He got back out of the truck and closed the door. Without a key he couldn’t lock it, but he didn’t feel there was much in there to interest a thief, unless it was a crook with hemorrhoids who’d be delighted to find some remaining ointment in that tube.

He drove the few blocks back into the center of town and parked out front of the diner. Once inside, he sat himself on a stool and waited for Jenny to bring him a coffee. He never needed to ask. He had out his notebook, reviewing things he had jotted down over the last few days.

He’d checked Wendell Comstock’s alibi. He had, in fact, been to Brattleboro to help a friend seeking his opinion on a possible house purchase. Wendell had been nowhere near his home when Nadine had died in the bathtub from electrocution, courtesy of that toy train transformer. There was no evidence to suggest her death was anything other than suicide, although it bothered Harry that Wendell had not believed his wife to be seriously depressed. Harry had spoken to her doctor, whom she had seen within the last four months when she’d felt a lump in her breast. Tests had shown that she had nothing to worry about. If she was feeling at all despondent, she had not made that known.

Sometimes you just didn’t know what was going on inside people’s heads.

If only Gavin had been Harry’s only worry of late. Lucknow seemed to be losing its mind.

The radio clipped to Harry’s belt crackled, and then a voice came through. “Chief?”

He grabbed it off his belt, brought it to his mouth, pressed the button, and said, “Yeah?”

“Report of shots fired over on Guildwood.”

Harry headed for his car.

Guildwood Street was in the town’s north end. Harry was making good time, pedal to the floor, until he approached that Albany & Bennington double-track mainline. It cut across the town along an east-west axis, dividing north Lucknow from south Lucknow. Harry saw the crossing gates begin to lower, the lights start to flash.

He thought, for a moment, he could gun it, cross the tracks before the first of three blue linked Conrail engines rumbled into view. Great big roaring behemoths clipping along, and the odds that Harry could slip through the crossing without getting hit—and killed—were slim to none.

The engineer hit the horn and held it, a deep-throated warning that echoed across the landscape and chilled Harry to the bone.

The front end of his vehicle was on the first set of tracks when the diesels flew past, missing the SUV’s bumper by inches.