“Mark, let’s have you get back on that list of released cons the chief dealt with.” The dep was standing, settling his hat on his head. “Thanks, Doc.”

Dr. Dvorak reached over the desk and shook MacAuley’s hand. The deputy chief clasped Mark on the shoulder and steered him out the office door. “Let’s give them a sec,” he said, once they were a few steps down the hall.

“Look,” Mark said, “about the released-con theory-”

“Track down their parole officers or their wardens. We’re looking for someone who had knife training while in the army, or who got in trouble for knife fighting inside. That shift switch you wanted? You got it. You’re on days starting now. Investigating, not patrol.”

The bump up in status that Mark had wanted so long flashed by, an irritating detail he had to hear before he got to what really mattered. “I want to spend some time looking into Reverend Fergusson,” he blurted out.

“What?” MacAuley held him at arm’s length. “What are you talking about?”

“Clare Fergusson. You told the chief yourself. She’s in the circle of suspects.”

“You mean back at the station? I was trying to crowbar some sense of discretion into the chief, for God’s sake. I don’t really think she’s a credible suspect.”

“Why not?”

MacAuley threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Because I know her, I guess. I just can’t picture it. I mean, okay, maybe she could possibly maybe get mad enough to lose it in a fit of temporary insanity. But cover it up? No way. She’d be signing a confession before you could finish Mirandizing her.”

“But think about it. She’s got the means-she did some sort of fancy survival training for helicopter pilots. She’s got the motive”-MacAuley shook his head, but Mark surged on-“she does, you know she does. You think the chief was ever going to divorce his wife?”

The deputy chief paused. “No.”

“Motive. And she had the opportunity-she was up in the mountains all alone for a week, including Sunday and Monday. She could have come down to the chief’s house, done the deed, and split before anyone saw her.”

“Durkee,” the deputy chief said, “I appreciate the level of thought you’ve put into this. That’s one of the things that tells me you’re going to have a great future as a cop. But the reverend is not a suspect. Put it aside. You’ll have more than enough to do compiling this list. Understand?”

“Yessir.” Mark tried to conceal his seething frustration. If the deputy chief spiked the investigation, that was it. No way was anyone going to look at the most likely suspect. Unless…

He thought of the now-crumpled letter from the state police waiting at home on his dresser. Unless he could find someone with the authority to take the case from MacAuley. Someone who wouldn’t be swayed by the chief’s friendship with the priest.

It is a cliché that there are no secrets in a small town. It is also false. In Millers Kill, it is unlikely anyone will ever know that Geraldine Bain, who has worked in the post office for thirty years and who is famous in the First Baptist Church for her deep-dish crumble-crust pie, nearly died from an illegal abortion in New York City in 1950.

The fact that Wayne Stoner, a hardworking dairy farmer and father of two, stays up after everyone has gone to bed to read his wife’s romance novels has never come out, even after he spilled coffee on Suzanne Brockmann’s The Defiant Hero and had to blame his thirteen-year-old, Hannah.

Laura Rayfield, the nurse-practitioner heading up the local free clinic, certainly hopes that no one ever discovers that during her youth in Tennessee (she followed a boyfriend to New York and discovered she loved the Adirondacks much more than the man) she was the statewide fire-baton twirling queen.

Tim Garrettson, who has been in marriage counseling with Reverend Fergusson for over a year, doubts that his wife, Liz, will ever find out that he has been unfaithful to her three separate times while attending insurance industry conferences. Unless he’s foolish enough to spill the beans himself.

But something like the violent death of the police chief’s wife will not stay secret, or low-key, or undiscussed. Especially when rumors had already been circulating that his recent relocation to his mother’s house was because his wife caught him out in an affair. The first story of the murder would appear Wednesday morning, in the Glens Falls Post-Star. It had almost no details from the Millers Kill Police Department, and only a single quote from the victim’s friend Meg Tracey. The reporter, Ben Beagle, was unable to obtain a statement from the widower. That did not stop the residents of Millers Kill from filling in the blanks themselves.

Dr. Emil Dvorak, in addition to his duties as the county medical examiner, also served as the Washington County Hospital’s pathologist, and he had been sitting a consult with Drs. Phillip Stillman and Molly Cline Monday evening when his pager went off. He had excused himself, grabbed Dr. Stillman’s phone, and called in. Stillman and Cline, who still found it vaguely amusing that someone who worked exclusively with dead people could have emergency calls, ignored what was going on across Dvorak’s desk, until he gasped out, “Oh, my God, no,” and buried his face in one hand.

When he hung up, Dr. Cline tentatively said, “Bad news?”

And Emil Dvorak, the soul of professional discretion, lifted his head and blurted out, “Russ Van Alstyne’s wife has been murdered.”

He terminated the consult and was on his way to the crime scene before the two other physicians could cobble together something appropriate to say.

Dr. Stillman, who had met both the Van Alstynes when he treated the police chief’s fractured tibia less than a year ago, used the extra time from the now-canceled consult to check in on one of his orthopedic surgical cases. On his way out, he bumped into the emergency department charge nurse.

“You know the police chief, right, Alta?”

“I ought to, the number of times he’s been in the ER picking up drunk drivers or talking with kids who got in trouble.”

“I just heard his wife’s been killed.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

By the start of the swing shift, the entire on-duty staff had heard the news.

Tuesday morning, an internist named Dr. Palil Ghupta drove from the hospital to the Millers Kill Free Clinic for his monthly supervisory meeting with Laura Rayfield, NP. He regaled her with the story and, because he was a fan of police shows, buffed it up a bit with the phrase “She was blown away.”

Laura was suitably shocked and impressed, and when at lunchtime she bumped into Roxanne Lunt, the director of the historical society next door, she passed the news on.

“A shotgun blast took her out,” Laura said, maneuvering past a slick spot of ice and packed snow. The sidewalks were in bad shape, but it was still easier to walk to Silvio’s Italian Bakery than to try to find parking spaces on the snow-lined street.

“Good heavens.” Roxanne pulled her fur collar closer, as if the icy winds of mortality were blowing around her neck. “I wonder if Clare Fergusson knows yet.”

“Reverend Fergusson? The minister?”

“Mm-hmm. She’s evidently a particular friend of Chief Van Alstyne’s.” She tugged open the door to Silvio’s. A swirl of yeasty steam swallowed them. “What’s really scary is the thought that whoever did it is still out there. I mean, if the police chief’s wife can be murdered in her own home, what chance do the rest of us have?”

“Most murders in the North Country result from domestic violence,” Laura said, unwinding her scarf. “If you aren’t married to or involved with the man who kills you, chances are, you’re safe. Just how good a friend is Reverend Fergusson?”

“Omigod! You can’t think the chief-”