Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

Reverend Clare cupped her hands on either side of her mouth and paced down the line. "Walk slowly," she said, projecting her voice so that it echoed off the gravestones. "Keep another searcher within sight on either side. That way, you'll be sure you're not missing anything. If you find the boy, pass the news down the line and return to the Muster Field. The search-and-rescue team is on its way, so if you hear three loud whistles, return to the Muster Field. Do not, under any circumstances, wander off alone! We don't want two people lost in the woods."

By the time she finished, she was at the other end of the field from Hadley. A ripple of words flowed through the line. The woman to Hadley's right said, "Let's go," Hadley passed it on to her left, and they all stepped over the low stone wall more or less in unison.

It was no-tech compared to the last search in the woods she had undertaken, but despite the lack of topo maps, flashlights, walkie-talkies, and whistles, it was fundamentally the same-walking in line, a flare of excitement when you saw a human-shaped bump on a log, disappointment and the dawning realization that one piece of forest looks pretty damn much like another. People yelled "Cody!" instead of "No soy del I-C-E," and they had the benefit of sunshine turning the air beneath the trees green, but otherwise it was that night in April all over. Hadley hoped they would be more successful this time.

The line drew thin as men and women responding to the forest's size spread apart to cover the maximum amount of acreage. It wavered and drifted out of plumb as differing terrain-open, brushy, thickly forested-forced some to slow and let others pick up speed. Hadley stopped, and halted the woman to her right, when she noticed the man to her left had disappeared. She was about to bring the line to a standstill when he reappeared from behind a cluster of young pines, zipping his fly and looking abashed.

They walked past slim birch and alder, past immense maples and oaks. They parted the heavy black-green spill of hemlock boughs to look underneath, and they peered and poked at fallen and half-rotted eastern pines. The pine needles and humus beneath their feet, the tock-tock-tock of woodpeckers and the whine of mosquitoes, the shaded and broken light-they walked forward and forward and forward, but it never changed. Hadley began to lose her sense of time and distance. She found herself checking again and again to make sure her search partners were well in sight. She had never understood the whole "lost in the woods" thing; she always figured, just walk out the way you walked in. Now, though, if someone had challenged her to find her way back to the Muster Field on her own, she didn't know if she could have done it. How far north and east did this piece of the Adirondacks go? Two miles? Two hundred?

Another ripple of words, excited, flowed down the line from the right. The calls of "Cody! Where are you?" fell silent as searchers passed the message like a relay torch. Hadley was already feeling a sense of relief-God, she'd be half out of her mind if she was the kid's mom-when the woman to her right turned toward her and said, "They need Officer Knox at the other end of the line."

Hadley stopped in her tracks. Officer Knox?

The woman made a shooing gesture. "Pass it on."

"Uh." Hadley felt as much of a fraud as she ever did when she said it. "I'm Officer Knox."

The woman could tell she was a fake, because her eyes bugged out and she said, " You're a police officer?"

Hadley didn't bother responding. She called to the guy on her left to move into her place, and took off for the other end of the line. What the hell could they need her for? Her mind pulled a blank. The other searchers, reenactors and St. Alban's parishioners alike, stared at her as she hiked past them. Hadley Knox, imitation police officer. No one would have questioned Kevin Flynn if he had been here. Maybe she should start pumping iron. Except the last time she'd tried that, getting into shape between Hudson and Genny, she'd started to look way too much like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. That wasn't going to buy her any cred, either.

The line strung out almost to the breaking point. Past the last remaining searcher, she could see four or five people clustered together. Reverend Clare was among them, head up, looking toward Hadley, but the others were all focused on the ground. Her stomach churned. Oh, my God, please don't let anything have happened to the baby . The fear sizzled up her spine as she recognized Anne Vining-Ellis, an emergency-room doctor, among the grim-faced group. Hadley forced her sneakered feet into a jog. She didn't want to know, but she couldn't stand the waiting to find out any longer.

"What is it?" she asked, before she could see. "What is it?"

They all looked up. Stared at her. Moved aside. Expecting to see a toddler sprawled on the ground, Hadley at first couldn't make sense of the jumble of dirt and dead leaves and ivory and… and…

The ivory was bone.

"We've found a body," Reverend Fergusson said.

"Another one, huh? Somebody got tired of planting corn?" Doc Scheeler grinned at his own wit, his teeth flashing whitely in his black beard.

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. "Christ only knows." He glanced around at the Muster Field, which looked like a cross between a municipal parking lot and a circus: ambulance and morgue wagon, three squad cars and a state K-9 cruiser, canvas tents and portable grills, SUVs and trucks and station wagons and sedans, people dressed for hard work in the woods, for a picnic, for a revolution. At 4 P.M., the late-spring sun was only just starting to slide into the western sky, and it was still hot enough to make Russ wish it were possible to project authority in shorts.

Scheeler hefted his kit over his shoulder. He was one of those dressed for the woods, in ripstop cargo pants and a hunter-orange vest over his shirt. Russ was thankful Emil Dvorak, their usual pathologist, was passing on most of the criminal cases these days. He couldn't have handled the trip into the forest with his bum leg. "Let's go," Scheeler said.

"I'm going to let Officer Knox take you over," Russ said. "I'll meet you there. I need to get updated on the search for the missing boy."

"I'll want to talk with whoever found the body. As, I'm sure, will you."

Russ waved his hand. "Dr. Anne Vining-Ellis is one of them, but I have no idea where she is right now. Probably treating poison ivy and picking deer ticks off people."

Scheeler nodded.

"Reverend Fergusson is another. She's-" He scanned the crowd of humans and vehicles, zeroing in on her head, her hair like raw honey falling out of its twist. She was talking with Lyle MacAuley, the Burnses pressed in close, listening, for a change. "There." He pointed.

"Sharp eyes," Scheeler said.

Russ grunted. It wasn't his eyes that made him uncomfortably aware of Clare's location. His head was still screwed up around his wife's death, but the rest of his body was quite sure he was a free man again.

"Wait a minute. Reverend Fergusson. Isn't she the same minister who called in the last John Doe?" Scheeler sounded incredulous.

"I know, I know. If trouble were a winning lottery ticket, she'd be a multimillionaire by now." Russ was saved from going into Clare's turbulent history by the arrival of his newest officer. The pathologist wasn't the sort to do a double-take, but his eyes widened at the sight of Hadley Knox filling out a T-shirt and cutoffs. The reflective MKPD vest she wore didn't do much to lessen the impact.

"Officer Knox." Scheeler took her hand. For a second, Russ thought he was going to kiss it. "Miller Kill's finest."

"Doc Scheeler." Russ was beginning to recognize that quashing tone in her voice. "Drink any urine lately?"