Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994

Changes by Stephen Wasylyk

Fifteen minutes from home, the front, blowing in faster than predicted, squeezed the Cessna into an ever-narrowing space between the churning clouds and the green mountaintops. The gray opaque wall of rain hit just as Klauder skimmed the last crest and dropped into the valley, Otto’s booming voice in his earphones telling him he was cleared straight in. Fine — if he could see the runway. Sweating, he kicked rudder, fishtailing to peer through the side windows, picked up the black strip more through luck than ability, and wrestled the gust-tossed Cessna to a bouncy landing.

Helping Sal, Otto’s mechanic, tie it down in the wind-driven rain, he should have been pleased he’d escaped a hospital bed or worse, but during the entire flight from Baltimore, he’d had the feeling that this was one of those days that start out badly and continue downhill.

A highly disapproving Otto — big, crewcut, and khaki clad — tossed a towel at him when he entered the office.

“You just used up a good portion of your luck, dummy. If you don’t concentrate on getting your instrument rating, we’ll be scraping you off a mountain. Your good friend, our esteemed and respected sheriff, said to have you call as soon as you landed. If you landed.”

Klauder finished the entry in his logbook. “Meg tell you why?”

“She didn’t have to. Know a guy named Fen Dexter?”

“Only to say hello. He lives across the lake.”

“Lived. Drowned day before yesterday after you took off.”

“I doubt if she needs me for a drowning. Hand me the phone.”

Meg sounded relieved. “About time, Klauder. I could see you flying around in those clouds, all confused, not knowing exactly where you were. Sort of like your love life.”

“I’ve never been confused, either while flying or in my love life.”

“They all say that as they climb out of the wreckage,” she said smugly. “How are you fixed for time?”

“I can spare all you need. Is it about Fen Dexter? Otto told me he drowned.”

She sighed. “Dead men don’t drown, Klauder.”

The day slid down another notch.

Sheriff Meg Boniface was waiting in her new office, cream-painted walls, walnut furniture, and beige rug on the floor. She’d slimmed down since her bypass surgery. Not the only change. A bit more gray in the bobbed hair, a few more lines in the square-jawed face. But the back was still ramrod straight and the uniform crisp.

Her department had new quarters — a yellow brick, one story building on a landscaped lot — complete with the latest in high-tech electronics. Klauder had said it made him feel old, since none of it had been around when he’d been on the force in Philadelphia. Makes me feel ancient, too, Meg had said, but people are still people and a scumball is still a scumball. Until the androids start walking around, no microchip can change that.

The county commissioners had no choice. Condos being built along the lake, the ski lift doing a landslide winter business, houses sprouting in fields that had always grown corn. The sheriff’s department had to expand — and Meg could easily have budgeted for a full-time detective, but she still kept him as investigative consultant, with both well aware that since his wildfowl carvings had brought him more money than he’d ever spend, helping her out had become a hobby, his per diem contributed to the department fund.

She looked pointedly at the rain-streaked window. “You lucked out.”

“Not really. Over strange territory I’d have turned back, but I knew exactly how many mountains I had to cross.”

She half smiled. “That’s more than the rest of us can say.”

He settled in one of her guest chairs. “So tell me about Fen Dexter. All I know is he had one of the nicest houses on the lake.”

She tented her hands. “Fen was only fifty-eight, but he retired from his sales manager’s job after his wife died a couple of years ago. Had a little money, he said, and there was no point in working for himself. No children, you see. Had a little broad-beam skiff he fixed up with a canopy, a deck chair, and an electric motor, so each day he’d run out a few hundred yards, turn off the motor, rig up his tackle, settle down in the deck chair, and drink beer. Often as not, he’d fall asleep, but then he wasn’t much interested in catching fish anyway. I always felt he was just marking time until he joined his wife.”

Not too many years since he’d gone through that himself. She’d gone out of her way to bring him back. Fen hadn’t been that lucky.

“About all we’ve ever had on the lake is small outboards and sailboats, but since they built those condos at the north end, we’ve had a slew of new people with nineteen, twenty footers with big twins racing around.”

