“Okay, how did you do?” Joe asks, and Agent Metz hands him her phone, leans over, and puts her hands on her thighs.

“Asthma,” she says to me.

When I raise my eyebrows, she adds. “Cold weather does it. It’s not normally a problem.”

Joe writes in his notebook. “That took you twenty-two minutes.” He looks at me.

“So Annalise arrived at this spot anywhere from one twenty-two to one forty-two, give or take.”

“Yeah. Looks like.”

Chase arrives, also a little winded. “What now?”

Joe stows his notepad in his pocket. “We drive from here to the Bradley place. Hop in.”

We drive in silence, the bare winter trees skimming by. I’ve got my phone timing us as Joe drives. He’d been to the scene before he’d arrived in Graybridge, but together, armed with the statements from our people of interest, we hope to find some answers. Joe pulls up on the side of the road. The old hunting lodge looks dark, dreary in the snow, like a huge dead beast. “How long did that take?” he asks me.

“Six minutes.” We get out, and he pulls a tarp out of the back of the car.

“I don’t have to get in that, right?” Agent Metz says. We’d run through our plan back in Graybridge and decided we weren’t going to go that far, but we all laugh.

“No, although it would help.” Joe cocks an eyebrow. She snorts and steps back. “Okay. We know that whether he took her around the house from the outside or went through the house entrance to the basement, he had to carry her quite a ways.”

“All of our suspects are big men,” I say. “Mr. Westmore carries heavy objects in the course of his work. Mr. Ferris plays hockey and tennis. Mr. Pearson isn’t any wimp.”

“Hayes Branch?” Chase says.

“Okay. He’s not Goliath, but he’s not a hundred-pound weakling either, and with adrenaline pumping . . .”

“The doctor was also a fairly big guy, and Ms. Robb was petite,” Agent Metz says.

“Right,” Joe adds. “Anyway, let’s walk around the outside of the house first.” He lays three cinder blocks in the tarp and wraps it up, and we head down the sloping lawn. The blocks aren’t quite the same as a full-grown woman, but Joe wanted something to approximate an unwieldy load. The snow isn’t too deep, thank God, but we slip a little anyway. We’re on the side of the house where the Westmores’ bedroom had been, but no windows. The other side of the house would’ve presented more difficulties. Much steeper, more trees, windows, the side porch where the Branches were sleeping. If the perp carried Ms. Robb outside, it would stand to reason it was on this side.