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was crawling up the back of his neck when he looked out at the lake and noticed that some of the reeds were bent or smashed in an indistinct path, as if something big had passed through them. When he turned to mention it, he saw that Sonny was up the bank away from him, standing with his hands in his pockets and gazing out at the lake. Wintone snapped his photographs, then walked up to join him.
    “Figure out anything?” Sonny asked as they walked back to the dusty patrol car.
    “Only that somethin’ killed the boy there, most likely somethin’ big.”
    “Find out who the boy was?”
    “Dale Larsen was his name. He and his folks were at Higgins’ place, here for a vacation. Lil Higgins is drivin’ ’em into Colver so they can see what’s left.”
    “That’s rough.”
    Wintone slammed shut the trunk lid of the patrol car, leaving four long finger-streaks in the coating of dust on the lighter tan, smooth paint. The sheriff and Sonny got into the car at the same time, slamming the doors almost simultaneously. Wintone twisted the ignition key, fishtailed the car in a dust-spewing U-turn and punched the windshield-washer button once to clear the glass.
    They had turned onto the main road back to Colver before Sonny spoke.
    “I been thinkin’ about that print, Sheriff.”
    Wintone was silent, watching the countryside, the gentle roll of green-wooded hills, like the soft curves of a reclining woman, the angled line of rough cedar-rail fence, the faded, miraculously standing outbuildings canted to the wind.
    “There weren’t any more prints,” Sonny said, “up the bank or in either direction.”
    “Meaning?”
    “It seems whatever it was must have come outa the water and gone back in.”
    “It does seem so,” Wintone said.
    The patrol car topped a rise and passed Sam Olfer’s red-roofed barn. They were almost into Colver. Wintone hoped he could avoid the Larsens.

FIVE
    W INTONE DETOURED TO DROP off Sonny at his sawmill, then drove the patrol car the rest of the way into Colver and parked in front of his office. The heat had run everyone off the street except a couple of teen-aged girls dressed in shorts and halters and riding ten-speed racing bikes. Wintone didn’t recognize either of the girls as they pedal-stroked the bicycles past him with graceful muscularity. Tourists.
    Inside the office he sat at his desk and tried to work, but couldn’t. He picked up a dull metal paper clip and bent it into various meaningless shapes, pricking his finger several times with the deceptively sharp wire end. Colver was changing, Wintone was changing, everything was changing. It was as if Etty’s death had altered the meaning of it all.
    The sharp ring of the telephone broke the oppressive silence of the office and Wintone’s gloomy musings. He reached out and lifted the receiver from its cradle slowly, as if it were glued.
    He was glad to hear Sarah’s voice.
    “I thought you’d be back earlier,” she said.
    “I had things to do at the lake.”
    “The Larsens made a positive identification of their son.” Her voice told Wintone there had never been any doubt in anyone’s mind; the formalities had to be observed.
    Wintone thanked her.
    “How did they take it?” Sarah asked. “When you told them at the motel?”
    “Like you’d expect.”
    She sensed Wintone’s reluctance to talk about it. “If Doc Amis comes up with anything I’ll let you know.”
    “Thanks, Sarah.”
    “Billy, you come by if there’s any way we can help you find out what happened, any medical information, or for that matter any kind of help we can give you. You come by.”
    “I will, Sarah.”
    Wintone hung up the phone. He picked up the paper clip he’d been toying with from his desk top, deftly worked it into a kinked though reasonably straight piece of wire and tossed it into his waste basket. As he sat back in his chair and stared at Etty’s picture on his desk corner, Wintone wondered if he really kept her face there—where he