Rough Country

bottom of the pond, then it was a rifle.”
    The sheriff nodded. “Thought it might be.”
    “Gotta have the crime-scene guys look for a pistol, though. If the shooter was in a boat, he might have dumped it over the side; or if it’s a suicide.” No other signs of violence. One shot, and the woman was gone. Virgil pushed himself upright and asked, “Where’s the nearest road?”
    The cops looked around, then one of them pointed. “I guess it’d be . . . over there.”
    “How far?”
    “Probably . . . a quarter mile? There’s a town road around the lake, and it crosses this creek about, mmm, a half-mile down, then hooks up a little closer to the lake and then goes on around to a cluster of cabins right on the west point of the lake. You probably saw them when you were coming in.”
    “Could you paddle up the creek?” Virgil asked.
    “Naw. It’s all choked north of the culvert,” the cop said. “Be easier to walk, ’cause the creek’s not that deep, but it’s got a muck bottom. . . . I don’t know. I don’t think you could walk it, either. Not easy, anyway.”
     
     
     
    THEY FLOATED AND TALKED for a couple of minutes. They hadn’t taken the body in, the sheriff said, because they wanted the BCA agent, whoever he was, to take a look and say it was okay: “We don’t have a hell of a lot of murders up here.”
    Virgil said, “You can take her. There’s enough current here to drift her a bit, and if there was any wind at all . . . no way to tell exactly where she was hit, unless we find some blood spatter.” He looked around, and then said, “You might have a couple guys slowly . . . slowly . . . cruise the waterline, all the way from the channel to the far end of the pond, look at the edge of the weeds and the lily pads, see if there’s any blood on the foliage. If she’d been right up against the weeds, there should be some.”
    The sheriff pointed at the cops in one of the boats, and they pushed off.
     
     
     
    WHILE THEY WERE TALKING, the two funeral home guys had moved over to the body. They had a black body bag with them, and were discussing the best way to hoist the body into the boat without hurting their backs. Virgil noticed that Johnson wouldn’t look at the body.
    Sanders said, “I’m gonna really have to lean on you and the other guys from the BCA on this thing—all my guys are up working on the Little Linda case. That thing is turning into a nightmare. Linda’s mom is some kind of PR demon; she’s holding press conferences, she hired a psychic. It’s driving us crazy.”
    “No sign of Little Linda?”
    “No, but the psychic says that she’s still alive. She’s in a dark place with large stones around her, and she’s cold. He sees moss.”
    Johnson: “Moss?”
    “That’s what he says,” Sanders said.
    “You’re investigating moss?”
     
     
     
    THEN ONE OF THE COPS who’d gone looking for blood called from fifty yards up the pond, toward the lake: “Got some cigarettes here.” And then the other one said, “There’s a lighter.”
    Virgil nodded at Don, and the sheriff told the rest of them to stay where they were, and Don started the motor and Virgil’s boat and the sheriff’s drifted up the pond. There, they could see what appeared to be a nearly full pack of Salem cigarettes floating on the surface and, a little beyond it, the bottom end of a red plastic Bic cigarette lighter.
    “She a smoker?” Virgil asked.
    “Don’t know,” the sheriff said.
    “We need to mark this—this may be close to where she was killed.” He called back to the guide, who motored over. “You got any marker buoys?” Virgil asked.
    Rainy dug in the back of the boat and came up with a yellow-plastic dumbbell-shaped buoy wrapped with string, the string ending in a lead weight. “Toss it right about there,” Virgil said.
    Rainy tossed it in; the weight dropped to the bottom, marking the spot for the crime-scene crew.
    “Leave the cigarette pack and lighter. Maybe crime scene can get something off them,” Virgil said. To the cops: “Keep looking for blood.”
     
     
     
    BACK DOWN THE POND, the funeral home guys were hoisting the body into the boat, with some trouble. The sheriff said to the cop on the tiller, “Get me back there.”
    Virgil said, “I want to take a look at that other shore—where somebody might walk in. Cruise the shoreline.”
    “I’ll be here,” the sheriff said.
     
     
     
    THEY STARTED where the creek drained out of the pond, moving