On Harrow Hill

1

“Listen carefully,” said Dave Gurney, “to this eyewitness description of a murder.”

He was standing at the podium in a lecture hall at the state police training academy, conducting a seminar titled “Evaluation of Eyewitness Statements.” There was a projection screen on a low stage behind him. He held a one-page form in his hand. Some eager cadets were leaning forward. All watching him.

“This recorded statement was given to an NYPD transit officer by Maria Santiago, a twenty-two-year-old teacher’s aide at a Bronx public school:

‘I was on the northbound platform at the 138th Street subway station. I was coming home from work, so it was around four o’clock. Not very crowded. There was this skinny, dark teenager, trying to look cool. Crazy clothes, like kids wear now. Near him there were these four older Anglo guys. Like construction guys. They started looking at the kid. Bad looks. One of them, big guy in a black leather jacket, dirty black jeans, said something about the kid’s clothes. Kid said something back. I’m not sure what, but in a Puerto Rican accent, like mine. Big guy suddenly pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket, shot the kid. People were running, shouting, everyone going nuts. Then the cops came.’

“Ms. Santiago’s full statement is longer than that,” said Gurney, looking up from the witness report, “but those are the main details. Anyone want me to go through it one more time?”

A female cadet in the front row raised her hand. “Could you, please?”

He read it again. “Anyone want to hear it a third time?”

No one said anything. He picked up a second report from the podium.

“This next example also comes from the NYPD transit division. It, too, describes a platform homicide. The statement was given by John McIntyre, a forty-five-year-old gas station owner:

‘It was rush hour, crowded, loads of people on the platform. I hate the subway, but once in a while I have to take it. It’s filthy. It stinks. People spit on the floor. So there was this fellow, coming home from work. Tired, stressed like. He was standing there, waiting for the train, minding his own business. And there was this bunch of black gangsta-rap assholes watching him. Scum of the earth. Puffy jackets. Stupid sneakers with the laces hanging off them. Stupid hats with hoodies over them. The leader of the pack has his eye on the guy who’s coming home from work. Evil eye, you could see it, looking for trouble. They say something back and forth. Then the black guy pulls out a gun, they get into a struggle, black guy gets shot with his own gun. Goes down on the platform. Ugly thing. But he asked for it. They call that karma, right? High on some shit. Meth makes them fuckers crazy.’

“Like the other statement,” said Gurney, “this one was edited down to a few essential points. Anyone want to hear it again?”

The same cadet asked for a repeat reading, and Gurney obliged. When he finished, he looked around the room and asked if anyone had any reaction to either statement.

At first the class remained silent. Then someone in the back row said, “Yeah, my reaction is stay the hell away from New York City.”

A few more comments followed from around the room.

Gurney waited. “Anyone have any idea why I chose those two statements?”

Eventually, a blond cadet with an earnest farm-boy face spoke up. “To make us glad we’re not transit cops?”

That was greeted by a few loud laughs.

Gurney waited.

The female cadet in the first row cocked her head and looked at him with a glint of suspicion in her eyes. “Because the two statements are from witnesses to the same homicide?”

Gurney smiled. A student’s leap of intuition always brightened his day.

In a scan of the room he saw expressions of disbelief, confusion, curiosity. A few cadets seemed to be practicing the police art of the neutral stare. He waited for the objections.

The first came from a wiry young man with small eyes and a sour mouth. “So, which one of them was lying?”

“They both took voluntary polygraphs, and the test expert concluded they were both telling the truth.”

“That’s impossible. There are direct contradictions—who had the gun, who was alone, who was part of a group, ethnicity, initial provocation, everything. They can’t both have been right.”

“True,” said Gurney mildly.

“But you said—”

“I said they were both telling the truth—not that they were both right.”

“The hell does that mean?” There was an angry vibe in the wiry young man that went beyond challenging an assertion—a vibe that did not bode well for a positive career in law enforcement. Gurney didn’t want to derail the lesson by confronting that issue now.

He addressed the whole class. “I’ll give you some more information. Then maybe someone can tell me what it means. Altogether, six witnesses to the incident were interviewed and submitted signed statements. According to those statements, one participant in the confrontation had a gun, the other had the gun, they both had guns. The individual who was shot was a dark-skinned African American in his twenties, or a light-skinned Hispanic teenager. He was solid-looking, he was thin, he was medium height, he was short. The other participant was wearing a black leather jacket, a dark shirt with no jacket, a brown windbreaker. The confrontation prior to the gunshot lasted five seconds, thirty seconds, more than a minute. They argued with each other, or they didn’t speak at all.” He paused. “What do you make of all that?”

“Jeez,” muttered the farm-boy cadet. “Sounds like the witnesses were on something.”

Gurney shrugged. “In the opinion of the officer conducting the interviews, all six witnesses were sober and credible.”

“Yeah, but . . . somebody got shot, so somebody had a gun. So, which one had it?”

Gurney smiled. “Right statement, wrong question.”

That resulted in a baffled silence, broken by a big bodybuilder with a shaved head in the back row. “Asking which one had the gun is the wrong question?”

“Right.”

The bodybuilder cadet squinted thoughtfully before replying. “Because they both had guns?”

“Or . . . ?” prompted Gurney.

“Neither one had a gun?”

“And if that were the case . . . ?”

The silence was broken this time by a voice from the middle of the room. “Someone else fired the shot!”

“That’s exactly what was confirmed by the only objective witness,” said Gurney.

That last phrase prompted some puzzled looks.

He waited to see if anyone would catch on.

The cadet in the first row who had asked for repeated readings was the first to speak up. “Was ‘the only objective witness’ a transit surveillance video?”

Gurney gave her an appreciative nod. “The video established the position of the victim at the moment he was hit. During autopsy a reconstruction of the path of the bullet indicated the probable position of the shooter relative to the victim’s entry wound. Transferring that trajectory back to the video revealed a young man in the crowd taking a small pistol-shaped object from his pocket and pointing it toward the victim. Immediately after the moment of impact, he returned the object to his pocket and walked quickly toward the platform exit, where he—”

The angry cadet interrupted. “You’re telling us that none of the witnesses could hear what direction the shot came from?”

“The brain’s greatest strength, the ability to create instant connections, can be its greatest weakness. All the witnesses thought they saw a gun in the hand of at least one of the participants in the confrontation. A moment later they heard a gunshot. They all connected the sound with the visual image. Their brains discounted the directional component of their hearing in favor of visual logic: you see what you think is a gun, you hear a gunshot, your brain automatically puts them together. And your brain is almost always right.”

The bodybuilder was frowning. “But didn’t you say that neither one of them actually had a gun? So . . . the witnesses who claimed they saw one . . . what did they actually see?”

“A cell phone.”

That led to the longest silence so far—no doubt reminding many in the room of the tragic news stories involving that very mistake being made by stressed police officers.

The farm-boy cadet looked appalled. “So, the witnesses were wrong about everything?”

“It happens,” said Gurney.

A cadet directly in front of him raised his hand. “What’s the bottom line on this? It sounds like we shouldn’t even bother taking eyewitness statements.”

“Statements can be helpful,” said Gurney. “But the bottom line is caution. Keep an open mind. Remember that eyewitnesses can be very credible—and very inaccurate. And the problem carries over into courtrooms. Eyewitness testimony, which is actually the least reliable evidence, is the most persuasive. And it’s not because anyone is lying. The fact is, people often see things that aren’t really there.”

The angry cadet piped up. “Mental cases, maybe. Idiots who don’t pay attention. Trust me—when I look at something, I see what’s there.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Gurney with a pleasant smile. “It’s a perfect introduction to a pair of animations I think you’ll enjoy.” He opened a laptop computer on the podium and switched on the projector.

“The first ten-second animation you’ll see shows a large blue ball bouncing across the screen. There are some numbers printed on the ball. The other animation will show a large green ball, also with numbers on it. Apart from those numbers, the balls may have other differences between them in size, surface texture, and the way they bounce. Pay close attention and see how many differences you’re able to notice.”

Gurney tapped a key on the laptop, and what looked like a large beach ball bounced slowly across the screen behind him.

“Next, the green ball,” said Gurney, again tapping a key.

After it completed its passage across the screen, he switched off the projector.

“Okay, now tell me about the differences you noticed. I want to hear from everyone, but first from you,” said Gurney, turning toward his challenger.

There was a new uncertainty in his eyes. “Some of the numbers on the balls might have been different.”

Gurney nodded encouragingly. “Anything else?”

“The green one bounced a little faster than the blue one.”

“What else?”

The angry cadet responded with a shrug.

“So,” persisted Gurney, “different numbers, different bouncing speeds. Any other differences between the balls?”

“Obviously, the colors.”

Gurney then addressed the same question to the other cadets and listened to their descriptions of the differences in the speeds, sizes, surface textures, and numbers on each ball.

He waited until they’d all offered their opinions.

“Now, I have an apology to make. I misled you—in the same way that I was misled when I was first shown the animation of the bouncing ball.”

He paused again. “Did anyone notice what I just said?”

At first no one responded. Then the bodybuilder’s eyes widened. “You said animation this time. Not animations.”

“Correct.”

In response to the perplexed faces around the room, he continued, “There was only one bouncing ball. I showed you the same animation twice.”

His challenger with the sour mouth said, “But you obviously messed with the color to make the ball look blue the first time and green the second. So it doesn’t prove anything, except that you lied.”

The room got very quiet. Gurney smiled. “I messed with your brain, not the color. The color of the animated ball occupies the midpoint between blue and green on the color spectrum. Because of what I told you at the beginning, you expected the first ball to be blue and the second to be green. And because that’s what you expected, you saw it the first time as bluer than it was and the next time as greener than it was. If you took a polygraph test on the two colors you saw, you would have passed. You would have been telling the truth, as you saw it. That’s my point. Witnesses may be telling you the truth about what they saw, but that truth may exist only in their own heads. And a polygraph test only measures the honesty of someone’s recollection, not its accuracy.”

A raspy-voiced question came from the back of the room. “So what kind of evidence are we supposed to trust?”

“DNA. Fingerprints. Credit card and bank records. Phone records, especially those with GPS data. Emails, texts, and social media posts can also be useful in establishing motives, relationships, and states of mind.”

“How about surveillance videos?” someone asked.

“Absolutely,” said Gurney. “The fact is, I’d take one high-quality video over a dozen eyewitness reports anytime. Cameras are basically pure optic nerves. They have no prejudices, no imagination, no desire to fill in the blanks. Unlike humans, they only see what’s actually there. But be careful when you view those videos.”

“Careful of what?” someone else asked.

“Careful that your own brain doesn’t screw up what the camera got right.”

2

After giving a reading assignment on the subject of his next lecture, Gurney ended the class and made his way along a colorless, fluorescent-lit corridor to the office of Harris Schneider, the academy’s part-time psychologist and occasional trauma counselor.

He was a small, middle-aged man with a large salt-and-pepper mustache never quite free of crumbs, a brown tweed jacket with elbow patches, and a briar pipe, overflowing with tobacco, that he always seemed on the verge of lighting. He listened as Gurney expressed his concern about the angry cadet in his seminar—the fact that he was already exhibiting the reflexive hostility characteristic of a mid-­career burnout.

Schneider cleared his throat. “Yes, I know. Unfortunate. Already on our radar. Not good.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “Appropriate action will be taken at the appropriate time.” He flashed a quick smile, as if pleased with his command of the situation. He glanced at the full bowl of his pipe, took a vintage chrome lighter out of his jacket pocket, and placed it on the desk in front of him—a gesture that, along with a sniffle and another clearing of his throat, signified that the meeting was concluded.

Gurney was tempted to restate his concern in more vivid terms—describing the consequences he’d witnessed when guns and badges had been given to angry men. But surely Schneider knew what could happen as well as he did. He thanked the man for his time, perhaps a bit too brusquely, and headed for the parking lot.

Emerging onto the windy tarmac, he was struck by the bizarre changeability of spring weather in the mountains of upstate New York. In the first chilly hour after dawn there was a bleak overcast, which was replaced two hours later by a perfect blue sky and warming bath of sunlight, which had now given way to racing clouds and swirling gusts of snowflakes.

He zipped up his nylon windbreaker, lowered his head, and hurried to his car, an aging but still functional Outback. He switched on the ignition and the heater, then checked his phone for messages. There was one, from Madeleine.

“Hi. Just got in from the clinic. There’s a message on our landline from a Mike Morgan, I assume the same Mike Morgan who used to be your partner? He wants you to call him back as soon as you can. If I’m not here when you get home, I’ll be at Deirdre Winkler’s. They have two baby alpacas I’m dying to see. I’ll be home for dinner. If you can, pick up some milk.”

Mike Morgan. Among the memories the name brought up, most were less than positive. One was indelible. It involved an event that created a unique link between them and resulted in Morgan being viewed as an NYPD hero—until the halo of heroism was overshadowed by the discovery of less commendable behavior.

The one time Madeleine had met him, she was less than charmed. And she’d expressed no regrets when Morgan, after partnering with Gurney for less than a year, was quietly forced out of the department.

His recollections were raising an uncomfortable question: What might Morgan want? He wondered about it for much of the fifty-minute trip home to Walnut Crossing.

As he drove up the two-mile-long dirt road from the county route to the hilltop property where he and Madeleine had been living since they moved from the city, he noted that the wind had abated and the snowflakes were falling more slowly. They coated the branches of the old apple trees along the road, the forsythia bushes between the pond and the barn, and the overgrown pasture between the barn and their farmhouse.

He parked in his usual spot by the mudroom door. As he was getting out of the car, a flock of yellow finches burst out of a snow-laden lilac bush by the feeders and flew across the pasture to the cherry copse. He walked quickly into the house, hung his windbreaker in the mudroom, passed through the big kitchen, and headed straight for the landline in the den.

He played Morgan’s message, making a note of the number. The man’s tone was tense, perhaps even fearful.

With more curiosity than appetite, he returned the call.

Morgan answered on the first ring.

“Dave! Thanks so much for getting back to me. I appreciate it. God, it’s good to hear your voice. How are you doing?”

“No significant problems. How about you?”

“Right now things are a little crazy. Actually, more than a little. That’s why I need to talk to you. Are you aware of my situation here?”

“I don’t even know where here is.”

“Right. Of course not. Ages since we spoke. I’m up in Larchfield. In fact, I’m the village police chief. Hard to believe, right?”

Gurney silently agreed. “Where’s Larchfield?”

“Just an hour north of Walnut Crossing, but I’m not surprised you never heard of it. Quiet little place. Serious felony rate close to zero. In fact, we’ve never had a murder here. Not until last night.”

“I’m listening.”

“I was hoping I could sit down with you.”

“You can’t tell me about it on the phone?”

“It’s a bizarre situation. Too many angles. I can’t afford to screw it up. Can I come and explain it to you?”

Gurney hesitated. “When did you want to do this?”

“I could be at your house in an hour.”

Gurney checked the time on his phone—2:58 p.m. Although he had no desire for a reunion with the man, there was a piece of their history together that put the option of refusing out of reach.

“You have my address?”

The excitement in Morgan’s voice was palpable. “Of course. You’re famous. You know that, right? You were featured in all the upstate newscasts last year—‘Retired Cop from City Solves White River Murders.’ You weren’t hard to find, thank God!”

Gurney said nothing.

“Okay, then. See you in an hour.”

3

Although their partnership had lasted only ten months, Gurney knew more about the personal life of Mike Morgan than that of anyone else he’d worked with in his twenty-five years in the NYPD. From the day he was assigned to replace Gurney’s retiring partner in the homicide division, Morgan had treated him as a ­confidant—with the result that Gurney had learned more than he wanted to know about the man’s longing for approval from his revered cop father, his reckless relationships with women, his waves of paranoia.

He’d also witnessed Morgan’s obsession with superficial orderliness, especially punctuality. So it was no surprise when, at exactly 3:59 p.m., a black Chevy Tahoe began making its way up through the low pasture toward the house.

Gurney went out through the mudroom and opened the side door. The cool air carried the mixed scent of wet snow and spring grass. He watched as the big SUV with a circular LARCHFIELD POLICE DEPARTMENT emblem on the door pulled in beside his Outback.

