“You might as well take a power drill to it now, get it over with,” he told me. “Honestly, you spend that money on a car and don’t get it rust-proofed, it’s beyond me.”

“Dad, the new cars already have perforation warranties.”

“Oh yeah, right, like they honor those things.”

We talked on the phone now and then, but not much. He’d actually bought himself a computer and occasionally I’d get an e-mail message from him, usually just a line or two to explain an attached photograph of some big muskie or pickerel he’d caught. For an old guy who was resistant to change, he’d embraced some of the new technologies with enthusiasm. I think it must have been those long, cold winters that brought him around. He was tired of being isolated, and his computer connected him to the world in ways he’d never imagined possible.

And now, from the sounds of things, he could be dead.

I quickly explained to Trixie what Sarah had said, and, after she’d hugged me, she had but one word to say: “Go.”

Once I was on the highway that led north out of the city, behind the wheel of our hybrid Virtue, pushing the little car as hard as it would go, I got Sarah on my cell again, asked her to tell me again what she knew.

The freelancer, Tracy, had learned of the incident about the same time as the authorities. She was being treated for a sore throat at her doctor’s, an elderly man who should have retired years ago but still practiced because it was hard to attract new GPs to an out-of-the-way place like Braynor. He did double duty in Fifty Lakes as a coroner, and Tracy was there when the call came in that a body had been found up by Crystal Lake, that it had been mauled pretty badly, and the first thing that had come to everyone’s mind was that a bear was to blame. Tracy offered to drive the doctor in her own car, and called The Metropolitan’s city desk when she figured she had a story that might appeal to an audience beyond the local paper she primarily wrote for, The Braynor Times. She’d had no idea, when she put the call in to Sarah, that there might be a personal connection.