Dead Water (19 page)

“Cool,” said Nick, not totally uninterested. “Glad someone can go on-line around here. I’ll be doing Pony Express all summer.”

“No, you won’t, kid,” Ray jumped in. “Doc, here, has called a friend of his who might help you out.”

“Yeah …” Nick’s tone flattened out again. He was as impressed with Osborne as he was with Ray. “Instead of carrier pigeons you got carrier fish?”

“Funny,” said Ray just as another knock was heard at the back door. Lew turned her head to smile at the wall. Osborne had to admit he was also amused by Ray’s lack of appreciation of a bad joke from someone supposedly of his own genetic makeup.

“That’s Joel,” said Osborne, standing up to head back to the kitchen.

“You sit down, Doc,” said Ray, jumping to his feet. “I’ll let him in.”

After Ray left the room, Lew sat back in her chair, put her hands in her pockets and regarded Nick with a straight-on stare. “I’ve got one thing to tell you, young man,” she said. Her tone was pleasant but pointed. “Ray Pradt is very highly regarded in this town. Some would argue he’s the best fishing guide in the region. And that’s a talent, not a skill, Nick.”

Nick shrugged and averted his eyes. “Yeah, well, he barely makes a living.” Something in the boy’s tone, a smug snottiness, stung Osborne. He heard Elise in the boy. And he hated it. Maybe he hated it because it jarred another memory: an echo of Mary Lee. Mary Lee, a master of condescension.

“True. But look at the living he makes,” said Lew, her voice low and deliberate, nonthreatening. She was cutting this kid a lot more slack than Osborne ever would. “He reports only to Mother Nature. He reads the future in the wind and the water … a hell of a lot more accurately than you will ever get in a computer printout. And …” she hesitated for emphasis, “he can always walk away from bullshit.”

Her language seemed to take the kid aback ever so slightly. At least he was listening.

“One other thing,” said Lew. “You may think you’ve been sentenced to a summer in Podunk, USA, my friend. But don’t underestimate Loon Lake. We may be tiny, but we got it all: the good and the bad. Whatever you find in the city, you will find here. But here you’ll deal with it a hell of a lot sooner. I know because I see it.”

Before Nick could respond, Ray had stepped back onto the porch with Joel and his son in tow. The father was a sandy-haired, mild-faced man not quite six feet tall. He had the pale skin and quiet manner true to someone who made their living sitting in one place all day. The boy didn’t look like him at all. Dark and short like his mother, whom Osborne had only met once, Carl hunkered in behind his father with a slouch more pronounced than Nick’s.

The boy looked like a bullfrog. His head was large and round; his eyes dark and brooding. The wide mouth drooped at the corners. Osborne watched to see if his eyelids would lower halfway and stay there. But they didn’t. Like Nick, Carl walked with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of oversize shorts, though his shorts were deep purple in color. And, like Nick, his ears sported a half-dozen silver earrings.

Carl’s eyes had brightened ever so slightly at the sight of Nick. Nick, who sat slumped on the sofa with the lamplight glinting off the hardware piercing
his
body.

Watching the two measure each other, Osborne recalled Gina’s comment in the car that morning after meeting Nick and Ray: “I’m more concerned with what’s pierced under his clothing,” she had said. He repressed a smile at the thought of that remark.

But she had said something else after hearing Osborne’s concern over whether Nick really was Ray’s son: “You’re probably not the only one wondering. Kids today know things they’re not supposed to know, Doc. That one doesn’t look stupid.”

After introducing everyone around, Osborne offered some pop to the boys and a beer to Joel. Starting toward the kitchen again, he paused in front of Nick. “Carl has a summer job working with computers—”

“On the net?” said Nick abruptly.

“’Course. Dad said you got a problem going on-line?”

“They got a crazy phone system out here. Something from the Middle Ages—a party line for God’s sake. I never heard of such a thing. I’ll bet Neil Diamond is big in this town, too, and I just got a new laptop—”

“Whaddya got?”

Nick described his equipment in terms unfamiliar to Osborne.

“Cool,” said Carl, openly appreciative. “Can I take a look?”

“Sure. Come down to Ray’s place,” said Nick. “Is that okay, Ray?” A glimmer of manners suddenly surfaced in the kid.

“Absolutely,” said Ray. “You boys have at it.”

