It had been another long night of nothing at all and I was tired and bored stupid when I pulled up

in front of the office. The sun would be up in another hour or so, but just then it was dark and
cold with a light rain, the kind of weather best described as dreary. Gloomy, even.
For a while, too tired and numb to do otherwise, I just sat there and stared at our
company sign. I'd like to say it was etched in the glass of our office door in proper Phillip Marlow
fashion, but really it was just a plastic placard in the office building's directory. Atterburn and
Gustafson, LLC, it read, in block letters. Some of the other tenants had fancy placards with their
company logo and all, but in our line of work, an image of seriousness was key; when people go
to see a PI, they want them to be serious and, more importantly, they want them to keep their
mouths shut about whatever it is they're hired to investigate. Also, we didn't want to spring for
the fancy one.
Finally, thinking maybe we should design a logo, I gathered up all the empty Super
America coffee cups from the passenger seat, got out of the car, and climbed the three flights to
our office. Like the sign out front (and the building itself), the office wasn't overly impressive on
the outside, just one big room with an adjacent bathroom and a counter, sink, microwave, and
fridge arrangement the landlords called a kitchenette.
Inside, it was nicer. We'd brought in a couple of desks and some comfy chairs, a leather
sofa and a coffee table, with some somber-looking artwork and a couple of maps on the walls.
Office furniture, in other words, but of a style designed to inspire confidence and put the client at
ease. Solid, dependable-like.
We'd also added a bank of wood-faced file cabinets and a big bookshelf stocked with fat,
leather-bound books. The former were mostly empty while the latter were miscellaneous novels
and histories, purchased at used book stores and estate sales. See, for some reason people
expect these things in a PI's office. File cabinets and books, you gotta have em. They're also a
good example of what my partner brings to the table; before he came to work with me, back
when it was just Gustafson, PI, all I had was a desk and a couple of chairs. Much classier now,
even if it currently looked a bit in need of cleaning.
Our turf is the Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and the five-state area. Yeah, I know,
you're thinking Minnesota? Not New York or LA? Not even Chicago? Not too glamorous, is it?
Well maybe not, but that's where we work and there's plenty enough violence, madness, and
general illegality to keep us busy. You don't have to go to LA to find scumbags and crooks.
Besides that, it's where all of this happened. I wouldn't know the first thing about New York or
Chicago, and so there you have it. Minnesota is it.
Anyway, that morning I had just come back from a night spent sitting in my car, listening
to my iPod, drinking bad coffee, and watching a duplex at 33rd and Pleasant. This was the
home of one Debbie Myers, the alleged mistress of a certain well-heeled exec at Honeywell
whose name I won't mention. (See there--the very soul of discretion, that's us!) I was supposed
to get photos of the exec going into Debbie's place, but either the man had wised up or run out
of Viagra, because so far he'd been a no-show. In my surveillance I'd seen some drunks, some
thugs, some hookers and various dealers and skells, plus lots of Debbie coming and going, but
so far no exec.

It was very much a part of our work (the crummy, mind-numbingly dull part), the kind of
thing that paid the rent, and I should have been happy with the hundred bucks a day it was
bringing in. But man, oh man, I was sick of waiting for that damn guy to show. Almost made me
reconsider my choice of career.
In the office I went to the half-size fridge and looked, but there was only a few of Paul's
organic yogurts and some health drinks in there. The drinks were green and yellow and sludgylooking, absolutely repulsive, and I refused even to think about the yogurt. I shut the fridge. I
eyed the coffee maker, but the pot held only a quarter inch of burnt sludge and the idea of more
coffee made my stomach lurch. Dispirited, I went to my desk, sat down, and leaned back, just
for a minute to rest my eyes.
I woke up when Paul breezed in two hours later, causing me to jerk up and then fall
forward in my chair so that I almost face-planted on the desk. I also barked my shin.
"What're you doing here?" He said, throwing a copy of the Star Tribute, the local
Minneapolis rag, onto his desk. "Any sign of our guy?"
"Nothin," I said, rubbing my shin with one hand and my neck with the other. "And I'm
here because I fell asleep before I could get home."
"Aha. Well, maybe tomorrow night."
"Yeah, about that..." I said, still pretty well dispirited, maybe more so, thanks to the rude
awakening.
"What about it?" He asked, giving me that look of his. "Some problem?"
"Well, no, not exactly," I said. I thought of letting it go, but then decided to hell with it and
just blurted it out. "It's just so goddamn boring! I mean, come on, eight straight hours, every
night for six straight nights, just sitting in my car? How would you like it?"
"That was the deal," he said in that maddeningly calm, level tone he uses when I get
riled. "You do the surveillance, I do the research."
"Yeah, but six nights in a row? It's inhumane! And anyway, I didn't know it'd be like this
when I agreed to do the watching."
Finding nothing to say about this, I guess, he sat down and opened his paper. Me, I
wasn't done yet.
"I mean, I know it's part of the job, but damn! You wouldn't leave a damn dog in a car for
eight hours at a pop! And besides that, I'm starting to think Mrs. Adultery didn't know what she
was talking about. That, or her husband decided to quit screwing Debbie. In other words, this is
looking like a big fat waste of time."
Again, he said nothing, hiding behind his paper. Finally, deciding that the one who was
wasting his time was me, I heaved a big sigh. "So how about you? Any luck?"
He lowered the paper enough to look at me. "Not much. Usual stuff on the husband-income six figures, pays his taxes and mortgage and other bills like clockwork, no police
record... About what we thought. Still digging, though."
"Yeah, well, ask me you oughta just throw in the shovel, man. With a squeaky record like
that, and he don't show at this Debbie's place for a week? I think we should just prepare a nice,

concise little report for the Missus that tells her she's out of her tiny little mind. Gently, though-maybe you should write it."
He lowered the paper a little more and gave me the look again. "Gus, we can't do that.
And you know why. This is the only client we have."
I grumbled and groused some more, but, seeing it was purely for my own benefit, I finally
gave it up. No sense arguing, with Paul or the facts. I let him go back to his paper and went to
clean out the coffee pot.
"Anything good in the paper?" I asked, washing sludge down the drain.
"Eh, usual stuff. Crisis in the Middle East, politicians on the take, cops shooting guys,
guys shooting other guys... Not what I'd call good, I guess. But then, is there ever anything good
in the paper?"
"You know what I mean," I said. "Anything good for us."
"Potential cases, you mean? Well, I don't know. You haven't let me read it yet."
Finished with the coffee maker, I now held out both hands and shook my head. "Hey,
fine. Sorry I asked." I grabbed my coat and headed for the door. "Well, I'm going home to get
some sleep. See you later."
He just grunted from behind the paper. I shrugged to myself and left.
As it turned out, there was something good for us in the paper. But then, good is a
relative term, and what we ended up getting involved in sure as shit wasn't anything good.
Matter of fact, it was downright evil. And I don't throw that word around lightly, either.
I drove home to my one bedroom shoebox apartment downtown, thinking about Paul. Well,
worrying was more like it. See, Paul Atterburn, my best friend since high school, had recently
lost his wife. After dating for about five years, they'd finally married and then, all of six months
later, Melanie had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the real bad kind. It had taken almost
two years for her to die, a slow, dreadful, painful descent full of hospitals and ambulances and
one crushing setback after the next.
Paul had been there for her all the way, more or less living at the hospital, but everyone
knew that all the radiation and chemo in the world wasn't going to save Melanie. She was one of
the finest human beings I've ever known, kind and smart and pretty, and we all had to watch as
she slowly got ugly, sick, and stupid from the drugs. All in all, it was so sad and tragic that words
can't even really describe it. Just writing this makes me feel bad.
At the time, I had carried on at the office, taking easy, quick-money cases (mostly work
comp fraud), stuff I could do by myself, but things got pretty slim. I think in those two grim years I
made us about five thousand bucks. It was enough to keep the office and my apartment, but
that was about it. The medical bills had eaten up all of Paul and Melanie's savings as well, so
that when he finally came back to work, after the funeral and all the memorials and all, he was
as poor as me. And that's saying something. We'd thought about chucking the whole enterprise
and going back to some sort of normal day jobs somewhere, but then we'd decided to try it for
just one more year and damned if we didn't start to get some decent, high-paying clients.

The only trouble now, and the source of my worries (other than terminal boredom), was
the effect of Mel's illness and death on Paul. He'd seen a shrink and done all the things they
recommended. There'd been therapy (consisting mainly of a lot of what they called coping
mechanisms), meditation, yoga, you name it, plus a whole drug store of antidepressants,
anxiolytics, and benzodiazepines. Lots of stuff with names that ended in X or "pram", as I recall,
and, as intended, they helped to keep him from going too deeply into the deep end. But pain like
his couldn't be talked or meditated or drugged away--only time could do that--and the end result
was that the experience had changed him. Profoundly, too, and not exactly for the good.
He got much more serious, less happy, to the point of being what I think they call
taciturn. Grim, even, just not much fun at all, like ever. But the worst thing was that Paul was no
longer afraid. Of anything. I don't mean he was brave or courageous or an adrenaline junkie, I
mean he just wasn't scared of anything, including his own death. And as any sane individual will
tell you, a certain amount of mortal fear is good for a man. It tells you when you're about to do
something stupid, for one thing, and thereby helps keep you alive, and in our business that's
pretty important. Sometimes it's all that's required.
Paul, though, well he seemed like there was just plain nothing life could throw at him that
could be any worse than what he'd already been through. And I guess that's about right. He'd
stared death eyeball to eyeball and walked away. But I'd seen him do things lately, little things
like car-chasing a guy at 120 per through downtown 394, beating hell out of a dude who had six
inches and a hundred pounds on him, walking into gunfire like it was nerf balls, stuff like that,
which made me wonder if his fearlessness wasn't going to get one or both of us seriously
wounded or killed. As much as he apparently didn't care if he lived or died anymore, I was still
very much attached to my existence, such as it was, and rather opposed to losing it.
So to be honest, that was what I was worrying about on my drive home. Of course I
didn't want to lose my best bud and business partner, but I wasn't so sure I was willing to die for
him, either. I sure as shit didn't want him to die for me. And since I was forced to back his play,
no matter what, no matter how crazy or dangerous, I think you'll agree that it was an issue worth
worrying about. Worrisome, that's what it was.
I kept meaning to talk to him about it, but somehow the time never seemed right. After
all, it's not the easiest kind of thing to bring up. What was I supposed to say? Like, hey buddy,
would you mind not trying to get us both killed today? Ease off on defying death, just a tad?
Well, maybe I'd talk to him today, or even better, some time later, like next week.
Now I guess this is as good a time as any to describe myself and Paul, your heroes and
the two main characters in this little tale. I won't go into our pasts, because that would just be
boring, but it might help if you knew at least what we look like. Oh, and by the way? I'll thank you
to forgive this, my humble attempt at writing; just try to keep in mind, I dropped out of high
school, okay? Okay then.
Personally, I'm built like--and, I'm told, kind of look like--a younger, thinner Randy Quaid,
and that's about the most charitable description I'm willing to admit to. I'm about six three and
175 pounds, more or less, and I have a face that, while not exactly ugly, ain't exactly Brad Pitt,
either. My usual attire is black Dickies work pants, flannel shirts (band t-shirts in summer), and

some good stout work boots. I keep my mouse-brown hair mostly buzzed off and my face
shaved, due to the fact that when I grow a beard I look like a derelict. Or maybe more of a
derelict. I do allow myself one affectation, a beat-up black porkpie. I'm thirty three years old,
never married but always hopeful, and I have all my teeth with only one cavity. And I guess that's
probably way more than you needed to know.
Paul is a smaller guy, about five nine and 160, but what he lacks in size he makes up for
with killer good looks and the body of a twenty-year old gymnast. He works out like crazy, eats
right, grooms himself well, and knows how to dress and accessorize. He looks kind of like a
young Tom Cruise (only meaner, harder, especially lately), and while he owns a whole wardrobe
of fancy suits and sportswear, he usually wears khakis, button-down work shirts, and white
sneakers. Kind of like the Professor on Gilligan's Island with his shirt untucked. He has black
hair, banker short but not buzzed like mine, and a neat, thin goatee. Like me, he's thirty three
and while I don't know how many cavities he has, I'm pretty sure he also has all his teeth.
So that's what we look like and enough of it. As far as our business went, we were doing
alright, not exactly rich--at all--but fairly comfortable. Like most PIs, we were always looking for
the Big Case, the one that would make us rich and famous. Maybe that's why we got into the
mess we did. Maybe we got greedy. Then again, maybe it was fate, coincidence or bad luck or
whatever. But however it came about, now you know how things stood just before the shit hit the
fan and we took the Pine Falls case. And man I'm here to tell you, I wish to God we hadn't.
I was sound asleep when my phone went off. I groped for the source of the noise and answered
it before I was really awake.
"Whuzzat?" I said. "Huh? Who?"
"Gus, wake up," I heard Paul's voice and came to a little more. "Let's go, pal, we got
work to do. Up, up!"
"Time is it?" I asked, fuzzy as a peach.
"Two in the afternoon. Now come on, get up. We got business."
"You suck, you know that?" I said. "Heartless bastard."
There was a quick, laugh-type noise. "Yeah, yeah," he said. "Just get down here. Now."
"What's so damn important?" I said, rotating my head. "What, you finally find some good
dirt on Mr. Adultery and little Debbie?"
"Screw that. This is better. Way better. See you soon." And he hung up.
Mumbling to myself, I sat for a few minutes on the edge of the bed and looked out my
one window. It was a nice-looking, early September day out there, sunny after last night's rain,
crisp and clear. Small, puffy white clouds lazed across the sky, and in the distance, between two
buildings, I could see a slice of the Mississippi, gleaming blue and white, banded by the
greenway and the flaming trees of autumn. Well, if I was going to be forced to operate on four
hour's sleep, at least it was a nice day out. I quit mumbling and got up.
When, after a shower, shave, and some OJ and toast, I finally got to the office, Paul was
at his desk, beavering away on his beloved MacBook Air. The damned thing had cost about
twelve hundred bucks and it looked like a kid's toy to me, but once Paul had shown me what it

could do I had to admit it was one fine computing machine. It did make me a little jealous
though; it had eaten up our whole meager tech budget, forcing me to make due with a measly
old-model Droid. What was more, for all its fanciness, so far it hadn't help us on a case in any
meaningful way that I could tell. Oh well, he loved it and it seemed to make him happy, so what
the hell, right?
He looked up for a second before going back to whatever he was up to. With one hand,
he tossed a section of the Star Tribute, folded open, across his desk. "Read that," he said.
I picked up the paper and looked. "What, this? Prior Lake opens new rec center?"
"No, stupid. Under that."
Now I saw what he meant, a half-page article headlined "Search on for missing college
student". I read it through and gathered that a twenty year old kid had disappeared from St.
Mark's University, a swanky, 50-grand-a-year Catholic school in the town of Cullen. A little map
showed this to be in Minnekota County, up in the northwest part of the state. Next to the map
was a small picture of the girl, a pretty thing with long black hair. Named Gayle Murphy, the
daughter of Steven and Joyce Murphy of Edina (one of the richer Twin Cities burbs), she had
evidently had no enemies of any kind. An A student, well-liked by the other kids and the profs,
etc, and with no record of "at-risk" behavior.
In the story, the exact circumstances of her disappearance were vague, only that she'd
gone to a party and never made it back to her dorm. It was the kind of tragic story you saw
maybe once a year; kid gets loaded, wanders off and falls in a lake or gets hit by a truck or lays
down for a little nap in a snowbank in January when it's twenty below. One a few years back got
run over when he went to sleep on a train track and last winter we had another kid freeze both
hands and feet so badly they'd had to amputate. Tragic, yes, but not all that unusual.
There was also mention of a reward for the kid and a record of the efforts of the
authorities so far, their searches and who they'd questioned, plus some background on the
college and the town of Cullen, but by that time I was getting bored with the ugly, all-toocommon story and quit reading. I tossed back the paper.
"What about it?" I asked. "I mean, poor kid and all, but what?"
"Guess who called, not two hours ago."
"I dunno. What, you want me to guess? Come on, give."
"Mr. Steven Murphy, that's who."
"What, the guy? The dad in the story?"
"Yup."
"No shit?"
"No shit."
I think I actually staggered a little, but it might have been just that I needed some more to
eat. Anyway, I had to go sit down and hold my head. I tossed my porkpie on the desk and looked
over at Paul. He was calmly clicking away at the Air. I took the paper again and, a little too
rattled to read properly, scanned it through.

"But, but," I said, eloquent as ever. "You mean it? I mean, damn, in this article here it
says they're offering--wait, here it is--fifty grand on this kid! Is that, you know, for real? Fifty
large? To find one kid, and dead or alive at that?"
"Looks like about the size of it," he said. Then he stopped pecking and clicking and
looked over at me and damned if he didn't smile. It wasn't like a grin or what you'd call beaming
or anything, but it was a smile nonetheless. I think I was more jazzed about that smile than the
potential case. I smiled back, and it was definitely a grin. A big old beaming one at that.
"Is this it, man?" I asked, beaming away. "The holy grail? The big payoff?"
His smile faded, but slowly, as he went back to the Air. "Don't get too excited, pal," he
said. "We don't even have the job yet. And even if we do get it, there's still the little matter of
actually finding her. And finding her before anyone else. That reward is open, you know."
"Yeah, but a DOA?" I said, undaunted. "Hell, with fifty large on the line, we could find
Amelia fucking Earhart! It's a cinch!"
He peered at me over the top of the screen. That old look was back. "Take it easy, Gus,"
he said, stern-like. "Alright? Don't get your hopes too high. Now, we have a meeting with the
Murphys tonight, at seven. And then we'll see. Until then, just calm down."
"Meeting?" I said, reduced to single words. "Yeah? Seven? Tonight? Where at? Their
place, I assume."
"No, here," he said. "How they wanted it."
"What, here?" I said, jumping up. "Tonight?" I looked around at the office. "But the place
is trashed!"
And, with the exception of Paul's desk, it was; there were food wrappers, old Broadway
Pizza boxes, coffee cups and old newspapers and pop cans and well, let's just say lots of
general clutter. The floor had all kinds of little specks of stuff in the carpet, the bathroom had last
been cleaned about six months ago, and the kitchenette was a minor-league biohazard.
Needless to say, we didn't get too many clients coming to the office. We also don't much like that
common domestic chore called "cleaning" and, fancy furnishings aside, we'd let it go pretty bad.
Hell, we didn't even own a vacuum!
"That's where you come in," Paul said, another little smile dancing across his face.
"What, you want me to clean? As in, you know, clean?"
"Right, first time," he said.
"Well, okay," I said, my enthusiasm dimming a little. "But why can't we meet em
somewhere else? Fancy restaurant or something."
"Nix," he said, always the chatterbox. "We meet them here, at our office, like any
reputable PI firm."
"Okay, okay," I surrendered, and stroked my chin. "Gonna have to go out and get stuff,
cleaning-type supplies, need a vacuum, scrubby spray, windex, all that..." I stopped and eyed
him. "What're you going to do?"
Again with the look. "Work," he said, nodding at the Air. "There's lots on the web I can
do. Now get going. We only have a few hours till they get here."

