“So that was the end of it?” Niels’s question brought him back into himself.

“If there had been some reason for her to want him dead-if he had a girlfriend, or she had another man on the side. Or maybe a big insurance haul. But there wasn’t. That was the problem. No one had a reason to want Jonathon Ketchem dead.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

“I finally boiled any evidence I got-not that there was much of it-down to two theories. The one thing everyone I spoke with agreed is that Jonathon Ketchem had had a hard few years. He had lost four kids and his farm, he was blue and distracted, he didn’t know what to do with himself next.” He took another bite and let Niels wait while he chewed and swallowed. “First theory. He walked. He left behind everything bad that’d ever happened to him and he took off for a new life somewhere out west.” He bit off another piece and ate it. “Second theory. He killed himself. Of course, there’s a problem with that one.” He took another bite to give Niels time to find it.

“If he committed suicide, where’s his car?”

“Right. Now maybe he left the car on the side of the road with the keys in it for someone to steal and he hiked into the mountains so deep no one has run across his body. But I wouldn’t put money on it.”

Niels nodded. “My son Norman says the kids at school have a theory. The Ketchem girl is in his class, you know. Anyway, he says Ketchem was set upon by desperate men.”

“Yeah, that’s the prevailing Ketchem theory. Except for his parents, they’re all convinced he was iced by bootleggers.” He balled up the paper the sandwich had come in.

“Isn’t that possible? From what I read in the paper, there were some pretty desperate characters back in those days. Judge DeWeese was handing out eight-year sentences and ten-thousand-dollar fines back in the twenties, for heaven’s sake. I’m sure there must have been some who were willing to kill to keep their money and their freedom.”

“Yes. There were.” Harry breathed in through gritted teeth, damming up the rage that washed through him whenever he thought of those days, good men’s lives poured out in defense of an idiot law that the government later turned around and repealed. Already, not five years on, people were starting to talk about the bootleggers as if they were Robin Hood and his Merry Men, as if they were some sort of gentlemen bandits instead of goddamn killers and thieves. He worked his jaw, trying to relax so he wouldn’t look as if he were glaring at Niels. “Yeah, there were.” He sighed, letting go of some of the heat in his head. “But even if he had stumbled across some gang unloading their cache, you have the same questions. Where’s the body? Where’s the car?” He shook his head. “He walked. Away from his wife and his kid. He’s a different person now, and maybe that helps him sleep nights, the selfish bastard.”

Niels sat silent for a moment. “So,” he said finally, “I guess I can’t count on your testimony as to his status as a decedent.”

Harry snorted a laugh.

“How about this,” Niels said. “You let me use those records detailing all the steps you’ve taken to find him. You don’t need to draw any conclusions. We’ll let the court do that. The fact that you haven’t closed the case after seven years and there’s still no sign of him may work in our favor.”

“And then what happens?”

“And then Mrs. Ketchem gets to become a widow. We can give her her life back.”

Harry thought about the woman he had first seen on the marble steps of the police station. Over the years they had met, at first frequently, then at longer and longer intervals, and each time, Harry felt the weight of letting her down, of failing to live up to his first ignorant promise to bring her husband back to her.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone can give Jane Ketchem her life back.”

Monday, March 20

Clare was debating whether to grab some lunch from the hospital cafeteria or make the trek to the Kreemy Kakes diner, grateful it was her day off and she didn’t have any appointments eating up her time, when it suddenly struck her that she had promised to volunteer Monday at the historical society after missing last Saturday. Her first thought was to call Roxanne and beg off again. She’d understand that waiting for a friend to get out of surgery took precedence over sorting out one-hundred-year-old advertising circulars. Except she heard Roxanne’s voice, when she had shown Clare the boxes and boxes of uncataloged donations. I’m afraid everyone who tackles this job gets bored too quickly to do much good.

Then, of course, her conscience took her by the chin and forced her to look at whether she would hang around the hospital for hours waiting for anyone else to get out of surgery. She had sat with family members before, anticipating good or bad news, but never just for herself. And she had to admit a broken leg wasn’t in the same league as a triple bypass or a bone-marrow transplant. If Mr. Hadley, for instance, ever took one of those tumbles off a ladder she feared would happen eventually, she knew she would go to the historical society, and simply call in periodically to find out how he was.

Which is how she found herself driving the chief of police’s pickup through town. She prayed no one would take a good look at who was behind the wheel, and she parked in the first spot she could find on the street, envious, with the part of her brain that wasn’t worried about her reputation, at the ease with which the truck crunched over the snow and ice to muscle its way into the parking space.

She trotted up the sidewalk, too late not to make an effort but also too late to think an outright dash from door to door would make any difference. She looked at the clinic as she went by, noting the legend THE JONATHON KETCHEM CLINIC carved in the granite door lintel. The sign bolted next to the door, the way everyone in town referred to it as the free clinic-it was as if Jonathon Ketchem were disappearing in his memorial, just as he had disappeared in life. Even though the sign indicated it was open, the clinic somehow looked abandoned, bereft without the man who had been its driving force for the past three decades. Clare thought about dropping in to find out how Laura Rayfield was doing manning the ship all alone, but her guilty conscience spurred her on to the historical society.

Another volunteer let her in, let her know that Roxanne wasn’t working today, and then sank back into a chair by the door with an open book. As she climbed the stairs, Clare could hear the voice of a docent leading a tour through the public rooms and the soft thud of a researcher taking down one of the massive tax-enrollment books in the second-floor library. She reached the third floor and went into the former nursery, closing the door behind her to discourage any of the other volunteers from drifting in and chatting. She switched on the lights, dumped her coat and scarf in the extra chair, and turned on the computer, all with a weird sense of disconnection from her surroundings-a few hours ago she had been listening to Russ grinding his teeth against the pain as she hobbled him up the trail, freezing, sweating, and here she was now, in a clean, well-lit room, surrounded by white boxes and history.

She logged on to the catalog and scrolled down to her entries from last Saturday. She had been going through the records of the long-defunct Fonda-Johnston-Gloversville Railroad, whose primary claim to fame seemed to be hauling passengers to the Sacandaga Amusement Park, which had apparently closed down about 1930. She reached into the acid-free storage box and pulled out another set of folders stuffed with ads, timetables, newspaper clippings, and photographs.