Let the Devil Sleep

Chapter 27

Gurney stayed up that night until Kim and Kyle arrived from Syracuse-Kyle on his BSA and Kim in her Miata.

After they’d reviewed everything they’d discussed on the phone, Gurney had two more questions. The first was for Kyle, and he got only half of it out before it was answered. “When you took off the covers of the smoke alarms-”

“I took them off very quietly, very slowly. All the while Kim and I kept talking about something completely different-about one of her courses at school-so no one listening would realize what I was doing.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. I saw it in a spy movie.”

Gurney’s second question was for Kim. “Did you see anything in the apartment that wasn’t familiar-any kind of small appliance, clock radio, iPod, stuffed animal, anything at all you hadn’t seen before?”

“No, why?”

“Just wondering if Schiff ever got around to bringing in the promised video-surveillance equipment. In situations where the apartment renter is aware of the plan, it’s easier to bring in a video transmitter that’s prewired inside its cover object rather than concealing it in a ceiling fixture or something else on site.”

“There wasn’t anything like that.”

The next morning at the breakfast table, Gurney noticed that Madeleine had skipped her usual bowl of oatmeal and had hardly touched her coffee. Her gaze out through the glass doors seemed focused on dark thoughts rather than on the sunny landscape.

“You thinking about the fire?”

It took her so long to answer that he began to think she hadn’t heard him. “Yes, I suppose you could say I’m thinking about the fire. When I woke up this morning, you know what came into my mind, for maybe three seconds? I had the idea of enjoying this lovely morning by taking a ride on my bicycle along the back road by the river. But then, of course, I realized I don’t have a bicycle. That charred, twisted thing on the barn floor isn’t really a bicycle anymore, is it?”

Gurney didn’t know what to say.

She sat silently for a while, her eyes narrowed in anger. Then she said, more to her coffee cup than to him, “This person who’s been bugging Kim’s apartment-how much do you think he’s learned about us?”

“Us?”

“You, then. How much do you think he’s found out about you?”

Gurney took a deep breath. “Good question.” It was, in fact, a question that had been gnawing at him since his phone conversation with Kyle the previous evening. “Presumably the bugs are transmitting to a voice-activated recording device-giving him access to the conversations I had with Kim on my visits there, plus her side of all her cell-phone conversations.”

“Conversations she had with you, with her mother, with Rudy Getz…”

“Yes.”

Madeleine’s eyes narrowed. “So he knows a lot.”

“He knows a lot.”

“Should we be afraid?”

“We need to be vigilant. And I need to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Ah. I see. I keep my eyes open for a potential maniac while you play with the puzzle pieces? Is that the plan?”

“Am I interrupting something?” Kim was standing at the kitchen door.

Madeleine looked like she was about to say, Yes, you are definitely interrupting something.

Instead Gurney asked, “You want some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I… I just wanted to remind you… we need to leave in about an hour for our first appointment. It’s with Eric Stone in Barkham Dell. He still lives in his mother’s house. You’ll love meeting this one. Eric is… unique.”

Before they left, Gurney made his planned call to Detective James Schiff at Syracuse PD to ask about the surveillance equipment for Kim’s apartment. Schiff was out on a call, and Gurney was transferred to Schiff’s partner, Elwood Gates, who seemed familiar with the situation. Gates was, however, neither very interested in the problem nor apologetic for the delay in installing the promised cameras.

“If Schiff said we’ll get to it, then we’ll get to it.”

“Any idea when?”

“Maybe when we’re done with a few higher-priority things, okay?”

“Higher priority than a dangerous nutcase making repeated intrusions into a young woman’s apartment, with the intention of inflicting serious bodily harm?”

“You talking about the broken step?”

“I’m talking about a booby-trapped staircase over a concrete floor, designed to create a potentially fatal injury.”

“Well, Mr. Gurney, let me tell you something. Right now there’s nothing ‘potential’ about the fatal injuries we’re dealing with. I guess you didn’t hear about the little crack-dealer turf war that erupted here yesterday? No, I didn’t think so. But your giant trespassing problem is right up there at the top of our list-just as soon as we shut down about a dozen crazy scumbags with AK-47s. Okay? We’ll be sure to keep you informed. You have a nice day.”