Normally I would have been a little put out by this. His tone was what I guess they call
imperious, like he was the boss and I was some peon gofer rather than his partner. But at the
time, looking at fifty Gs for what had all the signs of a slam-dunk job, I was willing to let it slide.
Who cared if he thought he was bossing me around; we were talking fifty thousand bucks! Still, I
gave him a look of my own, nice and fishy, when I got up to leave.
"Okay, partner," I said, pointed-like. "You're on. Just don't forget who cleaned up this pig
sty, okay?"
He paused again. This time the look had an edge of exasperation. "Oh yeah? And who
made it into a pig sty? Hmm?"
I hung my head. "Yeah, you're right. I'm just not what you call a neat person, you know?"
"Gus, please get going," he said. "There's a lot of work to do and not much time."
"Right, right," I said, heading for the door. Twirling my keys on one finger, I paused to grin
at him again. "Paul, man, this could really be it, you know? The Big One."
"Yeah," he said. "So let's make a good first impression, alright?"
I nodded at that and left, off to Target for about two hundred bucks worth of sprays and
polishes and scrubbing materials and a vacuum and a mop and bucket and all sorts of other
crap. Truth to tell though, if I'd known what I know now, how horribly it would all turn out, I'd have
told Paul to call Mr. Steven Murphy of Edina back and tell him to forget all about it, fifty grand or
no. And I sure as shit wouldn't have busted my knees and scrubbed till my hands were raw
making nice for the clients.
Mr. and Mrs. Murphy were a very well-mannered, not-too-obviously wealthy couple of about fiftyfive years apiece. My first impression (which I always trust, having found it to be dead accurate
more often than not) was of genuinely aggrieved parents, nothing shifty or two-faced about
them. Just regular, upper-middle-class, Minnesota-bred white folks, normal-looking in every way
except for the definite mien of the shell-shocked, a faraway stare in eyes that were circled with
bruise-like shadows.
Dad was small and thin, with a shaved bald head, a trim, graying beard, and narrow little
designer glasses. He blinked a lot and, when he wasn't talking, tended to chew on his cuticles.
Dressed in a suit coat with a ribbed turtleneck, he reminded me a little of Ben Kingsley. I pegged
him for either a doctor or a teacher. Maybe a dentist.
Mom was attractive, in a leathery, hard sort of way, tanned and fit-looking with nice white
teeth. She had short gray hair, bright blue eyes, and wore a knee-length black skirt, a pearl gray
cashmere cardigan, light makeup and scent, and what looked like about ten carats on her ring
finger. All told, kind of like a prettier, thinner Judy Dench, minus the accent.
They showed up right on time and Paul went to get the door and ushered them in. I'd
cleaned that sucker to within an inch of its life (not to mention mine) and, with the lights low and
the wood and leather and all gleaming, the office looked pretty good. Real confidence-inspiring.
I'd dug out an old black suit coat and a white dress shirt for the occasion (I drew the line
at wearing a tie, mainly because I don't think I own one) and had polished and buffed my

kickers. Freshly showered and shaved, I'd even ditched my porkpie in the bottom drawer of my
desk. For me, it was downright natty.
Paul brought the Murphys over to the couch and we all introduced ourselves and
exchanged handshakes. Dad's was kind of dead fish, but Mom's was surprisingly firm and dry.
Paul offered them coffee or water, but they politely declined and we got down to it. Paul did most
of the talking, as usual, and right away expressed our sympathy for their extremely difficult
situation.
"Yes, well, thanks," said Steven, the dad. "But we've heard that a lot and so far it hasn't
helped. Not even a little bit."
"Now Steven," said the mom, Joyce. "Let's try to be fair. It's not these men's fault, now is
it?"
"It's alright, Mrs. Murphy," said Paul. "He has every reason to be angry and bitter. And
the last thing you two need is to hear is more people telling you how sorry they are."
They both looked up at him, kind of surprised-like, and then over at each other. Paul kept
going. He's good at this kind of thing. Why he does the talking.
"What you need," he said, soft but firm, "is to find your daughter. Plain and simple. Am I
right?"
They looked at each other again and then both let out a relieved-sounding whoosh noise,
as if they'd been holding their breath. Like for the last week. Joyce actually smiled.
"Yes, exactly!" Said Steven, throwing up his hands. "Thank you! That's the first time I've
heard anyone involved in this whole mess say anything that made sense!"
"I can only imagine," Paul nodded. He paused, then went on. "Now, what we need from
you is all the background we can get. I know it won't be easy to talk about and that you've had to
go over all of this many times with the authorities. On top of that, unfortunately it will also be
painful to have to relive it all. Again. But it's necessary if we want to find your daughter. Alright?"
Both Murphys nodded and Paul resumed. "We'll need to know all about Gayle and all
about the school, plus the town the school's in, this Cullen. Most of all, we need everything you
can recall about the last time she was seen. We'll need to know details, in other words, and I
might have to ask you things that might seem kind of personal. Even intimate. Is that alright?"
They said it was, their faces setting into hard lines of determination. Paul really got going
then, digging in to the meat of the thing, so to speak, and I took notes, writing them down on a
legal pad with a Bic. I'd also set the camera and mic hidden in the bookcase so we'd have a
recording of the whole interview, but I still liked taking notes by hand. For some reason, they
make me think of things, angles and possibilities, that a recording didn't. Just how my feeble
little brain operates, I guess. I also threw in with a question of my own from time to time.
Anyhow, between the two of us, we got the entire story as best the parents knew it. The
Murphys were good soldiers, hardly ever breaking into tears, and turned out to be amazingly
objective and clear-headed, especially considering the situation.
Gayle was, as noted in the Star Trib piece, an overall good kid. An only child, she'd had
what sounded like an ideal childhood. Lots of friends, into sports and arts activities like band
and theater, and had never exhibited any sign of rebellion, let alone an inclination to run away.

"No, that's not even a possibility," said Joyce firmly, almost angrily, when Paul pressed
the issue.
"Yeah," agreed Steven. "The police keep asking about that, too, but no. Gayle would just
not do that. Not an option. Forget it."
I underlined "not a runaway" on my legal pad. Paul commiserated, mostly about the
general obtuseness of cops, and then changed direction, asking about the event itself. This, we
learned, had happened the night of Friday, August 30th, six days back. Gayle and three
girlfriends had gone to a kegger, a good old-fashioned college beer bust, out in a hay field in the
middle of nowhere where they could be as loud as they wanted. The nearest town, Pine Falls,
was about ten miles away, with Cullen (and the school, St. Mark's) another five. According to
what the witnesses--her friends--had told the cops, there'd been maybe a hundred other kids,
with a band and a bonfire and everything. Paul asked, delicate-like, about Gayle's drinking
habits.
"She was smart about it," said Joyce. "Informed. As we told the police--or tried to tell
them--she might have a drink or two, but she never got drunk, never missed school or activities,
no changes in her behavior, never had to call for help, nothing like that."
"We raised her with it, with a respect for it," said Steven. "So she'd know the ups and
downs of alcohol. Especially the downs. And drugs? Again, just forget it. She talked all the time
about the losers at school who smoked dope or did pills. So no, I don't think drinking or drugs
had anything to do with it."
"Well," said Joyce, taking Steven's hand, "really it's more like yes and no. But at best it's
only a remote possibility. Very remote. Of course, it could have been, what do they call it, a
mitigating factor. But as far as the main cause, as in her falling into a river or getting hit by a car
or something, while she was drunk or high? No, probably not."
I wrote "possible drunk/high but not likely" on the pad. Paul pressed on. "Now, about the
school itself," he prompted.
The Murphys told us that St. Mark's was a great place and apparently a good fit for
Gayle, who was in her sophomore year. It cost a lot, of course, but it also handed out what was
considered a very prestigious degree. It was what Joyce called "a bit insular" and while I didn't
know for sure what insular meant, gathered that it meant the students weren't exactly hangin in
the hood. Or, for that matter, hangin with anyone other than their suburban brethren, middle- to
upper-class white kids.
"And sure," said Steven, "maybe as far as that's concerned, she could've gone to a
bigger school, maybe one in the city. She was accepted at Northwestern and at the U of M, you
know. But a couple of her high school friends were going to St. Mark's and we thought it'd be
safer in general and well, there's always time to be exposed to, well, to life, you know?"
Paul nodded, but I was thinking: not so much time anymore, is there? And as for safe?
Well, events had proved rather decidedly otherwise. Nowhere was really safe. Of course, I kept
this to myself and just wrote "St. Mark's = extended high school/babysitting service for rich white
kids" on my pad. Paul asked more about the school, too, how many kids and teachers and its

specialties and such, but nothing that seemed too vital so I just waited and listened. Besides, we
could review the recording if need be.
Finally they got down to the real issue, Gayle's disappearance, and it was only then that I
saw a few tears in the Murphys' eyes. They held it together, no wailing or blubbering or anything,
but you could tell it hurt just to talk about it. And no wonder.
The crux of it all was that, due to the attentions of a hunky young man she'd met, Gayle
had decided to stay at the party after her friends left. I gathered that this was not so strange for
her; apparently if she had a failing, it was, like a lot of girls her age, that of chasing hunky young
men. But her friends had known the boy in question and had seen nothing dangerous in Gayle
staying at the party, especially as she'd already arranged another, reportedly sober, ride back to
campus.
The hunky young man, a junior named Sebastian something, had of course been
questioned by the police, apparently many times. A decent kid by all accounts who'd fully
cooperated, he said that the last he'd seen of Gayle she'd gone off to use the bushes. That is,
she'd gone to pee. And then? Nothing, she just didn't come back.
At the time, Sebastian had assumed she'd just lost interest in him and gone her merry
way. After all, they weren't dating, they'd just met; why should he worry about some chick he'd
just met? Likewise her ride home, another girlfriend who happened to be in the band, waited and
looked for Gayle until the place was deserted, and for nothing. Gayle just wasn't there, and the
friend could only assume she'd found another ride.
And that was more or less it. When her roomies and friends woke up Saturday morning,
Gayle was not there. They'd alerted the campus police, who'd alerted the real police, who'd
alerted the real, real police, and from there it had mushroomed. Before long, the FBI had been
involved, not to mention the local, county, and state coppers, and there'd been a whole big
organized effort at finding her. Dozens of party attendees had been questioned and the
surrounding countryside had been combed back, forth, and sideways. And all to what they call
no avail. Not a scrap of a hint of a clue.
This had been over the course of the last five days, and now the cops were talking about
"suspending" the search. Which is to say, giving up and going on with their lives. There were no
leads to speak of, no motive or opportunity or persons of interest or any of the other things cops
look for, and despite hundreds of kids and locals and detectives both professional and amateur
volunteering in the coordinated search, they'd found precisely zilch.
"It's pretty wild country up there," said Steven. "All pine woods and swamps. Lots of
lakes and streams, too, of course. Ten Thousand Lakes, all that... It's hard to search, I guess is
my point."
Joyce took over. "We brought her up there, of course. We even stayed for the two-week
orientation. And then we went to visit, about once a month, and it was always kind of like a little
vacation. The scenery, I mean. Really beautiful. But like Steven says, it's more or less the forest
primeval. Not very many farms, because there's not much you can grow. And the towns are few
and far between. Still, it is very pretty."

"If I might ask," I piped up. "Why did they put this school out in the middle of nowhere like
that? Not exactly convenient, is it?"
"It was originally a Benedictine monastery," Steven explained. "Still is, for that matter.
And as to why, I guess the monks wanted privacy. They do that."
I nodded and wrote down "School out in boonies, pine woods & swamps. Run by
Benedict monks" and let Paul take over again.
"Now," he said, "the nearest town, nearest to where the party was that is, it's called
what? Pine Falls? Is that right? Do you know anything about it?"
They shook their heads. "Not really," said Joyce. "We've never been there. It's smaller
than Cullen, I know that."
"And it's probably nothing like Cullen, either," said Steven.
"Why do you say that?" Asked my partner.
"No college," shrugged Steven. "College towns are different. In towns like Cullen, they
cater to the students. They have to. So they have coffee shops and wifi and sub shops and
pizza parlors. Bowling alleys, art galleries--well, you get the idea."
"And bars," said Joyce, allowing a tight smile. "Plenty of bars."
"But," Steven went on, "in the average small town outstate? They have pretty much none
of that. Any of it. Except for the bars, of course."
I nodded, knowing what he meant. Small towns, especially way up north like that, could
be downright depressing. I was from Plymouth, another Twin City burb, but I'd known plenty of
folks who'd fled this kind of town just as soon as they'd been able. Refugees, I called them, and
with some justification. Like in most of America, the small-town, Mayberry-type existence in
Minnesota was dying out, and what was left was quite often pretty darn sad. Towns that seem
like they're trapped in amber, watching a fast-moving world pass them by, a world that cares not
one whit whether they live or die.
Well anyway, the painful details now in hand, that was about all for our interview with the
Murphys. I got some more info from them, phone numbers, addresses, contact names with the
police and university bigwigs and whatnot, and wrote it all carefully on my pad. The Murphys
had obviously kept careful notes; by the time Joyce was done reading from her phone, I had a
whole page of info. They also provided a photo of Gayle, a 3-by-5 of the same shot they'd had in
the paper.
At the last, Paul carefully and tactfully told them that we'd do all we could but that they
should be prepared for the worst. And I had to agree with him, because if they hadn't found
Gayle Murphy by this time, she was quite likely dead. But you can't say that to the kid's poor
parents (not if you're a human being, that is), so Paul left it just sort of hanging. Finally, in a
casual sort of way, it was confirmed that the Murphys wanted to hire us and that they were
prepared to pay out on us finding Gayle, even if the worst came to pass and she was already
gone. And yes, the reward was fifty thousand.
"We just have to know," said Joyce, about breaking my heart with the look in her eyes.
"We don't care about the stupid money, we just have to know. One way or the other. Please,
bring our little girl home."

She finally choked up and lost it a little then, letting out a wracking sob and grabbing for
a tissue in her purse. I couldn't blame her. I almost lost it myself. Steven was silent, his throat
and lower lip working and a line of tears running down one cheek. Only Paul seemed
unaffected.
"We'll do our very best," he assured them. "You can rely on that. And while I can't
promise anything, I think you've done the right thing engaging the services of a private
investigator. We can go places and ask questions that the police, even the FBI, just can't. And if
we do take the case, rest assured, we are very good at what we do."
I nodded to confirm this and the Murphys seemed a little more hopeful. They got up and
put on their coats. Paul helped them and we all shook hands again. They didn't make any more
pleas or beg for help, just dried their dark-rimmed eyes and stood up straight. They went to the
door.
"Good luck," said Steven. "We're counting on you."
Joyce gave us a desperate smile and a little wave and then they were gone.
Paul shut the door and came back to where I was in a chair by the couch. He sat down and let
out a big sigh. He looked at me.
"What you think?" he said. "Dead already?"
"Probably," I said, getting up. "I mean, there's always a chance, but... No, it don't look too
good, does it?"
"Not at all," he said sadly. "And with all those searches? FBI, too? I'm starting to wonder
about our own chances. How are we going to find her when the Feds and all those people
couldn't?"
"Well, it's like you said," I replied, going to get a water. "We can talk to people that
wouldn't talk to the police. And we can go poking around wherever we want cause we don't
need search warrants. And, unlike any other PIs, we'll have the Murphys themselves behind us."
"Yeah, of course," he said. "That's all a given. But still... And what about this whole
backwoods angle?"
"What angle?"
"Think about it, hotshot," he said. "What the hell do we know about the woods? Not like
we go camping or hunting or whatever a whole lot--or ever."
"Oh, so what," I waved at him. "What's to know? I been camping before, it's no big deal.
And anyway, we won't be out in the woods, we can stay in motels. And you heard what they said
about this Cullen place--sounds like a regular Little Seattle!" He didn't say anything, so I peered
at him. "You're a real pessimist, you know that? A real Debby Downer. Hell, here we're lookin at
five large and you're worried about being out in the woods! Come on!"
He looked at me and smiled, thin-like. "Just trying to think of everything," he said. "Pays
to plan ahead."
"Does that mean we're taking the case?" I said, grinning like a schoolboy on the last day
of the year. "Huh, huh, does it?"

