Undercover Hunter(82)
He pulled out a different map. As he spread it, DeeJay could clearly see it was a road map. “Here’s another part of your problem. At the bottom of the resort property, you have a couple of county roads spreading out, as well as the one that goes directly to town. I don’t think you’re going to get much help from direction, not unless there’s some evidence somewhere that he came from a different direction and came through the forest. I sure haven’t heard it.”
“Neither have we,” said Cade. “For whatever reason, the age of the site, or just not thinking about it, nobody seemed to show any official interest in how he might have gotten there.”
“Probably the age of the site,” DeeJay said, looking at Cade.
He nodded. “Yeah. Three years after the last boy disappeared means a lot of rain, a lot of winter, a lot of new growth and probably a million ways his tracks wouldn’t be clear.”
* * *
Craig left them with some maps, promising to keep thinking about access to the scene. DeeJay watched him ski off down the street. She thought she might have heard the rumble of a heavy engine, but if so it was faraway. A plow probably wouldn’t reach them soon. She figured this storm had taxed the county hard.
“Dead end,” she heard Cade say.
She turned to him. “So it seems.”
He arched his brow. “You don’t agree?”
“I’m not sure.” She returned her gaze to the snow-buried world outside. It seemed safer than looking at Cade right now. Crossing the line last night had been bad enough, but now every time she looked at him she felt a jolt of sexual awareness that bordered on serious arousal. One night wasn’t going to be enough. She wished she knew if he felt the same. If she had any wiles, she’d long since forgotten them, so she had no idea how to find out.
“Oh, well,” she said, forcing herself to turn from the window and face all the messes from the killer to blurred professional lines. “We knew when we went out there that we were looking at a Herculean task to get those bodies up there. Nothing’s really changed. I hate to think Craig came out in this just to tell us that we’re not going to find a Day-Glo arrow to the killer’s point of origin.”
“We have to try everything. You know that. Anyway, he was clearly looking for a good excuse to get his wife chocolate.”
She had to laugh. “That was cute.”
“And probably true.” He paused, then said, “If I don’t get some exercise, I’m apt to start climbing walls. Care to join me in some shoveling?”
She hesitated. “What about the phone? And do we have a shovel?”
“I’ll call Gage and tell him we’ll be outside. He won’t get here soon anyway. There’s a storage shed just back of the house. Maybe there are some shovels in there.”
“I’ll shovel with my hands if I need to. Better than chewing nails.”
* * *
Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea. An hour later the neighborhood had become a kind of beehive of shared work. Those with snowblowers were cheerfully clearing all the sidewalks. Other residents helped each other with porches and buried cars. DeeJay and Cade met a lot of people in a short time, and everyone wanted to know their impressions of the locality.
It was kind of like meeting a friendly PR committee. When they took breaks, it was an excuse to cluster and chat, and coffee and tea were coming out of all the houses in a stream. Share and share alike. DeeJay approved of this neighborhood.