Blood lure

Moving on, she was reassured to find the midwest as solid as ever. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Heidleman had done everything right. Their backcountry permit was in order. From that she got the plate number of their car and ran it to get Roger's driver's license number and date of birth-the keys to the kingdom as far as data was concerned. Other than a speeding ticket in 1998, fifty-three in a forty-mile-per-hour zone, Heidleman was clean. The missus didn't even have a traffic citation against her record.

Bill McCaskil had also filled out a backcountry permit. He'd filed for the full two weeks allowed at Fifty Mountain Camp. That struck an off chord with A

Using the license plate number on his backcountry permit, she followed the same route along the information highway that she had with the Heidlemans. The results were considerably more interesting. McCaskil was not a pillar of the community. He'd been indicted for fraud three times, convicted and served eighteen months in a Florida state prison. The first indictment was for credit card fraud. The one he'd served time for was a real estate scam. The third was for selling bogus fishing permits for protected marine areas. His prison record took some time but A

McCaskil was not a good citizen, but other than the vague "antisocial" label, he was apparently nonviolent. Crooks dedicated to paper crimes-check kiting, insider trading, fraud-were usually no more likely to turn to murder than an average citizen, unless put under undue pressure. However, their chosen profession was more likely to bring them to that point by way of blackmail or fear of exposure than that of a welder or the checker at the neighborhood Albertson's. McCaskil's antisocial behavior was linked to stress. Crime was a stressful business.

A

Consciously, she relaxed the muscles of her neck and balanced her head properly atop her spine. Then she brought Carolyn Van Slyke into the mental picture she'd been building of Bill McCaskil to see if the two co

Could Carolyn have been blackmailing McCaskil? Had he followed her to Glacier for the purpose of murder? A

McCaskil was from Florida, Van Slyke from Seattle. They'd have to travel a long way to cross paths. Still, A

Unconsciously sacrificing good posture, she returned to the computer screen to digitally pursue the Van Slykes. Their vehicle, a grating combination of the Bavarian Motor Works and sport utility vehicle, was registered in Carolyn's name. A

A

Yes it will,she corrected herself, but hopefully not for a while.

Even a minor could rack up wants and warrants. Murder was no respecter of age. Teen killings in schools were big news. Mass murder was relatively new, but kids killing kids was a horror floating mostly unseen and unacknowledged beneath the presumed i

Molly had participated in a psychiatric study done in 1995 through the joint auspices of three east-coast medical teaching facilities. The findings were unsettling. On too many occasions to ignore, children as young as four years old had caused the "accidental" death of a friend or sibling: the child that died in a fall, the child that wandered into the bull's paddock, the one who drowned.

With these grim thoughts clouding any natural su

Lester was next. No hits; Les hadn't so much as been caught ru

She went back to Harry's notes. Lester Van Slyke worked as a quality assurance engineer for Boeing in Seattle. His wife had been with the law firm of Crumley and Pittman, also in Seattle.

Two calls got A

She called the eight. Three were available. Without out-and-out lying, she gave each the impression that she was making routine calls gathering general background information on Lester Van Slyke to the end that he would be granted a higher security clearance on a government project where he was acting as a consultant.

Ms. Tremane was suspicious and told A

Richmond was one of those people who so love to talk that the pure joy of rattling their tongues between their teeth overcomes reticence and discretion. He told A