"It does," he said. I let out a whoop and danced a little grizzled old prospector jig. "But
let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay? We've got a lot to do."
"Yeah yeah," I said. "I hearya. Lots of gear to get together, gotta tell people we're gonna
be gone for a while, all that... But damn, Paul, we got us a bona fide whopper! The Big Case,
the one we been looking for, like all our whole adult lives!"
"Looks like it," he said. "If we can pull it off, that is."
I just sat back, laced my fingers behind my head, and grinned some more, dollar signs
dancing through my head. Paul's caution and pessimism aside, I was excited, even raring to go.
So what if this place we were going to was kind of rustic and isolated? So what if even the FBI
hadn't found anything to speak of? And so what if they'd searched like crazy and found nothing?
We were pros, after all, not bumbling, provincial Barney Fifes or disinterested, stuck-up Feds.
Oh sure, maybe there was a nagging little voice in the back of my head that said
that Paul was spot on and that we were likely heading into a Class A shitstorm, but in the face of
all that money, I was more than able to tell it shut the hell up. Greed can do that, I guess.
For the sake of your attention span I won't go too deeply into the next day. It was spent mainly in
the mundane job of gathering, packing, and stowing into my car all the stuff we needed (or
thought we'd need) for the trip, followed by a cursory look at an online map and the route we'd
have to take to Cullen.
We also dug out our guns. Now, I don't know what you've read or heard about PIs and
guns or what you've seen on TV and in movies, but Atterburn and Gustafson was one concern
that pretty well shunned the use of firearms. Sorry if this disappoints, but to be honest, they
scare the willies out of me. Paul's different, as he'd done a four-year hitch in the Army back in
the day, but he was definitely no fan, either. He always said that there were plenty of other tools
in the box without resorting to guns. But in this case, we agreed that it was necessary. After all,
we'd be pretty well on our own up there, and who could say what we might need? Like good
Scouts, we wanted to be prepared, and that meant toting around something that could kill a man
dead in one second flat.
Mine was a run-of-the-mill Beretta M9 9mm pistol. The same as used by thousands of
cops and even more soldiers the world over, it was a good, reliable weapon, easy to use and
clean, with a fifteen-round magazine. Paul had given me an extensive course in its use, taking
me to the range until I was a fair shot and making me take it apart and put it back together until I
could do it all by myself, but I still didn't much like the nasty thing. I was always glad when I'd
finally put it back in the safe because just holding it always made my stomach tighten. When I so
much as looked at it I couldn't help but think: This is death. Right here, this chunk of metal and
plastic is death, in its most basic form. Scary. Anyway, you get the idea; I don't like guns.
Paul favored a bit fancier weapon, and one that fired a whole lot bigger bullet. A Smith &
Wesson model 500, it was what you thought of when you thought of a handgun, a real Dirty
Harry hand-cannon. It was a revolver, silver-plated, and only held five shots. But judging by the
size of the rounds, the amazingly loud bang/boom it made when fired, and the size of the holes

it put in targets, five should be enough. Maybe it was caliber-envy or something, but I swear
those .50 rounds looked like shotgun shells next to my 9 millimeters.
At any rate, Paul said that it was a good gun, reliable as any revolver and with lots of
what he called stopping power. And unlike me, he really knew how to use it; he could put all five
rounds into the bullseye at forty feet, with amazing speed and regularity. One time I watched him
do it five times in a row.
Besides these deadly little toys, we had a shotgun, a Mossberg 12 gauge, five-shot
pump with a medium barrel, and a hunting rifle, an old Remington 306 with a 5X scope. I
couldn't begin to imagine having to use any of them, pistol, shotgun, or rifle, but again, it was a
case of preparedness. Never know. So we brought em, along with enough rounds for each
weapon to start a small guerrilla insurrection and our conceal-and-carry papers for the
handguns. All of them got zipped into their cases and, with the ammo, stowed carefully into the
bottom of my trunk.
We also each went home and packed our personal things, clothes and bathroom stuff
and whatever, enough for a good couple of weeks. Before I left my place, I looked around, just
out of reflex, but there was nothing there I was going to miss. I didn't have any pets or potted
plants, the furniture was either cheap or second-hand (some of it both), and the decor--old, band
posters, mainly--was like something you'd see in a high-schooler's bedroom. With not another
look, I shut the door, locked up, and left.
My car, by the way, the company car, is a 2014 Toyota Camry. It's black with blue interior,
utterly average and reliable as a brick. And about as exciting. You'd think I'd have something
nice, something fast and sexy, with a growly engine. Something cool. But as much as I would
like to own such a status symbol, a flashy car is just not practical for PI work. Think about it: as a
guy who spends most of his time skulking around, watching and waiting for people, do you really
want something that will turn heads, that people will remember? No, of course not, you want
something anonymous, something totally forgettable. And nothing says anonymous like a Toyota
Camry.
The rest of our gear came from the office. Tech gadgets, mostly, phones and computers
and cameras and all kinds of junk I won't get into here. Suffice to say, we about cleaned out the
cabinets and drawers. Paul also brought the MacBook, of course, but I had my doubts as to its
usefulness and told him so.
"What're you bringing that for?" I said, diplomatic as ever. "Without Internet, it's basically
just an expensive door stop. I'd say boat anchor, but it don't weigh enough."
He stroked the thing's case. "What do you know?" He said, looking hurt. "You heard what
Murphy said: they have wifi, in town."
"Uh huh. Well, okay. I wouldn't want to part you from the precious thing anyway. Just
don't let it get wet or smashed or anything, alright? Cause, door stop or not, we can't afford to
lose it. Even if we do get the reward."
Naturally he agreed and, with that, we were about ready to leave. The office, paid up for
the year, could take care of itself, we'd already sent a final report to poor Mrs. Adultery, closing
that case as far as we were concerned, and anyone we knew in town who cared (a pathetically

short list) had been told that we'd be gone for a while. We even changed the greeting on our
voicemail. And so, with nothing keeping us in town, bright and early next day we locked up the
office, got into the Camry, and headed out. It was the first step on a long, horrible journey.
The drive up wasn't too bad, about six hours and 350 miles, northwest on 94 to Fergus Falls,
then north onto State 59 and a long stretch of two-lane and small towns, straight as an arrow, all
the way to Thief River Falls. From there we headed back east, into Minnekota County on State
One, clear to the town of Cullen.
I drove the entire way, which was okay; I didn't mind, and Paul's driving (aggressive and
fast, if not to say reckless) always made me nervous anyway. The scenery was as pretty as
advertised, corn fields, cow pastures, and wide open spaces until about Fergus, then increasing
forest as we went north. By about half way to Thief River Falls, the pines took over and by the
time we were in Minnekota County the leafy-type trees had dwindled down to just birch and
poplar. The air had a wonderfully clean, sharp smell, and with temps in the low fifties and no
clouds at all, the weather couldn't have been more pleasing.
We stopped only twice, once for gas and once to pee, and made good time. Personally, I
enjoyed the drive. All the rivers and lakes, the forests and even the swamps gave me plenty to
look at and the traffic was mostly semis and panel trucks, guys at work who were in no mood to
dawdle. Easy. I'd stuck my iPod on shuffle and, like sometimes happens, it managed to fit the
music to the scenery; just coincidence, of course, but when the Water Boys' song "Whole of the
Moon" came on just as we crested a long hill and looked down on a gorgeous river valley
outside of Thief River Falls, it was nothing short of perfect. Serendipitous, even. So like I said, I
enjoyed the drive.
If Paul noticed any of this (aside from the music, which he couldn't ignore), I saw no sign
of it. He spent most of his time reading something on the Air, something that looked far too dull
to even ask about. We chatted, of course, mostly about the case, but when that was tapped out
we mostly fell silent. There was nothing new we could talk about, our views on just about
everything--sports or politics or what have you--were the same, and neither of us was too big on
mindless blather. It was silence, but not an uneasy or awkward one. I think the right word is
companionable. And before we knew it we were rolling into Cullen.
A town of about 2000, not counting the students and staff at St. Mark's, Cullen was also the
Seat for the county of Minnekota. We got there at about one in the afternoon and drove all
around the town for a first look and a general impression. It was more or less what I'd expected,
a pretty little burg, well-maintained and bustling with life. There were exactly twelve named
streets and six numbered avenues, the streets all with customary tree names--Elm, Oak, Maple,
etc. and seven or eight state and county roads leading away in all directions.
The small downtown area was jammed with businesses. Bars and coffee shops seemed
to prevail, but there was also a public library, a small hospital, and a whole gamut of services
and retailers. There were stores of all kind, some fairly big, most very small, with hair salons and
clothing joints, shoe stores and a chain grocery, even a few "shoppes" and boutiques. All the

buildings were trim and well-kept and flower boxes and pennants on the light poles gave it a
strangely European feel. Like we might've been in the Bavarian woods or something; not a bad
thing, mind you, but sort of odd. Incongruous. But maybe that was just the obvious prosperity.
As Steven Murphy had said, it was a town whose business catered to the university crowd. And
from the look of it, business was good.
There was also a tidy park, down next to a little round lake where you could rent a canoe
or paddle boat. The park itself had a baseball field with bleachers (Home of the Cullen
Wildcats!), the obligatory gazebo, and a war memorial complete with a retired howitzer. All very
pleasant, all very clean and neat.
And if Cullen was pretty, even quaint, the campus of St. Mark's was positively darling.
Like a postcard or a recruiting poster made incarnate, it was the very stereotype of a university.
They had great big brick buildings, the dorms and classrooms, the administration and library
buildings, and most were covered in actual, no-fooling ivy. These buildings--halls, they called
em--were connected by wide walkways with benches and flower beds, and ancient-looking pine
trees and tactful bushes were strategically placed for shade and aesthetic effect. There was also
a football field, down in a natural amphitheater bowl, with bleachers and a concession stand on
one side and dense woods on the other.
And, pretty well infesting the whole place, there were the reason for it all, dozens of
young men and women of various size and shape. Strolling, chatting on benches, lying on the
grass, reading and hunched over their phones and tablets, they were heedless, bouncy things
with funny haircuts and fashionable clothes who reminded me most of extras in a college hi-jinx
movie. Recalling Joyce Murphy's comment about the place being insular, I looked more carefully
and saw that, at least from this small sample, she was right. Not one kid who wasn't Caucasian
pink. There was one girl who I thought might have been Asian, but that was it. Insular.
The thing that drew your attention though, dominating the campus as it did, was a
gigantic church, and this was quite the structure. It had a footprint bigger than the football field,
with a main section at least a hundred yards long and about half as wide. It was made of a
different color of stone than the others, a light gray, and had twin spires flanking the main
entrance of ten stories if they were a foot, each topped with a cross. Sets of tall stained glass
windows marched along each side, and a thirty-foot wide stained glass rose window occupied
the space above the main front doors. To me, it seemed too big, too much, both for the town and
the campus. I guessed that maybe they'd been a little overly optimistic when they'd put it up. I
mentioned this to Paul, who looked at it and shrugged.
"This was originally a monastery," he said. "Remember? And look, see how it's a
different stone, in construction? The church was probably the first thing the monks built."
"Huh," I nodded, satisfied. "Pretty nice, eh?" I waved at the spread. "Real, whatchacallit,
picturesque."
"Definitely," Paul said. "Like something out of John Irving novel. And we're going to
spend some time here, too. But first, let's head over to the cop shop. Didn't we pass that, back in
town?"

"Yup," I said. I let the literary reference slide, since I had no idea who John Irving was,
and turned the car around. "And then some lunch, maybe look for somewhere to stay. I saw a
couple decent-looking motels on the way in..."
I can summarize that day's work in four words: cops and more cops. First was the town
constabulary, the Cullen Police Department, then the County Sheriff, and finally the FBI, in the
person of the last Fed still left in town, Special Agent Darrell Christiansen. There was also a
campus security force, but we'd talk to them when we got back to the school if need be.
The town force, seven patrolmen and their Chief, a fat man named Dave Guilliford,
turned out to be next to useless, at least to us. They'd told the press and the Feds everything
they knew, every lead they'd followed to its dead end, and now evidently just wanted it all to blow
over and for things to get back to normal. The only useful thing we turned up was the fact that,
as PIs, we were not alone.
"Couple different guys," said the fat chief. "And thems just the ones came by to say hello.
Who knows how many you city folks are stumblin around out in the woods just now? What with
that reward they offered and all."
"Did you get their names?" I asked. "The PIs, I mean. Could be somebody we know."
Guilliford gave me a sour look. "Maybe," he said. "But then, they always ask me to forget
their names. If you know what I'm sayin."
I did. I fished out a fifty-dollar bill and casually lay it on his desk. "And we're hoping you'll
do us the same courtesy."
The fifty went away under his chubby pink hand. "Always happy to help," he said with an
oily smile. "And you just let me know if I can provide any more. Help, that is."
"We sure will, Chief Guilliford," I said, purposely using his title. "And if we find anything
important, you'll be the first to know."
"Preciate it," he nodded. "And you, well you have a nice day now."
The next stop, down the street at the county courthouse, was just about as unproductive,
but Kevin Ostad, the deputy we spoke with, was cordial enough, at least at first. And if he wasn't
exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, at least he didn't ask for a bribe. A thin, medium-sized
dude with a shaved head, bushy mustache, a rumpled tan uniform, and bad teeth, he had the
scrunched eyes and deep, lined tan of someone whose life was mostly spent outdoors.
The story was the same, though, in that the county boys were as stumped as anyone.
They'd searched and searched and questioned almost two hundred college kids, but so far
they'd chalked up a big fat zero.
"Ask me?" Said Ostad. "She probly just runned off. Headed out to California or New York
or somethin. Happens all the time."
I nodded, sympathetic-like, but Paul gave him a good scowling. "Is that right? All the
time?" He said with barely concealed sarcasm. "So I suppose her financials back that up. Big
withdrawals, credit card activity, plane tickets?"

"Well, no," allowed Deputy Ostad, "but it don't always work that way. Sometimes they got
'ccomplices, somebody else who foots the bill, eh? Or a family friend out of state, even a sugar
daddy, somethin like that. Can't rule nothin out."
"Well, is there more than one missing student then? One or more of Miss Murphy's
friends or relatives? Someone with whom she was in correspondence? Some person of interest
at least?"
But now Paul had gone too far. Deputy Ostad's amiable features sagged and then
hardened and he shook his shaved head a little, sad-like. "Boy, you city jerks always think you
got it all figured, don'tcha? Just like on TV. Like us small-town cops got our heads up our asses
so far we need a map an a flashlight to shit. Just like all them snooty city reporters, just like the
Feds an the BCI an all them other creeps. Well lemme tellya, we ain't quite as stupid an useless
an backward as you might think. Got a real lab, got computers, Internet, cell phones an
everything. An our Sheriff, Lieutenant Norlander? Well he's as about as good as any man alive
when it comes to the law. Plenny sharp, too."
He was getting good and worked up by now and I could see a thick vein in his neck
pulsing from ten feet away. "So here's an idea, Mister Atterburn: why don't you and your buddy
here just turn around and take your greedy butts back to the Cities. Go investigate some
crackheads or hookers or somethin. Cause we got this covered, an there ain't gonna be no
reward. Nothin here forya. Okay? Got it?"
"Hey, look," I tried, holding up my palms. But this bridge had already been burned, right
down to the waterline. Ostad shoved back from his desk, stood up and hitched his pants, and
then made a show of taking his service weapon (a Beretta M9, just like mine) out of his desk
and snapping it into the holster on his right hip.
"I got work to do now," he said. He'd calmed down--a lot, and quickly--and now his voice
was flat as a week-old beer. "You're welcome to stay if you wanna--this here's a public place."
And with that, he left.
There were two other deputies on duty, a big blond lady and a smaller Hispanic guy, but
they seemed to be absolutely engrossed with their paperwork all of a sudden. After a last,
useless look around, we followed Ostad's lead and left them to it.
"Man, these guys aren't exactly friendly, are they?" I said, once we were back in the car.
"Bunch of jerks."
"Yes, well, jerks or not," said Paul, "I can understand why they're not friendly."
"Yeah? What's your theory, then? Backwoods hicks? Sheer stupidity? Inbreeding?"
"Gus, man," he said, patient-like, "you need to try to see it from their perspective. I mean,
think about it: Small town, not much going on, the biggest problems they usually have are
speeders and loud parties. And now this, and you're square in the spotlight and suddenly the
FBI shows up and you're no longer competent, no longer needed or wanted, right in your own
town, where you've worked for who knows how long. Pushed aside like last week's leftovers.
Now, isn't that enough to make anybody unfriendly?"
"Good point," I said, but he wasn't done.

"Not to mention," he said, "all the reporters, the media jackals and tragedy junkies and
just plain weirdos coming out of the woodwork. And then we show up, along with who knows
how many other pro snoopers, all of us city folks and all of us desperate for that reward money.
And that's on top of everything else, like they didn't have problems enough."
"Okay, okay," I said. "I get what you're sayin, alright? Geez!"
"And you, you cut them some slack, okay? They're doing a tough job."
"Yeah, you're right," I said. "But the real question is: how good a job are they doing? After
all, they haven't found Gayle, have they?"
"Maybe that's because they can't."
"What's that mean?"
"Just that maybe they can't find her because she can't be found."
"Oh, that's encouraging," I said. "But I gotta admit, much as I don't want to, that that
possibility has crossed my mind. Sure would explain why all the searches came up dry. But it
also poses some kinda ugly scenarios, don't it? Cause to my mind it comes down to one of two
things: either she ran away, which don't seem too likely, or, option two, whoever grabbed her
disposed of the body. Like, real effectively, too."
"But how effectively?" Said Paul. "That's the real issue. I mean, there're a lot of ways of
getting rid of a corpse, aren't there? Fire, acid, dump it in the water, bury it good and deep,
somewhere out in the woods... And that's assuming the killer didn't transport the body--what if
somebody grabbed her and then drove away? Back to Peoria or wherever. Or just drove the
body three counties over and buried or dumped her there?"
"Alright, now we're just spinning our wheels," I said. "We've been here all of what, two
hours, and already we're speculating like a Texas oilman. Let's at least do some investigating
before we start drawing conclusions, alright?"
"I wasn't drawing anything," Paul said. "Far from it. Just looking at some scenarios, like
you said. ...but yeah, we are getting a little ahead of things." He paused, looking out the window.
Finally he sat up and thumped the dashboard. "Well, let's go see what the FBI has to say, shall
we?"
"Yes, good," I said. "Let's do that. And then can we get something to eat? I'm starving
here."
The FBI guy, Special Agent Christiansen, was staying at a place on the edge of town called the
Pinewood Motel. We found him there at about 3:00 that afternoon, smoking cigarettes, watching
pay-per-view porno, and sulking. I knocked on his door, number 312. There was some bumping
noises from within and then Christiansen answered it and, once Paul had introduced us and
given him a business card, showed us in. Well, waved us in, anyway.
The motel room was a wreck, with food cartons and lots of beer cans and crap all over
and looked generally like it hadn't been cleaned for about six months. There were three laptops
on the desk, some phones, and a bunch of other obscure electronics laid out all over one of the
two beds. None of them was even on, let alone in use. It was dark because all the shades were
down and there was a nasty funk of cigarettes, old food, and body odor.