“I’ve noticed. They don’t bother me in the cove, but I’ve seen and heard them. The lake is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, we have a police boat, but we don’t run it except on summer weekends when traffic gets heavy. Anyway, day before yesterday, a couple of wiseass kids in a sport cruiser thought it would be real cool to shake Fen up, so they open it up, head for him, and turn at the last second. The big wake just rolls that skiff over, which they think is hilarious.”

“I’m sure you’ve refined their sense of humor.”

“Oh, they won’t be laughing for the rest of the summer, even though they did us a favor. No telling how long Fen might have drifted around out there with no one the wiser. Fellow named Gegenbach saw it happen, so he ran his boat over to give Fen a hand, expecting him to surface spitting and cursing a blue streak, but no Fen. He’s beginning to think Fen is trapped under the skiff when he sees the body, drags it aboard, heads for shore, and calls us, thinking that Fen had been knocked out and drowned. So did we until we noticed the hole in his chest. Blood all washed away, you see. Fen was dead when he hit the water. Until we get the autopsy results, we won’t know when he was shot and how, and maybe how he got out there with his fishing rod in hand.”

“Gegenbach see another boat near him?”

“Not until he heard the cruiser, but he wasn’t watching him. Who would? Fishing is no exciting spectator sport.”

“Dexter’s boat tell you anything?”

“Couldn’t. The slug didn’t go through, and you can’t get prints from watersoaked wood. Immersion screwed up the body temperature, so until the stomach contents are analyzed, we have no idea of when he died. We checked the house and grounds but found nothing to indicate he was killed there.”

“So we come to possible motives.”

“The man minded his own business and bothered no one, like most people.” She held up a hand. “I know. Relatives. When he heard what happened, Hank Smithfield, Fen’s attorney, called. He’s executor. A niece in Philadelphia inherits, one Christine Labeaux. I called her yesterday. She drove up. As far as she knows, she’s the only living relative. Fen was her mother’s brother, but after her mother died fifteen years ago, it became a cards-at-Christmas-relationship. He never even notified her of his wife’s death. Might turn out differently, but she looks, talks, and dresses as if she doesn’t need his money. She’s at the house now. Nice person. I asked her and Smithfield to look through his papers for a reason someone might want him dead. I’d like you to go out there with me.”

“Just need time for breakfast and to pick up my mail.”

“You’ll need more than that. Get a haircut, and go home and change into dry clothes. Close shave wouldn’t hurt, either. I know you rich folk don’t worry about appearances, but that long hair, greasy jacket, jeans, and dirty trainers — I hate those damned things — make you look like a leftover from a stranded rock group. Hardly speaks well of the dignity of my office.”

Klauder raised his eyebrows. “Since this is the first time you’ve been critical of my carefully selected leisure ensembles, I sense your concern over your image might be tied in with your perpetual matchmaking on my behalf more than the image of your office. The niece is attractive and available, isn’t she?”

“I’ll admit she’s enough to make you give up flying to Pittsburgh to visit Natalie Something, but I don’t think you can make the grade. Even with all your money.”

He grinned. “I might be lucky. She may be a fortune hunter.”

“Hey, Klauder,” she called after him. “I’m glad we didn’t have to scrape you off a mountaintop. I’d have missed going along on your practice flights. I enjoy those free air tours of the county.”

He returned wearing dirty bucks, tan chinos, a bright red polo, and a white waterproof jacket. “I hope this meets with your approval. I’d have worn my tuxedo but—”

“Shut up and get in the car,” she said. “We’re losing time.”

Her driving had always impressed him, her square hands on the wheel making her a part of the car. He’d turned the Cessna over to her one day for a few minutes. She’d handled the plane the same way; instinctively, without fumbling or hesitation. She’d make an excellent pilot, he’d told Otto. Otto grunted. Take away thirty years and she could handle an F-16.

The ice age glacier that had scooped out the lake had left the east and west sides precipitous, trees growing to the water’s edge. The shore to the north was a broad slant, less so on the south.

Flying over, he’d noticed the zigzag buildings of the condos, the boats crammed into a small marina, and the small houses farther on, planted side by side in a cleared stretch like a suburban development. What hadn’t been apparent from the air was the destruction created to place them there, as though bulldozers had run amok. Made more sombre by the rain, the damage gave him a sense of changes running out of control.

