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Flanders drove—he’d come over on the ferry in his police car, an SUV—and Newt climbed into the backseat without hesitation.

I sat in the front passenger seat and studied the laptop that Flatfoot .

.

.

Jon had mounted to his dash.

“Do you use this computer when you’re driving?” I asked.

“I do.

I can run plates, pull up maps, locate addresses, look up warrants, that sort of thing.”

“Seems dangerous,”

I said.

“Like texting and driving.”

“Practice makes perfect, and we have some useful keyboard shortcuts.

I don’t do it when the car is in motion unless I absolutely have to.”

He drove us to Baileys Harbor and pulled into the parking lot of a bar across the street from the boat-launch site where he and Haggerty had met me a couple days earlier.

“Do you like bacon cheeseburgers?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Fries okay?”

“Sure.”

Jon beamed.

“Good.

I like a gal who isn’t afraid to eat.

What do you want on your burger?”

“Some lettuce and tomato.

A thin slice of raw onion if they have it.

That’s it.

No ketchup or mustard.”

“A purist,”

he said, nodding appreciatively.

“Should I get something for the big guy?”

He nodded toward Newt in the backseat.

The fact that he thought of Newt touched me.

“I’m sure he’d enjoy a basic burger with cheese,”

I said.

“Thank you.”

I took a twenty and a ten from my pocket and handed them to him.

“Use any extra for a tip.”

He accepted the money graciously.

“Why don’t you and Newt go scout us out one of those picnic tables over at the boat-launch site while I go inside and order? I’ll bring the food once it’s ready.”

“We can do that.”

Newt and I crossed the street and I staked out a table with a nice harbor view.

Jon arrived with our food about fifteen minutes later and handed me a large foam container, a lemonade, and a paper-wrapped burger.

“Hope the lemonade is okay,”

he said.

“If not, I can go back and get you something else.”

“It’s fine.”

After checking to make sure it wasn’t too hot, I set Newt’s burger on the ground atop the paper it had come wrapped in.

No sooner had I let go of it than Newt gobbled it down so fast that he ate part of the wrapper.

Then he sat and watched us eat, long strings of drool hanging from his mouth.

I loved the beast, but his manners were truly appalling at times.

“I apologize for Newt,”

I said to Jon.

“He usually comports himself with more dignity and restraint, but when it comes to food, he tends to lose all control.”

“On the contrary,”

Jon said.

“The fact that he’s willing to sit there patiently and wait until he’s fed shows remarkable restraint.”

He grabbed one of his French fries and held it aloft in Newt’s direction, giving me a questioning look.

I nodded and he tossed the fry to Newt, who snatched it out of the air and swallowed it whole, flinging a string of drool in the process.

“Do you need to get back to the island soon?”

I asked.

“I gather you’re on duty since you have a police vehicle with you.”

“I’ve got my other full-time officer covering things for now, and we have a part-timer taking backup calls.

I need to return to the island by four, but until then, I’m yours.”

There was something a little too intimate in the way he uttered those last two words.

It made me squirm in my seat and in my gut, and I wondered if I was being overly sensitive because, in general, I enjoyed Jon Flanders’s company.

He proved himself a good conversationalist, chatting about the weather, about how tourists could sometimes be annoying, about dogs, and about how many quality burgers he’d had in his life and where he’d had them.

I did notice that he managed to avoid telling me much of anything about his personal life or past aside from the burger locations, neatly skirting around my questions with clever segues and diversions.

Still, it all felt comfortable enough until we finished eating and Jon hit me with the underlying question that had been lurking beneath the surface of what had thus far been a comfortable, companionable conversation.

“What’s your gut telling you? Is there some kind of monster in Lake Michigan?”

“At the moment my gut is telling me I’m stuffed to the gills,”

I said.

“That was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.

I’ll have to remember this place.”

Jon smiled, but he looked at me intently, waiting, and I knew he wouldn’t let the question go.

I flashed back on those two glowing eyes I’d seen yesterday when looking over the side of Martin’s boat.

