A body frozen beneath Lake Champlain. Three suspects. One impossible crime. This Vermont mystery story channels Agatha Christie‘s golden age detective fiction with modern sophistication—fair-play clues, psychological depth, and a solution that transforms everything you thought you knew.

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PROLOGUE

There’s a particular kind of solitude that comes with being the smartest person in a marriage—not the loudest, not the most celebrated, just the one who quietly knows which levers to pull. Catherine Morrison had spent twenty-six years as the structural engineer of someone else’s cathedral, calculating load-bearing walls while Marcus received visiting bishops. Vermont suited her for this reason: it was a place where you could live inside your own competence, where the mountains didn’t care whose name was on the patents.

She took her coffee black, kept the farmhouse accounts in a leather ledger that predated spreadsheets, and had stopped correcting people who called her “Mrs. Webb” around the time she realized correction was a form of hope. The offshore accounts she managed with the same quiet precision she applied to everything—passwords memorized, never written, changed monthly according to prime number sequences Marcus wouldn’t have recognized as hers even if he’d stumbled across them.

Breakfast was oatmeal. Dinner was at seven. The lake cottage stayed at sixty-two degrees to prevent pipe damage. These were the rhythms of a life built on the assumption that intelligence, properly applied, could keep chaos at a permanent distance.

What she hadn’t accounted for was that Marcus, for all his public brilliance and private obliviousness, occasionally looked at spreadsheets the way she looked at sunsets—not for utility, but for the pure pleasure of pattern recognition.

The Three-Seven-Four Problem

The telephone call came to Detective Sarah Vance at 6:47 on a Tuesday morning in March, dragging her from dreams of somewhere warmer than Vermont. A body had been found in Lake Champlain, frozen beneath the ice. When she arrived at the scene twenty minutes later, stamping her boots against the cold, she understood why the state police had called her specifically.

The victim was Marcus Webb.

Sarah had met him exactly once, three months ago, when he’d appeared at the Burlington Police Department asking to speak with someone about what he called “a delicate matter of corporate fraud.” She’d listened for forty minutes while he explained his suspicions about his former company, made careful notes, and told him she’d look into it. She hadn’t. Financial crimes were federal jurisdiction, and she’d had three active homicide cases. Now Marcus Webb was dead, and delicate had become urgent.

He lay six feet beneath the surface of the frozen lake, perfectly preserved in the ice like an insect in amber. His eyes were open. His right hand was pressed against the underside of the ice, palm outward, and on that palm someone had written three numbers in what would later prove to be his own blood: 3-7-4.

“The ice is eight inches thick everywhere except here,” said Tom Brewster, the state forensic investigator, gesturing at the body. “Someone cut a hole with an auger, he went in, and it refroze. Time of death between eight and eleven last night. But here’s what interests me, Detective.”

He handed her a clear evidence bag. Inside was a small brass key, the kind that might open a safe deposit box or a locked drawer. They’d found it in Webb’s coat pocket.

“And here’s what troubles me,” Brewster continued. “No footprints lead to or from this spot except the fisherman’s who found him and ours. The snow stopped at three AM, and the wind scoured the ice clean. So how did the killer get him out here?”

Sarah crouched and studied the ice. The question was excellent. The nearest shore access was three hundred yards away across a flat expanse where tracks would have been impossible to hide. Yet the body was here, and someone had put it here.

She photographed the numbers on Webb’s palm. Three-seven-four. A clue left by a dying man, deliberate and specific.

“Who’ve we notified?” she asked.

“The wife, Catherine Webb. She’s at the house waiting for you.”

Sarah stood and turned in a slow circle, studying the landscape. Lake Champlain stretched gray and frozen to the New York shore. Behind her, the Vermont mountains rose like the spine of some sleeping creature. And somewhere in this cold, beautiful place, someone had committed murder and walked away without leaving a trace.

The game, as another detective might have said, was afoot.