Kim was watching Gurney’s face as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. “What did he say?”

“He said maybe the day after tomorrow.”

At Gurney’s insistence they took separate cars on their trip to Barkham Dell. In the event something unexpected arose, he wanted the flexibility to separate himself from Kim’s series of interviews.

She drove faster than he did, and they were out of sight of each other before they reached the interstate. It was a beautiful day-the only one so far that captured the concept of the season. The sky was a piercing blue. The widely scattered little clouds were radiant puffy things. Patches of tiny snowdrop flowers were blossoming in shaded areas along the highway. When the time-to-destination on his GPS told him he was halfway there, Gurney stopped for gas. After he filled his tank, he went into the station’s convenience store for a container of coffee. Minutes later, sitting in the car with the windows open, sipping his French roast, he decided to call Jack Hardwick and ask for two more favors. He was concerned that the quid pro quo, whenever it might come, would be substantial. But he wanted information, and this was the most efficient way to get it. He placed the call, half hoping for voice mail. Instead he got the sarcastic sandpaper voice of the man himself.

“Davey boy! Bloodhound on the trail of evil incarnate! What the fuck do you want from me now?”

“Actually, quite a lot.”

“You don’t say! What a goddamn shock!”

“I’ll be seriously indebted to you.”

“You already are, ace.”

“True.”

“Just so long as you know it. Speak.”

“First, I’d like to know everything there is to know about a Syracuse University student by the name of Robert Meese, aka Robert Montague. Second, I’d like to know everything there is to know about Emilio Corazon, father of Kim Corazon, former husband of New York City journalist Connie Clarke. Emilio dropped out of sight and out of communication ten years ago this week. Family efforts to locate him have failed.”

“When you say ‘everything there is to know,’ what exactly-”

“What I mean is, everything that can be dug up within the next two or three days.”

“That’s it?”

“You’ll do it?”

“Just don’t forget all that indebtedness.”

“I won’t. Jack, I really appreciate-” Gurney began. Then he noticed that the connection had already been broken.

After he resumed his journey, he followed the instructions of his GPS off the interstate and onto a series of increasingly rural byways until he came to the turn for Foxledge Lane. There, parked at the side of the road, he saw the red Miata. Kim waved, pulled out onto the pavement in front of him, and drove slowly up the lane.

They didn’t have far to go. The first driveway, flanked by impressive drystone walls, belonged to something called the Whittingham Hunt Club. The second driveway, a few hundred yards farther on, bore no identification or visible address, but Kim turned in and Gurney followed her.

Eric Stone’s home was at the end of a quarter-mile driveway. It was a very large New England Colonial. Everywhere bits of paint were beginning to peel. The gutters needed tightening and straightening. There were frost-heave cracks in the driveway. Debris from the recent winter littered the lawn areas and flower beds.

There was an uneven brick walk connecting the driveway with the three steps leading up to the front door. The walk and the steps were covered with rotting leaves and twigs. When Gurney and Kim were halfway along this path, the door opened and a man emerged onto the broad top step. It occurred to Gurney that the man was shaped like an egg. His narrow-shouldered, large-bellied physique was wrapped from neck to knees in a spotless white apron.

“Do be careful. Please. It’s a veritable jungle out there.” His theatrical delivery was accompanied by a toothy smile and anxious eyes that fastened on Gurney. His short hair, prematurely gray, was neatly parted. His small pink face was freshly shaved.

“Gingersnaps!” he announced cheerily as he moved aside to let them into the big house.

As Gurney stepped past him, the scent of talcum powder gave way to the distinctive, spicy-sweet aroma of the only kind of cookie he thoroughly disliked.

“Just follow the hall all the way to the back. The kitchen is the coziest spot in the house.”

In addition to the staircase to the second floor, the wide traditional center hall included several doors, but the patina of dust on the knobs suggested that they were rarely opened.