In addition to a sliver of fear, I’d experienced a thrill at the sight, a burgeoning hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d finally found my proof.

But the skeptic in me urged circumspection.

“I can’t say yet,”

I said honestly.

Seeing the disappointment on his face, I quickly added, “I’m certain there’s something unusual in the water, something that isn’t normally there, but just what that is, I don’t yet know.

I need more time.”

“How much?”

I shrugged, wondering why he’d asked that question.

Was it a money issue? Or something else? “Hard to say.

Are you being pressured by someone on the matter?”

“Not about you, per se, but to get an answer of some sort, yes.”

“Maybe our chat with Marty will get us some answers.”

Jon nodded, though he looked doubtful.

After gathering up the residue of our meal and disposing of it, we got back in the police car and drove to Marty’s place.

When we got there and I saw that his truck and boat were both gone, I felt disappointment tinged with a hint of resentment when I realized he’d probably gone back out on the water without me.

“Maybe he just went for a pleasure cruise,”

Jon suggested, reading my expression.

I shook my head.

“No, he saw something yesterday on his sonar.

I couldn’t see the screen because of the way the sun was hitting it, but I could tell it had him rattled.

I’m betting he returned to that same spot to have another look.”

I let out a sigh of frustration and shook my head.

“Damn, I wish he’d let me come along.”

Jon looked around at the property, his forehead wrinkled in thought.

“If you want, we can go back to Baileys Harbor and try to commandeer one of the patrol boats to see if we can find him.”

I considered that.

My curiosity was bursting at the seams, but I sensed that tracking Marty down with the cops in tow wouldn’t sit well with him.

It was a decision I’d come to regret.

“No, if Marty had wanted company, he would have let me know he was going out,”

I said.

“Best to leave him to his own devices.

He’ll tell me if he finds something.”

“You sure about that?”

I wasn’t. “I am,”

I said, looking at my cell phone.

“I should get back to the store.

Thanks to that nifty security camera you installed, I can tell things are getting a bit crazy there.”

“Your store is the very definition of ‘crazy.’?”

I winked at him.

“That depends on your definition of ‘normal.’?”

We passed the boat launch in Sister Bay on the way, and I saw Marty’s truck and trailer parked in the same spot it had been in yesterday.

I pointed it out to Jon and then said, “Can you get me the names and contact information for the friends who came here with Oliver Sykes? And I’d like to talk to Stokstad’s wife.

Can you get me her contact info, too?”

Jon frowned, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel.

“We’ve already talked to all of those people, and no one had anything useful to contribute.”

I sensed he was being defensive, as if my desire to talk to these people was somehow an indictment of his own inquiries, a suggestion that the police work had somehow fallen short.

“I’m sure you were very thorough,”

I told him.

“But I’m looking for information of a different nature.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet,”

I said with a meager smile.

“I want to know about offhanded things the victims might have said in passing or activities they might have done that seemed insignificant but also just a smidge out of character.

I want to know what their hobbies and interests were when they were at home.

I want to profile them, kind of like those FBI specialists do, but with a different focus.

That’s why I have Devon scouring their social media and online presence, to see what pages and groups they may have liked or visited or what connections they may have had to other people.

Sometimes a seemingly insignificant detail can be surprisingly enlightening.”

Jon considered that, and I waited.

“Okay,”

he said finally, “I’ll get you the information, but you have to promise me you won’t mention why you’re asking or why I hired you.

I don’t want word of this getting out.

If people find out we’re looking for a lake monster that’s trying to eat people, certain folks will have my head on a platter.

The last thing anyone wants is a reason for people to stay away from Door County.”

“Yes, sir, Chief Flanders!”

I said in my best military voice, giving him a snappy salute.

“I promise to be careful and discreet in my inquiries.”

As if to reassure him of that, Newt leaned forward from the backseat and rested his head on Jon’s shoulder.

Newt had never done that with anyone other than me, and when I saw the corner of Jon’s mouth curl into a smile, it triggered one of my own.