ALSO BY JOHN VERDON

Think of a Number

Shut Your Eyes Tight

Let the Devil Sleep

Peter Pan Must Die

Wolf Lake

White River Burning

On Harrow Hill

The Viper

To Naomi

PROLOGUE

ORDERING THE COFFIN from Amazon had been surprisingly easy.

But as the promised delivery date approached and he pictured the men wrestling the big shipping crate off the truck and lugging it to the old garage behind the house, he became obsessed with crafting appropriate responses to the questions he was sure they would ask.

Should he appear to be in a state of bereavement? Or should he say he was preparing for the end of a terminal illness? His own or someone else’s? Or perhaps he should lightheartedly explain that the thing was a prop for a theatrical production? Yes, that would probably be best. Keep it breezy. Avoid any mention of death.

As it turned out, his imaginative efforts were a waste of time. The two burly delivery men hefted the crate from the back of the van and placed it in the garage without a hint of interest.

As soon as they were gone, with a feeling of relief and excitement he pried open the top of the crate and inspected the heavy oak coffin inside, checking especially for sturdiness.

After a few simple tests, he was pleased to conclude that it could withstand the stresses to which it would be subjected. He felt as though a major step had been taken, that a key foundation stone of his plan had been put in place.

Perhaps the gods, or the universe, or whatever forces shaped his fate were finally on his side. A pleasant thought. But this was no time for relaxation.

There was so much more to do.

PART ONE

HATE

1

AMONG FRANKIE DALASIO’S many disadvantages in life was the fact that he bore a startling resemblance to a rat. A sloping forehead, beady eyes, pointed nose, and receding chin all contributed to the effect. Short oily hair clung to his small head like a wet skullcap. A restrained twitchiness suggested that sitting still required effort.

Dave Gurney was sitting in front of his laptop, viewing once again Dalasio’s surprise confession to having been an accessory in a five-year-old unsolved murder. His confession had led to the closing of that cold case.

Gurney’s interrogation of Dalasio had been his last official act prior to his retirement from the NYPD—with the distinction of having cleared more homicide cases that any detective in the history of the department. But the clearing of this one had left him with an uncomfortable feeling that even now, seven years later, lingered. Which was why he periodically returned to the recording—in the hope that something in it might point toward a more satisfactory resolution.

According to the original case file, it all began on a hot summer night in the Bronx when nineteen-year-old Pamela Espinoza failed to return home from a Narcotics Anonymous meeting half a mile from the apartment house where she lived with her mother, who was also a recovering addict.

Three days later, the incident was officially labeled a missing persons case. The following day an abandoned car with a blood-stained trunk was found in a wooded area near Orchard Beach. Three days after that a DNA test of the blood from the car came back with a match to Pamela Espinoza, whose DNA was in the data bank as the result of a conviction for possession of a controlled substance. No other DNA was recovered from the car, which had been reported stolen, and it evidently had been wiped clean of fingerprints. The case was reclassified as a probable homicide and assigned to a detective in the local precinct.

The subsequent investigation went nowhere. Espinoza’s known associates, in and out of recovery, local drug dealers, an unsavory ex-boyfriend, neighbors, and available relatives were interviewed. No one could be linked to the bloodied car. No one admitted knowing anything. In the end, the Espinoza case slipped quietly into the limbo of probable homicides with no recovered body, no witnesses, no workable leads.

It remained in that cold-case abyss until a summer day five years later when Frankie Dalasio, in the company of a lawyer named Felix Korn, a well-known defender of local creeps, walked into a Bronx precinct and announced that he wanted to make a confession regarding the murder of Pamela Espinoza. Ten minutes later Gurney was sitting in one of the station’s bleak, fluorescent-lit interrogation rooms across a gray metal table from the rat-faced Frankie Dalasio. Dalasio had come prepared with a typewritten, signed, and notarized confession.

In the recording, Dalasio nervously read his peculiar statement aloud under the watchful eye of Felix Korn. Dalasio’s voice was high-pitched to the point of squeakiness.

My full name is Francis Louis Dalasio. I am making this statement of my own free will in the interest of justice and to provide closure to the family of Pamela Espinoza. This is what happened, to the best of my recollection. One morning in the middle of June five years ago my brother Joey woke me up and told me there was a problem and I needed to help him. He took me to the garage in back of our house and told me to get in the car. I never saw that car before, so I asked him where he got it. He told me to shut up and get in the passenger seat. He put a pick and a shovel in the back seat, got in, and started to drive. I wanted to ask him where we were going, but I knew he’d tell me again to shut up, so I stayed quiet. He drove up to a little park in a corner of the north Bronx, which was officially closed because of some toxic waste problem, but he knew a way in. It wasn’t even a road, more like a path through the woods, just wide enough for the car. It led to an open spot by a stream, and that’s where he stopped and told me to get out and take the shovel. He took the pick and walked over by this big tree and started whacking the pick into the ground. After he loosened it up, he told me to start digging. I said, “Joey, what are we doing here?” He said, “Shut up and dig.” He’d loosen up more dirt with the pick, and I’d dig deeper. This went on for maybe an hour or two. It was getting close to noon, getting hot, sun’s coming down, sweat’s in my eyes. I’m trying to stay in the shade of that big tree. Finally he said, “That’s deep enough.” I’m wondering, Deep enough for what? But Joey is looking really crazy now, and I’m afraid to ask him anything. That’s when he went over to the car and opened the trunk. There was something big, wrapped in a wet blanket. The wet part looked like blood. Now I’m really scared, because I’m thinking he’s got a dead body in that blanket. He dragged it out of the trunk and over to the hole we dug and rolled it in. When it was rolling in, a body came out of the blanket, face up. I recognized Pamela Espinoza, because I’d seen her around the neighborhood. Her throat was cut open. I thought I was going to get sick. He told me to shovel the dirt back on top of her. So I shoveled, and he kept stomping the dirt down, to make the ground hard again. He was talking crazy and stomping on the dirt, and the whole thing had me so messed up in my head I couldn’t even hear what he was saying. Joey wasn’t like a normal person. I remember him whispering crazy-like with a grin on his face, “Bitch tried to blackmail me.” I was afraid to ask him what he was talking about, but I figured it had something to do with him dealing, and maybe she was trying to get money from him, or free drugs. I don’t know. After burying her, we drove the car to a spot near Orchard Beach, Joey wiped it down, I guess to make sure we didn’t leave any fingerprints, and we walked home, three, four miles. We never talked about it again. Mostly, I didn’t want to know any details of what he did to her, and even if I did, one look into Joey’s eyes would keep me from saying anything. He was always a little nuts, but after that business with Pamela he was totally insane. Not like screaming insane, but worse. Like he’d become a murderer, and murder was a cool thing. I was terrified of him, but I was afraid to leave. I was afraid he’d find me and kill me. I was afraid to tell anyone what happened, because he might find out. He’d find out and kill me.

Dalasio looked up, then back down at the typed document, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. His lawyer took it from him, flashed a bland smile across the table at Gurney, who was just out of the camera’s angle of view. He spoke with an artificial gentility that brought to Gurney’s mind the expression “lipstick on a pig.”

“That is my client’s voluntary statement concerning the events in which he was unwillingly involved subsequent to the death of Pamela Espinoza, namely his enforced participation in the disposal of Ms. Espinoza’s body. He has come forward, as he stated, in the interest of justice and in the hope of providing closure to the deceased’s family. It is important to note that my client was only fourteen at the time he was coerced into taking part in this tragic affair, while his dominating and terrifying brother, Joseph Dalasio, the murderer of Ms. Espinoza, was an eighteen-year-old adult.”

Korn paused as if to emphasize the legal salience of the distinction. “My client is now willing to respond to factual questions that fall within the scope of his direct knowledge.”

Gurney heard his own off-camera voice asking, “Why come forward now, Mr. Dalasio, after being silent for five years?”

Dalasio bared a row of small, pointed teeth. “Because I’m not afraid of my brother anymore.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s dead. Finally fucking dead.”

“Cause of death?”

“Dispute with the fucking Colombians. Who are even fucking crazier than Joey.”

“Date of death?”

“Two, three months ago. Local cops can give you the date.”

“So, for the first time in five years, you felt you could talk to us because you weren’t afraid of your brother anymore?”

“Right. And there was this thing on TV. This program called Open Files. Every week they pick an unsolved murder case, and they talk about it. Well, last month they did a thing on Pam Espinoza. They showed pictures of her, school pictures, you know? And it brought it all back—that horrible day when Joey made me bury her. And on that program, they interviewed the parents. They were all broke up. They wanted to know the truth. It seemed like the right thing to do. To come in and tell you about it. So you could tell them. Closure, you know? They said they wanted that.”

As he watched the video, Gurney’s reaction to that comment was even stronger now than it had been in the interview room. Dalasio’s expression of concern for the family was an obvious pretense. He’d let it pass at the time, because he wanted the sweaty young man to keep talking.

“The place where you buried the body—can you take us there?”

“Absolutely. The exact spot.” Dalasio grinned with what looked like the excitement of a poor student proud to know a right answer. Or was it the emotional rush of a salesman closing a shady deal? That was the question that occurred to Gurney during the original interview, and again every time he replayed it.

