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 at a walking pace. Virgil looked down the creek, and as the cop had said, it was choked with dead trees, sweepers, branches. He doubted that you could walk along it, and a boat would be impossible. They moved out, along the edge of the pond, scanning the shoreline until Johnson said, "There you go."

"Where?"

"See that dead birch, the one with the dead crown?" He was pointing across the weed flat at the wall of aspens and birch trees. "Now look about one inch to the left; you see that dark hole in the weeds? I see that all the time, in the backwaters on the river-somebody walked out there… over toward that beaver lodge."

"Okay." Virgil looked back at the boats around the body. "Could have set up on the lodge."

"Eighty-yard shot. Maybe ninety," Johnson said. "Looks about like a good sand wedge."

"Could be fifty, depending on how she drifted," Virgil said. "Good shooting, though."

Don said, "Not that great. Eighty, ninety yards. That's nothing, up here."

"I'll tell you what," Virgil said. "He had one shot, no warm-ups, and he put it dead in her forehead. She was probably moving, at least a little bit. And he was shooting a human being and had to worry about being caught, about being seen, about getting out of there. With all that stress, that's damn good shooting. He knew what he was doing."

Don looked from the shore back to the boats, back to the shore, then nodded, and said, "When you're right, you're right."

Looking at the beaver lodge, a low hump of bare logs, twigs, and mud just off the shoreline, Johnson said, "About impossible to get there from here. Might push a boat through to the beaver lodge, but even then…"

Virgil shook his head: "Better to come in from the same side the shooter did. Have to do that anyway." To Don: "Let's go see the sheriff."

THE FUNERAL HOME GUYS had McDill in a body bag and were zipping it up when they got back. The sheriff looked at their faces and asked, "What?"

Virgil said, "I think we got ourselves a crime scene."

3

WITH THE BODY out of the water, the sheriff talked to the two deputies who were looking for bloodstained lily pads, and told them to wait at the pond until he called them, or until the crime-scene crew arrived and sent them back. Then the rest of them pulled out, led by the sheriff in his boat, Virgil, Johnson, and Don in theirs, George Rainy, the guide, by himself, and the boat with the body.

At the pond, Virgil had only one flickering bar on his cell phone, but he had a solid four when they got back. As soon as Don cut the motor and started cutting a curve into the dock, he called the Bemidji office and talked to the duty officer.

"You got a crime-scene crew headed my way?"

"Should be there," the duty officer said. "Let me give them a call." He was back a minute later. "They ran into a closed bridge. They should be there in ten or fifteen minutes. They gotta go around."

"You still got guys up in Bigfork?"

"Oh, yeah. It's getting worse. You heard about Fox…"

A DOZEN WOMEN were standing on the dock, watching with the combination of curiosity and dread that you got at murders. Virgil tossed a line around a cleat and snugged the boat up to the dock and climbed out, holding it for Johnson and Don. When the sheriff had clambered out of his boat, Virgil relayed the news about the crime-scene crew and said, "Let's go see if we can spot the trail in-where the killer left the road."

"Sounds good."

To Johnson: "Why don't you go up to the lodge and see if you can get us some sandwiches; I'm starving to death."

"What're you doing?"

"I'm going to take a look at the body," Virgil said.

Johnson nodded and headed up the dock. Virgil walked over to Rainy, who was tying up his boat, and asked him to stick around until they could talk. The guide nodded and said, "Yessir," and followed Johnson into the lodge.

The funeral home guys hoisted the body bag out of the boat and Virgil had them unzip it. McDill was lying faceup, the front of her face stained red by hypostasis, the settling of blood in a dead body, under the influence of gravity. She'd gone into the water facedown, and apparently had stayed that way overnight.

The entry wound in her forehead was the size of Virgil's little fingernail, but the bone was pulped, as though the slug had exploded. The exit wound had knocked out the back left part of her skull, exposing some brain matter, which, washed overnight by the lake water, resembled gray cheese. To Virgil, it looked like she'd been shot with a small-caliber rifle, maybe a.223, or possibly a.243, with hollow-point bullets. She was wearing jeans, and he reached around to feel her back pockets, where she might be carrying a wallet, but she wasn't.

"You see any other wounds?" Virgil asked.

The funeral home guys shook their heads. "Not a thing," one of them said. "We'll check at the office, before we pack her up for the medical examiner. Let you know."

The body would be sent to Ramsey County, in the Twin Cities, for the autopsy.

"Zip it up," Virgil said. He duckwalked over to the edge of the dock, reached down, and washed his hands in the lake water.

STANHOPE HAD SEEN THEM coming in and now edged out onto the dock, and when Virgil stood up, she cringed away, unable to look, and asked, "Is that her?"

Virgil nodded and said, "You really don't have to be here. Why don't we go inside?"

She stepped away, still looking at the bag, and shuddered, and led the way along the path to the lodge door and up the interior stairs. Virgil asked, "You got the Internet here?"

"Oh, sure. Every cabin, and wireless all over the lodge."