THE DRIVE TO THE LAKE OF THE OZARKS took Somers almost an hour and a half, and it was one of the most painful drives of his life. Hazard had, for some reason, completely shut down. He wouldn’t respond to Somers except in tight, controlled answers, and the rest of the time he spent staring straight ahead as though he were looking down a tunnel. After the tenth or twelfth failed try at conversation, Somers gave up and settled in behind the Impala’s wheel. Maybe it had been a fight with Billy; maybe that was why Hazard was acting the way he’d acted on Monday—like Somers was worse than a stranger.
Whatever the reason, there was nothing Somers could do about it, and so he waited for the aspirin to kick in and tried to enjoy the drive. As they got closer to the lake, the ground became more hilly, rolling and swelling, exposing bleached limestone bones where the road sheared along the bluffs. Instead of the checkerboard farmland that filled most of Dore County, dense woodlands paraded on either side of the road. Cottonwoods and redbuds, American elms, eastern white pines, and on and on. Everything was green, a dark, vibrant green, that contrasted with the dusty golden fields of wheat behind them.
Chendo’s trail led them to an unmarked service drive that was nothing more than two ruts worn into a weed-choked clearing. Somers eased the Impala along the path, wincing as the car rocked back and forth, its suspension vainly trying to accommodate the sudden shifts of the winding tracks. Reddish-brown dust drifted up and coated the windshield, and Somers flicked on the mister. He winced as thick red droplets clung to the Impala’s hood. It was a department car, but every time Somers felt his teeth click together, he was reminded that it was his ass on the paperwork, not Hazard’s.
After almost thirty minutes, the track gave out at the top of a swell of land. The trees thinned to a clearing that overlooked, some two hundred yards below, a stretch of slate-blue water: the lake of the Ozarks. In the middle of the clearing, three large tents—Somers would have guessed they were eight-person tents, maybe bigger—surrounded the embers of a campfire. Somers pulled the car to a stop. As he opened the door, the wet summer smells rolled in: the freshly-crushed grass under the tires, purple clover, the reddish dust they had stirred on the drive. Woodsmoke from the fire lingered. From the lake came the whine of a speedboat, and then, closer, a splash and a round of excited cries.
“Guess it’s not as isolated as it looks on a map,” Somers said.
“Maybe that’s why he didn’t stay.” Hazard was scanning the clearing as he spoke. “Hello. Is there anybody in there?” His hand went to the .38 in his shoulder holster. Somers pulled his own weapon, a Glock 22, from its holster at the small of his back. Chendo Cervantes had an accomplice: the second man, the fake Volunteer. Was he still here? Was he here with friends?
Hazard motioned for Somers to move left, and without waiting for confirmation, Hazard swept to the right. Somers moved as quietly as he could, but he was sensible of the grass and weeds crunching underfoot, of the dew staining his trousers and chilling his legs, of the slight movements of air that sounded like train whistles in his ears, making him afraid that he would miss a crucial sound of warning.
Somers mind processed, in intermittent blips, the information he had. Twenty-four men. At most, there might be twenty-four men staying at this campsite. At a minimum, three, although that number seemed low for the size of the tents. The campfire was still smoking, so someone had been here recently. Might well still be here. So where were the cars and trucks? Where had all the vehicles gone? Adrenaline still pounded through Somers, but he felt the same steadiness that he had always felt in these situations: a kind of counterpoint to the emotional chaos that put the slightest tremor in his hands.
As Somers came around the tent on the far left, an older man wearing long johns—and nothing else—hopped out of the woods barefoot. In the act of scratching his ass, he froze when he saw Somers. Then he grinned. It was Leonard Birt.
“John-Henry, you bastard. What are you doing?”
Somers let out a breath and holstered his gun. “Hazard, you can come over here.” Hazard trotted into view, his .38 held low but still visible. After a glance at Somers and Leonard, he holstered the weapon and threw Somers a questioning look.
“Who’s this?” Bint said. “And what the hell is going on here? Can’t a man take a dump without other folk showing him any decency?”
“Detective Hazard, this is Leonard Bint, a frequent guest of the Wahredua PD for public intoxication, public urination, public nudity, and poaching.”
“And those is my good qualities,” Bint said to Hazard, punctuating the comment with a laugh that exposed two jagged, yellow front teeth.
Leonard Bint had been the first man Somers had arrested, and he was a hard man to forget: he stood barely five feet tall, and he had a cloud of curly, silvery hair. His potbelly stretched out his long johns, and his bare feet were matted with coarse gray hair. That first arrest had been for public nudity; Bint had just finished reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and had elected to follow the Founding Father’s example of air baths. It had ended with Somers and Bint both falling into the Grand Rivere. Swinney had fished them out with a boat hook.
“Leonard, what are you doing up here? Do I need to call a game warden?”
