Danson grunted, “Ready?” and Blue said, “Yup,” and Danson dropped the end of the rope, which was tied to a rusty, fifteen-pound dumbbell, into the river and followed it down. Blue was ten seconds behind him and immediately out of sight. Ralph got a heavy-duty, sealed plastic bubble out of the truck, with its own lead weight. It turned out to be a battery-powered LED light, and he clipped it to the rope and dropped it in the water and it slid down the rope and out of sight.
“Muddy water,” Ralph said.
They all stood around and looked at the hole for a while, Ralph as quiet as the Sphinx, until Johnson said, “I bet you guys have some really great conversations in the truck, huh?”
Ralph scratched his nose and shrugged and said, “Oh... no.”
Two minutes after that, one of the divers—impossible to tell which—surfaced and threw a dark object onto the ice, and went back down. Virgil squatted over it: a woman’s purse with a metal clasp. He opened it and found it full of the usual female junk, including a wallet. He opened the wallet and found himself looking at Gina Hemming’s driver’s license.
“Son of a bitch,” Johnson said. “This really is the place. I sorta didn’t believe it.”
A diver surfaced again two minutes later and threw a high-heeled shoe out on the ice, and went back down.
“Well, she wasn’t kidnapped when she went out for a walk,” Virgil said, as he looked it over. “She wouldn’t have been walking in that, not on that night.”
Twenty minutes passed, and Ralph went to the truck and brought back a ladder like those that are hung off the back of sailboats except this one had spikes at the curled top end. He stuck it into the water and jammed the spikes into the ice. Another five minutes, and one of the divers surfaced and climbed the first two rungs of the ladder, and Ralph grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him up the rest of the way.
Danson took off his face mask and said, “I think that’s gonna be about it. We did a grid ten to fifteen yards upriver, twenty yards down, ten yards on either side, and that’s what we got. Don’t think there’ll be any more.”
“You got what we needed,” Virgil said. “This is where she was dumped.”
“Yeah, I figured that when I spotted the purse,” Danson said. Blue surfaced, and Ralph and Danson helped him up the last steps.
Johnson said, “How cold are you?”
Danson shrugged. “Not cold at all.”
“This is cool,” Johnson said. “I’m gonna try it.”
“Lots of people tell me that, but then they don’t,” Danson said.
—
Danson and Blue went back to the camper and climbed inside to change back to street clothes, as Ralph piled up the gear at the back of the truck. Ralph also got them a black plastic bag forthe purse and shoes, began slotting the blocks of ice back into the hole he’d cut.
“Always do that?” Johnson asked.
“Yup.”
“How come?” Johnson asked.
“Liability.”
“What...”
Ralph gushed, “Guy comes zooming across the lake on a snowmobile going ninety miles an hour, hits a big pile of ice blocks, wrecks his snowmobile and kills himself, and his old lady sues our butts for everything we got. Liability.”
“Got it,” Johnson said.
—
Virgil and Johnson hung around until Danson and Blue were back out of the camper, and Danson said, “We’ll bill you.”
“Do that,” Virgil said. “And thanks.”
“Easier and better than our usual calls,” he said.
Johnson bit. “What are your usual calls?”
