“You pick up the pieces, huh?”

He gave her a look that suggested he could guess her opinion about the kind of work he did. “Actually, I help patients get to the point where they feel able to pick up their own pieces. Darby has responded incredibly well to the treatments I employed, I will say that.”

She gave him a nod. Maybe he wasn’t a bad guy. Maybe he was an egotistical jerk. Too early to say for certain.

The coffee finished dripping and Gleeson poured several cups. Offered her one which she took gratefully. She’d been up all last night and had worked nonstop since yesterday morning. The first forty-eight hours of any investigation were crucial. Pretty much everyone involved in this murder case was running on fumes and they were still no closer to finding answers than they had been yesterday. Considering they no longer had a suspect, they were even further away from solving these crimes than ever before.

Her boss was not happy.

Gleeson took the three cups out to the other members of the police department working the scene.

When he came back, she asked. “Did you know Martin Carstairs?”

“I already spoke to Special Agent Winters about that.”

“Now you’re talking to me.” She gave him a bright smile.

“Martin Carstairs was not a patient of mine.” Gleeson took a sip of his own drink. “Like I told SSA Winters, the one and only time I saw the man was at the ceilidh.”

Signy frowned. “You were there?”

Gleeson nodded. “With the family.”

At her surprised expression he gave her a querying frown. “You’re surprised I was at a dance?”

“Surprised you socialize with clients.”

He sighed impatiently. “I said ‘Hi’ to Darby and that’s pretty much the only time I spoke to her that night. It’s Fairbanks in January and we’ve only been here a short time. The family jump at any social event or chance to meet new people and make friends—my kids are both struggling and miss their old friends. My grad students invited us and told me it would be fun. It was.” His expression dropped. “However, something tells me we won’t be going next year.”

He was right. What had happened to Martin would haunt people for years. She’d met with his brothers and parents when they’d flown in this morning. It had sucked as there was a lot she couldn’t tell them. She was trying to get Martin’s house released from evidence so his family could pack up his stuff without having to make another trip back.

Signy stared into her coffee which tasted good but left a tang of bitterness in the back of her throat after drinking so much of the stuff lately.

And Gleeson was right about the social scene. There wasn’t much going on this time of year unless you were into winter sports or dog sledding. After the holidays, winter set in with unrelenting vigor and didn’t begin to loosen its grip until April. People who lived here made the most of any opportunities that popped up. Hell, it was more of a surprise she hadn’t attended the ceilidh, but Aiden wouldn’t have been seen dead at an event like that at his age.