Bint’s eyes showed, for a moment, a predatory calculation. Then he grinned, scratched his ass again, and sauntered past the detectives. Over his shoulder, he called, “Now, John-Henry, you’re going to give me a bad name. You know I’ve given up hunting just like I gave up drinking. They’re both sinful. Powerful sinful, you know.” He retrieved a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon from a cooler, popped the tab, and took a long drink.
“Just like he gave up drinking?” Hazard muttered.
“I think beer is more of a soft drink for Leonard,” Somers whispered back.
“Can I offer you gentlemen something in the way of refreshment?” Bint sketched a courtly bow, began to fall, and caught himself by landing face-first on a camp chair.
“This is a fucking joke,” Hazard said, not bothering to lower his voice this time. “Let’s go.”
“Give me a minute,” Somers said. He helped Bint up and settled him in the chair with a second beer in easy reach. Then Somers took a second camp chair and pulled it up alongside the old man. Bint belched, and it was such a forceful exhalation that the top two buttons of his long johns popped free. Bleary-eyed, Bint examined the damaged and then scratched the sweaty tangle of graying chest hair.
“You’re that new detective,” he finally pronounced, fixing Hazard with a look. “I remember you. Frank and Aileen’s boy.”
“I don’t remember you.”
“Oh, no. I don’t imagine you did. I had the devil in me back then. Knew your father all right. He was a good man.”
Hazard didn’t answer.
“Leonard,” Somers said, “how long have you been up here?”
“Just got here last night. The boys and I did a right honorable wiener roast. And today, breakfast like kings, only Davey forgot the eggs. Sausage, potatoes, even some of that cobbler from last night. You want anything? We still got some of that cobbler.” He rocked in the camp chair, trying to rise.
“No, no. We’re good.” Somers waved him back into the seat. “Last night? Don’t suppose you saw anything out of the ordinary? Anybody else here?”
Bint shook his head, and his long, curling gray hair drifted around his face. “Not a soul. Never been to this spot before, but it’s a good one. Off the beaten path. How’d you boys find it?”
“We had a map. You’ve never been here before? What brought you this time?”
“Oh, it was on account of a tip Davey got about these white-tailed—” Bint cut off, and his squinted eyes showed a furious attempt at thought.
“Never mind that,” Somers said. “Who gave him the tip? I’m not looking to get anyone in trouble, Leonard. You know me. I’ve always been fair, right?”
“Never thought I’d say this for a Somerset,” Bint said, his beady eyes rolling with amusement, “but you ain’t got half the stick up your ass your daddy does. Not half. Not even a quarter, if I’m being frank.”
Somers grinned. “That’s about the nicest thing anyone’s said to me. Now, we’re looking for someone who might be dangerous, Leonard, and I want to know who told you about this spot. That’s all. Right now, I’m not worried about anything else.”
Bint’s eyes showed a healthy amount of skepticism—and, Somers thought, an unhealthy amount of yellowing, most likely from all the hooch—and he didn’t answer. Before either man could speak, the sound of tires on gravel broke the silence, and a black panel van pulled up next to the Impala.
“There’s Davey now,” Bint said. “He gone to get eggs, but he’s back. You ask him yourself.”
The van’s door popped open, and a round man with lank, yellow hair stepped down. His hair wasn’t blond; Somers’s hair was blond, and he knew what blond hair looked like. This man’s hair was yellow, and it had obviously come out of a bottle, and the bottle had obviously come off a dollar-shelf at a convenience store.
“Davey, you get the eggs?”
“Yeah. Who’s these two?”
“This is John-Henry, my friend, and he’s police. That’s the new detective, the one everyone’s talking about.”
Davey’s eyes flicked over Somers without interest, but they lingered on Hazard. Somers felt a flicker of concern. He had heard some of the things people were saying about his partner, things that they’d been saying even before Hazard arrived, and he could guess what men like Leonard Bint and his friend Davey thought of having a gay detective on the force. Somers forced his best, guy-around-town smile, and tried to steer the conversation back to something productive.
“Davey, I’m Detective Somerset. I was telling Leonard that we’re looking for someone who was camped out up here a few days ago. Did you see anything when you got here last night?”
Davey grunted something that might have been a no.
“Could you tell me who gave you directions to this place? Leonard said it’s the first time he’s been here.”
“First time for him.”
“What’s that?”
“I say,” Davey said, dropping into a camp chair and plunging his arm elbow-deep in the cooler. “First time for him. I been here plenty of times. Come up here regular.”
“How often is regular?”
“Pretty often.”
“How often is that?”
Davey ignored the question and focused on luring a Pabst out of the cooler.
“The detective asked you a question,” Hazard said. He said it the way Hazard said pretty much everything when he was acting as a detective: a flat, dead tone that made the hairs stand up on the back of Somers’s neck.
“What’d you say?” Davey asked, his gaze drifting towards Hazard.