Gurney recalled how visiting Pamela Espinoza’s secluded grave with an evidence-collection team seemed to intensify Dalasio’s recall of the five-year-old event, as well as his twitchiness. He had tremors in both hands as he described the feeling of the shovel in his grip, the sound of Joey’s pick hitting the ground, the resistance of the hard-packed soil, the sound of the nearby stream and the little waterfall twenty yards away, the moss on the rocks around the waterfall, the deep shade that had cooled the sweat on his back as he labored over his task, the thud of the blanket-wrapped body onto the ground as it was dragged from the trunk of the car, the way the body rolled into the grave, the position in which it came to rest, face up, his brother stomping on the loose dirt to pack it down over the body, the demented look in his brother’s eyes.

In every respect Dalasio’s account of his coerced participation was unimpeachable. His description of the event was consistent with the physical evidence at the scene; the accused murderer was dead and without defenders; and the precinct commander was more than willing to add another cleared homicide to the positive side of his ledger.

Gurney shut the laptop and gazed out the window, pondering what he just reviewed. The basic facts of the interview were exactly as he’d remembered them. But now, more than seven years after Dalasio’s revelations and his own retirement from the NYPD, the itchy feeling that some discrepancy eluded him was growing stronger.

2

WHEN THE GRANDFATHER clock in the corner of the dining room struck nine, Gurney put aside his ruminations on Pamela Espinoza’s murder. He stood up from the big chestnut dining table and carried his breakfast dishes to the kitchen. It was time to begin his self-assigned maintenance duties around the mountain lodge he’d been occupying for the past four months.

As a gesture of gratitude for Gurney’s work in unraveling the deadly mysteries of the Viper case, the lodge’s absent owner, Ian Valdez, had invited him to stay there as long as he wished, free of charge or any obligation. Putting in two or three hours of work on the property each morning felt like the right thing to do. Besides, regular physical activity brought a sense of order into a life recently upended by his involvement in the most disorienting criminal pursuit in his long career.

The culmination of the Viper case wasn’t the first time he’d narrowly escaped death. Nor was the Viper the first ruthless killing machine he’d encountered. But it was the first time that the anchor lines in his life had been severed. Worst of all, he had only himself to blame for having lost so much through his all-consuming obsession for victory over the monster.

He’d lost his connection to Jack Hardwick as a result of the life-threatening injuries the man suffered helping Gurney with the investigation. The two detectives shared a long and complicated history, dating back to the sensational Piggert case. On the same day in separate locations, he and Hardwick each found half of the same victim’s body. The experience created a macabre bond between them—a bond that survived major differences in style and attitude.

They couldn’t have been more unlike. Gurney’s analytical approach to problems and his calm demeanor were a natural target for Hardwick’s loud skepticism, vulgarity, and appetite for confrontation—qualities that ended his career as a state police investigator. “Bullshit” was his instant label for any case hypothesis he deemed too cerebral. But the man was no fool. Gurney had come to respect the steel-trap mind underneath the frequent insults and X-rated outbursts. And it was hard not to be impressed by the fearlessness in those Alaskan-sled-dog eyes. In the middle of the recent Viper case, that fearlessness had led to a bloody shoot-out that left two heavily armed gangsters dead and Hardwick in a coma. The woman that Hardwick lived with—a state trooper named Esti Moreno—blamed Gurney for putting him in the situation that nearly killed him. And she was hell-bent on keeping Gurney out of their lives. She’d even gone so far as changing their phone numbers and blocking any access he might have had to them through social media.

Gurney also lost what goodwill he’d once had with the law-enforcement community when his high-octane conflicts with the local police, state police, and county district attorney turned him into a fugitive. Even more troubling was his realization that some choices he’d made during his pursuit of the Viper had been for reasons less admirable than the pursuit of justice.

And then there was the greatest loss of all.

He’d walked away from his marriage, accusing Madeleine of an insufficient appreciation of his profession’s importance to society and to himself and an insidious desire for him to become a different person. However, in the months since his angry exit, small cracks had formed in that wall of self-righteousness. There were occasional glimpses of what he’d lost. A recollected vision of her eyes, her smile, would ambush him into confusion and regret.

Such were the fallouts that followed in the wake of his Pyrrhic victory over the Viper. Such were the thoughts he sought to avoid by staying as busy as he could.

His chosen task that April morning was the splitting of a week’s worth of hardwood logs for the lodge’s massive fireplace.

Spring mornings in the Adirondack Mountains could be as cold as midwinter mornings downstate. He put on a heavy sweater over his flannel shirt, pulled a wool watch cap down over his ears, slipped his hands into a pair of fleece-lined leather gloves, and headed out to the log pile at the edge of the clearing. There was a gas-powered splitter in the tool shed, but he preferred the satisfying exertion and the simple concentration involved in using an axe. It wasn’t a foolproof system. Sometimes the nagging debate over the cause of his breakup with Madeleine pushed itself into the foreground of his mind.

The self-exonerating explanation was that she had always wanted him to be something other than a detective—had never accepted that the profession was the core of his identity—and the strain of this fatal flaw in their relationship finally broke whatever bond had been holding them together. The self-incriminating explanation was that he was so obsessively focused on solving homicide cases that he had become blind to his obligations to the living. Realizing that he had wandered once again into this dark mental cul-de-sac, he forced his attention back to the top of the log in front of him.

A few dozen logs later, he heard a vehicle making its way up the long hemlock-shaded driveway from the county road.

An old Chevy Blazer emerged into the clearing. Rust, age, and spattered mud had given its red paint the brownish look of a dried scab. It came to a stop in front of the lodge, and a slim young man stepped out, blinking in the bright midmorning sun. His fashionably trimmed blond hair, pressed jeans, and spotless blue puffer jacket made the weather-beaten Blazer look like a form of camouflage.

He approached Gurney with bright-eyed determination. His grip on a manila envelope suggested its importance, and his overall manner brought to Gurney’s mind the phrase “a man on a mission.”

“Mr. Gurney?”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time?” His unblinking eyes matched the pale blue of his jacket.

“For what?”

“Forgive me,” the young man said. “You’re obviously busy. I have no right to be intruding, asking for your opinion on this. But I don’t know what else to do.” His voice was clear but tense, his diction oddly precise.

“My opinion on what?”

“How worried I should be about the threats I’ve received. Here, let me show you.” He stepped closer and began opening the manila envelope. His clothes were spotless. He smelled of soap.

Gurney raised his hand. “Hold on. Who are you? Why are you bringing this to me?”

“The police brushed it off. Treated it like a joke.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Sorry. I’m Stuart Wilmot. I should’ve started with that.”

“Do I know you?”

“I’m the person who wrote the op-ed piece.” He paused. When he got no reaction, he went on. “The op-ed piece that pulled me into the battle for the town supervisor position down in Gladstone.” Another expectant pause. “How much of this are you aware of?”

“None of it.”

“You don’t read the Tri-County Star? Or listen to any local radio?”

“No.”

“God, you must be really isolated up here.”

“Intentionally.”

After a moment of apparent indecision, the young man pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper out of the manila envelope. “One night last week this came through my bedroom window, wrapped around a baseball-sized rock.” He handed the sheet to Gurney. The message on it had been printed in jagged letters with a black marker:

SHUT THE FUCK UP SCUMBAG

WHILE YOUR STILL ALIVE

Gurney examined the paper for a moment, then handed it back. “Why are you showing this to me?”

“Because I’m afraid. Not just for myself. For the people who are on my side. My supporters. And because of who you are. A famous detective. And because the police in Gladstone are useless. Worse than useless. Corrupt. In the pocket of my opponent. Don Ranzak has promised the Gladstone police chief the head security job in his horrible, environment-destroying project. I know that for a fact. A bribe to look the other way whenever my supporters are attacked. Ranzak is filthy rich, evil—”

Gurney interrupted. “Look, Mr. Wilmot, I really don’t—”

Wilmot went on, speaking louder and faster. “Don Ranzak is the most dangerous man in this state. His plans for Gladstone, for the whole county, are an unmitigated nightmare. I’m not talking about ordinary political selfishness, the slimy self-dealing that’s so pathetically common in government these days. I’m talking about pure evil. There is no other word—”

“Mr. Wilmot, please! Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

“I’m sorry. I get carried away. If you knew the situation, you’d understand.” He took a deep breath. “To tell the truth, I don’t really know what you can do. You would know better than me. But . . . maybe . . . maybe you could provide some level of protection?” He pointed at the threat on the wrinkled sheet. “Protection from things like that.”

“There are security companies that provide—”

“I know all about the upstate security companies. They’re all staffed by ex-cops. A lot of them by Gladstone ex-cops. Friends, drinking buddies, business associates of the corrupt Gladstone police chief. They’re not a safe option. You obviously don’t know how deeply the rot of Don Ranzak reaches.”

Gurney picked up his axe. “I’m afraid I can’t offer a solution to your problem.”

Wilmot took a step back, peering anxiously down at the paper as though it were making its scrawled threat again.

“But you’re a detective. One of the best. I read that in a magazine.”

“A detective. Not a bodyguard.”

“Then . . . perhaps I could hire you for what you actually do?”

“Meaning what?”

“You could discover who hurled this thing through my window. And who put the dead bluebird in my campaign treasurer’s refrigerator. She’s the president of the Gladstone Bird Club,” Wilmot clarified. “Her passion is the preservation of the northeastern bluebird. She’s devoted to the species. Someone shot one, broke into her cabin, and put it in her refrigerator. You really should read the newspaper.”

Gurney set the axe back down. “You think this is related to the political contest you’re involved in?”

“I’m sure it is. Dorothy has been very vocal about the danger Ranzak’s plans pose to our local bluebirds. She wrote a letter to the editor of the Tri-County Star, in which she was quite clear in her belief that one bluebird was of greater value to the world than a dozen creeps like Don Ranzak. The day after it was published, she found the dead bluebird.”

