My kit includes other items for which I see no immediate use: a dead cell phone. Two magazines of .357 SIG cartridges but no means of discharging them. A waterlogged notebook with blurred notes from my interviews. A Bic ballpoint pen. My wallet and badge. My leather belt. My bootlaces.

No matches. No lighter.

No hat or scarf to warm my throat.

My gun lies at the bottom of the Androscoggin, forever in its holster.

But when I push the button on my SureFire, a white beam shimmers from the end. The gaskets prove to be as watertight as promised. I shine it at the river and see only shimmering curtains of snow between me and the far shore. As a means of signaling for help, it is useless—at least from this location.

I try the phone again. The water has bricked the damned thing, as the tech geeks say. Or maybe the cold did it. Or the impact from the crash.

I check my watch, a vintage Seiko Marinemaster (fortunately still running) that is one of my stepfather’s hand-me-downs. Since his recent remarriage, Neil has increased the value of his gifts to me while decreasing the time he’s made himself available for phone calls and visits. The glow-in-the-dark indices tell me the time is 5:05, and I know that is correct because the watch is insanely accurate, despite my ill treatment of it.

Ten minutes before stage three hypothermia sets in: the kind that is irreversible outside a hospital. I am already shivering. It is my body’s reflexive attempt to generate additional heat. The time to worry is when the shivering stops. I need to make a plan and fast.

One trick to staying warm in the open is to make yourself small. So I kneel and sit down on my calves. I unzip my parka and tuck my gloved hands in my armpits and press my forearms against my chest, feeling the hard ballistic vest beneath the sweater. The order of business is to keep my core warm. My limbs will take care of themselves.

Where am I?

I have a rough sense, of course. A dim red light high in the air across the river has to be the cell tower at the summit of Pill Hill. I spent most of my afternoon at the trailer park there. It was because I stayed too long—“leave the hill before it gets dark,” people had warned me—that I am in this predicament.

Again I check my watch. My sense of time is distorted. It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes since I left the cluster of mobile homes. Driving out of that bad place, I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror. It never occurred to me that the real danger lay ahead.