“Someone is making a lot of money at nature’s expense here,” he said. “Those houses destroy the natural watershed.”

“His name is Benson,” she said. “If the commissioners don’t clamp down on him, he’ll build solid all along the lake frontage. The fish and wildlife people are screaming. They say he’s destroying one of the major stopovers along the fly way.” She glanced at him. “Surprised you didn’t know, making a fortune carving those geese and ducks the way you do. Seems to me you’d be leading the charge to leave things alone.”

“Seems to me I should have paid more attention to the people who called me,” he said quietly, “but they do tend to be fanatic without being specific. I’m not against change, but this is stupid.” She glanced at him again. “Money talks.”

“It can also talk back.”

“That’s why I told the commissioners you’d make a helluva head for county fish and wildlife. You’ll probably hear from them next week.” She ignored his stare. “Now, I don’t want you to get your feelings hurt, but I’m taking on a detective, so you don’t have to worry about helping me. You’ve outgrown the job and can do more good elsewhere. Time to get on with it, Klauder.”

Once again, she’d blindsided him and left him speechless.

She whipped the car into a short driveway and skidded to a stop. Still dazed, he followed her to the door of the house.

Dexter, he’d heard, had designed it himself. Taking lessons from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, no doubt. Most of the older houses, including his cabin, had been scattered in convenient natural breaks with very little cutting involved. Dexter had gone one better, blending it in, making it part of the environment; natural stone for the walls, cedar shingles for the roof. It was more than a house. It was a work of art.

So was the woman who answered the door.

Parted on the side, wavy long brown hair fell below the shoulders of the lightweight white sweater and tan gabardine jacket set off by the fitted black trousers. Her face was oval, lips full, nose straight, eyes dark brown with a hint of laughter. The clothes and the way she carried herself said Meg was probably right about her not needing money.

Natalie Something, who had leased the cabin next to his for a time but had returned to her law firm in Pittsburgh, and with whom he still maintained a relationship, was beautiful, but with a gloss Christine Labeaux didn’t have and didn’t need. Easy to see why Meg approved of her.

She frowned slightly at his name. “Klauder? Has a familiar ring to it.”

“He’s from Philadelphia,” said Meg. “Like you.”

The frown disappeared. “Of course. Not that long ago, was it? Five or six years. The detective lieutenant who took on some highly placed officials who were trying to sweep something under a rug. I don’t remember the outcome.”

“They’re still there and I’m here,” said Klauder.

“You two can reminisce on your own time,” said Meg. “Did you and Hank find anything in your uncle’s papers?”

“Let him tell you.”

Following her through the house, Klauder could only applaud the taste of Fen Dexter and his wife. Gleaming polished oak floors. Cherry furniture. Tasteful prints on the walls. This, he thought, is how it should be done.

Hank Smithfield was short, round, and partly bald. Folds of flesh over his eyes gave him a look of perpetual sadness. He looked soft. When he left a desk covered with paper to shake hands, his grip said he wasn’t. He’d probably surprised many a legal opponent.

“You’d asked us to look for someone who’d benefit from Fen’s death, Meg, other than Christine. Nothing here, but I brought the correspondence from the last six months on a matter Fen asked me to handle. I don’t believe there’s a connection, but you can make your determination.”

He handed her a manila folder that she placed on the desk and opened, Klauder looking over her shoulder. Repeated offers to buy the house on letterheads from Benson Developers, the price steadily increasing, clipped to refusals written by Smithfield.

“I called Benson himself and told him not to bother,” said Smith-field. “Fen said he’d never sell. His death is to Benson’s advantage, of course, since Christine—”

“It might not be,” she said. “I haven’t decided.”

Klauder walked to the windows. A roofed flagstone patio outside, only enough space cleared beyond to make it livable, only enough natural shrubbery removed to provide a view of the lake. Even the small boathouse of weathered wood looked as though it belonged.

“I can’t see that this house would be important enough for Benson to kill over it,” he said. “He has plenty of room without it.”

“My feeling precisely,” said Hank.

