Free A Cold Treachery by Charles Todd

story, all the while looking straight at us. I'm a shopkeeper, not a policeman, and uncomfortable risking my livelihood pushing those who frequent my shop too hard. Still—I'd say they were telling the truth.” He glanced at Miss Fraser and back again. “Surely what was done leaves scars? You'd have to read
something
in a man's eyes, if he was guilty of such a crime! And what woman would want to lie for him, knowing he'd slaughtered the children as well?”
    Which was, Rutledge thought, a perceptive comment and very much what a policeman would be looking for, asking questions of potential suspects. The eyes were sometimes unable to mask emotions that the muscles of the face could conceal with greater ease.
    You'd have to read something in a man's eyes, if he was guilty of such a crime!
    But not all killers had a conscience. . . . He had learned that, too, in Cornwall.
     
    H enderson stayed only for a cup of tea and then was off again, to be followed within the next hour by three more messengers from the search parties. Each, hovering over the map, filled in another area of countryside, giving the details of what they had seen and where they had searched and how they'd found the isolated inhabitants in their path. Rutledge noted each man's information in pencil.
    One of them said wearily, “It's not that we aren't doing our best. It's just that there's too much ground to cover, and no certainty whether the boy was there before us. Or will come there after we've passed the place by. We keep an eye to the skyline as we go, and to the slopes. We find ourselves wondering if the murderer is watching
us
from behind a boulder or in a fold of the land. Even at night, when we know he must be out there somewhere, maybe wanting young Josh as much as we do, and hoping we'll lead him to the lad, we feel uneasy. Nobody falls behind in the search party. Even the stragglers keep up.”
    “Anyone missing?” Rutledge always asked. “Unaccounted for?”
    But the answer was always the same: “Not that we can discover. So far.”
    Another man reporting in said, “People are locking their doors for the first time in years, barring them as well. Out of fear. You can be sure we make noise, coming into a yard—knowing we're being watched. No one wants a shotgun going off in his face!”
    Hamish said, “They ken the terrain. They ken the name of every male in the district. If he's no' a stranger, then the killer has to be one of the searchers, if no one is missing!”
    Rutledge followed the various parties along the tracks, jotting names beside each square that marked a farm, sketching in the sheep folds and ruins mentioned in the reports, noting the contours and shape of the valley. Information, Hamish reminded him, that was useless to a man in a kitchen by the warmth of a stove.
    It was a challenge, and Rutledge resisted it.
    Elizabeth Fraser put it best, when the men had gone again. “You aren't in London. You can't bring London experience to bear up here.”
    “I know.” But Hamish, stirred by Rutledge's own tension, was goading him.
    There's a child somewhere in the cold. . . .
     
    S ome time later he came to a barrier, and his numbed mind tried to identify what his hands and his feet could feel: hard, icy stones blocking his path. Beyond them he could see the snow moving, like an ocean of heavy flakes.
    But it wasn't the sea, it couldn't be. A walled pen, then, for the sheep who wintered on the fells. He could smell them now, the heavy odor of wet wool. The bellwether often took the flock to shelter when weather came down. Or the owner and his dog would drive them here, where, huddled together, their own warmth would see them through. It was easier to find and care for them when they weren't scattered about the hillsides, nearly invisible humps in the snow.
    With a last spurt of effort he clambered up and over the rough stone wall and slipped in among them. Snow-covered himself, he could crouch here and be safe for a little while,