The kitchen at the back of the house was cozy only in the sense of being warm and full of oven aromas. It was huge and high-ceilinged and contained all the professional-commercial appliances that a decade or two earlier had become de rigueur in the homes of the well-to-do. The stove’s ten-foot-tall exhaust hood brought to Gurney’s mind a sacrificial altar in an Indiana Jones movie.

“My mother was a devotee of quality,” said the egg-shaped man. Then he added, with a startling echo of Gurney’s passing thought, “She was an acolyte at the altar of perfection.”

“How long have you lived here?” asked Kim.

Instead of answering the question, he turned to Gurney. “I definitely know who you are, and I suspect you know who I am, but I still think it would be appropriate to be introduced.”

“Oh, stupid me!” said Kim. “I’m so sorry. Dave Gurney, Eric Stone.”

“Delighted,” said Stone, extending his hand with an ingratiating smile. His large, even teeth were nearly as white as his apron. “Your very impressive reputation precedes you.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Gurney. Stone’s hand was warm, soft, and unpleasantly moist.

“I told Eric about the article my mother wrote about you,” said Kim.

After an awkward silence, Stone pointed to a fashionably distressed pine table at the end of the kitchen farthest from the grand stove. “Shall we?”

When Gurney and Kim had taken their seats, Stone asked if either one wanted anything to drink. “I have various coffees in various strengths, as well as teas in countless herbal varieties. I also have some peculiar pomegranate soda. Any takers?”

They both declined, and Stone, making an exaggerated show of disappointment, sat down in the third chair at the table. Kim took three small cameras and two mini-tripods out of her shoulder bag. She set up two of the cameras on the tripods, one facing Stone, one facing herself.

She then explained the production philosophy at length-how “the folks at RAM” were intent on ensuring that the look and feeling of the interview was as simple and low-tech as possible, keeping it within the same visual and audio framework that was familiar to all those viewers who were accustomed to recording family moments on their iPhones. The goal was to keep it real. Keep it simple. An unpredictable conversation, not a scripted scene. With room lighting, not stage lighting. Nonprofessional. Human beings being human. Et cetera.

Whether Stone had any reaction to this declaration of authenticity was unclear. His mind seemed to wander somewhere else, refocusing only when Kim wrapped up her comments by asking, “Do you have any questions?”

“Only one,” he said, turning to Gurney. “Do you think they’ll ever get him?”

“The Good Shepherd? I’d like to think so.”

Stone rolled his eyes. “In your profession I bet you give a lot of answers like that-answers that aren’t really answers at all.” His tone was more depressed than challenging.

Gurney shrugged. “I don’t know enough yet to tell you anything more.”

Kim made some final framing adjustments in the viewfinders of her tripod cameras and put them both in HD-movie mode. She did the same with the third camera, which she kept in her hand. Then she ran her fingers back through her hair, sat up straighter in her chair, smoothed a few wrinkles out of her blazer, smiled, and began speaking.

“Eric, I want to thank you again for your willingness to participate in The Orphans of Murder. Our goal is an honest, unrehearsed presentation of your thoughts and feelings. Nothing is off-limits, nothing is out of bounds. We’re in your home, not on a studio set. The story is yours, the emotions are yours. Begin wherever you wish.”

He took a long, shaky breath. “I’ll begin by answering the question you asked me when you walked into the kitchen a few minutes ago. You asked me how long I’ve lived here. The answer is twenty years. Half of those years in heaven, half in hell.” He paused. “The first ten years, I lived in a world of sunlight cast by a remarkable woman, the last ten years in shadowland.”

Kim let a long silence pass before responding in a soft, sad voice. “Sometimes it’s the depth of the pain that tells us how much we’ve lost.”

Stone nodded. “Mother was a rock. A rocket. A volcano. She was a force of nature. Let me repeat that-a force of nature. It’s a cliché, but a good one. Losing her was like having the law of gravity repealed. The law of gravity-repealed! Imagine that. A world without gravity. A world with nothing to hold it together.”

