The cloud cover was low, and the world was gray. No snow had fallen in the last thirty-six hours. Footprints stood out in the glittering crust of the crisp snow.
Brogan looked like a retired army colonel, with his slim moustache and white temples. He drove them, told Shadow he was a retired high school principal. “I took early retirement when I saw I wasn’t getting any younger. These days I still teach a little, do the school play—that was always the high point of the year anyhow—and now I hunt a little and have a cabin down on Pike Lake, spend too much time there.” As they set out Brogan said, “On the one hand, I hope we find her. On the other, if she’s going to be found, I’d be very grateful if it was someone else who got to find her, and not us. You know what I mean?”
Shadow knew exactly what he meant.
The three men did not talk much. They walked, looking for a red snowsuit, or green gloves, or a blue hat, or a white body. Now and again Brogan, who had the walkie-talkie, would check in with Chad Mulligan.
At lunchtime they sat with the rest of the search party on a commandeered school bus and ate hot dogs and drank hot soup. Someone pointed out a red-tailed hawk in a bare tree, and someone else said that it looked more like a falcon, but it flew away and the argument was abandoned.
Hinzelmann told them a story about his grandfather’s trumpet, and how he tried playing it during a cold snap, and the weather was so cold outside by the barn, where his grandfather had gone to practice, that no music came out.
“Then after he came inside he put the trumpet down by the wood-stove to thaw. Well, the family’re all in bed that night and suddenly the unfrozen tunes start coming out of that trumpet. Scared my grandmother so much she nearly had kittens.”
The afternoon was endless, unfruitful, and depressing. The daylight faded slowly: distances collapsed and the world turned indigo and the wind blew cold enough to burn the skin on your face. When it was too dark to continue, Mulligan radioed to them to call it off for the evening, and they were picked up and driven back to the fire station.
In the block next to the fire station was the Buck Stops Here Tavern, and that was where most of the searchers wound up. They were exhausted and dispirited, talking to each other of the bald eagle that had circled them, how cold it had become, how more than likely Alison would show up in a day or so, no idea of how much trouble she’d caused everyone.
“You shouldn’t think badly of the town because of this,” said Brogan. “It is a good town.”
“Lakeside,” said a trim woman whose name Shadow had forgotten, if ever they’d been introduced, “is the best town in the Northwoods. You know how many people are unemployed in Lakeside?”
“No,” said Shadow.
“Less than twenty,” she said. “There’s over five thousand people live in and around this town. We may not be rich, but everyone’s working. It’s not like the mining towns up in the northeast—most of them are ghost towns now. There were farming towns that were killed by the falling cost of milk, or the low price of hogs. You know what the biggest cause of unnatural death is among farmers in the Midwest?”
“Suicide?” Shadow hazarded.
She looked almost disappointed. “Yeah. That’s it. They kill themselves.” She shook her head. Then she continued, “There are too many towns hereabouts that only exist for the hunters and the vacationers, towns that just take their money and send them home with their trophies and their bug bites. Then there are the company towns, where everything’s just hunky-dory until Wal-Mart relocates their distribution center or 3M stops manufacturing CD cases there or whatever and suddenly there’s a boatload of folks who can’t pay their mortgages. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Ainsel,” said Shadow. “Mike Ainsel.” The beer he was drinking was a local brew, made with spring water. It was good.
“I’m Callie Knopf,” she said. “Dolly’s sister.” Her face was still ruddy from the cold. “So what I’m saying is that Lakeside’s lucky. We’ve got a little of everything here—farm, light industry, tourism, crafts. Good schools.”
Shadow looked at her in puzzlement. There was something empty at the bottom of all her words. It was as if he were listening to a salesman, a good salesman, who believed in his product, but still wanted to make sure you went home with all the brushes or the full set of encyclopedias. Perhaps she could see it in his face. She said, “I’m sorry. When you love something you just don’t want to stop talking about it. What do you do, Mister Ainsel?”
“Heavy lifting,” said Shadow. “My uncle buys and sells antiques all over the country. He uses me to move big, heavy things. Without breaking them too badly. It’s a good job, but not steady work.” A black cat, the bar mascot, wound between Shadow’s legs, rubbing its forehead on his boot. It leapt up beside him onto the bench and went to sleep.
“At least you get to travel,” said Brogan. “You do anything else?”
“You got eight quarters on you?” asked Shadow. Brogan fumbled for his change. He found five quarters, pushed them across the table to Shadow. Callie Knopf produced another three quarters.
He laid out the coins, four in each row. Then, with scarcely a fumble, he did the Coins Through the Table, appearing to drop half the coins through the wood of the table, from his left hand into his right.
After that, he took all eight coins in his right hand, an empty water glass in his left, covered the glass with a napkin and appeared to make the coins vanish one by one from his right hand and land in the glass beneath the napkin with an audible clink. Finally, he opened his right hand to show it was empty, then swept the napkin away to show the coins in the glass.
He returned their coins—three to Callie, five to Brogan—then took a quarter back from Brogan’s hand, leaving four coins. He blew on it, and it was a penny, which he gave to Brogan, who counted his quarters and was dumbfounded to find that he still had all five in his hand.
“You’re a Houdini,” cackled Hinzelmann in delight. “That’s what you are!”
“Just an amateur,” said Shadow. “I’ve got a long way to go.” Still, he felt a smidgen of pride. It had, he realized, been his first adult audience.
He stopped at the food store on the way home to buy a carton of milk. The ginger-haired girl on the checkout counter looked familiar, and her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Her face was one big freckle.
“I know you,” said Shadow. “You’re—” And he was about to say the Alka-Seltzer girl, but bit it back and finished, “You’re Alison’s friend. From the bus. I hope she’s going to be okay.”
She sniffed and nodded. “Me too.” She blew her nose on a tissue, hard, and pushed it back into her sleeve.
Her badge said HI! I’M SOPHIE! ASK ME HOW YOU CAN LOSE 20 LBS. IN 30 DAYS!
“I spent today looking for her. No luck yet.”
Sophie nodded, blinked back tears. She waved the milk carton in front of a scanner and it chirped its price at them. Shadow passed her two dollars.
“I’m leaving this fucking town,” said the girl in a sudden, choked voice. “I’m going to live with my mom in Ashland. Alison’s gone. Sandy Olsen went last year. Jo Ming the year before that. What if it’s me next year?”