Christiansen, likewise, wasn't too impressive; overweight, pasty-faced and slow-moving,

he was about as far from the stereotypical image of the snappy FBI man as you could get. He
did have a black suit, at least, but physically speaking, he reminded me more than anything of
Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick. Not snappy at all.
As noted, though, he was amenable enough and waved us right in. Paul and I sat down
on the couch, moving aside some old Chinese food take-out cartons. He went over and
collapsed onto the unmade bed. He looked at our card, or at least glanced at it, and then flipped
it onto the bedside stand.
"From the Cities, huh?" He said. "Me, I'm out of the St. Cloud division. Originally from
Chicago. But who cares, right? Not me!" He laughed, his belly wobbling, and I did too, but purely
out of politeness. "So what the hell, what exactly can I do for you boys? I guess I know why
you're here."
As usual, Paul did the talking. In the stilted, legal-type language spoken by cops the
world over (which they tend to respect, coming from a civilian), he explained that we'd been
hired by the Murphys themselves, meaning we weren't just some freelance bozos, and that we'd
just arrived and would appreciate any information he could provide. As it turned out, he shouldn't
have bothered.
"Uh huh," said Christiansen, when Paul wound it down. "Well, good luck on collecting
that reward, brother. Because I gotta tellya, that poor girl was either kidnapped or she fell off the
face of the fucking Earth. Just gone, gone, gone. Personally, I think a serial killer got her. Some
psycho, just cruising around looking for a likely victim, and here's a half-drunk college coed...
And by now the guy's three states over. That's what the smart ones do, they don't shit where
they eat, you know? Hey, you guys want a brew? Got a bunch in the fridge, there."
"Don't mind if I do," I said, getting up. Paul shook his head. "You want one, Special
Agent?"
"Yeah, what the hell," said the G-man. "And why don'tcha call me Darrell, okay?"
I got two cold cans of Budweiser out of the mini-fridge (leaving about another case, plus
a half-empty bottle of Stolichnya), and brought one to Christiansen. He took it and, not bothering
to sit up, cracked it and had a good swig. I opened mine, too, and went back to the couch. I took
a long drink. It was only Bud, a mass-produced pisswater beer if ever there was one, but it was
icy cold and, thirsty and hungry as I was, really hit the spot.
"So, Darrell," said Paul. "What can you tell us?"
Christiansen took a smoke from the pack of Camels on the bedside table and lit it. He
blew out a big cloud that just hung there in the still air and sighed.
"It's a shitty case, is what it is," he said. "Fucked up, never seen anything like it. Luckily
I'm only here till tomorrow. And, as you can see, I'm not exactly busting my hump over it
anymore. But, let's see, what can I tellya? Well, that's easy. You know what's public, right?
What's in the papers and on TV?"
Paul said that we did.
"Well, that's about it, really," said the other. "Sorry to tellya, cause I sure as fuck would
like somebody to find that poor kid, one way or another, but what's public is all there is. No shit. I

mean, normally, how we do it, we'd have something we'd hold back, something only the perp
would know that we wouldn't tell the public about. I wouldn't tell you about it, either. SOP."
He blew out more smoke, making a bigger cloud that just hung there, and swigged his
beer. "But here, that's not even an issue. I mean, for us to do our jobs, we need evidence of
some kind, something to work with, you know? Forensic, hard evidence is always best, fibers or
shell casings, blood or whatever, but shit, here we don't have the body, we don't have any
suspects, shit, we don't even have any witnesses! What it boils down to? She went into the
woods to pee and never came back out. End of fucking story. Like the god damned woods just
ate her up. Poof, gone."
"That is strange," said Paul. "Must be... frustrating."
Christiansen snorted out smoke. "That ain't the word for it, brother," he said. "I mean shit,
we had fifteen agents here. Not to mention State Patrol, the county guys, the local guys--musta
been a hundred cops of one kind of another. We had dogs and copters, infrared scanners and
motion detectors, the whole fucking electronic arsenal. All the resources, as we say. There were
hundreds of volunteers, crawlin over and under and through about fifty square miles of some the
nastiest terrain on earth, and all for what? Zip, diddly. Jack fuckin squat." He burped again, a
real belly-buster, and waved his smoke. "So yeah, frustrating just don't cut it. Infuriating would be
more like it."
Paul and I looked at each other. This didn't sound so good. Like, at all. But still, who
knew, maybe this G-man was exaggerating or, more probably, playing some kind of reverse
psychology crap on us. We knew from experience how they'd sometimes try to play us private
investigators that way. Which is to say, there's usually no love lost between PIs and Feds. Or any
other kind of cop, for that matter. Christiansen, though, didn't seem like he was up to anything
like that; his exasperation seemed pretty genuine, like he took Gayle's case more personally
than was good for him.
This all crossed my mind in a flash (as I'm sure it did in Paul's as well) and we turned
back to Christiansen, who was was now swigging beer and flipping through the TV listings.
Looking for his next crummy PPV fuck movie, I guessed. Suddenly I felt kind of sorry for the guy;
lying here in the dark, drinking beer and watching bad porno, waiting for the word from his his
bosses that would let him get the hell out of this nowhere town and this rotten, depressing case.
Hell, just being in the room with him was depressing.
"What about the scene?" Asked Paul, apparently unfazed. "That is, can we go there? It's
not a closed crime scene anymore?"
"No, it's been cleared," said Christiansen, tired-like. He finished his beer and dropped the
can on the floor, next to a bunch of others. "You can knock yourselves out on that, you wanna.
Go ahead. But there's nothin to see. Just a field next to some woods. Not even any hay, cause
they cut it already, and what's let got trampled by the crowds. And next to that? Woods, some
swamps and streams and more woods and lakes, and then? Woods and more woods. Oh, and
did I mention the woods? Fuck, you could hide the US First Armored Division in there, no
problem, tanks and all. Just a real big stretch of nothin. And the other towns, nearby--and by

nearby I mean like a fifty-mile radius? Well, they're pretty much more of the same, just wide
spots in the road and about two years away from turning into ghost towns."
He looked away from the TV, over at us. "I guess you guys can tell by now, I won't be
exactly sad to put this place the fuck behind me. Been a bullshit, fucked-up deal, right from
jump."
We stayed with the guy for a little while, just to keep him company. Seeing the futility of it,
I guess, Paul didn't ask him anything else. I got him another beer and emptied his ashtray. But
we were wasting time (and it was depressing to boot) so we cleared out after about ten more
minutes.
Before we left I went over to the bed and shook his hand, searching his face for any sign
that this whole jaded, frustrated Fed thing was some kind of shtick, but there was nothing to see
in his eyes but a kind of angry boredom. If he was playing us, he deserved an Oscar.
"Like I said before," he said. "Good luck. You're gonna need it."
And, with mumbled goodbyes, we left him. We would never see Special Agent Darrell
Christiansen again, but later, when things got real ugly, I would think about him, wherever he
was, with an intense feeling of envy. The lucky bastard got out.
Our first place to set up shop was the Cartwheel Motel, on the north side of town about a half
mile from the campus of St. Mark's. A nicer version of the Pinewood, it was reasonably priced
and fairly clean and if the decor in our double looked like it had been decorated by a blind man
back some time about 1974, we weren't planning on spending too much time there, anyway. We
brought some of our gear in, mainly our clothes and stuff, and then, after my finally insisting on it
for about the eighth time, went out to get something to eat.
There were plenty of places to choose from and we finally picked a bar and grill named
Big Duke's. I was in the mood for a big greasy burger and this looked like a good place for one.
It was a lull period for the grill, 3:30 in the afternoon, and there were only a few other folks, all
kids, and just one waitress on duty. A few more guys sat at the bar, but these looked like locals,
unshaven guys with bad hair in dirty jeans, boots, and work shirts.
When the waitress, a thirty-something gal with a wide butt and enormous breasts, came
to our table I ordered the Big Duke Burger with fries and a beer and Paul, ever health-conscious,
went for a Caesar salad and a glass of ice water. The crazy hedonist.
While we waited for the food, I had a good look at the other patrons; you can tell a lot
about a town and its people by how they act in bars and restaurants. When you walk into the
local dive in an average small town, everyone in the place stops what they're doing and every
last eyeball in the place turns your way. Who's this, they wonder, and what are they doing here,
in our shitty little bar or our nasty little diner? Slumming? And do they need an ass-kicking? Sure
would alleviate the boredom.
But in some towns they're used to tourists and travelers. Some, dependent on them for
their livelihood, actually welcome the out-of-towner. They'll glad-hand you and ask where you're
from and point out some of the local attractions. And when you walk into that local dive, they still

stop and stare, but it's usually with a smile on their faces. Or at least not a look like they're
considering how best to kick your ass.
Cullen, I decided, was somewhere in between. They had to put up with the college kids
and their families and the occasional tourist, but that didn't mean they necessarily liked it. This
was mainly thanks to my take on the dudes at the bar, who kept sending looks toward Paul and
me and the college kids that were not really scowls but weren't exactly chummy, either. Hmm, I
thought; maybe, since the kids were only here for nine months of the year, the locals were only
one-quarter hostile. Simple math.
She of the enormous bosom brought my burger and Paul's salad and I dug in right away.
It was a good burger, not too fatty and done how I like em, almost charred. I was already half
done when I noticed Paul had barely touched his food. He just kept poking and shoving it
around with his fork.
"What's wrong, partner?" I asked around a mouthful of fries. "Salad no good?"
"Huh? Oh no, it's fine," he said.
"So what's up?" I prodded. Sometimes it took some prodding.
He looked up from the food and there was a look on his face I recognized and didn't
particularly like, the look he used to have when he'd just spent a long stretch at the hospital with
Melanie. The look of the chronically hopeless.
"Oh," he said, "just starting to think that this is a world-class wild goose chase. That we
were so blinded by dollar signs that we couldn't see how futile and stupid the whole thing is."
I put down my Big Duke Burger and wiped my mouth with a paper napkin. This sounded
serious.
"Paul, look," I said. "You might be right. This might be the dumbest thing we've ever
done--although that job in Duluth that one time has to be near the top of that list--but even if it is,
what's the harm? I mean, what's the worst that can happen? We don't find the girl and we have
to go back to the parents and tell them they're daughter must've been abducted by aliens cause
we sure as shit couldn't find her. And that's all! Sure, it'd suck, big time, to have to tell those nice
people something like that, but there are worse things, right? And it's not like we've never failed
before--hell, if you look back at it, we probably only bat about 500! So what's the big deal if it is a
wild goose chase? All we'd be out would be the gas it took to get here and maybe--maybe--a job
or two we missed while we were gone. Way I see it, we got nothin to lose here. Am I right?"
As I'd been giving this left-handed pep talk, I could see his face softening, the hard line
between his eyes easing up and the deep scowl slowly fading. This was a thing we did; he'd get
discouraged and I'd talk him out of it. Even in the deepest pits of Melanie's illness, I'd usually
been able to cheer him up, at least for a little while. No, I'm not a psychiatrist (or even a nice big
bottle of Xanax), but I do what I can because he's my friend and because, as far as I can tell, I'm
the only person in the world he really listens to.
"Yeah, okay," he said finally. "I guess you're probably right. It's just... I really want to find
her, Gus, and it's got nothing to do with the money. Oh, don't get me wrong; my half of the
reward would be mighty nice. But it's more than that, and it's different from all the other MPs
we've ever had. And, well, I'm just not sure why."

"Oh hell, that's easy," I said, reengaging with the Big Duke. "And I feel that way, too,
cause it's a tragic, shitty case and the clients are actually good people who didn't deserve any of
this, in any way. Unlike most of the people we've worked for over the years... Now, I'll agree with
you that so far it don't look too promising, but like I said, whatta we got to lose?"
He nodded, picking up his fork. "Gus, I have to admit," he said, "you sure have a way of
looking at things. Makes me jealous sometimes."
"Aw," I said, "don't feel bad. I'm just lucky that I got the IQ of a house plant."
To my great pleasure, he laughed and started in on his salad.
After lunch we went back to St. Mark's. Following the
gggggbbnbbbnbbnbbbbbbbbbhbbbnbbnnbtbbhelpful, cast bronze signs, we made our way
through the various halls and corridors and knots of magpie kids until we found the office of the
President, one Dr. Michael Harwood. Paul said that this would be the Big Cheese at the school
and likely the best-informed. He introduced us and be gavejunbb our card to the big man's
secretary, a hairsprayed, frumpy, middle-aged lady with the
nhuuhjubhhjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjnujjjnujjunjjjnnnair of the hopelessly officious. There was no nameplate on
her desk and we never did catch her name, but in my head she was named Marge. Or maybe
Mabel. She put on some reading specs from a chain around her neck and peered at our card,
then nodded and got up from her desk.
"Please wait here," she said. She went to the door leading into the inner office, knocked
twice, and went in. Paul and I sat and waited. I looked around at the office and felt suitably
impressed; high ceilings, huge, floor to ceiling windows, lots of woodwork and bookshelves and
potted plants, with tasteful, expensive-looking furniture and artwork (most with a religious theme,
including a couple of crucifixes), it was both comfortable and plush, like that of a corporate exec
or a high-priced lawyer.
Marge or Mabel or whatever was gone for what seemed like quite a while before she
finally came out of the President's lair and back to her desk. She didn't look at us but reached
for her mouse and consulted her computer screen.
"Dr. Harwood," she said, "can see you tomorrow, at 2:00 PM, for one hour. Is that
alright?"
Paul and I glanced at each other. "Well, yes," said Paul. "If that's the earliest he can fit us
in, that would be fine. But I would like to remind you--and the President, of course--that time is of
the essence in this matter. Every minute counts, and delays can be... detrimental. However, if
the President is too busy to spare the time for us, well, that will have to do. Of course, Mr. and
Mrs. Murphy might be somewhat disappointed with the delay, but I'm sure they'll understand
once we explain how busy the President is."
Marge or Mabel took this in, her face slowly sagging like melted ice cream. "Well, let's
not be too hasty," she said, quick-like. "I suppose I could speak to Dr. Harwood again. Maybe he
could fit you in earlier."
Paul gave her his best fake smile. "Oh, that would be wonderful," he said. "And I'm sure
our clients will appreciate it."

She got up again and went back into her boss's office. I looked at Paul and grinned. "You
know," I said quietly, "I just love it when you do that."
He gave a half-smile, one corner of his mouth turning up. "Something you learn in the
military. And the hospital. Just gotta fight arrogance with more of the same. Gotta speak their
language."
I chuckled a little and nodded. Then Marge/Mabel reemerged and came back to her
desk. She gave us a smarmy smile, what I think they call obsequious, and didn't bother with the
computer.
"Well, it seems the Dr. Harwood has an opening in his schedule after all. He can see you
now, if that's alright."
Paul cocked his head a few inches to the side. "Oh, is that right?" he said, pure sugar.
"Well now, isn't that lucky? And thank you very much for your help, ma'am. We certainly do
appreciate it."
She blushed a little and then waved us toward the inner office. "My pleasure," she said.
"And I hope you can help. Oh, that poor girl and her family."
"Yes, well," I told her, "we aim to do our best, ma'am."
The university President was just the sort of pompous, over-educated, under-socialized
ass I'd expected. Big on books but with all the common sense and human empathy of a cinder
block. Sixty or seventy years old, thin and handsome with a wave of silver hair and dressed in a
brown tweed jacket with a light brown shirt and tie, he sat behind a desk only slightly smaller
than an aircraft carrier in front of a whole wall of bookshelves. The other walls were either
windows or were covered in framed diplomas and certificates. The whole place, like the outer
office only nicer, was furnished with pricey-looking stuff, all in shades of brown and gray. Very
fancy for a small-town university and all obviously designed to impress.
Wwwwwwww "Come in, please," he said, not bothering to get up. We did.
There were two overstuffed armchairs in front of his desk and we went and sat down, but
the chairs were situated on a lower level than the desk, which sat eight or ten inches up on a
sort of raised platform. I'd seen this before, in other offices of other powerful men, and knew that
it was their way of pointing out to the world that, in this little space at least, they were king shit
and don't you forget it. Paul and I sat there for all of three minutes before getting right back up,
and we spent the rest of the interview standing.
Paul explained who we were and why we were there, dropping the Murphys' name a
couple of times for effect. Harwood listened, chin propped on his steepled fingers, until Paul was
done and then shook his head, slow and very sad-like, and sighed.
"Yes, it's been devastating," he said. "Traumatic for the students, the staff--and the
family, of course. Just tragic. But tell me, what can I do to help you? It seems to me that there
are already quite a few investigators involved, private and official. Even the FBI. And so far they
have been unsuccessful. Naturally I would like to help in any way I can, but... perhaps your
efforts might be better spent speaking with the law enforcement community."
"We did that already," I said, not liking this guy at all. "And now we're here to speak with
you."

"Oh, I see," he said, his eyelids fluttering. "Well, yes of course, then. What would you like
to know?"
Standing beside the low chairs with his arms crossed, Paul took it from there. I walked
over and pretended to look at the diplomas on the wall.
"We'd just like to get some names," said Paul. "And some contact numbers. And if you
could arrange for us to interview some of the last people to see Gayle Murphy, that would be
great."
Harwood frowned a little. "Yes, that seems logical," he said. "But you must understand,
my concern is for the students. Always. And I'm not sure that their best interests would be
served by further questioning. After all, they've already been questioned by the police, some of
them many times. I'm afraid that any further interviews would have to be approved by the
students' parents and the university board. I'm sorry, but I'm sure you understand."
I turned back from the wall of credentials (some of which looked pretty fancy alright, and
one of them was even from Harvard) to see Paul nodding at the guy.
"Yes, of course," he said. "And I'm sure anything we need can be gained from the police.
Or the news reporters. And with that, Dr. Harwood, I think we're done here. I will be sure to pass
your... efforts at assistance on to our clients, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy."
If Paul had meant it to, this didn't seem to faze the man. Harwood just smiled and
inclined his head a little, smug as can be.
"Well, I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help," he said. "And this may seem somewhat
callous of me, but as they say, life goes on. I am told by the best mental health authorities, the
grief counselors, the psychologists and traumatic events specialists whom we've brought in to
help, that this is the best course of action. Grieve, yes, and for as long as one needs to, but do
not let it become obsession. The students here at St. Mark's need stability right now, they need
to keep living their lives. As I said, this may sound callous or unfeeling, but there you have it: life
goes on. And I'm afraid that continued questioning of the young men and women involved would
only serve to reopen wounds that are just starting to heal."
"We understand," said Paul. "And I'm sure you're right. Well, thank you for your time, sir.
If we have any further questions that don't involve talking to the students, we'll be in touch."
"Of course," he said. He reached for a pad of sticky notes and jotted something. "This is
my personal cell number. Feel free to call, any time."
I reached up and took the note. Dr. Harwood stuck his arm out and shook hands with us
both and smiled his fatherly smile. "Have a good day now," he said. "And I certainly hope you
can find... something that the authorities have missed. Good luck."
We thanked him again and, passing Marge/Mabel on the way out (who also wished us a
good day now), left the office of the President of the University of St. Mark's. And good riddance,
as far as I was concerned. Guys like that always inspire me with an irrational urge to sneak up
and clonk them on the back of the head with a two-by-two.
Neither of us said anything on the way out. It must have been chow time or that classes
were in progress right then, but for whatever reason, the campus was quieter than before. Just a
few walkers, only one couple lying on the grass, and, farther off, two guys tossing a frisbee.

