"No, sir," Jim said, surprised at the intelligible sentence. "She's down at the main house by now." He devoutly hoped he was telling the truth. "Sir, what is your name?"

The man stared at him. "What?"

"What is your name? Who are you? What are you doing in this cabin?"

The man looked around him, a sudden wide smile that was as bright as it was meaningless spreading across his face. "Isn't this a nice place? The nicest I ever stayed in." He shivered. "Cold, though."

He was older than Jim had first thought. His face was lined and his beard and hair were an untrimmed tangle of curls that fell to his shoulders and chest. He looked like a cross between a mad scientist and the Count of Monte Cristo before the escape. He smelled of wood smoke and urine. Jim looked down and saw that the man had wet his pants.

"You shouldn't entertain angels unawares," the man said suddenly.

Jim looked at him askance. The man flashed his mad smile again. "You know why?"

"No," Jim said. "Why?"

The man's voice dropped to a confiding level. "Because they can turn out to be the devil."

Come to think of it, the guy looked more like Rasputin than the Count. "Okay, sir, let's go back down to the lodge."

The man cringed and tried to pull free. "No! No, I don't want to go there! The devil's there!"

"Not anymore," Jim said.

On the way back, all he could think of was how relieved he was that Dan O'Brian was off the hook.

And how not wrong he had been to let him go with Ruthe.

6

The news of the attack on Dina Willner and Ruthe Bauman and of Dina's death swept around the Park faster than if it had been broadcast on Park Air. The news that Trooper Jim Chopin had a suspect in custody swiftly succeeded it.

Kate heard it from Johnny, who came home from town with the news the following afternoon. She sat down hard and stared at nothing for several long moments. Johnny shifted from foot to foot, uneasy at the vacant expression on her face. "Kate?" he said tentatively. "Are you all right?"

She said nothing.

"Kate," he said, and stepped forward to touch her on the shoulder.

She looked at him. "What?"

"Are you all right?"

Two of her grandmother's oldest friends had just been butchered, one of them to death, the other to near death. "Yes," she said, summoning up a smile from who knew where. "I'm all right, Johnny."

He watched her indecisively for a moment. "Want some cocoa?"

"What? No, I don't think so."

" 'Cause I was going to make some for myself."

She saw from the look on his face that he needed something to do. "I'll take some tea. Some Lemon Zinger, with honey."

He brightened. "Great. I can do that." He went to the woodstove and checked the kettle, which was always left to steam gently at the back. "Almost full," he said. He got out two mugs, measured Nestle's and evaporated milk into one and honey into another. He put the tag of the tea bag underneath the bottom of the mug with honey in it. "So when you pour the water in, the string and tag don't go in, too," he said. He looked over his shoulder. Kate was back to staring into space.