“What was he doing with the images?”

“Selling them for bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency. It’s definitely a trafficking case. You did good putting this in place, me and the FTO angle. This is solid work.”

The subject of this praise didn’t respond.

Houston pressed him. “You don’t agree?”

Joe waved his hand apologetically. “No, no. I do. Absolutely. Thank you, Fred. I was just thinking that this was the easy one—the unlocked phone, the straight connection between perpetrator and subject. My questions are, one: What about the other electronics we grabbed? What’re they going to show us? And, two: Who killed Don Kalfus?”

“You think this douchebag did him in?”

“We have to ask the question.” Joe held up his own smartphone. “I’ve been getting texts from Jim Collins, updating me on what the crime techs are still finding. The assumption we started with, that Kalfus stole the car and used it for a multiday grab-and-run spree, seems to be paying off. His prints are everywhere—including on Buttner’s cell. And the local agencies we’ve asked for help are coming across with video footage from gas stations and convenience stores showing him filling up and/or buying things to eat. And there’s a growing list of burglary reports matching when and where he was in any particular neighborhood, in New Hampshire and Vermont, both.”

“So?” Houston asked. “That’s good, right?”

“In and of itself, sure, but none of it addresses the elephant in the room. Who killed him? And why was he put in the trunk?”

Joe indicated their surroundings. “For instance, Fred, what about this place says to you, ‘Burgle me’? This is low-income housing with lots of neighbors who don’t work and who watch their neighbors come and go as if it were a soap opera. Nobody in his right mind would break in here and steal a single cell phone.”

“They knew each other?” Fred suggested.

“Kalfus and the flying Trevor Buttner,” Joe agreed. “I think so, too.”

The late Don Kalfus’s mother, Cheri Pratt, didn’t mess with the traditional grieving process. She cut the line, went straight to rage, and stayed there.

“You fuckin’ people,” she snarled at the two cops before her. “You bust my ass, year after year, about Donny doin’ this and Donny doin’ that, never once helpin’ me set him straight. And now here you are, at long last, givin’ me shit about how ‘sorry for your loss’ you are when what you really want to do is screw him over again. What? For old times’ sake? No. ’Cause clearly he’s to blame for his own death. That is rich.”

With that, she left the open doorway and disappeared into the gloom behind her.

Ron smiled at Willy, bowed slightly, and gestured invitingly to him to follow her. “Please,” he said. “I insist. I am but your humble backup here.”

Willy took the lead, saying, “Fine, but if she hurts me, I want you to shoot her.”

The house’s interior spoke to a tornado’s aftermath, except that the roof was intact and the windows still in place. It was not a hoarding environment, where the contents reveal the owner’s genuine attachment to things. Instead, it was sloppier, more careless. Surveying the debris-covered surfaces before them, from furniture to counters to floor, the two men saw evidence of things simply dropped after use. Pizza boxes, canned goods, toys, grocery bags, clothing, two rusty bicycles, trash cans, old food wrappers, kitty litter scattered like rock salt, and countless glasses, plates, abandoned pots and pans—soiled and crusty—piled everywhere. The whole was a gloomy museum of stacked artifacts, arranged to challenge the visitor’s access, at the risk of causing catastrophic results. Quaintly, Willy had heard this kind of setting described as Diogenes syndrome. Truly everything, he’d thought at the time, now had a diagnosis.