Morgan got out, looking around anxiously at the fields and hills, then walked the path between the house and the raised asparagus bed. He was wearing neatly creased black pants and a gray dress shirt with a three-star chief’s insignia on the starched collar. Although the man still had the trim body of an athlete, his stride was stiffer than Gurney remembered, and the worry lines on his face seemed to have deepened.

As he reached Gurney, he extended his hand, smiling a little wildly. “David! Wow! So good to see you. Long time, eh?” His grip was unpleasantly tight, then suddenly looser, as if he’d caught himself in a bad habit.

“Hello, Mike.”

Morgan took a deep breath and blew it out gradually through puffed cheeks, stepping back and looking around again at the hills and fields. “You’re really out here, aren’t you? Not another house in sight. You okay with that?”

“Okay?”

“I mean, this is like the backwoods. Not a soul around. How much land do you have?”

“About fifty acres. It was a farm once. Mostly old pastures. Some small quarries. Cherry and maple thickets. Lots of trails.”

Morgan nodded, not really listening, looking around yet again. “You have any snakes?”

“Not really. Nothing poisonous.”

“I hate snakes. Always have. I read once about a guy putting a rattlesnake in his neighbor’s mailbox. Can you imagine?”

Gurney stepped back from the doorway with a half-hearted welcoming gesture. “You want to come in?”

“Thanks.”

Gurney led him past the mudroom into the kitchen and over to the round pine table by the French doors. He gathered up his notes for the academy lecture and put them aside.

“Have a seat. Coffee? Tea?”

Morgan shrugged. “Whatever you’re having.”

While Gurney busied himself with the coffee machine, Morgan remained standing, looking first around the room, then out through the glass doors.

“I appreciate this. Letting me come here on such short notice.”

When the coffee was ready, Gurney filled two mugs and brought them to the table. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Nothing. Thank you.”

Gurney sat in the chair he usually occupied for breakfast and Morgan sat opposite him. Gurney took a sip of his coffee and waited.

Morgan grinned nervously and shook his head. “I thought about this all the way here, but now . . . I’m not sure where to begin.”

Gurney noted that the man’s fingernails were still bitten to the quick. They had always looked like that, the swollen fingertips overlapping the stubs of the gnawed nails. Unlike most people afflicted with that compulsion, however, Morgan had never engaged in it in public. It reminded Gurney of his mother’s combination of public dieting and seemingly inexplicable obesity.

Morgan wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. “I guess the last thing you knew about my situation was that I left the department.” He hesitated, making it sound like a question.

“I heard you’d moved upstate.”

“That all came together nicely. You know that Bartley let me hang in until I hit twenty years and could get my pension, right?”

Gurney nodded. Considering the mess he’d gotten himself into, Morgan was fortunate to have been given such a gentle exit.

“That gave me a little breathing time to look around. I heard through the grapevine there was an opening for a head of security at a small upstate school, Russell College, in Larchfield. I applied, I interviewed, I got the job.”

“Nothing negative reached them about your NYPD problem?”

“Apparently not. But that’s understandable. There hadn’t been any official disciplinary action. On the record, I’d simply retired. Twenty and out.” Morgan stared down into his coffee for a moment, as though it contained some image from his past, before continuing.

“The college job was fine. Respectable, decent salary, et cetera. But a year later the Larchfield police chief resigned. It was suggested that I’d be a logical replacement.” A flicker of pride appeared in his eyes. “I went through an interview process with the village board, and two weeks later I had gold stars on my collar.”

“Simple as that?”

The pride gave way to uncertainty. “Sounds kind of unusual, right?”

“More than kind of.” Gurney considered which of the questions that came to mind to ask first. He chose the mildest. “What does the job entail?”

Morgan paused, staring again at his coffee. “It’s a strange place, Larchfield. Crime-free, tons of money, not a single wilted petal in the village flower beds. A living, breathing painting of upscale perfection.”

“But . . . ?”

Morgan’s mouth stretched into a sour expression. “Larchfield has always been under the thumb of a super-wealthy family. The Russells. Three generations ago they owned all the land in the area, which they gradually sold off with deed restrictions that allowed them to control everything from the styles and colors of the houses to the composition of the tarmac in the streets. There was a struggling college nearby—which the Russells saved and expanded with big endowments, with strings that ensured their control of it in perpetuity. And that isn’t the half of it. For over a century all the public institutions of Larchfield—from the library to the local theater to the two-hundred-acre park—have prospered through the benevolent dictatorship of that family.” He paused. “There isn’t much that happens in Larchfield without Russell involvement . . . and Russell approval.”

“Sounds like a private kingdom. Who’s the current king?”

“Ah, well, that’s the thing. Until last night, it was Angus Russell.”

“He’s your murder victim?”

Morgan nodded. “All hell is breaking loose.”

“How was he was murdered?”

“His right carotid artery and right jugular vein were both severed—with one cut. As he was coming out of his bathroom.”

“One cut?”

“A single slash. Clean and deep. Probably between three and five in the morning, according to the ME.”

“Who found the body?”

“The wife and the housekeeper—but in different ways. The wife, Lorinda Russell, says she came down to breakfast around eight. She made herself some tea in the kitchen, then brought it into the breakfast alcove at the end of the main dining room. She sits down and starts checking her phone. Then she hears this sound. A little ptt, is the way she described it. Then she hears it again. Then again. She looks around and sees a dark red spot on the beige carpet next to her. As she’s watching, another drop falls on the same spot. She looks up. There’s a pendant light fixture in the ceiling on the end of a gold chain, and there’s some kind of liquid dripping down the chain from a dark red spot on the ceiling. At first, she has no idea what she’s looking at. Then she realizes what it is. And she starts screaming.”

“She told you that she realized it was blood?”

Morgan nodded. “She seemed to have trouble saying the word. Claims the sight of blood, even the thought of it, has made her sick ever since her father fell off a tractor and got ripped up by a hay baler. The housekeeper, Helen Stone, was outside the alcove window, giving instructions to one of the gardeners. Stone hears the screaming and comes dashing into the house. She sees the blood coming through the ceiling, and she runs up the staircase to Angus Russell’s bedroom, which is directly above that breakfast alcove.”

“Angus and Lorinda have separate bedrooms?”

“Unusual marriage. Major age gap. Seventy-eight to twenty-eight.”

Gurney shrugged. “Magical power of money. So the housekeeper went into the bedroom and found the body? What about the wife?”

“She went up behind the housekeeper. Went as far as the bedroom door, took a look inside, and collapsed. Stone went right in. She found the body, along with ‘more damn blood than you could imagine having been in one old man’—is the way she put it.”

“All from the neck wound?”

“With one exception. His left forefinger had been cut off, so there was a separate puddle of blood around that hand. No idea yet what its significance might be. I’d say Angus got up in the middle of the night to use the shared bathroom between the two bedrooms. When he came back into his room, someone was waiting for him. One hard slash across the right side of the neck with a super-sharp blade. Best guess is that Angus made a half-turn away from the attacker and toppled headfirst over a chair. He ended up in a strange position, forehead on the floor, stomach and thighs slanting down across the seat of the chair, legs angled up in the air behind him. Like a sick joke.”

The comment reminded Gurney of a macabre moment in the White River murder case—when a severed head, with one eye closed as if it were winking, came rolling out of a crime scene, sending an on-site TV reporter into a state of catatonia. But he had no taste for dwelling on gruesome deaths. He preferred to focus on practical steps.

“So the lord of the manor got his throat cut and a finger amputated, assailant unknown. Were you able to lift any useful prints?”

Morgan shifted in his chair, still gripping his coffee mug. “The only clear prints our tech found—other than those of the victim, his wife, and the housekeeper—were ID’d by AFIS as belonging to a local named Billy Tate. If this were a normal case, he’d be our prime suspect. He and Angus hated each other, had a bad history together, including death threats. But none of that matters now.”

“Why not?”

“Tate was killed in a freak accident the night before last.”

“And his fingerprints at the scene . . . ?”

“We’re trying to sort that out. If this isn’t some kind of a screwup, then Tate must have been in Angus Russell’s bedroom at some point. Exactly when, we can’t be sure. No precise way to date the prints. But we know it couldn’t have been last night, because last night Tate was laid out in a coffin in the local mortuary.”

Gurney knew that determining when and why an enemy of the victim had been in his bedroom would be an investigative priority, probably the key to solving the murder. At the moment, however, there was a simpler question on his mind.

Oddly, it was Morgan who put it into words first. “At this point, you’re probably asking yourself what made me so desperate to see you.”

4

Twenty minutes later Morgan concluded a dire description of how, given the prominent family involved, the case was likely to turn into a political minefield that could make or break his career—and how Gurney’s investigative talents, strongest in the areas where his own were weakest, could save the day. He had only one request—that Gurney come to Larchfield at 9:00 a.m. the next morning to examine the crime scene. After that, he could decide whether he was willing to get involved.

With some reluctance, Gurney agreed, and with a sigh of relief, Morgan departed.

After watching the man’s SUV disappear around the barn onto the dirt-and-gravel road, Gurney returned to the kitchen. He remembered suddenly that he hadn’t stopped for the milk Madeleine asked him to pick up on his way home from the academy. So he picked up his wallet, got in the Outback, and drove through five miles of old farmland to the village of Walnut Crossing.

“Village” was a word that brought to his mind the antique charm of places he and Madeleine had visited on their honeymoon in the English countryside. But “village” had become a misnomer for Walnut Crossing, which each year had been sinking deeper into the economic and social malaise of upstate New York, with its spreading blight of empty storefronts and expanding populations of the unemployed and unemployable.

He pulled into one of the main street’s two “convenience” stores and went to the small dairy section of the wall-length cooler devoted almost entirely to beers, soft drinks, and strangely flavored waters. He took a half gallon of nonfat milk to the cashier’s counter, where he waited while a toothless woman in a housedress and green rubber boots purchased a handful of brightly colored lottery tickets.

As soon as he got home, he put the milk in the fridge and took out an onion, a pepper, a stalk of celery, and a large zucchini. He chopped the vegetables and put them near the wok. He filled a pot of water for pasta and placed it on the stove. He set the pasta water on high and went for a quick shower and change of clothes.

The relaxing effect of the warm water streaming down over his back kept him in the shower twice as long as he’d planned, and when he finally returned to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner, he found Madeleine at the stove with her back to him, stirring the vegetables in the wok. The pasta was boiling, and the table by the French doors was set for dinner.

“Hi,” she said without turning. “Thanks for getting things started. I see you remembered the milk.”

“You didn’t think I would?”

“I figured it was a toss-up.”

He saw no need to reveal how true that was. He went over and kissed the back of her neck. Her tousled brown hair had a sweet outdoor scent. “How was your day?”

She turned off the gas under the wok and stirred the pasta. “The part I spent at the clinic had its ups and downs. Eight intakes referred by the drug court. Two of them were scared to death, possibly scared enough to embrace the program. The other six were in denial. I could see the little wheels turning in their heads, trying to guess what I wanted to hear, trying to beat the system—anything rather than face their addiction.”

Gurney shrugged. “Liars and manipulators. Your typical clinic clientele.”

“But the few who do want help and end up turning their lives around—they make what I’m doing there feel worthwhile.” She turned off the gas under the pasta, carried the big pot to the sink, and emptied it into a waiting colander.

He realized his tone had been needlessly negative. “Of course what you’re doing is worthwhile. I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t. All I was saying—”

She cut him off. “You don’t like addicts. You had your share of difficult experiences with them in the city. I understand.”

He smiled, having read somewhere that smiling makes your voice sound warmer. “So the intakes were the mixed-blessing part of your day. How was the other part?”

“Very interesting. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.”

She shook the pasta-filled colander gently until it stopped dripping, carried it to the stove, tilted its contents into the wok with the sautéed vegetables, and stirred everything together with a long wooden spoon.

Once they’d served themselves from the wok and were seated at the table, Madeleine removed a folded sheet of paper from under her napkin and passed it across to him.

“This could be a little project for us.” Her face was bright with excitement.

He unfolded the paper and saw what appeared to be a structural diagram for some sort of shed.

“Dennis printed that out from a farm website,” she added.

He frowned at the man’s name. “What is it?”

“An alpaca shelter.”

“We don’t have any alpacas.”

“Not right now.”

He looked up from the paper.

“But we could get one,” she said. “Or two. Two would be better. They’re very social. One would get lonely.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I guess I started when I was helping the Winklers with their alpacas two years ago at the fair.” She fell silent, perhaps at the memory of how the fair had ended in disaster—the culminating horror of the Peter Pan murder case.

After a moment, she looked at him with a wistful smile. “It’s not something we need to do right away. We’d have to build that house for them first. And that could be a fun thing to do together.”

Gurney looked again at the design, then laid it in the middle of the table. “Alpacas are expensive, aren’t they?”

“That’s what everyone thinks, but when you take the pluses and minuses into consideration, they cost very little. Almost nothing.”

“The pluses and minuses?”

“I’ll let Dennis explain all that.”

“What?”

“I invited the Winklers for dinner.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“To give us an alpaca sales pitch?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. It’s ages since we’ve gotten together. If they want to tell us about their alpacas, that’s fine with me.”

They ate for several minutes before she laid down her fork and waited for him to meet her gaze. “The alpaca idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. And the Winklers aren’t as awful as you think. Try to keep an open mind.”

He nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

She picked up her fork. “Did you return that call from Mike Morgan?”

“I did.”

“His message sounded terribly anxious.”

“Some of that is just the way he is, but he does seem to be in an unusual situation. He actually came to the house to talk about it.”

“What does he want?”

“Help with a murder investigation in a village up north. Larchfield. Peculiar place. Peculiar crime scene. Most peculiar thing of all is that Morgan’s the police chief.”

“You don’t think he’s up to it?”

“Intellectually he may be up to it. But emotionally he’s a wreck.” He paused. “How much more do you want to know?”

“Enough so I can understand what you decide.”

“Decide?”

“About whether to get involved with his murder case.”

He didn’t respond to that.

She turned and gazed out through the French doors. “Look at the grass.”

He looked out past the little bluestone patio toward the henhouse and the old apple tree. The wet grass was glistening in the slanting evening sunlight. The only trace of the earlier snow was a cottony white patch at the base of the apple tree.

“Amazing,” she said, the expression on her face reflecting the radiance of the scene. She sighed and turned back to Gurney. “Tell me as much as you like.”

He took a moment to figure out where to begin.

“Morgan’s father was near the top of the ladder at the NYPD, and his twin brothers were both precinct commanders. There was an eight-year gap between them and Morgan, and he claimed they called him ‘the mistake.’ His father alternated between ignoring him and pointing out his deficiencies. Morgan was hell-bent on winning his family’s approval. He was great on paper, aced his promotion exams. But he had all kinds of fears, along with a disastrous way of dealing with them.”

“Drugs?”

“Women. Sometimes women who were involved in cases he was investigating. Even a potential suspect or two. Those mistakes could have put him in prison. But apparently the rush blinded him to the risk.”

“Sounds like he was fixing a low self-esteem problem by doing something that would make it worse. Like the addicts I see at the clinic. How did he get away with it?”

“No one wanted to get on the wrong side of his father, so there was a tendency to let things slide, as long as they weren’t too obvious or didn’t screw up a prosecution. But eventually one of the captains got fed up and told Morgan he needed to resign or the issue would go to the professional standards unit, with the possibility of criminal prosecution. In the end, he was allowed to stay a few more months to get to his pension-vesting date. A quiet exit.”

“Zero consequences for his actions?”

“Right.”

“And the Larchfield authorities concluded that this law-enforcement paragon would make an ideal police chief?”

“Not immediately. He told me he was hired first to head up security at their local college. A year later they chose him to replace the departing police chief. The first job seems a bit of a stretch. The second seems inconceivable. Coincidentally, the man who was just murdered was the main interviewer and decision-maker for both of Morgan’s positions.”

“Do you have a sense of why he wants you involved in the investigation?”

