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earliest.”
    “Plenty of time for us to get all the preliminaries under way here.”
    “What’s that all about?” asked Osborne as he and Lew headed over to where the EMTs were waiting.
    “Country Fest has been making up for all the extra hours we’ve had work with free tickets to the shows,” said Lew. “When I called down to Wausau and said I had tickets to see Shania Twain tonight—I had instant cooperation.”
    A smile of satisfaction crossed her face and Osborne knew why. This was a marked improvement in her usual relations with “those goddam Wausau boys.” The lead supervisor of the Wausau Crime Lab was not one of Lew’s favorite people—nor she his. Close to retirement age, Chuck Meyer was a former FBI agent who had little respect for women in the military or in law enforcement.
    Whenever she needed assistance from his lab—assistance for which Loon Lake had to pay good money—he found ways to make it clear that he considered Police Chief Lewellyn Ferris to be way out of her league.
    It was always the same battle: He would respond to her request with a snide remark implying that a man in her position would be able to handle the situation, whatever it was. She would listen to his rant, and when he had finished, in a calm voice she would list the resources and manpower needed. She would then request that he fax her a proposed budget and timeline. Chuck would balk, insisting he needed at least twenty-four hours advance notice.
    “Fine,” Lew would say, “I’ll send down a few figures.” Which she would do within thirty minutes—but only after trimming the projected costs by thirty percent. This would send Chuck into a frenzy. Within fifteen minutes, he would fire back an adjusted budget, which Lew would walk over to the home of the Loon Lake mayor for approval. The routine was repeated every couple of months—and Chuck never caught on.
    Today, when Lew called in, he was on vacation and Bruce was in charge. Bruce, who was bored, a Shania Twain fan, and, Osborne suspected, pleased to be working again with Lew. She found him willing to negotiate without paperwork and—once the free tickets were mentioned—running for the parking lot.
    “Where’s Ray?” said Lew, looking around after instructing the EMTs. “He didn’t leave, did he? I’ll need more photos once they have those bodies ready for transport. Cost a bloody fortune if I have to have Bruce shoot ‘em.”
    “He drove up the road about forty-five minutes ago,” said Osborne. “I examined the victim who rolled out of the backseat and the pattern of postmortem lividity indicates she did not die sitting in the car. She died standing up—which may be true of all three. Ray wanted to backtrack the direction the car was traveling to see if he might find any sign of where they were shot.”
    “He’s been gone long enough, he must have found something,” said Lew. “Let’s hope anyway. Any idea when all this may have happened?”
    “Not with this hot weather,” said Osborne. “Afraid I have to defer to the pathologist on that.”
    Lew nodded. “I had Marlene call out to Thunder Bay and Robbie was right—neither Donna Federer nor Pat Kuzynski showed up for work last night. She reached Pat’s mother, who was on the verge of calling us. Donna lives alone but Marlene put a call in to her father. I’ve arranged for them to meet us at the hospital to identify the bodies. But when it comes to Peg Garmin, I don’t know who we’ll call.”
    “Ray knows the family and—”
    “Family? I didn’t know she had family. After her husband died, I thought …”
    “Let’s ask Ray when he gets back here,” said Osborne. “He was pretty shook up, so I didn’t ask any questions. But his mother and Peg were close. Ray has known Peg Garmin since he was a kid.”
    Lew was astonished. “Are you serious? Dr. Pradt’s wife was a close friend of Peg Garmin’s?” As she was shaking her head in disbelief, the battered red pickup rattled into