The wolf didn’t want me to forget about him, it seemed. The veterinarian would need to anesthetize Shadow before she began her exam; it was simply too dangerous to try using a muzzle and other restraints. My hope was that he’d sleep the whole way home, provided I didn’t linger long in Stratford.

I slid my hand into my briefcase and pinched the letter I’d received from Mariëtte Chamberlain (née Van Rooyen). Her linen stationery included her phone number. I tried not to veer off the road as I keyed it into my cell phone.

“Yes?” came a woman’s voice.

“Is this Mrs. Chamberlain?”

“I should think you’d know who it was since you’re the one who rang me up.” She had an accent I couldn’t place. Australian? Zealander? “With whom am I speaking, please?”

“Mike Bowditch. I’m an investigator with the Maine Warden Service. You sent me a note about your father’s case.”

“Are you driving?” She pronounced the last word drrroyving.

“Yes, I am.”

“Would you do me the courtesy of pulling over and calling when you are no longer a danger to other drivers.”

“Ma’am?”

She had hung up.

I pulled into the boat launch at Lake Saint George. Ice extended in a silver ring from the shore, but most of the lake was open water. Some tiny ducks, buffleheads, bobbed in the blue chop. They disappeared beneath the surface for minutes at a time before popping up like corks.

I removed the folder from my briefcase and opened it across my lap. In addition to the official report, the file 14D, and the medical examiner’s findings, I had printed dozens of other documents: transcribed interviews, maps showing search grids, river flow information, and hydraulic diagrams.

“Mrs. Chamberlain, I am no longer driving,” I said into the phone.

“Thank you for responding to my letter, Warden Investigator Bowditch.”

Definitely Australian, I decided.

“Mike is fine.”

“I’d like to keep our relationship professional. Your colleagues presented themselves as advocates, but we discovered that it was just an act, or, in the case of the lead investigator, utter rubbish.”

“To whom are you referring?” I asked, although I already knew.

“A shifty fellow by the name of Rivard.”

Marc Rivard and I were old frenemies. At one time, he had been my sergeant, then briefly my lieutenant. In both roles he had made my life miserable. His career arc had been a sharp rise, followed by an even sharper fall. After he’d botched a case involving the slaughter of some moose on the land of the richest woman in Maine, he’d been “encouraged” to leave the service. It hardly surprised me that Mariëtte Chamberlain had reached the same conclusion about the man that I had.

“I am afraid I don’t understand what you’d like me to do,” I said into the phone.

“Reopen the case!”