Gurney said nothing.

Wilmot spoke calmly. “My campaign for town supervisor is being funded quite generously by a local individual who understands the terrible consequences that would follow a Ranzak victory. We have the resources to pay whatever your fee may be. All I ask is that you consider the offer. We’re desperate, Mr. Gurney. The stakes for Gladstone—for the whole upstate region—couldn’t be higher.”

Again, Gurney said nothing.

Wilmot paused, sighed, then headed across the clearing toward the Blazer. Halfway there he stopped and turned back toward Gurney. “There’ll be a debate between Ranzak and myself at eight o’clock this evening in the Gladstone town hall. Come. Please. I guarantee you’ll find the man himself more frightening than anything I could tell you about him.”

With a grim little smile, he got into the mud-spattered Blazer and drove down the evergreen-shrouded driveway. The Blazer’s two bumper stickers read “Vote Wilmot for Clean Air” and “Vote Wilmot for Clean Water.”

Gurney picked up his axe and positioned the next log to be cleaved. The sun had crept high enough in the sky now to warm the air. A swarm of mayflies took advantage of the hospitable environment. Batting them away from his face, he raised the axe high and swung it down through the precise center of the log, creating a satisfyingly clean severing. A shadow passed over the split halves.

A red-tailed hawk was circling above the hemlocks.

3

THE ROUTE TO Gladstone passed from the dark Adirondack woods into a bucolic landscape of rolling fields and meandering streams—home to old dairy farms, cornfields, and crossroad villages. Masses of pink buds covered the trees on forested hillsides. The pale green pasture grasses were coming to life. The setting sun bathed it all in a warm glow, but Gurney was only intermittently aware of the scenery. He was absorbed by thoughts of where he was going and the somewhat muddled motives behind his decision to go there.

It wasn’t out of any liking for Stuart Wilmot, who, despite the apparent intensity of his feelings, struck Gurney as a rather cold individual. Moreover, the threatening message that Wilmot claimed had been wrapped around a rock and thrown through his window was not the sort of crime that would normally attract his attention. The dead bluebird was a bit more interesting, but only a bit.

Perhaps he was just grasping at another distraction—like his renewed interest in the Frankie Dalasio case—an opportunity to focus on anything other than his separation from Madeleine. It was easier to think about someone else’s problems.

As he entered the outskirts of Gladstone, it occurred to him that the place itself might be playing at least a small role in his willingness to go there. He and Madeleine had almost chosen to live in Gladstone before discovering their property in Walnut Crossing. That was seven years ago—a turning point in their lives. He had retired from the NYPD as a much-decorated homicide detective and Madeleine had resigned from her position in well-respected psychotherapy practice. They were looking forward to the next phases of their lives with excitement and optimism. Those feelings were dampened in the ensuing years by the discovery of their differing expectations. But when they were touring the area around Gladstone, they were happy—perhaps happier than they’d ever been, before or since.

Within sight now of Wynderly Lake, glimmering in the gold light of the setting sun, he recalled the high points of the real estate agent’s sales pitch: Gladstone was home to the Hyperion Music Festival, an annual summerlong series of free concerts on the Sloane estate, attracting world-famous musicians; the wooded hills around the central village were home to many successful writers, which led to Gladstone’s frequent literary events; Wynderly was a crystal-clear lake, a certified safe source of drinking water; Gladstone contained more acreage devoted to nature preserves and wilderness areas than any town in the state.

Of the selling points Gurney could recall, the most relevant to his present visit was the fact that the thousands of acres owned by each of the two oldest families in the area—the Sloanes and the Ranzaks—were officially destined to be free from any commercial development in perpetuity. Over two hundred miles of hiking trails through private as well as state lands were open to the public, in the spirit of the famed British footpaths. There were fly-fishing contests, trap-shooting matches, a spring crafts fair, a fall harvest fair, a teenage sailing regatta on Wynderly Lake, public squash and tennis courts, and a world-class library.

Stuart Wilmot’s comments had suggested that at least one of the Ranzaks was rethinking his family’s magnanimity in a way that could make Gladstone less idyllic.

Gurney realized, of course, that the real estate agent’s glowing portrayal of the place hadn’t conveyed the whole story. Gladstone did have a genteel side, but it also had a hardscrabble side. For every idyllic llama or alpaca farm there was a secondhand clothing shop, a drive-through liquor store, a fast-food joint. As Gurney approached the town, he got the impression that the hardscrabble side had expanded considerably during the seven years since he and Madeleine had been on the verge of purchasing an old farmhouse in the nearby hills.

The mix of commercial establishments along the road seemed to be catering to two distinct clienteles. The Finnish Sauna Club was followed less than half a mile later by Rhonda’s Tattoo Parlor. A sign for a private road leading to the Chateau Vegan restaurant was followed by a strip mall that was home to Stiggy’s Road Warrior Bar and Grill, Happy Mouth Affordable Dentistry, Smokers Delight Discount Tobacco, and an anonymous storefront with half a dozen motorcycles lined up outside—watched over by a massively bearded man with a bulging belly, picking his teeth with a pocketknife.

The town center was more upscale, more as Gurney remembered it. The main street was lined with small antique shops and restaurants, old-fashioned streetlights, and large flowerpots overflowing with colorful spring blossoms.

Town hall occupied one side of a manicured green square with daffodil and jonquil beds in full bloom. On the left was a white steepled church, on the right a nineteenth-century brick building that housed the police and public works departments—each identified by signage as antique as the building, an element of historical “charm” that Gurney found a bit ridiculous.

He parked behind the town hall. The lot was nearly full. There were two bumper stickers on the car to his left: “Save the Blue Moth” and “Cancel Ranzak.” A competing sticker covered the full width of the bumper on his right: “A Good Socialist Is a Dead Socialist.” There was one anomaly—an exotic low-slung sports car whose acid-green color was highlighted by shimmers of gold in the rays of the setting sun. The car radiated money—with a likely sticker price five or ten times that of any other vehicle in the lot.

It looked like it might turn out to be an interesting evening—a thought that reminded him of the ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

4

GURNEY ENTERED THE town hall and joined the line at a TSA-style security checkpoint. Firearms and alcohol were prohibited. The man ahead of him appeared to be in his sixties. He had a straggly gray ponytail and a NASCAR cap. The twentysomething woman ahead of him had a chartreuse crew cut and was wearing a purple sweatshirt with the acronym “ROTPOC” in white letters. Beneath it were the words “Root Out Toxic Police Culture.”

Past the security gate there was a small foyer. On one side a flight of stairs led to the second-floor offices; on the other side there were two restrooms. Straight ahead, double doors opened into the rear of a space that reminded Gurney of a small high school auditorium. A hundred or so folding chairs were set up on each side of a wide center aisle. At the front end of the aisle there was a raised platform with a lectern. The chartreuse-haired woman found one of the few remaining seats in the back row on the left side of the aisle. The ponytailed man found one on the opposite side. Gurney decided to stand behind the back row. He picked a spot near a woman in a gray windbreaker who also appeared to prefer standing.

The large windows on both sides of the room were closed. A stale mixture of old wood, sweat, dust, and a vaguely piney floor cleaner hung in the air and discouraged taking deep breaths.

A big old-fashioned analog clock hung on the wall behind the raised platform. At exactly 8:00 p.m. a stout middle-aged man in a white shirt and dark slacks stepped onto the platform and positioned himself behind the lectern.

“Good evening!” he cried in a voice loud enough for a room three times larger. He paused, waiting for the crowd to fall silent.

“As most of you know, I’m George Strum, publisher of the Tri-County Star. We’re proud to be sponsoring this major civic event—a debate designed to air the colliding points of view in the contest for Gladstone town supervisor.” He dramatized “colliding” by spreading his hands apart and bringing them together in a clap that bore a startling resemblance to a gunshot, prompting little cries of disapproval from the left side of the hall, chuckles from the right side. Strum looked pleased by both reactions.

“Freedom of speech is a great thing! I expect we’ll hear a lot of it tonight. This is America, and we like to speak our minds. That’s what this country is all about!”

Gurney was just close enough to the chartreuse-haired woman to hear her mutter, “What it’s all about for that asshole is selling his shit-for-brains newspaper.”

“So here’s the deal,” continued Strum. “No big rules, just a little structure so everyone gets to have their say. Each candidate gets up to ten minutes to tell us why he ought to be our town supervisor—to lay out the stakes in this election as he sees them. After we hear from both candidates, we’ll open the floor to comments and questions from anyone who has any. I expect a lot of you will feel the urge to speak up. Don’t be shy.”

There were murmurs throughout the hall in various tones of excitement and concern.

“Okay, then.” Strum rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get this show on the road. We’ve already flipped a coin to decide the order of the opening speeches. Don Ranzak’ll be first, Stuart Wilmot second. May the best man win the hearts and minds of Gladstone! Don, the platform is yours!”

Strum stepped down and shook hands with a man who then mounted the platform with a springy step and a politician’s practiced grin. Applause erupted on the right side of the room.

A hoarse voice shouted, “Tell it like it is, Don!”

A second voice added with a hint of inebriation, “Knock ’em dead, Donny Boy!”

Ranzak’s grin broadened. “That’s what I’m here for.” Then he spread his arms, as if to embrace the whole room. “I’m Don Ranzak, and there’s no place I’d rather be than right here right now.”

