“I heard about the reward Mrs. Chamberlain was offering,” he said. “I didn’t care about the money. I wanted to help them find the old dude. No one should be buried in an empty coffin.”

It was going to take me a while to untangle that sentence. “But you accepted the reward anyway?”

“Why shouldn’t he?” said Tiff. “That’s why the woman offered it.”

One of the interview tactics I’d picked up over my career was to bob and weave. I never wanted the people I was interrogating to anticipate my next question. I didn’t want to give them time to plan their responses.

“What’s your opinion of Bruce Jewett?”

“My opinion?”

“Jewett was hunting with Chamberlain the morning he died. Other than you, he was the last to see the professor alive. The police were looking hard at him as a suspect—until you came forward. You saved Mr. Jewett more aggravation than you might realize. I’m curious how you would describe your relationship with him.”

Arlo smiled, open-mouthed. “Relationship! I’ve probably had, like, three conversations with the guy over the years. He was here before my cousin developed the hilltop. Bruce tried to stop it from happening. He hired lawyers to fight the permits, etc. He hates my cousin, but he’s always been friendly with me. Generally, I have a good rapport with people.”

“What do you know of his background?”

“Don’t answer him, Arlo,” said Tori.

“I can speak for myself, babe,” said Burch. “Jewett’s from New Hampshire originally. Served onboard nuclear submarines from what I hear. Top-secret stuff he can’t talk about. His mom moved in with him a few years ago. She has Alzheimer’s. She got out of the house once and wandered into the woods, and Bruce was racing around on his snowmobile trying to find her before she froze to death. He even came up here asking for my help—which was a first.”

“He didn’t alert the wardens?”

Burch’s reaction was a shrug. “I don’t remember seeing any of you guys around that night. We found her, in any case. It was below freezing, but she’d taken off half her clothes. It was one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen.”

Experiencing feverish heat is a symptom of moderate hypothermia. A person’s core gets so cold, they lose the ability to form rational thoughts. They engage in what is called “paradoxical undressing.” Sometimes they burrow into the snow or even hide from the people searching for them. The confusion would be worse in the case of a woman already suffering from dementia.

“I met Mrs. Jewett,” I said.

“You were inside his house?” asked Tiff with real surprise.