The man’s eyes were glistening with incipient tears.

Kim’s next words were a surprise. She asked Stone if she could have a cookie.

He burst out laughing-a giddy, hysterical outpouring that sent the tears down his cheeks. “Yes, yes, of course you can! My gingersnaps just came out of the oven, but there are also pecan chocolate chips, buttery-buttery shortbreads, and oatmeal raisin. All baked today.”

“I think oatmeal raisin,” she said.

“An excellent choice, madam.” He sounded like he was, through his tears, attempting to mimic a smarmy sommelier. He went to the far end of the kitchen and retrieved a plate heaped with large brown cookies from the top of the oven. Kim held up her third camera, keeping him in the frame all the while.

As he was about to lay the plate on the table, a thought seemed to stop him. He turned to Gurney. “Ten years,” he said, as if some new significance in the number had taken him by surprise. “Exactly ten years. A full decade.” The pitch of his voice rose dramatically. “Ten years, and I’m still a basket case. What do you make of that, Detective? Does my pathetic condition motivate you to find, arrest, and execute the evil fucker who murdered the most incredible woman in the world? Or am I so ridiculous you just want to laugh?”

Gurney tended to ice over at displays of emotion. Now was no exception. He answered with a matter-of-fact blandness. “I’ll do everything I can.”

Stone gave him an archly skeptical look but didn’t pursue the issue.

He offered them coffee again, and again they both declined.

After that, Kim spent some time eliciting descriptions of the man’s life before and after his mother’s murder. In Stone’s detailed narrative, life before was better in every way. Sharon Stone had been an increasingly successful player at the top end of the second-home real-estate market. And she lived her personal life at the top end in every way, sharing that luxury freely with her son. Shortly before the brutal intervention of the Good Shepherd, she’d agreed to cosign a $3 million financing agreement to set Eric up as owner of the premier inn and restaurant in the Finger Lakes wine country.

Without her supportive signature, however, the deal collapsed. Instead of enjoying the life of an elite restaurateur and hotelier, he was at thirty-nine living in a house whose estate grounds he couldn’t begin to maintain and trying to make a living baking cookies in his late mother’s dream kitchen for local gourmet shops and B &Bs.

After an hour or so, Kim finally closed the small notebook she’d been consulting and surprised Gurney by asking if he had any questions of his own.

“Maybe a couple, if Mr. Stone doesn’t mind.”

“Mr. Stone? Please, call me Eric.”

“All right, Eric. Do you know if your mother ever had any prior business or personal contact with any of the other victims?”

He winced. “Not that I know of.”

“Any enemies you knew of?”

“Mother did not suffer fools gladly.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she ruffled feathers, stepped on toes. Real estate, particularly at the level at which Mother operated, is a very competitive business, and she didn’t like to have her time wasted by idiots.”

“Do you remember why she bought a Mercedes?”

“Of course.” Stone grinned. “Classy. Stylish. Powerful. Agile. A major cut above the others. Just like Mother.”

“Over the past ten years, have you had any contact with anyone connected with the other victims?”

He winced again. “That word. I don’t like it.”

“What word?”

“ ‘Victim.’ I don’t think of her that way. It sounds so horribly passive, helpless, all the things that Mother wasn’t.”

“I’ll put it another way. Regarding any contact with the families-”

Stone interrupted. “The answer is yes, there was some contact at first-a kind of support group that came together after the shootings.”

“Were all the families involved?”

“Not really. The surgeon who lived in Williamstown had a son who joined us once or twice, then announced he had no interest in a grief group because he had no grief. He said he was glad his father was dead. He was quite awful. Totally hostile. Very hurtful.”

Gurney glanced at Kim.

“Jimi Brewster,” she said.

“Is that all?” asked Stone.

“Just two more quick ones. Did your mother ever mention anyone she was afraid of?”

“Never. She was the most fearless human being who ever walked the earth.”

“Was ‘Sharon Stone’ her real name?”

