Neil McMahon - Dead Silver

And yet I paused inside the door and watched Travis Paulson for a minute. The interaction here had strengthened my impression that he had a severe case of self-importance. He'd bustle around job sites waving blueprints and talking imperiously to the supers, who tolerated him only because they had to. I'd seen him driving with that same aggressive impatience, cell phone pressed to his ear, in a Seth Fraker-style pickup truck, a big new rig that had never hauled a scrap of anything.

He did seem to fit the model that Renee had described. His gaze was still flicking furtively toward her, like a nervous tic he couldn't control. He'd "just happened" to drive by her house and notice the trash pile. He'd pressed an invitation for further contact with her.

On the other hand, Helena was a small enough town that you easily could just happen by someplace, and it would be normal for a friend to take an interested look. I couldn't fault him for wanting more of her company. And above all, I just couldn't take him that seriously. Behind his swagger, he seemed too ineffectual to have committed such a harsh, resolute crime.

I hung around for a minute longer, watching the other men in the room. I didn't see any more signs of furtive fascination with the earring, and by and large, they were a distinguished-looking group.

But I was no judge of what might lie beneath the surface. Many of them had known the Callisters for years back into the past, and I could have been looking at a long-buried dispute or obsession that had driven one of those distinguished fingers to pull a trigger.

I still had the key that Renee had given me to her carriage house. Stepping into the cold, torn-up building was a familiar sensation, never uplifting and with nothing here to improve on it. I changed back into my work clothes, got a trouble light, and hunkered down where we'd found the cache.

The top of the masonry foundation wall, about a foot wide, had become a rat highway; with the caked dung and debris, the surface was hard to see, and we hadn't examined it closely yesterday. But as I moved the light beam, I spotted the pile of wood chips in a corner where rim and floor joists met, under the wall plate and studs-all dry old wood with plenty of updraft, a perfect place for a fire to start.

Shavings like that got scattered around during construction, although there was no apparent reason for this buildup. But a heavy sprinkling of a dark substance was mixed in, mostly congealed now but still finely granular in a few spots. I touched a fingertip to one of those and sniffed. It gave off the unmistakable acrid smell of gunpowder.

I made an effort to believe that this was just happenstance with a touch of freak coincidence, and that imagining anything else was buying into a folie a deux with Renee. But she was right. The powder hadn't just sifted down through the floorboards; there was too much of it, and no gaps directly above the spot.

Before the rats had turned the volatile black powder sodden, a single spark could have set it flaring. Flames and firefighters' hoses would have obliterated the setup; if any traces were found, there'd have seemed nothing strange about its presence in an area where a man had reloaded shotgun shells.

But the enamel jewelry box would have stayed more or less intact, with the fire mainly above it-the contents maybe heat-damaged, but still recognizable.

And investigators would swiftly have reached the conclusion that Professor Callister had hidden it there.

So had he? Or was Renee right again-that the real killer had established this slick ruse to divert suspicion from himself? The fire-resistant jewelry box seemed a notch fortuitous. Maybe he had provided it himself to fit his scheme, figuring that people would assume it had belonged to Astrid. Had he just stumbled across the photos somehow, maybe ransacking her cabin after the crime? Or had he known about them, and planned in advance to use them this way?

I poked around the study for a few more minutes without accomplishing anything, then admitted that I was mainly just stalling my visit to Sheriff Gary Varna.

As I walked across the yard to my truck, my gaze was caught by a vehicle a couple hundred yards uphill, in the woods behind the Callisters' house. That seemed like an odd place to stop. There were no houses or anything else nearby. It wasn't even a turnout; you'd have to pull off of Montana Avenue and drive a ways through the trees to get there.

The vehicle started to move immediately, pulling away and disappearing. All I could tell was that it was a mid-sized SUV, dark blue, several years old. They were a dime a dozen around here.

No doubt there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for its presence. That spot being an excellent vantage point overlooking this property, hidden from passing traffic and most other eyes, and the driver taking off as soon as I came into view, was all just coincidence.

Neil McMahon – Dead Silver

THE LEWIS AND CLARK COUNTY courthouse was a somber gray stone building that had seen its fifteen minutes of fame when the just-caught Unabomber was photographed on the steps outside. Besides housing the Sheriff's Department, it was also the old jail, and you couldn't fail to feel the gravity of that.

I'd been nervous about my offer to talk to Gary Varna ever since I'd made it to Renee. It was true that Gary was a longtime acquaintance of mine, and I could even call him a friend. And I thought he'd probably agree to an off-the-record look at what we'd found-not as a favor to me, but because he wanted to know what was lying under every rock, and he hated loose ends.

What worried me was that he suspected, correctly, my involvement in the disappearance of two men a while back. That had been the occasion for my last visit to the courthouse, handcuffed and flanked by deputies.

Now my relationship with him was a lot like Captain Hook's with the crocodile. Gary patiently kept an eye on me, following the tick of my inner alarm clock, confident that one of these days, the little raft of phony alibis that I'd patched together would hit a reef. I was equally sure that he was right.

There was some comfort in knowing that if he really wanted to push it, he long since could have. In fact, I had reason to believe that he had even run interference for me during that investigation. But I couldn't help suspecting that was because I was a morsel he was saving for later.

Meantime, we got along fine, although if I happened to glimpse him unexpectedly-and at six foot five, Gary stood out in a crowd-my blood pressure arced.

He was in his office, a cubicle as spartan as a Marine barracks, wearing his usual unofficial uniform: blue jeans pressed with a razor-sharp crease and a button-down oxford cloth shirt. He looked the part for his job-tall, lean, light brown hair just starting to gray. He was friendly as always, but as always, the gaze of his slate blue eyes started my mouth going dry. We chatted for a minute, until he paused expectantly.

"It's about John Callister," I said.

"John Callister," he said musingly. "There's a name that brings up memories. I was sorry to miss his funeral, but I couldn't get away."

"His daughter Renee's in town. She was cleaning up his study and she found some photos and a piece of jewelry. She thinks they're related to those murders, and I'm starting to think maybe she's right."

He didn't move or speak, but his eyes focused a click.

I told him the story, adding that Renee hoped to keep this confidential. And while I cringed at snitching, I felt compelled to confess that she'd handled the items-and that she deliberately had the earring on display.

His displeasure was clear. "That kind of thing don't wash, Hugh. I seem to recall you and me having a talk about it once before."