His strong baritone voice carried a hint of rural roughness that transformed the eliteness of his flashy gold watch into a well-earned emblem of a local boy’s success. He had the body of a former college athlete, only moderately thickened by time. Gurney guessed he was in his mid-thirties. His sandy hair was combed just neatly enough not to be messy. His smile was broad and toothy but had no connection to his cool gaze.

“Right here is where I want to be,” repeated Ranzak. “You know why? Because I love Gladstone. Love everything about it. Everything about it, except its failing economy—the same failing economy that’s a symptom of the damn mess our country is in.”

“Damn right!” shouted a male voice in the audience.

Ranzak nodded grimly. “This town used to be a place good American people could make a good American living. That was before things started to change. Before our jobs got shipped off to China. Before skyrocketing gas prices and new taxes and all kinds of government regulations turned business and farm life into a nightmare. On top of that, we’ve got these environmental lunatics whose sole purpose in life is to stop any kind of progress!”

Shouts of agreement on one side of the aisle drowned out muttered objections on the other side.

“But I’m not here to complain. I didn’t leave the big city—that downstate cesspool of crime and every kind of sickness—just to come back home and complain. I came home to make a difference. The biggest, most positive difference Gladstone has ever seen. I have a plan to make Gladstone not just the prosperous town it once was but the most prosperous town in this state—a shining light to the whole country.” Ranzak’s voice, now hard-edged and clear, was rising. “And let me tell you, this godforsaken, pagan, weakened, demoralized, screwed-up country of ours is in desperate need of a shining light! With your support, Gladstone will be that shining light!”

The applause was loud, long, and entirely from one side of the room. When it died down, he continued in a more matter-of-fact tone.

“You can see our full development plans on our Gladstone Tomorrow website. It shows exactly how the natural beauty of our countryside can be transformed into an incredible economic engine for the benefit of everyone in this room. An economic engine that produces a construction boom, high-paying jobs, opportunities for countless small businesses, tourism, country inns, you name it!

“But here’s the thing. To make it all happen, we need our town board to make the right decisions. That’s why I’m running for town supervisor. This election day may be the most important day in the history of our town. It will decide our future. Your vote will decide whether Gladstone becomes that shining light of energy and positivity and progress . . . or just continues to sink into that paralysis of do-nothing negativity that my opponent stands for—the negativity that hates progress, hates ambition, hates business, hates success, hates our country. I know you folks, and I know you’ll do the right thing—for Gladstone, for your children, for America!”

Stepping aside from the lectern, he greeted the raucous applause from half the room with an intense gaze, a satisfied grin, and wave of acknowledgement that to Gurney looked unnervingly like a Nazi salute.

As soon as Ranzak left the platform, George Strum stood up and faced the audience. “Wow, we’re off to a rousing start tonight! I don’t know how our other candidate can respond to what we just heard, but we’re about to find out. Stuart Wilmot, the floor is yours.”

Wilmot took his place at the lectern, slowly shaking his head. He was dressed the same as he’d been that morning when he visited Gurney, minus the puffer jacket.

He sighed dramatically. “So many lies, it’s hard to know where to begin. Mr. Ranzak—” He grimaced, making the name sound like an abrasive chemical. “Mr. Ranzak loves the word ‘progress.’ But that’s just a pretty label he uses to conceal something else entirely. The so-called progress that he’s really after is nothing but the relentless pursuit of tawdry, self-aggrandizing garbage. ‘Progress’ to Mr. Ranzak means replacing his five-million-dollar house with a twenty-five-million-dollar house, replacing his five-thousand-dollar watch with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar watch. All ‘progress’ means to him is enlarging his pile of flashy trash. Like that ridiculous million-dollar car of his.”

Hostile and approving murmurs rose and fell like gusts of wind.

When they subsided, Wilmot went on. “But here’s the important point about his progress, his ambition. If all it amounted to was bad taste and pathetic greed, I could laugh at him and walk away. But that’s not all it amounts to. There are consequences to his half-baked plans, consequences the rest of us would be stuck with. If Satan himself appeared among us, he couldn’t concoct a more devilish way of destroying everything in our world that’s pure and beautiful and God-given. Instead of the fantasy of high-paying jobs, we’ll get the reality of poisoned water. Instead of the myth of a tourist bonanza, we’ll get foul air, endless noise, and a traffic nightmare. Instead of a dreamworld of employment opportunities, we’ll get pollution and ugliness—and the extinction of at least a dozen endangered species that rely on the delicate ecology of our wonderful countryside.”

The negative energy in the room was taking on a life of its own. Wilmot’s voice rose to an agonized shout, competing with the raucous exchanges between the two factions.

“And for what?” Wilmot cried. “So Donny Boy Ranzak can have a fatter bank account? Another tacky gold watch? Another absurdly pretentious car? Another grotesque mansion? For Godsake, don’t let him steal the beauty that belongs to every one of you to satisfy his wretched greed. Don’t let your vote give him that power. Because if he gets that power, everything we hold dear will go up in the smoke of what the devil pretends is progress! I don’t use the word ‘devil’ lightly. The horrible fact is Ranzak made his millions by inflicting pain on the weak, the helpless, the vulnerable. His wealth came from turning nursing homes and day care centers into unsafe, understaffed, underfunded hellholes. He endangered the lives of innocent children and hastened the deaths of the old and the frightened, to line his pockets! This is not a man to be trusted. This is a man to be despised!”

Strenuous applause from Wilmot’s side of the hall competed with angry boos and obscenities from Ranzak’s side.

Wilmot continued. “You’ve heard what he’s offering you. A glowing vision. But that vision, even if a tenth of it were true, comes with the terrible costs I’ve already described. Now, I ask you to consider a more peaceful vision, a vision that embraces nature rather than tearing it to pieces. I ask you to picture Gladstone at the heart of a new upstate economy, based on the conservation and enhancement of our natural resources—a wonderland of outdoor pleasures, a place for the young and old to connect with what’s real and beautiful in our world. Ecotourism doesn’t have to mean taking raft trips on the Amazon or communing with penguins in Antarctica. It can mean soul-reviving immersion in the glories of our own hills and valleys, our pristine lakes and streams. Gladstone can become the beating heart of what our overstressed and overworked world so desperately needs—a retreat that moves at the restorative rhythm of nature—a place to awaken to what’s real and beautiful, to the gifts God has given us, to what really matters.”

The crowd reaction, divided as before, was less vociferous. No doubt, Gurney thought, because Wilmot’s closing comments possessed a soft wistfulness that his earlier attack on Ranzak lacked.

That changed with a shout from the Ranzak side of the hall.

“What a load of bullshit!”

It was enough to reignite the battle of insults, full force.

As Wilmot returned to his front-row seat, Strum mounted the platform. He raised both hands, the palms toward the audience as if to restrain the tide of emotion. The calming gesture took a long minute to have any effect. Gurney was scanning the hall for any indication of the verbal attacks escalating into something physical. He noted a similar concern in the expression of the woman standing a few feet from him. She had placed herself, purposely or accidentally, just behind the center aisle, equidistant from the right and left sides of the hall.

As the sounds of division began to subside, the alarm on Strum’s face relaxed into simple excitement.

There was a final cry from a member of the pro-Ranzak contingent.

“Don’s the man!”

It was immediately countered by a shout from a woman across the aisle.

“Moron!”

Strum’s hands went up again. “Hey, hey, hey, take it easy, folks. Everybody can have their say. In the interest of orderliness, please raise your hand, and I’ll call on you. In the interest of fairness, I’ll go from one side of the room to the other. In the interest of decency, keep your language clean, like you were talking to your pastor. Okay, let’s see some hands.”

Hands shot up on both sides of the aisle. Strum pointed at one of the front-row hand-raisers. “Alright, Wayne, let’s start with you.”

The man stood up and turned around to face the audience. He was a pudgy man with an unhappy mouth and disapproving eyes.

“I know many of you in this room, but for those that don’t know me, I’m Wayne Bowler, president of the Gladstone school board. I was elected on a platform of ensuring that common sense, traditional values, and love of country will stay at the heart of our curriculum. You just heard Don Ranzak say he wants Gladstone to be a shining light in this sadly declining nation of ours. I couldn’t agree more. What’s coming out of Hollywood these days, what’s coming out of San Francisco, what coming out of New York City—none of it’s fit for human consumption. I say let’s get back to the simple virtues of hard work, progress, and success. A vote for Don is a vote for everything that made America the envy of the world.”

When the applause died down, Strum pointed to a raised hand on the other side of the hall. A tall pale woman stood and faced the audience. Her chestnut hair was pulled back from her face, emphasizing its angular features. She had the clear, confident voice of a college lecturer.

“I’m Kay Eliot, president of Friends of Endangered Species. We’re a small group, helping God’s smallest creatures survive. Our world is becoming a hostile place for so many beautiful living things, little creatures crushed by what the greedy and thoughtless among us call progress. Creatures who may not live to see another spring, another birth. Tiny, battered bits of God’s creation, on the edge of extinction. Like the blue moth, whose known range has been reduced to the rolling wildflower meadows east of Gladstone—the miles of meadows that Don Ranzak’s bulldozers will level for a deadly plague of condominiums and golf courses. The blue moth—this delicate gem of nature—will be crushed by greed and gone forever. My friends, don’t be misled by a pretty word like ‘progress.’ The truth of Ranzak’s ambition is far from pretty. A vote for Ranzak is a vote for death!”

That last line brought people to their feet on both sides of the aisle, and the clash between applause and boos was the loudest and longest yet. Strum waited for most to be seated again before pointing to another raised hand. A gangly, straggle-bearded man with sunken cheeks and a loose grin got to his feet.

