Bonegrinder Read Online Free PDF Page A

them, feeling awkward in the curiously graced presence of their grief, and stepped to the door. The voice that stopped him was soft and controlled.
    “Did you say an animal, Sheriff?”
    With an effort he turned and looked at Beth Larsen’s soul in her dark eyes. “Had to be….” He nodded again and left quickly.
    Lil Higgins was standing by the corner of the office. Wintone didn’t say anything to her, was barely aware of her on the edge of his vision, as he strode to his parked patrol car.
    He started the car and headed toward Big Water Lake, dwelling on the idea that his job was getting harder with the years. According to Lil Higgins, the Larsens had originally intended to stay at one of the motels on the north shore of the lake, deciding after a long discussion to drive their station wagon south rather than let the northern forest fire ruin their vacation. That was a discussion they would both remember for the rest of their lives.
    Wintone slowed the car and steered through a curve beneath an ancient leaning elm whose lower branches had been axed to permit passage. Then he turned right onto the narrow dirt road that skirted the lake. Rocks beat against the insides of the patrol car’s fenders and a plume of thick dust obscured rear-view-mirror vision. The green wildness that surrounded Wintone was in many places almost impossible for a man to move through, its interior guarded by brush and thick, upright sapling trunks like sturdy, impassable bars. Even ax and chain saw were insufficient to probe the woods’ depths. Through the trees to his left, Wintone could occasionally glimpse the lake’s surface, dull and flat and endless-seeming. It looked like a place that would keep its secrets.
    Sonny Tibbet moved out fast from the shade of a blackjack oak and flagged down the car. He looked glad to see Wintone.
    “Joe James had to go on back to town,” Sonny said when the sheriff had rolled down the car window to the heat. “Up over that rise is where it happened.”
    Wintone got out of the car and followed Sonny over a small rise and down a flat stretch shaded deep by oak and maple to the bank of Big Water Lake. Insects flitted up at each of their footfalls in the bent, dry grass and mosquitoes and gnats swarmed about the two men. Wintone watched a large mosquito light on Sonny’s sweat-stained shirt collar and crawl toward his red, perspiring neck.
    The boy had died right at the water’s edge, and Wintone stood for a moment and looked at the gentle lake water lapping at where blood had soaked into the churned mud. A cane fishing pole still lay on the bank, the homemade bait on the end of the line already covered with ants. The lake was shallow here, sloping out to the deeper area, and the water was dark green and broken by reeds and a rotting, half submerged fallen tree. Not much fishing here except for carp or mudcat, but an eleven-year-old boy wouldn’t know that.
    “Lookit here, Sheriff.”
    Wintone looked to where Sonny was pointing and saw a good, clear print up where the bank was less muddy. After his first glance he bent low to examine it.
    Old Bonifield had been right. Whatever had made the print must have been big, heavy. The impression was over an inch deep, almost round, with one edge of it deeper than the other and sort of gnarled.
    Wintone stared at the print awhile and decided he should make a plaster cast. He’d brought equipment with him in the trunk of the patrol car, and he gave Sonny the keys and asked him to get that and the camera in the glove compartment. Wintone hadn’t been sure he would want to make a cast of the print, but now he hoped that moisture hadn’t gotten to the quick-dry plaster mix that had sat so long in his bottom desk drawer.
    The plaster was fine, and while the cast was hardening Wintone looked over the rest of the scene carefully, examined the boy’s fishing pole and bait and searched in vain for another clear print. He felt a chill like one of the damned mosquitoes