This case had been cancerous, emotionally. Beginning with a homicide was never a high point, but the gradual descent here into kidnapping, domestic abuse, and who knew what still lay ahead had filled Joe with a dread he couldn’t help projecting onto the towering, forbidding terrain surrounding them.

Thomaston didn’t come to much when they finally reached it. Dwarfed by neighboring mountains north of the Presidentials, spared the commercialism of Gorham, Lancaster, or even hardscrabble Berlin, it presented as almost endangered, clinging to its hilly edge like an uncertain notion—an exercise begun by humans who’d later moved on.

They hadn’t, not entirely. There was a post office, a single-story municipal building, a volunteer fire department, and, as expected, a police station of modest scope, complete with one cruiser parked outside.

“They speak English?” Willy asked, looking around.

“You might not find out if you ask,” Joe cautioned him. “The whole Live Free or Die thing really applies up here. They might not take to your natural charm like they do back home. I wouldn’t expect them to see cops as more than government stooges.”

“That’s okay,” Willy replied easily. “I am a government stooge, so we should get along.”

Joe relented. “You just might at that,” he said, bypassing the tiny, snow-clotted downtown to meet their contact as agreed farther down the road.

At the town garage, marked by its dome-shaped salt barn, easily the largest building they’d seen so far, he circled to the back of the structure and stopped near a cruiser parked facing them, but out of sight of the road. As they left their vehicle, a young man appeared from the barn, looking around warily as he approached.

“That’s him,” Willy said to Joe.

The uniformed officer took them in, especially Willy’s limp left arm, before shaking hands and asking, “You from Brattleboro?”

“Joe Gunther and Willy Kunkle. Yeah,” Joe told him.

“Dillon Rowe.” He looked around again. “Listen, I’m not sure how thin the ice is under my feet,” he said.

Joe gestured to the entrance he’d appeared from. “Would you like it better if we talked in there?” he asked.

The young man smiled thinly. “You mind?”

Willy bowed slightly and gestured that Rowe should precede them.

The three entered a building as high and empty as a small cathedral, its center dominated by a large but reduced pile of salt, still being put heavily to use against road ice during a winter that would hang around long after southern Vermont started sprouting crocuses. It was dark, mysterious, and resonant inside, lending to the conspiratorial mood of the meeting.

“No secret passwords?” Willy asked.

It was hard to interpret if Rowe was irritated or embarrassed by that.

“Why here?” Joe asked, shooting Willy a look. “Why the cloak-and-dagger?”

Rowe studied his polished black boots a moment, organizing his thoughts. “Your BOLO triggered a memory that could cause problems for me. I wanted to find out what you really wanted before I talked to you.”