Nick leaped to his feet. It was the first energetic move Osborne had seen him make since he’d scrambled back up on the dock. “Where did you say you’re working?”

“A game preserve the other side of Rhinelander. Guy named Kendrickson. Great stuff. I’ll tell you about it.”

“Follow me, guys,” said Osborne. “I’ll give you some 7UPs to take along.”

The last thing he heard as the boys slammed out the back door was Carl saying to Nick, “Call me Zenner. No one calls me Carl.”

“Dr. Frahm,” said Lew as the adults pulled their chairs around to include Joel, “so Carl is working for Hank Kendrickson, huh?”

“He is,” said Joel proudly. “Setting up his entire operation—debugged the software, built a database, right now he’s designing a home page for the game preserve—and making twenty dollars an hour. He’ll have a couple thousand in the bank for college by the end of the summer. If Nick is computer savvy, I’ll bet Carl can get him hired on, too.

“Yep,” said Joel proudly as he raised his beer mug in a toast to his absent son, “Kendrickson is darn lucky he found Carl. The kid loves computers, and he’s honest about his hours. Once you get past E-mail, I don’t think Hank has a clue about the stuff.”

This time Lew half snorted, half laughed. “To hear him talk,
he’s
the expert.”

“Oh, well, Hank thinks he’s an expert on everything, I guess,” said Frahm gently, obviously unwilling to be too critical of a man paying his son some good money. “But Hank’s too much the gentleman. Doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. No-o-o, Hank talks the talk, but Carl does the work.”

“How much time is he putting in?” said Lew.

“Most afternoons and some evenings. He has summer school in the mornings. English lit and an SAT prep course.”

“Dr. Frahm, would you have a problem if I gave your son a little more work to do? I need some help with our new system at the jail. I have an emergency situation, a database that needs updating as soon as possible.”

“What kind of database?” asked Frahm.

“ATF. I need to get our regional gun registrations up to date. Nick should be able to help out, too, though I haven’t said anything to him yet.”

“I think Carl would love it. Kid is big on guns. I bought him a beauty of a twelve-gauge for deer hunting. Sure, Chief, talk to him about it.”

Then Frahm leaned forward as if he was telling a secret. “Anything to keep him from hanging out with that strange crew he got in with when we moved here. We’ve had some problems with the boy. I’m afraid Carl takes after me: more brains than muscle. He’s just not into sports or the outdoors. He’s smart, he’s got a lot of energy, and the only thing that keeps him out of trouble is the computer. Thank God for the Internet.”

“He seems a good kid,” said Lew pleasantly.

“He
is
a good kid,” said the father, not a little as if he was trying to convince himself. “Do you know the crowd I’m talking about?”

“Yes, I do. Interesting bunch. Not the in crowd, if you don’t mind my honesty.”

“So you are watching them?”

“Yes. But Dr. Frahm.” Lew spoke gently. “I watch all the kids. It’s hard to be a teenager in Loon Lake. I don’t care what your sports are, if you love to hunt, if you watch TV all day, it is just damn hard to be sixteen in a town like this. I give ‘em all a lot of leeway. And that crowd is no worse than any other.”

“How many crowds are there?” asked Osborne.

“Too many,” said Lew. And with that she diverted the conversation to talk of the new shoreline restrictions on summer cottages. Osborne watched her. He sensed a reason she didn’t want to field any more questions about Carl’s crowd.

Half an hour later, as the four adults walked down to Ray’s trailer to check on the boys, Lew hung back with Osborne.

“Lucky Nick,” said Lew.

“How so?”

“He’ll learn to fish from the master.”

“That’s true, though I think he hardly appreciates it.”

“He will someday.”

“You think so? That kid is a handful. I’m glad you said what you did about Ray.”

“He could use a few manners.”

They walked in silence for a few paces, Osborne resisting the urge to put his arm around her waist.

“Doc,” she said softly when she was sure she couldn’t be heard, “I think I have a way to find out if Nick is really Ray’s son.”

“How so?”

“In our Child Support Division, we use DNA testing to determine paternity. Do it all the time—we have so many razzbonyas trying to avoid paying child support. All we need to do an STR, which is the name of the test, is a saliva sample.”

“That’s enough? But you need it from both parents, right? Elise would never consent, I’m sure.”