Gurney gazed far out through the French doors as though the answer might lie somewhere in the low pasture. “He spent his last half hour here making my involvement sound like the most reasonable thing in the world.”

She raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“He claims that this murder is the kind of case that would benefit from our combined strengths. He sees himself as a ‘possibility’ thinker and me as a ‘probability’ thinker.”

“Meaning what?”

“That he’s good at coming up with multiple scenarios for how and why a crime was committed, but lousy at estimating likelihoods and prioritizing investigative efforts.”

“Isn’t that ‘lousy’ part what a police chief ought to be good at?”

“Nothing about this situation is what it ought to be.”

“Then just say no. His inability to do his job isn’t your problem.”

“It’s not that simple.” His gaze drifted out the glass doors toward the low pasture. “The thing is . . . there’s an unspoken debt involved. About six years ago, right after Morgan and I got teamed up, we were doing follow-up interviews on a bodega homicide in the South Bronx projects. As we were leaving the apartment of a witness, we came face-to-face with three gangbangers coming out of the apartment directly across the hall—their meth factory, it turned out. They figured we’d come for them, and things got instantly insane—their Uzis against our Glocks. Morgan jumped back into the apartment we’d come out of, and I dove into the stairwell for cover. My wrist smashed against the railing, my weapon went flying down the stairs, with three Uzi maniacs coming at me. That’s when Morgan came charging out into the hall, between me and them. He had his Glock in one hand, his backup Sig in the other, and everybody starting shooting at once. Over a hundred shots fired in no time at all. Complete mayhem. When it got quiet, the three gangbangers were spread all over the tile floor, and Morgan was standing there, untouched.” He paused, looking pained. “I never told you about this because—”

“Because you never wanted to bring the frightening facts of your job into our home.” She paused. “So, the way you see it, he risked his life to save yours?”

“All I know is, he did what he did, the guys who were coming at me are dead, and I’m alive.”

She picked up her fork and began moving strands of her leftover pasta toward the center of her plate. “I’m wondering . . . do you see him as a self-absorbed, anxiety-­driven womanizer? Or a fearless, self-sacrificing hero?”

“Couldn’t he be both? Fearless when confronted by a clear and present danger, but otherwise in a self-absorbed flight from his demons?”

“Or maybe the man you thought turned into a hero that day was still the same emotional mess—making a suicide attempt. One that happened to fail, fortunately for you.”

Gurney’s gaze settled on the shed diagram in the middle of the table. “That thought did occur to me. Maybe I just don’t want it to be true.”

“So your bottom line is that you’re alive because of what he did—regardless of what his motive may have been—and you owe him something in return?”

“I’m not sure what. But something, yes.” He turned up his palms, in lieu of an answer. “Anyway, I’ve agreed to go to Larchfield tomorrow morning. Maybe things will be clearer after that.”

He looked out toward the henhouse, then back at Madeleine. “I don’t particularly like Morgan. Never did. But I can’t just walk away. It’s not just about that shoot-out in the projects. There was a . . . an awful thing . . . that happened at the promotion ceremony where he got his gold detective’s shield. That’s a big moment in a cop’s life. It was for me, and I suspect it was ten times that for him. But then, at the end of the ceremony, his father came up to him. His big-deal father he was desperate to please. His father looks him in the eye, like he was a perp. No handshake, no congratulations. All the son of a bitch said was, ‘That gold shield is a family tradition. Don’t disgrace us.’”

Gurney felt a mixture of anger and sadness whenever that moment came to mind. That father, hard and cold. That son, longing for something he would never get.

Madeleine was watching him. When he met her gaze, he saw in it an understanding of what he was feeling, an understanding perhaps deeper than his own.

5

In keeping with the unpredictability of springtime in the mountains, the next morning was strangely balmy, the air soft and humid in the hazy early sunlight. As Gurney headed for his Outback, the sweet scent of the damp pasture grass jogged a childhood memory of the Bronx park where he’d spent so many summer hours, away from the tensions that had locked his parents’ marriage into a permanent state of unhappiness.

He entered the address of the Larchfield Police Department in his GPS and set out, leaving thoughts of that park and that marriage behind him.

His route took him through a landscape that was by turns picturesque and depressing. There were expanses of bucolic countryside—glorious green fields and red silos, meandering streams and century-old fieldstone walls, hillsides covered with wildflowers. And there were sad emblems of economic decline—the broken windows and creeper-covered walls of once-thriving dairy plants, barns and farmhouses gone to ruin, bleak villages where even the FOR SALE signs were disintegrating.

As he approached the foothills of the Adirondacks, the old pastures and maple groves were overtaken by thickets of pine and hemlock, the land gradually becoming more forested. The scattered businesses included small motels, campgrounds, gun stores, rod-and-bait stores. All appeared in need of refurbishing.

Eventually his GPS directed him off the state route onto Skeel Swamp Road, a winding byway through a lowland of tree trunks standing in the shallow beaver ponds that had rotted their roots. A little beyond the beaver ponds a faded sign announced that he was entering Cemetery Flats. The only visible structure in the next mile was Dick & Della’s Place—an old-time diner, surrounded by pickup trucks. A mile past that a sign welcomed him to Bastenburg.

Where it entered the town’s commercial strip, Skeel Swamp Road was renamed Center Street, and its speed limit was reduced to twenty-five, giving Gurney ample time to observe the defining elements of the place.

In addition to two fast-food franchises, he passed a Quick Cash soda-can redemption center, a Hardly Used clothing store, a Thirsty Boys Beer Emporium, Maria’s Pizza and Laundromat, Smoker’s Heaven, Dark Moon Potions and Lotions, Golden Dragon Takeout, Iron Man Martial Arts, a pawn shop, a bail bondsman, a no-name gas station, two tattoo parlors, and a hair and nail salon.

There was a memorable sign in the window of the last storefront he passed on the strip.

CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHS

FOR GOD, COUNTRY, AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

Leaving the commercial area, the road rose gradually toward a distant ridge. When he was about halfway to the top, a dark blue BMW sped past him, going at least twice the speed limit, despite the poor condition of the road surface and the presence of a Bastenburg police cruiser parked on the shoulder. The BMW flew by it, but the police vehicle stayed where it was. As Gurney drove by, he noted that the officer appeared alert but showed no indication of initiating a pursuit.

When Gurney finally arrived at the crest of the hill and could see down into the next valley, he was amazed at how different it was from the one he’d just driven through. In place of the desolate beaver ponds, a glistening stream meandered through emerald meadows. In the middle of the valley the stream widened into a sky-blue lake with chartreuse willows on its banks. The end of the lake was bordered by a postcard fantasy of a New England village, complete with a white church spire.

Halfway through the gentle descent into this postcard world, a small sign on the mowed grass verge of the road bore the word LARCHFIELD in polished copper letters on a dark blue background. Even the surface of the road was different here—smoother, quieter, free of the cracks and patched potholes on the Bastenburg side of the hill.

As he was passing through an intersection at the near end of the lake, Gurney noted that Skeel Swamp Road was now called Waterview Drive. It led him along the manicured edge of the lake, past the willows he’d observed from the rise, to the edge of the village square. His GPS directed him onto Cotswold Lane—and announced immediately that he’d reached his destination. His dashboard clock read 8:59 a.m.

He pulled over to the curb under a giant maple just coming into leaf. Looking around, he thought perhaps there’d been a mapping error or that Morgan had given him the wrong address. On his left was the square itself—a parklike rectangle of perfect grass, gravel paths, stone benches, and flower beds with boxwood borders. On his right was a shaded sidewalk and a row of three large Victorian homes whose wide porches were surrounded by lilacs. Nowhere was there anything resembling a police station.

He could just make out the address on the porch post of the home he was closest to. He recognized it as the number he’d entered in his GPS. He headed up the bluestone path that led to the porch steps. There was a discreet plaque mounted on the clapboard siding beside the front door. Just as he got close enough to read the words on it—LARCHFIELD POLICE HQ—the door opened and Mike Morgan stepped out.

“You’re here! I was starting to worry!”

Gurney gestured toward the house. “This is your police station?”

“Yes. I’ll explain later. Right now we need to get to the Russell estate.” He pointed to a driveway beside the house. “Bring your car around back. We’ll go together in mine.”

Gurney drove the Outback around to a parking area behind the house, where he noted three Larchfield police cruisers, two unmarked Dodge Chargers, and Morgan’s Tahoe. As he was getting out of his own vehicle and into Morgan’s, he saw that the areas behind the two adjacent Victorians were also paved parking areas. The vehicles in one were civilian and generally upscale. In the other, there was a metallic-silver Lexus with a rear wheel elevated on a jack.

Morgan explained, “The house on the left is the village hall—mayor’s office, justice of the peace, village board, code enforcement, et cetera. The one on the right is the Peale Funeral Home. The one in the middle is our headquarters. There’s a peculiarity in the village zoning ordinance—an architectural clause that requires public and commercial buildings to conform to residential design standards—part of the historic Russell grip on everything in Larchfield.”

Gurney took a moment to absorb that before changing the subject. “Any developments at the crime scene?”

“Couple of things. One of our guys discovered a surgical scalpel on the floor under some shelving—in a greenhouse-conservatory type of structure on the back of the house. Same area where the break-in took place. There was blood on the scalpel, probably the murder weapon. Looks like the killer stumbled and fell on his way out, and the scalpel got away from him.”

“Prints?”

“Smudged but maybe recoverable. Lab’s doing what they can.” He pressed the start-engine button.

“You said there were a couple of things.”

“The Russells’ dog. It was found in back of the house, out by the woods, dead. Head appeared to have been hit with a hammer. The ME agreed to take a look, but he wasn’t happy about it. Said we should be sending the animal to a veterinary pathologist. Very touchy about his status.” Morgan backed out of his space and headed down the driveway.

Before he got to the end, a dark blue BMW turned sharply into the same narrow passage from the street side, coming to a stop nose-to-nose with the Tahoe.

“Jesus!” Morgan grimaced. He put the big SUV into reverse and slowly backed up into the parking area. The BMW came up the driveway and stopped beside him. Morgan lowered his window. The other driver did the same.

He had close-cropped dark hair, small unblinking eyes, and a downturned mouth. He peered at Gurney for a long moment before turning his attention to Morgan.

“We need to talk.” His tone was emotionless, but his eyes were insistent.

“Definitely,” said Morgan. There was a tic at the corner of his mouth. “But right now I need to get out to Harrow Hill. Do you have any specific information about—”

The man interrupted. “Not about what happened to Russell. But we need to talk. There’s a lot at stake. I’m sure you understand. So, call me. Before noon.” Giving Gurney another once-over, he turned his car around and disappeared down the driveway.

“Jesus,” said Morgan a second time. He exhaled slowly, his hands on the steering wheel.

Gurney stared at him. “Who the hell was that?”

“Chandler Aspern,” said Morgan, as though the name had a sour taste. He put the Tahoe back in drive and drove slowly out of the parking area.

It wasn’t until they reached Waterview Drive, the road encircling the lake, that he spoke again. The tic was still working at the corner of his mouth. “He’s the mayor of Larchfield. For years the sharpest thorn in Angus Russell’s side. They both have enormous manor houses on Harrow Hill. All the land is technically owned by the Russell family, but Aspern has a hundred-year lease on half of it—a lease that Angus Russell was desperate to break.”

“Why?”

“Because the land has quadrupled in value since the terms were negotiated.”

“How much money is involved?”

“It’s conceivable that Aspern could sell the lease to his half of Harrow Hill, with development rights, for somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty million dollars. If Russell could have gotten the lease invalidated, those development rights would have reverted to him. But there was a larger issue than the money. It was about control. Russell was always fiercely determined to get his own way. On top of that, he despised Aspern. And the feeling was mutual.”

“Why did he lease him the land to begin with?”

“He didn’t. The deal was worked out years ago between their fathers, who were business partners, and both of whom died soon after the deal was finalized.”

“So, your victim had at least one serious enemy.”

Morgan burst out in a nervous laugh. “Be nice if it was only one. Control freaks like Angus Russell collect enemies by the dozen.”

“I assume there’s a will. What do you know about his beneficiaries?”

“Best guess is that everything will be funneled through private trusts and there won’t be any significant assets to go through public probate. Maybe none at all. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bulk of his wealth going to his wife and his sister.”

“He had no children?”

“No.”

“Charities?”

“He considered them all frauds.”

“How about close friends? Local institutions?”

“I don’t think he had any friends. As for institutions, one possibility would be his sister’s church. Hilda Russell is the Episcopal pastor of St. Giles—the church on the square with the white spire. And there’s Russell College, endowed by Angus’s grandfather. It overlooks the lake.”

“Is that where you were head of security?”

“Yes.”

“Angus hired you for that job?”

“Yes.”

“Then hired you again as village police chief?”

“Yes.”

“He was empowered to do that?”

“Officially, I was appointed by the village board.”

“But Angus unofficially controlled the board?”

“Angus unofficially controlled a lot of things. Some key people owed him a lot—money, favors, his willingness to keep secret the embarrassing facts he’d discovered about them, et cetera. He had enormous power, and he enjoyed using it.”

“How do you think his death will affect your position?”

Morgan’s jaw muscles tightened visibly, as did his hands on the steering wheel. He started to speak, stopped, then began again. “A lot will depend on how this case turns out . . . how smoothly it’s managed . . . how clear the outcome is.”

“How do you see Aspern in that process?”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Do you see him as a friend or an enemy?”

“Definitely not as a friend. That’s not how he relates to people. He sees everything in terms of transactional allies and enemies—what people can do for him or to him.”

Gurney nodded, trying to organize everything Morgan had told him. But he realized it was way too soon to start pigeonholing information, with so much more to be learned, and he turned his attention to the area they were driving through.

Waterview Drive followed the outline of the lake, which Gurney estimated to be about two miles long and half a mile wide. The homes along it were set on large verdant lots that ran from the shoulder of the road down to the edge of the lake. The properties were separated from each other by lush plantings of laurel and rhododendrons. The homes were mostly big traditional colonials—painted in a muted palette of olives, grays, tans, and deep reddish-browns that reminded him of dried blood.

The cars were as conspicuously upmarket as the real estate. He turned to Morgan, who was chewing obsessively on his lip.

“What sort of people live in Larchfield?”

“Their common denominators are wealth, entitlement, and the willingness to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a house in order to live next to someone else who was willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a house. As usual, the ones who consider themselves the cream of the crop tend to be the scum of the earth.”

Gurney was surprised by the bitterness. “Sounds like you hate living here.”

“Carol and I don’t live here. There’s no way we could afford it, even when she was working. We’re out in the wilderness between here and Bastenburg. Land is cheaper in the middle of nowhere.”

The poor-me attitude was familiar to Gurney from their days in the NYPD. It was getting on his nerves all over again. A mile or so later, with the shimmering blue lake on their left and a dense forested rise on their right, Morgan slowed and turned up into the woods on a dirt-and-gravel lane marked PRIVATE ROAD.

“This is the foot of Harrow Hill—the Russell side of it.”

Gurney peered ahead to where the lane began to climb more steeply through the dark woods. The gloomy greens of ragged hemlocks and ledges of flinty black rock set the hillside far apart from the nearby picture-book world of Waterview Drive.

“Seems a rather cheerless approach for a grand estate,” said Gurney.

Morgan flashed a humorless smile. “Cheerfulness has never been a Russell virtue.”

After ascending through a sequence of sunless switchbacks, they arrived at a gateway in a high stone wall. The ornamental iron gate was open, but a length of yellow police tape was taking its place. Beyond the tape there was a long allée of tall beech trees arching over a beige gravel driveway. Gurney could see, centered at the end of the driveway, the portico of a massive, rectangular stone building. He couldn’t help feeling there was something cold, almost inhuman, in the perfect geometry of it all.

A young officer with a Larchfield PD badge on his sleeve appeared from nowhere with a clipboard, eyeing Gurney through the windshield. Morgan lowered his side window.

“Morning, Scotty.”

“Morning, sir. If you don’t mind, sir, for the crime-scene log, I’ll need the name of your passenger.”