Catherine Webb was fifty-one years old, composed, and either innocent or an exceptional actress. Sarah had learned long ago that the two could be difficult to distinguish. She sat in the kitchen of the restored farmhouse that had been her home for three years, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea that had long since gone cold.

“Marcus went out at seven-thirty,” she said. Her voice was steady. “He said he needed to retrieve something from the lake cottage. We have a small place on the shore where he kept an office. He used it when he needed to work without interruption.”

“In a blizzard?” Sarah asked.

“Marcus grew up in Maine, Detective. Weather was something that happened around him, not to him. Besides, the cottage is only a mile from here, and he had the Land Rover. I didn’t worry.”

“When did you realize something was wrong?”

“When he hadn’t returned by midnight. I called his mobile repeatedly. No answer. At twelve-thirty I called the police, but they said I needed to wait twenty-four hours for a missing person report. When I woke this morning and he still wasn’t home, I called again. Then your colleague arrived to tell me they’d found him.”

Sarah made notes, watching Catherine’s face. The woman’s grief seemed genuine, but three decades of police work had taught her that genuine grief and genuine innocence were not the same thing.

“The numbers on his hand,” Sarah said. “Three-seven-four. Does that mean anything to you?”

Catherine’s expression didn’t change, which was itself interesting. Most people showed surprise at such a question, curiosity about what numbers she meant. Catherine simply said, “No. Should it?”

“Your husband was leaving a message. His last act was to write those numbers. They meant something important.”

“Marcus dealt with numbers his entire career, Detective. Software, algorithms, data sets. Perhaps it was a password or a file reference. I couldn’t say.”

“Tell me about his former company.”

Now Catherine did react. Her composure flickered, just for a moment, like a candle flame in a draft. “Webb Analytics? He sold it three years ago when we moved here. He wanted to retire, to collect rare books and enjoy the countryside. Why do you ask?”

“Because three months ago your husband came to me with evidence that someone at the company that bought Webb Analytics was using his algorithms to commit financial fraud. He believed the illegal profits ran into hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Catherine set down her mug very carefully. “He never mentioned that to me.”

“Are you certain?”

“Detective Vance, I’ve been married to Marcus for twenty-six years. If he’d been investigating something that serious, I would have known. We had no secrets.”

Sarah underlined that last sentence in her notes. In her experience, people who claimed to have no secrets invariably had the most.

“I’ll need access to his office at the lake cottage,” she said.

“Of course. I’ll give you the key.”

“That won’t be necessary. We found one in his pocket.”

Catherine’s face went very still. “That’s odd. He kept that key on a ring with his others. He wouldn’t have been carrying it separately unless…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Unless what, Mrs. Webb?”

“Unless he was planning to show someone what was in the drawer it opens. The locked drawer in his desk at the cottage. That’s where he kept anything he considered sensitive.”

Sarah felt the familiar electricity of a case beginning to take shape. “Who might he have been planning to show it to?”

“I have no idea. As I said, Detective, Marcus told me nothing about any investigation.”

The lake cottage was a gem of modern architecture, all glass and cedar, perched on a rocky outcrop with a view that must have been spectacular in summer. Now it simply looked cold. Inside, the heating system hummed, keeping the space just warm enough to prevent the pipes from freezing.

Marcus Webb’s office occupied the entire upper floor. Three large monitors sat dark on a custom desk. The bookshelves held volumes on cryptography, blockchain technology, and financial forensics. And built into the desk was a locked drawer.

Sarah used the brass key. The drawer slid open smoothly.

Inside were three items: a leather notebook, a USB drive, and a loaded Beretta 92FS handgun.

The gun surprised her. Vermont had liberal gun laws, and plenty of people owned firearms, but Marcus Webb hadn’t struck her as the type. Unless he’d felt he needed protection. Unless he’d known he was in danger.

The notebook was more revealing. Sarah sat at the desk and read it cover to cover, and with each page the case transformed from a simple murder into something far more complex.

