Near the shore the weeds slap the rubber hull and a cold mist splashes over the Zodiac’s prow. Fifty meters from the edge she cuts power to the outboard and slows to five knots, easing the craft into a dark nook behind a clump of trees. A meter from land, she guns the engine and jumps the boat’s prow onto a patch of coarse grass that serves as a beachhead. Convinced the boat is secure, she turns the engine off and waits for the moment to settle.
Behind her, the lake is still clear and blue. Her wake is already dissipating and mixing with the new ripples created by the easterly breeze. Her tracks through the weeds and algae will be visible if the police are attentive—especially by air—but there is still no sign of them and of course Irv has the same GPS coordinates that Sigrid does, so he doesn’t actually need to find her at all; he can go straight to the meeting point. She has the lead, though. Perhaps no more than minutes, but maybe long enough to find Marcus and move him to a new location. If she can talk sense into him, there might still be a way to turn him in publicly and without incident; maybe at a diner in the town or in a playground full of little human shields. Someplace the police wouldn’t risk a spectacle or scaring the locals.
Not in a town as white as this, anyway.
The SWAT team for Saranac Lake is commanded by Lieutenant Alfonzo Plymouth, who is nothing like Irv’s SERT captain, Pinkerton. Irv met Alfonzo once before—at a regional police convention a few years ago—and remembers liking the guy well enough. On the scorched pier by the police station, Alfonzo is wiping the sticky residue from the fire extinguisher onto his trousers as he calmly directs his men in taking inventory. They rummage through the black bags that were recently burning and now smell terrible.
Calypso Marine confirms to Frank that it does not have any Zodiacs in stock. Thanking them, and hanging up his cell phone, he tells Alfonzo they’ll need to get the two remaining boats—such as they are—seaworthy again. Al steps gingerly onto the first and larger of the two boats. He hops up and down a few times on a blackened spot near the stern to test for integrity.
“How does it look?” Irv asks.
“Seems OK,” Alfonzo says. “I’d risk it. We won’t set any speed records, though.”
“So . . . off we go, then. Right?”
“Well . . . no,” says Alfonzo, examining the motor. “Your friend cut off the starter cord.”
“Take it from the other boat?”
“Cut that too.”
“That can’t be a hard fix,” says Irv. “You take off the cowl, pop off the choke linkage, and wrap another cord around the motor. Bob’s your uncle.”
“Yeah,” says Alfonzo, unconvinced. “Anyone got any cord?”
“Can’t you use a shoestring or something?” Irv asks. “I think I saw that in a cartoon once.”
Alfonzo looks down. “Mine are tactical boots. Zipper and Velcro. Why, what have you got?”
Irv wordlessly looks at his cowboy boots and so does Alfonzo. Neither comments.
“Frank?” Irv yells. “We need a starter cord from the hardware store.”
“I got it, I got it . . .” Frank says, waving as he opens the door to his police car and wedges himself in like a cupcake into a packed lunch box. Rumbling up his eight-cylinder he sets off to find the missing component to modern law enforcement.
Alfonzo instructs the men to spray some kind of magical glop on the bottom of the blackened boat that supposedly will harden up and help prevent a leak from forming. They scale back their gear to raw essentials—including walkie-talkies and firearms—and set to the task of turning the small fishing boat into a small fishing boat filled with a tactical SWAT team.
Frank returns thirty-five minutes later with a nylon cord and lunch.
A Few Smartly Chosen Words
The brass bell above the police door at the sheriff’s station rings, crisp and bright, before Howard Howard’s towering head muffles it with his coif. Howard has never visited Irv’s police station—at least not since Melinda has worked here—and no one knows him by sight. But when he opens his mouth to speak, Muppet the dog knows him by sound.
“I’m looking for the sheriff,” says Howard, gliding into the office like a specter.
Muppet, who’s been resting after an exhausting nap, springs from the floor of the kitchen, stumbles on the waxed linoleum, runs to the front door, and skids to a halt in front of an imperial God of a man who hovers above him with eyes of puppy-dog brown and eyebrows as expressive and inhuman as his own.
“Who are you?” Howard asks the dog.
Melinda can see that Muppet does not know the answer because Muppet does not speak English. But he wants to know. He wants to answer Howard.
“Woof,” says Muppet.
“And where’s the sheriff?” Howard asks the office more generally.
Melinda had been in Irv’s office typing up numerous warrants for the county that have to be issued by the end of the week, and she stops working as soon as Howard starts to speak and Muppet shuts up.
“I’m Deputy Melinda Powell, sir,” she says, rising and extending her hand. Standing close to him, she is dwarfed. While Irv has broader shoulders and generally more heft to him, Howard’s Lincoln-esque height, raised chin, and lowered gaze make him far more imposing. It’s like looking up at an angry Gandalf.
“Where’s the sheriff, Deputy Powell?”
“In Saranac Lake. The town, not the body of water. We believe that Marcus Ødegård may be in the general area based on a call we received. Irv is there with Frank Allman and the regional SWAT team.”
“How many men is that?” he asked.
“Maybe half a dozen, sir. I’m not sure.”
“How many