“My name is Deke Loomis, and I ain’t the president of a goddamn thing!”

That prompted bursts of laughter. As soon as they died down, his grin disappeared and his tone turned angry. “This here’s the tip of the iceberg. Stopping a big real estate development—that’s just the point of the knife they’re sticking in the back of America. They say they want to save some damn moth. Jesus! What are they going to save tomorrow? Hornets?” He cast an ugly glance in the direction of Kay Eliot, who was watching him without expression. “How about saving the deer ticks? God, give me patience!” He turned to the rest of the room. “Tip of the iceberg. You want to know what’s hiding under the water—what the big nasty part of that iceberg’s all about?”

He doubled the volume of his voice. “I’ll tell you what it’s about! Socialism! Anti-Americanism! Anti-every-damn-thing this country stands for! God, give me patience! Are these people for anything? Oh, yeah, they’re for things. They’re for every Hollywood socialist idea you can think of. They want to promote any book, any movie, any TV show that ridicules our country. They want to give our tax dollars to every illegal bum that’s got his hand out. They want them trans lunatics to have whatever they want. They want men who claim to be women to have the right to barge into our daughters’ bathrooms. The right to do that, can you imagine that? This ain’t about a goddamn moth. This is about the future of America! Vote Ranzak!”

Before the crowd could react, Wilmot jumped to his feet, pointed at Deke Loomis, and shouted, “Are you trying to win the Stupidest Man Alive contest, or did you forget to take your meds?”

The crowd’s reaction was intense. People rose from their chairs, facing off across the aisle. Hostility was growing like a brush fire in the wind. Verbal attacks were drowned out by louder ones, and the harsh acoustics of the hall amplified everything. Amid the din, some of the insult-hurlers were moving threateningly into the center aisle.

Not far from Gurney’s position at the rear of the aisle, a barrel of a man with a shaved head and a splotchy red face was spitting his words at a small mousy-haired, drably dressed woman facing him. “You fucking lesbo lunatic!”

She took a step toward him. “How does it feel having Ranzak’s dick up your ass, you dumb shithead?”

He bared his teeth, lurched forward, and—

She raised her right hand, and a visible spray hit him in the face. He let out a half-stifled shriek, stumbled back, fell over a chair, and crashed to the floor. With hands pressed against his eyes, his words hissed out through clenched teeth.

“You’ll pay for this, you goddamn dyke!”

The colorless little woman receded back into the shouting crowd as two uniformed cops hurried into the hall and began clearing the aisle.

The woman in the gray windbreaker who’d been standing quietly next to Gurney leaned toward him and said, just loudly enough for him to hear through the bedlam, “Time to get some fresh air.”

She went out through the double doors, passing two more cops on their way in.

Her comment sounded to him like an invitation. The bizarre town hall affair having run its course, and with the local police now taking control, he decided to head out after her.

5

THE SUN HAD set behind the line of hills to the west of Gladstone. Only a faint touch of purple remained in the sky. There was a chill in the air. As Gurney emerged into the floodlit parking lot, he saw the woman from the back of the hall standing a few feet away by a white Prius, zipping up her windbreaker.

“Welcome to Gladstone,” she said with a deadpan expression that concealed whatever irony she might have intended.

He smiled. “Stimulating evening.”

“Gladstone used to be a boring place,” she said. “Pleasantly boring.”

He nodded. “My wife and I came close to moving here seven years ago.”

“A calmer time. What brought you here tonight?”

“Someone thought I’d find the debate interesting.”

“Did you?”

He shrugged. “Interesting in an ugly, demented way.”

“Who was it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who thought you’d find it interesting?”

“Stuart Wilmot.”

She looked at Gurney with growing curiosity. “A friend of yours?”

“Not exactly.”

“I’m Molly Parr. My father is Floyd Parr.” She paused, and Gurney filled the silence.

“The retired town supervisor,” he said, “who’s sudden retirement created the need for the upcoming election.” Since his meeting with Wilmot that morning, Gurney had done his homework.

“So you know what’s going on here.”

“Not in any detail. Just the basics.”

She frowned, seemingly baffled by Gurney’s presence. But any further questions she might have asked were put on hold, as a stream of grumbling people poured past them from the hall into the parking lot.

Tribal alliances were as evident outside as they’d been inside—nowhere more so than in the dueling bumper stickers. “Socialists Suck” on a jacked-up black pickup faced off against “Greed Kills” on a tiny yellow hybrid. Other vehicles traded similar accusations.

“You know what I find the most frightening in all this?” said Molly Parr after most of the crowd had disappeared into their cars and trucks. “It’s not just the polarization. It’s the location of the energy.”

That comment got Gurney’s attention. It was something he hadn’t heard before.

She continued, “The negative feelings being expressed are so much more passionate than the positive ones. People hate the opposing side more than they love their own side. What excites them most about their leader is the leader’s attacks on the opponent. The escalation of the negative. Not just here in Gladstone but everywhere. Have you noticed that adjectives used in news stories have become intensified? It used to be said that someone criticized their opponents. Now they are said to have slammed them. They used to respond to an accusation. Now they fire back. But the same exaggeration hasn’t occurred with positive words. ‘Support’ is still just ‘support.’ ‘Agreement’ is still just ‘agreement.’ The escalation is all on the negative side—the moronic addiction to outrage. The appetite for confrontation. The hawkeyed search for potential enemies. There has to be a bad guy, a bad political party, a bad anything—so long as it’s someone else, someone to blame for their own unhappiness, their own frustration.”

As if to underscore her point, the “Socialists Suck” truck let out a deafening roar through its reverberating exhaust system as it left the parking lot.

In the relative silence that followed, Gurney’s gaze settled on the extravagant-looking acid-green vehicle he’d noticed earlier.

“Do you know who owns that?” he asked.

“That’s Ranzak’s million-dollar thousand-horsepower attention-getter. Conspicuous consumption is a big part of his appeal.”

“He drives that thing around town?”

“Especially to political events. He sometimes uses it as part of his pitch. Apparently, it has a high-end automated driving feature. He says electing him will be like pushing the Go button to that wonderful destination.”

Her phone beeped. She took it out of her pocket and looked at the screen.

“Sorry,” she said with a smile. “There’s something I need to attend to. Good night, Mr. . . . ?

“Gurney. Dave Gurney.”

She blinked in surprise. “Dave Gurney . . . the half-retired detective?”

“Do I know you?”

“I doubt it. The news media aren’t nearly as interested in me as they are in you—the star homicide detective who’s been colliding with one upstate police force after another.” There was more curiosity in her eyes than criticism.

“The collisions were unintended.”

“You mean, they were just the byproducts of your homicide investigations?” Her tone was ironic but not unfriendly.

“Something like that.”

“So, what are you investigating here in Gladstone?”

“Not a thing.”

“Did I detect a silent yet at the end of that denial?”

When Gurney didn’t reply, she continued, “The thing is, we haven’t had a homicide in our idyllic little town in ages.” She paused, before adding, “Unless you know something I don’t?”

He smiled. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Molly Parr.”

“Nice to meet you, Dave Gurney. Perhaps we’ll speak again, and you’ll tell me why Stuart, who’s not exactly a friend of yours, invited you to this remarkable debate.”

He watched as she got into her shiny white Prius and drove off in electrified silence. He turned back toward the hall at the sound of footsteps.

Wilmot approached him, wide-eyed and biting his lower lip.

“I hope that gave you a feeling for what I’m dealing with.”

“I didn’t see anyone dealing with anything. What I saw was an explosion of animosities.”

Wilmot’s mouth opened for a second or two before any words came out.

“I admit I’m passionate about the values I represent. There’s so much at stake. Beautiful living things. The spruce grouse. The lavender butterfly. The blue moth. The sedge wren. There’s a poem by William Blake with the lines ‘He who shall hurt the little wren / Shall never be beloved by men.’ Harmless gems of God’s creation. And Ranzak would trample them. He’s a greedy, cruel bastard! So, yeah, I admit I’m passionate about this. This is about stopping a monster from bulldozing the beauty out of our world. And I assure you, the economic factors are not all on his side. There’s plenty of gainful employment to be had in a green world. The ecotourism I mentioned in my comments in the hall—that’s no small thing. Sustainable recreation. Light-footprint, low-profile development. These things can be consistent with conservation. And conservation can foster a healthy local economy.

Gurney sensed Wilmot wasn’t finished. He waited.

When the man spoke again, his tone was less assertive.

“Can you help us? Maybe look into the threats? Find out who’s behind them? Make sure we stay alive long enough to win this all-important election?”

“I really don’t have the kind of resources or local connections to deal with the problem you’re describing.”

Wilmot lowered his head, a frightened look in his eyes. “Maybe you could sleep on it? Maybe something will occur to you?”

6

PEACE ELUDED GURNEY that night. The recalled sights and sounds of the town hall “debate” were vivid and persistent. Most disturbing was his feeling that Molly Parr had been right about the ascendancy of hatred in public life. He finally fell into an anxious half sleep just after noting the first gray hint of dawn.

He awoke late in the morning to the whining of wind in the hemlocks that surrounded the lodge. Snow swirled past the window, which was no great surprise. Spring weather in the mountains often changed by the hour. He sighed, got up with some effort and no enthusiasm, and discovered that his restless night had produced a dull headache. The motion of brushing his teeth made it worse. The feeling eventually faded with his third cup of coffee, accompanied by scrambled eggs and toast.

