"You came to Ms. King's aid on real short notice."
"I'd done some work for one of her friends in Houston, years back. She recommended me."
"You just dropped everything and came flying down here?"
"I was told Caroline King has lots of money, and I need the extra income. I've got two greedy, bloodsucking ex-wives."
Ski wondered what he'd done to make Dodge Hanley think he was stupid enough to swallow that bullshit. He considered revealing what he'd learned after making some fact-finding calls today, but, for the time being, he decided to play along and pretend to be as ignorant as the stump Dodge was sitting on.
Ski said, "Besides smoking, what were you doing out here?"
Angling the smoke away from Ski, Dodge exhaled and pointed toward the lake. "I thought maybe Starks came by boat. But I nosed around the dock and shoreline and didn't see any evidence of that." He came back to Ski with an arch look. "Nothing as solid as those fresh tire tracks you found."
Ski smiled wryly. "Who'd you torture?"
"No waterboarding necessary. You hang out at a county courthouse long enough, you hear things. Never knew one of them that didn't leak like a rusty pipe."
Ski considered the older man for a long moment, then, making a decision, stood up and angled his head back toward the woods. "Want to take a walk?"
Dodge came to his feet. "Lead on."
"Put out the cigarette. I don't want you burning down our forest."
Dodge sucked in a lungful of smoke and muttered a string of grousing swearwords as he exhaled. He ground out the cigarette, then fell in behind as Ski plowed through the underbrush, pushing aside tree limbs and adroitly sidestepping natural obstacles, retracing the way he'd come but without worrying about how much noise he was making. "I left my flashlight up here a ways. Can you see okay?"
"Don't worry about me," Dodge grumbled.
Ski ducked under a tree branch and hoped Dodge saw it in time to do the same. He hadn't planned to share any aspects of the case but found himself inviting the former cop's input. "The three-way stop where Lake Road dead-ends? The bait shop?"
"Yeah?"
"I talked to a guy who was there about midnight last night, pumping gas." Pride prevented him from telling the veteran investigator that a civilian had actually tracked down the bass fisherman.
"Kinda late to be pumping gas."
"He was getting his boat ready to take out first thing this morning. Wanted to have that chore done so he could get on the lake by daylight."
"That's one of the reasons I never fished. It starts too early."
"So," Ski continued, "he's at the pump filling his gas can when this guy pulls a Toyota up to the side of the building. Time roughly coincides with Ms. Malone's 911 call."
"Did the vehicle come from this direction?"
"It did."
"The fisherman is sure it was a Toyota?"
"Positive. His daughter has one like it. He said the driver got out and stumbled into the men's room."
"Exterior entrance?"
"Right."
"Stumbled?"
"He demonstrated it to me. Looked like limping. When the gas can is full, the fisherman thinks maybe he ought to check on the guy. So he moseys over to the men's room, knocks on the door, and says to the guy inside that he couldn't help but notice that he was limping and asks if everything's all right, does he need some help. The guy hollers through the door--"
"He doesn't open it?"