Flat Lake in Winter Read Online Free

jargon for ambulance. Carlson - no doubt at Stanton’s direction - also told Manning to notify the Franklin County Medical Examiner’s Office to dispatch an investigator to the scene and expect two cases sometime around mid-afternoon. Ottawa County had no medical examiner of its own: There simply weren’t enough suspicious or unexplained deaths during the course of a year to warrant budgeting for one.
    With Route 30 all but deserted early that Sunday morning, Stanton drove with his headlights on and his roof lights flashing, but without his siren. He kept the speedometer at a pretty level eighty-five on the straightaways, slowing for turns. He would have gone even faster, he explained later, but was on the lookout for the most common, and most dangerous, road hazard likely to be encountered at that hour: the four-legged variety. Hit a deer while you were doing ninety, and your car was history, he knew; hit a moose and you were, too.
    Leaving Route 30 for county roads that became progressively less paved, Stanton had to slow down considerably. As he turned onto Flat Lake Road, the asphalt gave way to hard-packed dirt, and for the last few miles he rode his brake with his left foot while working the accelerator with his right. Even so, he wasn’t able to make as good time as Bass McClure had earlier that morning: Despite an overabundance of horsepower, the low clearance and automatic transmission of the cruiser made it no match for the Renegade.
    By the time Stanton and Carlson arrived, it was somewhere around seven-thirty. There would be some disagreement as to the exact time, with Stanton placing it at 0724, while McClure insisted that he’d looked at his watch at one point and noticed it was seven-forty, and the cruiser was still nowhere in sight. That wouldn’t be the only point of contention to arise between the two men, who had little in common and had always been a bit wary of each other. Stanton’s spit-and-polish military bearing struck McClure as a silly affectation; he saw no reason for a by-the-book approach to every little detail, when common sense and native intuition generally cut to the heart of things much more quickly. Stanton, for his part, regarded McClure as a seat-of-the-pants amateur, with little technical knowledge regarding the preservation of a crime scene. The truth is, that when it came to their criticisms of one another, they were both pretty much on target.
    McClure came out of the guest cottage with Jonathan Hamilton and met Stanton and Carlson on the pathway. As Stanton would learn, this marked at least the second trip Jonathan had been permitted to make on the path since McClure’s arrival: first in bare feet, and now in shoes.
    “Is he in your custody?” Stanton asked McClure, nodding at Jonathan and dispensing with so much as a greeting.
    “Custody?” McClure replied. “It’s not like I caught him takin’ niners.” “Niners,” were bass under ten inches, which had to be released.
    “Where are the DOAs?” Stanton asked.
    McClure pointed in the direction of the path that led to the greathouse. “Main house,” he said. “Second floor.”
    Stanton asked McClure to accompany him, motioning Carlson to stay with Jonathan. “Don’t let him out of your sight,” he instructed the trooper, “and don’t let him touch anything.” In his initial report, Stanton would write that the subject (meaning Jonathan) appeared agitated, nervous, and unwilling to make eye contact with any of the other men.
    Instead of walking on the flagstones of the pathway, Stanton insisted that he and McClure walk alongside them, in the ivy and pachysandra that bordered them. To McClure, this precaution seemed no better than a tradeoff, risking the contamination of one area for that of another. But he said nothing.
    At the greathouse, Stanton took pains to avoid disturbing anything, donning rubber gloves before entering, being careful to avoid stepping on visible bloodstains, and disturbing nothing that