Pushing his plate aside, he opened his laptop and began reviewing once again his interview with Frankie Dalasio. Within minutes it became obvious that the events of the previous evening were making concentration impossible. Wrestling with the Dalasio affair was challenging enough when he was clearheaded.

He closed the laptop and took his cup and dish to the kitchen sink. He put on a windbreaker, woolen hat, and insulated gloves and went outside to busy himself with manual work on the lodge grounds. On the docket today was the restoration of the dilapidated rock wall that bordered the garden behind the main building. Hefting sixty-pound rocks and seating them firmly in place without crushing his fingers demanded all his attention, which freed his mind from the mess in Gladstone.

By the time he was hungry enough for lunch he’d worked up a sweat and removed his hat and windbreaker. The wind had died down, the snow squall had passed, the sun was at its highest and brightest in a blue sky, and spring had returned—along with the circling hawk.

Back in the lodge he checked his phone and saw that he’d received a message from Stuart Wilmot. He sounded shaken. His voice was pitched up a note or two from the night before.

“Mr. Gurney, I hope you get this right away. We have an emergency here. Evie Hubble has disappeared. Apparently abducted. Please get back to me. The police are useless. Worse than useless. God only knows what’s happening to her. Call me, please.”

Gurney didn’t recognize the woman’s name, but it was conceivable that her disappearance could be an escalation of the threats Wilmot had received. Or, more likely, her unexplained absence could have some simpler explanation. Reluctantly, Gurney called him back.

Wilmot took it on the first ring, and the words came tumbling out. “Thank God you called! She’s gone. We’ve got to find her.”

“Please, Mr. Wilmot,” Gurney said in a calm, professional voice. “Let’s start at the beginning. Who exactly is missing?”

“Evie. From last night. The woman with the pepper spray. She’s gone.”

He remembered the incident and how the woman had slipped back into the crowd just as the police arrived. “When you say ‘gone,’ what do you mean?”

“Gone. Disappeared. She was supposed to be at our campaign staff meeting this morning at nine. She never showed up. She didn’t answer her phone. We kept calling. She’s never blown off a meeting, and she always answers her phone.”

“You don’t think there could be some harmless reason for this?”

“Absolutely not. As soon as our meeting ended, I went to her cabin out on Violet Lane. Her car was there, but she was gone. And this is the scary thing—her back door was hanging open. It’s obvious she’s been abducted.”

“You called the police?”

“Of course. But they acted like I was creating a crisis out of nothing.”

“They came to the cabin?”

“No detectives. Just a uniformed officer. A real jerk. Wandered around the place for five minutes, looking bored.”

“No interest in the open door?”

“He said it didn’t mean anything. She could have left it open on purpose. Or by mistake. Or the wind blew it open. Christ, the wind doesn’t blow open a closed door! You see what we’re dealing with?”

Gurney considered the possibility that Hubble had been detained by the police following the pepper spray incident. It was a small town. It wouldn’t have been difficult to identify her if somebody was in the mood to press charges. That would explain her absence, but it seemed unlikely that the police would withhold that information from Wilmot.

“You heard Lucas Potts threaten her, right?” Wilmot pressed.

“The guy she pepper sprayed?”

“A goddamn maniac. He did time in state prison for aggravated assault, terroristic threats, arson. Arson was the big one. He tried to burn down the house of his parole officer. How’s that for lunacy? And he hates Evie.”

“Why?”

“She talked her sister into divorcing him and providing the evidence that got him convicted in the arson trial. He’s got to be the prime suspect in her disappearance.”

“You mentioned this to the police?”

“Twice. First on the phone and again to the useless cop they sent to the cabin.”

If what Wilmot claimed was true, it painted the Gladstone police in an unflattering light, but Gurney had been around long enough to know that stories involving the police often had more than one side.

Wilmot continued in a softer voice. “That’s why we’re desperate for your help. Abductions often turn into . . . something worse. Could you at least come out to Evie’s cabin? Take a look around? See if there’s anything that could lead us in the right direction? It could be a lifesaver. Literally.”

7

FOR THE FIRST hour, the GPS route to Evie Hubble’s cabin was identical to the route Gurney had taken the previous night to the debate, but once near town, it diverted onto a secondary road that curved around Wynderly Lake. He recognized it as one of the rural byways the real estate agent had shown him and Madeleine to impress them with the beauty of the area. The trees looked a little taller now, the wild rose bushes more expansive, the alder thickets more aggressive in their encroachment on the old pastures. The succession of postcard scenes triggered a memory of the excited smile on Madeleine’s face that day, as they were about to embark on their new upstate life.

It also brought the feeling of loss he experienced whenever he recalled their happy moments together. It was a phenomenon he’d imagined would fade with the passing months, but the opposite had occurred. That aching sense of something missing from his life had only intensified.

A line of cyclists pedaling toward him in orange Lycra became a welcome distraction from his thoughts.

The route brought him along a grassy ridge above one of the long sides of Wynderly Lake. He recalled the real estate agent saying the lake was three miles long and half a mile wide. It was as brightly blue as the sky and bordered by maple and cherry groves, displaying their fresh spring leaves, an expanse of pale greens. There was a landscaped clearing at each end of the lake, and in the center of each clearing a large house.

The voice of the agent was clear in his memory, her tone of respect verging on homage, as she pointed to those homes and explained that they belonged to “the two oldest and most respected land owners in the area, the Sloanes and the Ranzaks.” She’d added that both families were deeply committed to the preservation of Gladstone’s natural beauty.

A mile or so past the lake, Gurney’s GPS announced that he’d arrived at his destination. All he saw was a plain black mailbox on a weathered cedar post by a dirt driveway. He turned into the driveway and followed it up a hill through a thicket of birches and, via a rough wooden bridge, over a brook to a clearing where Wilmot’s muddy Blazer was parked in front of a log cabin, deeply shaded by the drooping branches of giant hemlocks. There was a small white hybrid Toyota next to the Blazer.

Wilmot stood on the cabin’s porch, taking rapid puffs on a cigarette.

As Gurney got out of his car, Wilmot stubbed the cigarette out on the porch railing and flicked the butt out onto the ground.

Gurney frowned. “Not an ideal way to treat a potential crime scene.”

“What? Oh, sorry, I’m not thinking straight.”

Gurney opened his trunk, retrieved a pair of latex gloves, and put them on.

“That little white car Evie Hubble’s?”

Wilmot nodded.

“Have you touched, moved, or deposited anything inside or outside the cabin?”

Wilmot produced a deer-in-the-headlights stare. “I don’t think so.”

“Not even the front or back door?”

“Oh, right, of course. After knocking on the front door, I tried the knob. And I put my hand on one of the glass panes, trying to see inside. And I probably touched the back door, too. The one that was open. That’s how I got in.”

“What about the officer who came after you called the police?”

“He might’ve touched some things. I should have watched him more closely. All I noticed was that he wasn’t paying much attention, just kind of wandering through the place.”

“Did you get his name?”

“The ID on his uniform said ‘S. Clapper.’”

“When you were inside, did you leave the front door locked?”

“Absolutely.” Wilmot looked relieved to be able to say something with certainty.

“Is the back door the only other way in?”

“Apart from the windows, yeah.”

“Okay, show me.”

Wilmot led the way around the side of the cabin to a tiny covered porch, consisting of nothing more than a slab of bluestone under a shingled overhang. The sound of water rushing over rocks came from a narrow gully behind the cabin. The dense shade was damp and unpleasantly cool. The back door resembled the one in front, dark-stained wood with six panes set in the top half. There were scratch marks on the bottom half of the door.

“Did Clapper say anything about those?”

“He said something about raccoons.”

“And he wasn’t interested in the fact that the door was open?”

“No, like I told you on the phone. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t open it myself. I said I found it that way, which was one of the reasons I called the police—along with the fact that Evie was missing but her car was still here. He just shrugged, as if none of it meant anything.”

Gurney stepped inside and found himself in the cabin’s central room. Most of the light came from two small windows, one on each side of the front door. The colorless atmosphere reminded him of Evie Hubble’s drab clothes at the town hall. The air was as shiveringly cool inside as outside.

He glanced around at the walls. “Is there a light switch?”

“No light switches. Just that and that.” Wilmot pointed to a kerosene lamp on a low table next to a rickety-looking chair and another on a larger table in the middle of the room.

“She really has no electricity?”

“She hates the power companies. She believes they contribute to everything wrong with the world—suburban sprawl, habitat destruction, species extinctions, pollution, global warming. She can get really emotional about people who trample on the natural beauty of the world, who care more about money than about living things. You saw an example last night of how passionate she can be.”

He paused for a moment, looking a bit conflicted. “Admittedly, she’s pretty extreme in her commitment to conservation, and that can turn some people off. But she is who she is, and her heart’s in the right place.” He pointed to a poster on the wall over the fireplace mantle. “She designed that. It says a lot about her.”

DEFEND NATURE

WITH A BOLD HEART AND

A SMALL FOOTPRINT

The words on the poster were surrounded by a delicately painted wreath of green leaves.

“I gather you’ve been in this cabin before today,” said Gurney.

“Our campaign group met here several times—before Larry Sloane invited us to meet in his guest house.”

“The same Sloane with the estate at the end of the lake?”

Wilmot nodded. “The end opposite Ranzak’s.”

“Sloane is the ‘generous individual’ funding your campaign?”

“He covers almost all our expenses—mailings, radio ads, internet, billboards, legal advice, you name it.”

“Sounds like he believes in your cause.”

