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  “Ma?” he said, barely whispering by now. “Can you hear me? I got to try to get help.”

  Nothing.

  He sighed, gritted his teeth, took hold of the steering wheel with his good hand, and pushed up with his feet, hoping to launch himself at least partway out the window.

  The pain was beyond imagination. It felt like lava, filling him with heat and blinding red light, exploding inside his head and making him gasp for air. Beyond that, he could feel something fundamental shift within him, as if the cellar of a house had suddenly vanished into the earth, leaving everything above it precariously poised above a void. For a split second, he could almost see himself hovering in the air, somewhere between heaven and oblivion.

  And then he, too, collapsed into the blackness and the utter, all-encompassing quiet of a winter night.

  Brett: so wut u doing

  gIRl: chatting with u

  Brett: cool

  Brett: u in school

  gIRl: nope

  Brett: why

  gIRl: home - school get out at 220

  Brett: oh cool

  Brett: so u ain’t got no bf to be hanging with

  gIRl: nope broke

  Brett: that sucks

  gIRl: i guess

  Chapter 2

  It was postcard serene—trees coated in white snow, hanging low over a tumbling brook whose boulders were collared with sugar halos of ice, sparkling in the sun. The painfully blue sky overhead daubed the darkly rushing water with the hint of a bruise as it emerged, cascading, from a large, cavernlike culvert projecting from under a quaint backcountry dirt road.

  Joe Gunther studied that road a moment. It emerged from the woods like a fairy-tale prop, entered the sunshine, its snowy shoulders dazzling in the light, leaped the culvert, and vanished as magically into the darkness of the trees on the far side. There were no railings hemming it in as it spanned the water, not even a curb. In fact, if viewed from a low enough angle, the road appeared to cross the brook as if by the stroke of a paintbrush.

  “What do you think?”

  Joe glanced over at Sammie Martens, his only female squad member and as close as he had to a lieutenant.

  “I think it’s dangerous as hell,” he said. “Bet more than one driver’s gotten white knuckles crossing this thing.”

  “Not to mention the odd pedestrian,” she added ruefully.

  Joe nodded and grunted his agreement, approaching the edge overlooking the water. Sam joined him to stare down at the swirl and tumble of the stream gushing out below them. There was a pile of boulders right at the mouth of the culvert, then a widening where one of the banks tabled out slightly to form a small beach before the trees downstream crowded in once more and narrowed the channel to create a miniature whitewater chute that raced off around a bend.

  At the edge of the snow-clad beach, the water slowed and flattened enough to create a pool—no doubt a popular swimming hole during the summer. Not that Joe had been hard-pressed to conjure up such an image, since floating facedown in the middle of the pool was the body of a fully clothed man.

  “You think that’s what he was?” he asked her.

  Instead of answering, Sammie merely shrugged.

  By the water’s edge, a diver for the Vermont State Police was adjusting the last piece of equipment on his cold-water suit. Before lowering his face mask, he called up to Joe. “You ready for me to go in?”

  Joe gave him a thumbs-up.

  Another state police officer, this one looking cold despite his zipped and snapped bulky ski parka, approached from the other side of the short bridge. Joe and he had just been introduced minutes earlier. He was Jeff Dupree, originally from Virginia, and he was still getting used to the cold weather, even after five years up here.

  “You find anything up that way, Jeff?” Joe asked as he drew near.

  The young man shook his head before reporting in a soft Southern accent. “A couple of houses about a third of a mile up. One’s empty; the other had no idea—older couple that keep to themselves. They told me the road dead-ends about a mile up, at least in the winter. The town doesn’t plow it. I didn’t see any tracks by the side of the road along the way that told me anything.”

  Joe nodded. “Thanks. You got their names and information?”

  Dupree tapped his chest with a heavily gloved hand. “Sure do.”

  Joe smiled at the sight. His own jacket was unzipped and he was without gloves, considering this an unusually warm day. He returned to watching the diver below.

