Notes
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we understood the gravity of our situation. He'd been missing for ten days before they found him, you know. It was one of the biggest manhunts in Vermont history- state troopers, the FBI, even an Army helicopter; the College closed, the dye factory in Hampden shut down, people from New Hampshire, upstate New York, as far away as Boston.
It is difficult to believe that Henry's modest plan could have worked so well despite these unforeseen events. We hadn't intended to hide the body where it couldn't be found but had simply left it where it fell, in hopes that some luckless passer-by would stumble over it before anyone noticed he was missing.
This was a tale that told itself simply and well; a hiking accident, no more, no less, and it might have been left at that, with quiet tears and a small funeral, were it not for the snow that fell that night, it covered him without a trace and after ten days when the thaw came the state troopers, and the FBI, and the searchers from the town, all saw that they had been walking back and forth over his body until the snow above it was packed down like ice.
It is difficult to believe that such an uproar could have taken place over an act for which I was partially responsible.