“We can do it with just the father,” said Lew. “We do it that way a fair amount. The STR targets the specific DNA we’re interested in and the lab in Madison can have results in two days or less. The kicker is I have to have a saliva sample from both the child and the father. I’ve got Ray’s saliva, Doc, but I need the boy’s.”

“How do you have Ray’s?”

“That joint I confiscated off him last year? You and I both know Ray always rolled his own. That little puppy is in my evidence room, all bagged and filed with care. Hell, the Madison lab can get a few million cells off that if I ask ‘em.”

“What about consent? I hate to have Ray know we’re doing this. Even though we should tell him,” said Osborne.

“I have that, too,” said Lew. “He signed a consent form for any kind of testing necessary the very first time you two helped me out. You’ve forgotten, Doc—you did, too. Those are on file.

“And while I don’t need consent from a minor, I can skirt the requirements that I have parental consent if I believe the parents are not cooperating or being truthful.”

“I see,” said Osborne. “You have reason to believe Elise won’t cooperate and Ray, thinking he is the natural father, is being suckered into a lie.”

“Exactly. So I can have the test done without alerting Ray and Nick—
if
I can get a sample of Nick’s saliva.”

“Leave that to me,” said Osborne. “I have an idea.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet. Opening it, he pulled out a charge card. “Expired.” He waved it at Lew, keeping his voice low. “If I can get some of Nick’s saliva on this, let it air dry and you keep it safe in an envelope—will that work?”

“Don’t see why not,” said Lew. “I just don’t see how—”

“Wait and see,” said Osborne. “I have my ways. What concerns me more is that we’re doing this without Ray’s knowledge … but I just don’t trust Elise. I keep wondering what she’s up to.” He looked at Lew in alarm. “What if we’re right? What if the STR indicates that Ray is not Nick’s father?”

“We deal with that then,” said Lew.

She kicked at some leaves as she walked with her hands thrust into her pockets. “You know, Doc, that’s one thing I worry about with Ray…. He’s too trusting. He wants to like people.”

“You don’t?”

“It’s my job to question, Doc. I don’t dislike people, I just don’t accept everything they say, no matter how much I might like them.” He could see her face in the final glow of the setting sun as she glanced at him. “Think how often we lie to
ourselves
, for God’s sake.”

twenty-three

“You can’t catch a fish if you don’t dare go where they are.”

Norman Maclean

Ray’s
mobile home sat as close to the water’s edge as the law would allow. Osborne suspected that it was even closer. Though Ray covered the marks left by the tires, every summer Osborne could detect the comfortable little trailer inching its way, week by week, to the shore. In the fall, he moved it back, out of the wind.

And why not? Old-timers in the Northwoods always said nothing was better for a good night’s sleep than fresh air streaming through the windows of a sleeping loft in a boathouse cantilevered out over water. Such structures had been outlawed for years, however. But Ray, an outlaw at heart, was happy to risk a fine in return for the opportunity to sleep with the call of the loon in his dreams.

Osborne held the door open for Lew. Stepping into the well-lit interior, he could see that, as always, Ray’s place was spacious and pristine. The living room held a plump, oversized, dark-blue corduroy sofa and matching recliner against cream walls with curtains to match. In one corner stood an old jukebox, Ray’s pride and joy, and in the other, an antique wooden phone booth with a working rotary phone. Ray’s two yellow labs, Ruff and Ready, were asleep on a hand-crocheted afghan that had been thrown across the sofa, leaving little room for humans.

The action was at the round oak table in the kitchen. The overhead light had been turned off, and Ray’s colorful vinyl tablecloth, green and white plaid studded with cheery red apples, pushed back to expose the rich wood underneath. On the burnished hundred-year-old planks rested a slim black object, cover lifted and monitor alight with digital images dancing across the screen. Mesmerized by the screen were Nick and Carl.

“Hey.” Nick looked up. “Zenner helped me finish installing my software. He got the sound working. You wanna see a really cool game?”

“I do,” said Lew.

“Take my place,” said Zenner. He stood up, eyes wide, face happy and hands outside his pockets. Osborne couldn’t believe this was the same sullen teenager who had slouched into his kitchen less than an hour ago. Zenner headed for the living room. He stopped in front of the jukebox. Ray had plugged it in so that neon waves of color were traveling up and around the edges, making gurgling noises as they ran.