“Okay. I’ll call the state police and see if we can get some sent over, but try to assemble a team to start looking now.” Ben looked up at the span of the Shumholdt Bridge unfolding behind them.

Wickelow Bend was one of those magic places on the earth. Even standing there in the eighth-of-a-mile bend in the road, Ben could feel its tug. For this very reason, lots of people wouldn’t drive it, choosing the interstate that took them six miles out of their way to avoid this one little patch of road. During the end of World War II, Wickelow Bend had been the entrance to Le Cirque Margot’s office, but when the circus closed in the early 1970s the old road had grown over, the woods erasing all traces. From his father he knew that lots of God-fearing folks in the area had hated the circus at the time, preaching against it to their congregations.

Now, in the fall, the forest played host to drunken dares. Kids taunted each other to see if they could spend just one night in Wickelow Forest. There were wild tales, like the man who supposedly tied two of his wayward dogs to a tree until he could retrieve his truck, only to find nothing but bones in the morning. Ben thought it probably had been hypothermia, then hungry animals that finished the dogs off, but wondered what ass would tie his dogs to a tree in the woods in the first place. With each passing year, the stories and the stupid dares around the place only grew.

Ben walked around to the car. “Why don’t you try to pull some fingerprints from the car and see if there is any blood or hair? You do have your kit with you, don’t you? If not, I’ve got some stuff in the back of the car.”

“Won’t the Staties be pissed? I mean, I’ve never pulled a fingerprint before. We don’t pull fingerprints, Ben. We never need to.” He reached into his back pocket and retrieved a tin of Copenhagen. Ben thought it took him forever to unscrew the lid.

“Just follow the directions on the kit.” Ben didn’t need him screwing it up. “Never mind. Just go get it and I’ll get the damned prints myself. We need to mark off a circle from about here to that tree and over to that tree and search inch by inch. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

Ben took out a pair of latex gloves from the back of his car and began searching for the car keys inside the Cobra. They were missing from the ignition. He looked under the floor mats. Nothing.

“Did you find any keys, Doyle?”

His deputy appeared in the passenger’s window. “No.”