  He and Sam were the only representatives from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, the state’s independent major-crimes unit. The others, and there were five of them by now, were all from the state police. It hadn’t always been so. In the not so distant past, the troopers would have owned this scene and been led by detectives from their own BCI division. But, recently, by a governor’s signature, the VBI had been put in charge of all major cases, the only concession being that, generally speaking, the unit should be invited in by the initial responders rather than simply take charge.

  It had been an awkward arrangement at first, and not just with the state police but the large municipal forces as well, with considerable grumbling from all sides. But since VBI was composed of the best from all departments, and since Gunther, as field force commander and number two in the bureau, had bent over backward to be accommodating, supportive, and self-effacing, relations were improving all the time.

  It also didn’t hurt that a majority of the new VBI was made up of old BCI members who loved the increased autonomy and lack of heavy-handed structure.

  Below them, the diver slowly waded into the dark water, eddies collecting around his calves as he picked his way between unseen obstacles. The body floated spread-eagled, as if snorkeling, about ten feet out.

  “Any theories yet?” Joe asked more generally. Sam had been here an hour already, ever since a 911 cell phone call from an out-of-town jogger enjoying the sylvan isolation had gotten everyone moving.

  She shook her head. “The road’s been plowed, the snowbanks don’t show anything, there’s nothing lying around like a wallet or a bag, there’s no car parked nearby, and Jeff just told us what he found—or didn’t—up the road. I don’t know what the hell happened. If this guy’s a drunk who missed his footing, what’s he doing way out here? We’re fifteen miles from Brattleboro. If he drove here, where’s his car? If he was driven here by someone else, what’s the story with that?” She glanced over at him, clearly frustrated. “I sure as hell hope he has some ID, ’cause this could be anything. Maybe he fell from a plane.”

  “You got a canvass going?” Joe asked.

  “VSP did that right off the bat. There aren’t a lot of houses around here, but they’re spread out, so it’ll take a while to hear back from everybody. I’m not holding my breath. There’s something about this one that makes me think it won’t be a slam dunk.”

  “Foul play, as they say?” he asked.

  “Just a hunch.”

  That counted for something. Sam Martens had been working for Joe a long time by now, dating back to when she was one of his detectives on the Brattleboro PD. Wiry and energetic—and as privately self-doubting as she could be forceful with others—Sam was a dogged, intuitive, natural digger. Joe had been delighted when she opted for the VBI, joining his own three-person, Brattleboro-based squad. This small group, while responsible for cases in Vermont’s southeastern corner, had also virtually become a flying squad, often called on to support other VBI teams across the state because of Joe’s status within the organization. He wasn’t big on pecking orders or playing favorites, but his trust in Sam played a role in making this arrangement possible.

  The diver had slipped fully into the freezing water by now, barely disturbing its surface except for the bubbles escaping from his regulator. It had once seemed like overkill to Joe, all this scuba gear for a job that might have been achieved with a pair of waders, but Vermont’s waters proved deadly for people who didn’t t
reat them with respect, and by now he’d become easier with a little more caution holding sway over a mishap, especially for a dead body. Besides, as he’d been told more than once, these calls were good practice for when a life did hang in the balance.

  The diver, clearly milking the moment, circled the body, examining it from all sides. They even saw the reflected flash of his waterproof camera as he took a picture.

  Eventually, though, he reached out and began shepherding the source of his interest toward shore, where a tall, skinny man waited quietly. This was the death investigator from the medical examiner’s office, who, along with the state’s attorney and the police, formed the judicial three-legged stool on which rested the fate of the unexpectedly dead in Vermont.

  Joe nodded, half to himself. “Well, guess we’d better introduce ourselves to the mystery guest,” he said, and moved toward the embankment, where a rope had been rigged to help with the snow’s slippery surface.