“Well, we’ll probe a little to see if there’s something we don’t know about,” said Meg. “I have to get back, but I’d like you to look around, Klauder. Hank can give you a ride back to town.”

“My pleasure,” said Hank. “I’ll be here for another hour or so.”

Klauder donned a fold-up hat he pulled out of a pocket and stepped out into the rain. Not much to find after two days and a summer deluge, so that smug grin she threw him told him she expected him to do more than look around. Always the matchmaker.

The peaked-roof boathouse was open at both ends. The slope was gentle enough so that Fen could have pulled the skiff up under it, but he’d extended it out into the water on timber pilings and run a landing down one side. As with the house, he didn’t do anything halfway.

The salvaged skiff was tied to the landing, the collapsed remains of a deck chair still screwed to the bottom. The canopy Meg had mentioned was probably at the bottom of the lake, the support brackets empty. The electric outboard had been tilted in and would never run again after its immersion at the bottom of the lake, too. More suitable for waters far more placid than the often choppy lake, the electric outboard had to have been chosen for its almost silent hum, something Klauder could appreciate. He preferred rowing to the roar of an outboard himself. A tiller along one side of the chair and controls on the other had been rigged so that Fen could maneuver in comfort.

He’d been a creative tinkerer, modifying and adapting to suit himself. Even the cables of the battery charger on the wall had been mounted on an arm that swung out over the skiff to position them directly over the battery.

Klauder turned at a small noise. Christine Labeaux, in a yellow hooded waterproof jacket, had followed him out. Run the image in a catalogue and you’d sell a million of the jackets to women who could only hope they’d look as well.

“Your uncle was a man who lived the way he wanted to live.”

“So my mother always said. He didn’t die poor, but if he’d stayed in Philadelphia with the family firm, he’d have died very wealthy. That never mattered to him. He met his wife here, she wanted to stay, and if that was what she wanted, so be it. He loved her very much.”

“The masculine version of whither thou goest, I will go—”

She smiled. “Exactly. Not too many around these days.”

Klauder squatted and looked out the open end of the boathouse to the rain-shrouded lake, seeing Fen drifting out there until the kids had flipped the skiff. He remembered taking off for Baltimore in a stiff southwest wind. That morning, the skiff would have been bobbing enough not only to throw off a long-range killing shot but one from a boat alongside. Far more likely he’d been dead when sent out there. If so, there had to be blood somewhere, but Meg said they’d found nothing in the house. Anything they’d missed outside would be washed away now.

Washed away.

He ran an index finger over the thick planks of the landing. Wet. Only to be expected in high humidity with the lake making little slapping sounds less than two feet below. But perhaps too wet. He gouged at a plank with a key. The wetness was too deep for surface moisture, too deep for planking that had baked under cover for two days in dry weather.

He pivoted slowly. Arms folded, she watched silently.

There it was. Meticulous Fen had run a water line to the boathouse, the coiled hose alongside a twelve inch shelf fastened to the wall, a knife handle projecting from a slot. No cleaning of fish in Mrs. Dexter’s nice kitchen. Fen would bring them in ready for the pan or freezer. And use that hose to wash down the shelf, planking, and skiff.

A burst of wind-driven rain suddenly drummed across the roof.

The hose could have been used to wash away any blood. By the time Meg looked, the surface would have appeared dry. And if not completely, so what? Wasn’t the lake right below?

When he stood upright, she said, “You look pleased with yourself.”

He smiled. “Remind me never to play poker with you.”

“You’ve come up with something. What is it?”

“Are you certain you didn’t shoot your uncle to inherit his house?”

“I couldn’t shoot anyone, not even my ex, although I’m sure a jealous woman or an irate husband will one of these days. Now tell me what you saw, because I’ve been looking at the same things and seen nothing.”

He explained. “I think he was killed right here. Let’s call Meg.”

They walked up the wet, grassy slope, Klauder with a comfortable feeling of having walked in the rain with her sometime, somewhere before.

“Do you intend to sell?”

“I’m not certain. My life at the moment is far from settled. Perhaps I’ll move here. I’ve been thinking I need a change.”