“Absolutely!” The exaggerated conviction in Wilmot’s voice gave Gurney the impression that something more than political agreement might be underlying Sloane’s support.

Before Gurney could ask about it, Wilmot changed the subject.

“There’s something else I want to show you.” He took out his phone, tapped a couple of icons, and turned it toward Gurney. The text message on the screen was in capital letters:

RAN YOUR FUCKING MOUTH AGAIN FATAL MISTAKE

“When did this arrive?”

“Last night, right after I got home from the debate. And right after I got it, a weird howling started in the woods behind my house. It sounded more like a wolf than a coyote. But there aren’t supposed to be any wolves around here, so then I thought it might be someone out there in the woods imitating a wolf. That’s what really frightened me.”

“Did you show that text to the police? Or mention the howling?”

He shook his head. “I was totally focused on Evie’s disappearance. They must all be connected, though, don’t you think? Evie, the text, the howling.”

“Do you have a firearm?”

He shook his head again. “Guns make me nervous.”

“Do you know if Evie has one?”

“I doubt it. I’ve heard her complaining about our lax gun laws. At one of our meetings, she said the only qualifications you need to own an assault rifle in America are an impulse control disorder and a low IQ.”

“You’ve never seen any sort of firearm here in the cabin?”

“No.”

“When Officer Clapper was here this morning, did you see him picking up anything or taking anything with him?”

“No.”

“When you first came here looking for Evie, did you see a purse, wallet, phone? Anything it would be odd to leave behind if she intended to go somewhere?”

Wilmot pointed to a small leather bag on a table next to the front door. “I think she usually keeps that with her.”

When Gurney went through it, he found an address book, a checkbook, a wallet containing a hundred dollars, a credit card issued in association with the Northeast Wildlife Association, membership cards in several ecologically themed organizations, a driver’s license, registration and insurance cards, business cards from two printing companies, a comb, a packet of tissues, and some loose change. But no phone.

“When you went through the house earlier, did you see her phone anywhere?”

“It’s right there.” He pointed to an old-fashioned corded landline phone on a matching table on the other side of the front door.

“I mean her cell phone.”

“She doesn’t have one. She considers them a form of brain poison.”

Gurney was getting a fuller picture of the combative creature who the previous evening had attacked a man three times her size. The more he learned, the more questions came to mind. He was about to ask about her specific duties in the campaign when his attention was diverted by the sound of a vehicle approaching the cabin.

He moved closer to the window and saw a dusty white pickup come to a stop behind his Outback. A lean short-haired woman stepped out of it and strode up to the cabin. Her fist was poised to knock on the door when Gurney opened it.

Her voice was as hard-edged as her features and the stare she fastened on Gurney through steel-rimmed glasses. “Who the hell are you?”

8

WILMOT JOINED GURNEY at the door. The woman’s gaze switched to him, a raised eyebrow expressing her curiosity.

“Arbor, this is Dave Gurney. Dave’s a detective. Dave, this is Arbor Lockwood, a friend of Evie’s.”

Gurney produced a polite smile. Lockwood didn’t.

“So,” she said to Wilmot, “is there any news?”

“Nothing yet. The police have been informed, but—”

“But those corrupt morons haven’t done a damn thing, am I right?”

“That’s why I’ve asked Mr. Gurney to get involved—a detective with no connection to the local department.”

He turned to Gurney. “When I was calling around this morning, trying to find Evie, Arbor was one of the first people I spoke to. That’s why—”

She cut him off, asking Gurney sharply, “What do you propose to do?”

He responded blandly. “Perhaps I could ask you a few questions, as long as you’re here.”

“Fine. Ask.”

“First, let me get out of this doorway and into the sunlight.” He walked out of the house and past the parked vehicles. It was his experience that people tended to be more open in less constricted environments.

On the way he overheard Wilmot whispering to Lockwood, “He’s a big-deal homicide detective from the NYPD. Huge numbers of solved cases. Down in the city and more recently up here. In fact, there was a multiple-murder case in Larchfield just a year ago that he solved after the local police got nowhere with it. And there was a really weird one up in the Adirondacks, involving staged suicides that baffled everyone—except him.”

“Fine. I get it. But I’m still worried sick.”

Once they were out of the gloom cast by the hemlocks, Gurney turned to Lockwood. “May I ask how you know Evie?”

“Most people in Gladstone know most people in Gladstone.”

“Your obvious concern suggests—”

“That I’m closer to her than to some other people? True. We went through elementary school and high school together, summer camp, state college, the local bird club, LGBT support group, the fundraising arm of the battered women’s shelter, and now the campaign against Slimebag Ranzak.” She added, adjusting those steel-rimmed glasses, “So, yeah, we’re close. Kindred spirits.”

The softening of her voice in that final comment told Gurney they were a couple. Living separately, but definitely a couple.

“What exactly is Evie’s role in the campaign?”

“Aggressive promotion. Attack ads. Nasty slogans. In one of her ads she called Ranzak a barbarian with a bulldozer. In other ones she called him a money-grubber with a wrecking ball. Then she enraged the Business Owners Association members who support Ranzak by shouting in a public meeting that they were genuflecting in front of a garbage can.”

“She also helped me with my speeches,” interjected Wilmot. “We were generally on the same wavelength, so working together was a pleasure.”

“I’m gathering from you both that her uncompromising attitude made a lot of enemies,” said Gurney.

“Yes,” said Lockwood. “And every one of them the scum of the earth.”

“When Stuart told you that Evie was missing, what was the first explanation that occurred to you?”

“That she was abducted, obviously.”

“Abducted by . . . ?”

“Ranzak.” Her lips tightened, as if the name were acid in her mouth. “Not personally, of course. Multimillionaires like Ranzak don’t dirty their own hands. But I don’t have a speck of doubt that he’s responsible.”

“Do you know of any enemies she has who are not directly connected to Ranzak?”

She sighed. “She has a sharp edge that might have irritated a few other people. But I can’t give you any specific names.”

“Is it possible that she may have voluntarily gone into hiding?”

“Not without telling me. Or Stuart.”

“Does she have any nearby relatives?”

“No.”

“Have you yourself been threatened in any way?”

“No.”

“Any thoughts about Lucas Potts?”

Anger flashed in Lockwood’s eyes. “Lucas Potts is a man-shaped lump of shit. And dumb as dirt. He couldn’t kidnap a dead possum.”

Wilmot’s phone rang. He stepped a few feet away to take the call.

“Just one more question,” said Gurney. “If we’re dealing with an abduction, and if Ranzak is behind it, what would its purpose be?”

“To scare the crap out of us? To make Stuart drop out of the race? Or maybe he’s counterpunching, proving he can hit us harder than we can hit him—a street-fighting reaction to Evie’s verbal attacks. Who the hell knows what goes on in that sick brain of his?”

“Jesus Christ Almighty!” cried Wilmot, holding his phone by his ear, his mouth hanging open.

Gurney and Lockwood stared at him.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Right. Okay.” He lowered the phone. The look on his face made it clear that nothing was okay. “It’s about Kay Eliot. She’s disappeared.”

Lockwood’s eyes widened and her lips parted twice before any words came out. “This is crazy,” she said with a peculiar calm that looked like clinical shock.

Gurney remembered Kay Eliot as the woman who declared at the debate that a vote for Ranzak was a vote for death. She was president of Friends of Endangered Species.

“Who called to tell you this?”

“Kay’s husband, Dr. Aldon Sterne.”

“You know where she lives?”

Wilmot’s breathing was rapid and shallow. “A few miles farther out on this road. A pretty isolated spot.”

“I’d like to talk to him as soon as possible. Can you lead me there?”

He nodded. “Sure. Just follow me.” He looked at Lockwood, blinking as though he’d forgotten for a second who she was. “Do you want to come along?”

“I should go home. Or stay here. I don’t know. I’ll do something. You go ahead.”

“Right. Give me a call if anything happens.”

He backed away, tripped, caught himself, and got into the muddy Blazer.

Gurney started toward his own car, then stopped and turned to Lockwood.

“Did Evie have a job, other than campaign work?”

“Yes. The animal shelter. Furry Friends. Just outside the village.”

The Sterne-Eliot residence was a converted post-and-beam barn. It stood at the high end of a sloping pasture. A gravel driveway led from the road to a broad parking area occupied by a John Deere tractor, a riding lawn mower, a snowblower, a large Jeep, and a hybrid Toyota sedan. Wilmot parked next to the tractor, and Gurney pulled in behind him.

The barn-to-home modification preserved the original appearance with the exception of the barn doors. Those had been replaced by a residential front door. A tall, slim man with salt-and-pepper hair and a strained expression stood in the open doorway. His Harris Tweed jacket and tan slacks suggested expensive taste. The jacket was slightly askew, as if he’d taken a tumble and hadn’t bothered to straighten it out. A muddy smear on the right elbow underscored the impression.

As Wilmot and Gurney got out of their vehicles, he called to Wilmot. “Any news?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I don’t know any more than when I called you. The police are on their way. They didn’t show much interest in coming, but I told them if they didn’t send someone out here ASAP, I’d be on the phone to the sheriff’s office, the state police, and the FBI. That got through to them.”

“Good.” Wilmot gestured toward Gurney. “Dr. Sterne, this is Dave Gurney, a retired detective from the city.”

Sterne gave Gurney the assessing look of a diagnostician. “You have any ideas about this?”

“At the moment I’m just trying to gather all the information I can.”

