Last to Die

out right now, so there’s no secrets. Never wanted to keep it a secret anyway.” He looked at Sansone. “Even though you thought it best.”
    “You know about this, Mr. Sansone?” the cop asked. “And you employ him here anyway?”
    “Let Roman tell you the circumstances,” said Sansone. “He deserves to be heard, in his own words.”
    “Okay. Let’s hear it, Mr. Roman.”
    The forester crossed to the window and pointed at the hills. “I grew up there, just a few miles past that ridge. My grandfather was the caretaker here, looked after the castle since way back, before it became a school. No one was living here then, just an empty building, waiting for a buyer. Naturally, there were trespassers. Some of ’em just come in to hunt and leave. They’d bag their deer and leave. But some of ’em, they came to make trouble. Smash windows, set the porch on fire. Or worse. You run into ’em, you didn’t know which kind you were dealing with …”
    He took a breath. “I ran into him over there, coming out of the woods. There was no moon that night. He just suddenly appeared. Big fella, carrying a rifle. We saw each other and he raised his gun. I don’t know what he was thinking. I’ll never know. All I can tell you is, I reacted on pure instinct. Shot him in the chest.”
    “With a gun.”
    “Yes, sir. Shotgun. Took him right down. He was probably dead within five breaths.” Roman sat down, looking a decade older, his rough hands resting on his knees. “I’d just turned eighteen. But I guess you knew that.”
    “I called in a background check.”
    Roman nodded. “No secret around these parts. Thing is, he was no saint, even if he was a doctor’s kid. But I killed him, so I went to jail. Four years, manslaughter.” Roman looked down at his hands, scarred from years of outdoor labors. “I never picked up a shotgun again. That’s how I got so good with a bow.”
    “Gottfried Baum hired him straight out of prison,” said Sansone. “There’s no better man.”
    “He still has to come into town to sign a statement.” The cop turned to the forester. “Let’s go, Mr. Roman.”
    “Headmaster Baum will make some calls, Roman,” said Sansone. “He’ll meet you in town. Don’t say a word, not until he gets there with an attorney.”
    Roman followed the cop to the door and suddenly stopped to look at Sansone. “I don’t think I’ll be making it back here tonight. So I want to warn you that you’ve got a big problem here, Mr. Sansone. I know I didn’t kill that man. Which means you better find out who did.”

SUMMER FOG CLOAKED the highway to providence, and jane craned forward, peering from behind the wheel at cars and trucks that glided ahead of them like ghosts in the mist. Today she and Frost were chasing yet another ghost, she thought, as the wiper swept the gray film from her windshield. The ghost of Nicholas Clock, Teddy’s father. Born in Virginia, graduate of West Point with a degree in economics, avid outdoorsman and sailor. Married with three children. Worked as a financial consultant at Jarvis and McCrane, a job that required frequent travel abroad. No arrests, no traffic tickets, no outstanding debts.
    At least that was what Nicholas Clock looked like on paper. Solid citizen. Family man.
    The mist swirled on the road ahead of them. There was nothing solid, nothing real. Nicholas Clock, like Olivia Yablonski, was a ghost, flitting quietly from country to country. And what did that mean, exactly,
financial consultant
? It was one of those vague job descriptions that conjured up businessmen in suits carrying briefcases, speaking the language of dollar signs. Ask a man what he does, and those two words,
financial consultant
, could make your eyes glaze over.
    The same way
medical supply sales rep
could.
    Beside her in the passenger seat, Frost answered his ringing cell phone. Jane glanced at him when he said, a moment later: “You’re kidding me. How the hell did
that
happen?”
    “What?” she said.
    He waved her off, kept his focus on the phone call. “So you never finished the analysis? There’s nothing else you can tell us?”
    “Who is that?” she asked.
    At last he hung up and turned to her, a stunned expression on his face. “You know that GPS tracker we pulled off the rental car? It’s vanished.”
    “That was the lab calling?”
    “They said it disappeared from the lab sometime last night. They got only a preliminary look at it. There was no manufacturer’s