Snow clung to the cuffs of his pants and collected along the top of his boots at his ankles. It melted into freezing water that soaked his socks and numbed his feet. The leather boots were fine for town, but they weren't made for a trek through the woods. They sank beneath the deep snow and slipped on the shallower patches. To prevent a tumble down an icy incline, Denton hugged the trees for support. At the bottom of the hill there was an empty gap, where he skidded through leaves and slush until he caught hold of a birch to stop his momentum.

The cabin was getting closer, but it was of little relief to him. The closer he got, the more he wondered what exactly he was doing out there.

After he left the house that morning, he went back to see Radcliff. Undeniably, it was a bad idea. He could hear Bill chastising him in his head. The boy could be a serial killer. He should just stay out of it and let the police handle it. But Denton couldn't leave it alone. He felt if he could just see him again, he would pick up on whatever clue he had missed the first time. There was no chance that Eddie would let him into the house again. He just hoped that a few minutes at the door would reveal a telltale sign of the boy's guilt or innocence.

After ringing the bell and knocking several times, no one appeared to be home. Denton walked along the gallery peering in the windows. Heavy drapes hid most of the rooms from view. The only one he was able to get a look at was the formal living room. The antique furnishings sat there in their museum-like gloom.

Following the side of the house, he trudged around to the backyard. The garden gate almost kept him out, but with some effort, he was able to shove it through the snow enough to squeeze past.

The morning's sun reflected off of the windows of the conservatory, forcing him to press his face up against the glass and shield it with his hands in order to see in. He stared up at the celestial paintings. Denton considered the subtle, almost hidden, figure eights in both images. What had been happening to the artist as she painted these? What was compelling her?

When he pulled away, the position of his hands and his forehead were marked on the window with an outline of frost, formed from his breath. A quick rub with his coat sleeve wiped it clean.

Back inside the comfort of his car, he lingered there, tasting his disappointment. He stared out at the empty street in front of him. There were a few cars parked in driveways, but no one was on the road. His eyes darted to the rear-view mirror. No one was back there either.

The police weren't watching the house.

He brushed his hair back along his scalp. Why weren't they monitoring Radcliff?

Of course, Eddie was out, so perhaps the officers they put on him were tailing him, as he went about his business. But what business did he have so early on a Monday morning? He didn't go to school—at least, not Milton. A search of the student directory had confirmed that. Could he have a job?

Unlikely. There was an idleness about the boy. He was too young to have a career and too wealthy to be spending his time as a store clerk. Eddie kept a lawyer on speed dial and spent his time playing videogames.

If he were to predict the boy's behavior, Denton would say he should be still home asleep. Or at least, he would be on any normal Monday. However, he had been picked up by the police two days ago and interrogated for multiple homicides. That could certainly be reason enough to change his routine.

Denton started the Mercedes and took a long meandering route to campus, stopping and getting a coffee on the way. He needed to better understand Eddie Radcliff, but he didn't have enough information. If only he had focused more on him at the time. If only he had spent another five minutes examining his bedroom.

If the boy was guilty, why did he let him into the house that day?

Because I told him I was with the police.

No, because he had assumed I was the police. He had been waiting for a visit from law enforcement. That's why he was so ready to believe Denton was a detective.

But why not demand a warrant? To appear innocent.

"Come on in. Look around. I have nothing to hide. You can poke around all you like. I'll just go play a videogame like everything is normal."

There must not be anything incriminating in the house, or he would have kept Denton out. It made sense. The police were investigating his mother's death, if there was any evidence at the Radcliff home, they would have found it already.

The smell of Agatha's room came back to him: the sickly, flowery perfume barely masking the odor of antiseptic. What had Bill said? "They scrubbed the van down." Had her room been scrubbed down too? Her body had been found out by Salem Creek Mill, but where was she killed?

Even though Denton hadn't found anything, his visit caused Eddie to worry that the police were on to him. So, he immediately decided to destroy the rest of the evidence.

No. Next his accomplice showed up.

The van pulled up only minutes after I left. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence. Eddie's worst fears are realized when the police show up at his door. The moment the cop goes upstairs, and he's alone, he calls up his friend. He freaks out on the phone. His friend tells him to relax. Play it cool. He's on his way. Eddie turns on a videogame and starts to play to keep from pacing and fidgeting. The friend hops in his van and races over. He parks up the street and waits for the police to leave. As soon as he sees the detective walk out and pull away in his car, he goes to check on Eddie to make sure he hasn't done anything stupid and hung them all.

Eddie's hysterical. He's certain it's only a matter of time before they're charged and taken to prison. They argue about what to do and finally decide to clean up the rest of the evidence. Then they head out to Federal Road, where they meet the third killer and gather up all the tools of their heinous trade.

They dump them or destroy them or hide them somewhere else. But then they're picked up by the real police. The three of them are questioned. The police put them into separate rooms hoping one will rat out the others. But the lawyer shows up and gets them released before that can happen.

Then what does Eddie do? Go home and pretend nothing has happened?

