19. missing corpse

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Brock looked at the map and sighed

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Brock looked at the map and sighed. Saturday came to an end and they had barely scratched the southern limit of the Woods. It hadn't snowed since Friday morning, but the cabins' owner swore that judging by the way his knee kept hurting, there was more snow on the way. Great. More snow to get deeper into the woods. Canvassing the area was so exhausting and frustrating. They needed to find that damned militia soon, before the weather got even worse with the fall rains.

He knew they were doing things the right way, striking squares off their grid only after a thorough search. Janowsky had gotten the State Police to lend a hand, to keep checkpoints at the main roads coming in and out of the southern woods. That way, Brock could use both Tac teams on the search. So he had eight agents from Portland and twelve Tac men. Seven three-man search teams, out there from nine to five, when the sunset dragged the temperature down with the sun. But he had the same lot of nothing as when he just got there, three days ago.

He heard engines start outside the cabin he shared with Russell, and voices. The Tac teams were leaving. There wasn't enough room for them at the only vacant cabin, so they'd taken accommodation at Portage Lake and Ashland. That added a two-hour commute to their days, but they didn't complain about missing the chance of staying there, with no internet, no phone coverage and only some distorted TV sign. For those staying there, Brock had arranged an extra fee with the cabins' owner to have breakfast and dinner made for the whole group every day. If the Tacs were leaving, it meant he should go fetch his dinner before they closed the kitchen for the night.

The sound of the trucks driving away reminded him of another truck. Sergeant Simon's pickup truck might hold a lead. Maybe the traces of mud on the tires and sides could reveal in which part of the Woods he lived. He remembered Hank had used that to locate the Baileys last year. But Hank wasn't there. Brock had already sent a sample to Portland, but he'd get the results only by Monday or Tuesday.

Before his mind strayed, he made a mental note to have another sample of the mud taken from the pickup. If the first one didn't come up with any positive result, he'd send the second sample to Boston—even if that meant the results delivered personally at his cabin's door by Gillian and her team, all of them eager to take part in the case.

He hated that feeling, being so certain that were the punks there, they would come up with some extravagant way to locate the militia in a couple of day tops. If not through Hank's tests, with Ron's weird devices, or some secret tracking skill of Fred's. Or Gillian would just connect the most unimportant dots in some unexpected way, making it look like it was plain two plus two. Somehow, they'd pin a red stack on his map and she would smirk at him—wrong, she smirks at others, Brockner, never at you. Fine, she would smile at him, those bright blue eyes looking up straight into his to explain the subjects were actually half a mile away from the cabins. See the fence past those trees, sir? That's them, sir.

The door opened behind him. Russell came in with a gust of chilling wind, a murmur of voices outside and a smell of meat stew that made Brock forget about Gillian to hear his stomach howl like a wolf.

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