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It made sense to Harry that, several hours later, Bill Tracy would have been the one to leak the news about the body out on

Miller’s Road. He most likely popped into the diner before his next job just busting to tell someone—maybe Jenny—about what

he’d discovered, how he’d been the one to call the cops, how he was right there when it all happened. How often did you get

a chance to be a minor celebrity at the Lucknow Diner?

If Harry knew anything, it was that you couldn’t count on people to keep their mouths shut. In this town, gossip was a brushfire.

Once it got going, there wasn’t much to stop it. Wouldn’t be long before Rachel Bosma, that reporter for the Lucknow Leader , would be calling him.

After he’d given the bacon sandwich to Gavin and met, briefly, the owner of that train shop, he felt rejuvenated and went

back to the scene. With the sun up, he’d be able to get a better look at things. He’d sent out one of his other officers,

Nancy Clarkson, to relieve Stick, telling her to set up barriers about a quarter mile in each direction from where the body

had been found. Not just to keep gawkers away, but to walk that stretch in case something might have been missed. Someone

might have had more than just that one body to dispose of. After all, there were two Lucknow men missing.

“Hey, Nancy,” Harry said when he walked up to her cruiser. She had the driver’s-side back door open, her legs and butt sticking

out as she searched for something on the floor.

She crawled back out, stood at attention, and made a brushing-herself-off gesture even though there was nothing on her. Looking sheepish, she said, “Hey, boss.”

“Lose something?”

“My stupid Palm Pilot thing. With all my phone numbers and appointments and everything.”

“When’d you lose it?”

“Haven’t seen it in a couple of days. My whole life’s in there.”

Harry smiled. “I have this thing called a day planner. I write stuff in it with a pencil.”

Nancy sighed. She been with the Lucknow Police for five years, and, lost Palm Pilot aside, she was as sharp as they came.

Harry figured he’d lose her one day to someplace like Burlington or Montpelier, or maybe she’d make the jump to Boston or

Albany. More money, more challenges. She was married, with a three-year-old son.

“Marty’s been and gone, took the body with him,” she said. The coroner.

“Okay.”

“And I’ve walked both sides of the road, quarter mile in each direction, and didn’t see a thing, but I can take another run

at it, go a little farther off the road.”

“Sounds good,” Harry said. “You knocked on any doors?”

There were several houses along this stretch but spaced far apart and set back some distance from the road.

“No,” Nancy said. “Needed to stay close, in case anyone drove around the barriers. Had one guy give me a hard time, said he

was gonna be late for work. I started to get out my ticket book and he turned around. We don’t know yet who it is?”

Harry shook his head.

“I had a look,” Nancy said, looking grim. “You think an animal did that to him?”

He shook his head again. “No. You hang in, I’ll ask around.”

Harry went to the house closest to where the body had been left, a simple one-story with peeling white paint, several missing

shingles, and a rusted tractor in the front yard tangled in enough weeds and grasses that it had become an integral part of

the landscaping.

There was a battered Chevy in the drive that dated back to the seventies. The car looked familiar to Harry, who thought he’d

pulled it over more than once. He rapped on the front door and waited for the sounds of footsteps within.

The door creaked open twenty seconds later. A man in pajama bottoms and a stained sleeveless undershirt, what Harry thought

of as a “wife-beater,” squinted at him.

“Yeah?”

Harry introduced himself, then pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the patrol cars stationed out on the road. “Had a bit

of an incident last night and I was hoping you might be able to help us.”

“What kinda incident?”

“Wondering if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary last night between, say, eleven and two or three in the morning?”

The man continued to squint. “Don’t I know you?”

“It’s possible, sir. What’s your name?”

“Darrell Crohn, Esquire.”

Harry’s eyebrows rose briefly. “Esquire. So, you’re a lawyer, Mr. Crohn?”

He shook his head. “No, I just like the sound of it. Think you gave me a speeding ticket.”

“It’s very possible.”

“Yeah, that was you. Give me a ticket for driving too fast near the school when it was ten o’clock at night and there wasn’t

even any kids around. You folks should be out catching terrorists, not bothering the likes of me.”

