The third book in the Zack Walker series, 2006

TRIXIE SNELLING SEEMED TO BE working up to something over lunch this particular Tuesday, and really just killing time talking about scouring costume stores to find forehead ridges to please a client who liked to be dominated by a Klingon, but she never got to it because I had to take a call on my cell that my father had been eaten by a bear.

“There were those two Klingon chicks in the series where the bald guy was the captain, right?” Trixie asked me, because she knew that I was something of an authority when it came to matters related to science fiction.

“Yeah,” I said. “Lursa and B’Etor Duras. They were sisters. They tried to overthrow the Gowron leadership of the Klingon High Council.” I paused, then added, “Lots of leather and cleavage.”

“I’m okay there,” Trixie said, shaking her head at the useless information I had stored in my head. I wondered sometimes what important stuff gets crowded out when your brain is filled with trivia.

“My closet’s so full of leather,” Trixie continued, “I’m afraid it’s all going to congeal back into a cow. I should show you sometime.” Even though Trixie was dressed, at the moment, in a dark blue pullover sweater and fashionable jeans over high-heeled boots, it wasn’t difficult to imagine her in full dominatrix regalia. I had seen her that way once-and not as a client-back in the days when we were neighbors. We’d kept in touch after Sarah and I and the kids had moved away, and even though we were just friends, and met regularly for lunch or a coffee, I never quite got over the novelty of what she did for a living.

She continued, “But getting these ridges onto my forehead, making them blend in with the rest of my head, then there’s the makeup that makes me look like I’ve fallen asleep at the tanning salon, I mean, getting ready for this guy is a major production. Where are the guys who just want to be whipped by the girl next door? Plus, he wants me to torment him without wrinkling his Starfleet uniform.”

“He wears a Starfleet uniform,” I said. “What rank is he?”

“Captain,” Trixie said. “There’s these little gold dots on his collar that supposedly denote rank, but he just tells me to call him Captain, so that’s fine. He’s paying for it. I’m just glad he doesn’t want me to call him Rear Admiral. Imagine what that might entail.”

“I imagine that you are well compensated for your efforts.”

Trixie gave me a half smile. “Absolutely.” The smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Trixie picked at her spinach salad as I twirled some fettuccine carbonara onto my fork.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.” She picked at her salad some more. “What’s going on with you? Things working out with Sarah as your boss?”

I shrugged, then nodded. I’d been working as a feature writer at The Metropolitan for more than a year now, having accepted the fact that I could not make a go of it staying home and writing science fiction novels. I’d been assigned to Sarah, whose responsibilities at the city desk included overseeing a number of feature writers, some neurotic, some egotistical, some neurotically egotistical, and then there was me, her obsessive, often pain-in-the-ass, husband.

“Oh sure,” I said. “I mean, she wants to kill me, but other than that, the relationship is working well.” I had a bite of pasta. “I’m on the newsroom safety committee.”

“There’s a surprise,” Trixie said.

“It’s no joke. We’ve got air quality issues, radiation off the computer screens, there’s-”

“Let me see if I understand this. You work for a major daily newspaper, where they send reporters off to Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and God knows where else, and they expose murderous biker gangs and do first-person stories about what it’s like to be a skyscraper window washer, and you’re worried about air quality and computer radiation?”

“You make it sound kind of weenie-like,” I said.

Again, Trixie gave me the half smile. “Sarah okay with you and me being friends?”

I nodded. “I were you, I’d be more worried about my own reputation, hanging out with a writer for The Metropolitan.”

“And how was your trip? Didn’t you guys go someplace?”

“That was months ago,” I said. “A little trip to Rio.”

“Good time?”

I shrugged. “I found it a bit stressful.” I paused, then added, “I’m not a good traveler.”

“How’s Angie?” Trixie asked. My daughter was nineteen now, in her second year at Mackenzie University.

“Good,” I said. “Paul’s good, too. He’s seventeen now, finishing up high school.”

“They’re good kids.” Trixie’s eyes seemed to mist when she said it, and then she seemed to be looking off to one side, at nothing in particular.

“I keep getting this vibe that there’s something on your mind,” I said. “Talk to me.”

Trixie said nothing, breathed in slowly through her nose. If she needed time to work up to something, I could wait.

“Well,” she said, “you know the local paper in Oakwood? The Suburban? There’s this-”

And then the cell phone inside my jacket began to ring.

“Hang on,” I said to Trixie. I got out the phone, flipped it open, put it to my ear. “Yeah?”

“Zack?”

“Hi, Sarah.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m having lunch with Trixie. Remember I said?”

“So you’re not driving or anything?”

“No. I’m sitting down.” My mind flashed to Paul and Angie. When you have teenagers, and someone’s about to give you some sort of bad news, you know it’s probably going to be about them. “Has something happened with the kids?” I asked.

“No no,” Sarah said quickly. “Kids are fine, far as I know.”

I let out a breath.

“So anyway,” Sarah said, “there’s this stringer I use sometimes, Tracy McAvoy? Up in the Fifty Lakes District? She does the odd feature, breaking news when it happens up there and we can’t get a staffer there fast enough. Remember she did the piece about that seaplane crash, the hunters that died, last year?”

I didn’t, but I said, “Sure.” However, I could recall seeing the byline, occasionally, in the paper. Fifty Lakes is about a ninety-minute drive north of the city, lots of lakes (well, about fifty) and hills, cabins and boating and fishing, that kind of thing. A lot of city people had cottages up there. My father, for one.

“I just got off the phone with her,” Sarah said. “She’s got this story about a possible bear attack. Pretty vicious.”

I could guess where this was going. Tracy was an okay reporter, she could file a basic story, but the city desk was wanting something more, some color, maybe a piece for the weekend paper. The sort of thing I was born to do. “Sarah, just get to it.”

“Would you shut up and listen? It was in Braynor, well, in the woods outside Braynor.”

“Yeah, okay. Braynor’s where my dad’s camp is.”

“I know. Well, here’s the thing. They found this body, this man, and I guess there wasn’t a whole lot of him left to identify, and they found him right by Crystal Lake.”

That was the lake where Dad ran his fishing camp. A handful of cabins, rental boats. I mentioned that to Sarah.

“I know, Zack. That’s where they found the body. In the woods by your father’s place.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I guess I should give him a call.” I paused. “I can’t even remember the last time I talked to him. It’s been a while.”

“Here’s the thing,” Sarah said, hesitating. “Nobody’s seen your dad for a while. And they haven’t identified this body yet.”