  The ME’s rep was Alan Miller, a twenty-year EMT whose primary job was as a carpenter. Joe, who’d worked with him a number of times, had always found him to be a quiet man of peaceful demeanor, and sometimes wished that he’d found a happier part-time occupation. Death investigation seemed a dour way to complement the more optimistic pursuit of emergency medicine.

  But Miller clearly didn’t see it that way. His face lit up when he saw Joe—or better Sammie, Joe reasonably suspected.

  “I didn’t see you two hiding out,” Miller said, shaking hands. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Nothing,” Sam responded gloomily, ignoring him in favor of the corpse now being hauled onto the small beach area.

  Miller followed her gaze just as the body was rolled over onto its back. “Well,” he said, “maybe we’ll get luckier here, or at least up in Burlington.”

  Joe didn’t say anything, hoping he was right. Burlington meant the ME’s office and Dr. Beverly Hillstrom, a prime example of how a state like Vermont could still sometimes attract the very best professionals. More than once, she’d pulled a miracle out of thin air when Joe thought he had run dry of possibilities.

  Miller pulled on a pair of latex gloves as he approached the deceased. “Not a very remarkable-looking guy, is he?”

  That was hard to argue. The body was waxy-pale and tinged with the blue typical of cold-weather deaths, but he was relatively fresh, possibly dead for under ten hours, and the rushing water had kindly washed away the seepage that a dry corpse produces in short order.

  “Looks like a clerk out of an old movie,” Sam agreed.

  The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties to early forties, bald with a fringe of hair above his ears and around the back. He was neither fat nor thin, tall nor short, handsome nor hideous. Joe had to agree with Sam—this was a portrait of utter blandness. The Invisible Man in three dimensions, dressed for winter.

  Miller was now standing astride him, as if getting ready to squat down and sit on his chest. In fact, he merely hovered so his hands could roam freely just above the man’s surface, carefully unbuttoning and unzipping and peeling back layers of clothing, searching through pockets as they were revealed. He didn’t actually take anything off, but by the time he was finished, most aspects of the man’s anatomy were available for inspection.

  But in terms of revelations, despite the treasure hunting aspect of the process, the conclusion matched the introduction—and Sam’s opening appraisal.

  As Miller reiterated when he finally stepped free and peeled the gloves from his almost numb hands, “Nothing. No bends, folds, or mutilations.”

  Joe pursed his lips without comment. He didn’t like cases like this. It wasn’t the extra work they represented—the lack of identification, the absence of a clear and reasonable story. Rather, it was the lingering scent of menace he disliked—the palpable suggestion that they’d ended up dead without ready explanation because somebody else had engineered it that way.

  It was possible that this man had fallen off the bridge in a drunken stupor, or suffered a heart attack while taking an evening stroll, but Joe doubted it. This body had been stripped of the conventional identifiers we all carry, and Joe’s instincts told him that Hillstrom and her associates would end up telling a tale of homicide. Looking down at this innocuous mystery, he could almost feel the malevolence that had brought it about.

  Sam glanced up at her boss, one eyebrow raised. “What do you think?” she asked.

  I think there’s a nemesis out there, ready to be engaged, he thought, but he actually said to her, “I think we use a fine-toothed comb.”

  A shout reached them from the road above. “Special Agent Gunther?”

  They all looked up at Jeff Dupree, his hand in the air as if waving farewell to a train.

  “What’s up?” Joe asked, raising his voice above the tumble of the water.

  “I’ve got dispatch on the cell phone. Something about a car crash.”

  Lonely: any hot girl wanna chat ??

  Hottie: yea

  Shez: add me

  Dislove: dude

  Gangsta: ron how tall r u??

  Shez: n u can hav a look

  Hottie: what is it

  Lonely: any hot girl wanna chat ??

  Hottie: kk

  Dislove: bored

  Hottie: so u gonna talk me something about yourself

  Boss: hey all Im Back Whats good?

  Hottie: yourself

  Dislove: any guys? . . .

  Gangsta: ron r u there??