Paul went over to one of the benches and we sat down. It was a gorgeous fall
day, cool but just right in the sunshine, with only a light breeze to hint of the freezing cold to
come. For a
little while we just sat there. I watched the frisbee kids and waited. Finally Paul spoke up.
"He's right, you know," he said, also watching the frisbee guys. "He's an egomaniac, a
whale in a fishbowl, but he's right. Last thing these kids need is us."
I had to agree. "Yeah," I said. "And I guess it's his job to be a jerk. But it does kinda leave
us out in the cold, so to speak. I mean, what else can we even do here if we can't talk to the
kids? I mean, we could talk to em, if we really wanted, on the sly..."
"No," he said. "As far as I can tell, there's nothing else to be done here. That seems
pretty plain. What's more, I don't think we should bother. We could talk to the kids, if we really
wanted, like you say. Just do it off-campus. Find them in a bar or one of those coffee-shop wifi
joints, or just on the street. But we're not going to, because doctor Harwood is right."
I nodded. The frisbee kids had finished and were heading toward one of the dorms,
laughing and tossing the disc back and forth.
"Yeah," I said, "and admitting that is like tongue-kissing Adolph Hitler. But, there you
have it and there it is: nothing here. So? What's next?"
"Into the woods, my friend," he said, getting up. "Now we go into the woods."
He meant it literally, as in actually, physically traveling to the crime scene, but when I
think back it seems more like a metaphor. Yeah, we were heading into the woods, alright. Into
the deep, dark woods.
Since we were paid up at the Cartwheel and it was already 5:30 in the evening, we decided to
wait until morning to leave Cullen. That left us some time to kill and, since Paul doesn't believe
in killing time, we spent the time working.
After a short confab on the issue, we decided to just kind of wander around town that
evening and talk to people. This was a basic strategy, trolling for clues, that we used sometimes
when there wasn't much else to be done. A last resort, but not totally hopeless, it didn't usually
produce much in the way of hard info (or that lifeblood of PI work, names), but once in a while
you got lucky. Even at worst, you got a general take on the town and its people. Its denizens,
like they say.
And so we hit the bars. We also hit the ice cream parlor, a sub shop, a coin-op laundry,
two pizza parlors, a movie theater, and the local STD clinic. That last one was Paul's idea. But it
was in a bar, a dark, smelly little place called O'Dell's, that we hit pay dirt, of sorts.
We chatted up all kinds of folks that evening, into the night and early morning. As always,
I talked to the people in the bars and anywhere else requiring a certain amount of smartass
charm, while Paul did the talking everywhere else. In general this meant me doing most of it,
since Paul comes off kind of stiff as a first impression, but that was okay. I like meeting people.
But it also meant my laying out plenty of cash for drinks and hot dogs and pizzas and
other such friendly gestures. Not to mention some plain old palm-greasing. I had to try to keep a
tally in my head for reimbursement later, because it's not cool to ask for receipts. People

remember that. But I lost track pretty quickly; was that just ten or ten fifty for that round of shots?
And can I count shooting a game of pool, even though I enjoyed whipping that college boy's
ass? Well, I told myself, don't worry; by the end of this, either you won't need to concern yourself
with such paltry sums or it'll be the least of your troubles.
As far as a general impression went, we found that my earlier estimate of the town was
more or less right. The locals liked the kids for their wallets and the kids liked the townsfolk for
their wifi. The kids were there for nine months a year and during the summer the locals relaxed.
Some closed up shop altogether and went on vacation, others used the time to build bigger and
better places to part the kids from their parents' money. Sort of a symbiotic relationship, I think is
the term, and it seemed to be working, as it was hard to get a negative word from either side
about the other.
The consensus on Gayle Murphy's disappearance, among kid and townies alike,
seemed to be that some creep from out of town, some passing serial murderer most likely, had
grabbed her. That was why they hadn't found her, and it had to be an out-of-towner because
surely no one like that lived in Cullen or any of the other towns around there. They never had
any trouble of any kind, let alone something like kidnapping or murder! Therefore, some
transient or lonely drifter had to be your culprit. As Paul says, Ipso Facto, Ergo Sum. Well,
something like that, anyhow.
The one exception to this line of talk was at O'Dell's Bar and Grill, a typical dive on the
outskirts of town. I'm not sure what they grilled in there, but I wasn't about to ask, either. It was
the one bar out of maybe a dozen we hit that didn't have a single college kid in it, making it
unique in that respect, and had instead exactly six guys. Scruffy, loud dudes, they all wore what
I'd come to think of as standard jackpine hillbilly attire, filthy jeans, plaid or plain work shirts over
dirty t-shirts (the more grease-stained the better), with work boots and a ball cap advertising
trucks or guns or booze. Sometimes all three.
There was a jukebox playing something country from 1985, but it was quiet enough that
they all stopped dead and stared at us when we walked in. After all the cheerful, helpful people
we'd met so far, it was almost refreshing. I nodded at them and went to the corner of the bar,
where no one was, and looked hopefully down its warped, chipped surface at the bartender. A
medium-sized, skinny old guy with thick glasses and a bad comb-over, he disengaged with the
boys and shuffled down to us.
"What'll it be?" He asked, as a proper bartender should.
"Two taps," I said. "Whatever you got that ain't light."
With a nod, he shuffled off again, down to the beer taps. The bar itself sure wasn't much
to look at--or smell--just one big space with a bar along one wall. There was the jukebox against
another wall, a couple of outdated, dusty video games (golf and deer hunting), a pair of doors
leading to what had to be very small--and undoubtedly stinky--bathrooms, three tables with four
chairs each, all unoccupied, a shabby bumperpool table, and some neon beer lights and
unframed, peeling beer posters on the walls. A sad string of Christmas lights hung behind the
bar, where a couple rows of bottles and some mismatched glassware sat collecting dust.

The beer mugs seemed clean enough, though, and the old bartender asked for five
bucks for both, so that was okay. We took seats on stools, with three stools between me and the
nearest local. At first we chatted with each other, paying no attention at all to the others. It was a
fishing ploy, and the guys at the bar ate it up, right on the edge of their stools, as it were.
"So then he says," I said, as if picking up something we'd just been taking about, "he
says to me: Move it? I just parked here, and I have to plug it in. Plug it in! You believe that shit?
An then I look and sure as fuck, yup, you got it, it's one of them Prius piece of shits!
Unbelievable. Plug it in!"
Paul grinned and shook his head. "Fuckin kids. Some times? Just wanna slap em, you
know? Not hurt em like, just give em what their parents never did, know what I mean?" He
lowered his voice for dramatic effect. "But there's your problem. The parents. Too much money,
not enough discipline. Like with that poor Murphy girl."
I shook my head, sadly, and drank some beer. "There you go," I said. "Too much money,
that's what I say, too. Anyway, how bout that new H&K I was tellin you about? You check that out
yet?"
He drank some beer, burped. "Oh yeah. That is one sweet piece of hardware."
He went on to extol the virtues of some gun or another I'd never heard of, using terms I
didn't begin to understand. The bar guys loved it, though, as intended, and before long one of
them, coming back from the can, stopped and made some remark about the new "slide rail" on
that baby. And with that the ice was broken. Common ground on deadly weapons.
The other guys gradually got into the conversation and clustered around our corner of
the bar. Paul captivated them with tales of this or that wonder-weapon, again using all kinds of
terms and references I didn't understand. I'm pretty sure the locals didn't understand them all,
either, but that was just fine. They liked being impressed, at least when it came to new ways of
killing people.
After a couple rounds, the last one on a guy named Vern, Paul finally managed to steer
the conversation away from guns and ammo to the general downfall of civilized America. It
wasn't a huge change of course, at least not for these boys, and in turn it set me up to get to
what we were really after.
"Yup, like with this poor Murphy kid," I said, casual-like but angry, too. "I mean, it's sad as
hell and all, but that poor kid musta been just plain stupid. Probly texting somebody and walked
out in front of an eighteen wheeler. Or she was checkin her Facebook or some shit and walked
into a sinkhole or an old mine shaft or somethin. Kids today, all they know is them gadgets an
their precious Internet. Whole problem, ask me."
There was a general consensus of agreement on these pearls of wisdom from the local
intellectuals. One even belched and said damn straight. They also all looked kind of sad, except
for one guy, a small, rat-like dude whose only variant on the standard attire was a stocking cap
on top of his mullet. He looked more angry than sad, and not a little buzzed, and suddenly spat
out a curse.
"Fuckers," he said, his bloodshot eyes like glassy embers. "Dirty fuckers. And know who
it is, I'll betcha? Them freaks in Pine Falls. Betcha anything. Everbody knows bad shit happens

in that town. Lotsa bad shit. Nobody likesta talk about it, but it does, man. I know, I was born
there, man, and I tellya. Bad shit. Buncha freaks and weirdos, whole town."
My ears perked up at this. We hadn't heard much about this Pine Falls as of yet and to
hear something negative, about anyone or anywhere, was of interest. After all, PIs aren't looking
for happy, well-adjusted folks in happy, well-adjusted places. Freaks and bad shit is where it's at
as far as we're concerned. Stock in trade.
"That right?" I said to Stocking Cap. "What's up with that? Me an Paul here, we're from
outside Oshkosh, and we don't put up with that kinda shit round there, man. So what's up with
this Pine Falls? What, people scared of it or somethin?"
I had said the magic words. Sometimes you just know, like you've stumbled on the secret
password, the key to whatever it is your mark knows that you're trying to get out of him. It's like a
little bell going off or a lightbulb lighting up, and it always gives me a bit of a thrill, a sense of
satisfaction, even after all these years. Of course, sometimes the magic words get you more
than you were bargaining for. Sometimes the bell going off means the start of the first round and
suddenly there's a fist flying at your head. But either way, magic words, and the reaction they
produce can tell you a lot.
But this was different. The same, but different. They were murmuring and scratching
under their caps and looking into their beers. But it wasn't just that. I'd hit a nerve and, yes
indeed, they were scared of it. I could tell, plain as day. Whether that meant scared of the whole
town or its people or something else was another matter, but their fear was undeniable. Their
heads drooped or they looked over their shoulders, and their flushed faces went pale. One guy
crossed himself and two or three muttered curses under their breath. The bartender actually
gave a shudder I could see from ten feet away.
It was weird, like something you'd read about or see in a movie, and the thrill it gave me
wasn't one of satisfaction, it was one of fear. Just a real case of the heebie-jeebies, and looking
back on it now, I realize that it was well-deserved.
At the time though, it passed quickly enough. And thrilled or not, I did notice Stocking
Cap, having had his say, get up and weave his way through the empty tables and into the
bathroom. Not that this was unusual; he'd put down enough beer to float a boat. I just wanted to
keep an eye on him.
"Always towns like that," Paul was saying, "like, member, Gus, that one little shithole, by
Wausau? What was a name a that again? Bensburg, Bertburg, somethin like that? Anyway, that
was where that one whole buncha crazy-ass fuckers was. They was like a cult or some shit,
member?"
I nodded sadly, drank some beer. "Yup. Made the papers an everthing. Damned weirdos.
What ever happened with them guys, anyway? Wasn't it FBI got em?"
Paul shook his head. "ATF," he said, then frowned. "BCA maybe, don't member. Feds,
anyway." He paused and drank. Then he looked at the boys, who were recovering their poise,
such as it was, and shaking off whatever had just passed over them like a black cloud. "Heard
you had some Feds round here lately," he said. "Bout that missing girl, right?"

"Yeah," said one big fatty named Gene. "They was county, state, and federal guvmint.
Whole nine yards. Dogs an copters an everthing. Poor kid, her an her fambly. Never did find
nothin."
"Shit," I said, philosophical-like. "At's messed up. Serious."
I was about to go on in this vein when I saw Stocking Cap, looking bleary and pale,
come out of the can and head for the door. I nudged Paul under the bar and kept talking to the
stool jockeys.
"Gotta sutha somethin," muttered Paul and, approximating a decent rolling drunkwalk,
made for the door. He paused, just for a second, to look at a bulletin board next to the door,
before following Stocking Cap out.
I kept up the patter, trying to get their take on the disappearance and what role Pine
Falls--this town that scared them--had it in all, but I didn't have much luck. Apparently being
scared of it made them disinclined to talk about it. Go figure. Anyway, I did get the idea that Pine
Falls was something of a pariah, if you can say that about a town. What I mean is that,
according to these yokels, nobody went there unless they had to, people from there were always
kind of suspect (even Stocking Cap, by the way), and if we knew what was good for us, we'd
stay the hell away, too.
"But," I asked, genuinely confused, "don't the cops know about em? I mean, seems to
me, if this Pine Falls got so much trouble and so many freaks and bad guys, why dint the cops
go there first? Rattle some cages, ask some questions, all that usual cop shit?"
"They did," said another guy, a skinny dude with bad skin named Phil, "but dint do em no
good, count of them Pine Falls folks won't talk to nobody, not even cops."
Fat Gene nodded agreement. "Yup. Hear tell, they just don't talk to nobody. And if the
cops don't have no ev-dence, what are they gonna do? Anyways, they got their own cops there,
and I spose they got whatchacallit, jurisdiction. What I heard, anyhow."
I bought a round for everyone, including some shots of what Skinny Phil called "the
Polish". This was a wicked thick blackberry brandy that tasted like cough syrup and had a kick
like an angry mule. I drank mine, but on top of the beer and pizza and ice cream and what-all it
made my stomach cringe like a whipped dog. No more! But I soldiered on; sometimes you have
to make sacrifices in this business.
Getting the sense that I had probably asked enough leading questions about some pretty
unpleasant subjects for one night, I started talking about the Vikings instead. This was also an
unpleasant subject, but it wasn't murder or kidnapping. It was also a guaranteed source of
conversation with these guys, and soon I was able to sit back and listen as they debated the
relative merits of Teddy Bridgewater and whether Adrian Peterson had a big year left in him.
Finally, after a good half hour, just about when one or more of the yokels would be sure
to notice he was gone, Paul pushed back into the bar. He gave me a significant look and then
rolled his eyes to say that we should get going. Coming over to the bar, he hung an arm around
my neck.
"Come on, buddy," he said. "We gotta hit the road. Things to do, people to see."

I grinned, rueful-like, and threw a twenty on the bar. "Shit," I said. I looked at the yokels.
"We gotta be down in the Cities tomorra. Better go get some sleep, eh?"
Our new pals protested that it was still early yet and that we should stay for another
round, but we begged off and ten minutes later we were out of there. Outside, I took a big breath
of clean air, my nostrils thanking me, and looked at Paul.
"Well?" I said as we walked to the car. "Anything from the rat-faced dude?"
"Got something," he said, holding up his phone. "Though it's not exactly encouraging.
Hell, if half of what he says is true? Damn. But one thing: we know where we're going. Next
stop, Pine Falls."
Just two words, just another name of another town in a nowhere place, but for us, Pine
Falls was about to take on a rather large significance. One that would make us wish we'd never
heard of it.
Back in our poorly-decorated motel room, Paul played back the audio part of the video he'd
recorded of his chat with Stocking Cap. Most of it was either too faint to hear or simply
meandering gibberish, but there was a part toward the end that we listened to several times. I
even wrote it down on my legal pad. It went like this:
"...you name it," said Stocking Cap. "Theft, burglary, assaults, just plain fistfights, like
that. Tons of wife-beaters and guys who beat their kids, too. Drug dealing and bootlegging and
stolen cars. Lots of bad drunks, too, the violent kind."
Paul asked if he had any idea why this should be so.
Stocking Cap snorted. "The fuck should I know?" He said. "But I betcha anything if you
looked at the numbers on it, the statistics, like compared to anywhere else? That town's gotta be
off the fuckin charts, you know? Some people even say it's cursed, like there's somethin bad
there, you know? Not like I believe in that shit, but who knows, eh? Or maybe there's like,
somethin in the water, pollution or somethin. All's I know is that a whole lotta bad shit happens.
An another real weird thing? It's almost like bad people are attracted to there, you know? Only
new people that town ever gets are generally more of the same. Like it's some kinda freak
magnet, eh? And regular folks, people who don't want no trouble, if they got a brain in their
fuckin head, they get the hell outta Dodge, soon as they can. Like me."
Paul asked about the Pine Falls authorities. What about the cops or the town council or
whatever they have for local government? Don't they care? Don't they do anything?
"Fuck no!" Said the man. "Far as I can tell, they're all in on it! Probly half the folks end up
in the hospital got put there by the cops. And long as they get their cut, them and the mayor,
well, they just ignore it. Shit, cops? In Pee Falls? They're worsen the crooks! And if other cops,
like the county or state or whoever, if they come to town, well the locals either bribe them too, or
they all just clam up and don't say nothin. Far as anybody from outside knows, it's just another
little town. Sure, maybe they got a few more crimes on their books, but who cares? Happens
sometimes, and they can't keep tabs on every little shithole in the whole state. Naw, nobody
gives a flyin fuck what happens in Pee Falls. At's how they like it, an at's how get away with it."

There was more but it was all Stocking Cap complaining, bemoaning even, about his life
and the crummy town he was from. I quit taking notes, once we'd heard it a few times, and we
looked at each other.
"Gee whiz," I said, tired and buzzed and with a tummy ache. "Sounds just like Mayberry,
don't it?"
"Yeah, only in reverse," Paul said, looking at my notes. "I guess the guy could have been
exaggerating, of course. He was pretty lit after all."
"Maybe," I said, "but I keep asking myself why, you know? Why'd he tell you all that stuff?
Trying to scare us off? I mean, he didn't exactly seem like the world's biggest Good Samaritan to
me, if you know what I'm sayin. So why warn the warning?"
"Not sure," said Paul. "And who knows? Probably he was just making conversation,
trying to impress or blowing off steam. Or maybe he really is an altruist and doesn't want us
getting hurt. Doubtful, granted, but it's possible."
We sat there not saying anything for a while. Finally I groaned, holding my stomach, and
got up. "Well, one good thing," I said, heading for the bathroom, "at least we know what we're
getting into. Cause even if that dude was laying it on kinda thick, it sounds like Pine Falls might
be one tough little burg. Forewarned equals forearmed, right?"
He just nodded, staring at my notes. I used the bathroom, and the less said about that
the better. When I came out, he was still staring, but I was well past giving a damn. I pulled off
my boots and clothes, down to my shorts, and got into bed. It had been a long day, with not
much to show for it, and I was shot. I snapped off the bedside lamp and rolled onto my side.
"G'night, Paul," I said. "Tomorrow's another day."
"Night, Gus," he said. "And it's already tomorrow."
Smartass. I didn't bother to respond and, in what felt like seconds, I was deeply asleep.
It clouded up overnight and when I woke up next morning at about 9:00 it was raining. Paul was
already up, hunched over the Air. I could smell that he'd made some coffee with the dinky motel
coffee maker and the TV was on with the sound off. After I rubbed some gunk out of my eyes I
saw it was tuned to the local news, W-something out of Bemidji. A weather guy was pointing at
the blue screen behind him, where a big blob of green wobbled around, back and forth in a loop.
I knew just how it felt.
"Looks like rain," I yawned. "Like, all day. Cold, too."
"Your point?"
"No point," I said, swinging my legs out of bed. "Just sayin. But it does mean it's gonna
be kinda inhospitable. Weather-wise, that is."
"So bundle up," he said, pouring some coffee. "And let's get going. We should be on the
road already."
I scrubbed my face with both hands and let out a little groan. "Okay, I'm up," I said. The
weather guy on TV had been replaced by a sports guy with a preview of the upcoming
Vikes/Packers game. I used the remote to turn it off. "But man, I gotta tellya, I earned my keep
last night. That Polish crap is brutal."

