43

MIKE MCMAHON PUNCHED THE radio’s transmit button with an insistence born of frustration. “Come in, Sharon,” he called for the dozenth time. Ten minutes had passed since she was due to check in and he hadn’t noticed she was late until just now because he had been caught up in a conversation with Detective Shaw (surprise, surprise, the man actually could talk), who had lost track of his partner, the asshole O’Bannon.

Mike told Shaw the man was probably halfway to Portland by now and that if Shaw was so in awe of his partner that he wouldn’t speak up about the obvious dereliction of duty on O’Bannon’s part, he should probably just hop into his car and follow him on down the road.

“Can’t,” Shaw replied simply and with his characteristic lack of emotion. “He’s got the only set of keys to the Caprice.”

Mike shook his head and laughed out loud. How could he respond to that? Shaw refused to be baited into an argument, which, Mike decided, was probably a good thing. Getting into it out here in the middle of the night with one of the guys hand-picked by the attorney general (read: the governor) to come up here and white-wash this entire bizarre affair was probably not any kind of winning strategy for the new Paskagankee Police Chief, anyway.

Mike simply held his tongue and told Shaw that if he ran across O’Bannon, he would let the man know his partner was looking for him. “But don’t hold your breath,” he said. “I don’t think O’Bannon and I will be exchanging Christmas cards any time soon. If he sees me coming, he’ll probably head off in another direction. Of course with this fog, I suppose I might stumble over him without even seeing him until it’s too late. For both of us.”

Following the testy exchange, Mike checked his watch and began calling Officer Dupont’s radio. He then called Professor Dye to be sure his transmitter was working properly and heard it squawk to life right next to him, as the two men were in the process of walking together around the fire for what felt like about the hundredth time of the evening.

“What the hell,” he muttered. “She knows she’s supposed to check in with me.” “Sharon, come in,” he called again.

“Perhaps her receiver has gone on the blink,” Dye suggested.

“Maybe,” Mike answered, although his tone of voice indicated his opinion regarding the likelihood of that scenario.

The gigantic bonfire was finally starting to wane, although it would continue to burn through the night and well into tomorrow. The number of people clustered around it had begun to decline noticeably over the last thirty minutes or so, as most townspeople succumbed to the miserable weather conditions and called it quits.

The feeling of unease in Mike’s stomach began blossoming again the moment Shaw mentioned he had lost track of his partner. Mike’s response notwithstanding, he knew there was no way the detective would just have taken off for Portland without gathering Shaw first. Now, with two unexplained disappearances in the last two minutes, Mike’s senses were telling him things were going horribly wrong. A look into the worried face of Ken Dye told him that the professor was thinking the same thing.

“What do we do?” Dye asked.

“Good question,” was the best Mike could come up with. He knew as Paskagankee Chief of Police and a man with fifteen years of law enforcement experience he should be able to manage something better, but he was well and truly stumped. “Searching the woods in this fog would be suicide, not to mention we could walk within five feet of seeing . . . something, and completely miss it, the way the mist is playing havoc with the flashlight beams.”

The two men stood shoulder to shoulder, staring out into the murky night. The grey mist shifted and danced in front of them, seemingly alive with malevolent intent. “Let’s take a walk around Sharon’s perimeter,” Mike finally suggested. He knew it was probably pointless and a complete waste of time, but at least they would feel like they were doing something productive. Professor Dye agreed immediately.

The night’s pervading blackness enveloped the two men as they trudged along the outer ring. As expected, the heavy shroud of fog served to prevent any insight into what had happened to Sharon or where she might have gone. Mike cursed himself for allowing the rookie officer to walk the outermost perimeter. Obviously, Professor Dye had to stay close to the fire, but why hadn’t Mike reserved the more remote outer ring for himself?

The search for Officer Dupont was conducted mostly in silence, the two men lost in their own thoughts. Mike could see tracks in the muddy snow, presumably made by Sharon as she had traipsed around and around, but there was also a confusing array of other footprints, with no indication of who they might belong to or what they were doing there.

After nearly an hour of searching, creeping forward at a snail’s pace and looking desperately for evidence that might explain Sharon’s disappearance, the pair arrived back at their starting point. They were cold, wet, and tired, and had been completely unsuccessful. Mike glanced at the professor and saw a bleak look in the man’s eyes that he knew must have reflected in his as well.

By now it appeared everyone had departed, as it was nearly two o’clock in the morning and even the hardiest of the partygoers had finally succumbed to the miserable conditions. There was no sign even of Warren Sprague, and Mike assumed the farmer had retreated to his home after bidding the last of the revelers goodnight, not knowing where Mike was and assuming he would find his own way out if he had not already done so.

The once-raging bonfire had burned down to a massive pile of red-hot glowing embers. Waves of thick black smoke curled off the top of the pile and disappeared into the fog. Mike and Ken started off to the Paskagankee Police Explorer without a word. What was there to say? They had come to the gathering to protect the townspeople, and now one of the supposed protectors was missing; two if you included the possibility that O’Bannon had vanished as well.

Mike was determined not to assume Sharon’s disappearance was related to the string of bizarre and deadly occurrences of the last week until he saw evidence to the contrary, but he knew deep down inside that the likelihood of the events being unrelated was practically nil. He was angry and frustrated and exhausted. He could barely stand the thought of having to wait for sunrise to begin looking for Sharon in earnest.