Thinking of Meg and her fish and wildlife commission, he said dryly, “At least you don’t have to be told. I’ll lead the parade that welcomes that decision, but if you decide to sell let me make the first offer.”

They took a few steps before she spoke. “If you like, but I warn you that I drive a hard bargain and the price may be—”

He almost chuckled aloud. Evidently Meg hadn’t gone too far in her matchmaking. “More than an employee of the sheriff’s office can afford?”

“Well—”

They reached the patio before she paused.

“Oh Lord,” she said softly. “Now I know why the name was so familiar. You’re that Klauder, too. I’ve admired your work.”

“Thank you.” He grinned down at her. “But don’t think you can boost the price. I drive a hard bargain myself.”

She smiled. “Negotiations should be very interesting.”

Hank waved him to the phone in the kitchen. “A bit more private.”

He told Meg what he thought. “If I’m right, forensic should find traces of blood on those planks.”

Her voice had an unexpected warmth. “I’m going to miss you, Klauder. Now think about this. The autopsy report says digestion had barely begun. Since the people who knew him say he usually had breakfast about seven, that would make the time of death about eight or so. And the slug that killed him was soft lead that bounced off a rib and destroyed his heart. So distorted the gun can’t be identified, but the slug weighs about eighty grains. Not your everyday type of ammo, and probably out of an older .32 caliber piece. Another interesting bit that might knock your theory in the head. The gouge on the rib shows the bullet entered on an upward path of about twenty degrees. If he’d been settled in that chair—”

He thought for a moment. “A rower faces toward the stern. With power, you face forward, which is how his chair is mounted. He’d have been tilted backward just about twenty degrees all right, but the shot would have to be fired parallel to and about thirty inches above the bottom of the boat. Can you see someone popping up over the bow and pulling the trigger?”

“Only a frogman in a movie, and he’d have used something high-tech. Look around a bit more. I’ll be out with the forensic crew.”

Hank appeared. “I’m leaving now. You ready?”

“Meg is coming back,” said Klauder.

Hank’s eyes showed interest. “Find something?”

“I hope so,” said Klauder.

Christine replaced Hank in the doorway, her faint perfume overriding the musty odor of wet foliage and the lake wafting inward.

Klauder looked around the spotless kitchen, where copper bottomed pots and pans were suspended over an island, the sink gleaming. The step-on trash container had a fresh liner.

“Checking on my neatness?” Christine’s voice was amused.

“Hoping to check on your uncle’s. You cleaned up after him?”

“Really nothing to clean. Neatness runs in the family.”

“Notice anything to indicate he might have had company for breakfast?”

“Nothing obvious, but the trash I put outside is still there.”

“It can wait. I’m going to take another look at the boathouse.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll tag along.”

“You’ll get wet.”

She snapped her fingers at him. “Be alert, Klauder. A good detective should be looking for a motive for my interest.”

“Obvious. You intend to seduce me in the wet grass.”

“Damn,” she said. “My mother warned me detectives weren’t easy.”

He had visualized the shooting as taking place on the landing, but that twenty degree angle made a difference. Ten feet or so from shore, the landing was approximately two feet high when it crossed the edge of the water. If only Fen had been on the landing, above the shooter — he scanned the soft earth, muddy the last foot or so where the lake waters lapped. Plenty of footprints that didn’t mean a thing.

They’d have looked for a cartridge case, spewed out if an automatic instead of a revolver had been used. Perhaps there had been one, picked up by an alert shooter. He squatted by the water’s edge. If the shooter had been standing here, an automatic would kick the casing into the water. Something else for forensic to check.

The boathouse could tell him nothing more. He rose and stepped outside. At both edges of the clearing, a path led off into the woods. Common all round the lake except where the banks were too steep, worn there by neighbors, strollers, and people who fished from shore.

The purr of engines drifted down from the road. Meg here already.

Yellow-slickered, she listened, nodded, and went off to talk to the two men she’d brought with her.

When she returned, Klauder asked, “You looked into Benson’s offer?”

“Face to face. I like to see a man’s eyes when he tells me what he’s been up to. Four properties he’d like to have. The others are willing to sell. Fen wasn’t. Without him there could be no deal. Not really that important, he said. If Christine here thinks like Fen, he’ll just find another strip.”