We left Cullen at about 11:00, to the relief of the maid, who'd been hovering around since 10:00.
It was still raining and the crisp autumn atmosphere of yesterday was gone. Now the air was
thick with mist and fog, the fall foliage looked somber, more like what it really was, the trees
dying before the big freeze, and the sky, hanging just above their tops, looked like it was made
of lead. All in all, kind of gloomy.
I drove, of course, and our route couldn't have been plainer, just straight north on County
10, a two-lane asphalt road that was mostly deserted and apparently last repaired in about
1995. I kept our speed down, watching for potholes and cracks and taking in the landscape.
Maybe it was the weather, but it seemed to get gloomier and gloomier as we went. The woods,
mostly big old pines, pressed in on either side of the road, their rain-soaked branches hanging
down like tired old men.
And when there was a break in the woods, it was almost always swamp. Once in a while
a sad little dairy farm, the cows immobile, head-down in the rain, but mostly it was swamp.
Some were just low spots, only yards across, but others were huge expanses, acres and acres
of reeds, hummocks of moss, naked, skinny poplar trees, and greenish, brownish, stagnant
water. All of the plants had turned brown and dead-looking and all of the birds that normally
make a wetland look alive were gone, migrated off to nicer climates in Florida and Mexico. And I
could see why.
I tried my best to not let it get me down, but between the rainy landscape, my Polish
hangover, and the general air of hopelessness and woe around this case, it wasn't easy. Even
the iPod, which insisted on shuffling in a lot of old Patsy Cline and Chess Blues artists, seemed
against me. When it started on Howlin Wolf's "Killing Floor", I turned it off. Paul, oblivious as
usual, just sat and stared out the window. After a while I asked about something that had been
bugging me.
"Hey man," I said, "you notice something back there?"
"Like what?" He said. "About Cullen, you mean?"
"Yeah, well sorta," I said. "What I mean is, we didn't run into any other PIs. Remember
what the police chief said? At least two other guys. But I didn't see anybody that even looked
like a PI. Not in town or on the campus. Did you?"
He shook his head. "No, but it's not too surprising. They probably did just what we did,
talked to the cops and the university guys and then decided it was hopeless and went home.
That, or we just haven't run into any of em yet."
I nodded. That seemed reasonable. I kept driving, and when we came to the only turn
we had to make to get to the crime scene, it was so narrow I almost missed it. But there was a
sign, a bullet-pocked, rusted blue diamond, which I did not miss, and soon we were rolling along
(at about 20, thanks to enormous potholes and ruts like canyons) through trees and swamps
even denser and more claustrophobic than on County 10.
After about three or four miles of this, with the rain beating down and the trees bending
over the road so much that they almost formed a tunnel, we finally came to a large open area,
spreading out to our right in a clearing of maybe 10 acres. The road and an area about fifty

yards into the field were churned up and rutted by truck and car tires, not to mention foot traffic,
and with the rain it had turned into a one-each, regulation mud pit. There were no other cars and
no one to be seen. A lonely strip of police tape lay in the muck and weeds like a forlorn party
favor.
I parked right there, where there was some dry land, pulling the Camry just a little to one
side and shutting it off. I peered through the windshield at the field, then looked at Paul. He
looked at me and, with nothing to say, we shrugged at each other and got out of the car.
I had bundled up, as Paul had suggested, but even longjohns, gloves, and my big North
Face coat couldn't keep out this clammy, bone-chilling cold. It wasn't so bad at first, but the
longer we were out there the wetter you got and the more the cold settled in. I could see why we
had the place to ourselves. It reminded me of something my dear old dad used to say, that the
Minnesota climate was good enough for people who were stupid enough to live here.
Walking around the soggy, muddy field, I could see why Christiansen had said it'd been
cleared because there was nothing to see and nothing left to investigate. As noted, it was maybe
ten acres altogether, in a rough circle, flattened on one side by the presence of the road. The
thick, chilly air smelled of crushed vegetation, turned soil, and the acrid stink of wet clay.
The field was bound on all sides by forest. There was a band of scrub growth first,
saplings and tall weeds that marked where the woods was starting to reclaim the clearing, but
past that was the really deep stuff, where the trunks of the old pine trees, most two or three feet
wide, marched off like irregularly placed, mismatched pillars.
Their branches didn't really get going until about seven or eight feet off the ground and
the ground was covered with a thick mat of needles and twigs, so that there was almost no
undergrowth or bushes and your footsteps made no noise at all. Even the rain was muted, most
of it caught by the trees before it hit the ground, and instead there were thick drops falling, here
and there at random intervals. A thin fog hung around the trunks and lowered visibility to around
ten trees, or about seventy-five yards. All told, this made for a very eerie, spooky sort of scene.
Forbidding, even.
I was standing there staring off into the woods, thinking about how nice and warm and
dry it was in the car, when Paul suddenly spoke, just behind me, causing me to jump about a
foot and nearly out of my own skin. I whirled around, clutching my chest, and swore.
"Jesus, don't do that!" I said. "Scared the shit out of me."
He was grinning some. "Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "Didn't mean to. You
okay? Well, alright then... So uh, what do you think? I'd say let's split up, cover more ground, but
somehow I don't think you'd be into that."
"You're damned right I'm not," I said. What I didn't say was: Holy shit, look at these
woods! Looks like something out of a Hammer horror movie, like Dracula's castle is just down
the road. Like if you took a survey and combined everyone's idea of what a spooky forest should
look like, this is what you'd get. Yes, I kept that to myself, but obviously I couldn't keep it from my
face because Paul immediately pounced.
"What, are you scared?" He said, pulling up the hood on his coat. "It's just a lot of trees,
you know."

I gave him a look that I hoped was a scowl. A real fierce one. "What, are you scared?" I
parroted, in a high, schoolyard voice. "You know somethin, man? You been using that one on
me since we were ten years old."
"Oh, that's ridiculous," he said. "You can't even remember when you were ten."
"I do too remember it," I said. "That time you got me to put that bottle rocket in old Mr.
Finkler's mailbox. We were both ten, and I know cause I got those fireworks for my tenth
birthday. So there."
"You got fireworks every birthday. It was what your grandpa always gave you. And
anyway, it was me who did that, and it was an M80, not a bottle rocket."
Well, we went back and forth like that for a while. I won't tell you the whole thing,
because really we were just procrastinating, putting off having to go into the woods, and the
details of who blew up Finkler's mailbox are not all that important. Finally, after a good ten
minutes of pointless bickering, we just gave up. I caved in first.
"Say, uh, this is just a thought," I said, "but we could do this later, like tomorrow, when it's
not raining. Right? I mean, this place has been searched and re-searched, right? And it ain't like
it's going anywhere. Why don't we go check out Pine Falls today, come back here later? After
all, if we're going to stay there in town, we should probably check it out first, right?"
I heard myself about to say "right" again and clapped my mouth shut. It made a little
bloop noise in the rain. I looked hopefully at Paul, but he was just standing there staring off into
the woods. I looked around, turning to survey the clearing at our backs.
It was all still, nothing moved, but I could almost see what it had been like six nights ago.
Over there on the edge of the clearing you got the stage, a flatbed truck maneuvered into the
tight space, backed up with six or seven gas generators and fronted by a couple of stacks of PA
speakers. There are some lights, maybe just some old Christmas strings but maybe some actual
spots and footlights. And on the stage, under the lights? Who knows? Some band, it doesn't
matter. But in front of it, about a hundred kids, all staring up at the performers, drinking and
smoking and moving in whatever way kids do these days to whatever noise they currently see fit
to call music.
Over here in the middle of the clearing they've set up the beer, aluminum kegs in fiftygallon rubberized plastic garbage cans filled with ice--two at least and probably four or five--and
each one has a crowd six or seven kids deep, each with a red plastic cup in hand. There's some
jostling and once in a while harsh words and one keg site has been taken over by some big jocktype guys using a beer bong, but for that, plenty of beer is being consumed.
Bottles of whiskey (for those who want to look tough) and bottles of schnapps (for those
who prefer candy flavors and don't care about looking tough) are passed around, too, along with
assorted joints, pipes, and bongs. And of course, there are the usual over-enthusiastic types, as
evidenced by the three or four kids bent over at the waist, puking up their guts.
And over here to the right are parked all the vehicles, the kids' cars, SUVs and
motorcycles, a few of those horrible CRV things, maybe even some pickups. Not just a few are
occupied, the kids inside having sex, smoking dope, or just chatting, and other kids lean on the

cars, smoking and drinking, talking far too loudly and laughing in each other's faces at inane
stoner jokes.
And beyond that, past the lights and the noise and all the laughing, exuberant partygoers? Nothing, a real big nothing. The echoes of the music and their high, clear voices bounce
off the trees for a few hundred yards and then fall dead onto the carpet of needles. The swamps
swallow up their red plastic cups and their goofy glow-bracelets and go right back to being
swamps and in a month no one will even know there'd ever been a party here. Back to nothing.
But of course it wasn't nothing, and that was the trouble. If it was nothing, like a desert or
a prairie, we wouldn't be there. This was actually more a case of too much; too many trees, too
many swamps, and too much sheer acreage. Hundreds of miles of it, stretching away in every
direction. Hell, if you headed north from here, you wouldn't come out of the woods until
somewhere to hell and gone way up in Canada. For a city boy like me, it was an awe-inspiring
thought. Daunting, even.
Lost as I was in these dismal thoughts, I snapped out of it when Paul grabbed ahold of
my arm. It felt like he'd clamped me with a vise grips and I let out a little squawk.
"Quiet!" He said, whispering. "I think I saw something."
He let go of me, I turned back in his direction, and together we stared into the woods. A
chill ran down my back and it was only partly from the little stream of rainwater that had made its
way under my coat. I helped Paul stare for a little while, but, with the fog and rain, there was
nothing to see but trees and more trees.
"What was it?" I finally asked, keeping my voice down. "What'd you see?"
"Not sure," he hissed back. "Movement, but it was out of the corner of my eye--didn't get
a good look."
"Uh huh," I said, looking around, left, right, up and down and out the back of my head.
The chill had decided to take another couple of laps, up and down my back. "Well, maybe it was
just a deer or a raccoon or something. You know, local fauna. Gotta be plenty of fauna around
here..."
Involuntarily-like, my feet moving all on their own, I started backing away from the woods.
Paul finally stopped glaring into the trees and fog and blew out a pent-up breath. He turned
around and saw me, already a good twenty yards away and still backpedaling.
"What's up?" He said, a look on his face that I guess you'd call quizzical. "Going
somewhere?"
"Well, you know..." I said. I managed to get my feet to stop and flapped my arms in a
helpless gesture. "Just thinking it might be good to, you know, warm up a little in the car. Before
we, you know, before we go on." It sounded lame, even to me, but Paul just smiled and came to
join me.
"Okay, okay," he said. "We'll explore the woods later. Alright?"
I liked the sound of this. A lot. But of course I didn't want to admit it and look like a big
scaredy-cat, so I pretended to think it over. For about three seconds. Then I gave a shrug that
was about as forced as my unconcern.

"Well, up to you, I guess," I said, hoping very much that he wouldn't call my bluff. "I
mean, it would be easier without all this fog and rain."
"Yeah, that's right," he said, clapping me on the back. "Much easier. Now come on, let's
go check out the town."
I almost ran to the car.
I don't know about you, but until I saw Pine Falls, I'd never really considered the word dread.
And why should I? It's one of those words like terror or genocide or cancer that just doesn't get
thrown around much in polite, casual conversation. And good thing, too. No one wants to talk
about things like that unless they really have to.
But looking at this place, this collection of shacks and two-story hovels and beat to shit
double-wides, dread was definitely a word that came to mind. There was the dread in my heart,
of course, a miserable sinking feeling just looking at it, but dread seemed like it was coming
from the town as well, like it radiated it. Projected it, even. I'd never seen anything like it, and I'd
seen some pretty sad little towns over the years. This one beat em all. Not that I said anything
about it; like back in the woods, I didn't want to look like a coward in front of Paul. But as we
drove around that morning, it was there, a dread you could almost taste.
Maybe it was the scarcity of people. There was a sign on the edge of town, the standard
green with white border, which claimed that Pine Falls held a population of 324, but that was
either generous or seriously outdated. By our later estimate, there couldn't have been more than
100, and even that's being charitable. At any rate, it was a town all but devoid of townsfolk.
The Main Street part of town was a group of larger buildings, some stone or brick, most
of clapboard or cheap lumber, that made up what passed for a downtown. Many were merely
run-down, but there were several that were boarded up, dilapidated, or just plain burned down.
Of those still apparently in use (though it was sometimes hard to tell), we saw a Town Hall, a
clothing store, a half-empty grocery, a farm and seed store, and a couple of bars and eateries.
On the side streets--all five of them--which crossed Main Street (the main artery, with the
only stoplight) there were a few more going concerns among the boarded-up ones. We spotted
a barber shop, a drug store, a bait shop, two gas stations, three more saloons, and a book store,
most if not all of which might or might not still be in operation. There were also three churches,
one Catholic, one Protestant, and one obviously abandoned. And the first two didn't look all that
better-attended than the last.
There were houses, too, of course, but these were even worse than Main Street. They
were mostly slapdash cinder block and clapboard jobs and, given the obvious aversion of their
owners to things like mowing the lawn or painting every twenty years or so, it was hard to tell
which were inhabited and which weren't. To me, they all looked abandoned. The best of them, a
few mid-century ramblers, weren't so bad and even had lawns and driveways, but these only
served to emphasize the squalor of the rest.
There were some signs of life around the Falls Motor Court, a nasty agglomeration of
single and double-wide trailers. There were some kids playing in the mud, a guy working on his
pickup, and a hugely fat woman sitting under a rusted awning drinking a 20-ounce can of beer.

As we wheeled past they all stopped, even the kids, and stared at us and the car like we'd just
flown in from Mars. They didn't look angry or annoyed or anything, not even suspicious like
you'd expect. Instead they had this odd, flat, open-mouthed look, something like dull interest,
that was almost worse. Hostility I could understand; this was just creepy.
The town kind of shriveled up and died outside of the Main Street area, as the houses
got fewer and farther in between, and the streets dead-ended or turned into state or county
highways. On the west side of town, maybe a half mile from Main Street, we came upon what
looked like the town's busiest concern, a rambling wooden structure with a bunch of pickups
parked outside and a big sign reading Pine Falls Tavern. A smaller plastic sign read "Friday Nite
50-cent Tap's".
"Aha," I said. "The local center of culture and intellectual exchange, no doubt. Very nice."
"Yeah," said Paul. "And judging by all the pick-em-ups, not to mention the misuse of the
apostrophe, I'd say there's probably a meeting of the local Mensa group. Probably in there
discussing Hawking and Wittgenstein."
"Yup," I said. I'd heard of Hawking, the genius wheelchair guy, but the other one? Not a
clue. I filed it away in my head, along with John Irving, "insular", and a whole bunch of other stuff
I don't know, just for future reference. It's my "gotta look that one up one of these days" file, and
if it was a physical object, it'd be a file cabinet. A big one. Well, at least I'm trying, right?
I kept driving, past the august halls of the Pine Falls Tavern and back toward Main Street.
As we were passing a place called the Big Buck, another seedy-looking bar, the front door of the
joint suddenly blew open and a man, propelled by another, larger man, came flying out. He
bounced off a truck, then a light pole, and finally landed heavily on the weedy, cigarette-butt
strewn asphalt of the parking lot. It looked like it must have hurt, probably a lot, and I hit the
brakes, waiting to see if the guy was okay or not (and thinking not). But damned if he didn't get
right up. None too steadily, but up on his feet nonetheless. The second guy, he that had done
the tossing, stood in the Big Buck's doorway, a doughy mountain of muscle and flab with a
bearded, hairy face not unlike a rendition of Bigfoot.
The toss-ee was your basic, poor white trash-looking guy, somewhere between fifty and
dead, with long stringy hair, a patchy beard of gray and brown, and clothes that looked like they
hadn't been washed--or maybe even changed--in about a decade. Under Bigfoot's watchful eye,
he hitched up his soiled, baggy work pants and shook himself. He looked our way, did a double
take, and then stared me straight in the eye. It was just a moment, just a long glance, really, but
it was so out of the ordinary that I couldn't help but notice. By way of contrast, Bigfoot looked at
us too, but he had that same dull, mouth-breather look of the folks in the trailer park.
Not like Scrawny here, the drunk. No, he stared at me and I could almost feel it, like he
was shooting laser beams from those bloodshot eyes. There was anger and distrust and even
hatred in that stare, a lifetime of frustration and booze and broken dreams. Why he should direct
it all at me, a complete stranger, was another matter, but there it was and I was glad when we'd
rolled past and the moment was over.
"Wow," I said, "you see that?"
"What, that old guy getting the heave-ho? What about it?"

"Did you see his eyes? That stare he gave us? Yipe!"
"Sorry, didn't notice," said Paul. "Why?"
"Oh, never mind," I said, not feeling like dwelling on Scrawny or his laser eyeballs. "Just
another colorful local character."
The last place we checked out was the town park, about an acre-sized space with a few
benches, a morose little playground with swings and see-saws and such, and an ugly pile of
singed wood and charred bricks that might have been a gazebo or bandstand before it had
burned down. There was a small parking lot, empty, and I turned in and pulled the Camry to a
stop.
Over on the other side of the park was the source of the town's name, a pretty little
cascade of white water, chuckling down over maybe thirty feet of jagged granite rocks. The
actual falls of Pine Falls. But right next to it sat a squat, concrete utility building, some kind of
pumping station or dam control, and some industrious soul had spray-painted the words "this
place sucks shit in hell" in drippy, two-foot tall letters on its side. Kind of ruined the aesthetics of
the scene, don't you know. After maybe five minutes, I backed the car out again and we left the
park.
It'd only taken about twenty minutes to tour the whole of Pine Falls, but that was more
than enough for me. Once we'd seen all there was to see, I stopped the car in front of one of the
gas stations (Fred's Texaco) and looked over at my partner.
"Well, what you think?" I asked. "Is this just about the crappiest little town you've ever
seen in your whole life? Or is it just me?"
"It's not much to look at," he said, "I'll grant you that. And it's not exactly teeming with life,
either, is it? Not a whole lot going on."
"More like nothin," I said. "But hey, there was that one place, the Pine Falls Tavern. Lots
of fun to be had in there, I'll bet! Provided your idea of fun is sitting around in the dark at three in
the afternoon, drinking shitty beer and ripping pull tabs. Yee-ha. But then, I'm leaving out the
scintillating conversation. Mustn't forget that."
"Oh, sure," he nodded. "A detailed discussion of Constitutional Law, perhaps. Or a round
table panel on String Theory and Nuclear Physics."
"To be sure," I said. "That, or a tobacco-juice spitting contest."
"Yeah, so okay," Paul said, "it's a crummy town. I think we've established that."
"And what about those folks at the trailer park? You catch that freaky, dumb-ass stare
they gave us?"
"Not really, no," he said, and waved one hand. "But whatever. All that's beside the point.
It's a crummy town full of crummy people. So what? Can't be the only one. Gotta be lots of little
burgs just like this around here. And anyway, the weather's rotten; who's going to be out in this
crap?"
"Uh huh," I said. "Yeah, you're right, that's probably it. The weather. Right."
"My point is that it just doesn't matter," Paul said. "We're not here for sight-seeing, we're
here to get a line on Gayle Murphy. Remember?"
"Well, yeah," I said. "I mean, why the hell else would we be here?"

"Exactly," he said. "Now let's get to work."

