afternoon and leave the door unlocked, no matter where you live. That's just plain crazy."
Sharon sighed. "I'm telling you, that's the way it is in a place like this. What customers are they going to miss? Their neighbors? They'd probably help themselves and leave the money on the counter. And neighbors don't steal from neighbors out here. Grace, what are you looking for?"
She'd been wandering around the cafe, eyes sweeping the floor, the empty booths, and finally the front window. "Hmm?"
"You see something out there?"
"Outside? No. But I'm going to take a walk, check out the house we passed on the way in. Be right back."
Grace started to walk around the side of the cafe toward the frame house behind it, then stopped, blue eyes riveted to the small metal box bolted into the concrete block. A fat sheath of PVC snaked down from the bottom into the ground. She walked a little closer to read the name of the local telephone company imprinted on the box, just to make sure, then felt a shot of adrenaline fire at her heart. The PVC sheath, and the cluster of wires within, had been sliced through.
Grace froze in position, moving only her eyes, and felt her hearing sharpen, trying to pull sounds out of this eerily silent place.
Kids,she told herself.Kids with a pocketknife and a serious streaky of ill-guided mischief.
After a few moments she moved slowly, cautiously, circling the gas station until she found its phone box and severed cord sprouting ragged wire ends. Her mind was moving at light speed, compensating for the restraint she forced on her body.
She found the outside phone box on the house, another clean cut, and then moved warily to the front door, opened it, looked into the shadows, and listened. It wasn't necessary to search the place. She knew instantly that there was no one inside.
She closed the door to the house quietly, then stood there on the stoop for a moment, looking, listening, longing for a breeze to ruffle the silence that threatened to smother her.
She didn't care what Sharon said about normalcy and small towns and unlocked doors on a Saturday afternoon. She couldn't think of any of that now. She was too busy listening to the voice in her head that said they weren't supposed to be there.
SHERIFF MICHAEL HALLORAN was sitting in his office on the second floor of the Kingsford County Government Center, his chair turned toward the big window that looked out over Helmut Krueger's dairy farm.
He'd never heard anyone describe Bonar Carlson as brilliant, but the man saw more than most and paid attention to details that the rest of the world glossed over. That was part of what made him such a good cop. Halloran was now seeing what Bonar had noticed a long time ago, and it made him feel a little inferior, like he'd been walking around with his eyes shut for most of the summer.
Helmut Krueger's pasture wasn't nearly as lush and green as it should have been; it had that autumn cast that happens when grass starts to dry from the roots up and the yellow shows through. And if that wasn't enough to confirm Bonar's predictions of drought, all you had to do was look at the herd of Holsteins. They were crowded into a black-and-white jumble today, butts out like football players in a huddle, tails beating ineffectually at the plague of biting flies that could take a hundred pounds off a heifer in a matter of days.
Bugs of one sort or another were a constant bother during any Wisconsin summer, but when drought threatened, the mosquito population went way down while the deerflies, horseflies, and stable flies reproduced in epidemic numbers to torment the daylights out of farm animals.
The signs had all been there in front of him, and Halloran hadn't seen them. It made him question his own powers of observation, made him wonder what he was doing in a job where success often rested on seeing what other people didn't.
Like this case. This was his second homicide case in as many years, after a decade of
Sharon sighed. "I'm telling you, that's the way it is in a place like this. What customers are they going to miss? Their neighbors? They'd probably help themselves and leave the money on the counter. And neighbors don't steal from neighbors out here. Grace, what are you looking for?"
She'd been wandering around the cafe, eyes sweeping the floor, the empty booths, and finally the front window. "Hmm?"
"You see something out there?"
"Outside? No. But I'm going to take a walk, check out the house we passed on the way in. Be right back."
Grace started to walk around the side of the cafe toward the frame house behind it, then stopped, blue eyes riveted to the small metal box bolted into the concrete block. A fat sheath of PVC snaked down from the bottom into the ground. She walked a little closer to read the name of the local telephone company imprinted on the box, just to make sure, then felt a shot of adrenaline fire at her heart. The PVC sheath, and the cluster of wires within, had been sliced through.
Grace froze in position, moving only her eyes, and felt her hearing sharpen, trying to pull sounds out of this eerily silent place.
Kids,she told herself.Kids with a pocketknife and a serious streaky of ill-guided mischief.
After a few moments she moved slowly, cautiously, circling the gas station until she found its phone box and severed cord sprouting ragged wire ends. Her mind was moving at light speed, compensating for the restraint she forced on her body.
She found the outside phone box on the house, another clean cut, and then moved warily to the front door, opened it, looked into the shadows, and listened. It wasn't necessary to search the place. She knew instantly that there was no one inside.
She closed the door to the house quietly, then stood there on the stoop for a moment, looking, listening, longing for a breeze to ruffle the silence that threatened to smother her.
She didn't care what Sharon said about normalcy and small towns and unlocked doors on a Saturday afternoon. She couldn't think of any of that now. She was too busy listening to the voice in her head that said they weren't supposed to be there.
SHERIFF MICHAEL HALLORAN was sitting in his office on the second floor of the Kingsford County Government Center, his chair turned toward the big window that looked out over Helmut Krueger's dairy farm.
He'd never heard anyone describe Bonar Carlson as brilliant, but the man saw more than most and paid attention to details that the rest of the world glossed over. That was part of what made him such a good cop. Halloran was now seeing what Bonar had noticed a long time ago, and it made him feel a little inferior, like he'd been walking around with his eyes shut for most of the summer.
Helmut Krueger's pasture wasn't nearly as lush and green as it should have been; it had that autumn cast that happens when grass starts to dry from the roots up and the yellow shows through. And if that wasn't enough to confirm Bonar's predictions of drought, all you had to do was look at the herd of Holsteins. They were crowded into a black-and-white jumble today, butts out like football players in a huddle, tails beating ineffectually at the plague of biting flies that could take a hundred pounds off a heifer in a matter of days.
Bugs of one sort or another were a constant bother during any Wisconsin summer, but when drought threatened, the mosquito population went way down while the deerflies, horseflies, and stable flies reproduced in epidemic numbers to torment the daylights out of farm animals.
The signs had all been there in front of him, and Halloran hadn't seen them. It made him question his own powers of observation, made him wonder what he was doing in a job where success often rested on seeing what other people didn't.
Like this case. This was his second homicide case in as many years, after a decade of
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