Dressed in her running gear, Sterling crouched in front of the oil heater, put her gun and personal phone inside, then clicked the fascia into place. She’d woken at dawn, then dozed on and off before deciding to get up. A sunny winter morning awaited, and she was hoping a run would blow away the cobwebs.

Outside, the spider web glistened in the sunlight, the front lawn white from an overnight dusting of snow. With the snarling dog at the forefront of her mind, she patrolled around the carport and shrubbery, checking for prints or anything that could have been dropped. Next, she checked the old bird aviary down the side of the house, then walked further along until she reached the locked gate that led into the rear yard. But there was no sign of the dog anywhere on the property.

Out the front again, she pulled up her hood and worked her fingers into her synthetic gloves. Sticking to the bitumen, she took the downhill gradient slowly. At the intersection, she varied her route to the Alpine Way, pulling back her hood now that she’d warmed up. After weeks and weeks of surveillance, she knew every house in the town of three hundred, and the make and models of the cars that went with them.

At the Alpine Way, she lengthened her stride along the flat section before taking the road to the pondage. Stopping to slowly retie her laces, she noted that the barbeque area was deserted save for a car with a trailer parked close to the boat ramp. Sucking in some deep breaths, she did a few stretches. Out on the water, a lone fisherman sat hunched in a dinghy, his fishing rod in hand.

Sterling ran on, following the shoreline, birds twittering overhead. Frigid air gathered in her chest while oxygen flooded her brain.

She stopped at the spillway and stood with her hands on the back of her head, pleased to see that the road had been re-opened. After a while, she started to walk.

Someone wanted Art Lorrimer dead, and the most common motives for murder were gain, crimes of passion, revenge and concealment. This wasn’t a crime of passion.

As his next of kin, all three Lorrimer siblings were the beneficiaries of his estate and stood to gain from his death. Motive right there.

Concealment? What damaging information did Lorrimer have that forced someone to murder him so it didn’t become public? And revenge? Lorrimer owed people money, people so dangerous his parents purchased a plane so he could escape. Criminal gangs were notorious for having long memories, a fondness for exorbitant interest rates and a tendency to commit murder without a second thought.

Were these the same people Scruffy Freidman had intended to give up to the drug squad? Freidman had been turning informant, so concealment was definitely the motive for his murder.