I said something out loud, like “Jesus Christ” or “Holy shit.” I’m not sure. When you find your first dead guy, it’s like that cliché about when you’re in a car accident, and everything seems to move in slow motion. Of course, the dead guy wasn’t moving at all. The only things moving were me and Willow Creek as it flowed around the body.

It was a man, in boots and jeans and a plaid shirt, and even though he was facedown in the shallow water, the crown of his head just barely above the surface, I had an inkling of who he was.

Part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, he might still be alive, even though he had a very visible gash in the back of his head that offered a view of what I could only assume was brain. So I stepped into the water, grabbed hold of him by his arms, up close to his shoulders, and rolled him over. It wasn’t that hard, the water giving him a bit of a weightless quality, and once I could see his face I knew that the Mississauga salamander had lost its greatest ally.

I pulled Samuel Spender up onto the bank, resting his body on its back. Lifeless eyes stared skyward. It was clear to me now that he was long gone. There would be no need, I thought, for any heroic mouth-to-mouth efforts at resuscitation.

I thought of my friend Jeff Conklin, where he might be three decades later. I finally caught up to you, Jeff.

I reached into my jacket pocket for the cell phone I carry around most everywhere. It wasn’t until then that I realized how upset I was by this discovery; my fingers were shaking too much to punch in the numbers. You might think that punching in 911 wouldn’t be that hard, but when your background is in journalism, and your wife still earns her living at a newspaper, you know that the first thing you do in an emergency is call the city desk. And that’s more than three numbers.

I took a couple of deep breaths and dialed.

“City.”

“Hi. I need to talk to Sarah. It’s an emergency.”

“Hey, is this Zack?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“It’s Dan. Remember we talked that time, when you pretended to hurt yourself on the stairs, and your kids called the ambulance? Sarah told us all about it. That was really something.”

“Listen, Dan, I need to talk to Sarah. Like I said, it’s an emergency.”

“She’s just coming out of the M.E.‘s office. What is it this time? The house on fire or something? Fire trucks on the way?”

“Put her on the fucking phone, Dan.”

“Yeah, sure, fuck you, too. Hang on.”

Sarah took the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”