Christine waved a hand at the path on the left of the clearing.

“Now I know why Mr. Tustin was so interested.”

“Interested? What did he say?”

“He came over yesterday to express his condolences. He said he and my uncle had been friends for years. He seems to be a nice old man, but I felt he came over more to learn if I intended to sell than to extend sympathy. It wasn’t what he said so much as how he said it. He seemed anxious to know what I was going to do.”

“He did? Benson said the others didn’t care much one way or the other. If Fen sold, so would they. If he didn’t, it was fine with them. He didn’t mention that Tustin might have felt differently.”

Meg fingered her jaw.

“When I talked to them, he and his wife said they’d heard nothing, but there was something about his wife—” She pointed at Christine. “You stay here. If my people find anything, they’ll cut a piece out of the landing to take back to the lab. I don’t want them chasing you around for permission.”

Walking through the woods in the rain was not one of Klauder’s favorite activities. Soaked to the knees, water trickling down his neck; everything gloomy; tree trunks stained dark, even the sheen gone from the silvery birches; foliage shedding water that invaded every seam.

Glimpses of the rain-stained Tustin house appearing through the trees heightened his sense of dire anticipation. Nothing like Fen’s — more typical of the others spotted around the lake. Bare-bones design, but snug and serviceable, like his cabin.

Up close, dilapidation was clear; a loose shingle projecting over the eaves breaking the pattern of the water running from the roof, window frames once painted now peeling, a patch that had once been a vegetable garden overgrown with weeds — a drab picture that heightened the sense of foreboding that had been with him since he landed.

It’s the gloomy atmosphere, he told himself — his mind conditioned by what he saw. Wouldn’t feel this way if it had been sunny. He grinned. The only sunshine he’d seen today had been Christine.

Tustin was one of those men shrunken and dehydrated by the years: shoulders hunched, cheekbones and eyes prominent, gray hair sparse, plaid shortsleeved shirt and chinos baggy on his thin frame. He stood almost defiantly behind his seated wife. Klauder noticed the occasional tremor in the liver-spotted hands on his wife’s shoulders. Parkinson’s, no doubt.

They were hardly a Jack Sprat couple — wearing a light sweater and dark slacks, his wife was as lean, but women spent their lives more conscious of appearance so the ravages of time had been tastefully veneered with cosmetics, the full head of styled gray hair probably a wig.

Meg held her soaked Stetson at her side, her voice dangerously soft. “You didn’t tell me you and Dexter had a disagreement about selling.”

Tustin’s Adam’s apple jerked as he swallowed. “You didn’t ask.”

His wife covered her face with her hands.

In a silence broken only by the whisper of the rain on the roof, Klauder looked around at a kitchen that seemed as worn as its owners.

“I’m asking now, Mr. Tustin.”

His thin, old man’s voice was almost whining. “All right. I wanted to sell. We needed the money to move to town. Nothing better than living out here when you’re young enough to get around, take care of things, but when shopping and seeing the doctor are almost more than you can handle—”

“You’re not the first elderly couple in that situation, Mr. Tustin. The others simply sell and get out. The way this county is growing, buyers are no problem. Couldn’t you do the same?”

Tustin’s hand trembled as he waved. “Look around. How much would we get the way it stands? Benson was offering almost twice as much as a private buyer. That difference meant we could live like human beings instead of scraping by.”

“Ah. And only Fen kept the deal from going through. Sounds like a good reason to shoot him.”

“You can’t prove I did that!”

Meg looked down at the Stetson, rotating it in her hands thoughtfully. “Well, now that we know where to look, maybe we will, Mr. Tustin. It would be much better for you to tell us all about it before that time comes.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

His wife shrugged his hands from her and rose abruptly. “For God’s sake, tell her! It was an accident! That damned old gun! I told you from the beginning to tell the truth. What could they have done to you? All you did was make it worse.”

Anger stiffened him for a moment before his shoulders sagged. “Why couldn’t you keep quiet? Whatever they did to me, you’d be left here alone. You know you couldn’t handle that.”

