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  "He was a scum bag," Croft said. "Excuse me, m'am."

  "I hear worse from him every day," Janet said. She smiled at Croft.

  "Thing is, somebody seems to have wiped out practically his whole social circle, up there in Maine. A ranger in the National Forest up there found them scattered all around. His two sons, his bodyguard, and one of his associates, all gunned down here and there."

  Newman nodded. He ate some salad.

  "Nobody's hysterical with grief," Croft said. He drank from the beer can. "They were all maggots and whoever burned them did the world a favor. Interesting thing was, another guy got killed up there, guy named Hood. Chris Hood. Know him?"

  "Of course. He lives right back of us."

  "Yeah," Croft said. "That sort of got our attention."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning the coincidence. Here you think Karl did a murder and then you think he didn't, then a guy who lives right next to you gets killed in the same woods with Karl." Croft drank more beer. He put the can down and belched softly. "

  "Scuse me," he said.

  Vincent took another small sip of Scotch.

  Newman had finished eating. He sipped his wine.

  Janet Newman was still eating. She speared a mushroom slice from her salad bowl and put it in her mouth.

  Vincent said to Newman, "You've lost some weight haven't you?"

  "Yes, about twenty pounds."

  "Look good," Vincent said.

  "That's terrible about Chris," Janet said. "We were quite good friends."

  "But you haven't seen him in the last month or so, have you," Croft said.

  "No," Janet said. "I assumed he'd gone hunting. He does that often in season." "Season just opened," Croft said.

  Janet shrugged. "I don't know. I don't hunt. I just know it's in the fall sometime."

  Croft grinned. "Hell, I didn't know it either," he said. "I just checked it with the Maine cops myself."

  Newman said, "Want another beer?" "Sure," Croft said. Newman got it from the refrigerator.

  "How's your Scotch, Lieutenant?"

  "Fine."

  Newman began to remove the dinner dishes and put them into the dishwasher. Janet finished her salad.

  The two policemen were quiet for a moment.

  Newman leaned his hips against the kitchen counter and said, "What do you guys want?"

  Croft looked at Vincent.

  Vincent smiled and sipped more Scotch. "We want to try out a hypothesis on you," he said. "Suppose there was a man who witnessed a murder and identified the killer."

  Vincent paused and raised his glass and looked at the overhead light shining through the Scotch.

  "And suppose then the killer leaned on this guy, or his wife, or both, and made the guy change his story. How's the guy feel, Bobby?"

  "Lousy," Croft said. "He feels like he's been pushed around and made a coward, humiliated probably."

  "Right. So what's he do? If he tells us, the killer will come down on him like hail on a flower, right?"

  Croft said, "Right."

  "So he decides to shoot the killer. That gets revenge. Takes care of his humiliation, keeps the killer from making good whatever threats he might have made, and, a plus, is sort of executing him for his crime.

  You know?

  Not just cold-blooded murder, but a kind of justice. You follow me so far?"

  Newman nodded.

  "You, m'am?" Vincent said.

  "Yes, of course," Janet said.

  "But of course there's some problems. The guy's no pistolero, for one thing. And he's gotta do it so neither the cops nor the robbers know or even suspect."

  "Especially the robbers," Croft said. "Cause they'll shoot him on suspicion." "Right," Vincent said. "So this guy has to get some help and he has to find a way of doing things so no one will know." "Especially the robbers," Croft said.

  "Right," Vincent said. "Now say this guy has a friend who's- a real hard-ass, excuse me, m'am. Guy's been in the Rangers and he's had a lot of combat and he's tough enough anyway to hunt bear with a willow switch. Suppose this guy goes to his hard-ass friend and explains his problem and his friend says, hell, let's do them in, I'll help."

  "That would make things a lot simpler," Croft said. "Friend might be an ex-football player, even, four, five years in the pros, something like that."

  "Yeah," Vincent said, "that would be good. Now if that was the idea and then one day Karl heads up into the woods in West Overshoe, Maine, there's the chance. So this guy and his buddy, say, they head up there and they began blazing away, but the buddy gets killed and now the guy's in it alone, and there's several tough hoods against him and he pulls it off." "And gets away," Croft said. "And comes home and keeps his mouth shut and settles back into his life."

  "How's that hypothesis sound, Mr. Newman?" Vincent said.

  "Bizarre," Newman said.

  "Yeah," Vincent said, "that's a good word. It is bizarre. I don't believe any of it for a minute. Neither does Bobby. Right, Bobby?" Croft said, "Right."

  "Which is why I never mentioned your name to the Maine State Police," Vincent said, "or any connection you might of had with Karl, or even that you lived near Hood. Far as the State of Maine knows, you don't exist." "So," Croft said, "if our hypothesis wasn't so crazy, you might say you are clean. Except, of course, you are clean because you never could have done something like that."

  Newman didn't speak.

  "In a way it's too bad," Vincent said. "I wish you were the guy in my hypothesis, because if you were I could shake your hand"-Vincent put his hand out to Newman. Newman took it-"like this and say I think you're a hell of a man." Newman shook Vincent's hand. He said, "Hypothetically speaking, Lieutenant, shake her hand too."

  Vincent stood up and shook hands with Janet. "Thanks for the Scotch," he said.

  He and Croft went out to their car. Vincent got in the passenger side.

  Croft walked around to the driver's side and opened the door to get in.

  With one foot in the car he looked back at Janet and Aaron Newman standing together at their back door. He raised his right fist and held it above his shoulder for a moment. Then he got in the car and drove away.

  Robert B. Parker

  Robert B. Parker is the author of five previous novels The Godwulf Manuscript God Save the Child, Mortal Stakes, Promise Land, and The Judas Goat all of them about a Boston private detective known as Spenser. Promised Land won the Edgar All Poe Award in the USA for the best myste novel of 1976. Wilderness is his first non-Spenser novel.

  Robert Parker and his wife, Joan, are co-authors of Three Weeks in Spring, an autobiographical book. They live in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, with their two sons, David and Daniel.

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