Morgan spelled it out. The officer entered it on his clipboard, lowered the yellow tape, and waved them through.

The arrow-straight driveway split at the end into two matching arcs that met under the portico. A smaller driveway led from the far side of the portico to a six-bay carriage house with a slate roof. Morgan parked in front of the main house behind six other police vehicles: four black-and-white cruisers, an unmarked Dodge Charger, and a gray tech van. Wide cream-colored stone steps led to an entrance door of polished mahogany.

“Quite the palace, eh?” said Morgan. “Built with Cotswold stone that Angus’s grandfather had shipped over from England.”

Gurney noted Morgan’s alternating awe and contempt in the face of Larchfield wealth, but responded only with a noncommittal grunt.

Morgan opened his door. “Where do you want to start? Inside the house or outside?”

“First, I need to understand the personnel situation—who’s on-site, what their responsibilities are.”

“The two main people you’ll meet are Brad Slovak and Kyra Barstow. Brad’s a detective, acting as case CIO and scene coordinator. Kyra’s our main evidence tech and an instructor in the forensic sciences program at the college. We have four patrol officers on-site to assist Brad and Kyra.”

“The medical examiner was here yesterday?”

“Dr. Ronald Fallow. Lives locally, so he got here quickly. He examined the body in situ, transported it to his office in Clarksburg, and scheduled the autopsy for this morning. We might get preliminary findings by the end of the day. Or we might not. Fallow’s not easy to deal with.”

“What did you tell your people about my coming here?”

Morgan ran his tongue across his lips, his gaze fixed on the dashboard. “Basically, I told them that you’re a former NYPD homicide detective, a very successful one, retired, teaching investigative techniques at the academy. And since most of your police experience was in the city, it would be interesting for you to observe how an upstate department like ours approaches a major crime.”

“That’s what you told them?”

“It’s essentially true.”

“You mean, it’s not totally untrue.”

Morgan shrugged off the distinction. His aptitude for using true statements to create misleading impressions had always been one of his dubious talents. In fact, it was a significant ingredient in Gurney’s mixed feelings about getting involved.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s start with a walk around the perimeter.”

6

Since the evidence team had not yet completed their examination of the site, Gurney and Morgan donned regulation sets of white Tyvek coveralls, shoe covers, and nitrile gloves before entering the restricted area.

Gurney, with Morgan following, began his examination on the right side of the huge house, where a lawn sloped away from daffodil beds toward a line of shrubbery at the edge of the natural woodland beyond. He could hear the chirping of birds and the distant ratatatat of a woodpecker. The morning sun was turning the ground-floor windows of the house into gleaming rectangles of light.

A movement at the bottom of one of the windows caught Gurney’s eye. There was a window box full of red tulips, and he thought they might have swayed in a passing breeze. Then he realized what he’d seen moving was actually inside one of the large glass panes. A black cat on the sill had raised its head and was watching him through narrowed amber eyes.

He moved on, seeing nothing unusual on that side of the house, apart from the fact that it looked more like a grand museum than a private home. The back was equally impressive. That was where the conservatory was appended to the main part of the building. Nearly the full height and width of the house, it consisted of an ornate dome-like structure of glass panels set in a framework of intricate arches. A verdigris patina on the metalwork, along with the overall design, gave it a distinctly Victorian look.

Double lines of yellow police tape extended in a widening pattern from the sides of the conservatory out to the woods at least a hundred yards away, enclosing a broad fan-shaped area of the lawn. Lengths of string were laid out in a crisscross search pattern within the enclosure. Two figures in crime-scene coveralls, heads down, were making their way along the outer edge.

Morgan lifted the tape for Gurney to pass under, then followed him. Gurney saw two other Tyvek-suited individuals just inside the glass door—a short, stocky, ruddy-faced man and a tall, dark-skinned woman, engaged in a discussion. The man’s gestures appeared argumentative.

Morgan gestured for them to come outside.

The man came first. His reddish hair was cut in the prevalent law-enforcement style—shaved on the sides, close-cropped on top. His bull neck made his round, cheeky face look small. He acknowledged Morgan in a terse military style. “Sir.”

The woman followed, looking lean and athletic even in her coveralls. Her expression was mildly questioning.

Morgan introduced them. “Brad Slovak, Kyra Barstow . . . Dave Gurney.”

“Sir,” said Slovak again, this time with a deferential nod.

Barstow extended her hand. Gurney shook it. Her grip was strong.

“Any developments?” asked Morgan.

Slovak ran his hand back through the sandy-red stubble on the top of his head and glanced at Barstow before answering. “We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the problem with the fingerprints.”

Barstow shot a sideways glance at him. “There is no problem with the prints.” There was a West Indian lilt in her voice.

Slovak tilted his head from side to side, the movement of someone trying to loosen tight neck muscles. “The suggestion that the prints in the bedroom belong to Billy Tate?” He shook his head. “There has to be another—”

She cut him off. “The man’s prints are the man’s prints. A fact. Not a suggestion. They’re clear, clean, and recent. And there’s the AFIS ID—”

Now he cut her off. “The system isn’t perfect. Mistakes are made. Human error. AFIS has been known to screw up. Their search algorithms depend on human judgment. Nothing in the system is perfect. Point is, everyone we’ve spoken to says Tate was never in the house—and that Angus would have put a bullet in him if he even set foot on the property. Plus, coming anywhere near Angus would have violated the terms of his parole—”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” interrupted Barstow. “Nineteen years. Thousands of prints, thousands of IDs. Never has there been the kind of screwup you’re talking about. Not by me. Not by AFIS.”

A timely ratatatat from the woodpecker in the forest punctuated her assertion.

Slovak repeated his neck-stretching exercise. “I’m just saying—”

Morgan spoke over him, to Gurney. “You were always fascinated by odd little discrepancies. This one make any sense to you?”

“Not yet. But it could be significant.”

“Why?” Slovak’s tone was more curious than challenging.

“Things that make no sense at first often tell you the most in the end.”

Morgan asked Barstow if she had run the prints through the system a second time.

“I did.”

“Same result?”

“The same.”

“Anything come back yet on the bloodstained scalpel?”

“We should hear momentarily if the prints on it are of any use. And maybe get data on the blood by noon.”

“Bloodwork being done at the college lab?”

“With a sample to Albany for confirmation.”

“How about the dog?”

“Dr. Fallow found a piece of fabric in its mouth.”

“That fabric,” interjected Slovak, “could be a major break. The dog probably got his teeth into the intruder’s sleeve or pants leg before getting whacked on the head. Good chance of recovering his DNA from it.”

“Or her DNA,” added Barstow.

Morgan nodded with a tense smile and turned to Gurney. “As long as we’re here at the attacker’s entry point, do you want to go inside and see the murder site?”

“Might as well.”

As they headed for the conservatory door, Morgan’s phone rang. He peered at the screen, grimaced, and took a few steps away. After saying something into the phone—Gurney thought he heard the name “Chandler”—Morgan looked back at Slovak.

“Take Dave through the house. I’ll catch up with you.”

“Yes, sir.” Slovak sounded pleased with the assignment. He strode over to the conservatory door, gesturing to Gurney to join him. He pointed to where a glass pane had been smashed out of its frame. Pulverized remnants were strewn on the concrete floor. Gurney recognized the distinctive shatter pattern of break-resistant glass.

“Was the security system activated?”

“Actually, sir, there isn’t any security system.”

“On an estate like this? Nothing at all?”

“Strange, right?”

Strange indeed, thought Gurney, as he examined the metal frame by the door handle. Every bit of the pane had been pounded out of it.

“Very thorough,” he said, as much to himself as to Slovak. “Almost obsessively so.”

“And well planned,” said Barstow, who had joined them.

“I don’t know about planning,” said Slovak, giving her a testy look, “but this isn’t the work of a burglar with a brick. According to the housekeeper, nothing’s been disturbed and nothing’s missing.”

“Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing,” said Barstow, pointing at the glass on the conservatory floor. “I’d say that shatter pattern resulted from the use of just the right kind of tool for that kind of glass.”

That got Gurney’s attention. “Describe it.”

“A heavy hammer with a small head to concentrate the impact. The injury to the dog’s head looks to have been caused by the same kind of implement.”

Slovak shifted impatiently on his feet. “We’ll get the real answer from Dr. Fallow.”

Barstow’s gaze remained on Gurney. “Unless there’s anything else you want from me, I need to catch up with my team and see how the second perimeter search is going.”

“The second?”

“I like to go through a crime scene at least twice. If you have any questions about on-site evidence, you can reach me anytime through Chief Morgan.” She exchanged nods with Gurney, ignored Slovak, and headed with long elegant strides across the lawn toward the two Tyvek-clad figures at the edge of the woods.

“Okay!” said Slovak with the irritation of a man delayed at a traffic light that had finally turned green. “Let’s get started.”

7

Gurney had been in botanical-garden conservatories before, but never in anything quite like this. A tropical world of trees, shrubs, and flowers was cosseted in the decor of a grand English manor. The planting bed enclosures resembled fine furniture. The little pathways winding among them were of polished yellow stone, edged with satin-finished hardwood.

He followed Slovak under the arch of a wood-framed device with wheels on each of its four corners and a system of overhead pulleys—presumably designed for lifting and moving the heavier plants in their large earth-filled urns.

As they passed through a sliding door into the house itself, the loamy scents of the conservatory were replaced by something equally distinctive—the smell of money enshrined in polished chestnut floors and antique Persian carpets; in paneled mahogany walls and hand-carved balustrades; in fireplaces the size of alcoves; in alcoves the size of living rooms.

Having led Gurney to an alcove off the main dining room, Slovak explained that this was where the discovery had been made—where the blood from the victim’s slashed throat, seeping down through the floorboards, had stained the ceiling and then dripped onto rug beneath it, next to the chair where Mrs. Russell had been seated. “If she’d been just a couple of feet to the left, it would’ve dripped right on her.” He sounded both excited and appalled.

Gurney peered up at the stain on the high ceiling.

“If you want a closer look,” said Slovak, “I can have a ladder brought in.”

“No need. I’d rather see it from the top side.”

Slovak led the way through the dining room into a hallway lined with lifesize portraits of old men in elaborate gilt frames and up a staircase. Gurney noted that segments of the carpeting on several stair treads had been neatly cut out and removed.

The stairs led to a second-floor hallway, from whose carpet two similar excisions had been made. There were several doors along one side of the hallway. One was open, and a plastic crime-scene-containment curtain was hanging in front of it. Slovak held it aside.

“You can go right in, sir. The tech team’s already been through here. Twice. This is the husband’s bedroom. The next one down the hall is the wife’s.”

Gurney pointed to the carpet. “I’m curious about those cutouts.”

“Bloodstains. One was obvious. Others showed up under luminol—partial shoe-prints, like the attacker had stepped in the victim’s blood and tracked it out here. Also a couple of drops, maybe off the scalpel. Barstow cut the carpet pieces out and sent them to the lab. Hopefully, what we get back will answer questions, not just raise more. That business about Tate’s prints . . .” Slovak shook his head, his voice trailing off.

“You sound like you might have . . . some difficulty . . . with your tech officer?”

“I don’t have any difficulty. It’s just that she’s got this attitude thing going.”

“Oh?”

“The superior tone. ‘I’ve been doing this for nineteen years.’ That kind of crap.”

“Has she ever been wrong?”

“Who knows? She pretends to be perfect. But people cover things up, right?”

Gurney decided that this was not the best time to pursue what was likely a routine problem of personal chemistry. He stepped past the plastic curtain into the bedroom.

Everything in there was big—a king-size four-poster bed, a chest of drawers twice the size of his own, and two seven-foot-high armoires on one side of the room; a massive Queen Anne table on a Persian carpet in the middle; and a ceiling-high stone fireplace on the other side. There were three large windows along the wall opposite the doorway.

He went to the nearest window. It overlooked the carriage house, which placed the bedroom on the opposite side of the house from the conservatory—perhaps sufficiently isolated from the breaking of the glass that it might not have been heard.

He turned back to the room, letting his gaze wander around it. Noting dusting powder on most of the hard surfaces, he asked where Barstow had found Billy Tate’s fingerprints.

Slovak pointed at the doorway. “Two of the prints she claims are his were lifted from the doorknobs. And there were some partials on the floor by the bathroom, just outside that area where the blood is.”

Exactly where someone might have knelt to cut off the victim’s finger, thought Gurney, as he made his way to that end of the room.

The size of the bloodstain surprised him. A good six feet in diameter, it filled the area between the side of the bed and the bathroom doorway. The chair Russell had toppled over was in the middle of it. On the wall to Gurney’s right there was a line of dried droplets, which he recognized as the spatter that occurs when a blade is slashed through an artery and specks of blood are sent flying onto nearby surfaces.

“If you want to see what this place looked like when we got here yesterday, I can show you,” said Slovak, taking out his phone and starting to tap icons.

Gurney didn’t answer. He was busy reconstructing the basic elements of the attack in his mind. Angus Russell getting up, half-asleep, going to the bathroom; then stepping out of the bathroom, heading for his bed. His attacker stepping in front of him, scalpel in hand. A sudden backhand slash across the side of the neck—a fatal incision severing both right carotid and right jugular. Russell falling headfirst over the chair.

“Were the lights on when you arrived?” asked Gurney.

“Not the regular lights. Just a small nightlight in a baseboard socket next to the bed. I asked the housekeeper if she’d touched anything when she found the body. She was positive she hadn’t. And the wife was in no condition to touch anything. She passed out in the doorway and was still in a state of shock when we got here.”

Gurney nodded. “So, if Russell had turned on the bathroom light when he went in there, which he must have done, then turned it off as he came out, his eyes probably wouldn’t have adjusted to the semidarkness in the bedroom. He probably never saw his assailant.”

“Right,” said Slovak, nodding. “He comes out of the bathroom. Assailant steps in front of him. One quick, deep slash. Assailant exits the way he entered.”

“But then, on the way out, the assailant dropped what you believe is the murder weapon. Then got attacked by the dog.”

“And killed it.”

“What kind of dog was it?”

“German shepherd. Big male. Even dead it looked scary.”

“They let it out at night?”

“So the housekeeper told us. They had one of those invisible electric dog fences, enclosing about six acres around the house.”

“Do you know where the dog was killed?”

“I assume where we found it. At the edge of the woods, not far from the conservatory.”

“Why do you assume that’s where it was killed?”

Slovak blinked in confusion and ran his hand back over his stubbly hair, as if to aerate a sweating scalp. “Why kill it and move it? That dog weighed over a hundred pounds. You think it matters?”

“It might.”

“I’ll see what we can do to pin it down.”

“Probably a good idea,” said Gurney. “But you’re the CIO on this. You run the case any way you want. It’s your turf, Brad. I’m just an observer, asking questions.”

Slovak gave him a knowing look. “You’re not just any observer.”

“Meaning?”

“When Chief Morgan told us you were coming, I did some research. I found an article in New York magazine from six years ago. Titled ‘Supercop.’”

“Jesus,” muttered Gurney.

“The article said you had the highest percentage of cleared homicide cases in the history of the NYPD, and that you’d worked hundreds of homicides. Hundreds. You know how many I’ve worked? Two—both when I was on loan to the Bastenburg department—and they were both domestics. I also found newspaper articles about cases you solved since you moved upstate—the White River murders and those killings up in Wolf Lake. So, any advice you have for me, I’m ready to listen.”

Gurney’s allergy to flattery led to an awkward silence.

He noted that Slovak was still holding his phone, which he’d taken out when he offered to show Gurney the photos he’d taken of the scene. It seemed like a good path back to the reality of the moment.

Gurney pointed to it. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Slovak tapped an icon, bringing up a series of photos that showed Russell’s body tilted down over the chair in the grotesque face-on-the-floor, legs-in-the-air position Morgan had described. But seeing the body on the phone screen, stripped of every iota of dignity, was different from just hearing about it.

“These are the ones I took,” said Slovak. “Our photographer took a lot more, different angles, plus a video. I can get those for you if you—” He was interrupted by the ringtone of the phone. He took the call. It lasted less than a minute.

