo! Sheriff!” The deputy was shouting and waving his arms from out on the ice. “Here it comes!” He bent down at the edge of the enlarged hole and tugged on a loop he’d made with the yellow rope. It took a massive effort, but the deputy was strongly built. Slowly at first, then all of a sudden, a sodden dark mass slid out from the fishing hole.

From a distance, the most Holmes could tell was that the shape was human, with arms and legs sti. . .