Chapter 8

Sunday, June 27, 7:41 a.m.

The telephone rang in Samuel Wicks' apartment. Sam, in bed but awake, grabbed the receiver. "Yeah."

"Sam? Thiz' Lester."

"Yeah, Sheriff?"

"Sam, we got a dead girl. Out at Ain't There Lake. Not far from the highway, off of County Line Road. I need you to go out there, right away."

Lester Mickelson was the Crandall County Sheriff. Sam Wicks, his chief deputy, was accustomed to getting the hard cases. The Sunday morning call was not that unusual. But was this a murder? Not too many murders in their quiet little county.

"Who's out there for us, Lester?"

"Ted Murray got the call. He's there, and he's called the coroner. 'Girl's still out there, and we don't know who she is yet. Ted's just a kid, Sam. Get on out there, soon as you can. I got that interview on WENC-TV this morning, but I'll wait for you after, back here at the office."

"O.K., Lester. I'm gone."

From Sam's apartment in midtown, it was a 15-minute drive, in light Sunday-morning traffic, to County Line Road. He didn't use the siren. On the way, he reflected on his eight-year career with the Crandall County Sheriff's office. The large but sparsely populated county had law enforcement problems that were a far cry from his previous cowboy career as a federal drug enforcement agent.

Sam Wicks had been highly regarded at the Drug Enforcement Agency, but he and DEA had been, in Sam's eyes, a bad fit from the start. After seven years working out of South Florida, Sam had welcomed the opportunity, at a 40-percent reduction in pay, to become a Crandall County Sheriff's Deputy.

Sam had just negotiated the turnoff and entered the muddy track down the road that once had been the county boundary line when he saw the blue dome light on the roof of a Sheriff's cruiser just ahead.

Parking behind Ted Murray's car, Sam saw another car approaching just behind him. It was Butler Brown, the coroner. He waited for Brown.

Ted Murray emerged from the piney woods near the road and beckoned them both across a water-filled ditch and into the trees.

"What have we got, Ted?" Brown asked.

"There's a young woman out here, Butler, layin' on her back in the water in Ain't There Lake, close to the shoreline. If you got any boots in the car, better bring 'em. I don't know how long she's been there. I got the call five minutes before six this morning--just when I was goin' off duty. Anonymous call. 'Sounded like a kid. 'Took me close to an hour, after gettin' out here, to locate the body. Unfortunately, I started at the southeastern side of the pond -- the part closest to the entrance to County Line Road.

"I finally found her, 'way over here, up the southwest side. I moved my car up closer after I found her, when I went back to call it in. She's over this way."

Brown and Wicks followed the young deputy to the edge of Ain't There Lake -- so-called because of the propensity of the shallow body of water to appear overnight, with the coming of heavy rains, and (despite its impressive size) to disappear again a few dry days later, leaving only a slightly soggy, weed-strewn depression -- an open field. For the moment, with the past week's rains, Ain't There Lake was, indeed, there.

It was necessary to wade along the edge of the water to avoid the dense brush that bordered it. Ted Murray graciously surrendered to the coroner his single available pair of rubber boots. He and Sam negotiated the mud in their street shoes.

Ted had left the woman as he had found her. She lay in four inches of water, nude except for a pair of denim cutoffs that had been pulled down to below her knees. One shoe -- her left -- was on her foot. Small red marks -- bites from flies or mosquitoes -- marked her torso and bare legs.

"Good-lookin' woman," Brown said. "You know her?"

Ted and Sam each indicated he did not.

"Layin' out here naked like that," Brown said, "it don't look like no heart attack, now does it?"

"Ted," Sam said, "call in and ask Lester to send out a couple' Sheriff's Auxiliary people to stand out by our cars and keep folks out of here. Tell him to send the wagon, too. But let them know that they need to stay quiet -- just roll it out here, nice and easy. You stay out there by the road until either the ambulance or the Auxiliary people show up. If it's the Aux. folks, show them how to direct the ambulance crew out here, and then you come on back and help me look around. OK, now wade out of here nice and slow, Ted. We've torn up this area enough already."