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“She was coming to meet you?” I say.
“Apparently.”
“You… weren’t expecting her?”
He leans back, presses his palms to his eyes, and exhales. “No, I… I hadn’t told her where I was.”
I don’t comment. I just wait for more. It takes him a moment to give it.
“When I’m checking out a potential claim, I can’t let anyone know where I am.”
“Even your wife.” I say it as a statement. A question will sound accusatory, even if my mind boggles at the thought of Dalton disappearing into the forest, alone, for weeks, and not even telling me where he is.
“I know how it sounds, and I wish I could say it was for her own safety or that she didn’t want to know, but…” He swallows. “She was definitely not happy about it.”
I nod, again letting him proceed at his own pace.
“We’ve only been married a few years. Three.” A pained smile. “Three years, two months, five days. Second marriage for both of us. She knew I do this. I’m a professor, and I come up here for most of my summer term. My first wife would joinme. Denise… It wasn’t her thing. I thought Denise was fine with the arrangement, but I realized it’s one of those things where you’re in love and you tell yourself something isn’t a problem when it really is.”
He smooths another lock of his wife’s hair back. “She told herself it didn’t matter and I told myself she didn’t mind, and we were both lying. This year, I think she started to realize that I wasn’t telling her where I went because I didn’t trust her.”
“Started torealizeit. Meaning youdidn’ttrust her.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” he says quickly. “She just didn’t understand the need for secrecy, and we have friends who mine, and I just… I decided it was better if she didn’t know. After all, what did it matter? It’s not like she can hop on a train and come visit.”
“So you were out of contact while you were here?”
“I fly down every third weekend.”
“No satellite phone?”
He shrugs. “It’s expensive, and it’s a security risk. I did promise to look into one of those satellite text things for next year, but it’s still a GPS signal, right? That’s not safe. I know it sounds paranoid, but I’ve heard stories—so many stories.”
“When you fly down, someone picks you up? Someone you trust with the location?”
“It’s a friend, but he picks me up a day’s walk from here. Like I said, I’m paranoid.”
“Yet Denise managed to find you. She had three sets of possible coordinates, and one led here. If there is a chance someone else was involved in your wife’s death, then I need to know how she got here. Who could have brought her. Who could have told her where to find you.”
“No one except me has that information.”
“Someone did.”
He shakes his head. “She got it from me. From my research notes. That’s the only possibility.”
“Your research notes.”
He sits back, his gaze still on his wife. “Every year, I work in a new area. When I’m out here, I’m mining but also scouting for those potential new sites. I usually have two or three in mind, within a general area. I start at one, and if I don’t get anything, I move to the next.”
The list of three sets of coordinates. “This was one of your potential sites.”
He nods. “Last year, I scouted over here. I have a scientific model based on a number of factors that predicts a potential site. It’s my area of academic expertise. I use that to find a general area and then I study it in person. This year, I had a list of three potential sites.”
“She found that list.”
He throws up his hands. “Somehow. It’s not as if I left it lying around. It’s all on my computer. A dedicated laptop that is never connected to the internet. The laptop has a password, of course, but there’s additional security on the files, though it’s not exactly state-secret level.”
“Just enough to keep someone from casual snooping.”