In an average case our first move would be going around to the bars and diners and whatever,
like we had in Cullen, and doing our best to make friends with some of the locals. But in this
town, we decided that our usual methods might have to be somewhat amended. Or in other
words, we decided that making the rounds of the bars and restaurants in Pine Falls would
probably yield one of two results, either the cold shoulder and nothing, or a considerably warmer
reception, in the form of an old-fashioned ass-whupping. Or in other, other words, we were too
scared to go bar-hopping just yet. We went to find a place to stay instead.
There was only one motel, a ten-unit rectangular concrete box divided into rooms called
the Starlite Motel. It was on the south side of town, one of the last standing buildings before the
swamp took over, its reeds and hummocks coming up to within fifty yards of the parking lot.
There was only one vehicle in the lot, a battered, mud-colored Honda with no hubcaps,
parked right in front of the office. Their sign, a peeling, faded billboard out by the road,
advertised "Free Satelite TV" and "Complimentery Breakfast". Evidently they didn't own
dictionaries in Pine Falls. We used the TV later on, enjoying the single channel to no end, but
once we'd met the staff, we decided to pass on the "complimentery" breakfast.
The proprietor of this charming establishment and the entirety of said staff was named
Earl Sorenson and he was one of the sleaziest, most unpleasant people I've ever met. And in
our line of work I've met some seriously sleazy, unpleasant dudes.
About thirty years old and of average height, about five ten, Earl was overweight by
about 75 pounds and every ounce of it was carried in a beer belly of truly heroic proportions.
The rest of him, his arms and legs, even his head, was thin, spindly even, but then you got to his
torso and you could swear he'd swallowed a beach ball. That, or he was nine months pregnant.
His face was dominated by a wide, thick-lipped mouth with yellow teeth like aged ivory
pegs. By contrast, his eyes, nose, and ears were too small and the eyes were far too closely
spaced under pale, almost girlish brows. His longish brown hair was parted in the middle, but it
was greasy and thin on top and, with a scraggly beard, made me think vaguely of rodents. All
told, as repulsive a specimen as any I'd met lately. And that was just his looks.
We'd had to summon Earl from his office, a space sectioned off from the lobby by an old
bedspread, by ringing the little round bellboy bell. The lobby wasn't worth mentioning, just an old
duct-taped couch, a coffee table with some ancient, yellowing magazines, a fake, cobwebbed
potted palm, and a steel cylinder ashtray. There'd been no sound from the office but we heard a
creak and a groan and then Earl poked his head out. His face went from annoyed to curious and
settled on a half-smile of fake courtesy.
"Well hello, gents," he said. "Need a room then, eh?"
Paul stepped forward. "That's right," he said. "Tonight, maybe a couple more."
"All-righty then," said Earl, rubbing his hands together. He came to the front desk, a
flimsy, fiberboard counter, and reached down behind it for a four by six note card. "Jest fill this
here out. It's twenty-two fifty a night, thirty for a double, thirty-five for a suite."
"Suite?" I said, intrigued. "What's that got?"

"Oh, it's real nice," Earl nodded eagerly, his voice like rancid pudding. "Got your
bedroom, your living room, two bathrooms, and, bestest of all, you got your own hot-tub." He
winked at me. "All's you need now is some female companionship, eh?"
I knew what would come next; just by chance, he knew a couple of real nice girls who
also happened to like hot tubs. Maybe he could give em a call, see if they're available... But I
didn't let him make the offer.
"Yeah, we don't need the suite," I said. "Just a double will be fine."
Earl was disappointed. He shrugged, making his belly bounce. "Suit cherself. Makes me
no never mind."
He reached back to a row of pegs on the wall and grabbed a key--an actual metal key,
on a blue plastic keychain--and handed it over. I raised my eyebrows at this, but it was a wasted
effort, as Earl didn't notice. Keys it would be.
"So what you fellas in town for, then?" Asked Earl, as Paul filled out the registration card.
I gave him one of my best inscrutable looks.
"Business," I said, cryptic-like. "Just business."
"Yeah, what kind?" Earl said. "Traveling salesmen? Or more of them private
invest'gators, maybe? Had me quite a run a them, last few days. So what's your business?"
"Our own," I said, now giving him my best tough-guy look. "Get me?"
"Okay, friend," he said, looking hurt, like I'd cancelled recess. "If it's like that, it's like that.
Have it your way. But case you ain't noticed, this here's a small town. Real small. And folks like
you--city folks, I mean--well, they don't always get along so good with the locals. Know what I'm
sayin here?"
Paul had finished with the card and now pushed it across the counter at Earl and smiled.
"And you can help with that, I presume," he said. "Facilitate things. For a small compensation, of
course."
Earl looked a little confused, but then grinned, his big rubbery lips curling up almost to
his ears. "Now you're gettin it," he said. "See, I'm a well-known guy round here, you know? Any
friend of Earl Sorenson is welcome in this town. So, like whatever business you're in, I can
smooth out the path--like you said, facilerate things."
"Grease the wheels," I said. "And a few palms, too, right?"
Earl nodded, still grinning. "At's right," he said. "Of course, maybe you figure you can do
okay on your own, without me, and that's cool, no big deal. But like I said, city folks and small
town folks don't always get along so good. And there's some fellas in this town, well, they're bad
news. Real hard cases, some of em, and some that are just plain crazy. But hey, like I said, up
to you, eh?"
I felt an urge to look at Paul to see what he was making of this, but resisted. Never good
to show indecision to strangers, especially scumbags like Earl. A tough, who-cares attitude was
what was needed here. I shoved my porkpie onto the back of my head and leaned on the desk.
It creaked and wobbled a little, but held up.
"Look, man," I told him, "we don't want no trouble. We're just passing through. Gonna
stay a couple nights, maybe more, and then we'll be gone. Now, what we're doing here must be

obvious, and we won't bother sayin otherwise. We're after the Murphy kid. There, I said it, and
we don't care who knows it. Now if we need your help, we'll be sure to ask for it. Okay? But until
then, I suggest you just keep your nose out of our business. Cause, believe it or not, we're sorta
hard cases ourselves. Right, Paul?"
Earl looked from me over to Paul, his little piggy eyes narrowing, and right into Paul's
Hard Look, a version of his regular look only with a terrible flat, deadness to the eyes and an
iron-firm set of the jaw. I'd never had the Hard Look turned on me, but I'd seen it in action a few
times before and it never failed to impress. If I had to describe it, I'd say it was like looking into a
bottomless pit, where there's no hope and no joy, a thousand-yard stare he'd earned the hard
way, in hospital emergency rooms. And, as always, it did its job here; Earl paled, his blubbery
lips uncurled, and he blinked a few times and looked down at his hands.
"Alright, friend, alright," he said, taking the registration card. "Just tryin to help, eh? No
offense or nothin. But you know, guy's gotta make a livin. Think this motel pays the bills? Well
think again. Town like this, guy's gotta do what he can, just to survive."
"Uh huh," I said. "Well, we all got our problems, don't we?" I shelled out a twenty and a
ten and laid them on the counter. "There you go. Now if you don't mind, we'll be on our way."
"Sure, buddy," he said. He glanced at Paul but the Hard Look was still hovering around
and he quickly came back to me. "Your room's down on the end, number six. Hope you like it."
He grinned his liver-lipped grin again, only now it looked kind of sinister. "And you have a nice
day now."
Given Earl, our room was about what I'd expected, a dark, dank, smelly box with
furniture, facilities, and decorations from some time in the last century. Like 1982. Now, I don't
much like rented rooms in the first place; the thought of all the people who'd stayed there before
me (and God knew what they might have done while they were there) always gives me the
creeps. But even if I was the world's biggest fan of motel rooms, this place would have
disappointed. To put it another way, out of five stars, this wouldn't even rate a fraction.
The bathroom was sort of clean, if you didn't look too close, but the water was a rusty
color and tasted of sulphur. The beds were okay when you first lay down, but once you'd sunk
down to the springs, they ended up feeling more like slabs. Hard ones, with hard metal studs.
There were stains here and there, on the floors, on the walls, even the ceiling, that I tried not to
look at too closely. There was no fridge or coffee maker and the TV, bolted to the wall, featured
exactly one station, W-something out of Bemidji, which wasn't worth watching.
All in all, a complete and total shithole. Just nasty, and I wondered if we might not be
better off sleeping in the car. At least there we wouldn't stand a fair chance of catching a
disease. And by the way, I've told you about it in some detail just so you know what terrible
privations we're sometimes forced to endure. Makes your heart just bleed, don't it? Well, maybe
not, but you get the point. This place sucked.
"Whew, boy," I said, dropping my duffle bag. "This is kinda... bad, ain't it? Sure you don't
want to just camp out? We got the tent and the sleeping bags and all, we could put em to use."
"Tempting, but no," he said, going to the room's single window. "I think we'll stay right
here."

"Jesus, why? I've seen nicer rooms in prison, man!"

"You've never been in prison."
"No, but I've been a visitor, plenty of times, and I've seen my fair share of the insides of
jail cells, too. And anyway, my point is that this place is bad. Real bad."
"Yes, yes it is," he said, looking out through some skewed, bent venetian blinds. "But
somehow I think we're on to something here."
"Like what, a case of the clap? Bedbugs? Maybe some dysentery?"
"No," he said, unamused, "I mean that this town seems like some sort of epicenter, like
all the bad things that happen in this little corner of the world happen here. Like Stocking Cap
said."
"Pfft, him," I said, "he said lots of shit, and most of it crazy. But I kinda see your point. If
all the bad guys really are here, in one convenient place, then there's a chance that whoever
grabbed Gayle Murphy might be here. Right? Like it could be a local boy and not some roving
SK after all."
"Yes, that's about right," he said. "Not that I think we'd get that lucky, but you never know.
But I'll tell you one thing: If our man is here in town, he's not going to be easy to catch, let alone
identify."
"Yeah? Seems like just the opposite to me. I mean, with so few people in this town,
shouldn't that make it easier?"
"Theoretically," he said, turning away from the window. "But maybe not."
"What's that mean?"
"Well, think about it: if there is someone living in Pine Falls who's capable of such a
thing, capable of doing it and getting away with it, that is, well, he's not going to be your average
psycho. He'd be smart, for one thing, because he'd have to be and not get caught, and he'd be
good at his work, quick and efficient, with a detailed plan and a way of disposing of the body."
"Huh, yeah," I said. "I see what you mean. If it is a local, and he managed to not get
hauled in by the cops--or hauled in, questioned and released--he must be pretty crafty. Makes
me think of what our new friend Earl said, about some of the hard cases around here. Some are
just plain crazy, right?"
"I believe that's what he said, yes," Paul said, going over to sit on one of the beds. He
sunk in alarmingly and had to sit forward fast to not be swallowed up. "Whoa. I think this must
be your bed."
"Fine," I said, thinking. "They both suck, anyway. Probably be more comfortable on the
floor, if it wasn't so filthy... But hold on, lemme get this straight. We're gonna stay here, in this
pesthole room in this rotten motel with the scummy manager, on the edge of this nasty little
town, and that's even though we don't have any leads pointing this way. So what, we just hope
to find whoever snatched Gayle Murphy? That sound about right?"
"I suppose it does," he said, laconic-like. "But hey, I'm not saying it'll be easy. Getting
these yokels to trust us enough to dish the dirt on each other probably won't be easy, staying
here in this crummy room won't be easy, and most of all it won't be easy to find our guy,
provided he's even here."

"I agree," I said. "Especially about the room. But isn't this kind of a gamble? I mean, what
if we put all our time and meager resources into this angle and nothing comes of it? What if our
guy is already long gone, like Agent Christiansen said?"
"Then it's like you said already," he said. "We'll be out the gas money and whatever lost
income from a missed client or two. Besides, we can't look everywhere and talk to everyone. We
have to narrow it down to something we can handle. And if you ask me, that's this town. So sure,
it's a gamble, but it's one I think we have to take. That, or back up, turn around, and come at this
from another angle completely. And I don't think we want to do that."
"No, probably not," I said. "Not yet, anyway. Hell, we've only been a couple of days. And
even we don't give up that easy. But I would like to know how we're supposed to get anything
out these people. If they're all as standoffish and weird as they say, and the cops couldn't get
anything out of em, how are we supposed to? How are we gonna gain their trust?"
"Not sure yet," said Paul. "But there's always a way. Just takes the right man and the
right leverage."
"Hmm," I said. "I see what you mean. And buying em booze wouldn't hurt, either."
By my final count, there were twelve bars in the town of Pine Falls, an even dozen of dark, beersoaked joints so depressing that Charles Bukowski would've found them grim. (See there--I can
use a literary-type reference, too.) They were small, usually no bigger than an average living
room, and had bathrooms that would've sent a health inspector screaming off into the night.
Their patrons were all locals, no exceptions, about two-thirds men, with both
sexes of a breed my old man liked to call the Jack Pine Savage. Not exactly hillbillies, not in the
dueling banjos, West Virginia/Appalachian sense, anyway, but close. Let's just say these folks
didn't hold much with what the rest of us call civilization. Culture, learning, innovation and
change, these things were not only foreign to them, they were actively shunned and anyone who
embraced such liberal ideas was considered weird and not to be trusted. These folks liked
booze, drugs, sex, and their trucks, in that order, and if they spent most of their lives on bar
stools, that was just fine. They were true believers, with the bar as their church and alcohol and
drugs as sacraments.
Okay, that's probably laying it on kind of thick, but I want you to get the sense of
hopelessness and hostility we felt in Pine Falls. These folks were bored and angry. Angry that
they were bored and bored with being angry. And they didn't like city folks.
Remember before, how I described how people stopped and stared when you walked
into the local dive? Well, this was like that only times five. We would open the door, step inside,
and within two seconds they would all stop dead, even if they were shooting pool or telling a
dirty joke or dancing to Garth Brooks, and every last bleary eyeball would turn to look. It was like
in the old westerns, with Paul and me cast as the trouble-making gunslingers from out of town.
But we'd known it wouldn't be easy, so we kept at it, and you'd be surprised at how
quickly you can make friends when you buy rounds for the house. Of course, we didn't just walk
in and start throwing money around; that would've gotten us nothing but scorn and maybe a

good beating from some resentful, impoverished local. No, we had to warm them up, speak their
language, and do lots and lots of commiserating. Then you could buy a round.
My standard comments were: "Yeah, that's rough", and then something about the
"goddamned gub-mint". Worked every time, because like most losers, these bums just wanted
someone to listen to their stories. And yeah, it was depressing to hear about their hernia or their
dying grandma or their losing their jobs or whatever, but that was the price we had to pay. If we
wanted to gain their trust, we had to listen to their pathetic tales of woe. And buy em rounds.
Another thing that helped was that we spent a good solid week doing it. Every day and
into the night, we went to at least three bars and spent a few hours at each. By the third night,
we were actually welcomed when we came through the door. The wonders of a sympathetic ear
and a fat wallet.
The guy I was looking for the whole time was the drunk I'd seen get thrown out of the Big
Buck. This was because (as I reasoned, anyway) he would likely be what you call alienated. He
would have no love for the local bars or, possibly, even for the town itself. And, properly plied
with free booze, he might just tell us a few things about people in town that others would not.
Some of the dirt, that is, and maybe even about some of the crazier "hard case" individuals.
It would be later that I actually spoke to him, but on the second day we learned that his
name was Alvin Schuster and that he was, by general consensus, the town drunk. Which, in this
town full of drunks and junkies, was saying something. We also learned that he lived in the
trailer court, that he sometimes dealt in hard prescription drugs, and that he had to walk
everywhere because he'd had sixteen DUIs and they'd taken away his license. A real prince, this
guy.
But that wouldn't be until later and I'm getting ahead of myself. See, when we weren't at
the bars, we were out in the woods, and on one of these little hikes, we encountered something
pretty scary, something I don't even really want to write about. But I will, because otherwise the
story would kind of crap out at this point, and anyway, for you it might seem kind of exciting. For
us? Not so much. More like terrible and sad.
It was a drizzly, cold day, our fourth in Pine Falls, and we were searching the forest on the
eastern side of the clearing when I finally snapped. I remember, because that was almost the
exact same time we found the corpse. You don't forget a little thing like that
We'd established a kind of system and had searched the north and south sides already,
to a distance of about half a mile in each direction. We would walk very slowly, about twenty
yards apart, back and forth and to and fro, heads down and eyes wide open, until we'd covered
the designated area. It wasn't precise and there was ground we missed, but given the size of the
search area, we did a pretty thorough job.
And found absolutely nothing of interest. We found some garbage, at least near the
clearing, like booze and beer bottles, cigar and cigarette butts, red plastic cups, a broken glass
hash pipe, and even an old ripped St. Mark's sweatshirt, but nothing that told us a lick about
Gayle or her abductor. On top of that, the recent rains had washed away all of the tracks, partygoers' and searchers' alike. Even Gayle's footprints were gone.

The forest was, well how do I put it? Imposing? Maybe that's the fancy word for it, but I
guess I'd have to go with spooky. Eerie, maybe. Anyway, I guess I'm no kind of outdoorsman,
because it gave me the creeps, big time.
It was too quiet, for one thing. There were a few birds, woodpeckers and sparrows
mostly, but that was it for animal life. And aside from the peckers' weird power tool noise (which
would erupt all of a sudden and make me jump), the birds didn't make any noise. Just kind of
flitting here and there, real quick like they didn't want to attract attention. Like they knew enough
to keep their heads down.
It was on day two, I think, that Paul pointed out that there weren't any squirrels. I hadn't
noticed. What did I know about squirrels? But he was right; I hadn't seen even one.
"Maybe they don't live around here," I said. "You know, wrong whatchacallit. Biome."
"If we were talking gray squirrels, I'd say yes," Paul said, peering up into the trees. "But in
pine forest like this there should be reds."
"And there aren't, I take it. But how do you know? Maybe they're just bein real quiet, like
the birds."
"No, red squirrels are noisy. Come anywhere near em and they go off like a burglar
alarm. And they eat pine cones and nest in pine trees, which means this woods should be rife
with em. It's weird."
"You say so," I said, also looking up into the trees for rodents that weren't there. "But ask
me, this whole place is weird. Not good weird, either. More like spooky weird."
He hadn't said anything to that and we'd kept trudging and searching. But he was right.
The whole time we were there, we never saw anything but birds.
The only real noise out in the forest was the wind through the pine trees and it was
almost worse than the silence, a sort of ghostly whooshing sound that made my neck hair stand
up. Occasionally it would jar loose a pine cone, which would fall (and usually startle me pretty
good), bouncing off the branches and down to the ground with a sort of brittle, scratchy clunk.
We didn't make any noise, either. The ground was so thick with pine needles that it was
like walking on carpet and the few little fallen twigs were wet and made no noise when stepped
on. All the same, carpet or not, I often found myself tip-toeing, and when we talked it was usually
in whispers.
There was also frequent ground fog, patches of swirling mist like lazy ghosts twisting
around the tree trunks and breaking up into nothing when we walked through them. And in the
low spots, where the moss and reeds took over, the fog lay like a big misty blanket of cotton, like
you could cut sections out of it with a knife. Even on sunny days, there was fog down in the deep
spots.
The bugs were no fun, either, but in that respect at least we were fortunate. Or that's
what Paul told me, anyway. I was cursing a mosquito bite one day and he told me to quit
complaining, that we were lucky.
"How so?" I said, scratching. "Lucky if we don't get Lyme disease?"
"Lucky it's just mosquitos," he said. "If this was spring or early summer, there would be
deer flies, horse flies, black flies, ticks... And even more skeeters than this."