For six months, Marcus Webb had been conducting a meticulous investigation into Cascade Technologies, the Boston firm that had purchased Webb Analytics for forty-two million dollars three years ago. According to his notes, someone at Cascade had been using his proprietary algorithms—algorithms that could predict market movements with uncanny accuracy—to engage in illegal high-frequency trading. The profits were staggering: two hundred eighty-seven million dollars over thirty-one months.

Webb had identified exactly three people with the technical knowledge, access to the algorithms, and motive to commit the fraud. He’d listed them on a page marked SUSPECTS in careful block letters:

JAMES ROTHMAN, former CTO of Webb Analytics, now living in Shelburne, Vermont. Technical genius, amoral, would sell his grandmother for stock options. Access level: COMPLETE.

MIRANDA KEATS, former CFO of Webb Analytics, vacation home in Stowe, Vermont. Brilliant financial strategist, deep resentment over her percentage of the sale. Access level: COMPLETE.

THOMAS LELAND, VP of Acquisitions at Cascade Technologies, staying at the Basin Harbor Club in Vergennes, Vermont. Orchestrated the purchase, has Cascade board connections. Access level: ADMINISTRATIVE.

All three were in Vermont. All three had been in Vermont for at least a week. And according to the final entry in the notebook, dated the previous day, Marcus Webb had invited all three to meet him at the lake cottage at eight PM last night.

Sarah read that entry three times, her pulse quickening. Marcus Webb had gathered his suspects in one place, presumably to confront them with his evidence. It was either brilliantly courageous or spectacularly foolish. Based on the current location of Marcus Webb’s body, she suspected it was the latter.

But here was the puzzle: if all three suspects had been at the cottage last night, how had they gotten Webb’s body three hundred yards onto the lake without leaving tracks? And which of them had done it?

She photographed every page of the notebook, bagged the USB drive, and left the gun where it was after confirming it hadn’t been fired recently. Then she went downstairs and made three phone calls.

Within the hour, James Rothman, Miranda Keats, and Thomas Leland would each receive a visit from Vermont State Police detectives, asking them to come to the Burlington Police Department for questioning regarding the death of Marcus Webb.

Sarah suspected at least one of them would refuse. Guilty people often did, at first. But they all came eventually. They always did.

James Rothman arrived first, driven by a state trooper from his Shelburne home. He was forty-three years old, rail-thin, with the permanent squint of someone who’d spent too many years staring at screens. He wore an expensive parka over what appeared to be pajamas.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he said, settling into the interview room chair with the nervous energy of a bird on a wire. “This is terrible. Marcus was brilliant. Difficult, but brilliant. We built something amazing together, and now he’s gone, and it’s just terrible.”

Sarah let him talk. Nervous people often said more than they intended.

“When did you last see Marcus Webb?” she asked when Rothman finally ran out of adjectives for terrible.

“Last night. He called me yesterday afternoon, asked me to come to his lake cottage at eight PM. Said he had something important to show me. I assumed it was about his book collection—he’d been trying to interest me in rare programming manuals for months. So I went.”

“In a blizzard?”

“Marcus said it was urgent. And honestly, Detective, I don’t have much else going on. I sold my share of the company, I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, and I spend most of my time alone writing code that no one will ever use. When your only friend calls and says he needs you, you go.”

Sarah made a note. Rothman’s alibi was that he’d been at the scene of the crime. Either he was innocent and honest, or guilty and clever. Time would tell which.

“What happened when you arrived?”

“The cottage was lit up, Marcus was there, and so were two other people: Miranda Keats and Tom Leland. I hadn’t seen either of them in years. It was like a reunion, except Marcus was furious. He had this notebook, and he kept waving it at us, accusing us of stealing his algorithms and using them to commit fraud. It was insane.”

“Was it true?”

Rothman blinked. “I have no idea. I haven’t thought about those algorithms in three years. I write experimental code now, machine learning stuff that probably doesn’t work. I certainly haven’t been manipulating financial markets.”