“Yes and no. Mostly yes. Her name was officially Mary Sharon Stone. After the huge success of Basic Instinct, she had a makeover-changed her hair from brown to blond, dropped the ‘Mary,’ and promoted the remarkable new persona. Mother was a promotional genius. She even got the idea of running photos of herself on billboards, sitting with her legs crossed in a short skirt, à la the famous scene in the film.”

Gurney indicated to Kim that he had no more questions.

Stone added with an unsettling smile, “Mother had legs to die for.”

An hour later Gurney pulled in next to Kim’s Miata in front of the bleak strip-mall office of an accounting firm: Bickers, Mellani, and Flemm. It was situated between a yoga studio and a travel agency on the outskirts of Middletown.

Kim was on her cell phone. Gurney sat back and mused on what he would do if his name were Flemm. Would he change it, or would he wear it as a badge of defiance? Was the refusal to change one’s name, when the name was as patently absurd as a donkey tattoo on one’s forehead, laudably honest or stupidly stubborn? At what point did pride become dysfunctional?

Christ, why am I occupying my brain with this nonsense?

A sharp little rap and Kim’s purposeful face at his side window brought him back to the moment. He got out of his car and followed her into the office.

The front door opened into an unimpressive waiting area with a few unmatched chairs against one wall. Worn copies of SmartMoney were fanned out on a small Danish Modern coffee table. A waist-high barrier separated this area from a smaller area that contained two bare desks in front of a wall with a single door, which was closed. Atop the barrier was an old-fashioned bell-a little silver dome that had a raised plunger on the top.

Kim tapped firmly on the plunger, producing a surprisingly loud ding. She repeated this half a minute later, with no response. As she was reaching for her phone, the door in the rear wall opened. The man in the doorway was thin, pale, tired-looking. He gazed at them without curiosity.

“Mr. Mellani?” said Kim.

“Yes.” His voice was dry and colorless.

“I’m Kim Corazon.”

“Yes.”

“We spoke on the phone? About my coming here to prepare for our interview?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well…” She looked around in mild confusion. “Where would you like to…?”

“Oh. Yes. You can come into my office.” He stepped back inside.

Gurney opened a swinging panel in the low barrier and held it for Kim. It was dusty, like the two unoccupied desks behind it. He followed her into the back office-a windowless room with a large mahogany table, four straight-backed chairs, and bookcases on three of the four walls. The bookcases were filled with fat volumes on accounting rules and tax laws. The pervasive dust had settled on the books as well. The air smelled stale.

The only illumination came from a desk lamp at the far end of the table. There was a fluorescent fixture on the ceiling, but it was turned off. As Kim surveyed the room for places to set up her cameras, she asked if it could be turned on.

Mellani shrugged and flipped the switch. After a series of hesitant flashes, the light stabilized, producing a low buzz. The fluorescent glow emphasized the paleness of his skin and the shadows below his eyes. There was something distinctly cadaverous about him.

As she had done in Stone’s kitchen, she went through the process of arranging the cameras. When she was finished, she and Gurney sat on one side of the mahogany table, Mellani on the other. At that point she gave, almost word for word, the same speech she’d given Stone about the production goals of informality, simplicity, naturalness-keeping the interview as close as possible to the kind of conversation two friends might have in their home, loose and candid.

Mellani didn’t reply.

She told him that he should feel free to say anything he wished.

He said nothing, just sat and stared at her.

She looked around the claustrophobic space, whose inhospitable drabness the ceiling light had only managed to enhance. “So,” she said awkwardly, seeming to realize that she would have to be the motivator of whatever conversation they were going to have, “this is your main office?”

Mellani seemed to consider this. “Only office.”

“And your partners? They… they’re here?”

“No. No partners.”

“I thought… the names… Bickers… and…?”

“That was the name of the firm. Formed as a partnership. I was the senior partner. Then we… we parted ways. The name of the firm was a legal thing… legally independent of who actually worked here. I never had the energy to change it.” He spoke slowly, as though struggling with the unwieldiness of his own words. “Like some divorced women keep their married names. I don’t know why I don’t change it. I should, right?” He didn’t sound as if he wanted an answer.