Meg’s voice held a touch of sympathy. “Mr. Tustin, you’d better have an attorney sitting beside you when you explain what happened. What did you do with the gun?”

Head down, he stared at the floor like a child being scolded.

Mrs. Tustin stepped around him, disappeared through a door, and reappeared a moment later, the corners of her mouth turned down in loathing, a small black automatic cradled in both hands before her as though she was disposing of a slimy woodland creature driven indoors by the rain.

Klauder saw the hammer pulled back and stepped forward, ice running down his spine.

Tustin’s head lifted. He whirled, bumping her elbow and tearing her hands apart.

Too far away to do anything, Klauder yelled.

The automatic spun slightly as it fell, the muzzle rotating toward them, roaring as it hit and obliterating his yell and masking the impact as it drove Meg back a step before she collapsed.

Beyond her Mrs. Tustin’s eyes rolled upward, face frozen in horror as she sank to the floor, while Tustin screamed, “That’s how! That’s how it happened to Fen!”

Klauder frantically tore open the yellow slicker, exposing the blood rapidly staining the tan uniform below the badge.

He would swear forever that he saw life linger for a second above her before it was gone, although they said she really died on the way to the hospital.

The precise time didn’t matter at all.

She’d have wanted him to see it through, so he stayed until Tustin’s statement was duly typed up and signed in the presence of his lawyer and the district attorney.

He’d gone over after breakfast to see Fen, Tustin said, taking the gun with the idea that if Fen saw how serious he was, he’d be more inclined to listen to him.

The gun served its purpose. Fen said he hadn’t realized selling to Benson was so important to him. Now that he knew, they’d work something out. Tustin was ten or fifteen feet away, the gun in his right hand. Intending to step forward and shake Fen’s hand, he began to transfer it to his left. It slipped from his shaking fingers, firing as it hit the planks of the landing. Fen collapsed, rolled, and fell into the skiff.

All he could think of, he said, was what would happen to his wife if she was all alone. He worked Fen into the chair, used the hose to wash down the landing and the skiff, and sent the skiff out into the lake with some vague idea that if he was found somewhere on the other side, no one would know where he died. That might have been so, but the battery had been only partially charged and the skiff ended in open water, fair game for the prankish teenagers in the sport cruiser. He recovered the gun from where the recoil had sent it, told his wife what happened and to say nothing when the police came around. He’d thought of throwing the gun into the lake or burying it, he said, but was afraid someone would find it and hurt himself or someone else.

Part of Tustin’s motivation had to be that with Fen dead, his problem might be solved, but he’d never admit it.

Well, his wife was definitely alone now, heavily sedated in a hospital bed. Already agonizing over her husband’s causing Fen’s death and then trying to evade responsibility, how she’d carry the additional burden of causing Meg’s was anyone’s guess. The justice system had no quarrel with her. An accident, pure and simple. She’d been cooperating when it happened.

Like Klauder, Novachek, the chief deputy, was still functioning in a fog of disbelief. Some of the deputies sat stunned and staring at blank, flickering computer screens, others doing useless things like spinning a pencil with a forefinger. The entire crew was there except for those on patrol duty. It would not do for a raucous drunk to challenge one tonight.

Seated with elbows on her desk and his head in his hands, Klauder stared at the bagged automatic, unloaded now, its clip beside it. An old gun, an import, finish dull and scratched and worn, bought long before manufacturers began to build in safety devices against accidental firing. What everyone called a bureau drawer special.

“Novachek,” he said, “could the casing in the water be thrown where it was found if the gun was fired on the landing?”

Novachek shrugged. “Who can say? The water could have rolled it around a little. Why?”

“If you’d dropped this gun and killed Fen Dexter, what would you have done with it?”

“Thrown the damned thing as far as I could out into the lake.”

“Where it could be found, like the casing. If you decided to keep it, would you have unloaded it?”

“For damned sure. What are you getting at?”

“If Meg hadn’t—” His throat tightened. “If there had been no second time, what would you have thought of Tustin’s story?”

“That he could be lying in his teeth—” Novachek passed a hand over his face. “Jeez, Klauder, what difference does it make now?”

He pushed the automatic toward Novachek with a forefinger. “Have a state police weapons expert strip it down and go over it. Tonight.”

