KATE TRIED REACHING HER father again, to no avail. She gathered up her belongings and left the hospital. Boston’s winding streets and left turns were difficult to navigate at the best of times, let alone the dead of winter when the roads were full of potholes and icy patches. She drove through the angular streets past office complexes, strip malls, and gleaming contemporary buildings, afraid Bram might’ve done something stupid, like gone off half-cocked to confront Professor Stigler at the university. She could almost picture him barging into the professor’s office and looming over his desk, hurling accusations, maybe threatening physical violence. What if he lost it completely—that hair-trigger temper of his? The campus police would haul him off in handcuffs.
And it would be all her fault.
At every stop light, she dialed her father’s office number and listened to the busy signal. Finally, his secretary picked up and told Kate that he’d cancelled all his appointments and stormed out of the office without a word of explanation, leaving the phone off the hook. Kate thanked her and hung up.
By the time she reached her father’s house on Three Hills Road, Kate had worn herself out with worry. His car wasn’t in the driveway, so she headed back to town and parked a few blocks away from the university. She crossed the snowy campus to the Clarence Oberon Building, where she took an elevator to the fourth floor, only to find that Stigler’s office was dark and his door locked.
She found the Sociology Department main office at the other end of the corridor and stood in front of the administrative assistant’s desk, tapping her nails anxiously on the wood. The middle-aged woman seemed mildly annoyed to be interrupted. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Professor Stigler.”
“He had an early class then went home for the day. Would you like to leave him a message?”
“Actually,” Kate confessed, “I was looking for my father, Bram Wolfe. I think he might have come to see the professor.”
“Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “You must be Kate. I’ve heard so much about you. Dr. Wolfe has been our family physician for years. He’s taking care of my grandkids now, can you believe that?”
Kate nodded. “So he was here?”
“About an hour ago. I sent him over to the lake house.”
“Lake house?”
“He said it was urgent, so I gave him Professor Stigler’s home address.” She searched her computer database. “623 Lakeview Drive.”
Kate thanked the woman and left. She drove north of town, where the million-dollar homes hugged the lake. She passed renovated neo-Gothic bungalows and stately mansions where some of the wealthiest residents of Blunt River lived: university faculty members, small businessmen, and local politicians.
623 Lakeview Drive was located at the end of a private road, separated from its nearest neighbors by a tall cedar fence and thick pine woods. She parked next to her father’s Ford Ranger, then got out and stood for a nervous moment. There were no other vehicles parked in the driveway and no garage. She wondered where Stigler’s car was. Where was her father?
The wind picked up, howling through the pines. Stigler lived in a lacy Victorian wedding cake of a house with Baroque-style turrets and a wraparound porch. Down by the lake, a wooden dock stretched out over the ice. The view was wild and desolate.
She was heading toward the house, boots crunching over gravel, when something caught her eye: a set of drag marks in the gravel, two slender grooves made by a pair of heels, accompanied by a trail of blood drops.
Kate froze. Someone had been dragged out of the house, down the porch steps, and across the driveway. The blood drops stopped where Stigler usually parked his car—she could see tire impressions in the gravel, deep wells made by something rugged, perhaps an off-roader or an SUV.
Kate took out her phone and dialed 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator answered.
Her mind went blank.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I think my father’s dead,” Kate blurted out.