Kim’s smile became more strained. She shifted in her seat. “Quick question before we go any further. Shall I call you Paul, or would you prefer that I call you Mr. Mellani?”

After several seconds of dead silence, he answered almost inaudibly, “Paul’s okay.”

“Okay, Paul, we’ll get started. As we discussed on the phone, we’re just going to have a simple conversation about your life after the death of your father. Is that all right with you?”

Another pause, and then he said, “Sure.”

“Great. So. How long have you been an accountant?”

“Forever.”

“I mean, specifically, in years?”

“Years? Since college. I’m… forty-five now. Twenty-two when I graduated. So forty-five minus twenty-two equals twenty-three years as an accountant.” He closed his eyes.

“Paul?”

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

He opened one eye, then the other. “I agreed to do this, so I’ll do it, but I’d like to get it over with. I’ve been through all this in therapy. I can give you the answers. I just… don’t like listening to the questions.” He sighed. “I read your letter… We talked on the phone… I know what you want. You want before and after, right? Okay. I’ll give you before and after. I’ll give you the gist of the then and the now.” He uttered another small sigh.

Gurney had the momentary impression that they were miners trapped in an underground cave-in, their oxygen supply fading-a scrap of memory from a movie he saw as a child.

Kim frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

Mellani repeated, the words heavier the second time around, “I’ve been through all this in therapy.”

“Okay… and… therefore… you…?”

“Therefore I can give you the answers without your having to ask the questions. Better for everyone. Right?”

“Sounds great, Paul. Please, go right ahead.”

He pointed at one of her cameras. “Is that running?”

“Yes.”

Mellani shut his eyes again. By the time he began his narrative, whatever Kim was feeling about the situation was breaking out in tics at the corners of her mouth.

“It’s not like I was a happy person before the… event. I was never a happy person. But there was a time when I had hope. I think I had hope. Something like hope. A sense that the future could be brighter. But after the… event… that feeling was gone forever. The color in the picture got switched off, everything was gray. You understand that? No color. I once had the energy to build a professional practice, to grow something.” He articulated the word as though it were a strange concept. “Clients… partners… momentum. More, better, bigger. Until it happened.” He fell silent.

“It?” prompted Kim.

“The event.” He opened his eyes. “It was like being pushed over the edge of something. Not a cliff, just…” He raised his hand, miming the movement of a car reaching the apex of a hill, then tilting slightly downward. “Things started going south. Falling apart. Bit by bit. The engine wasn’t running anymore.”

“What was your family situation?” asked Kim.

“Situation? Apart from the fact that my father was dead and my mother was in an irreversible coma?”

“I’m sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was, were you married, did you have any other family?”

“I had a wife. Until she got tired of everything going downhill.”

“Any children?”

“No. That was a good thing. Or maybe not. All my father’s money went to his grandchildren-my sister’s children.” Mellani produced a smile, but there was bitterness in it. “You know why? This is funny. My sister was a very screwed-up person, very anxious. Both her kids are bipolar, ADHD, OCD, you name it. So my father… he decides that I’m fine, I’m the healthy one in the family, but they need all the help they can get.”

“Are you in contact with your sister?”

“My sister is dead.”

“I’m sorry, Paul.”

“Years ago. Five? Six? Cancer. Maybe dead isn’t so bad.”

“What makes you say that?”

Again the bitter smile, drifting into sadness. “See? Questions. Questions.” He stared down at the tabletop as though he were trying to discern the outlines of something in murky water. “The thing is, money meant a lot to my father. It was the most important thing. You understand?”

His sadness was reflected in Kim’s eyes. “Yes.”

“My therapist told me that my father’s obsession with money was the reason I became an accountant. After all, what do accountants count? They count money.”

“And when he left everything to your sister’s family…?”

Mellani raised his hand again. This time he mimed the slow descent of a car into a deep valley. “Therapy gives you all this insight, all this clarity, but that’s not always a good thing, is it.” It wasn’t a question.

