LITMIR.BIZ

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night.”

      “She had it coming. You know she did.”

      “Did it ever occur to you that you might be wrong about her? I don’t see Eddie as being her type at all.”

      “Think about it. She kicked you to the curb at the same time Eddie left me.”

      “Alright, so we’re rid of her. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

      “I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that. On Wednesday she asked if it would be okay to tell her parents she was staying with me for a few days. I only said yes because I thought we might be friends again like we used to be. Now she’s taken off and refuses to answer her cell phone.”

      “After Thursday night, what do you expect? You got physical. You stepped over the line.”

      “She gave as good as she got.” Madison touches the scratches on her face. “She hasn’t been in class and if her parents come looking for her I don’t know what to tell them. Do you have any idea where she’s gone?”

      “In case you’ve forgotten, she’s my ex-girlfriend. She doesn’t provide me with her daily itinerary.” He knows more than he’s telling, but this isn’t the time to share it. Wind rattles the cottage window and rose vines scrape the shingle siding. “Let’s sit on it a day or two and see what happens. If her parents show up, tell the truth.”

      Once Madison is off the line, Cody lies back with his arms behind his head and stares at the ceiling. When Sterling broke up with him he didn’t hear from her again… until last week. Now their lives are entangled in a way he never anticipated.

      “I’m pregnant,” she said, getting right to the point. There was a moment’s disorientation before he found his voice.

      “How did that happen?”

      “What kind of question is that?”

      “You always took precautions.”

      “I know, but it happened anyway.”

      “You’re not implying it’s mine?” he says. “I haven’t seen you in months.”

      “You make it sound like it was back in the Ice Age. I’m saying it could be you. There’s a fifty-fifty chance.”

      “Okay. Have you seen a doctor? I mean, do you know for sure?”

      “No, but all the obvious signs are there.”

      “Before you go off the deep end, get one of those over-the-counter test kits?”

      “Are you crazy? If I do, it’ll be all over town.”

      “Then go to the clinic in Appleton and get it done right. No one knows you there.”

      “If I test positive I’ll need money to get right again and I can’t go to my parents. It would ruin their good opinion of me.”

      “Is that what this is about? Money? You’re the one who left me, remember, and now you want me to ride to your rescue like the cavalry? Shouldn’t you be asking the person you left me for, the other Mr. Fifty Percent?”

      “I can’t. He doesn’t know.”

      “Don’t you think it’s time he does?”

      “You don’t understand. I can’t talk to him the way I can…could…talk to you. Please help me. If you lend me the money I promise I’ll pay it back.”

      “I know all about your promises, Sterling.”

      “I know and I’m sorry for the way I treated you. You must think I’m terrible.”

      “You are terrible,” he says. “Let me know what they say at the clinic and we’ll talk again. You have to realize I’m not the same gullible guy I was before you came along.”

      CHAPTER 2

      “The dog won’t let me approach the body,” says Frack.

      Deputy Frank “Frack” Telusky is first on the scene. We stand side by side in the woods at the edge of a dirt road just off the main highway. A big brown dog lies protectively over the form of a tall teenage girl. She looks like a sleeping princess in the crackling autumn grass, her hair the color of the oak leaves drifting from the tree above her head. Beneath a network of angry scratches, her face has a beautiful symmetry even in death.

      I observe the dog, his labored breathing and worried eyes. “He’s scared, Frack. I’ll get him some water.”

      I’m Deputy Robely Danner, the only female officer on our small force. Mike, Frack and I man the substation while County Sheriff Early Brooker is assigned to the Coroner’s Office at the county seat. Mike Oxenburg and I ride together and Frack, the last to be hired on, usually rides solo.

      I walk to the car, return with a cup of water from my thermos and kneel several paces from the dog. He’s a fluffy mix about the size of a refrigerator who’s picked up a few burrs in his double coat. He’s thirsty and stressed and growls low in his throat. He licks the dead girl’s cheek and nudges her hand, but she’s not waking up, now or ever.

      “That’s a good boy,” I say. He sizes me up with a worry line between anxious eyes and runs a dry tongue between his teeth. After a moment’s indecision he pulls himself to his feet and empties the cup. I check his worn leather collar but find no tags. He follows me to the car and flops down on the back seat.

      My partner Mike, is a big, soft-bellied teddy bear who’s moving an Amish buggy and two boys on bicycles further back from the crime scene. He’s a hard-working nuts-and-bolts cop with three year old triplets, Tommy, Trevor and Travis, a midlife surprise for him and his wife Tammy, who works at the Stop and Go.

      Frack, on the other hand, is Mike’s opposite, a whippy chain-smoker with smooth muscles like steel cables. After an honorable stint in the Marines, he worked an oil fracking operation in the Dakotas before returning home. Because he’s explosively powerful in a pinch, we started calling him Frack and it stuck. In last winter’s white-out, he single-handedly lifted the front end of a car while I pulled a hapless passenger from beneath the undercarriage.

      We’re all natives of the small farming community of Abundance…one stop sign, two churches and three bars, one owned by my four-times divorced mother, Gladys Calhoun, whose name is all too well-known to law enforcement.

      Frack and I look down on the body of the dead girl. Her blue eyes, frosted over in death, stare unblinkingly into the stratosphere. Her broken fingernails indicate a valiant struggle before someone got the best of her.

      She wears jeans, a chunky pink sweater with the neck stretched down over her left shoulder and a pink and blue plaid tennis shoe on one foot. It appears to be a soft kill… no stab wounds, bullet holes or blood… but that doesn’t make her any less dead. I snap photos from various angles with my camera phone and put it back in the pocket of my jacket.

      “There should be another shoe around here someplace,” I say. I look at my watch. “Forensics should be here by now. Do you know how many people trampled the scene before we got here?”

      “None that I know of,” says Frack, bagging the girl’s hands. “The boys waved down the Hochstetler’s who put in the call from the Olsen farm. They never got out of their buggy.

      Mike motions me over and introduces me to Ty Behnke and Josh Scheulke, both nine. The local phone book, about the size of a church bulletin, is full of Behnkes and Scheulkes, the Wisconsin equivalent of Smith and Jones. If the Amish had phones we’d see Lapps, Stoltzfuses and Zooks. The boys saw no suspicious activity when they stumbled onto the scene, nor do they know the girl. Mike calls Ralph Behnke to pick them up.

      The Hochstetler’s buggy sits on the shoulder of the highway. They’re a young married couple named Samuel and Ruth. “When you first arrived on the scene did you see any vehicles, anything suspicious?” I ask.

      “No, just the dead girl and the two boys. Ruth found the

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