“He said I’m asking some questions,” Somers said. “And we’d sure appreciate you gentlemen’s help. Can you tell me who else is up here?”
Davey grunted and cracked open his beer.
“Davey’s pretty sour,” Leonard said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “on account he forgot the eggs. Don’t mind him. You know, Detective, I’m a man who’s never minded helping the police. I’m a great believer in civic duty. In helping one’s fellow man. It’s the Christian thing to do. I was just telling Davey this last night. Davey, I said, helping our local authorities, that’s the Christian thing to do.”
“Uh-huh,” Somers said, trying to mask his concern about where this was leading.
“And I figure each good citizen will do another good citizen a turn in the same way it’s done to him. Don’t you think, Detective?”
“I’d say that’s as may be, Leonard. A helpful citizen who finds it expedient to undress and climb the statues in Worburn Park, peeing all over the playground in the process, that kind of helpful citizen might find himself with a warning instead of another trip to the county jail.”
“This is a fucking joke,” Hazard said.
“You’re a man after my own heart,” Bint said, tipping the beer towards Somers. “You sure you don’t want something? It’s hot as hell today.”
“No thanks, Leonard. Just some information.”
“Well, tell him, Davey.”
Davey grunted, shifted in his seat, and stared at Somers through a curtain of greasy yellow hair.
“Davey comes up here about once a week,” Bint said, undisturbed by his friend’s silence. “Real regular. Clockwork. And first thing Davey said last night was someone had been up here, messing up a goddamn perfect spot to do some—well, Detective, to do some camping. And we’ve got Cliff Treadway up here and Shawn Coy and Roy Lows. Those boys are doing what you might call a nature walk right now.”
“A nature walk with a few rifles between them.”
“That’s right, Detective. Just for safety’s sake.”
“What was messed up? About the site, I mean.”
“Some fool broke through the trees on the far side. Damn near snapped every branch in his path. Plenty of good trails up here, and Davey knows all of them, but this fellow didn’t bother with any of them. Just barged off like he’d been drinking since Sunday and had to take a piss right goddamn now.”
“Where?”
“Over there.” Bint gestured magnanimously with his Pabst. “You want Davey to show you?”
Davey, in Somers’s opinion, looked more likely to sprout wings than show them anything helpful, so Somers shook his head. “You boys enjoy your camping trip. A real quiet camping trip, with real quiet walks in the woods.”
“That’s right, John-Henry. Quiet as angels’ wings.” To Somers’s surprise, Bint turned to Hazard. “Emery, welcome back, boy. Bet your daddy would be pretty high on his horse if he saw you now.”
Hazard ignored the comment and marched past the tents towards the line of trees and brush that Bint had indicated.
“Touchy,” Bint said. “Touchy as a boy too, but real touchy now.”
“You have a good day, Leonard. Nice to meet you, Davey.”
Somers left the men to their beer and followed Hazard to the brush line. True to Bint’s words, a trampled section of grass revealed where someone had struggled into the line of trees. Several branches had been broken, while flattened weeds showed where someone had moved deeper into the woods.
“Where the hell was Chendo going?”
“It was night,” Hazard said, his scarecrow eyes darting around the clearing and then back to the brush line. “After midnight. He left before dawn. Unless he had a decent flashlight and took time to explore, he wouldn’t have known there were trails here.”
“Or unless he’d been here before. Why else would he come to this spot?”
Hazard shook his head and didn’t answer. “This is too wide,” he said, pointing at the trampled path.
Somers squinted. “You’re right. He wasn’t just going himself. He was dragging something.”
“Or someone.”
Somers pushed into the broken line of growth, fought through a tangle of prickers, and scrambled onto a bare patch of dirt. He heard Hazard following him, although the bigger man was obviously having more difficulty—and doing a great deal more swearing. It was easy to follow the trail that Chendo had forced through the woods. It curved down and around the slope of the bluff. Dirt crumbled under Somers’s leather soles, and more than once he slipped and had to catch himself.
“This would have been a hell of a thing to do in the middle of the night,” Somers called over his shoulder.
No answer from Hazard except more swearing.
The smell of the humid summer was mixed now with a cool, earthy scent, and the occasional burst of the moldering dead leaves from last autumn. As Somers hugged the bluff and continued down, though, a caught a whiff of something else. A reek of decay. And then the whisper of the leaves was replaced by a steady buzzing.
Somers knew what they were going to find; he’d smelled that smell before, he’d heard that horrible buzzing. And around the next curve of the hill, he found it. The body was swollen and, under the black, writhing masses of the flies, it was a bluish-gray color. The stink of rot poured off the corpse. Somers stood there for a moment, studying the scene.
When Hazard reached him a moment later, he uttered a single word: “Fuck.”
Yes, Somers thought. They were fucked. Because the body in front of them was missing its head and hands, and that was going to make identifying it a hell of a lot harder.