Chapter 10
The first real lead came less than twelve hours after the vigil. It didn't come from the board. It came from a phone call.
Callie was at her desk in the Sheriff's Office in Lewis when the tip line lit up just after noon.
A deputy transferred it to her. The caller was a woman named Marion Kelsey, seventy-three, lived on Hays Brook Road, half a mile south of Burt Halvorsen's property.
She had already been interviewed during the canvass and had nothing to offer then.
But she had been thinking about it since, the way people do when violence happens close to home, turning the names over in her mind, and one had surfaced.
"There was a man," she said. "Three years ago.
At a town meeting. He stood up and shouted at Dr. Halvorsen in front of everyone.
Said Burt was responsible for covering up how his brother really died.
Said the autopsy ignored evidence that the equipment had failed.
Said Burt helped make sure nobody answered for it. "
"Do you remember his name?"
"Aspen. Todd Aspen. He lives out past High Peaks somewhere. Works as a hunting guide, I think."
Callie thanked her, hung up, and pulled up the county records.
Todd Aspen. Forty-four. Former Army infantry, four years active duty, two years National Guard reserve.
Marksman qualification on his service record.
Honorable discharge. Came back to the Adirondacks and built a business as a hunting guide and seasonal outfitter, running trips into the backcountry for tourists who wanted to shoot deer without getting lost. He lived alone on a rural property off Bear Cub Lane outside High Peaks.
Twelve acres, mostly forested. No criminal record.
Three years ago, his younger brother Kyle had died in a hunting accident on state land near Keene.
Fell from a tree stand, hit his head on a rock, bled out before anyone found him.
Burt Halvorsen performed the autopsy and ruled the death accidental.
Todd Aspen believed the tree stand was defective, that the platform bolt had sheared, and that Burt's autopsy had failed to document injuries consistent with equipment failure.
Without that documentation, there was no case against the manufacturer, no accountability, no answers.
Todd raised the issue at two town meetings and filed a complaint with the county health department.
The complaint was reviewed and dismissed.
The ruling stood. In Todd's mind, Burt didn't kill Kyle.
But Burt helped make sure no one answered for it.
Callie stared at the screen.
She thought about what Noah had told her that morning.
The bruise on his chin. The torn collar.
He hadn't just chased a shadow. He'd been knocked to the ground by someone real.
And the man at the vigil had moved through those backyards and trees like he'd done it a thousand times.
A hunting guide who ran backcountry trips in the High Peaks Wilderness would know that terrain.
She picked up the phone and called McKenzie.
"I need you to run a name through the firearms registry," she said. "Todd Aspen. And pull everything we have on a hunting fatality from three years ago. Kyle Aspen."
"What are we looking at?"
"Someone who had a very public reason to hate Burt Halvorsen."
McKenzie was back in twenty minutes. He leaned against her desk and laid the printout flat.
"Four registered firearms. A shotgun, a .22 rimfire, and two .308s. One's a Remington 700, the other's a Tikka T3. Both are bolt action. Both are commonly used for long-range hunting."
Callie looked at the list. Two .308s. The same caliber that had killed Maggie Coleman and Burt Halvorsen.
"His service record?"
“Clean record. He was based out of Fort Drum. Marksman qualification, which in the Army means he can hit a man-sized target at three hundred meters. Not sniper-level, but well above average. He would have trained on the M16 and the M4, but the fundamentals transfer to any rifle."
"What about the hunting guide business?"
“No issues. Licensed and insured. Runs backcountry trips in the High Peaks Wilderness and the Pharaoh Lake area. Mostly fall and winter. Deer, bear, some turkey in the spring. He knows the terrain."
Callie picked up her jacket. “Checks all the boxes. Let's go talk to him."
She briefed Avery Rivera on the way out. The acting sheriff listened, nodded, and told them to keep it conversational unless Aspen gave them a reason to escalate. "Don't spook him into lawyering up before we get what we need."
The drive from Lewis to Bear Cub Lane took forty minutes on Route 73 through Keene and around the south end of the lake.
The road narrowed as they left the main highway, turning to gravel after the last mailbox.
The forest pressed close on both sides, spruce and hemlock and paper birch, the canopy dense enough to block most of the afternoon light.