Denton was still considering this question when he pulled into the Milton parking lot and headed to his usual spot in the back.

If he were Eddie, he'd leave—get out of town—avoid trouble. On TV, the police always say to the suspect, "Don't leave town." But do they say that in real life? Is there any way to enforce it? What would stop him? It wasn't as if there were roadblocks around Bexhill.

Denton checked the time. The morning was slipping away. The first exam had already started.

He rushed across campus. There were proctors, so he wasn't needed, but Denton always felt duty bound to be there. Two of his undergrad classes were sitting it that day. The other two would take it on Tuesday. He arrived flushed and slightly sweaty. Glancing in, he saw the hushed room. The only noise came from the sound of pen on paper and the occasional cough or squeak of a chair. He removed his coat and draped it over an empty desk. He then carefully folded his scarf. Deep burgundy with a paisley print, it had been a gift from Linda. He placed it on top of his coat and meandered down the long rows. A few students looked up at him from their essays. He smiled and nodded back. After two complete tours, he headed back to the door and gathered his things.

On his way out, he went up to Monica Rainville. She was leaning against the wall with her arms folded and a stern look on her face. Her eyes passed from one desk to the next, with fierce concentration. Denton asked her in a low whisper, "I didn't see Kaling. Did you hear from him?"

"No," she said. "He hasn't been at the last couple of conferences either."

Denton nodded. "I'll be in my office. Call me if there are any problems." There wouldn't be. There never was.

Kaling hadn't been in class since Maggie Biscamp's abduction. He had taken it hard. The last time Denton had seen him, it was in Market Square at the vigil. The teary eyed young man was at the head of the procession beside the girl's parents.

News of her death must have devastated him.

When Denton got to his desk, he carefully started re-reading all the notes he had taken since the murders of Mr. 8 first came to his attention. With his left hand, he flipped through the pages of his notebook. With his right, he scrawled down points on a fresh sheet of lined paper.

The odd assortment of facts and observations told a grim story of what a dark and fearful place Bexhill had become. It was a tale about a secret killer that stalked the town and mysterious disappearances that haunted the residents. It was about how the disappeared turned into the dead, because of the curiosity of a dog. And how news broke over the town and filled it with grief and terror.

Denton was just starting to go through his notes on Agatha Radcliff, when someone knocked on the frame of his open door. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," Lorraine said, while he recovered his composure.

"My own fault." Denton adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Too much coffee this morning."

Lorraine was the new administrative assistant for Psychology. When the previous assistant retired in June, she'd transferred from the Chemistry Department for slightly more pay. The raise almost certainly failed to compensate for working directly with Simon Foley on a daily basis.

"Still at it?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm stuck here until 2:30 or so. You?"

"I'm out of here. We're shuffling off to Buffalo this afternoon."

Denton smiled politely at her joke. He hadn't found it funny the first two times he'd heard it either. Her husband's family was from Buffalo, New York, and they took the kids to visit them just about every chance they got.

"Just wanted to bring you this. Merry Christmas." She held out a gift bag with red and green tissue paper fluffed out of the top.

"Geez Lorraine, you didn't have to do that." He got up and stepped around the desk to take the bag from her.

"It's just a little something. I'm not going to be here for the potluck, so I wanted to give it to you now. Your one of the only profs that doesn't make my life hell around here."

He pulled out a bottle of scotch. "Thank you, Lorraine. This is fantastic. I'll be sure to think of you when I'm drinking it. Merry Christmas." He tried to strike a balance of sounding truly appreciative but not so thankful that it sounded phony. The bottle was bottom shelf stuff, far inferior to anything he'd ever buy himself. Maybe he could use it for cooking.

"Hang on. I have something here for you." He went back and fished out a box of chocolates from his desk drawer. He felt sheepish giving it to her. The scotch for all its faults was a generous gift considering they barely knew each other. The candy he'd gotten her had been on sale at the drugstore.

"Sorry, I didn't wrap it. I didn't realize you would be leaving today."

She thanked him and tucked it under her arm. There was something in the gesture that said, I'll go put it with the others.

Anxious to change the subject, he asked, "Your folks don't mind you spending the holidays with Ted's people."

"God, no. There's so many people at their place on Christmas, they're thankful for the extra room."

"I didn't know you had a big family."

"Lots of cousins. We McGuigan's are all over these hills." Lorraine was the type of person whom Linda envied: a true local.

Someone who wasn't just raised here, but who also had generations of roots in Bexhill. Denton often wondered whether it was really out of her love of the town or her hatred of still feeling like an outsider after all these years.

His eyes drifted down to his desk, the last word he had written jumped out at him: "Splendor." The mountain Agatha had painted. The mountain that didn't exist. Could it be a name used by the locals and not found on any map? Like Toad Lake, which was often called Drowned Man's Pond.

He asked Lorraine if she had ever heard of it. "Can't say as I have. Why?"

He pulled out his phone and started to try and find the photo he'd taken the other day. Hopefully he had caught one of Agatha's paintings in frame, when he took the picture of Linda's.

