The Bodies Left Behind

this was last fall?”
    “Yessir?”
    “And he said he’d had a run-in with a man up here. At one of the stores. A big guy. A local, Steve said. Somestupid thing, about nearly bumping cars in the lot. The guy went crazy. Followed him home, threatened him.”
    “He give you any details?”
    “No. Just he lived around here and he was pretty big. Three hundred pounds.”
    Munce looked at Dahl, shaking his head. “Doesn’t seem like the perp. It was two of them, and nobody was that big, to judge from the footprints. Did he give you a name or description?”
    “No, it was just one of those stories: this scary thing happened to me, you know. But he was shook up. No question. I mean, the man came right to the house. If there were more than one maybe the big man brought his friends and they . . . well, they hurt Steve and Emma. While he waited in the car.”
    If Dahl had a dollar for every conflict in a parking lot that could have turned violent but didn’t, he’d be rich. He asked, “Could you give me your number, Mr. Paskell? We may want to ask you a few questions.”
    Paskell was looking at the car, where the groceries bought specially for his friends sat, soon to be discarded. Would he throw them out in anger or despair? Despite his benign appearance, the man was, Dahl figured, a rager. “Mr. Paskell?”
    He still wasn’t listening. Then the sheriff asked again and the friend blinked. “My number. Yeah, sure.” He recited it for Dahl.
    Brawny Tanner stroked his mustache and looked at the sheriff, his expression saying, It never gets any easier, does it?
    “Are you all right to drive?” Dahl asked.
    “A few minutes.” He was gazing at the house. “Just a few minutes.”
    “Sure. You take your time.”
    The businessman, his face a mask, pulled out his phone. He rubbed it between thumb and finger, delaying making calls to friends. Dahl left him to the agonizing task.
    Prescott and Gibbs were putting up crime scene tape. Munce reported that the three deputies had gotten a “ways” into the woods and had lost all trace of the women’s trail.
    “Whatta you think about that big local?” Tanner asked Dahl.
    “Doesn’t set off fireworks for me. But we’ll keep it in mind. Get me a map. Anybody got a map? And spotlights?”
    Maps yes, spots no, so they walked up the steps to the front porch, whose overhead light was blazing and attracting the first few bugs of the season. One deputy produced the large map of the area and set it on a wooden café table on the porch, moved the chairs back. The houses here weren’t depicted but Lake View Drive was, a narrow yellow line. Lake Mondac was on one side and on the other was a vast mass of green, Marquette State Park. Elevations and trails were shown, ranger stations, parking lots and a few of the scenic highlights: Natural Bridge, Devil’s Deep, the Snake River Gorge.
    Tens of thousands of acres.
    Dahl looked at his battered Timex. “Give them five, six hours since the murder. How far could Brynn andthe girl get? In that brush, at night, not very.” His leg hurt like the dickens.
    Prescott ambled up. “Found something by the garage, Sheriff.”
    The troopers eyed the deputy’s bulk. He nodded at them, as confident as any twenty-seven-year-old could be.
    “What’s that?”
    “Found a tarp, the sort you’d cover a canoe with. And drag marks leading to that stream. It runs into the lake.”
    “Footprints?”
    “Couldn’t tell. It’s grass and gravel. But the skids could be fresh. And I looked in the garage. There’s only one life vest. No paddles. I’ll bet they took the boat.”
    Dahl looked over the map. “No streams or rivers flowing out of the lake. They could get as far as the opposite shore but then they’d have to hoof it.”
    “They have the boots for it,” Munce pointed out. “Swapping footgear.”
    Dahl noticed that Graham still hadn’t left yet, but was hanging back, eyes on the dark woods.
    “Graham, you help us out here?”
    He joined them and accepted various measures of sympathy from the other law enforcers after introductions were made and they learned it was his wife who was missing.
    Dahl explained about the canoe.
    Graham shook his head. “I don’t think it was Brynn who took it.”
    “Why not?”
    “She hated boats. Hated water.”
    “Well,” Commander Arlen Tanner pointed out, “was a pretty extreme situation. She might’ve made an exception.”
    “Only if there was no other way to go.”
    Dahl asked, “Did