“Mind? I can’t thank you enough for being so thoughtful. She’s having the time of her life.”

“I think I’ll stand right here and watch her for a while,” Connie said. “Then I’ll be ready for something hot to drink and I have a feeling Lucy will be, too. Ben, you look like you haven’t had enough.”

Wesley said to me, “You up for a few quick runs?”

We exchanged remarks about nonessential matters as we moved through the line, and then were silent when the lift swung around and seated us. Wesley lowered the bar as the cable slowly pulled us toward the mountaintop. The air was numbing and deliciously clean, and filled with the quiet sounds of skis swishing and dully slapping hard-packed snow. Snow from snow machines drifted like smoke through the woods between slopes.

“I talked to Downey,” he said. “He’ll see you at headquarters just as soon as you can get there.”

“That’s good news,” I said. “Benton, what have you been told?”

“Marino and I have talked several times. It appears you have several cases going on right now that aren’t connected by evidence, necessarily, but by a peculiar coincidence in timing.”

“I think we’re dealing with more than coincidence. You know about Ronnie Waddell’s print turning up in Jennifer Deighton’s house.”

“Yes.”

He stared off at a stand of evergreens backlit by the setting sun. “As I’ve told Marino, I’m hoping there’s a logical explanation for how Waddell’s print got there.”

“The logical explanation may very well be that he was, at some point, inside her house.”

“Then we’re dealing with a situation so bizarre as to defy description, Kay. A death row convict is out on the street killing again. And we’re supposed to assume someone else took his place in the chair on the night of December thirteenth. I doubt there would have been many volunteers.”

“You wouldn’t think so,” I said.

“What do you know about Waddell’s criminal history?”

“Very little.”

“I interviewed him years ago, in Mecklenburg.” I glanced over at him with interest. “I’ll preface my next remarks by saying that he was not particularly cooperative in that he would not discuss Robyn Naismith’s murder. He claimed that if he killed her, he didn’t remember it. Not that this is unusual. Most of the violent offenders I have interviewed either claim to have poor recall; or they deny that they committed the crimes. I had a copy of Waddell’s Assessment Protocol faxed to me before you got here. We’ll go over it after dinner.”

“Benton, I’m already glad I’m here.”

He stared straight ahead, our shoulders barely touching. The slope beneath us got steeper as. we rode in silence for a while. Then he said, “How are you, Kay?”

“Better. There are still moments.”