“They won’t move that fast—”

“Yes, they will. For Meg. Call me at home with what they find.”

The rain had ended, leaving the streets glistening in the muggy warmth of a summer evening that couldn’t touch the coldness inside him. Arms folded, her face soft with sympathy, Christine was leaning against his Cherokee.

“Would a little silent company help?”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” he said.

She made coffee and then curled up on the sofa while he paced the floor of his cabin, the warmth of her presence keeping the grief from surfacing and breaking him down.

One in the morning before Novachek called. He listened. Said, “You and the D.A. can take it from here.”

And went back to pacing, his part of it done. Only the cold and numbness inside him to handle now and only one way he knew how to do that.

He was untying the Cessna in the long shadows of sunrise when Otto came out, started to say something but merely clapped him on the shoulder.

And then alone, leaving Christine standing by the Cherokee, he took the Cessna up into a cloudless, rain-washed morning, the rolling mountains brilliant shades of emerald accented by mist clinging in the narrower valleys like faults in an enormous stone; slowly climbing in a wide circle until he reached ten thousand feet.

Meg hadn’t liked it this high. Doesn’t seem real, she said.

That’s the idea, Meg. Just you and God up here. The hurt and pain left behind, and for a little time the world below can be what you’d like it to be — no stupidity, no fear, no hate, no death — and even though those spectres surround you again the moment you touch down, you’ve conquered them for a few minutes.

The county rolled by below. Her county. Not many more weeks before the green became a brilliant multicolored carpet and the ragged V formations came honking in to rest and feed on the lake and in the fields before continuing south. Some would die before hunters’ guns, but not enough to make a difference. The difference could be made only by people like Benson who would destroy their thousand-year-old resting stations with wholesale abandon to pocket a few dollars.

She’d never made rash decisions, he knew. Probably had debated with herself as to whether she needed him more than the fish and wildlife commission. The commission had won. Change was inevitable, but the way should be paved with forethought and consideration. She’d draped that responsibility around his shoulders like a mantle. She never gave someone an option when it came to doing what she felt was right. His turn had come several times before. This had been the final one.

As he turned, a cable system satellite dish atop a mountain caught the sun with a momentary flash, the bit of brightness standing out against the background. Something like what the weapons expert would have seen on the dull metal sear when he’d disassembled the automatic.

When an automatic like Tustin’s was cocked, a notch in the sear held the hammer back until released by the trigger. The hammer can be jerked out of the notch if the weapon is dropped, but that depends on how worn the notch is, how hard the weapon is jarred, and its attitude when it hits. The odds are against it, but it could happen twice in a row. Even kill twice.

But the odds against striking two people in the heart? Monumental.

He’d seen it happen to Meg, so he found it impossible to believe it had happened to Fen. The significance of that cocked automatic in Mrs. Tustin’s hands had taken time to penetrate his shocked mind. She, of course, couldn’t know how dangerous that was, but Tustin did. He couldn’t have been so stupid or upset as to knowingly leave the gun like that without a reason — perhaps to prove that the gun would fire when dropped.

The weapons expert found the sear filed down. Novachek found the file at Tustin’s house, the matching metal still embedded in the teeth. Less than a pound and a half of trigger pull instead of the normal four pounds or so. Damned gun would go off if you sneezed in the room.

All of which said Tustin had killed Fen Dexter deliberately, standing below him on the water’s edge. And then, to make his dropped gun story believable, doctored the automatic to fire easily — never considering who might be in the way when it went off.

No protection against the fools of the world, Meg liked to say.

The mist in the valleys was thinning, disappearing; antlike traffic was taking over the empty roads and highways. A new day beginning.

He trimmed the Cessna for a slow, circling descent. As much as he’d like to, he couldn’t stay up here forever, even though down there—

— down there were not only sadness and grief, but warm memories, work to be done, a life to be lived — and Christine.

He smiled and said aloud, “I think you finally made it, matchmaker.”

And would swear forever he heard, so clearly that his head swiveled to look at the empty seat beside him, that good-humored, sometimes smug, often needling, but always affectionate voice: Time to get on with it, Klauder.