If it had been meant as comforting, it didn't work. I had groaned and sprayed myself with
more Muscol. Lucky my ass. But I could see his point; adding flies to the mosquitos would've
made things downright nasty. Intolerable, even.
The trees themselves were pines and small stands of birch and poplar. The pines were
definitely in charge, though, with trunks from a foot to three feet in diameter. Like I said before,
their branches didn't start until about six feet up. The needles were all on the outside, where
they could get some sun, and this made the trunk was like a ladder, the branches like rungs right
up to the top. If I'd been a ten year old boy, I'd have been in tree-climber's heaven.
But I was not a ten year old boy, I was a middle-aged man with zero desire to climb trees
and, by the fourth day, I was pretty well fed up. Paul, with the patience of a saint, seemed like he
could spend the rest of his life happily tramping through the woods all day, going to dive bars all
night, and sleeping in a moldy, stinky flophouse, but not me. I guess maybe I don't have his
whatchacallit, perseverance, but whatever. I was bored, hungry and tired, hungover and smelly
from bug spray and the damned woods came me the creeps and well, I'd just had enough. We
were hell and gone from the car, back at the clearing. I guess it was about 2:00 in the afternoon
that it finally came to a head and I mentioned my misgivings to Paul in my usual calm, eloquent
fashion.
"Paul, man, this sucks shit!" I said, stopping and waving my arms.
He looked over at me and swatted a mosquito. "Problem?" He asked calmly.
"Yeah, I got a problem," I said, hearing the whiny sound of it and not caring. "I don't think
I can keep doin this and I'm pretty damned sure we're not gonna find anything. They went all
through these woods, hundreds of people! I mean, come on, what are we doing here? It's a
huge waste of time!"
"Maybe, maybe not," he said, getting out his water bottle. "We won't know that until we're
done, will we?"
"Oh, sure, like the old cliche: it's always the last place you look cause then you stop
looking, right?"
"Yup," he said. "Just because it's a cliche doesn't make it not true. And we still have half
of this side to search. So why don't you just suck it up and--"
But he never got to finish telling me what a wuss I was being, because it was just then
that I noticed the hand. Thin and yellow-white, it lay on the pine needles looking like that of a
mannequin. I pointed at it, urgent-like, and Paul, his chiding interrupted, turned to look.
The hand was attached to an arm, the arm was attached to a body, and the body lay on
the pine needles, face up and fully clothed. As we got closer we saw that it was a woman and
that she was most definitely dead. She was wearing jeans, a blue flower print blouse, and dirty
white low-rise sneakers with pink socks. Her skin, where we could see it, was a horrible, waxy
color and stretched way too tightly, almost like a mummy.
It was her face, though, that would later give me nightmares. With no eyeballs, the
sockets had become gaping, ragged holes, her nose had sort of fallen in, collapsed on itself,
and her lips were drawn back in an impossibly huge grin that showed a double row of crooked

yellow teeth. There was a nasty, sweet rotten stench in the air, but it wasn't overpowering, only
sickening. I looked at my partner.
"Looks like we found her," I said, one hand over my nose.
Paul didn't say anything. He was staring at the body with a funny, puzzled look on his
face. I started to step forward but he threw out a hand and told me to stop. I did, freezing like a
kid playing red light/green light.
"What?" I said. "What's wrong?"
"Just don't go any closer," he said quietly. "This is a crime scene. We don't want to fuck it
up."
I couldn't argue with that. I relaxed and looked around. The woods looked like they
always did, spooky as hell, and nothing was moving. I looked back to the body and felt suddenly
like I was somewhere where I shouldn't be, like I'd walked in on something that someone didn't
want me to see. This woman's body, just lying there, flat on her back with arms outspread, legs
half-crossed, was so totally undignified as to be obscene, and it made me feel dirty and bad to
see it. No one should be treated like that when they die. And whoever left her there could only
be a monster. Suddenly the bad, dirty feeling warped right into anger. I ground my teeth and
blew out a pent-up breath, cursing whatever sorry excuse for a human who was responsible.
Paul was still staring, but the the puzzled look had gone. "This is not Gayle Murphy," he
said. "It's someone else."
Now it was my turn to be puzzled. "What, serious? Some other dead woman? Are you
sure?"
"This woman has blonde hair," he said. "Gayle's is dark brown. Plus, unless I miss my
guess, this woman is much older. Also, look at the clothes--would a college sophomore be
caught dead in that?"
I forced myself to look again. Blonde hair, crummy clothes, cheap shoes. Yup, he was
right about that. I couldn't tell how old she'd been, but her build didn't look like that of a college
coed, either. I turned away again.
"So who the fuck is it?" I asked, my anger now mixed up with confusion. "And how in hell
did hundreds of searchers miss her?"
"Not sure," he mumbled. He took some purple Nitrile gloves out of the pack and tossed
me a pair. I put them on, feeling ridiculous. "But I doubt she was killed here. Someone dumped
her here, but I'll bet anything she was killed somewhere else. And probably some time ago."
I scoffed. "What're you, mister CSI all of a sudden? How can you tell that?"
"Well, look," he said, pointing. "The body hasn't seeped into the dirt. If she'd been killed
here, her bodily fluids would've stuck her right to the ground. What's more, there are very few
insects. If she'd died here, there'd be bugs everywhere."
Stepping carefully, with yours truly just behind, he went forward, to within five feet of the
body, and squatted down. I stood behind him and watched the surrounding woods. Call me
overly sensitive, but finding the corpse had made me a little edgy. Plus, the last thing we needed
was for somebody (like, say the local cops) to come along and find us standing over a dead
body. Just wouldn't look good.

Finally Paul broke the silence. "This woman," he said, "has been dead for quite some
time. Maybe as long as a year."
Now I was really confused. "Wait, what are you saying? She was killed somewhere else,
then like what, stuck in storage for a year? And then some sick fucker dumped her here? Is that
what I'm hearing?"
"Yeah, more or less," he said. He stood up and looked around at the nearby ground.
"Check around. There might be footprints, tracks of some kind from whoever left her here."
We split up and walked around carefully, peering at the ground like we'd lost a contact
lens, but there was nothing to find, just needles and twigs and pinecones. After a wide circuit
around the scene, we met back at the corpse. Standing over her, we didn't say anything for a
while. The wind came through, making that soft, creepy whooshing noise in the trees, and my
neck hair, already at attention, stood up like a wire brush. I tried to shrug it off, but the shrug
turned into a shudder.
"I wonder who she is," I finally said, shaky-like. "And how old. Looks like she was what,
about forty? Fifty?"
"Hard to say," said Paul. "She's so desiccated, could be anywhere from twenty to
seventy. If I had to guess, though, I'd say fifties. And probably a local, judging from the hair and
clothing."
I scratched my head, confused and angry and generally freaked out. "So what do we do
now?" I asked. "I mean, report it, right? Get em looking for whoever did this."
He didn't say anything, staring down at our Jane Doe with a thoughtful sort of
expression.
"Paul?" I said. "We gotta report it, right?"
He finally stirred. "Hmm. I think not."
"Huh? Why wouldn't we?"
"Think about it," he said. "Someone put this woman here. Not ten miles away, not in the
next county, but right here. And it had to be recently, like in the last day or two, or they would've
found her during the search for Gayle. Right?"
"Yeah, okay, I'm with you. But why? Why would someone do that? And if they had the
body in like, storage, without anybody else knowing about it, why take it out now?"
"That I don't know," he said. "Could be they figured no one would be out here, now that
the whole area has been searched."
"And what, they had a body just layin around that they needed to get rid of?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. But I do know one thing: If we bring the cops out
here, there's going to be one hell of a shitstorm."
"Well, that's true enough," I said. "And most of the shit would fall on us. Police, autopsy,
coroner's inquest, all that." Something occurred to me. "How do you think she was killed? Or
wait--are we even positive she was killed? Maybe she died of like, natural causes and
somebody was too cheap for a funeral."
Paul didn't bother to respond and just gave me the look. I drooped.

killed?"

"Yeah, you're right," I said. "That's stupid. But what about it? Can you tell how she was

"Check out her neck," he said, gesturing. I did, and noticed something around her throat,
a cord or belt or something. And her neck looked wrong, all bruised and swollen. "See the
ligature? Still there, and it looks pretty obvious to me that she was strangled."
"Yeah," I nodded, looking away again. "Looks like it. Poor thing... So, what? Are we just
gonna leave her here like this? Not even cover her up or anything?"
"Well, no," he said. "We can't leave any sign that we've been here. And if anyone asks,
we didn't see anything, either. Okay?"
"I dunno, man," I said, dubious-like. "Just doesn't seem right. You know?"
"Of course not," he said. "But something tells me that this is big. Maybe real big."
"Well, it's a murder, so yeah, "big" kinda goes without saying. But here's my question:
what does it have to do with Gayle Murphy? You know, the person we were hired to locate?"
"Who knows?" He said. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything."
I groaned. "This just got messy, partner," I said. "Real fuckin messy. And it's got nothing
to do with why we're here, that's the hell of it. I mean, don't get me wrong. Whoever did this to
this poor lady should be caught and strung up by his balls. About a hundred times. But like I
said, it's got nothing to do with us. Or our fifty grand. Well, our shot at fifty grand, anyway. You
know what I mean."
"Yeah," he said. "It could be a major fly in the ointment, alright. But then, it might be our
first lead, too. Too early to tell, but somehow I think that whoever's behind this has something to
do with Gayle. Could even be the same guy."
I nodded. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. Could be a serial murderer. And what better
town for a serial murderer to live in than Pine Falls? What was it Stocking Cap said? About the
town?"
"That it was like a magnet for weirdos," said Paul. "And yes, that's what I was thinking,
too." He looked around, up through the trees, and then at his watch. "It's getting late. We should
head back to the car."
"Guess so," I said. "But it still just seems wrong to leave her like this."
"Come on," he said, patting me on the shoulder. "Let's go. And don't worry; if there's any
way on earth that we can catch whoever did this, you better believe we're going to do it. Trust
me, somebody's going to pay for this."
That made me feel a little better, but not nearly enough, and it was with a real strong
reluctance that I turned to walk away. I glanced back once, hoping that somehow she'd be gone,
that we'd imagined the whole thing or that I was dreaming or something. But no, she was still
there, big as life and twice as dead. And then the trees blocked my view.
We got back to town at sundown. It was a beautiful sunset, graceful clouds lit red and orange
from beneath, framed by a cobalt sky, but all it did was emphasize how crappy and shabby the
town was. I parked the Camry in front of our room and got out. I noticed something and poked
Paul in the ribs.

"Look," I said. "We got company."

I was talking about the two other cars now parked in the motel lot. One was an older
Buick, blue with a big dent in the passenger side door, and the other was a Subaru Forester,
green, with a luggage rack on top and an Obama for President bumper sticker. Paul gave them
a glance, said yup, and went inside. I made a mental note of them both, just in case.
It was too early to hit the bars, so we relaxed and changed out of our outdoor clothes. I
lay down on my bed, sinking like a stone to the lumpy hardness beneath, and turned on the TV,
but good old W-something had on an old Lawrence Welk rerun and after about three bars of
Moon River I clicked it off. I let out a big sigh, but of course that was pointless, wasted on Paul,
so I sat up and rubbed my face.
"That was nasty," I said. "Today, I mean."
From his place at the flimsy table, Paul looked up from his MacBook, his face neutral,
and didn't say anything. I shook my head at him.
"Didn't that bother you?" I said. "Finding a corpse? Didn't that rattle you, even a little bit?"
"Of course it did," he said, brow contracting. "Why, what do you mean?"
"Well, just that you're so calm about it, like you do that kind of thing every day."
"Would you be happier if I'd panicked? Or was I supposed to cry or something?"
"Hey, take it easy," I said. "I'm not criticizing--hell, if anything I'm jealous! I just don't know
how you can stay so calm. I was shaking like a leaf back there."
He frowned and went back to the computer. "Just lucky, I guess," he scowled. "But what
about you? After all, this isn't the first dead body we've found. Or did you forget Peter
Normand?"
I moaned a little and said oh yeah, because I had not by any means forgotten. In fact, my
tummy did a flip at the memory. One of our first really profitable cases, Normand had been a
mentally challenged man (and the son of a rather wealthy couple) who'd walked away from his
group home. We'd found him in an abandoned house on the north side of town, dead as a
stone, and he'd been there for a few days by the time we found him. I won't go into specifics,
because that would just be ghoulish, but suffice to say that the smell and the sight of a 300
pound man who's been dead for three days is pretty damned ugly.
"Yeah, I remember Pete Normand," I said. "Kinda hard to forget. But that was different."
"Different how? He was just as dead."
"Yeah, but he wasn't out in the woods like this. And besides, we were actually looking for
him, weren't we? Maybe that's it, it was just so unexpected. That and the woods..."
He kept quiet, clicking at the Air. I shook myself free of the picture in my mind's eye of the
dead woman and her eyeless, grinning face, got up, and went over to the table.
"What're you doing, anyway?" I said, looking over his shoulder. "Don't tell me this place
has wifi."
"No, it does not," he said, distracted-like. "But before we left I downloaded a
comprehensive list of unsolved serial murders. Our Jane Doe might or might not be a victim of
an SK, but I think it's worth looking into."
"Christ, where'd you find that? Psychos dot com?"

He looked up. "No, Wikipedia."

"Oh," I said. "Right. Well, any luck?"
"Couple of possibles," he said. "But it's just a theory, anyway. After all, it's entirely
possible she was killed by your average, garden-variety murderer and not a serial killer. And
even more possible that the killer had nothing to do with Gayle Murphy."
"Like, just coincidence? Man, I dunno about that. We find a dead, murdered woman, in
the same place where Gayle disappeared? Seems a little too coincidental, ask me."
"I agree," he said. "And that's why I'm looking at the list. Never know."
"Yeah, you're right," I said. "As usual." I stretched my arms over my head and yawned
loudly. "Man, I'd give anything to just stay in and go to sleep early tonight. Been a long day." He
looked up and I smiled. "Whataya say, honey? Should we just stay home, here in our luxurious
quarters? Order out room service, maybe go for a swim or down to the spa?"
He smiled too, thinly, and then shook his head. "No, darling," he said. "We have a big
night planned. Dinner, drinks and dancing, the works. Now go get dressed."
I groaned, as enthusiastic about another night at Pine Falls' soul-crushing watering holes
as I'd have been with a date with the electric chair. But such is the life of a PI, so I went to wash
up and get ready to go out. And as it turned out, it was a good thing we did hit the bars, because
that was the night we first heard of a man named Lentch.
We were at a place called the Knothole, a particularly seedy little joint down on Main Street,
when we first heard the name. We'd been talking to a couple of locals named Bob and Fred.
Bob was a self-employed welder, Fred worked at the grocery store, and both of them were fairly
typical Pine Falls dwellers, not too bright, poorly groomed and dressed, and about as
enlightened as a moonless night.
Some of the things they said about minorities, women, and homosexuals (and just about
anyone else not like themselves) would've normally provoked me to no end, probably even to
violence, but this was not a normal situation. If we'd been in the city, I would've at least told them
off. But this was their turf, enemy country, and so we just listened and nodded instead of hauling
off and kicking their worthless racist, misogynist, homophobic asses. But it wasn't easy.
We had gradually brought the conversation around to the local tough guys. Who was
mean, who was crazy, that kind of thing. They told us some stories, about this dude or that who
beat up this guy or that, about how some other dude beat his wife and another shot his dog. It
was pretty depressing, ugly stuff, especially considering how funny Bob and Fred thought it all
was. Worse, it didn't really tell us much about who might've snatched Gayle. But then I paid
closer attention as Bob started telling us about someone named Oliver Lentch.
"Now there's a crazy motherfucker if I ever hearda one," said Bob, lowering his voice.
"Right, Fred?"
Fred hunched down over his bottle of Cold Spring. He looked around before nodding,
and his red, hairy face gone serious.
"Oh yah," he said. "That is one mean old dude. I even heard he killed somebody. Spent
a long time in the slammer for it, too."

"That right?" I said, not having to fake interest for once. "Who'd he kill, anyway?"
Bob's faced scrunched up. I guessed he was thinking, but maybe he just had gas. "Not
sure," he said. "But I heard it was a woman. Like a sex thing, you know?"
"Yah?" Said Paul in his best Fargo accent. "So, sort of a sex predator then, eh? Did he
have to register, notify the town, all at shit?"
"Probly," shrugged Bob. "I dunno for sure, eh? But anywho, he's like some kinda hermit.
Don't bother nobody. But stay the fuck away from his property, that's what I heard."
"Yah, like Miz Peterson's dog, eh," said Fred. "Shot that fucker dead as shit."
"And there was them surveyor guys, too. Member that?"
"Yah," said Fred. "Chased em off with a fuckin machete, what I heard."
And they'd heard more, too, because apparently this Lentch was a real bastard. Not a
bully, more of a scary loner, but feared and avoided nonetheless. We listened, nodding and
saying wow, what a nut, until they finally went off on some other tale of pain and woe. Seemed
like there was a lot of that in Pine Falls.
But we'd gotten our first actual lead and had even managed to learn where the man
lived. After we'd left the bar, I almost felt encouraged, despite the moral filth we'd had to wade
through to get it.
"What do you think?" I asked Paul, once we were in the car. "Think this Lentch is our
man? Could it be that easy?"
"Doubt it," he said. "But you never know. Stranger things have happened."
We visited two more saloons that night, back to the Pine Falls Tavern and then over to
the Corner Bar. At both places we asked, as subtly as possible, about this Oliver Lentch
character and in both got the same general impression from the assorted barflies as we'd gotten
from Bob and Fred. Lentch was a scary loner who lived in an old farmhouse outside of town and
who was definitely to be avoided. Even Big Mike, a real piece of work, huge and belligerent as a
rutting stag, had to admit that he wouldn't set foot on Lentch's land, not even on a bet.
"At old dude's crazy as shit," he said around his whiskey seven. "Heard he was military,
too. Like back in Nam, eh?"
But, implied scariness aside, that was about it as far as it went. There were rumors, tales
of this or that instance of Lentch defending his property, mainly, but nothing in the way of hard
facts. And as we listened to the various accounts, my interest began to fade. This guy sounded
like a dangerous crank alright, maybe even psychotic, but he didn't sound like someone who
would snatch or kill a teenaged girl. That took a whole different kind of twisted freak.
I voiced my doubts on the ride back to the motel. Paul agreed, but thought we should still
at least check him out.
"Like how?" I asked. "I mean, we got no legal right to question him and from the sound of
it, he don't much like visitors. So how we gonna check him out?"
"Call McKenzie," he said. "He still owes us one, right? From that case with the taxi driver
who got stabbed."
"Hey, yeah," I said. "Have him run the name, we could at least get the guy's vitals. Good
thinkin, partner!"

He smiled a little and nodded. "Thanks. Now let's go home. Could be a big day
tomorrow."
"Ah, yes," I said. "Luxurious room six of the fabulous Starlite Motel, located in scenic
Pine Falls, Minnesota. Home sweet shitty home."