“Yeah, but Christ, that water can’t be more than fifty degrees this time of year.”
“It would take him, what, twenty, thirty minutes to wade across? He’d have hypothermia in ten.”
“You say ‘wade’ like you know how deep it is.”
“It’s a cranberry bog, for Chrissakes. How deep can it be?”
“So you’re an expert on cranberry bogs?”
“I know they aren’t very deep.”
“Then how deep are they, genius?”
“I’d say three to five feet. Somewhere in that range.”
“So wade on out there and let’s see.”
DeMarco flashed a look of annoyance at the trooper from his station. DeMarco and Morgan had known each other for seven years, had worked together many times. Morgan turned to the others now and said, “Keep it quiet, guys.”
“Why bother?” one of them asked. “If he was anywhere near here, the dogs would know it.”
Morgan faced the man who had spoken. “Quiet,” he said again.
Overhead, the droning whir of a helicopter faded in and out as the craft flew a grid between the cranberry swamp and Lake Wilhelm. DeMarco thumbed down the button on his radio. “Still nothing?” he asked.
A trooper in the helicopter studied his infrared screen. “I’ve got your group beside the swamp,” he said. “I’ve got the rest of the troopers making their way to where you are. Between them and you, nothing.”
“Take it north of the swamp,” DeMarco said.
A few minutes later, he received another report. “I’ve got one hotspot fleeing easterly,” the trooper informed him. “But it jumped over Black Run at about thirty miles an hour. So I doubt it’s our man.”
DeMarco gazed out across the cranberry bog. Fifteen acres of freezing water, he thought. Fifteen acres of vines whipping at your face and arms and tangling around your legs.
Where are you going, Thomas? he wondered. What’s that misfiring brain of yours telling you to do now?
“So how do you think he got out of here?” one of the troopers asked. “You think he caught a ride with somebody?”
Nobody answered.
DeMarco pursed his lips, squinted, and stared out across the swamp. When he inhaled, he could smell a vague scent of something fruity, a subtle tang mixed with the darkness of the bog and the ache of inevitable winter. Cranberries? As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a cranberry in sight.
He glanced again at his map, then reached for his radio, called the station, and told the dispatcher where to send the vehicles for pickup. Afterward, he walked down the short slope to the edge of the swamp and squatted on his haunches. He scooped up a handful of water and looked at it. Up close and in small amounts, the water lost its darkness, looked as clean and amber as good whiskey. He held it to his nose, inhaled its fragrance. He could smell the winter in it, could smell the dying fruit. He cupped his hand to his mouth, sucked in a sip of water. It was so cold that it burned his throat, so cold that it made him dizzy. He tilted his head back, squeezed shut his eyes, put one hand against the ground to steady himself from falling over.
He did not know what to do with the ache running through him. He wished he could lower his head into the water and let its darkness blind him and let its chill numb his brain. Then he could crawl into a shallow depression in the ground and pull pine boughs atop him, and he would never come out, never think another thought.
He knew that the four troopers up on the road were watching him, maybe whispering to one another. The dogs were probably watching him too. “Let them fucking watch,” he muttered to the water. “Let them fucking wonder.”
Seven
The first thing DeMarco did after returning to the barracks was to wash his hands. He washed his hands frequently, eight, ten times a day. He kept a package of antiseptic baby wipes in his car, another one in his desk. But this time, he went to the lavatory in the barracks because he wanted to splash water on his face too, thought the shock of cold water might knock the cobwebs from his brain. He soaped his hands thoroughly, scraped a thumbnail beneath each fingernail, rinsed off the soap, and splashed four handfuls of cold water in his face.
His hands were clean, but the water on his face didn’t work. Fragments of thoughts floated through his brain like charred paper on water, thoughts that would not coalesce.