“It’s beginning to take on some form as to why this ridiculous and unspeakable thing had to happen to destroy lives,” he said, the vibrato of anger plain in his voice.

“Particularly in view of the fact (Race) could have easily hidden away, it’s pretty obvious he made a purposeful decision he was going to do something.”

It gave him some relief to learn Manor’s stolen pickup truck had been recovered by police, but he was amazed it had traveled all the way to Texas.

“It doesn’t seem possible,” he said. “It’s such a recognizable vehicle.”

Lavin politely declined to answer questions related to the investigation, including queries about the rifle that police had reported missing from the camp and that Race had with him when he was apprehended.

“I’m sure that my statement to the police is probably going to be used in the extradition hearing, and I may be a major witness,” he said.

Lavin attended both Manor’s wake and funeral.

“My eyes are still watering,” he said from his Burlington office. “It was awful.

“When I met (Manor’s widow) Heather at the wake, I completely broke down.”

Lavin last saw Manor about a week and a half before the murder, when he told the caretaker he planned a weekend there soon.

It was time to get the water system up and running, and though Lavin doesn’t mind installing it as much as shutting it down for the winter, he said Manor told him he’d tend to the task.

Lavin knows that, the night before, Manor went over the job details at his home on White Road in Mooers, collecting the tools he’d need for the work.

“That poor, poor man,” he said. “That poor, poor family.

“The senselessness of this whole thing is just incomprehensible.”

Churubusco Lodge is just a mile or so from the U.S./Quebec border, adjacent to a local natural wonder called the Gulf, a deep chasm in the midst of wilderness in both New York and Canada that Lavin said no car would be able to negotiate.