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A
“Two-thirty it is.” For a moment he hovered near the table. “You going to eat that sandwich?” he said finally.
“It’s all yours.” A
Hawk stopped chewing as abruptly as he had begun but remained staring down at his plate. “I’m sorry, A
“De
“De
“Jo?”
“Nobody. Just De
“Now me.” A number of stock phrases marched across the tip of A
“Is it really?” Hawk sounded as if her answer genuinely mattered to him.
“ ‘Okay’ is relative, I guess,” A
EIGHTEEN
Frederick was in Ralph’s chair, tilted back, his ankles crossed atop the clutter on the desk. In the cheap suit he presented a perfect parody of the 1930 shamus. A
She finished her story: “So they dressed De
“That was two days before those divers-Whosis and Bozo-discovered the body.”
“Two days.”
Stanton picked up a blue For Your Eyes Only envelope and tapped it without showing the contents to A
“Four? Four days before the Canadians found him?”
“Yup. Nobody reported him missing? Nobody wondered where he was?”
“He was on his honeymoon,” A
“Three days.”
“He died on his wedding night!” A
“You’d think the bride would have noticed,” Stanton said.
Jo was camped up on Lake Richie just southwest of Moskey Basin, working on her freshwater quality study. When De
Within a couple of days Jo had been back on Isle Royale working. A
Jo’s camp was a two-mile hike in. The trail was muddy. Blackflies, tiny airborne carnivores called “all-jaws” by the local Michigan children, bit without warning. Mosquitoes and Frederick Stanton whined.
“Tell me about the autopsy report,” A
“Good of you to come along, A
A
He looked the offended i
“The autopsy…” she led in.
“Dead since the seventeenth of June, four days before the Canadians discovered the body. Cause of death: drowning.”
“Drowning? With his tank nearly full?”
Stanton chuckled. “The corpse wasn’t wearing a tank.”
A
“You knew about that, too? Jeez, A
“There was a bruise across his shoulder where his harness would’ve been. He was in dive gear when he died. That’s my guess anyway.”
“Wow.” Stanton sounded genuinely impressed. “Gee, you think?”
“Occasionally.” A
“Remind me not to deal drugs in your park.”
“You don’t buy that anymore.”
Stanton neither agreed nor disagreed.
A
Stanton looked at his shoes, at the canopy of aspen closing overhead. He gri
A
“I swear by local talent,” he said at last. “They know where the bodies are buried, who’s sleeping with whom.”
“Help me then.”
Stanton seemed to weigh the efficacy of interagency cooperation. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Castle drowned. Water was in his lungs. If you’re right about the bruise being caused by his harness, he drowned with plenty of breathing air on him. Too weird for me.”
A
“Left him to wake up dead?”
“That’s what crossed my mind,” A
“Why?”
“Beats me.” She turned and began walking again, the moisture-laden thimbleberry branches slapping dark patterns on her trousers.
“Drugs,” Stanton said. “When you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, is drugs.”
“One-size-fits-all motive?”
“It’s perfect,” Stanton said, and: “Damn!” The sound of slapping, a mosquito or blackfly departing the quick and joining the dead. “I’m all for drugs,” he babbled on. “Takes the guesswork out of law enforcement.”
They found Jo’s camp on a rocky bluff overlooking Lake Richie. Set like an orange Easter egg amid the froth of wild sarsaparilla, her tent was pitched on the hardened site.
Frederick crawled halfway inside. “Not searching,” he called out. “Can’t search without a warrant. Checking for guns and bombs. Officer safety.”
A
“Do you think Jo killed De
“The spouse is always a prime suspect.”
“Better than drugs?”
“Nothing’s better than drugs.”
“No more profiles. Do you, personally, think Jo did it?”
“I don’t think,” Stanton replied solemnly. “I’m a government employee.”
A
Out in the lake, silver rings were begi
The story didn’t feel right. The knife: A