The Bodies Left Behind

from the lake. He didn’t know the town well but assumed it was like a thousand others in Wisconsin: a gas station, a grocery store that sold as much beer as milk and a restaurant that was harder to find than the local meth cooker. “They have houses there?”
    “Around the lake? Think so.”
    Dahl stared at the blue pebble of Lake Mondac on the map. It was surrounded by a small amount of private land, which was in turn engulfed by huge Marquette Park.
    This  . . .
    Jackson said, “And the campgrounds’re closed till May.”
    “Whose phone?”
    “That we’re still waiting on.” The young deputy had spiky blond hair. All the rage. Dahl had worn a crew cut for nine-tenths of his life.
    The sheriff had lost interest in the routine reports and in a beer bash in honor of one of their senior deputies’ birthdays, an event that was supposed to commence in an hour at the Eagleton Tap, and which he had been looking forward to. He was thinking of last year when some guy—a registered sex offender, and a stupid one—picked up Johnny Ralston from grade school and the boy had the presence of mind to hit LAST CALL on his cell phone and slip it in his pocket as they drove around, the sicko asking him what kind of movies he liked. It took all of eight minutes to find them.
    The miracle of modern electronics. God bless Edison. Or Marconi. Or Sprint.
    Dahl stretched and massaged his leg near the leathery spot where a bullet had come and gone, not stinging much at the time and probably fired by one of his own men in the county’s only bank robbery shootout in recent memory. “Whatta you think, Todd? I don’t think you say, ‘This is the number I want,’ to four-one-one. I think you say, ‘This is an emergency.’ To nine -one-one.”
    “And then you pass out.”
    “Or get shot or stabbed. And the line just went dead?”
    “And Peggy tried calling back. But it went to voice mail. Direct. No ring.”
    “And the message said?”
    “Just ‘This is Steven. I’m not available.’ No last name. Peggy left a message to call her.”
    “Boater on the lake?” Dahl speculated. “Had a problem?”
    “In this weather?” April in Wisconsin could be frigid; the temperatures tonight were predicted to dip into the high thirties.
    Dahl shrugged. “My boys went into water that’d scare off polar bears. And boaters’re like golfers.”
    “I don’t golf.”
    Another deputy called, “Got a name, Todd.”
    The young man produced a pen and notebook. Dahl couldn’t tell where they came from. “Go on.”
    “Steven Feldman. Billing address for the phone is two one nine three Melbourne, Milwaukee.”
    “So, it’s a vacation house on Lake Mondac. Lawyer, doctor, not a beggarman. Run him,” the sheriff ordered. “And what’s the number of the phone?”
    Dahl got the numbers from Jackson, who then returned again to his cubicle, where he’d look up the particulars on the federal and state databases. All the important ones: NCIC, VICAP, Wisconsin criminal records, Google.
    Out the window the April sky was a rich blue like a girl’s party dress. Dahl loved the air in this part of Wisconsin. Humboldt, the biggest town in Kennesha, had no more than seven thousand vehicles spread out over many miles. The cement plant put some crap into the air but it was the only big industry the county had so nobody complained except some local Environmental Protection Agency people and they didn’t complain very loudly. You could see for miles.
    Quarter to six now.
    “‘This,’” Dahl mused.
    Jackson came back yet again. “Well, here we go, Sheriff. Feldman works for the city. He’s thirty-six. His wife Emma’s a lawyer. Hartigan, Reed, Soames and Carson. She’s thirty-four.”
    “Ha. Lawyer. I win.”
    “No warrants or anything on either of them. Have two cars. Mercedes and a Cherokee. No children. They have a house there.”
    “Where?”
    “I mean Lake Mondac. Found the deed, no mortgage.”
    “Owning and not owing? Well.” Dahl hit REDIAL for the fifth time. Straight to voice mail again. “ Hi, this is Steven. I’m not available—”
    Dahl didn’t leave another message. He disconnected,let his thumb linger on the cradle, then removed it. Directory assistance had no listing for a Feldman in Mondac. He called the phone company’s local legal affairs man.
    “Jerry. Caughtya ’fore you left. Tom Dahl.”
    “On my way out the door. Got a warrant? We looking for terrorists?”
    “Ha. Just, can you tell me there’s a