Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley Page B

interfering with her story. It’d be worse if I had nothing to show for it.
    Deputy Frank D’Alessio walked into the office and, without noticing me, handed Dingus a steaming mug and a thin file folder. “Forensics, chief,” the deputy said. Dingus shot him a look, and D’Alessio turned and saw me.
    “Ah, jeez,” he said. “Gus.”
    “Frankie,” I said. “Forensics?”
    He glanced nervously at Dingus, then started for the door. “You’re playing tonight, right?” He meant our playoff game. “See you out there.”
    I smiled at Dingus. “Forensics on a snowmobile?”
    Dingus shrugged. “Routine stuff,” he said. “And that’s off the record.” He stood up from his chair, closed his office door, and sat down again. The name of the woman in the photograph came to me: Barbara Lampley. Dingus actually displayed a picture of his ex-wife. What man did that?
    “Off the record, Dingus? Give me a break. Has the
Pilot
ever burned you?”
    He folded his meaty hands on his desk. “Not yet,” he said. “I’d really like to help you, Gus, but fact is, I have an ongoing investigation here.”
    “Ongoing or reopened?”
    “No comment.”
    That gave me an idea.
    “Can I get a copy of the original police report from 1988?” I said.
    “Tell you what,” he said. He pushed back from the desk, pulled a drawer out, plucked a sheet of paper from inside, and handed it to me. “Fill her out and we’ll get back to you.”
    The sheet was a form for requesting records under a state public-disclosure law. “Dingus, I can’t wait for this,” I said.
    “Well, I’m afraid somebody else has asked for the same report, and I asked them for the same thing.”
    “Joanie?”
    “No, not the redhead.”
    “Who then?”
    He shook his head. “That’s all.”
    I couldn’t imagine who else would be interested in that report.
    “Are you going to drag Walleye?”
    “Sure,” Dingus said. “With an icebreaker.”
    This wasn’t like Dingus. He usually gave it up once he saw you were serious. Did he have more at stake here than I knew? I recalled watching him from the woods on the night the cowl washed up, how he knelt in the shadows on the beach. I didn’t remember him being a close friend of Coach, but then I wasn’t around Starvation for years.
    “Hey,” I said. “Isn’t that Barbara Lampley? Your ex?”
    “What of it?”
    “You’re a better man than me, Sheriff.”
    “OK,” he said, pushing away from his desk. “We’re done here.”
    “No, tell you what, Dingus, I’ll take your advice.”
    Remembering Barbara reminded me that Dingus had been a deputy once—maybe during the original investigation. I slapped the information sheet down on his desk and scribbled my name, the
Pilot
address, and my request for the 1988 file on Coach’s accident. I handed it to Dingus. He stared at it for a long moment, then looked up at me, holding my gaze as if he were sizing me up. We really didn’t know each other very well. I guessed that was going to change. “All right,” he said. “We’ll process it within the required ten days.”
     
     
     

ten
     
     
       Glassy cobwebs arched over the stairway down from the
Pilot
newsroom. I flicked a switch and gray light filled the basement, a dank concrete vault the size of a one-car garage. Along three walls stood wooden racks holding black binders of
Pilot
s dating to the 1970s, dates etched in gold lettering on their sides. The one I wanted was marked “March 1–March 15, 1988.”
    I hefted the binder from the rack and set it on a slab of Masonite laid across two file cabinets beneath the stairway. Pink Post-its jutted from the edges of the binder—Joanie’s doing. I flipped to the newspaper marked by the first Post-it, Monday, March 14, 1988. Coach’s death covered the front page. The headline bannered across the top read, “Blackburn Dies in Snowmobile Mishap.” Beneath it a photograph showed cops standing around a patch on the frozen lake, the headlights of