“What time did you leave the cottage?”

“Around nine-thirty, maybe nine-forty-five. Marcus was still ranting, Miranda looked like she wanted to kill him, and Tom just kept saying it was all a misunderstanding. I’d had enough, so I left. Drove home, went to bed, woke up to state police at my door telling me Marcus was dead.”

“Did you see anyone else leave?”

“No. I left first.”

Sarah leaned forward. “Mr. Rothman, Marcus Webb’s body was found on the lake, three hundred yards from shore, with no tracks leading to or from it. How do you think it got there?”

Rothman’s face went pale. “I have no idea. When I left, Marcus was alive in the cottage. I swear to God, Detective, I had nothing to do with his death.”

“Three-seven-four. Does that number mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

“Marcus wrote it on his palm while he was dying.”

Rothman thought for a moment, his eyes unfocused in the way of someone accessing deep memory. Then he shook his head. “Nothing comes to mind. Not a file number, not a password, not a date. Just a number.”

Sarah let him go, with instructions not to leave the state. As he departed, Miranda Keats arrived.

Miranda Keats was fifty years old, expensively dressed, with the kind of careful grooming that spoke of discipline and control. She settled into the interview room chair as if it were a throne, crossed her legs, and said, “I want my lawyer present.”

“You’re not under arrest, Ms. Keats. You’re here voluntarily to answer questions about Marcus Webb’s death.”

“Nevertheless, I want my lawyer.”

“That’s your right. But let me ask you one question before you exercise it: where were you last night between eight PM and midnight?”

Miranda studied Sarah for a long moment, calculating. Then she said, “At Marcus Webb’s lake cottage. He’d invited me, along with James Rothman and Thomas Leland. He accused us of financial crimes. It was absurd and insulting, and I told him so. Then I left around ten PM and drove back to my home in Stowe. I did not kill Marcus Webb, and I resent the implication.”

“What time did the others leave?”

“I have no idea. I left first.”

Sarah wrote that down, noting that both Rothman and Keats claimed to have left first. Someone was lying.

“Three-seven-four,” Sarah said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

For just a moment, Miranda’s composure slipped. It was subtle—a slight widening of the eyes, a barely perceptible intake of breath—but Sarah had been watching for it.

“Should it?” Miranda asked, her voice carefully neutral.

“It’s what Marcus wrote on his palm before he died.”

“Then I suppose it meant something to him. Now, Detective, I really must insist on speaking with my lawyer before we continue.”

Sarah terminated the interview and showed Miranda to a private room where she could make her call. As she left, Thomas Leland arrived.

Thomas Leland was sixty-two years old, silver-haired, impeccably dressed even at short notice, with the confident bearing of a man who’d spent decades in positions of authority. He sat in the interview room with the ease of someone who knew his rights and expected them to be respected.

“This is a tragedy,” he said before Sarah could speak. “Marcus Webb was a difficult man, but he created something genuinely valuable. His death is a loss to the technology community.”

“You were at his cottage last night,” Sarah said. It wasn’t a question.

“I was. He called me Monday and asked me to come to Vermont for a meeting. He said he had evidence of financial irregularities related to the Cascade acquisition of Webb Analytics. As the executive who led that acquisition, I felt obligated to hear him out. When I arrived at the cottage last night at eight PM, I found James Rothman and Miranda Keats already there.”

“What happened?”

“Marcus presented his theory that someone had been using his algorithms to commit market manipulation. He had a notebook full of accusations and circumstantial evidence. It was compelling in its detail but ultimately baseless. I spent an hour explaining why his conclusions were incorrect, but he refused to listen. He was convinced one of us was guilty.”

“Are you?”

Leland smiled, a thin expression that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m a corporate vice president, Detective, not a trader. I arrange deals, I manage acquisitions, I sit in board meetings. The algorithms Marcus created are far beyond my technical understanding, and I have no access to the systems that would be required to deploy them for trading purposes.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Around ten-fifteen. Miranda had already left, and James departed a few minutes after I did. Marcus was alive and very angry when I walked out. That was the last time I saw him.”

