The Fool's Run

the left was a partly wooded ridge that rose two hundred feet to the ridgeline. We followed a single strand of overhead electric wire along the road, past a half dozen cabins and two broken-down barns. The wire ended at Dace’s place. The cabin was high on the bank, thirty feet above the stream.
    Like the other cabins along the creek, Dace’s was small and primitive, built from four-by-four timber and rough siding. The roof was covered with green tar shingles. A one-holer outhouse sat on the upstream side of the cabin, surrounded by a screen of pines, with a new moon cut in the door. Nearby, a strand of plastic-covered rope, tied between two trees, served as a clothesline.
    “Dace said they get terrific floods through here every few years,” LuEllen said, as we pulled onto the dirt patch that served as a parking place. “They cut down most of the trees upstream, and there’s nothing to soak up the water.”
    I got out and looked around. The weather had broken, and though it was cool now, the day was a pretty one. Dace had thinned the trees between the house and the creek, and there was a pleasant view down to the water. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, the fishing would be prime, the muskies carrying late-season weight. I needed some time on the water.
    As I walked around the yard, LuEllen tramped through the falling leaves to an herb garden beside the porch. She turned over a rock, took a bottle out of the ground, unscrewed the cap, and dumped a key out.
    “His emergency key,” she said.
    The cabin was as simple inside as it was out. There was a two-burner electric range, a wood stove for heat, a table, a few chairs, a couch, a stack of old magazines, and two beds and a bureau behind a partition. I unloaded the luggage and we got comfortable.
    We spent that day and the next walking the neighborhood. On the hill above the road, there were large areas of grassy hillside that at one time might have been pasturage. There were no animals to be seen. The grass was broken by patches of wild raspberries and clumps of ragged, second-growth timber. The strip below the road, along the creek, was heavily wooded.
    We found an acceptable ambush site two hundred yards downstream from the cabin and an excellent one seventy yards above it. The site above the cabin was better. And that’s where I expected to see them.
     
    “I WANT TO talk to Maggie.”
    There was a long pause. “She’s here,” Dillon said. “It’ll be a minute.” He put me on hold. A long minute later, Maggie came on.
    “Why did you do it?” I asked. My voice grated out, angry and cold. I wasn’t pretending.
    “I didn’t,” she said urgently. “I knew you’d think so. But it was Rudy. He was so frightened of what we did to Whitemark and what could be done to us, that he panicked. He’s sick. He’s in the hospital, and he may not get back out. They’re not sure, but they think now it’s a brain tumor. But believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Dillon didn’t either.”
    “Huh.” LuEllen, standing with her ear close to mine, turned her head and mouthed “Dace.”
    “What happened to Dace?”
    “He was killed,” Maggie said simply. Her voice sounded low and hurt. “These assholes shot him and killed him. They would have killed you, too, and LuEllen. When you called Dillon, Dillon confronted Rudy. The argument brought on the breakdown, or whatever it is. As soon as we figured out how to do it, we called these men off. They’re already out of the country.”
    I let the silence build until she said, “Hello?”
    “What happened to Dace’s body? Is it still in the apartment?”
    “No. I was told they . . . disposed of it. I really don’t know the details.” LuEllen squeezed my arm and closed her eyes. Tears started around the lashes.
    “Explain how they knew where we were,” I said, pressing. “How they got up past Philadelphia, if they weren’t tipped off by Dillon.”
    She had the answer. “They put some kind of radio signal device on your car,” she said. “They couldn’t follow you exactly, but they knew when they were close. They tracked you up north, and then, they said, you picked a motel out in the middle of nowhere. They followed the signal right in. They took the beeper off the car when they got there, so if they . . . found you . . . the police wouldn’t find it on your car.”
    “Jesus Christ.”
    “Do you believe me?”
    I let the silence hang for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. It sounds okay. But I