“That was Chief Morgan. He wants me to interview the three gardeners, find out if they saw anything, et cetera. Freddy Martinez, our only Spanish-speaking officer, can translate. You can stay up here and get a closer look at things. Chief said he’d join you in a few minutes.”

When Slovak had departed, Gurney’s attention returned to the bloodstained area in front of the bathroom door, but now he was visualizing the revolting images he’d seen on Slovak’s phone.

Over the course of his career, he’d come to accept these disturbing experiences as a natural part of dealing with violent deaths. But being horrified, disgusted, or touched by the details of a brutal crime didn’t help in solving it. For some detectives, those emotions did seem to provide extra motivation, a willingness to go the extra mile. Gurney had never lacked motivation. But his personal motivation to get to the bottom of things—to expose the lies and find the truth—had little to do with empathy for the victim. It came from a colder place in his psyche. It arose from his desire to know.

He could picture himself trying to explain this to Madeleine. And he could imagine her asking, with a skeptical tilt of her head, what had compelled him that morning to get into his car and drive to Larchfield. “Didn’t it have something to do with your feelings about the way Mike Morgan was treated by his father? And your feelings about being alive because of what he did in that South Bronx hallway?”

He could picture himself replying that although his feelings had influenced his decision to be present that morning, they wouldn’t drive his pursuit of the truth. If that pursuit was to begin in earnest, it would be for another reason altogether.

He could picture Madeleine’s likely response—a patient smile.

His phone rang.

He was too logical a man to believe that coincidences were driven by unseen forces, but it gave him a tiny frisson to see Madeleine’s name on the screen.

“Just wanted to let you know,” she said, “our dinner has been moved to tomorrow evening.”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“With the Winklers,” she added. “You might want to put a reminder on your phone.” She paused. “How are things in Larchfield?”

“Hard to say. There’s an odd—” He stopped speaking at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

A moment later, Morgan pushed aside the containment curtain and came into the room, his expression more strained than usual.

“Sorry, Maddie, got to go. Talk to you later.”

Morgan was shaking his head. “Damn! As if the situation wasn’t bad enough by itself, now I’ve got Aspern to deal with. That’s who was on the phone. Expressing his ‘concerns’ about the investigation, the media, the negative impact on the precious image of Larchfield.” His gaze rose to the ceiling, as if searching for an escape hatch.

“What’s his concern about the investigation?”

“That my department may not be up to handling it. Or, more to the point, handling it quickly enough to avoid the town’s reputation being shredded.”

“A reputation he’s heavily invested in?”

“Not just heavily. Totally. Apart from the long-term Harrow Hill lease he inherited from his father, he’s acquired most of the old farms in the immediate area—which he’s been subdividing into ten-acre parcels and advertising as ‘Serene Country Estates Nestled Around a Picture-Book Village.’ Larchfield’s most prominent resident getting his throat sliced open in the middle of the night is not the picture Aspern is trying to promote.”

Gurney glanced toward the gruesome stain on the floor. “Inconvenient facts are still facts. What does he expect you to do?”

“God only knows. Identify the killer this afternoon? Arrest him tonight? Use my magic powers to keep the story out of the news?”

“If Aspern is concerned about your department, why don’t you just turn the case over to the state police? That’s what their Bureau of Criminal Investigation is there for.”

Morgan began pacing around the room, uttering little sounds of misery and indecision. Finally, he stopped and shook his head. “I can’t do that. It would be giving up too soon.” There was something pleading in his tone. “If we could manage it ourselves, that would be ideal. If we can’t, we can’t. But to give up before we’ve hardly gotten started . . .” He shook his head in a way that resembled a shiver.

“Small-town departments ‘give up’ all the time,” said Gurney. “They deal with drug arrests, burglaries, assaults—you know the drill—and hand homicides over to BCI. Simple matter of resources.”

“We have resources. We have an arrangement with the college’s forensic sciences department that gives us access to their state-of-the-art lab. We can get results here faster than BCI can get them from their lab in Albany. Admittedly, our people don’t have much major crime experience—except for Kyra Barstow—but they’re not stupid. They just need some direction.”

Gurney saw in Morgan’s eyes an obstinacy that would make further suggestions to transfer the investigation useless.

“So, your lead guy will be Brad Slovak?”

“You think that’s a mistake?”

“Hard to say, not knowing what your options are.”

Morgan turned toward one of the windows, gazing out at nothing in particular, and sighed. “Brad’s okay. Obviously not in your league. But we’ve got good support from Kyra on the tech side. In any event, it’s the best we can do at the moment.”

Gurney felt uncomfortable with the man’s far-from-subtle plea for help. He walked over to one of the windows and changed the subject. “Have you checked out the other buildings on the property?”

“Of course. Automatic part of securing the site.”

“Find anything of interest?”

“The carriage house was an eye-opener—Angus’s Mercedes, his wife’s Porsche, a big Mercedes SUV, and three vintage Bugattis. I’m guessing a million bucks’ worth of transportation. There are two apartments on the second floor—for the housekeeper and the groundskeeper.”

“Either of them hear or see anything?”

“Zip. We got a lot of detail on what they did that evening—TV shows they watched, when they went to bed, et cetera. But nothing useful. Questions about recent visitors, disputes, problems didn’t produce anything specific. We didn’t hear anything we didn’t already know. Which is that Angus had more than his share of enemies, and his wife is an icy self-centered bitch. But those interviews were limited. We plan to continue them.”

“Slovak handled them?”

“Yes. He also took Mrs. Russell’s statement.”

“While you were making the trip to my house?”

“Right.”

Gurney wasn’t thrilled that Morgan had absented himself from the critical early hours of the case in order to pull him into it. “Besides the main house, conservatory, and carriage house, what else is on the property?”

“A barn for the maintenance equipment, a utility garage for a pickup truck and a couple of four-by-fours, a gardening shed, and Mrs. Russell’s meditation studio. That’s where we’ll meet with her. Let me confirm that she’s up to it.”

He checked the time on his phone and placed a call, which was picked up right away.

“Hi, Glenda . . . How is she? . . . We’ll see her first, Helen Stone second . . . When she comes out of the shower, tell her we’ll be there at 11:15 . . . Right . . . No, Brad’s with the three gardeners. I’m bringing another detective with me . . . No, no need to tell her . . . Any problems, call me.”

He slipped the phone back in his pocket. “You got the gist of that?”

Gurney nodded. “But the gist didn’t include the purpose.”

“The purpose is to amplify the statement she already gave—with any details that might not have occurred to her yesterday.”

“I gather she was in bad shape?”

“It took her a couple of hours to recover from the initial shock. After that she was coherent enough. Her doctor claimed she’d suffered an acute PTSD reaction to the sight of the blood. Rapid onset, rapid recovery.”

“Her doctor was here?”

“He was. A participant in the Russells’ superelite medical plan. Instant house calls—any reason, any time. Premium is seventy-five grand a year to start. Anyway, she didn’t want to stay in the main house, which was fine with us, so she moved out to the cottage. That’s when Brad took her statement. Then her doctor gave her a pill to help her sleep. For the past twenty-four hours we’ve kept a female officer with her.”

“And you want me to sit in on this follow-up interview?”

“Or be an active part of it. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Any special reason?”

The tic returned to the corner of Morgan’s mouth.

“The lady is quite . . . unusual.”

8

Lorinda Russell’s personal cottage stood in the center of a lush lawn bordered by mountain laurels at the end of a mowed trail through the woods. The slate roof had a stone chimney at either end. Bright green ivy softened the edges of the door and window openings, giving the facade a fairytale quality.

As Morgan and Gurney were approaching the front door, it opened, and a female officer came out to meet them. She was unsmiling, with hard eyes that had seen too many bad things.

“Mrs. Russell okay?” Morgan asked.

“She’s on her feet, speaking clearly.” The officer hesitated, glancing at Gurney.

“Detective Gurney is joining me for the interview,” said Morgan. “You can speak freely.”

“She’s gone from basket case to boss of the world. No signs of grief. Nothing. There’s a strange brain behind that movie-star face. Hope I’m not talking out of turn.”

“No problem, Officer. Good time for a break. Come back in half an hour.”

“Yes, sir.” She stepped away, heading in the direction of the main house.

Morgan took a deep breath and led the way through the ivy-framed doorway.

Gurney’s first glance around the interior brought to mind English cottages he’d seen in design magazines in his dentist’s waiting room. With antique oak beams, armchairs in flowery chintz fabric, and a potbellied woodstove set inside a stone fireplace, the place radiated country gentility. But his attention soon shifted from the furnishings to the tall, dark-haired woman standing next to the hearth.

She had the classic features and unblemished skin of a young model. Her beige slacks and white blouse were form-fitting. She was holding a phone, speaking in a calm voice.

“It needs to happen now . . . That’s not my concern . . . Good . . . Correct . . .”

Seeing Morgan and Gurney waiting in the room’s timbered archway, she waved them in without expression, pointing them toward the couch as she concluded her call. “You have the address . . . Tomorrow at nine, no later.”

She tapped an icon on her phone, then greeted Gurney with a perfunctory smile. “I’m Lorinda Russell. Who are you?”

Morgan answered for him. “This is Detective Dave Gurney. My former partner in the NYPD. He’s a homicide expert—the best. I’ve asked for his input on the situation here.”

Her gaze remained on Gurney. “Is Dave a deaf mute?”

Morgan reddened.

Gurney smiled. “Rarely deaf.”

“Good.” She pointed again at the couch. “Have a seat. I need to make another call.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Gurney, still standing.

She had no reaction. As she was swiping through several screens, she asked Morgan, “How soon will your people be finished?”

“Finished?”

“In the house.” She tapped an icon and raised the phone to her ear.

Morgan looked uncertain. “I hope by the end of the day. Why?”

She didn’t answer, speaking into the phone instead. “This is Lorinda Russell. Call me to set a time for the arrival of your crew.” She tapped another icon, laid the phone on the coffee table, waited pointedly for Morgan and Gurney to settle themselves on the couch, then sat in an armchair facing them.

“Did you know that blood is considered a form of hazardous waste?”

Morgan blinked in apparent confusion.

“Finding a competent cleaning company has been a challenge,” she said, her eyes on Gurney. “Some don’t want to deal with bloodstains at all, and only one was willing to deal with this amount of blood. But I’m sure you’re more familiar with the problem than I am.”

In his two-plus decades in the NYPD’s busy homicide division, Gurney had encountered many reactions to the murder of a spouse, but never one like this.

She went on in an even voice. “The blood needs to be removed completely, without a trace, before I can go back in that house.” Her gaze lingered another few seconds on Gurney. There was a flicker of something challenging in her ­expression—something he’d observed in individuals who enjoyed competition.

She switched her attention to Morgan. “Where do things stand with your investigation?”

“At the moment we’re processing evidence. Lab work is underway. We’re gathering video files from private and municipal security cameras in the area. Officers are canvassing nearby residents. Everything possible is being done, and we hope—”

She cut him off. “In other words, right now you know nothing.”

Morgan looked embarrassed. “Lorinda, everything is being done that can—”

“How about you, Detective Gurney? Any input?”

“Just questions.”

“Ask them.” Her fingers began to tap quietly on the arm of her chair.

“In the period leading up to the attack, were there—”

“The murder.”

He raised a curious eyebrow.

“I prefer clarity. It wasn’t just an attack.”

“Okay. The murder. Were you aware of any conflicts in your husband’s business or personal life that could be connected to what happened here?”

She uttered a sharp sound that could have been a cough or a laugh. “Angus’s life was nothing but conflict. He was a warrior. His most endearing trait. But it creates enemies.”

“Any that might be willing to kill him?”

“I’m sure quite a few.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“If you mean anyone that leaps to mind immediately, that would be our wretched neighbor, Chandler Aspern. But I’d be more concerned about the ones that don’t come to mind, wouldn’t you?”

“Aspern comes to mind because of the lease disagreement?”

“That, and because he and Angus hated each other. Quite openly. If it was Chandler who’d been murdered, Angus would be everyone’s favorite suspect. I went through all of this with Detective Slovak yesterday. You should read his report.” She looked with some annoyance at Morgan, then back at Gurney. “Let me ask you something. How much danger do you think I’m in?”

“The killer was in the bedroom next to yours. If you were a target, you’d be dead.”

“So you think I’m safe?”

“Probably.”

“But I shouldn’t bet my life on it?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Her fingers stopped tapping. She was regarding Gurney now as if he were a mystery to be solved. “There’s something bothering you. What is it?”

“I find it interesting that you have no security cameras, no alarms.”

“That’s being rectified. I was on the phone this morning arranging for the installation of a state-of-the-art system.”

“Good idea.”

“Are you being sarcastic—implying it would have been a good idea before Angus was murdered?”

“It certainly would have been a good idea,” said Gurney blandly. “But I’m guessing it was never seriously considered. What I’ve been told about Angus makes me think of someone I knew a long time ago—a powerful man with a lot of enemies and no alarm system. He regarded an alarm as a sign of fear, and fear was an emotion he’d never acknowledge in himself. Fear was the emotion he inspired in others.”

She was looking at him with real interest. “What happened?”

“He underestimated one of his enemies.”

She smiled but said nothing.

Gurney switched gears. “When was the last time Billy Tate was in your house?”

“Four years ago, not long before he was incarcerated. But he wasn’t actually in the house. He was at the front door, demanding payment for some job Angus had hired him to do, but which he didn’t do very well. Angus refused to pay him. That’s what led to the threats and the assault conviction that put him in prison.”

“When was he released?”

She looked at Morgan.

“A year and four months ago.”

Gurney asked her if she’d seen Tate since his release.

She said she hadn’t.

He decided to switch gears again. “Did Angus have a regular time each night when he got up to go to the bathroom?”

“I have no idea.”

“His being up, moving around in the bathroom, that wouldn’t wake you?”

“No.”

“You’re a sound sleeper?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if he was in the habit of getting up more than once?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, considering his age.” Looking suddenly bored, she picked up her phone from the coffee table and glanced at the time. “I have calls to make. Is there anything else you need from me right now?”

“One last thing,” said Gurney, standing up from the couch. “It would be helpful if you could put together a list of people who might welcome your husband’s death.”

“Detective Slovak already asked for that, and I’ll tell you what I told him. If you mean people who’d be glad Angus is dead, the list is endless. If you mean people getting a significant financial benefit from his death, the list is short.”

“Okay. Start with the short list.”

“Hilda Russell. Chandler Aspern. And Angus’s conniving, gold-digging wife.”

Morgan stared at her, his expression frozen.

Gurney asked, “Are those the words people use to describe you?”

“Those, and a lot worse.” She brushed a hair back from her perfect face. There was a combative glint in her dark eyes.

As they were heading back along the path to the main house, there was a jittery edge to Morgan’s chronic anxiety. “What did you think of that?”

Gurney didn’t answer right away. He was unsettled as much by the attitude of the new widow as by his active involvement in a meeting he had intended to simply observe.

“You mean, what did I think of her short list?”

“I mean, what did you think of Lorinda herself?”

Gurney waited for the woodpecker in the forest to conclude a long series of ratatatats before answering. “Conniving and gold-digging might be close to the truth. Also, controlling and smart. But I have the feeling there’s another quality in her, something I can’t put my finger on. How much do you know about her?”

“Larchfield is as gossipy as any small town. People like Angus and Lorinda figure in a lot of stories. People say she was a wild teenager, brought up in a crazy family over in Bastenburg. There’s a unified school district here, so she went to the same high school as the Larchfield kids. The rumor was that there was an inappropriate relationship between her and the school principal, Hanley Bullock, when she was fifteen. She never said anything publicly about it, nothing was ever proven, and it never became a police matter. But in the end Bullock resigned, his wife divorced him, and he moved out of the area.”

“And Lorinda?”

“When she graduated and turned eighteen, she married Angus, who was sixty-­eight at the time and had recently dumped his third wife. That was ten years ago, and people are still talking about it.”

