“What’re you saying?”

“That what we got is what we got. You and I can suspect a killing all we want, but aside from a tiny bit of plastic bag under a fingernail, we have nothing, and Lucy’s tox results aren’t going to help.”

“What about tearing into his alibi?”

“We’ll do that, for sure,” Joe answered. “But there again, so what? Let’s say we find a hole in his timeline, that we establish he could’ve made it home in time to kill her and get back to Boston to be found and told face-to-face about her death. If we still don’t have hard proof of a homicide, we could have him standing by her bedside with a chain saw and still not be able to pin a murder on him.”

“It’s like the reverse of double jeopardy,” Willy grumbled.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s wearing belts and suspenders, both. He knocked her off without a trace, and he gave himself an airtight alibi.”

They drove in silence for a while, enjoying Interstate 91’s deserved reputation as being among the nation’s most scenic freeways. Between the Connecticut River to their left and the hills and farms opposite, each coming in and out of view as the pavement undulated across the earth like a low-flying helicopter, it was a soothing and inspiring sight. Even the weather was finally cooperating, being neither snowy nor wet, but instead almost balmy and capped with a bright blue sky.

“Let’s step back and not look at this in terms of proof and evidence,” Joe suggested. “Let’s ask why he killed her.”

They found Sam and Lester back at the office that afternoon, staring at their computer screens, and visibly happy for the opportunity to take a break.

“So the autopsy was a bust?” Lester asked as they entered, Willy having texted the results from the car.

“Yes and no,” Joe replied. “There was nothing to say she was murdered, but nothing to say she died of any obvious natural cause, either.”

That led Sammie to ask, “Which is another way of saying we’re dealing with a clever bad guy in the person of Lemuel Shaw?”

“That’s how I see it,” Willy confirmed.

Joe sat on the corner of his desk, facing them—his usual perch. “I’m open to disagreement on this, but as I was telling Willy on the way back, challenging the man’s alibi is probably what he wants us to do. We will obviously cover the basics and ask Boston PD to interview a couple of people, but I’m thinking we need to sneak up on Mr. Shaw from a direction he doesn’t expect.”

He nodded at Sam and asked, “I take it from your being here that you’ve finished retracing Don Kalfus’s last journey?”

“I hate to sound like a parrot,” she replied, “but we’ve got to say yes and no, too. We may or may not be done finding storage dumps for his swag, but we still haven’t finished checking out every last place he stopped at along his travels. He was out there for almost a week.”