“He didn’t have much use for the Warden Service. Our guys had pinched him a few times for exceeding his limit of geese. He was out on the river the same morning as Chamberlain and Jewett. But he came in before they did.”

“So Bazinet was a witness?”

“Only in the sense that he saw them together from afar. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.”

If I had been the primary on the case, you can be certain I would have made a notation that Vic Bazinet had been hunting in the vicinity the morning the professor disappeared.

“He seems like someone I should talk with,” I said.

“I’m done trying to have a polite conversation with you,” Rivard said. “So what are you going to do next? Are you going to petition the colonel to reopen the case on the basis of what Arlo Burch could and couldn’t have seen? Are you going to try to persuade the state police it was a possible homicide? I guess as long as it gives you a chance to smear me, it doesn’t matter. That’s all that you want, isn’t it?”

I have always found that when I am angry, sad, or afraid, it helps to recenter myself in the natural world. I took a breath and looked around.

The only signs of life were a dozen crows scouting the park perimeter. More had perched atop the fenced enclosure around the cell tower. Once again I remembered the huge roost nearby that Charley had told me about. In a little more than an hour, as the sky turned from blue to purple, they’d begin assembling from every direction: hundreds, possibly thousands of crows.

I thought Rivard was about to hang up. But he came back with a question: “You said you were outside Burch’s trailer. Who are you going to interview next?”

“Is there someone in particular you’d like me to avoid?”

“I don’t remember you being a comedian, Bowditch.”

“I’ve been working on my stand-up.”

“Don’t quit your day job.”

“I genuinely wish you and your family a happy holiday, Marc. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s the truth.”

“Yeah? Well, I have two words for you, and they aren’t ‘Merry Christmas.’”

Number nineteen was another double-wide, but far less palatial than Burch’s. Dove-gray siding, black trim. The only addition to this one was a roofed porch that an amateur carpenter had tacked to the front. It was easy for me to imagine Grambo sitting in the shadows with a twelve-gauge across her lap.

But not on a bone-chilling afternoon like this one.