This one looked like every other mud room I’d ever been in—lined with hooks and benches—except for the incongruous presence of a large, new-looking freezer, hip high and four feet long, shoved up against one wall. The thing was so large, it made the mud room unusable for its intended purpose. I stopped, staring at the gleaming appliance. “You don’t think…,” Alan whispered in horror. I did not want to look in that freezer. Yet that’s what I did, gritting my teeth and lifting the top. The missing snowmobile canvas was in there, white condensation frozen in fractal patterns across its black surface. I moved the canvas. A man, perhaps seventy years old, his eyes open, his face white with frost, was folded into the tight space, his mouth frozen open, as if he died screaming. I’d found the mayor of Shantytown. “He knew Rogan was the person buying Nina Otis drinks,” Alan murmured in shock. “And this is how he shut the guy up.” I plunged into the dark house, feeling for light switches.