“At the moment, sir, I’m not here to bother you, but to seek your assistance in an investigation. You notice anything unusual late last night?”

“Like what?”

“Maybe a vehicle parked out by the road. Some lights. Anything suspicious?”

Darrell Crohn slowly shook his head. “Nope. I was asleep. Went to bed around nine or so, got up maybe an hour ago.”

“Okay, well, thank you for your time.”

“Only woke up once, around two, because of the train.”

Harry said, “Train?”

“The whistle. Why they have to blow the goddamn whistle in the middle of the goddamn night?”

“A train whistle woke you up.”

“Isn’t that what I said? But I got back to sleep pretty quick.”

“What line of work are you in, Mr. Crohn?”

“Odd jobs. Salvage, mostly.”

“Any chance you might have had something to drink before you retired last evening?”

Darrell smiled slyly. “That is a distinct possibility, Mr. Chief, sir.”

The rail line that bisected Lucknow didn’t come anywhere near Miller’s Road. Darrell clearly had been awakened by his own

imaginings.

Harry gave the man a tip of a hat that wasn’t there and said, “I thank you for your time. You have a good day, sir.”

Harry had no better luck with the residents of the other nearby houses. He’d hoped at least one place would have been equipped with surveillance cameras, that an image of a vehicle stopping briefly might have been captured. But not one house out this way had a security system. Sure, they locked their doors at night, but this was not what you would call a high crime area. If anything, they were more worried about the occasional black bears that wandered onto their properties and rifled through their trash.

Harry was on his way back to his car when his cell phone rang.

“Chief Cook,” he said, taking the call. He always felt a little funny saying that, like he should add “and bottlewasher.”

Sometimes, some wise-ass would supply the words for him.

Not this time.

“Harry? Marty here.” Martin Grist, the coroner.

“Hey, Marty.”

“The fuck is going on in your neck of the woods?”

“You tell me.”

“Never seen anything like this. Whoever did it, you’d want to take them on a fishing trip. He or she could debone a bass like

nobody’s business.”

“Might sound like a dumb question, Marty, but have you determined a cause of death?”

“Well, he had a pretty nasty bump on the back of the head, but if that didn’t kill him, something else did before he was sliced

up. Asphyxiated, would be my best guess. And then largely bled out before all the detail work was done.”

“Detail work.”

“Taking out the humerus in the upper arms, the radius and ulna in the forearm. Tibia and fibula in the legs. That and the

rib cage were the biggies. Didn’t bother much with the little stuff. All the bones in the fingers were still there. And I

have to say, very meticulously done. Must have had some very fine equipment. Maybe a Dremel.”

“Why would somebody do that, Marty?”

“That, my friend, is your area. Something else. Those two missing people you’ve been trying to find?”

“Yeah. Angus Tanner and Walter Hillman.”

“You know whether either one of them had a tattoo?”

Harry didn’t have to think. He knew the answer. “Tanner’s wife said he’s got an eagle on his back. Served briefly in the Gulf

War.”

“There you go.”

Harry sighed. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this. He wasn’t going to find Tanner alive, but at least he’d found him. And,

while there was still nothing to directly connect Walter’s disappearance to Angus Tanner’s, it certainly didn’t seem to bode

well for the other man. He wasn’t looking forward to the visit he was going to have to pay to the Tanner family.

“I’ve got some more to do here,” Marty said, “but I at least wanted to give you that much.”

Harry thanked him and dropped the Nokia phone back in his pocket. He went back to Nancy’s cruiser.

“Tanner,” he said.

Nancy nodded. “Figured it’d be him or Hillman.”

“Yeah.”

“I talked to a woman from that place.” Nancy pointed to a house about fifty yards up the road. “She was driving to work, had

to give her permission to go around the barrier to get into town. Nice Audi.”

“Anything?”

Nancy shook her head. “Didn’t see anything. She and her husband had that place built last year, nice house. Moved up from

Boston. Both lawyers.”

“They must love living near that guy.” Harry tipped his head toward Crohn’s yard full of junk.

“All she said she heard was a train whistle,” Nancy said. “Woke her up around two. Since when is there a line around here?”