Morgan stumbled forward on a rough spot in the path, just managing to catch his balance. He didn’t speak again until they emerged onto the lawn in front of the conservatory. “We’re going to meet with Helen Stone over in the carriage house.”

“Okay.”

“What about the other two names on her cui bono list?” asked Morgan, as they proceeded across the lawn. “Any thoughts?”

“I’m not sure what I think. What can you tell me about Hilda Russell?”

“Not much more than I told you on our drive over here. She’s Angus’s younger sister, the Episcopal rector of St. Giles on the village square. She and Lorinda are as different as two human beings can be. Except for willfulness. They both have a ton of it.”

“What about her relationship with Angus?”

“They seemed close enough, at least on the surface. In the community, Hilda was better liked than Angus. She didn’t antagonize people the way he did. Although . . .” Morgan slowed his pace, then stopped. “At least one person had a problem with her. Or with her church.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you Billy Tate was killed in an accident the night before Angus’s ­murder—which is why his fingerprints being at the crime scene is so problematic. I didn’t go into the details of his death, because they didn’t seem relevant. He couldn’t have killed Russell. Dead is dead. End of story. But the fact is, the accident that killed Billy Tate occurred at Hilda’s church. On the roof.” He paused. “Tate, as you may have gathered by now, was a bit of a lunatic. A wild child who got wilder as an adult. He was on the roof of St. Giles, spray-painting graffiti on the steeple, with a thunderstorm blowing in. He was struck by lightning, knocked off the roof, fell a good twenty-five feet onto a hard gravel path. Stone-cold dead.”

“This was witnessed by someone?”

“Two patrol officers, a dog-walking couple, Brad Slovak, and yours truly. In fact, we have it all on a phone video, taken by one of the dog walkers. I’ll show it to you back at headquarters—after we talk to Helen Stone.”

9

As they were heading to the carriage house, Slovak approached them. He didn’t look happy.

“Sir,” he said, giving Gurney a crisp nod, then speaking mainly to Morgan. “Martinez and I just finished interviewing the three gardeners. Bottom line, they didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, don’t know anything. I showed each of them our file photo of Tate, asked if they’d ever seen him here, or anywhere near here. All said no.”

Morgan was chewing on the inside of his lower lip. “Talk to Tate’s parole officer, find out if he was making his weekly appointments, if there was anything about him that—”

“Excuse me, sir, I already did that. Tate’s parole period concluded a month ago. The PO told me he came close a couple of times to violating Tate for erratic behavior. But he kept his appointments and didn’t get too far over the line. The PO said he’d heard about the accident. The craziness of Tate being up on that roof in a thunderstorm didn’t surprise him.”

Morgan checked his watch. “This would be a good time to follow up with the guys doing the door-to-doors, see if they’ve discovered anything.”

“Make sure they’re checking for any exterior security cameras,” added Gurney.

“Yes, sir.” With a parting nod, Slovak strode off toward the row of police vehicles under the front portico.

“Well,” said Morgan. “It would be nice if Tate’s print ID is a simple algorithm screwup. If it’s not that, I don’t know what the hell it is. You have any ideas?”

“I’m thinking an algorithm screwup wouldn’t work that way. Let’s say those prints belong to Person X, and the system parameters are set in a way that the prints are mistakenly identified as belonging to someone other than Person X. Doesn’t it seem unlikely that the person the algorithm mistakenly settled on would just happen to be a local resident with a history of conflict with the victim?”

Morgan looked pained. “Okay, but if the prints are Tate’s, where does that leave us? There’s no way around the fact that Tate died at least twenty-four hours before Angus was murdered.”

As Morgan’s voice was rising, he was looking helplessly at Gurney—whose reaction to agitation in others was a countervailing calmness.

Gurney shrugged. “I believe Helen Stone is waiting for us.”

The side of the carriage house, like the cottage, was covered with bright green ivy. An entry door led to a staircase that rose to a small landing and a second door.

The door was opened by a gray-haired, square-jawed woman in a sweatshirt and jeans. Her combative gaze seemed to convey great confidence in her own convictions.

Morgan spoke first. “How are you doing, Helen?”

She stared at him. “Never better.”

“I guess that was a stupid question. Can we come in?”

“If you don’t mind standing. The chairs are being used.”

She stood back out of the doorway, and they stepped into an entry foyer. Straight ahead was a large living room with stacked boxes everywhere and piles of clothing on the chairs and sofa. A window as wide as the room looked out on the lawn and woods.

“This is Dave Gurney,” said Morgan, “a homicide detective I worked with in the city.”

She looked at him without interest, then back at Morgan. “What can I do for you?”

He eyed the boxes in the living room. “Are you going somewhere?”

“With Angus gone, I have no desire to stay here.”

“You don’t get along with Lorinda?”

“You could say that.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I’m not going to talk about her. I don’t want her name in my mouth. I worked here as long as I did because Angus wanted me to. He’s gone, so I’m going.”

“Where to?”

“My sister in Richmond.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I’d leave now if I could get a flight.”

Morgan shot a glance at Gurney, who saw it as a request for assistance.

He smiled at Stone. “You’ve made me curious. What’s the single worst thing you can tell me about the relationship between Angus and Lorinda?”

He could tell that she was thinking about it. That “single worst thing” approach usually worked.

“The worst thing was his inability to see her for what she was. He was brilliant, the smartest man I ever met, except when it came to her. With her, he was a drug addict. In total denial. He treated her like a queen, for God’s sake.”

“It must have been difficult for you, working here under those conditions.”

“Life is difficult. Some can handle it, some can’t.”

A movement behind her in the living room caught Gurney’s attention. Perched atop a china cabinet was a black cat with gleaming yellow eyes, like the one he’d seen watching him from a window in the main house.

He pointed. “Is that yours?”

She looked back over her shoulder. Her voice softened. “That’s Prince. Short for Prince of Darkness. He follows me everywhere.”

“Interesting name for a cat.”

“Appropriate,” she said, then added, looking at Morgan, “Was there anything else?”

He blinked, as if his mind had been elsewhere. “I was wondering if anything occurred to you since yesterday.”

“I went over everything with your detective.”

Morgan seemed about to ask another question when he was stopped by a sharp rapping.

Stone stepped around him and pulled the door open. “Yes?”

It was Kyra Barstow. She looked past Stone at Morgan. “Sir, we need to talk.”

He excused himself and went out onto the landing, closing the door behind him.

Stone stared impatiently at Gurney.

“Tell me something,” he said. “You knew Angus pretty well, right?”

“Probably better than anyone.”

“So you probably have a better idea than anyone who his enemies were.”

“That Slivovak person asked me to make a list. I told him he should go make a copy of the county phone book.”

“Angus generated that much animosity?”

“He was a strong, determined man. He lived by a code that’s gone out of style. Old Testament morality. Eye for an eye. Our so-called ‘society’ has gotten away from that, and we’re paying the price. Angus didn’t suffer fools gladly. He spoke his mind. The plain truth. People don’t like the truth.”

The apartment door opened abruptly and Morgan stepped in, agitated and apologetic. “Something’s come up. Dave, I need you to come with me. Helen, we’ll talk again before you leave.”

Gurney followed Morgan down the staircase and out onto the lawn.

“We have to get back to town,” Morgan said as he strode toward the police vehicles under the portico.

Kyra Barstow was already there, by the tech van, tapping the screen of her phone. Morgan got into the driver’s seat of the Tahoe, motioning Gurney to the passenger seat.

“The lab results are in,” he said, starting the engine. He didn’t say anything more until they’d driven through the allée and past the uniformed officer at the gate.

“The scalpel that Slovak found in the conservatory? The blood on it is Angus’s. And the bloody prints on it? They belong to Billy Tate. That piece of fabric in the dog’s mouth? The trace of blood on it belongs to Billy Tate. And there were micro-particles of glass in the fabric that match the smashed pane from the conservatory door. As for the blood traces on the staircase and hall carpets? The blood on the shoe prints is Angus’s—probably from being stepped in. But one of the droplets on the carpet is Tate’s.”

“Tate is definitely dead, right?” asked Gurney.

“I saw it happen. I saw the lightning hit him. I saw him fall. I saw the ME pronounce him dead. I saw the body get wheeled into the mortuary.”

“Sounds pretty definite. You have a next step in mind?”

“I told Kyra to call Brad, fill him in on the lab findings, then meet us at headquarters. I called Peale, asked him to check the mortuary.”

“To make sure your dead suspect is still dead?”

Morgan’s eyes widened in desperation. “I guess. I don’t know. Dead is dead, right? It’s not a temporary condition.” His phone rang. He pushed the speaker button on his steering wheel.

“Chief Morgan here.”

“This is Danforth Peale.”

“Thanks for getting back so quickly. You checked?”

“Where are you?” There was a harsh note in the man’s patrician accent.

“On Waterview Drive. On my way into the village. Is everything . . . all right?”

“You wouldn’t have sent me on this peculiar errand if you expected everything to be all right, would you? You knew damn well something was wrong.”

Morgan’s mouth was slightly open—the look of a man staring at calamity.

The waspy voice went on, ragged at the edge. “The body is gone.”

“Say that again?”

“Gone. Somebody stole Tate’s goddamn body.”

10

Morgan pulled into the parking area behind the big Victorian funeral home, stopping next to the silver Lexus with the jacked-up rear axle.

After he made calls to Slovak and Barstow, giving them the missing-body news and telling them to come directly to the mortuary, he turned to Gurney. “What do you think’s happening here?”

“Hard to say. But it’s an interesting development.”

“Why the hell would someone steal the body?”

Gurney didn’t answer him.

Morgan got out of the Tahoe, lit a cigarette, and began sucking on it as though the smoke were oxygen. Slovak came barreling up the driveway in an unmarked Dodge Charger, followed by Barstow’s tech van.

Morgan ground out his cigarette on the pavement. Barstow opened the back doors of her van and produced four sets of crime-scene coveralls—which would have been overkill at a normal burglary, but was appropriate here, given the missing body’s connection to a murder.

Slovak was the first to speak. “So, what’s the theory? Somebody snatched Tate’s corpse and dragged it into Russell’s house to leave trace evidence? Doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“Not necessarily the whole corpse,” said Barstow lightly. “All the killer needed to bring was a little blood for the carpet, maybe some for the fabric in the dog’s mouth, plus a finger or two to make the prints. We know from the mutilation of the victim’s hand that the killer was adept at cutting off fingers.”

Slovak winced. “Then why go to the trouble of carrying the whole body away?”

“Good question.” She looked at Gurney. “Any ideas?”

“Too soon for ideas. We need more information.”

On cue, the back door of the funeral home opened, and a man stepped into the parking area. His pink cashmere sweater and green slacks struck Gurney as being more suited to a golf course than a funeral home.

“Morgan! Get in here.”

It was the same arrogant voice Gurney had heard on the speaker in the Tahoe. The man who’d called himself Danforth Peale looked to be in his late twenties. He had neatly combed blond hair, a pale complexion, and a pouty mouth.

Morgan offered a brittle smile. “Be with you in a second, Dan. Just getting prepared.”

With everyone in coveralls, shoe covers, and nitrile gloves, they followed Peale into a hall that smelled of antiseptic. At the end of it was a closed door.

Peale turned to Morgan, his voice tight with anger. “That’s the embalming room with the cadaver-storage unit. When you called, I came down from my office and discovered the damn mess in there. I didn’t touch a thing.”

He led them into a large clinical-looking space, similar to an ME’s autopsy room. The disinfectant odor was stronger here. In the center was a gleaming white embalming table, hooked up to specialized plumbing equipment for irrigation and draining. An operating-room lighting fixture was suspended from the ceiling above it. Glass cabinets lined the walls. The glass door on one of them had been smashed.

What captured Gurney’s attention, however, was the cadaver-storage unit on the other side of the embalming table. Seven feet high and at least that wide and as deep, it resembled a giant safe or industrial walk-in closet. Its door, nearly the full width of the unit, was wide open. Inside, a casket with its lid raised rested on a mortuary trolley, similar to the rolling stretchers used in hospitals. Inside the casket was a bloodstained fabric liner. Gurney could see an area on the edge of the lid where the wood was splintered.

“Damned idiots did that,” said Peale, following Gurney’s gaze. “There’s a latch under the side rail, but they didn’t take the time to find it. They just pried open the lid.”

“They?” said Gurney. “You have reason to believe it was more than one person?”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it? Tate’s body weighed at least a hundred fifty pounds. And the trolley is still where I left it in the unit. Meaning the body was lifted out of the casket and carried out of the building. Damn near impossible for one person.”

Slovak was stroking his chin in a near-parody of thoughtfulness. “Unless he, or she, rolled the casket out to the back door on that trolley thing, pried the top off, dragged the corpse into the trunk of their car, then rolled the trolley back in here.”

Barstow was staring at him. “Why would they take the time to replace the trolley?”

Morgan, who Gurney knew abhorred any conflict he might be called on to resolve, interrupted with a raised hand. “Let’s debate the scenarios later.” He turned to Peale. “Have you seen any signs of forced entry?”

Peale pointed to a doorway off the main room. His sweater sleeve rode up a few inches on his wrist, revealing what appeared to be a gold Cartier watch. “The window in there is open. It was closed the last time I was down here.”

“Closed and locked?”

“Maybe not locked. I’m not sure.”

“Apart from the broken casket and open window, has anything else been disturbed?

“Obviously that,” Peale said, pointing to the smashed glass door of the case on the wall.

“Was something taken?”

For the first time, the haughtiness in Peale’s voice was diluted with something that sounded like fear. “Five surgical scalpels and one bone mallet.”

Barstow spoke up. “Could you describe the mallet?”

“My largest. Ten-inch handle. Lead-weighted head. Narrow-diameter striking surface. Why do you ask?”

“Long story.”

Morgan returned to his own line of questions. “Are you aware of anything else that’s been taken or disturbed?”

Peale pointed to an area on the bare wall between two cabinets. “There are some peculiar scratches over there.”

Morgan and Barstow stepped closer, peering at a horizontal number eight with a vertical line through the middle of it. It appeared to have been scraped into the paint with a sharp-pointed instrument. Barstow pulled out her phone and took a photo.

“Anything else?” asked Morgan.

“No, apart from that, everything is wonderful!”

Morgan’s mouth tightened. He spoke with the forced evenness of a man defusing a bomb. “This would be a good time to turn the room over to Kyra. Her crime-scene team will go over it with a fine-tooth comb. If the intruders left any evidence behind, they’ll find it. In the meantime, I’d like to get a broader picture of the situation—especially the time period between the arrival of Tate’s body and its removal. You mentioned having an office upstairs. That might be a good place to talk, unless you’d rather come next door to headquarters.”

Peale stared at him for a long moment before answering, as if anger at the desecration of his workplace was getting in the way of his ability to think. “My office . . . is fine.”

Gurney, meanwhile, had noted what he suspected was the lens of a discreet security camera mounted atop the hinge bracket of one of the wall cabinets.

He pointed to it. “Is that what I think it is?”

Peale looked up, reluctantly, it seemed. “I’m afraid so.”

11

Danforth Peale’s “office” had little in common with the image the term brought to mind. With the exception of a handsome walnut file cabinet and a laptop computer on a small Hepplewhite table, there was no hint of it being a place where business was conducted, even the genteel business of burying the wealthy dead.

The old-money look of the furnishings evoked the cozy den of an Ivy League dean. One wall was covered with sepia prints of what Gurney guessed were the winning boats in various yacht races, another with old botanical prints. Four damask-­covered Queen Anne chairs were grouped around an oval coffee table. In the center of the table stood a Chinese vase.

Peale gestured to the chairs as he chose one for himself. Once they were all seated, he spent a few seconds flicking invisible specks off his sweater before looking up with a strained smile.

Morgan cleared his throat. “I’d like to hear more about that security camera in the embalming room—and your whole security setup.”

Peale sat back and crossed his legs. The preppy loafers visible below the cuffs of his green pants looked expensive. He steepled his fingers thoughtfully in front of his chin. “Three or four years ago, some vandals from Bastenburg broke into the embalming room. They were observed by a neighbor and apprehended almost immediately. No damage was incurred beyond a forced lock on the back door. But it did raise a concern, and I brought in a security expert who installed a state-of-the-art system. Supersensitive to sound and motion, audio-tropic, video-tropic, hi-def, full color.”

