We left the doctor, dropped Toby with May Erdich, and drove back to the little airfield. The snow had stopped falling but not before a gentle skin of white had been pulled over the road and the airplanes and the bodies in the field. Joe Pike and I unshipped the tarps from the two Pawnees’ engine cowlings and covered Charlie DeLuca and the three guys who’d died with him and then we sat in the LeBaron to wait.

A couple of Connecticut state cars got there first, followed by a plain blue sedan with somebody from the Connecticut AG’s office. They came in the right way, without the sirens or the lights, and I liked them for it. The guy from the AG’s office walked over to us and asked who we were. I told him my name and Joe’s, but I didn’t mention Karen or Peter, and he didn’t ask. He said that he had been told something about bodies at another location. I told him how to get to the pumpkin field and that there were two bodies on either side of the field in the woods. He nodded and went back to the uniform cops, and then he and a car full of the uniforms drove away to take a look. Twenty minutes later a tan car with an FBI emblem on the side door and a white Ford from the New York State Attorney General’s office pulled in just ahead of a gray Cadillac limousine. Two guys got out of the FBI car, and a bald guy and two women got out of the N.Y. car. Rollie George and his dog got out of the limo. The law student was driving. Everybody except the bald man smiled when they saw Rollie and shook his hand and told him it was good to see him. Nothing like palling around with a big-time novelist at a murder scene.

Karen said, “Shouldn’t we be out there with them?”

“No. We sit and wait and see what they say.”

They went as a group to the spot between the two airplanes and lifted the tarpaulin and looked at what was under it. Maxie sniffed at Charlie’s body and lifted his leg and Rollie had to pull the dog away. One of the women laughed. They stood over the bodies for a long time, sometimes glancing back to the car, but mostly not. Everybody seemed in agreement with what they were talking about except the bald guy. You could see it in his face. He made sharp gestures and once he pointed at our car. They talked some more, and then Rollie George walked over to us and bent down by the driver’s side window. He gave Karen the sort of reassuring smile your grandfather might give, and if he recognized Peter, he didn’t say anything. He leaned close to me and said, “Can we have the bad cop?”