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he put in a call to Judy. She would have made it in to the station house, since she only lived a block or so away.
    She picked up on the first ring.
    “Morning, Carl,” she said cheerfully.
    “What’s so good about it,” Carl growled irritably.
    “Who said it was good? I just said it was morning,”
    “Yeah, okay, sorry, Jude. Have you heard anything else from the Burlington boys yet?”
    “Only that it’ s pretty well impossible to get back to the crime scene from where they are. Roly said to tell you they won’t even be able to get a chopper in the air until all this lot eases up. Are you planning to come in here? Almost called to say he’s on his way but I’m not expecting him for a while yet.”
    Still holding the phone, Carl looked out at his cruiser again.
    “Yeah, Jude, I’ll be in as soon as I can clear some of this damned mess off of the cruiser. Should be there in about half an hour, max, okay?”
    “I’ll have the coffee pot on. You wanna pick up some donuts or something on your way in. I didn’t have time to make myself breakfast today.”
    “Will do, Jude,” he said. “See you soon.”
    He clicked off the phone and slipped his parka and fur trimmed winter hat on. Then he picked up his gloves and keys and went out, locking the door after him.
    As he brushed the snow off from the cruiser with a broom he kept beside the front door, he wondered what this new day would bring. Right now the perp had the advantage of the bad weather. But as Almost had pointed out last night, he too wouldn’t be able to get far in this weather either. So chances were he’d still be holed up somewhere locally. The weather had deteriorated even further after he’d dropped Lisa off last night.
    This was a real doozi e of a storm too; worst one he’d seen in years. Their tiny community just wasn’t equipped to handle anything like this. Any serious emergency services came to them from Burlington, Newport, Montpelier, the State capital, and even the closest one, the Copley Hospital in Morrisville, was still over ten miles away. There was just one medical doctor, one veterinary surgeon and one dentist in Cooper’s Corners. Anyone requiring serious medical or dental surgery would have to go into one of the bigger towns for it. The morgues, medical examiners and the State Troopers were there as well.
    Apart from looking like the inspiration for TV’s Mayberry, Cooper’s Corner’s could be described as typical, picturesque rural America. A friendly little community where everyone knew everyone else. Typically Vermont too, with its rolling hills, beautiful white painted churches, red barns and covered bridges.
    And too damned cold in the wintertime! But it wasn’t a community where one expected murders to be committed either and even this one may have been the result of people just passing through.
    Carl and Almost’s main source of normal policing was to apprehend speeders out on the highway. Once, an out of towner had robbed the feed mill’s country store, but had been easily caught.
    After hearing about the robbery, Wes Williams had noticed him, a stranger, putting his beer purchases into a feed mill canvas bag. It may have been perfectly innocent, but Wes alerted Judy anyway. The villain was apprehended by Carl no more than twenty minutes after committing his crime. In a community like Cooper’s Corners it pays to have everyone know everyone else. People they don’t know stand out like sore thumbs.
    Everyone also knows Errol Scott too. For the last five of his sixty three years, Errol has been almost constantly as drunk as a s kunk. Everyone also thought they’d known Errol’s wife, Dolly, pretty well too. But without as much as an ‘It’s been nice knowing you’ to Errol, she’d apparently taken off to California.
    From her point of view, maybe it hadn’t been so nice knowing Errol after all. Either way, Errol had been totally sloshed almost every day since she had left.
    To start with Errol was at