Slovak interrupted. “Sorry, sir? Audio-tropic? Video-tropic? Could you—?”

Peale cut him off. “The camera lens pivots automatically in the direction of any detected sound or motion, follows it, and transmits it—to be recorded on that computer.” Peale pointed to the laptop on the Hepplewhite table. “Wonderful theory. Horrible reality.”

“Sir?”

Peale addressed his answer to Morgan and Gurney. “The damn system’s strength is its weakness. Its level of sensitivity makes it a waste of my time. There’s a street that runs in back of my parking area. Every damn vehicle that passed set off the system’s functions. Every single morning, on that computer, I would have a series of videos of the rear wall of the embalming room—which, as far as the camera was concerned, was the source of the sound of the passing cars. All those hi-def files ate up the computer memory.”

“So you turned it off?” asked Morgan.

“Not entirely.” Peale flicked another invisible speck off his sweater and re-­steepled his fingers. “I left the search and transmit functions on, since I’m often here in the evening and I can glance at that computer screen to see if anything problematical is occurring. In fact, nothing ever is. But I did turn off the record function.”

“So, the basic monitoring function is on all the time?”

“Just from nine in the evening till six in the morning. To my knowledge, Larchfield’s never had any daytime crime at all.”

“So,” said Morgan with a summarizing frown, “if you were in this office the night of the body’s removal, you would have witnessed it happening on that computer?”

“Correct.”

“But no recording was made.”

Peale’s voice hardened. “Also correct. Infuriatingly so.”

“It would be helpful if you could take us through everything that happened between the time you took possession of the body and the last moment you saw it.”

Peale raised his hands in objection. “Let’s be clear about that ‘possession’ term. I was told that the deceased’s next of kin, Darlene Tate, had requested that the body be brought here, pending a decision regarding its final disposition. I complied with that request as a courtesy, not as a legal transfer of possession. I agreed purely as a temporary matter of accommodation to the bereaved.”

Morgan looked at Slovak, as if for confirmation.

Slovak nodded his assent to Peale’s account and added some details, seemingly for Gurney’s benefit. “During my call to Billy’s stepmother, she asked that the body be taken here. She said she’d come as soon as she could to discuss arrangements. Since the fatal accident had been witnessed by Chief Morgan, myself, and the couple who photographed it happening, Dr. Fallow waived the need for an autopsy.”

Perhaps in response to a look of surprise on Gurney’s face, Slovak added, “In addition to being a local physician, Dr. Fallow is the county’s part-time medical examiner—so he gets to make the autopsy decisions.”

“He signed a preliminary death certificate?”

“Yes, sir, he did,” said Slovak. “Right after we brought the body in on the trolley.”

“He arrived that quickly?”

“Yes, sir. He lives right here in the village. As soon as we saw Tate fall, we called him—in his capacity as a regular medical doctor. When he examined Tate on the ground, he pronounced him dead, then signed the certificate in the embalming room.”

Peale resumed his narrative, again addressing himself to Morgan. “As I was saying, I was informed that Darlene Tate would be arriving with further instructions.”

“Did she show up as promised?”

“Sooner than I’d expected. Around four thirty that morning. I was still here in the office.”

Morgan asked, “Did she give you specific instructions at that time?”

“Indeed she did. Specific and unnatural.”

“Unnatural in what way?”

“First of all, she insisted on conducting our meeting down in the embalming room rather than my office. She asked to see the body. I cautioned her concerning the brutal effect of the lightning strike on the side of his face. It was a burnt vertical gouge, with some of the bone over the eye and cheekbone exposed. But she insisted that I wheel the body out of the storage unit so she could see it. Reluctantly, I ­complied—fully prepared for a shocked reaction. The shock was my own, when I saw the look on her face.”

He paused before adding, “She was smiling.”

Morgan grimaced. “Smiling?”

“Radiantly.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She asked if Billy was really dead.”

“And you told her he was?”

“Of course.”

“How did she react to that?”

“She said, ‘Let’s hope he stays that way.’ Honestly, it gave me the shivers.”

“God,” muttered Morgan. “Did she provide you with funeral instructions?”

“Only that there was to be no embalming, no obituary, no visitation hours, no service of any kind.”

“Did she make any other requests?”

“She said she needed a couple of days to decide on a location for the burial, and she asked me to keep the body here until then.”

“And that was it?”

“Not quite. She wanted to pick out a casket immediately. I keep a limited selection in a display room downstairs. She picked the cheapest one. Then she insisted that I place the body in it, at that moment, while she watched. I would normally refuse such a request. But I was desperate to be rid of her, so I did. It was awkward, unsanitary, and unprofessional. The clothing of the deceased was still wet in places where there’d been bleeding.” Peale sighed and shook his head.

Slovak looked appalled.

Morgan leaned forward in his chair. “What happened then?”

“I had removed some personal effects from the pockets of the deceased’s jeans and sweatshirt—a nearly empty wallet, a phone, a car key—and I suggested that she take them. But she said no. Absolutely not. She demanded that her stepson’s body be left just as it was. She was adamant.”

Slovak looked confused. “Did she say why?”

Peale continued to speak directly to Morgan, as if underscoring a preference for addressing only the highest-ranking person in the room. “She said she wanted everything he had to rot in his grave with him. Rot in his grave. Her exact words.”

Morgan asked Peale if he put those belongings in the casket with the body.

“Yes. I laid them on the body, dressed just as it was—in the bloodstained hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. I closed the casket. I latched it. I rolled it into the refrigerated storage unit. I shut the door. And finally, thank God, I was able to bid farewell to that woman.”

“And the next time you visited the embalming room? When was that?”

“When you called me an hour ago and asked me to check on Tate’s body.”

Morgan appeared to be struggling to assimilate everything Peale had said. Eventually, he turned to Gurney. “You have any questions?”

About a dozen, he thought. But this was not the best time to ask them.

12

After leaving Peale, Gurney, Morgan, and Slovak went down to the embalming room, where Kyra Barstow was supervising the work of the two Tyvek-clad evidence techs Gurney had observed that morning on the lawn of the Russell estate.

Morgan asked if Barstow could come next door for a meeting at headquarters. She said that she’d join them in a minute; first, she needed to give her team some additional instructions for the examination of the casket.

True to her word, she arrived in the conference room just as Gurney, Morgan, and Slovak were taking their seats. Morgan ran his fingers over the satiny tabletop and gestured at the room’s thick carpeting and mahogany paneling. “Just like our old precinct house,” he said, making an obvious joke.

Gurney forced a smile at the memory of the stained floor tiles, cheap plastic chairs, and scarred tabletop in the detectives’ meeting room in the converted tenement building with its noisy pipes, temperamental heating system, and ubiquitous mice. He might have smiled more easily if he didn’t interpret the comment as an attempt to remind him yet again of their history together, its inescapable debt.

Morgan turned to Barstow. “Anything of interest in Peale’s embalming room?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Plenty of fingerprints, shoe prints, fibers, hairs, bloodstains. I’ll get the lab to work through the night. By tomorrow morning we should have some results in hand.”

Morgan looked pleased, or at least less worried. “Let’s take a few minutes to assess what we learned from Peale and prioritize next steps. Who wants to start?”

Slovak raised his hand like a schoolboy. “Detective Gurney has been really quiet. I’d love to hear his thoughts.”

“You and me both,” said Morgan. “Dave?”

“You mentioned there’s a video of Tate’s accident, taken by a witness.”

Morgan nodded. “It’s been downloaded to our evidence archive. You want to see it?”

“Very much so.”

Morgan began manipulating an app on his phone. A burnished wood panel in the conference room wall slid open, revealing a large monitor. After a few more swipes and taps on his phone, the big screen came to life, showing a nighttime image of a white church facade, illuminated by a streetlamp at the edge of what Gurney recognized as the village square. The steeple of the church was framed by a black sky.

Gurney’s attention was attracted by a shadowy figure on the sharply pitched roof next to the base of the steeple. The camera began to zoom in slowly. The shadowy figure—in black pants and a gray hooded sweatshirt—moved closer to the edge of the roof and became illuminated by the streetlamps below.

Slovak leaned toward Gurney. “That’s Billy Tate.”

Gurney could see that Tate was holding a can of something in one hand and grasping the corner of the steeple with the other.

Three flashes lit up the sky in rapid succession, followed by a long rumble of thunder.

Tate began moving the can in a curving motion along the side of the steeple.

Two blue-white flashes lit the sky, more brightly this time, followed by louder thunder.

A still-brighter flash created an eerie silhouette of the steeple and the hooded figure next to it. The flash was followed almost immediately by the crashing of thunder, and a few seconds later by another flash and another crash.

Slovak pointed at the screen. “It’s coming now . . . right after this next wind gust.”

Bits of debris, leaves, and dust were roiled up into the air and whirled past the front of the church. Tate stepped in closer to the steeple, bracing his body against it.

“Watch,” said Slovak excitedly. “Here it comes . . .”

A blinding lightning bolt blasted Tate away from the steeple and over the edge of the roof. With a fast downward sweep, the camera followed the body’s fall to the ground.

Gurney flinched, not just at the sight of the impact but at a sound embedded in his memory—as vivid at that moment as the day he heard it, while he was still a probationary officer in the NYPD. An addict had jumped from a sixth-floor apartment window and struck the pavement less than ten feet from where Gurney was standing. The stomach-turning sound of the body hitting the ground had stayed with him for three decades.

While the camera remained on Tate’s inert form, two uniformed officers rushed into the scene, followed by Slovak, followed by Morgan—both in civilian clothes. Slovak knelt next to the body and went through an extended check for vitals. One of the uniformed officers initiated CPR, shouting at the same time for a defibrillator. Slovak could be seen taking out his phone.

Morgan fast-forwarded the video to a later point where a man in chinos and a loose cardigan entered the area with a small leather bag. He squatted by the body and applied a stethoscope to the chest and carotid artery. Because of the position of the camera it was difficult for Gurney to be sure, but the man seemed to be palpating the neck area, then checking the eyes. After a while, he stood up and spoke to Slovak and Morgan and a third officer, all of whom had been closely observing the examination.

Morgan stopped the video and turned to Gurney. “The guy you just saw examining Tate is Dr. Fallow.”

After another fast-forwarding, the video showed a rolling stretcher being guided toward the body. Gurney recognized the man pushing it as Peale. There was some discussion between him and the doctor, after which Peale, Morgan, Slovak, and one of the uniformed officers lifted the body onto the stretcher. With Peale leading the way, Morgan rolled the stretcher out of the frame.

At that point he stopped the video again.

“Any questions?”

“From the point at which the video begins, until the body is removed, how much time elapses?” asked Gurney. “With the fast-forwarding, I couldn’t tell.”

“There’s an embedded time code, which I disabled for this viewing, since it’s a bit of a distraction. The total time from start to finish is a little less than an hour. The first twenty minutes or so is devoted to Tate on the roof. What I showed you starts at the end of that portion. The full version includes the defibrillation efforts, the arrival of the EMTs in an ambulance, along with two police cars from Bastenburg.”

“How did Tate get up on the roof?”

“There’s an interior ladder that goes up into the steeple, and a door in the back of the steeple that opens onto the roof.”

Gurney turned to Slovak. “Is graffiti the reason Tate was up there?”

“Reason doesn’t mean much when you’re talking about Billy Tate.”

“Tate hated Angus, and the pastor of St. Giles is Angus’s sister,” said Morgan. “So, it could have been a way of lashing out at him.”

Barstow was frowning. “There’s something I’d like to see again. Could you take the video back to the point just before the final lightning bolt?”

Morgan did as she asked.

“There!” she said, peering intently at the screen. “On the side of the steeple, about waist-high where Tate is standing. Can you enlarge that area?”

Morgan went through a series of taps and swipes on his phone, and that portion of the scene expanded to fill the frame.

“It’s not very clear,” said Barstow, “because of the angle of the camera and the limited lighting from the streetlamp, but you can make out the graffiti. See the curving, intersecting lines?”

They all leaned forward, studying the area she was pointing at.

“Now look at this,” she said, holding up her own phone.

On the screen was the photo she’d taken in the embalming room of the figure scratched into the wall paint—a horizontal number eight with a rough line bisecting it.

The murky graffiti on the steeple had the same shape.

Morgan’s worry lines deepened. “Any idea what that thing is supposed to be?”

“While you guys were up in Peale’s office, I checked the internet to see if I could find anything like the figure on the wall,” said Barstow. “It might be just a coincidence, but it resembles the ancient alchemy symbol for sulfur.”

“Sulfur?” Slovak uttered a dismissive grunt. “What’s sulfur got to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Barstow. “Except that the site where I found it said that sulfur was once believed to be the main ingredient in hellfire. Because of that connection, some people who called themselves Satanists adopted the symbol as their emblem.”

Her explanation produced a fraught silence.

“Am I missing something here?” asked Gurney.

Morgan shifted uneasily in his chair. “Billy Tate’s girlfriend, a woman by the name of Selena Cursen, is supposedly involved in witchcraft—whatever that means.”

“The Rich Witch,” said Barstow.

Gurney stared at her. “The what?”

“The Rich Witch. Her parents set her up with a fat trust fund, probably because they knew she was unemployable. Dabbles in all sorts of occult nonsense. Big spooky house in the woods. Soulmate of Billy Tate, ever since he got out of prison. Dresses in black. Silver studs in her lips. Very intense gaze—like she’s imagining a plan she has for you. Makes a lot of people uncomfortable.”

“She’s a loner?” asked Gurney. “Or is there a local group she’s part of?”

“I’ve never heard of any group,” said Barstow. “You, Chief?”

Morgan shook his head. “Far as I know, the only creepy group around here consisted of her and Tate.” He paused for moment, then spoke to Slovak. “Brad, you need to pay Selena Cursen a visit. The symbol scratched on Peale’s wall is enough to make her a person of interest in the theft of the body. But go easy. Offer your condolences. Tell her you’re just following up on the accident. Try to get a sense of how she reacts to questions about Tate. Don’t say anything that might trigger her to clam up or call a lawyer.”

Slovak looked less than happy. He rotated his shoulders like a weightlifter working out a cramp. “If that figure eight thing suggests she’s involved, how about we get a search warrant for her house, go in there and tear it apart?”

Morgan shook his head. “The figure eight may not mean what we think it does. Too loose a connection for a judge to issue a warrant. We need more.”

“I have a question,” said Gurney. “The video of the accident shows you and Brad helping to lift Tate onto the stretcher. Did you get a clear view of his face?”

Morgan nodded. “Perfectly clear.”

“So, you have no doubt that the person who fell off that roof was, in fact, Billy Tate?”

“No doubt at all. You, Brad?”

Slovak shook his head emphatically. “Zero doubt.”

“Even with the lightning damage to his face?” asked Gurney.

“The damage was awful,” explained Morgan, “but only to the left side. The right side was untouched. No one at the scene had any doubt about his identity. It’s one of the few things about the case I am sure of.” He gave Gurney a questioning look. “You seem puzzled.”

“I’m trying to understand the connection between the theft of Tate’s body and the murder of Angus Russell. I don’t see the purpose of putting a dead man’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. Stealing the body involved a major risk, but I don’t see a payoff that would justify it. If Tate was dead before Russell was killed, we’re obviously not going to believe he was the perp. So what was the point of leaving that phony evidence in Russell’s house?”

“Maybe the killer has a really twisted sense of humor,” suggested Slovak.

Gurney shook his head. “If it was just the killer’s macabre idea of a joke, the trouble he took to pull it off seems way out of proportion. And as a form of misdirection, it makes no sense. It makes me wonder what I’m missing.”

Morgan flashed a rare smile. “That gives me hope. Back in the city, every time you zeroed in on an odd fact in a case, it led to the solution.”

“Speaking of oddities,” said Gurney, “that meeting Peale described with Darlene Tate was hardly normal. Did something happen between her and her stepson that explains it?”

