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overhang of the Wolf River while trout fishing late one night, they had had to wait nearly an hour for a thunderstorm to pass. An hour during which Osborne had told the story of his wife’s death. He wanted her to know the details of that night because it explained his loyalty to Ray Pradt.
    Lew tended to come down hard on Ray, needling him for his bad jokes, his ill-timed bird calls, and his record of misdemeanors, a lengthy list that included repeated citations for poaching on private land and, at the same time or on other occasions, smoking a popular controlled substance. It was the latter that caused her to balk at deputizing Ray just when he was most needed.
    Lew might deputize Osborne for help in identifying victims and early clues to cause of death, but when she needed a jump on some nogoodnik hunkered down in an abandoned whiskey still somewhere deep in the Northwoods, she would need Ray, arrest record and all. At least Osborne thought so. No one—meaning no one on the police force or in the Loon Lake telephone directory—could cut through woods and cross water like Ray. It was as if he had been born with the instincts of an eagle. It had crossed Osborne’s mind more than once that where Ray’s father had been a cutter of the body, Ray could go to the heart of nature. Unerringly and without fear.
    And so he had taken advantage of the lightning strikes over the Wolf River to make Lew listen. Methodically, as if detailing a new technique for root canals, he had described Mary Lee’s dedicated torture of the young and not-so-innocent fishing guide.
    It started when Ray lucked into ownership of the property next door to the Osbornes’ newly constructed lakeside home because he happened to be at a grave site, waiting to fill it in, just as the deceased’s heirs discussed their plan to put the land up for sale. Loon Lake being one of Wisconsin’s top five trophy muskie lakes, Ray, shovel in hand, made an offer over and above the asking price.
    Days later, the parking of the “Pradt Mobile,” the scruffy trailer Ray called home, in full view of Mary Lee’s living room picture window, was the catalyst for full-scale warfare. The president of the Loon Lake Garden Club was not going to have that trailer trash ruin “everything I’ve worked for in my life.”
    She wasn’t exaggerating. Over the thirty-eight years of their marriage, Osborne had come to realize that he’d married a woman who prized her possessions above all else, certainly above him. Nor was she happy unless she was in full control of any life that touched hers. This meant she was seldom happy.
    If Osborne had fine-tuned the art of escape through fishing, Mary Lee had turned negativity into her artistic achievement. The most pleasant remark or gesture from her husband—or a friend—was always interpreted as a cover for some hidden, dastardly agenda. Only her daughters were viewed as benign.
    And so it was that Ray met one of the few people who ever hated him.
    He took it on the chin. Where Osborne had learned to duck and cover, Ray stood his ground, a sheepish, amiable grin flitting across his features as Mary Lee conducted herself like Rumpelstilskin, stomping along the property line, hands hard on her hips or fingers jabbing into the air, and all the while shouting demands.
    “I hear you, Mrs. Osborne,” was Ray’s gentle response. Just those words and nothing more. One morning, pushed to the edge by Ray’s refusal to move his trailer and the Oneida County sheriff’s determination that the Pradt Mobile was legally sited, she even called Ray’s heritage into question. At that point, Osborne suggested she quiet down. He reminded her it was Ray’s mother who had proposed Mary Lee for membership in the Rhinelander Garden Club, a group considered more prestigious because it drew from a population ten times the size of Loon Lake.
    Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Mary Lee, Osborne decided to befriend Ray, whom he had heard was a wizard when it came to