Another person claiming someone else left first. Sarah added it to the growing list of contradictions.

“Did you notice anything unusual? Anyone else in the area?”

“It was a blizzard, Detective. Visibility was perhaps twenty feet. I focused on getting to my car and driving back to the Basin Harbor Club without ending up in a ditch.”

“Three-seven-four. Does that number have any significance to you?”

Leland’s expression didn’t change. “None whatsoever. Is it important?”

“Marcus wrote it on his hand before he died.”

“How unfortunate that he chose to spend his final moments on something so cryptic. If he’d written a name instead, your job would be much simpler.”

Sarah studied him. Of the three suspects, Leland was the most controlled, the hardest to read. Rothman was nervous, Miranda was defensive, but Leland was simply calm. That could mean innocence or exceptional guilt.

“Don’t leave the state, Mr. Leland. We’ll likely have more questions.”

“I have business in Boston next week. Surely you don’t intend to prevent me from—”

“I intend to solve a murder, Mr. Leland. If that requires inconveniencing you, I’m prepared to live with the guilt.”

Sarah spent that evening in her office, surrounded by photographs of the crime scene, transcripts of the interviews, and copies of Marcus Webb’s notebook. Her partner, Luis Mendoza, had gone home hours ago, but she couldn’t leave. Somewhere in the evidence was the answer. She simply had to see it.

Three suspects, all at the cottage, all with motive and opportunity. All claimed to have left while Marcus was still alive. All denied being the last to leave. Someone was lying, but which one?

And then there was the central impossibility: how had the killer transported Marcus Webb’s body three hundred yards onto the lake without leaving tracks?

She called Tom Brewster, the forensic investigator.

“The ice,” she said when he answered. “You said it was eight inches thick everywhere except where the body was found. Could someone have cut multiple holes earlier, before the snow, and then used them to move across the ice underwater?”

“In theory, yes. In practice, you’d die of hypothermia in about ten minutes. And the holes would have refrozen.”

“What if they wore a wetsuit?”

Brewster was quiet for a moment. “That’s actually not bad, Detective. A good wetsuit, some scuba gear, you could swim under the ice from hole to hole. It would explain the lack of tracks.”

“Can you check the other ice fisherman holes in the area? See if any of them were enlarged recently?”

“I’ll have a team out there first thing tomorrow.”

Sarah hung up and returned to the photographs. Something was bothering her, something she’d seen but not registered. She spread the crime scene photos across her desk and studied them one by one.

There. In the photograph of Webb’s frozen hand, the one with the numbers on his palm. She’d focused on the numbers themselves—3-7-4—but now she noticed something else. The blood had been applied with Webb’s left index finger, based on the smear patterns. But Marcus Webb was right-handed. She’d seen him write during their meeting three months ago.

Which meant someone else had written the numbers. Someone had staged the clue.

But why? What did 3-7-4 actually mean?

She turned to her computer and ran a search for the number in Marcus Webb’s notebook. Nothing. She tried the USB drive they’d recovered from his desk drawer. The drive contained copies of financial records, trading logs, and algorithm specifications, but no reference to 3-7-4.

Then she remembered something Catherine Webb had said: Marcus told me nothing about any investigation.

But Catherine had known about the locked drawer. She’d known what key opened it. Which meant she’d seen inside it at some point, regardless of what she claimed.

Sarah called Catherine Webb’s number. It rang four times, then went to voicemail. She called the Shelburne Police and asked them to do a wellness check at the farmhouse.

Twenty minutes later, her phone rang.

“The house is empty, Detective,” the Shelburne officer reported. “Looks like she left in a hurry. Suitcase missing from the bedroom closet, drawers open, toiletries gone. Want us to put out a BOLO?”

“Yes. Catherine Webb, fifty-one, blonde, driving a—” Sarah flipped through her notes. “Driving a dark green Volvo XC90. Consider her a person of interest in a homicide investigation.”

