stern like a landed fish by Jo and Officer Stanton. Anna was next, lifted clear of the water’s grasp. Ralph pulled himself up as far as the low deck and planted his butt on the two-by-four slats. Gently he took Denny’s body from Lucas and held it cradled in his arms while the Chief Ranger floundered on board.
Anna, sitting on deck, a flippered foot held clumsily between two gloved hands, was watching Jo as her wiry brown arms gathered her husband into a one-way embrace. The expression on Jo Castle’s face was familiar. Once Anna had seen it on Christina. She was watching her daughter sleep when Ally had been racked by a fever. A look that was equal parts tenderness and grief.
Either Jo was a complete psychotic, or she had not killed Denny. Remembering the strength in Jo’s arms as she had pulled her from the lake, Anna fervently hoped it was the latter.
Awkwardly, Jo bent and kissed her husband. Faint bruises ringed Denny’s mouth in blue. The captain’s cap, absurd now in the drizzling light of day, fell from his hair. Brass buttons winked as the collar of the uniform fell open. There was no shirt beneath the double-breasted jacket and the flesh of Denny’s shoulder was exposed. A livid bruise cut down between neck and shoulder. The discolored flesh was jarring on skin so white, and Anna turned away as if she would protect Denny’s modesty.
THIRTEEN
Anna was thinking about the bruise on Denny’s shoulder. Usually on her lieu days she liked to loose her mind from the often paranoia-inducing mental fetters of rangering. Not rangering, she reminded herself: law enforcement. It saddened her that the line between the two grew thinner every year. But recent events were too intrusive to allow her peace of mind.
Postmortem lividity left bruiselike marks on corpses. Blood, no longer circulating, pooled at the lowest point on the body. In Denny, supported by water, pressurized on all sides, lividity might possibly have shown faintly in the lowest extremities but not in hash marks across his chest. The autopsy would tell how much force had been used, if the bruise had been caused by a blow, and if the instrument of trauma had been edged. But it probably wouldn’t be able to tell what that instrument had been: baseball bat, crowbar, or just walking into a door.
What was troubling Anna was that the bruise configuration seemed familiar. So, motoring across sparkling blue waters on her day off, she busied her mind flipping back through the endless slides of corpses paraded before her in law enforcement classes. Coroners, policemen, arson investigators, body recovery experts, all with color pictures, each picture telling a story of violent death. Anna dredged up the images, hoping to decode the story Denny’s corpse was trying to tell.
At the northern end of Five Finger Bay, the sheer beauty of the day drove the blood and gore from her thoughts. The shores were snowy with thimbleberry blossoms, a lacy skirting between the blue of the water and the green of the trees. The sky had cried itself out the night before and smiled down clear and warm. Anna pushed the
And of being on the lake’s surface, not its floor.
Rock Harbor was bustling. Compared to the great ports of the world, it was a mere hole in the island, but after a week on the north shore it felt like New York Harbor on the Fourth of July.
Heading for the slips reserved for NPS vessels on Mott, Anna maneuvered the
It was Frederick the Fed.
Government-issue punk; his superiors must be eternally off balance, unsure whether Stanton merely had bad taste or really was poking fun at them.
“Officer Stanton,” she called out the open window. He scrambled ungracefully to his feet and proceeded to louse up her docking efforts with his good intentions. She barely managed to shove her fenders out before he dragged the Bertram into the pilings.
“Yo, Anna,” he said as she stepped onto the dock. Anna had never heard anyone actually use “yo” except in jest. Maybe she still hadn’t. Stanton’s face was deadpan.
“Morning,” she replied neutrally as she tied off to a cleat.
The clatter of leather soles brought him up next to her. His features were overly large but finely shaped, giving him the appearance of a badly carved heroic figure. The goofy hat, the fifties shirt, the hard shoes-everything about him was a study in incongruity. It struck Anna that it might be intentional; it’s hard to know a man who defies patterns.
“I’ve been hoping to get a word with you,” he said.
“It’s my day off.”
“Good. Mine too. We’ll have oodles of time.”
Yo. Oodles. Anna smiled. “You answer mine, I’ll answer yours,” she said.
Frederick started to fold himself down again onto the dock but Anna shook her head. She’d had enough of water for a while. This weekend she planned to stay on terra firma.
Together they walked inland, following a well-trodden path lined with bluebead lilies and red eastern columbine. Above them, trees whispered across a narrow ribbon of sky.
Under a white pine, on ground kept bare by fallen needles, Anna sat down.
“Are there snakes?” Frederick asked suspiciously.
“Yup.”
“Ish.” He curled his muscular legs up close, knees under his chin as he squatted beside her. His slightly bumbling fastidious act put Anna in mind of the disarming foolishness of Lord Peter Wimsey.
“Do you read Dorothy L. Sayers?” she asked abruptly.
“Never heard of her.” There might or might not have been a gleam in his eye. “That was your question,” he said. “Now mine. Say somebody is trafficking in drugs between Canada and the U.S. Buying it here, selling it there. Your customs checks here are only a formality. Say maybe Isle Royale is the exchange place.”
Anna waited. “What’s the question?” she asked finally.
Stanton looked surprised, as if it had been obvious. “Who would it be?” he demanded.
Anna laughed. “You tell me.”
“Say somebody with a boat. Say somebody who’s here regularly. Somebody who’s got a reason for repeated trips. Maybe a commercial fishing guide boat, a sightseeing concession, a dive concession.” He opened his eyes wide and treated Anna to a friendly, guileless stare.
She looked away, let her gaze rest on the perfect mosaic of leaves and bark beyond the rusty circle of needles. Sun dappled through the foliage, catching and reflecting the living green. Even on dry land on Isle Royale there was a sense of being in a watery world.
“Why do you think it’s drug-related? Why a concession boat? Have you corroborating reports?”
“That’s three questions, Anna, and no answers. You’re running up your tab.”
Anna said nothing and after a moment he decided to tell her. “No evidence, just statistics. A border area, not heavily patrolled, an island full of coves, regular international boat traffic, a bizarre murder. I’m working profiles here. This is the profile of a drug-related murder.”
All law enforcement people worked with profiles whether they consciously chose to or not-like gamblers working the odds. So did businessmen and shopkeepers and receptionists and streetwalkers. A poorly dressed man, eyes watering, nose running, standing alone in a darkened doorway clutching a heavy object in his pocket, might be a lost country parson with hay fever grasping his Bible for comfort. Profiles said he was not. Given his profile, the police in some places would have probable cause to pull him in for questioning.
Anna rose and dusted off her rump. “I’ll let you know if I think of anybody who fits,” she said.
Free of Stanton, she found she didn’t know what to do with herself. The
