Instead, she faced a simple, two-story log building with a deep-eaved roof and a broad porch that looked more like Wyoming than New York State to her. The house-camp?-fronted a gravel drive almost as wide as it was long. On the far side of the drive, opposite the porch, the trees had been thinned rigorously, leaving a dramatic view of the mountains rolling away to the north. Meant as a summer house, then. One thing Clare had learned in her almost two years in Millers Kill was that no one built a house facing north if he could help it. The view was bracketed by a three-bay garage on one end, also constructed from logs. Its doors, like the house’s door and shutters, were trimmed in Adirondack green.

Huggins’s black Dodge Ram was parked out front among several other pickups and SUVs. Clare pulled in beside them, a midget in the Land of the Four Wheel Drive.

The clammy chill of the predawn air seized her as soon as she got out of the car. She ducked back in to get her parka and gloves from the passenger seat and nearly cracked her head when someone called, “Reverend Fergusson?” from the camp house’s shadowy front porch.

“Yeah, it’s me,” she said.

“Glad you could make it.” He stepped off the porch into the gray light, a compactly built man in a blaze-orange jacket. “Don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Duane.” He shook her hand.

“Sure,” she said. “You’re one of Russ’s-one of Chief Van Alstyne’s part-time officers, aren’t you?”

His teeth gleamed in the half-light. “Part-time police, part-time rescue, part-time EMT, full-time pain in the neck, my wife tells me. You got something orange or reflective in there?”

She pulled her Day-Glo green running vest out of the backseat. “I thought this would do.”

“Good enough. We don’t want you getting shot up by somebody mistaking you for a buck.”

She shrugged the vest over her parka while following Duane back to the house. “Is that a real problem?”