He held it up, adding, “I’ll have my team go through it, but I’m thinking its real value will be in answering: Where the hell did Don Kalfus steal it from?”

Winchester, New Hampshire, is known for its beautiful Victorian-era library, a couple of picturesque covered bridges, an annual pickle festival, and for being a hard-luck, down-at-the-heels, minor industrial throwback that few outsiders can find on a map. In Willy Kunkle’s world of places harboring people who targeted others for money, drugs, sex, or pent-up frustration, Winchester was an unfortunate standout.

This is why Willy was here now, in a rainstorm that appeared at odds with the ruined snow on the ground. It was cold, dark, and miserable, despite being midmorning. He’d grabbed another few moments of sleep and then headed off on his own, invoking his temporary federal reach and ignoring his unit’s protocol about informing anyone where he was or what he was doing.

This was archetypal Willy, reflective of his solitary nature.

His goal was Darren Bader, whom Corey Browne had probably mentioned to get Willy off his back. Nevertheless, Willy had no doubts that Bader and Browne, among many like them, had trafficked in stolen goods with the ambitious, hardworking, and now late Don Kalfus. That alone was enough to justify at least a short conversation.

The timing of this visit was calculated. Men of Bader’s social stratum are not morning people, and Willy wanted to find him at home, operating below par. Not, if memory served, that Bader was an overachiever in any department.

Browne had said Bader lived in the hills west of the Monadnock Speedway, another of Winchester’s landmarks, but Willy was impressed by just how remote that proved to be. His department-issued SUV was handling the forest road ahead of it but was being tested when at last a small, patchwork, plywood-walled cabin came into view.

Willy stopped the car, rolled down the window, and waited for a full two minutes, honoring the common phenomenon of an unseen guard dog being off the leash. Still following backwoods protocol, he emerged from the vehicle in full view of the cabin’s windows and stood facing the building with his good hand holding his coat open to reveal his badge, despite the pouring rain.

Only then did he approach, slowly and deliberately, as if a rifle was trained on him.

That was a possibility, given the man he hoped to visit, the overall setting, and the circumstances behind Willy’s visit.

Willy knew Darren Bader from PD days, when the daily cycle was more likely to involve burglaries and domestics than murders. Vermont’s citizens did not kill one another with the regularity of a Detroit or a Los Angeles. Before the advent of the VBI and its specialized charter, Willy and his municipal squad dealt with whatever illegalities occurred. That usually meant lowlifes like Darren, who, for all his nasty habits, craven appetite, and amoral outlook, was no stone-cold killer, despite an occasionally nasty temper.

But it never hurt to be careful, and times had changed. All it seemed to take recently was the lightest pressure on an emotional trigger.