She hung up and sat very still, thinking. Catherine Webb hadn’t been at the cottage last night. All three suspects agreed on that point. But Catherine had access to Marcus’s work, had the most to lose from his investigation if she was involved, and had just fled.

Sarah pulled out the photograph of Webb’s hand again and studied the numbers. Three-seven-four. What did a wife know about her husband that no one else did?

Then it hit her. She grabbed her phone and called the Chittenden County Records Office, knowing she’d get a recording at this hour but leaving a message anyway. Then she called a friend who worked in the office and apologized for bothering her at home.

“I need you to check something for me,” Sarah said. “Marcus and Catherine Webb, married for twenty-six years. I need to know Catherine’s maiden name.”

Five minutes later she had her answer: Catherine Morrison.

Morrison. M.

Sarah pulled up the notebook photographs and found the suspects page. The three names were listed by last name: ROTHMAN, KEATS, LELAND.

But what if there had been a fourth suspect? What if Marcus Webb had created a fourth page, documenting his wife’s involvement, and someone had removed it from the notebook?

She speed-dialed Mendoza. “I need you to get a warrant for Catherine Webb’s financial records. All accounts, including anything under her maiden name Morrison. I think she’s been the one running the trading scheme, and I think Marcus found out.”

“You think the wife killed him?”

“I think we’re about to find out.”

The forensic accounting team worked through the night. By seven AM they had their answer: Catherine Morrison Webb controlled four offshore accounts containing two hundred ninety-three million dollars, all generated through high-frequency trading using algorithms that matched Marcus Webb’s proprietary code.

She’d been the CFO of Webb Analytics before Miranda Keats, back in the company’s early days. She’d left when they married to avoid conflict of interest issues, but she’d retained complete knowledge of how the algorithms worked. When Cascade bought the company, she’d maintained administrative access through a backdoor she’d installed years earlier. She’d been the one committing fraud, and Marcus had finally figured it out.

The state police found Catherine’s Volvo at the Burlington airport long-term parking at nine AM. She’d booked a flight to Grand Cayman under her maiden name, departing at 6:30 that morning.

They arrested her as she stepped off the plane.

Catherine Webb sat across from Sarah in the interview room at the Burlington Police Department, her expensive lawyer beside her, and said nothing for the first twenty minutes. Then the lawyer leaned over, whispered in her ear, and she began to talk.

“Marcus called me Monday night,” she said. Her composure had crumbled, replaced by exhaustion. “He said he knew what I’d done. He’d found the offshore accounts, traced the trading patterns, connected them back to me. He said he was going to turn me in unless I stopped immediately and returned every penny.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I’d built that money. That I’d spent twenty years watching him get credit for work I’d helped create, watching him sell the company and keep the lion’s share while I got nothing. That I deserved this.”

“So you killed him.”

“I asked him to meet me at the lake cottage Tuesday night to discuss it. I told him I’d agree to his terms if he’d just give me time to close the accounts properly. He agreed.”

“But you didn’t go to discuss anything.”

Catherine shook her head. “I went to convince him to keep quiet. When that failed, I had to protect myself.”

“How did you get his body onto the lake?”

For the first time, something like pride crossed Catherine’s face. “Marcus loved ice fishing. We had all the equipment—the auger, the wetsuit he used for winter diving, the underwater lights. I’d cut three holes in the ice two days earlier when he was in Burlington. Tuesday night, I shot him with his own gun—he kept it in the cottage, he thought I didn’t know—and I put on the wetsuit and dragged his body under the ice from hole to hole until I was far enough from shore. Then I pulled him up through the final hole and left him there to freeze.”

“The numbers on his palm. Three-seven-four.”

“I wrote those. I knew you’d investigate, knew you’d find his notebook with the three suspects. I thought if you believed he’d left a clue pointing to one of them, you’d focus there instead of on me. Three-seven-four was my telephone extension at Webb Analytics twenty years ago. I thought if you figured it out, it would implicate me as one of his suspects, not as the killer.”