• • •

Emerging from Paul Mellani’s dreary office half an hour later into the sunny parking lot gave Gurney the jarring feeling he got coming out of a dark movie theater into daylight-a shift from one world to another.

Kim took a deep breath. “Wow. That was…”

“Dismal? Desolate? Morose?”

“Just sad.” She looked shaken.

“Did you notice the dates on the magazines in the reception area?”

“No, why?”

“They were all from years ago, nothing current. And speaking of dates, you realize what time of year this is?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the last week of March. Less than three weeks to April fifteenth. These are the weeks every accountant should be crazy busy.”

“Oh, jeez, you’re right. Meaning he has no clients left. Or not very many. So what’s he doing in there?”

“Good question.”

The drive back to Walnut Crossing in their separate cars took nearly two hours. Toward the end the sun was low enough in the sky to produce a hazy glare on Gurney’s dirty windshield-reminding him for the third or fourth time that week that he was out of wiper fluid. What irritated him more than the absence of the fluid was his increasing dependence on notes. If he didn’t write something down…

The ring of his phone interrupted his brooding over the state of his mind. He was surprised to see Hardwick’s name on the screen.

“Yes, Jack?”

“The first one was easy. But don’t think that reduces your debt.”

Gurney thought back to the request he’d made that morning. “The first one being the history of Mr. Meese-Montague?”

“Actually, Mr. Montague-Meese, but more about that anon.”

“Anon?”

“Yeah, anon. It means ‘soon.’ One of William Shakespeare’s favorite words. Whenever he meant ‘soon,’ he said ‘anon.’ I’m expanding my vocabulary so I can speak with greater confidence to intellectual dicks like you.”

“That’s good, Jack. I’m proud of you.”

“Okay, this is a first take. Maybe we’ll have more later. The individual of whom we speak was born March twenty-eighth, 1989, at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.”

“Huh.”

“What’s the ‘huh’ about?”

“That means he’s about to turn twenty-one.”

“So fucking what?”

“Just an interesting fact. Proceed.”

“There is no father’s name indicated on the birth certificate. Little Robert was surrendered for adoption by his mother, whose name, incidentally, was Marie Montague.”

“So little Robert was actually a Montague before he was a Meese. Very interesting.”

“It gets more interesting. He was adopted almost immediately by a prominent Pittsburgh couple, Gordon and Celia Meese. Gordon, it so happens, was filthy rich. Heir to an Appalachian coal-mining fortune. Guess what comes next.”

“The excitement in your voice tells me it’s something horrible.”

“At the age of twelve, Robert was removed from the Meese home by Child Protective Services.”

“Were you able to find out why?”

“No. Believe me, that is one seriously sealed case file.”

“Why am I not surprised? What happened to Robert after that?”

“Ugly story. One foster home after another. No one willing to keep him for more than six months. Difficult young man. Has been prescribed various drugs for a generalized anxiety disorder, borderlinepersonality disorder, intermittent-explosive disorder-gotta love that one.”

“I guess I shouldn’t ask how you got access to-”

“Right. So don’t. Bottom line, it adds up to a very insecure kid with a shaky grip on reality and a major anger problem.”

“Then how did this paragon of stability-”

“End up at the university? Simple. Right in the center of that screwed-up mind there lurks a sky-high IQ. And a sky-high IQ, combined with a troubled background, combined with zero financial resources, is the magic formula for a full college scholarship. Since entering the university, Robert has excelled in drama and has earned fair to lousy marks in everything else. He is said to be a natural-born actor. Movie-star handsome, fantastic onstage, able to turn on the charm, but basically secretive. He recently changed his name back from Meese to Montague. For a few months, he cohabited, as you may know, with little Kimmy. Apparently that ended badly. Currently lives alone in a three-room rental in a subdivided Victorian house on a nice street in Syracuse. Sources of income for rent, car, and other nonuniversity expenses are unknown.”

“Any employment?”

“Nothing obvious. That’s the story for now. If more shit turns up, I’ll drop it on you.”

“I owe you.”

“You got that right.”

