“I don’t know. Not a lot. Maybe three at a time, tops. Seven? Over the years? It wasn’t a huge thing, like you’re thinking.”

“You have no clue what I’m thinking,” Willy muttered, his emotions less restrained than Joe’s.

Herrick didn’t notice. “Seamus took care of them,” he said.

“Tell us about that.”

“It’s what I meant about his being Shaw’s weirdo sidekick. He starts out one of ’em, like I said, and then he becomes their jailer? How twisted is that?”

“You saw a lot of Seamus?”

“Off and on. I’d drop by to see how he was doing. Find out when the Shaws might be coming up. Keep in touch.”

Keeping your thumb in the pie, Joe thought. He placed another picture on the table, this one of the long-missing Scooter Nelson. “You ever see him?”

Herrick peered at it without interest. “Maybe. I guess so. He’s not one of the recent ones.”

Joe moved on. “Lemuel and Lucy fell out toward the end,” he said. “You know why?”

Herrick shook his head. “I didn’t see her as much as the two guys, and not at all toward the end. I was surprised she’d died. You saying that wasn’t natural?”

“One last question for now, Clyde,” Joe asked, not answering. “Then we’ll take a break. Were there any other people, besides Lucy, you, and Seamus, who were part of the inner circle? Anyone Shaw trusted like he did you three?”

“Not that I know,” Herrick replied, the living embodiment of the banality of evil, in Joe’s eyes. “Course, I never traveled south to their other place. This was my patch, and I stuck to it.”

“This confirms it,” Sammie announced, holding up a fax back in their Brattleboro office. “According to prints filed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Seamus Kyle, aka Thomas Nesbitt, disappeared without a trace nine years ago, from Leominster, Mass.”

“Score one credibility point for ex–police chief Herrick,” Willy said from behind his desk.

“And,” Sam went on, switching to her computer monitor, “preliminary reports from the cadaver dog team in Thomaston indicate five skeletons in five separate graves, some still with plastic bags over their heads. One was also wearing a ring and had dental work matching Scooter Nelson’s. It’s looking like it might be the oldest one of the bunch. He could’ve been their first.”

A silence settled over them at that, which Joe tried to lighten.

“You hear Dillon Rowe was made acting chief?” he asked.

Lester tried to help. “Good for him. God knows I wouldn’t trade places with him, but to each his own, I guess.”

“What’s left of my brains would rot,” Willy agreed.

“Speaking of brains,” Joe asked them all, “is any one of you satisfied with the way things rest with this case?”

Lester, by character more inclined to coloring within the lines than the rest of them, reacted on the bright side. “It’s looking good,” he said. “We got Lucy killing Kalfus, Seamus knocking off Lucy, and Shaw blowing up Seamus, along with thumb drives, fingerprints, physical evidence, and Herrick’s testimony to support it all. We’re close to solving several missing kid cases, we connected a string of burglaries across southern Vermont and New Hampshire to the man who did them, found two small warehouses full of stolen items to be redistributed to their owners, and have two people behind bars for felonies ranging from murder to kidnapping to sexual assault on a minor, among other things. And we did it all as part of a federal task force where I don’t think we pissed off even a local deputy. That may be the biggest accomplishment of all.”