Mr. Murder

ermine.
        Paige drove through Mammoth Lakes without stopping and turned south toward Lake Mary. In the back seat, Charlotte and Emily were so entranced by the snowfall that, for the time being, they did not need to be entertained.
        East of the mountains, the sky had been gray-black and churning.
        Here, in the wintry heart of the Sierras, it was like a Cyclopean eye sheathed in a milky cataract.
        The turn-off from Route 203 was marked by a copse of pines in which the tallest specimen bore scars from a decade-old lightning strike. The bolt had not merely damaged the pine but had encouraged it into mutant patterns of growth, until it had become a gnarled and malignant tower.
        The snowflakes were smaller than before, falling harder, driven by the northwest wind. After a playful debut, the storm was turning serious.
        Cutting through mountain meadows and forests-increasingly more of the latter and fewer of the former-the upsloping road eventually passed a chain-link encircled property of over a hundred acres on the right.
        This plot had been purchased eleven years ago by the Prophetic Church of the Rapture, a cult that had followed the teachings of the Reverend Jonathan Caine and had believed that the faithful would soon be levitated from the earth, leaving only the unbaptized and truly wicked to endure a thousand years of grueling war and hell on earth before final Judgment came to pass.
        As it turned out, Caine had been a child molester who video taped his abuse of cult members' children. He had gone to prison, his two thousand followers had dispersed on the winds of disillusionment and betrayal, and the property with all its buildings had been tied up by litigation for almost five years.
        Some fantasies were destructive.
        The chain-link fence, topped with coils of dangerous razor wire, was broken down in places. In the distance the spire of their church soared high above the trees. Beneath it were the sloped roofs of a warren of buildings in which the faithful had slept, taken their meals, and waited to be lifted heavenward by the right hand of the Lord Almighty. The spire stood untouched. But the buildings under it were missing many doors and windows, home to rats and possums and raccoons, shorn of glory and hairy with decay. Sometimes the vandals had been human. But wind and ice and snow had done the better part of the damage, as if God, through weather warped to His whim, had passed a judgment on the Church of the Rapture that He had not yet been ready to pass on the rest of humankind.
        The cabin was also to the right of the narrow county road, the next property after the huge tract owned by the defunct cult. Set back a hundred yards from the pavement, at the end of a dirt lane, it was one of many similar retreats spread through the surrounding hills, most of them on an acre of land or more.
        It was a one-story structure with weather-silvered cedar siding, slate roof, screened front porch, and river-rock foundation. Over the years his father and mother had expanded the original building until it contained two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and two baths.
        They parked in front of the cabin and got out of the BMW. The surrounding firs, sugar pines, and ponderosa pines were ancient and huge, and the crisp air was sweet with the scent of them. Drifts of dead needles and scores of pinecones littered the property. Snow reached the ground only between the trees and through the occasional interstices of their thatched boughs.
        Marty went to the woodshed behind the cabin. The door was held shut with a hasp and peg. Inside, to the right of the entrance, against the wall, a spare key was wrapped tightly in plastic and buried half an inch under the dirt floor.
        When Marty returned to the front of the cabin, Emily was circling one of the larger trees in a crouch, closely examining the cones that had fallen from it. Charlotte was performing a wildly exaggerated ballet in an open space between trees, where a wide shaft of snow fell like a spotlight on a stage.
        "I am the Snow Queen!" Charlotte announced breathlessly as she twirled and leaped. "I have dominion over winter! I can command the snow to fall! I can make the world shiny and white and beautiful!"
        As Emily began to gather up an armload of cones, Paige said, "Honey, you're not bringing those in the house."
        "I'm going to make some