Strike Dog by Joseph Heywood

number of people we need to ratchet up the investigation has been a bitch since 9/11. Homeland Security and antiterrorism take priority and eat up a lot of resources. Add to this that state and local police units are all in terrible financial shape,” she added. “We’re lucky to be this far.”
    â€œWhy am I here?” he asked. He could understand an unbalanced or pissed-off violet going after a game warden who’d bumped heads with him—but methodically killing game wardens all over the country? Never mind believability; it made no sense.
    â€œYou’re a tracker; you’re good at finding people, and you operate in the environment where all this goes down. The woods are your thing.”
    He shook his head. “I find known missing persons, not unknown, unidentified killers. That’s for you people.” He had inadvertently gotten involved in a number of homicides over the past three years and had been told repeatedly by his supervisers to keep to his own turf.
    â€œWisconsin’s attorney general wants his cousin’s killer caught, and he thought you might be able to assist. He called your governor, and here you are.”
    He cringed. Lorelei Timms: He blamed her for being bumped out of the Mosquito Wilderness to a detective job he neither wanted nor sought.
    â€œI hear your governor’s a big fan,” Special Agent Monica said.
    Service grimaced and wondered how many changes of clothes he had in his truck.
    â€œIt’s not all bad news,” she said.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œI have to apologize,” she said. “I’m sorry about your colleague, but this is the first body we’ve recovered in the golden window,” she added. “I’m also sorry about your son and girlfriend. It’s difficult to deal with so many losses so close together.”
    He shook his head. He was beginning to distinctly dislike Special Agent Monica. She seemed pretty straightforward, but there was something missing, something not quite right about her or the situation, and it was making him extremely uncomfortable.The golden window, he knew, was cop speak for the first forty-eight hours after death.
    â€œFicorelli was off duty and in this area to fish with a man named Thorkaldsson, who happens to be sheriff of Florence County. Thorkaldsson was supposed to meet Ficorelli, but he was late, and when he showed up, he found the body near their meeting place. He immediately secured the crime scene,” she explained.
    â€œFlorence is small,” she continued, “and the department is just Thor­kaldsson and three deputies. The county doesn’t even have its own lockup. They have to farm prisoners out to other counties. The sheriff may run a small-time cop shop, but he did one helluva job here, and we think his arrival was really close to the time of Wayno’s death. Usually we find cold bodies dropped at locations different than the kill sites, so this case potentially gives us a leg up on gathering evidence and leads. We’ve never been able to locate an actual kill site, which means this could be the break we need. The body was still warm. It couldn’t have been moved that far or that long before the sheriff arrived.”
    Service grunted acknowledgment, but he was still trying to process it all, and his gut was churning, never a good sign. “You think this dump site here is also the kill site?”
    â€œNo,” she said, “but this is the soonest we’ve ever gotten to a victim. Want to take a look?”

11
    FLORENCE COUNTY, WISCONSIN
MAY 20, 2004
    They got into her Crown Victoria and headed down a slight grade. It took ten minutes to reach a place where a federal crime lab panel truck was parked, and a crime scene ribboned off. The area looked like a vehicle turnaround, and ahead Service saw four large, pale-gray boulders set back in white cedar trees beyond where a berm had been piled up by a dozer. Small yellow evidence