What I saw put tracers of cold between my shoulder blades. There was one person inside the cab-a small nut-brown man with black hair that was dyed now a bright ugly crimson along the top of his skull. He was lying down on the floorboards, wedged between the steering column and the seat, and pressed in against his left shoulder was the upper half of an iron lug wrench.
Behind me Harry said, “Anybody in there?”
“Yeah, one guy.”
“Can we get him out?”
“Door's jammed. But it doesn't matter.”
“Why doesn't it?”
“Because he's dead,” I said.
“Jesus,” Harry said. “You sure?”
“I'm sure.” And I was thinking that both of us had been half-expecting violence to break loose at any time here in the bucolic quiet of Eden Lake; had been as prepared for it as anybody ever is. But neither of us had been prepared for it to come like this, from a totally unexpected, unrelated source, and in a way even more brutal than any we might have anticipated.
“He was dead before the van went off that bluff up there,” I said. “Somebody caved in his head with a lug wrench.”
Five
We beached the skiff at the foot of the slope and climbed up and went over onto the bluff. It was graveyard-still up there; nothing stirred anywhere in the hot, windless dusk. You could see the tracks made by the van's tires in the grassy earth, and they started back where a rutted trail hooked away through night-shadowed pine forest. There were no other tracks of any kind.
I said, “Where does that trail lead?”
“Connects with a fire road about a hundred yards back,” Harry said. “That one loops around the lake and picks up the county road into The Pines.”
“Used much?”
“Some. Tourists and local kids, mostly.”
“But not around this time of day.”
“Not usually, no.”
“So whoever did it probably got away without being seen.”
“If he isn't still around here somewhere.”
“Not much chance of that, as much noise as we've made.”
“What the hell could it be about?”
I shook my head.
We walked to the trail and followed it a short way into the woods. The ground there was hard-packed, covered with pine needles, and you could not tell if another vehicle had come along it or parked on it recently. The only indications of human presence-and human folly-seemed to be a scatter of rusting beer cans and the paper wrappings from fast-food chicken and hamburgers and at least two used condoms tied off like deflated carnival balloons. Lots of things lost here, I thought grimly. Virginity, hours and nights, laughter, another unspoiled piece of nature. And now you could add a man's life to the list.
I stopped to listen, but there was still nothing to hear; the area was deserted now, all right. Then my eye caught and held on something multicolored lying on the grassy hump between the ruts a few yards ahead. I went up there and sat on my haunches and looked at the thing without touching it. It was a couple of feet long, iridescent green and gold ornamented with eyelike markings in rich dark blue-and it had no more business being there at Eden Lake than a murdered dealer in Oriental rugs and carpets.
“Peacock feather,” Harry said beside me.
“Yeah.”
“Funny thing to find in a place like this.”
“I was thinking the same.”
“Could it've belonged to whoever did for the guy in the van?”
“Maybe,” I said. I leaned down close to the feather, still not touching it. Free of dust or pine needles or water stains; colors sharp, vane smooth and new-looking. “One thing's sure-it hasn't been here very long.”
Harry frowned as I stood up, “Doesn't make much sense,” he said. “Why would anybody carry around a peacock feather?”
“Yeah,” I said, “why?”
When we came out onto the bluff again, the last reflections of sunset were gone from the lake and the water had turned a dusty gray color. The sky was a velvety purple, studded with hard un-winking stars and the fingernail slice of a gibbous moon. You could tell that it was not going to get any cooler than it was now until the hours just before dawn.
I said, “You'd better take the skiff back and report this to the county sheriff.”
“What about you?”
“I'll stay here and keep watch.”
“You sure? It'll take a couple of hours.”
“I don't mind if you don't.”
“Whatever you say, buddy.”
I went downslope with him and held the skiff while he got in, and then shoved it off. When he jerked the outboard to life, mosquitoes and gnats gliding through the heavy stillness seemed to dart away in all directions, like shards of the suddenly broken quiet. I stood at the water's edge and watched until he had the skiff turned and the throttle opened up; then I sat down in the grass to wait and think a little.