"An artist did a series of paintings of it. Agatha Radcliff. Have you heard of her?" He spoke with his eyes sifting through the images.

"Of course. Although, I can't say I know much about her, but everyone knows the Radcliffs. They're practically royalty around here."

He held out the phone to her, and she looked down to see a zoomed in, pixilated autumn scene of the mountain in bright reds and golds.

"Oh, that's Nazareth," she said, with the certainty born from seeing the vista a thousand times.

"What?"

"From that angle, she must have painted it from their place on Mount Hamon."

"What place?"

"The family has a hunting lodge up there, everybody knows about it. President Hoover went duck hunting there with old Pop Radcliff once."

A search of the internet pulled up several articles on the hunting lodge. Matthew "Pop" Radcliff was a logging tycoon and a local character around the time of the First World War. As Lorraine had mentioned, he had entertained Hoover at his lodge, shortly after he had completed his term in office. It was pretty big news for the area, big enough that it got picked up and repeated in several retrospectives of the county. And apparently big enough news that people still talked about it today.

Denton wondered abstractly whether there was a plaque in the lodge that read: "Herbert Hoover slept here," similar to those that boasted of other historic guests in the inns throughout the area.

According to one recent article, the lodge was now owned by a Tabitha O'Donnell née Radcliff. He couldn't find an address on Tabitha, but he did find out she was born in 1919. If she were still alive, it was unlikely she'd be doing any hunting, or that she'd make her permanent residence in some remote mountain top retreat.

When he punched the address into his phone's GPS, it told him it was only a fifty-five minute drive. It would be even shorter, if you were leaving from Federal Road, he thought. More than enough time to get up there and back before the police stopped them.

The next couple of hours were spent in nervous anticipation for the exams to finish so he could follow up on the lead. It was most likely a wild goose chase, but there was something ominous and tantalizing about it. Perhaps it was because of its proximity to Mt. Nazareth State Forest. Ever since the incident with the cow mutilator and the shack, the place had been a source of dread for him. Even though it was completely irrational, it felt obvious that the Mr. 8 case would lead him back there.

The drive was long but uneventful, until he reached Angel's Pass Road and started heading up Mt. Hamon. With each switchback, the mountain drive became more treacherous and the snow in the woods became deeper. By the time he pulled off on the narrow access road to the lodge, the plowed banks at its sides formed a deep trench that he could barely see above. The road was dirt and two frozen ruts kept his tires from straying. Each time he accidentally hit the side of the grooves, the rubber moaned and the car trembled. But he was thankful for those tracks, when he slammed on his brakes and they were the only things that kept him from skidding off the road and crashing into one of the banks.

A glimpse of midnight blue around the next bend had caused Denton to react without thinking.

Blood pounded in his ears. The top of the van stood just above the hill of snow.

Slowly, he started up again and rounded the corner. The van blocked the way, but there was nowhere to go beyond it. In front of it, there was a small red hatchback, and then the road ended, with an impassable three foot snow drift. Only a path of repeated footprints broke the smooth white plane.

He turned off the engine and got out.

About a quarter mile further up the mountain was the lodge. It looked smaller than it had online. It may have been impressive in its day, but it was puny compared to some of the elaborated vacation houses that had been built on the lakes and mountains around Bexhill in more recent years. It was a two story log structure nestled amongst the trees. Had it been summer and the leaves were still green, he never would have been able to see it from where he was standing.

Denton thought it best not to walk straight up the beaten path to the front door and decided to make his own route through the woods hoping to flank it. A route he soon regretted, as he slogged along exhausted and cold, with soaking wet feet.

By the time he reached the tree line, the sun was starting to set and the branches cast long shadows over the snow. The winter's solstice was less than a week away and the afternoon was prematurely turning to night.

He made a dash for the lodge. He hunched over to try and stay out of sight. His jog was awkward and his feet stumbled through the snow. His scarf dangled from his neck, until it broke free and dropped to the ground. He took three quick steps back to retrieve it. The cashmere lent a small amount of warmth to his hand while he stuffed it in his pocket. He reached the side of the building and stayed low, his hands clasping his knees while he fought for breath. When he'd recovered from the excursion, he carefully peeked into one of the windows. The vaulting room was empty. A two story fireplace stood across from him. A fire was in its hearth, burnt down to embers. Off on another wall, papers and photos were pinned up, but he couldn't make out the details. There was only one item he recognized. Barely visible in the dim light was the front page of Saturday's Bexhill Gazette. If he hadn't looked at it so often, the picture of Aikmen Field would have just blended in with the rest of the jumble of photos and clippings.

They must be here. He needed to call Bill. Denton dialed the number and waited, trying to see if he could make sense of any of the other clippings. Could that photo on the left be Maggie Biscamp? Was that one the candlelight vigil?

After a minute, when the call didn't connect, he checked the screen and realized he had no signal.

He'd have to call from the base of the mountain. Denton groaned thinking about the walk back to the car in the rapidly growing dark. It was then that something hard and cold pressed against the back of his neck.

"One wrong move and you're dead," a voice said.