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this is a crime scene. But this kid could have walked here, could’ve been driven here, could’ve been lowered from a helicopter for all we know. The scene can tell us that. I need to find what I can, before it vanishes under all this white stuff. As you keep pointing out.”
    “Understood,” he said quietly.
    “You don’t sound happy, Detective Swift.”
    “Happy? I’m happy. There’s a handful of homes within a half mile of here. My guess is that, no, he wasn’t flown in by chopper, but he came from one of those homes. But I have no ID. If I had an ID, I might be better prepared to give someone the worst news of their life. So in the next few minutes, see if there’s any ante-mortem data in all this shit that can tell me whose dead kid is lying there before I go knock on their door.”
    She stood looking at him, the snow falling between them; the lights sweeping through.
    Her voice was softer. “Gotcha,” she said. Then a pause. “I liked the line about the one-legged man.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Deputy Alan Cohen pointed down Route 9N at a small white house in the distance. “Looks like Mrs. Hamilton is already up,” he said.
    Swift turned and saw a woman standing on her porch, a tiny figure from this distance. One of his troopers had already headed over and was nearing her driveway, trudging through the powdery snow.
    “I’ll be back.” Swift started walking towards the house. It looked like there was no more postponing the inevitable.
    He’d planned on questioning the Hamiltons as soon as possible — they were really the only neighbors close enough to have seen anything — but waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them what they knew about a dead kid lying in the middle of the road? He didn’t think the kid had come from their house — he knew the Hamilton family and their kids and grandkids, and the dead body in the road didn’t fit the profile of anyone there. And there was little chance they could help identify the vehicle that had fled the scene, or its driver. An older couple, in their eighties, they had surely been sound asleep. Only now had all the lights and commotion disturbed one of them, half an hour after Lenny Duso had called Dispatch.
    The woman and the trooper both watched him approach. He tried on a smile and climbed up the two steps onto the porch. He kept his voice low, almost to a whisper.
    “Hello, Mrs. Hamilton.”
    “Is there someone out there?”
    Swift glanced at the trooper, a man with the uncommon name of Koby Bronze. Bronze was young, twenty-five years old. His open expression communicated to Swift that he hadn’t said much to the woman yet.
    “Yes,” Swift said, turning his gaze back to Mrs. Hamilton. “There’s a young man. Unfortunately, he’s passed away.”
    She put a hand to her mouth, and her eyes widened. “Oh no. Oh dear,” she said through her fingers. Swift got a look at her. She wore a long winter bathrobe, pale pink, and slippers on her feet.
    “It’s very cold out here, Mrs. Hamilton.”
    “Lorraine.”
    “Lorraine. We can come back later in the morning and talk to you. No need to alarm yourself with this. Everything is safe; we’re here now and we’re going to make sure we get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
    “I see...”
    He gave her another smile. “Did you hear anything that woke you up? Any voices out there, or maybe a car, something like that?”
    She still had her hand to her face. “I don’t sleep very well. My husband snores. I woke up and saw the lights coming through my window.” She took her hand away from her mouth and pointed with a knobby finger at the police lights. “Those.”
    “That’s fine. Thank you, Lorraine.” Swift glanced at Trooper Bronze, conveying with a look and a slight jerk of his head that the trooper should help the woman back inside and calm her down. He started to turn and leave the porch.
    “It’s a young man?”
    He paused, and faced her again. “Yes, ma’am. About thirteen