The air through the open window was cooler than in town and smelled like damp earth and pine resin.
McKenzie drove. He hadn't said much since they left the office.
"You buying him?" McKenzie asked.
"I'm buying that the lead doesn't feel forced."
"And if he isn't?"
"Then we wasted half a day on the best lead we've got." McKenzie glanced at her. “Are you thinking it's the same guy from last night? The one who jumped Noah?"
“Maybe,” Callie said. "It's not a stretch."
“But it’s a lot of assumptions stacked on a phone tip."
"It's more than we had yesterday."
McKenzie was quiet for a moment. "You know what I keep thinking about? If he lawyers up, we're into paperwork, probable cause, and a judge. Best case, tomorrow. Maybe longer. If he talks, we get answers today."
"He's a former soldier. He'll either cooperate because he's clean, or he'll shut the door because he's not."
"In my experience, the guilty ones don't shut the door. They invite you in and lie to your face."
They passed a trailhead parking area where two cars sat empty, hikers already deep in the backcountry. A hawk circled above the tree line, riding a thermal. The mountains were close here, the valleys narrow, the sky reduced to a strip of gray between the ridges.
"What's your gut saying?" Callie asked.
McKenzie was quiet for a moment. "My gut says men like this don't usually get handed to you by a woman remembering a town meeting." He glanced at her. "But I've been wrong before."
The property appeared around a bend. A gravel drive leading to a single-story cabin set back from the road.
Dark wood siding. Green metal roof. A covered porch with two Adirondack chairs and a pair of muddy boots by the door.
Behind the cabin, a large outbuilding that looked like a workshop or storage shed.
A pickup truck was parked in the drive, a black Ford F-250 with a cap on the bed and a hunting outfitter decal on the rear window.
They parked behind the truck. Callie got out and scanned the property.
It was tidy. Functional. No junk in the yard, no trash, no clutter.
Firewood was stacked against the side of the cabin in rows that looked like they had been measured.
A game camera was mounted on a tree near the drive, its lens aimed at the approach.
The front door opened before they reached the porch.
Todd Aspen was lean and tall, maybe six-two, with short brown hair going gray at the temples and a face that looked like it had been outside in every season for forty years.
He wore a flannel shirt over a thermal, work pants, and boots.
His arms were crossed but not tight. He wasn't surprised to see them.
He had probably watched them on the game camera from inside.
He was about the right height. About the right build. There was nothing soft about him. Callie filed that away and kept her face neutral.
"Help you?" he said.
"Detective Thorne, Adirondack County Sheriff's Office. This is Detective McKenzie. Do you have a few minutes?"
Aspen studied them both. His eyes moved from Callie's badge to McKenzie's face to the unmarked Tahoe in his driveway. He didn't ask what it was about. He already knew.
"Come in," he said.
The cabin was one large room divided by function.
Kitchen to the left, living area to the right, a hallway leading to what Callie assumed were a bedroom and bathroom.
The space had the discipline of a barracks.
Everything in its place, surfaces clear, no decoration except a framed photograph on the wall of two men in hunting gear standing beside a large buck.
The younger one was smiling. The older one was Aspen.
Neither was posing. They were smiling at each other.
Was it Kyle, the dead brother?
A topographic map of the High Peaks Wilderness was pinned to the wall beside the kitchen, marked with colored pins. Red for hunting routes, Callie guessed. Blue for water sources. Green for campsites. This man lived by the terrain and knew it the way most people knew their neighborhood streets.
"Coffee?" Aspen asked.
"No, thank you."
He gestured to the table. They sat. He sat across from them with his hands flat on the wood, as if he had nothing to hide. His posture was straight but not rigid.
“Let me guess, this is about Burt Halvorsen," he said.
"It's about both murders," Callie said. "We're speaking with a number of people in the area."
"You're speaking with me because someone told you about the town meeting." He didn't say it with anger. He said it as a fact, the way he might note the weather or the time of day.
She didn't confirm or deny. "Tell us about your relationship with Dr. Halvorsen."
Aspen's jaw tightened. Not much. Just enough to notice. "My brother Kyle died three years ago. Fell from a tree stand on state land. Burt Halvorsen did the autopsy. He ruled it accidental. I disagreed."
"Why?"