Gurney’s mind was swimming with so many free-floating facts that when Madeleine commented that evening over coffee on the spectacular sunset that had occurred an hour earlier, he had no recollection of having seen it. In its place was a mass of disquieting images, personalities, details.

The Humpty-Dumpty cookie baker, not wanting to think of his all-powerful mother as a “victim.” The mother who “ruffled feathers, stepped on toes.” Gurney wondered if the man was ever told about her earlobe on the sumac bush, the earlobe with the diamond stud in it.

Paul Mellani, a man whose rich father gave all his money, therefore all his love, to someone else. A man whose career had lost its meaning, whose life had turned gray, whose thoughts were grim and sour-and whose language, demeanor, and lifeless office were the equivalent of a suicide note.

Jesus… suppose…

Madeleine was watching him across the table. “What’s the matter?”

“I was just thinking about one of the people Kim and I visited today.”

“Go on.”

“I’m trying to go back over what he said. He sounded… pretty depressed.”

Madeleine’s gaze grew more intense. “What did he say?”

“That’s what I’m trying to remember. The thing that comes to mind was a comment he made. He’d just told us his sister was dead. Then he said, ‘Dead isn’t so bad.’ Something like that.”

“Nothing more direct? No expression of any intention to do anything?”

“No. Just… a heaviness, a… lack of… I don’t know.”

Madeleine looked anguished.

“The guy at your clinic, the patient who killed himself? Was he specific about…?”

“No, of course not, or he would have been taken to a psych ward. But he definitely had that… heaviness. A darkness, a hopelessness.”

Gurney sighed. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what we think someone may do. It only matters what people say they’re going to do.” He frowned. “But there’s something I’d like to find out. Just for my own peace of mind.” He got his cell phone from the sideboard and entered Hardwick’s number. The call went to voice mail.

“Jack, I want to increase my enormous indebtedness to you by asking for one more tiny favor. There’s an accountant down in Orange County by the name of Paul Mellani. Happens to be the son of Bruno Mellani, the first Good Shepherd victim. I’d like to know if he has any guns registered. I have a concern about him, and I’d like to know how much I should worry. Thanks.”

He sat back down at the table and absently put a third spoon of sugar in his coffee.

“The sweeter the better?” asked Madeleine with a small smile.

He shrugged, stirring the coffee slowly.

She cocked her head a little to one side and studied him in a way that had once made him uneasy but in recent years he’d come to welcome-not because he understood what she was thinking, or what conclusions her “study” produced, but because he saw it as an expression of affection. To ask her what was on her mind would be like demanding that she define their relationship. But the part of any relationship that made it precious was not something that could be defined on demand.

She raised her cup to her lips with two hands, sipped from it, and put it down gently. “So… do you want to tell me a bit more about what’s going on?”

For some reason the question took him by surprise. “You really want to know?”

“Of course.”

“There’s a lot.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. Remember, you asked for it.” He leaned back in his chair and spoke with hardly a pause for twenty-five minutes, recounting everything that came to mind-from Roberta Rotker’s firing range to the skeleton at Max Clinter’s gate-with no effort to organize, prioritize, or edit the data. As he went on, he himself was struck by the sheer number of intense people, weird tangents, and sinister complexities in the affair. “And finally,” he concluded, “there’s the matter of the barn.”

“Yes, the barn,” said Madeleine, her expression hardening. “You believe it’s connected with everything else?”

“I think it is.”

“So what’s the plan?”

It was an unwelcome question, because it forced him to face the fact that his intentions didn’t add up to anything remotely like a plan. “Poke around in the shadows with a cattle prod, see if anyone yells,” he said. “Maybe light a fire under the sacred cow.”

“Can any of that be expressed in English?”

“I want to find out if anyone in official law enforcement actually has any solid facts, or if the sanctified theory of the Good Shepherd case is as fragile as I think it is.”

“That’s what you’re doing tomorrow with the fish guy?”

“Yes. Agent Trout. At his cabin in the Adirondacks. On Lake Sorrow.”

Just then Kyle and Kim came in the side door, accompanied by a rush of chilly air.