'Okay.'
'What?'
'What are you doing here?'
'Freelance work.'
'You came to Ms. King's aid on real short notice.'
'I'd done some work for one of her friends in Houston, years back. She recommended me.'
'You just dropped everything and came flying down here?'
'I was told Caroline King has lots of money, and I need the extra income. I've got two greedy, bloodsucking ex-wives.'
Ski wondered what he'd done to make Dodge Hanley think he was stupid enough to swallow that bullshit. He considered revealing what he'd learned after making some fact-finding calls today, but, for the time being, he decided to play along and pretend to be as ignorant as the stump Dodge was sitting on.
Ski said, 'Besides smoking, what were you doing out here?'
Angling the smoke away from Ski, Dodge exhaled and pointed toward the lake. 'I thought maybe Starks came by boat. But I nosed around the dock and shoreline and didn't see any evidence of that.' He came back to Ski with an arch look. 'Nothing as solid as those fresh tire tracks you found.'
Ski smiled wryly. 'Who'd you torture?'
'No waterboarding necessary. You hang out at a county courthouse long enough, you hear things. Never knew one of them that didn't leak like a rusty pipe.'
Ski considered the older man for a long moment, then, making a decision, stood up and angled his head back toward the woods. 'Want to take a walk?'
Dodge came to his feet. 'Lead on.'
'Put out the cigarette. I don't want you burning down our forest.'
Dodge sucked in a lungful of smoke and muttered a string of grousing swearwords as he exhaled. He ground out the cigarette, then fell in behind as Ski plowed through the underbrush, pushing aside tree limbs and adroitly sidestepping natural obstacles, retracing the way he'd come but without worrying about how much noise he was making. 'I left my flashlight up here a ways. Can you see okay?'
'Don't worry about me,' Dodge grumbled.
Ski ducked under a tree branch and hoped Dodge saw it in time to do the same. He hadn't planned to share any aspects of the case but found himself inviting the former cop's input. 'The three- way stop where Lake Road dead-ends? The bait shop?'
'Yeah?'
'I talked to a guy who was there about midnight last night, pumping gas.' Pride prevented him from telling the veteran investigator that a civilian had actually tracked down the bass fisherman.
'Kinda late to be pumping gas.'
'He was getting his boat ready to take out first thing this morning. Wanted to have that chore done so he could get on the lake by daylight.'
'That's one of the reasons I never fished. It starts too early.'
'So,' Ski continued, 'he's at the pump filling his gas can when this guy pulls a Toyota up to the side of the building. Time roughly coincides with Ms. Malone's 911 call.'
'Did the vehicle come from this direction?'
'It did.'
'The fisherman is sure it was a Toyota?'
'Positive. His daughter has one like it. He said the driver got out and stumbled into the men's room.'
'Exterior entrance?'
'Right.'
'Stumbled?'
'He demonstrated it to me. Looked like limping. When the gas can is full, the fisherman thinks maybe he ought to check on the guy. So he moseys over to the men's room, knocks on the door, and says to the guy inside that he couldn't help but notice that he was limping and asks if everything's all right, does he need some help. The guy hollers through the door--'
'He doesn't open it?'
'No. He tells the fisherman that he's fine. He just came in to 'take a piss.' Those words. The fisherman is a die-hard evangelical and wanted to hear no more of--I quote--'that kind of filthy language.''
'He sounds like a barrel of laughs.'
Ski stopped to retrieve his flashlight from the crotch of a tree where he'd left it. He clicked it on and turned to check on Dodge, who'd been keeping up, but barely. The older man was huffing. 'Are you all right?'
'I've got on city shoes.'
His shoes weren't to blame for his wheezing like a malfunctioning bagpipe. 'You need to lose the cigarettes.'
'Walk.'
Ski directed the beam of light to the ground, which made the trekking much easier. 'The fisherman went on his way and didn't think any more about it.'
'Not even when he heard there'd been a shooting in the vicinity around that time of night?'
'He was out on the lake all day. Didn't learn about the incident until he got home this afternoon, and by then we were contacting him.'
'Did he describe the guy?'
'He got a fairly good look because there's a light above the restroom door. Oren Starks's general height, weight, and age. Receding hairline. The guy was wearing khaki slacks and a dark golf shirt. Ms. Malone said Starks had on khaki slacks and a navy golf shirt.'
'No one coached the fisherman? He hadn't heard that description on TV or from his wife when he got home from his fishing trip?'
'He says no, and I don't think this guy would lie.'
Dodge hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat. 'Fuck no. Not if he takes exception to the word
Ski chuckled. 'Plus, I showed him a faxed photo of Starks that I got from the marketing firm's employment records. Fisherman said he was ninety-five percent sure that was the guy.'
'Not one hundred?'
'On account of it was dark and he was twenty or so yards away.' Ski motioned forward. 'It's just ahead.'
The flashlight beam picked up the yellow tape that had been strung around a small area that appeared to be the cul-de-sac of an overgrown track. 'My guess,' Ski said, 'is that when the house was being built, the construction crew pulled some of their vehicles off the road and parked them in here where it was shady, and to keep from cluttering up the area in front of the house.
'When the house was completed, the track and clearing became overgrown with disuse.' He shone the light down on the tire tracks in the dirt. 'Fresh. And they weren't made by heavy equipment. I discovered them just after daylight this morning, got a man out here pronto. He's no expert, mind you, but he made a pretty good cast.'
'Lucky it didn't rain last night.'
Ski nodded. 'I'm rushing up the match, but I'm betting the tires will be standard- issue Toyota.'
'Find anything besides the tracks?'
