Free Dead Level by Sarah Graves Page B

through darkened to mature woodland, a patch of it that two centuries of loggers had not yet quite gotten to.
    The forest canopy spread green and fragrant over his head, a few patches of blue poking through and the air cooling suddenly. Dewey felt his neck and shoulders relaxing for the first time in years. A couple of miles ahead, the lake’s few rustic shoreline cabins were mostly empty now that the summer season was over.
    But in them there would be firewood and drinking water—you couldn’t drink out of the lake unless you wanted a nasty gut bug called beaver fever—plus coffee and food, mostly canned stuff left by the summer people. At least one would have a rowboat or a canoe he could use, too, and he might even find some guns.
    By tonight, Dewey would be tucked up snugly in one of those cabins, with a fire going in the woodstove and beef stew from one of those cans warming in a kettle on it, coffee in a percolator, maybe even biscuits if they’d left biscuit mix. He’d be warm and toasty, with not a soul suspecting he was nearby.
    And even if anyone spotted, say, the smoke from the chimney or light from a window, he might still be okay. This time of year it was mostly only hunters who came out here: good old boys, many of whom wouldn’t tell on him, he felt certain.
    Because Dewey wasn’t the only guy who’d ever wanted to slap some mouthy broad halfway to kingdom come, that much he knew for a fact. And it wasn’t his fault, either, that instead of halfway, as it had always been before when he’d needed to teach Marianne a lesson, that last time it was all the way.
    He plucked the other apple from his pocket. Biting in, he let the sweet juice and pulp dribble down his lips.
    That last time, he’d actually killed her. And no good-luck charm in the world could do a thing about that.
    Not that he cared, he told himself firmly. Boohoo , he thought as he made his way through the forest toward the nearest of the lakeside cottages. Boohoo with a freakin’ cherry on it …
    But then he stopped. Directly ahead, the trail continued uphill between more boulders; he knew the way, having been here before many times, hunting and trapping.
    To his left, though, the land sloped down into a hollow with what remained of a long-dead tree sticking up out of it: a twisty gray trunk denuded of bark and aged to a silvery sheen with sharp daggers of broken-off branches stabbing out in all directions.
    Dewey stared at the tree, or rather, at what was under it. A circle of stones marked where someone had built a fire of sticks very near the tree trunk. From its lower branches hung pieces of clothing: shirt, pants, jacket. A pair of boots stood with toes nearly touching the charred campfire remnants.
    To Dewey, the scene described disaster: someone had gotten wet, fallen into the lake, maybe. Maybe it was late, and as cold out here as an October night in the Maine woods could be; getting back out again in wet clothes had looked iffy. Starting the fire, drying the clothes, and waiting until it was light had looked better to someone.
    But the tactic hadn’t worked, and now as he approached the dead fire, Dewey saw who that someone was.
    Well, I’ll be damned. Bentley Hodell, you old son of a bitch. Ain’t seen you in a dog’s age .
    The man’s nearly naked body lay where it had fallen, half in and half out of the fire circle. Dewey recognized the short braid of frizzy gray hair, the hooked nose, and most of all the big gold signet ring on the right hand, stretched out as if grasping for something it could never reach.
    Not in this world, anyway. Bentley had won that ring in a card game, Dewey recalled. He’d been there when it happened, in the backroom of the Happy Crab sports bar in downtown Eastport. Afterwards, Bentley had bought everyone a drink, then given Dewey a ride home.
    And now here he was, naked to the elements. Or nearly; Dewey couldn’t remember when he’d seen a man so pitifully exposed. From the looks of