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photographing, then watching forensics bag the remnants of speaker wire. The frayed end of the speaker wire nearest the fragmented engine was still partially wrapped around one of the spark plugs.
    The car was rigged
, Phillips thought. His mind went through the steps the perpetrator would have taken to make it work. C
rude, but effective
.
    Powell Griffin was busy following a trail of spike-booted footprints leading to and from the Grace vehicle from seven spaces away. Impressions in snow were hard to photograph because of lack of contrast, but Griff knew the procedure. First, he sprayed the boot-prints with orange spray paint, holding the can three feet away from each impression so the aerosol didn’t cause damage. By directing the spray at a forty-five-degree angle, the spray paint marked only the highest impression points. Then, since the highlighted impressions were liable to absorb heat from the sun, they were shielded with canvas tent screens until they could be adequately photographed.
    When he had finished protecting the prints, Griff walked over to Phillips. He had something on his mind, and Phillips knew him well enough not to ask what he was thinking until Griff thoroughly formulated what he wanted to say and was ready to share it.
    Phillips joggled his body back and forth in the cold, keeping his feet stationary so as not to mar the scene.
    “Have you ever seen a woman in this town wear spike-heeled boots?” Griff asked finally.
    “I’d have to ask my wife,” Phillips replied. “But I’d guess no. It’s too slippery. You’d fall down as soon as you hit the ice.”
    Griff looked past the crime scene tape at the gathered crowd. Nearly all looked frozen, nearly all wore parkas and heavy hiking boots, and nearly all were undoubtedly locals or relatives of locals who had dressed them or advised them on what they’d need to survive upstate New York winter weather.
    “Do we have any dental stone?” he asked.
    “Always. Bags of it.”
    Griff did the math in his head. He had over a dozen clear prints of both the right and left boots.
    Dental stone with a compressive strength of at least eight-thousand psi was used for impressions in soil, snow, or sand. Phillips went to the forensics van and brought back an armload of premixed, re-sealable plastic bags, setting them at Griff’s feet in a trackless spot. Then he went and retrieved four gallon-sized jugs of water, bringing them back and setting them down beside the bags of dental stone.
    Griff picked a bag up and grabbed a jug. He poured sufficient water into the bag, sealed it, and shook it up. “I feel good about those prints,” he said.
    “You think a woman could have done this?”
    “Think Mike was having an affair and this was the other woman getting back at him when he tried to cut things off?”
    “Don’t know yet,” Phillips said. “But we’ll figure it out.”
    He watched as Griff massaged the first bag of dental stone until it was the consistency of watered-down Bisquick.
    “There are two good car tire impressions—left front, left rear—where the boot-prints start and return. Let’s get those two, while the wind is cooperating.”
    Phillips nodded and headed off.
    * * *
    The man on the second floor of Sheldon Hall did not want to go outside. Other than the car that had been blown to bits, his was the only car left in the Takamine Road lot. If he went out now, there would be questions, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to get involved.
    He had been gazing out at the parking lot when the blond woman was stood near the Grace car. The gas tank was on the right side of the Saturn, and it was parked in the right corner of the lot, so his view was partially obscured. After watching her a while, he decided she must be putting gas in the tank. He went back to reading his hardback copy of
A Winter Haunting
.
    Movement caught his peripheral vision again, however, and he turned and looked out a second time. The woman stepped away from the car and