  Hottie: shez u there

  Shez: em wot u wna no

  Ron: back yes I am

  Lonely: boss

  Lonely: can we chat ??

  Hottie: I don’t know that is for u 2 tell me

  Ron: im 6’1”

  Doo: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  Doo: hi

  Shez: well iv got an 11inch touge n breath frew ma ears

  Hottie: oh I c

  Chapter 3

  Joe positioned his chair in the corner, by the window, where he had a clear view of both the bed and the door and where he could stretch out his legs if need be. It was a strategic decision, based on the chance that he’d be spending a lot of time here, which, sadly, was what he was anticipating. Unless things deteriorated even more.

  He looked across at his mother, lying peacefully in bed. At least he had that to hold on to. There were no tubes stuck down her throat at the moment, and only a single IV dangling from a metal pole beside her. She just looked asleep, aside from the ugly bruise extending from her left temple. Soon, he’d been told, if she stayed this way beyond some short-term deadline, a feeding tube and oxygen would be introduced. Maybe more. But, right now, her vitals were stable, her breathing deep and regular, her heartbeat strong, and her brain waves energetic.

  He had been led to believe that among the overall patient population at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, his mother was actually in pretty good shape. She just wasn’t waking up.

  Leo, typically, wasn’t quite as enigmatic. Like the man himself, his injuries were prominent, visible, and easily diagnosed, if not so simply set right. Leo had been Joe’s first stop in the hospital, once both patients’ conditions had been made clear on the phone. For all Leo’s much publicized joviality, he was a worrier, always nervously hovering over the target of his attention. It was one of the reasons he was so popular as a butcher, fussing over every customer. Joe knew from the moment he’d heard of his brother’s broken ribs, collapsed lung, fractured shoulder, and concussion, that Leo’s biggest problem was going to be his inability to get to their mother’s bedside. To Joe’s mind, regardless of who was in worse shape physically, Leo was going to be needing the most care.

  And that wasn’t even factoring in the man’s guilt.

  Fortunately for Joe, his brother was so beaten up that he couldn’t give much voice to his concerns. When Joe visited him in ICU, in fact, picking his way through all the monitoring equipment circling the bed, all Leo managed was a halfhearted smile.

  Joe
wasn’t even sure he could talk. “You okay, Leo?”

  Leo winced, as if at some joke Joe couldn’t fathom. “Top of the world,” his brother whispered, adding, “How’s Ma?”

  Joe slipped his hand into Leo’s and gave it a squeeze. He made his voice sound upbeat. “Haven’t seen her yet, but you’re in much worse shape. They told me she’s fast asleep—breathing fine, though, and everything else looks okay. No breaks, no messed-up major organs. The doc on the phone told me not to be overly concerned—that sometimes the body just needs to rest awhile. Sounds pretty good.”

  Leo closed his eyes, and Joe realized he was fighting back tears.

  “Leo,” he told him, “it was an accident.”

  Leo took a ragged breath, reopened his eyes, and murmured, “It was the car, not the road.”

  He coughed once then, not forcefully, but the effect was telling. His face contorted, and one of the monitors began chirping. A nurse gently moved Joe out of the way in order to adjust something.

  “I’ll look into it, Leo, and I’ll take care of Mom. Just get better, okay? I’ll be back in a bit and give you an update.”

  Now, in the stillness of his mother’s room, Joe thought of the deeper meaning behind Leo’s parting words. In Leo’s world, there were really only four areas to which he paid any attention—Mom, the butcher shop, his short-term girlfriends, and cars. The barn their father had once filled with farming equipment, livestock, and hay now housed a mismatched, dust-covered, much tinkered-with collection of automotive relics. Leo never worked on the Subaru he used to chauffeur their mother—she’d made it very clear that she wanted a professional doing that—but Joe trusted his brother’s mechanical instincts and knowledge. If Leo thought the car had somehow been the root cause of this accident, Joe was ready to believe him.