“What’s the third option?”

“I could eat my gun.”

“Don’t joke about that.” Lyle’s mobile face was dead serious.

Russ flipped his hand to show it was open. “Sorry.”

“I think she’ll assume you’re going to go head to head with her,” Lyle said, dragging the conversation back to Russ’s question. “Once she pegs you as the prime suspect, she’s got to assume you’re going to be busy covering your ass with both hands. Maybe by hauling her back out to the mayor’s office for a showdown while the rest of us trash the files. Or manufacture some new evidence implicating somebody else.”

Russ thought for a few seconds, then pushed away from the window frame. “I want you to do two things for me.”

“Okay…” Lyle’s voice was tentative. “What?”

“I want you to get me the registration info for the license number of the car the Tracey kid saw at my house. But before that, I want you to have an accident in the squad room.”

“A what?”

“Carry in some coffee or one of Harlene’s strudels and drop it all over the floor. Make it big and messy and make sure everybody’s paying attention to you.”

“And in the meantime, you will be doing what, exactly?”

“Getting out of Dodge.” He could see the question taking shape in his deputy chief’s mind. “It’ll be better if you don’t know anything else. Plausible deniability and all that. When you’ve got the car owner’s info, leave me a message on my cell phone.”

“Leave you a message.”

“I’m getting on in years. I may forget to turn it on.”

“Uh-huh.” Lyle levered himself out of his chair. “We got fifty-odd years of law enforcement experience between us, and here we are, plotting like a couple of junior-grade James Bond wannabes.” He grinned up one side of his mouth. “I like that.” He stuck out his hand. “Good luck, Russ.”

He left his office door open after Lyle left and listened as his deputy chief loudly asked Harlene if there was “anything good” in the kitchen. Of course there would be, since Harlene baked compulsively during the winter months and brought the resulting sugar bombs in to work so that her husband, Harold, fighting the onset of Type II diabetes, wouldn’t fall to temptation.

Russ put his coat on and wrapped his old tartan scarf around his throat.

He heard Harlene asking, “You want me to help you with any of that?” and Lyle refusing.

Russ shoved his gloves into his coat pocket. Looked around the office. Was there anything he had to take with him?

The clatter and clash from the squad room startled even him. He heard Harlene’s chair squeak, roll, and thud into her file cabinet. He glanced through his doorway in time to see her disappearing in the direction of the noise, which now consisted of loud swearing, shouts from someone whose uniform had been wrecked, and Kevin Flynn laughing hysterically.

He stepped out into the dispatch room, closed his door behind him, and, unnoticed and unheard, left the building.

Driving away from the station house in his red pickup, Russ could have felt guilt, or anger, or panic. He guessed any of those would have been more appropriate than the almost giddy sense of escape that filled him. Maybe, after all those years of the straight and narrow, walking on the wrong side of the law had a certain wild appeal. That would explain a lot about his relationship with Clare.

Thinking of her dampened his spirits, and the first left that led him out of town and toward his house extinguished them. His house. The thought of going back there yet another time nauseated him. He was going to have to sell it. Or better yet, burn it. Make it a pyre for his marriage. Slain jointly by a stranger’s knife and his own infidelity.

He drove through the outskirts of town, into the farmland that rolled higher and higher out of the east, until it crashed against the mountains in the west. The sky was thicker now, the ice-pale cloud cover turning leaden. He realized he hadn’t listened to the news or caught a weather report in three days. He switched on the talk-radio station in time to catch the 9:00 A.M. highlights. War, a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, terrorist cells in the U.S., and a record-breaking deficit. New England was celebrating the Patriots making it to the Super Bowl. The North Country could expect a slowly developing storm to drop another four to six inches of snow within the next twenty-four hours.

The rousing music of the Dr. Adele show swelled behind the psychologist’s voice, telling him today’s show was for all those women who couldn’t enjoy sex because they were self-conscious about their bodies.

Christ. He snapped the radio off. If he hadn’t been depressed before, that would have done it for him.

The Peekskill Road was empty of traffic. Empty of all signs of life around the widely spaced farmhouses, save for the threads of smoke rising from every chimney except his. And the folks who lived to his left, the Andersons. He frowned. Had something happened to the elderly-no. It was all right. They were away in Arizona.

Good enough. He didn’t want any witnesses if Investigator Jensen came around asking questions.

He powered up his driveway and parked in front of the barn door. He got out, hauled it wide open, and, getting back behind the wheel, inched his truck into its space next to Linda’s wagon.

He grabbed his soft-sided CD holder and squeezed out the driver’s side, reflexively careful not to scratch the Volvo, and rumbled the big door shut along its track. He paused at the hard-packed walk to the kitchen and went instead to the front of the house. Wading through more snow was a small price to pay not to have to step into the room where his wife had-

He forced his attention to unlocking the door. Inside, the air was so cold he could see his breath. Either one of the responders had turned the thermostat off, or they had run out of oil. There was a pronounced smell of cat, and he remembered Eric McCrea telling him about his wife’s new pet, and how it had been stuck inside after she had been-

He realized the damn cat was probably a witness to the murder. Not that that was going to do him any good.

He strode toward Linda’s tiny office, looking as little as possible to the left or right. He dropped into the desk chair and pushed the computer’s on button, hoping that the cold wouldn’t affect the machine. It slowly blinked into readiness, and he turned to a stack of blank CDs she kept at hand. He loaded one into the disk drive, opened the hard-drive menu, and started copying.

E-mail, Word documents, spreadsheets, photos. Not knowing what might yield something useful, he copied it all. Browser, Web sites, fax program, music player. He went through three CDs, then four. While the computer burned data, he riffled through Linda’s paperwork again, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that would point to one direction or another.

A notice popped up on the screen. DISK FULL. PLEASE INSERT ANOTHER DISK AND PRESS CONTINUE. He released the CD drive, scooped out the disk, and replaced it with an empty one.

The phone rang.

He froze. In the silence between rings, the disk drive clicked smoothly into place.

CONTINUE COPYING? The computer asked him.

He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and thumbed it on. The house line rang again. His cell displayed its service logo. The house line rang again. The cell’s signal and battery indicators ramped up. The house phone rang again. The cell phone beeped loudly. Its screen read 2 MISSED CALLS. He thumbed the selection button. The screen displayed the numbers he had missed. Both were from the station.

The answering machine picked up, and he heard his own voice asking the caller to leave a name and number.

“This is Investigator Jensen of the BCI, looking for Russ Van Alstyne. Chief Van Alstyne, if you get this message, it’s very important that you contact me. I need to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss the direction of the case. Please call me at the station or on my cell phone at 518-555-1493.”