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me.”
    “You’re not going to lose your job.” Doyle rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Thanks to those two broads he’d been stuck with, he had a migraine coming on, which was making it hard to resist the urge to smack Kaplan. “I got a guy at the lab in Sudbury, he’s handling things. Another week, all this—” he waved toward the woods “—will die down, and the Feds will be out of our hair. So relax.”
    “I hope you’re right, Doyle.”
    Doyle snorted. “When the hell have I been wrong before?”
    “I can think of a few times,” Kaplan said. “Matter of fact, I think that’s what got us in this mess in the first place.”
    Doyle’s eyes narrowed. Kaplan shrank visibly under his gaze. “You better think long and hard before running that mouth off at me again,” he said after a lengthy moment.
    “Or what?” Kaplan demanded, although the bravado had largely faded from his voice.
    Doyle didn’t answer, but shifted his focus toward the tree line. Just past the police tape he could see Jan Waters, that hot blond reporter, leaning against her van. He raised a hand in greeting, and she smiled and wiggled her fingers in return. Kaplan followed his eyes and let out a low whistle. “Man, would I like to tap that.”
    “That’s a surefire way to lose your wife,” Doyle said.
    “Bet she’d be worth it, though.” Kaplan stared at her longingly. “She can probably crack nuts with those legs.”
    Doyle guffawed at the image. “She can crack more than that.”
    “Yeah?” Kaplan scrutinized him. “Sounds like you might know.”
    Doyle smirked in response. A patrolman was coming down the trail with a Belgian Malinois panting on the end of a leash. Two other officers followed him. Doyle stood and smacked Kaplan on the arm. “C’mon, boy,” he said, grinning. “It’s your turn to get in there.”
    Four
    “Ready to go?”
    Kelly glanced up from the stack of reports she’d been sifting through. Monica stood in the doorway, jiggling her car keys in one hand.
    “Sure, I’ll be right there.” Kelly tapped the papers, straightening them into a pile, then rose to join her.
    It was a short drive across the border to Bennington, a picturesque Vermont town complete with a village green. A strange obelisk dominated the landscape, stone sides sloping three-hundred feet up to a point at the top. Monica nodded to it as they drove past. “Commemorates the Battle of Bennington, when they drove the Brits back up to Canada during the revolution. Butt-ass ugly, isn’t it? Me and my friends call it the ‘mighty gray dildo.’”
    Kelly laughed. Despite her brash nature, Monica exuded a warmth and spirit that was hard to resist. She was feeling better about the case today. After getting a good night’s sleep at a local bed-and-breakfast, she felt lighter, more able to handle a daunting stack of cold cases. The fact that it was a gorgeous day outside didn’t hurt, either.
    They crossed a covered wooden bridge and passed rows of fields and rolling green meadows. It was almost unbelievably lush. After a few minutes they turned into the parking lot at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, a stately Georgian building of brick and marble that looked more like a college library than a hospital. Monica slid into one of the spaces reserved for emergency personnel.
    As Kelly turned to get out of the car Monica stopped her with one hand. “Listen,” she said firmly, “I know that so far we’ve been making the Keystone Cops look like pros, and you must think we’re a bunch of Podunks dead set on bungling this case for you. But what you’ve seen so far today—well, let’s just say I didn’t put my best foot forward. You gotta understand, Doyle has been driving me bananas. I feel like he interferes every time I try to get something done.”
    Kelly started to reply, but Monica waved a hand, cutting her off. “You don’t have to say anything. I know we all gotta get along, and I’m really going to try.