Slovak spoke first. “Billy Tate and I were in high school at the same time, a year apart. There was a rumor circulating about him and his stepmother. Pretty X-rated stuff.”

“They were having sex?”

“It was just a rumor at first, but when his father shot him, that seemed to seal the deal.”

“His father shot him?”

“Five times. EMTs thought at first he was dead. But he recovered. His father’s doing a minimum twenty in Attica for attempted murder.”

“When did this happen?”

“Ten, twelve years ago. Billy was a junior at Larchfield Academy.”

“The relationship between Billy and Darlene—did that situation continue after high school?”

“I don’t know. For a while, people got tired of talking about it. But it came back to life when Billy got involved with Selena Cursen. When that started up, somebody fired a few shotgun blasts into Selena’s house. We got an anonymous call that it was Darlene, but there was no way to make the case.” Slovak looked at Morgan for confirmation.

Morgan shrugged. “No witnesses. No evidence. But plenty of bad feelings all around.”

“Your idyllic part of the world sounds remarkably messy,” said Gurney.

Slovak nodded. “The thing is, the guys on the village board made sure the media reported that the Tates lived in Bastenburg, not Larchfield. I bet they’d love to say Angus got killed in Bastenburg, if they could.”

Morgan’s fingers were tapping restlessly on the table. “Okay. Time for next steps. Dave, any thoughts on priorities?”

“Only the obvious ones. The body theft probably required more than one person. A vehicle must have been used to transport it. Someone may have seen it being loaded in back of the funeral home, or unloaded at its destination—possibly the Cursen property? Assuming this happened after dark, the body theft would have occurred after eight the evening following the accident, and it, or parts of it, would have been brought to the Russell house in the time window the ME estimated for Angus’s death—3:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. It would make sense to focus your door-to-door inquiries on what people may have seen roughly between nightfall and dawn.”

Morgan nodded his agreement. “Brad, I want you to get on that ASAP.”

Slovak grimaced. “I have all the guys doing door-to-doors around Harrow Hill. I don’t have anyone left to do the same thing around the funeral home or out by Selena’s place.”

“Split your people up. Or borrow officers from Bastenburg. Your choice.”

Morgan turned to Barstow. “Kyra, you stay on top of the crime-scene processing at Peale’s and the overnight lab work. Call me as soon as you get results. Is there anything I’m missing?”

She smiled. “You heard Peale’s description of his stolen bone mallet?”

He nodded. “It sounded like your description of the sort of hammer used to break into the conservatory.”

“And to kill the dog.”

“Right. The hammer does seem to link the body thief directly to the Russell break-in. Brad, when the scalpel comes back from the lab, show it to Peale. See if he can confirm it’s one of the five taken from the embalming room. Dave, any other ideas?”

“Peale said he left Tate’s phone in the casket. The body thief may have taken it. If it’s turned on and the battery is still alive, it can be pinged and located. You should also get a warrant for Tate’s recent call records and text messages.”

Morgan asked Slovak to follow up immediately on both suggestions. Then he took the sort of deep breath that precedes a difficult topic.

“There’s one final issue. The media situation. So far, it’s been manageable. Tate’s death was covered as a freak accident, with no mention of the lurid stories surrounding his background or his hostility toward Russell. Angus’s murder received broader attention in the upstate media markets—Albany, Syracuse, Rochester—and we’re getting some pressure from reporters for updates. But that’s nothing compared to the tornado that’s going to hit us when word gets out that there may be a connection between the two deaths. What I’m saying is, be ready for a god-awful storm. Give out no information. Refer all questions to me.”

13

After Slovak and Barstow left to pursue their assignments, Morgan leaned back in his chair and let a slow exhalation puff out his cheeks. His gaze moved slowly around the conference room, stopping at the big recessed screen. He picked up his phone and tapped a series of icons, and a wood panel slid across the opening. He ran a finger lightly along the polished tabletop.

“An example of Angus’s largesse. The man was hell-bent on everything in Larchfield being first class.”

After a silence, he spoke again without looking at Gurney. “I remember you once saying that asking for help wasn’t a sign of weakness, it was a sign of sanity. You still believe that?”

“I do.”

“I’m glad you came here today.”

Gurney said nothing.

“You’ve been a huge help. Huge. The situation here is turning into . . . I don’t know what, but I know it’s the kind of thing you’re better at than I am. And it’s obvious that Brad and Kyra have tremendous respect for you.” His gaze met Gurney’s. “How are you feeling about your involvement?”

“Honestly? Like a fifth wheel. I know you want help, but an outsider in an undefined position with no legal standing doesn’t strike me as the kind of help you need. You and your people know Larchfield better than any outsider ever could.”

The tic was back at the corner of Morgan’s mouth. “There’s something I haven’t told you. About my personal situation here. A complication. When I was heading up security at Russell College, I did some extra jobs for the Russells. Private investigations. Background checks on people Angus was doing business with. Things like that.”

“For which you were paid?”

“Generously. Which is part of the problem.”

“Oh?”

“What I mean is, a previous relationship like that . . .’’

His voice trailed off. He started over, addressing his comment to the ceiling as if it were a softening filter between himself and Gurney. “In a high-profile case like this, a previous relationship can bite you in the ass. So, I’m trying to insert some distance. Establish a framework of objectivity. You get what I’m saying?”

“I get that things here are more tangled up than you told me.”

Morgan nodded, now looking at the floor. “I don’t know why I didn’t mention it before. Compared to everything else going on . . . I guess it didn’t seem that urgent. And there’s something else—I might as well lay it all out. A situation with my wife is occupying a lot of my brain. I didn’t want to dump this on you. But I guess you have a right to know. So there are no secrets between us.”

Gurney waited for him to go on.

“After the city, the job at Russell College felt like a gift. It headed off any speculation or questions about my exit, because ‘Director of Security’ at a classy private college sounded like a step up. I didn’t just land on my feet, I landed in Shangri-La. I barely noticed that Carol wasn’t all that thrilled. I figured with her social work and nursing degrees she could find a job up here, no problem. The only thing that mattered to me was my opportunity. My career.” He paused, shaking his head.

When he continued, his voice was thick with regret. “So we made the move. But once we got here, reality set in. Things weren’t as perfect as I’d imagined. We couldn’t afford to live in the village, so we ended up out in the sticks, where we discovered all the rural pleasures—poison sumac, snakes, carpenter ants, septic-system backups. It took Carol longer to get a job than I’d imagined. When she finally did, it was for half of what she got paid in the city. And right off the bat she got involved in a battle with a pack of fundamentalist fanatics in Bastenburg—lunatics living in an armed camp they called a church—with rumors of polygamy, child marriage, sex abuse, violence. Carol became a thorn in their side. She used every criminal and civil lever to drag the leader into court and make his life miserable. But, as vile as he was—and still is—he had money and connections. When I was made police chief, her activism started making things dicey for me.” He rubbed his hands hard on his thighs, as if trying to warm them.

“I’ve had to bend over backward to avoid creating any impression that I was involved in her private war. In my paranoia, I even avoided having conversations with her about it. She was totally obsessed, and I stopped listening to her. I became extremely protective of my job. I was turning my back on everything that mattered to her. That crusade of hers had become her life, and I was ignoring her life to protect my job. I was acting as if she didn’t exist.” Morgan was leaning over the table, his forehead in his hands, staring into a private abyss.

Gurney wondered if that was the end of his story. Was the estrangement from his wife occupying his mind so completely that he’d become unable to do his job?

“Carol is dying,” Morgan said softly.

Gurney blinked. “What?”

“She has terminal cancer. Brain, heart, lung. Treatment has been discontinued.”

“Jesus, Mike. I’m sorry.”

“So, that’s it. That’s my situation.”

In the silence that followed, Gurney had the disquieting feeling that Morgan’s marriage was, in its own way, a darker echo of his own. There were major differences, certainly, but the similarities were clear enough to bring to mind that time-worn saying:

There, but for the grace of God . . .

And clear enough to soften his antipathy to Morgan’s neediness.

It was in this frame of mind that he found himself listening more openly when, a little while later, Morgan proposed an arrangement for Gurney’s continuing involvement in the case.

And it was in this frame of mind that he accepted.

With the privileged enclave of Larchfield in his rearview mirror, Gurney passed over the crest of the ridge that separated the emerald valley behind him from the grim expanse of Bastenburg in the flatlands ahead of him.

As he passed through Bastenburg’s main street, it seemed that even the sunlight was duller here; he suspected this had less to do with the quality of the light than with the town’s aura of depression, its vacant storefronts and vacant-eyed loiterers.

For the rest of his hour-long drive home he tried to focus on the beauties of the countryside rather than the perplexing questions surrounding the Harrow Hill murder. But it was only at the end of the trip—when he rounded the barn and headed up through the low pasture and saw Madeleine tossing handfuls of feed corn to the chickens—that he was able to relax in the present moment and see what was right there in front of him.

For better or worse, Gurney was hard-wired for rational endeavors, but happiness, he’d learned repeatedly, was not the fruit of a logical pursuit, not something to be captured. It was a gift. It arrived suddenly, surprisingly—as it did now in his glimpse of Madeleine, smiling in her pink windbreaker, with the hens scurrying around her, pecking at the tossed corn. He parked the Outback by the asparagus patch and got out, inhaling the scent of the moist grass.

After shaking the last few grains out of her feed can, she came over and gave him a welcome-home kiss. “The little door between the chicken run and the coop is stuck. Maybe you can get it open while I get dinner started.”

It turned out that problem was not easily solved. It involved considerable thumping and yanking, as well as the use of a silicone lubricant and a pry bar, both of which he had to fetch from the barn. But there were upsides to the endeavor. In the half hour it consumed, his mind didn’t sink even once into the Morgan-­Larchfield morass; and by the time he entered the house, Madeleine had prepared one of his favorite dinners: baked salmon, steamed asparagus, and basmati rice with a sweet pepper sauce.

He changed his shirt and washed his hands, and they sat down to eat at the little round table that looked out over the patio.

“Thank you,” she said. “I tried to do it myself, but I wasn’t able to budge that door.”

Madeleine put more sauce on her salmon. “How is the situation in Larchfield?”

“Everything there is odd. And the longer I was there, the odder it got.”

She ate a forkful of rice and waited for him to go on.

“It appears that someone stole the body of a local idiot from a mortuary and used it to plant evidence suggesting that the idiot committed a murder the day after he died. The CIO on the case is a young guy with virtually no relevant experience who spent half his time ingratiating himself with me and the other half antagonizing the crime-scene tech. At the end of the day, Morgan told me his wife is dying and offered me a blank check to take over the investigation.”

Madeleine put down her fork. “His wife is dying?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes. I mean, he’d have to be completely warped to lie about something like that. Don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “You know him better than I do.”

“Well . . . I have to assume he’s telling the truth.”

She picked up her fork again. “You’ve accepted the blank check?”

“I told him I’d do what I could. No guarantees.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why—”

“Because I’d be less happy if I turned him down.”

She gave him one of those looks that made him feel like she was seeing his motives more clearly than he was.

His gaze settled on the alpaca shed design, which was still on the table, although now partly covered by the salt and pepper shakers. He wondered when Madeleine would bring the subject up again. Surely it would be a topic at the upcoming dinner with the Winklers, a thought that contributed to his lack of enthusiasm for their visit.

“Look,” said Madeleine, pointing to the sunset’s wash of amber light on the hillside.

“Very nice,” he said, looking out through the glass door.

Madeleine reheated the pepper sauce, and they consumed their remaining salmon, rice, and asparagus without much further conversation. She insisted, as usual, on clearing the table and washing the dishes by herself. He stayed in his chair. His eyes were on the softly glowing hillside, but his mind was in Larchfield.

When Madeleine finished the dishes, she wiped off the sink island, folded the dishtowel, and went upstairs to practice her cello. Gurney’s thoughts, meanwhile, were proceeding by a winding route through the odd aspects of Billy Tate’s absurd death, the theft of his body, and its seemingly senseless implication in the murder of Angus Russell.

These peculiarities alone would make the case a serious challenge for any homicide department—even without the elements of rumored incest, witchcraft, and a mayor with an apparent financial motive for murder. And then there was the matter of the police chief’s refusal to refer the case to the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

That thought reminded Gurney that Larchfield was within the NYSP zone where Jack Hardwick had been stationed when he was a BCI investigator.

Despite Hardwick’s compulsive vulgarity and combative personality—a combination that had finally ended his state police career—Gurney had always felt that the man’s fearlessness and no-nonsense intellect more than made up for his outrageous manners and attitude.

He decided to give him a call to see if he knew anything useful about Larchfield. The call went to voicemail, and he left a message.

Since no immediate next step came to mind, he decided to relax in one of the chairs out on the patio. Although the sun had disappeared below the western ridge, the chair was still warm. He settled into it and watched the hues of the clouds changing from peaches and corals to pinks and purples. From inside the house the strains of a Bach cello piece drifted out, lulling him into a rare state of peace.

When, sometime later, Madeleine came out and perched on the arm of the Adirondack chair across from him, he opened his eyes. The air was cooler now, and the color was gone from the sky.

“So,” she said, “while I was trying to focus on my music, I kept feeling there are things you haven’t told me.”

“About Larchfield?”

“About your willingness to help Morgan.”

He was about to say there wasn’t anything he hadn’t told her, but that wasn’t true.

He sighed. “This is going to sound ridiculous.”

“So?”

“I mean, really ridiculous. In addition to the rational issues giving me pause, there’s the fact that Morgan reminds me of my mother.”

“Why?”

“There’s a plaintiveness in his attitude that I have a hard-wired resistance to. My mother was always trying to get me to pay attention to her, solve her problems with my father, fix the sad mess of her life. When she praised me, it was always for something I’d done for her. When she criticized me, it was always for something I hadn’t done for her. The constant message was that I owed her something.”

“You hear that in Morgan’s voice?”

“I do. I’m sane enough not to let an echo make my decisions. But I hear it.”

“We all deal with echoes.”

“Maybe so. But that’s one of the things that makes me want to back away. But one of the things that makes me want to help him is even more ridiculous.” He hesitated.

She smiled. “I like ridiculous motives.”

“We had mice in our precinct house. A contract exterminator would come in every three months, but what he did would only last a couple of weeks. Then the mice would come back. Morgan started bringing in traps. Catch-and-release traps. He went to a lot of trouble to do this. Setting them every night with peanut butter. Gathering them up every morning. Taking them to a local park on his lunch break. Letting the mice go. Enduring a hell of a lot of abuse.”

“So you figure there’s some good in him? An adulterer who likes mice can’t be all bad?”

Gurney shrugged.

Madeleine smiled. “Maybe all your pros and cons have nothing to do with your decision. Maybe it’s the challenge of the case itself.”

They stayed on the patio, listening in silence to the chirping of the birds returning to their roosts, until the deepening dusk and the chill in the air persuaded them to go into the house.

The wearying effect of Gurney’s long day soon overtook him and he decided to go to bed. His sleep, however, was troubled by weird dreams that persisted through the night. In the last one, he found himself in a cavernous building, standing in a long line of Black Angus cattle. The air smelled of raw hamburger. Blue and green balls were floating down from the ceiling. A voice on a loudspeaker demanded that he guess what color the balls were. A bell was tolling for a funeral he was supposed to attend. There was an elegant sign on the wall in italic lettering: MORGAN’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE.

The bell became the ringing of his phone on the bedside table. Half-awake, he picked it up.

“Gurney here.”

“Dave?” It was Morgan’s voice, its stress level ratcheted up a few notches.

He blinked a few times to clear his vision and peered at the time on his phone. “It’s six o’clock in the morning. What’s wrong?”

“The case just got turned upside down. Nobody stole Tate’s body. The son of a bitch got up and walked out of there.”

“What?!” Gurney sat up, instantly awake.

“He’s not dead. He walked out of that embalming room. Nobody put his fingerprints in Russell’s bedroom. He left them there himself.”

“How do you know this?”

“The casket. The lab did a microanalysis of the splintered edge. The casket wasn’t broken into. It was broken out of.”