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it satisfied the dentist.
    And then there was the night that Mary Lee got sick. A blizzard was howling around the lake, the wind chill had dropped to 50 below zero and the blowing snow was four to five feet deep in drifts. Mary Lee woke at 3:00 A.M. with a bronchitis that had turned into pneumonia. Time was precious. Osborne called Ray for help. Within minutes, Ray had the plow on the front of his pickup and was pushing through the bitter blackness for a woman who’d ridiculed him. Mary Lee didn’t make it, but Osborne was profoundly thankful anyway. No one could have gotten her to the hospital any faster than the two men did that night.
    Mary Lee had been a hard woman to live with, and Osborne knew Ray understood that without the two men ever discussing her.
    These days he was the one man Osborne was always happy to have in the boat. He could pull answers from places where few thought to go.
    Osborne hung up the pay phone and turned towards the bar where Lew sat gulping her glass of water. Clammy in his wet clothes, he envied her: she looked quite dry and comfortable. Her ample khaki-clad hips spread with authority over the high bar chair. Above the open collar of her fishing shirt, her round face was relaxed, friendly, and, Osborne noticed as he took the bar stool beside her, surprisingly weathered. Did she fish year round?
    “I have to wait for Roger to get here with the ambulance,” she said, pushing the other glass of water his way, “shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
    As he seated himself beside her, Osborne wondered if her job ever got really dangerous. He couldn’t imagine crime in the northwoods beyond off-trail snowmobiling and drunken drivers. And, of course, the random body in the Prairie River.
    She was the mother of three grown children who had gone through school with his own, and he had been as taken aback as anyone when the
Loon Lake News
announced her appointment to the force, the first woman police officer in the history of Loon Lake. He and his buddies at McDonald’s had chewed on that for days. Mary Lee and her friends, who had never given a thought to full-time employment, were sure she had made a mistake giving up her “proper job” as a secretary at the paper mill. No one ever expected Lewellyn Ferris to be promoted to Chief.
    Yet here she was a short seven years later. But then, Lew had always been a little different.
    She was built like a linebacker. And walked like one, too. Well, maybe that was putting it a little harshly. She had broad shoulders, and she walked standing tall, shoulders back, tummy in, arms loose. She walked like an athlete. Osborne had to admit he found Lew Ferris more than a little intimidating. He could see why secretarial work didn’t appeal to her.
    The dancers must have been on break when Lew and Osborne first walked in because suddenly music started up again in a room off to the back of the bar. The crowd around the bar cleared, and most of the men drifted back to tables. From the corner of his eye, Osborne could see the small stage. Uneasy over what might happen next, he hoped Lew’s deputy, Roger, would rescue them soon.
    “So, Doc, how come Ray Pradt keeps such close tabs on you?” Lew lowered her voice. With the jukebox turned off and the music coming from the next room, they no longer had to shout to be heard.
    “He’s my neighber …”
    “Ray Pradt is your neighbor?” she interrupted. “You gotta be kidding. I thought that guy lived in a shack—in the woods—with the rest of the wildlife.”
    “No-o,” said Osborne, smiling gently. “Ray’s a good friend. He bought the lot next to mine three years ago. Out on Loon Lake. I take it you know him?”
    “Of course I know Ray,” she said, “better than I’d like to—may I say.” She raised her glass and gave him one of those looks. Ray did not appear to be one of her favorite people.
    Osborne could think of a dozen reasons why. He knew that over the years Ray had had more than his