Read Rough Country for Free Online Page A

really be taking a chance. If they saw her, people would remember.”
    “We’ll check everybody on this road,” the sheriff said. “Every swinging dick.”
    Car coming; they heard it before they could see it, and when they saw it, it was an oversized white van. “Crime scene,” Virgil said.
     
     
     
    THERE WERE FOUR GUYS with the crime-scene crew, led by Ron Mapes, who’d last run into Virgil while they were looking at the murder of an Indian cop from the Red Lake Chippewa reservation.
    Virgil ran them through what had been done, including the marker buoy out on the lake, and all four of them looked down the track toward the lake. “We’re gonna need head nets, metal detectors . . .” Mapes began.
    Virgil said to Mapes, “Could you guys go in there right now, take a quick look at the track? See if anything pops up? At Red Lake, you told me the killer was a small guy, and that got me started in the right direction.”
    “We can look,” Mapes said.
    The crew all had fifteen-inch rubber boots and head nets and cotton gloves to protect against the mosquitoes, and they took it slow, pushing down the track, looking for anything along the way, checking for metal. While they were doing that, Virgil, the sheriff, and Johnson walked farther down the road, looking at the driveways branching off to the sides. The driveways were gravel-and-dirt tracks leading uphill, away from the lake: hunting cabins, the sheriff said, usually empty until the fall.

    THE CRIME-SCENE CREW had been in for ten minutes, out of sight, when they got back, and the sheriff called the Grand Rapids airport Avis and reserved an SUV for Virgil. He’d just rung off when they heard somebody coming in, and then Mapes pushed delicately through the brush beside the killer’s track, still searching it with his eyes. When he got out on the road, he pulled off his head net and said, “The mosquitoes are thick in there . . . gets wet about a hundred yards in.”
    “So . . .”
    “I can’t promise you that she’s the killer, but I can tell you that whoever walked back there is a woman,” Mapes said. “She maybe went in more than once, or maybe there were a couple of them, because it’s tracked up.”
    “Scouting tracks,” Virgil said.
    “Anyway, we got three partial footprints so far, the instep of a woman’s boot or shoe. Maybe a shoe, because there’s a low heel,” Mapes said. “We won’t be able to give you an exact size because we’re mostly seeing that instep, but it also looks to me like there’s a capital M in the instep, a logo. One of the guys thinks it’s for Mephisto shoes. He said Mephisto shoes run about three hundred bucks a pair.”
    “Not something you’d see every day,” Virgil said.
    “Heck, I don’t even know if you could buy any locally, I mean, closer than the Cities,” Mapes said. “Though you could order them on the Internet.”
    “What else?” Virgil asked.
    “Well . . . nothing. But I thought that was quite a bit,” Mapes said.
    “Nothing on the beaver lodge?”
    “Not there yet. I’m going back in.”
    “Done good, Ron,” Virgil said.
    The sheriff looked at Virgil and said, “Gotta be somebody at the lodge. A woman, shoes from the Cities.” Sanders had relaxed a notch: this was more of a Cities problem than a local deal, and he was happy to have it that way.
    “Let’s go back and talk to Stanhope,” Virgil said. “Then if you could have one of your guys give me a lift down to Grand Rapids, we could let Johnson go.”
    “I can do that,” the sheriff said.
     
     
     
    ON THE WAY BACK to the lodge, Johnson said, “I feel like I’m ditching you.”
    “You’re not. This isn’t your job. Catch a fish for me, up there,” Virgil said.
    “Not gonna catch any fish,” Johnson said gloomily. He ducked his head over the steering wheel, looking up at the bright sky. “This trip is cursed.”
    At the lodge, Virgil hopped out, got his duffel bag, walked around to the driver’s side, and said,