Sarah sat back. The case was solved, the killer confessed, but something still bothered her. “Why did you write anything at all? Without those numbers, we might never have connected you to the fraud.”

Catherine smiled, a terrible smile that held no warmth. “Because I’m arrogant, Detective. Because even while I was committing murder, part of me wanted you to know how clever I’d been. Because after twenty-six years of being invisible, of being Marcus Webb’s wife instead of Catherine Morrison, I wanted someone to recognize what I’d accomplished.”

“You accomplished murder.”

“I accomplished two hundred ninety-three million dollars. The murder was simply necessary to protect my work.”

The trial took six months. Catherine Morrison Webb was convicted of first-degree murder and seventeen counts of securities fraud. She received life imprisonment without parole. The offshore money was seized and distributed to the defrauded investors.

James Rothman, Miranda Keats, and Thomas Leland all testified at the trial, each confirming that they’d been at the cottage that night but had left before Catherine arrived. Marcus had called them there to accuse them of fraud he’d later realized his wife had committed. It had been his last act of investigation before confronting the real culprit.

Sarah Vance attended every day of the trial, watching as Catherine Morrison Webb sat motionless in the defendant’s chair, showing no emotion as witness after witness described her crimes. Only once did Sarah see her react. When the prosecutor displayed the photograph of Marcus Webb’s frozen hand, those numbers written in blood across his palm, Catherine had smiled.

Pride, Sarah thought. Pride and resentment and the fatal belief that being brilliant entitled you to anything you could take.

On the day of sentencing, as Catherine was led from the courtroom in handcuffs, she paused beside Sarah.

“You know what the real joke is, Detective?” she said. “Marcus would have forgiven me. If I’d just admitted what I’d done and asked for his help, he would have found a way to protect me. Twenty-six years of marriage, and I never understood that the one person who would have stood by me was the person I killed.”

Then she was gone, and Sarah was left standing in the empty courtroom, thinking about marriage and murder, about the secrets people kept and the prices they paid for keeping them.

Outside, spring was finally arriving in Vermont. The ice on Lake Champlain was breaking up, fracturing into pieces that would melt and vanish as if they’d never been there at all. But Sarah knew better. Nothing ever really disappeared. Everything left traces for those who knew how to look.

She walked out into the pale sunshine and went home, where her own small apartment waited, where no secrets lived, where she could finally sleep.

The case of Marcus Webb was closed.

The three-seven-four problem was solved.

EPILOGUE

They found the oatmeal still in the pot when they searched the farmhouse, congealed into something that looked like regret set to simmer. Sarah Vance thought about that sometimes during the trial—the breakfast Catherine Morrison Webb had made the morning she fled, eaten alone as she always had, bowl rinsed and placed in the drainer as if there’d be a tomorrow that required clean dishes.

The offshore accounts were dismantled by federal prosecutors who’d never heard of prime number sequences, who saw only theft where Catherine had seen compensation. The farmhouse sold for less than Marcus had paid for it, which seemed appropriate somehow. The lake cottage became a rental property. Someone else’s coffee now sits on that desk where the locked drawer used to be.

In her testimony, Catherine had said the thing about Marcus forgiving her, and Sarah believed it was true. That was the particular cruelty of intelligence misapplied—it could solve equations in milliseconds but somehow couldn’t calculate the simple variable of being asked. The wetsuit was evidence exhibit 14-B. The brass key went into a box with other solved mysteries.

Spring broke the ice into pieces that looked, from the Burlington station window, like a puzzle someone had given up on halfway through. Catherine Morrison Webb serves her life sentence in a facility that doesn’t allow ledgers, where competence has nowhere useful to go. She keeps the accounts anyway, Sarah heard, all in her head, adding and subtracting numbers that no longer mean anything to anyone but her.

— The Seasoned Sage