Sterne grimaced. “Well, the information that matters is that my wife has evaporated without a word, without a call, without a note. Nothing. Completely unlike her. Everything points to her being taken by someone against her will.” The words were pouring out of him in a rapid stream, powered by the kind of anger that’s often the face of fear.

“The last time I saw her was yesterday, around two o’clock. That’s when I left for the city, for an alumni get-together—half a dozen of us who graduated together from Harvard Med and stayed in touch. We meet every year at this time. I spent the night in Manhattan and came home this morning. I found our side door hanging open and no sign of Kay anywhere. I went through the house, the outbuildings, checked the trail she sometimes takes through the woods up to the ridge. There are still patches of ice that the sun never reaches. I fell twice. Almost slid off a ledge. I kept thinking about the side door hanging open. She’d never leave it like that. And all her things are still here. That’s her car.” He pointed to the Toyota. “Her wallet and her phone are in the mudroom. She never goes out of the house without her phone. Never. That alone tells me something is terribly wrong.”

The cloak of anger had evaporated, exposing the fear.

“So, yesterday afternoon is the last time you saw her?”

“Yes.”

“Was that also the last time you spoke?”

“No. If one of us is away, we usually speak on the phone before we go to bed. That would’ve been around 10:30.” He retrieved his phone and scrolled through his call log. “It was 10:24 p.m., to be exact, and we spoke six minutes and twelve seconds.”

“Did she say anything about her plans, anything she might be doing this morning?”

“She said she’d be skipping the campaign staff meeting because she had an appointment for a Zoom conference with our accountant. Tax questions.”

Wilmot interjected, “Kay did call me yesterday to tell me she couldn’t come to the meeting. That’s why her absence didn’t set off alarms.”

Gurney stayed focused on Sterne. “Do you know if she kept her appointment with the accountant?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t. I checked the messages on her phone. One was from the accountant’s assistant, wondering if she’d forgotten. Does that matter?”

“I’m trying to narrow the window between when she was in touch and when she wasn’t.”

“I see.” A tiny tic disturbed one corner of his mouth.

“Are there any security cameras on your property?”

“No. We never imagined we’d need them.”

“Are there any police cameras on nearby roads?”

“To monitor traffic? Lord, no. There’s no traffic to monitor.”

“Let me ask you one final question. If your wife was taken from here against her will or tricked into leaving with someone, do you have any idea who could be responsible?”

He nodded slowly, anger flooding back into his eyes. “Ranzak.”

“Why him?”

“Because Kay hates every damn thing he stands for. God knows she hasn’t been shy about letting him know that she wants to stop his wretched project.” He paused, a troubled look overtaking his anger. “She may occasionally have been overly forceful in her comments. I remember a few times—”

He was interrupted by the gravel-crunching arrival of a Gladstone police cruiser.

It came to a stop behind Gurney’s Outback. One of the two men who stepped out of it was a young cop whose uniform shirt was at least one size too small for his muscular frame. The other one was older, paunchier, and wearing the gray slacks and ill-fitting sport jacket favored by middle-aged detectives everywhere. Gurney had a similar one hanging in his closet. He approached Sterne with the sour expression of an acid reflux sufferer.

“Good afternoon, Doctor. I’m Detective Mark Hoskins.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” Sterne’s tone suggested he’d expected the man to arrive sooner.

Hoskins glanced with distaste at Wilmot, then with curiosity at Gurney.

“Who are you?”

“Dave Gurney.”

He reacted with what looked like an effort not to react. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here at the request of Mr. Wilmot to assist in locating this gentleman’s wife.”

Hoskins’s eyes narrowed, as though he were assessing the amount of trouble Gurney might cause. Switching to a bland expression, he spoke to Sterne.

“Any word from your wife?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Sorry to hear that. But she’s bound to turn up.”

“Bound to turn up? That’s what you drove out here to tell me?”

“I drove out here because the chief asked me to drop by. He said to let you know that we’re keeping an eye out for her. Legally that’s the most we can do, since an adult being out of contact with a family member for a few hours doesn’t come close to qualifying as a missing persons case. There are all sorts of places she could have gone for all sorts of reasons. If we put out a MISPER alert for everyone who wanders off without—”

Sterne leaned forward, fury in his eyes. “Wanders off? What the hell are you talking about? I know what my wife does and does not do. She does not forget appointments. She does not go out and leave the door hanging open. She does not go out without her phone. She does not wander off. Am I making the situation clear to you?”

The uniformed cop who came with Hoskins was standing a few feet behind him, taking this in with widening eyes and a half-open mouth.

Hoskins stood still, his face as expressionless as the ground he was standing on.

Sterne went on. “I heard that Evie Hubble has also disappeared. It’s damn suspicious that these events took place after they both made speeches attacking Don Ranzak.”

Hoskins nodded in slow motion, his unblinking gaze conveying nothing. “Is it true that you and your wife are getting a divorce?”

“It’s a totally amicable arrangement, not that it’s any of your damn business.”

Hoskins showed no reaction to Sterne’s hostility. “When a person is not where a family member expects them to be, the context can be significant.”

“I assure you, Detective, the so-called context of my marriage has nothing whatever to do with what’s happened to my wife. If you think otherwise, you’ll be wasting everyone’s time, and time could be very important. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Perfectly. I appreciate your perspective.”

If his expression was designed to convey appreciation, it fell well short of the mark.

Sterne’s lips tightened into a thin straight line. He didn’t speak again until the police cruiser with its two occupants was back out on the road.

“Arrogant, useless little prick,” he muttered, his narrowed eyes following the vehicle until it was out of sight.

9

CERTAIN ELEMENTS OF the situation had begun to pique Gurney’s interest, and none more so than the Gladstone police department’s lack of interest. So, when Wilmot suggested that Gurney follow him home to discuss possible next steps, he agreed.

Wilmot’s home turned out to be a small wood-frame house at the forested end of a dead-end road, a mile or so from the town’s business district. Its white paint was faded. There were areas of pale green mold on the visible parts of the foundation. The porch was sagging, and the old rhododendrons around it were overgrown. A rutted driveway ran along the side of the house to an open shed in a similar state of shabbiness.

Wilmot’s Blazer came to a stop next to the house’s weathered side door, Gurney parked behind it, and they both got out. Wilmot unlocked the door, and Gurney followed him onto a landing from which one set of stairs led down into a dark basement. They took the shorter set up to a kitchen. When Wilmot switched on the lights, Gurney was shocked.

Everything in the room was gleaming, spotless, severely modern. A small table with a single chair occupied one wall. The opposite wall held a refrigerator, sink, stove, and countertop. The visible materials were stainless steel, brushed aluminum, and black granite. The floor was bleached oak. There wasn’t a smudge or speck of dust on anything.

A window at the near end of the room looked out on another world—an area of scruffy grass with a large bird feeder on a tilting pole, swarmed by chickadees and purple finches. The grass extended back into a tangle of thorn bushes bordered by a dark evergreen thicket.

A doorway at the far end of the room opened into what might once have been a traditional living room but now was a space that looked more like the office of a minimalist architect—everything steel, glass, and leather. The floor was of the same bleached oak as the one in the kitchen. The walls and ceiling were pure white. Lighting was provided by recessed LED fixtures. A desk-sized table displayed only a closed gray laptop. Behind the table was a steel-and-leather chair. Two matching chairs faced each other over a coldly antiseptic coffee table.

Wilmot pointed him to one of the chairs and seated himself in the other. The only sound was the soft hum of what Gurney guessed to be an out-of-sight air purifier. “To get the obvious question out of the way—” Wilmot made a sweeping gesture that took in the whole house. “Once my mother was no longer here, I replaced everything with its opposite. Lumpy chintz armchairs and flowery wallpaper out, steel and glass in. Simple as that.”

Gurney smiled. “Nothing is really that simple.”

Wilmot produced a chillier version of Gurney’s smile. “I suppose not. But I hope you’ll agree that right now we have more urgent things to discuss. Two of my most important supporters are missing, likely in great danger. Plus, there’s an election we must win to keep a money-mad predator from destroying everything we value—while so-called law enforcement is in the pocket of the predator. You saw for yourself how unwilling they are to look into anything that might embarrass Ranzak.”

Gurney nodded noncommittally. “Tell me about the Sterne-Eliot couple.”

“Aldon is a semi-retired surgeon. Came up from the city about ten years ago. Met Kay at a political fundraiser. They’ve been married for five years, and they recently agreed to a totally friendly separation. They’re both reasonably well off, and both support our campaign. What else do you want to know?”

“How she and the transplanted surgeon adapted to married life in Gladstone—their connections, friends, enemies, whatever comes to mind.”

Wilmot made a sound that might have been a one-syllable laugh. “Surgeons don’t usually adapt. They do things their own way and expect other people to do the adapting. But Aldon is rather solitary, so he probably hasn’t made any serious enemies, and he doesn’t seem interested in having friends. Kay is warmer, more caring, more attuned to people. She cares about all living things, especially the endangered ones. She’s fanatical about saving the blue moth and the spruce grouse, and her best friend, Laura Pinkney, started the Lavender Butterfly Society.”

“How about enemies?”

“Until yesterday I would have said she had none. No serious ones, at any rate. But when she was speaking at the town hall last night, Don Ranzak looked like he would have been happy to cut her throat and watch her bleed to death.”

The image led to a brief silence.

“You haven’t told me how you happened to get into this race for town supervisor.”

“It wasn’t my idea. When Floyd Parr retired, Ranzak announced his candidacy—along with his scheme for a sprawling commercial development on thousands of pristine acres. The whole thing was horrifying—at least to those of us who love the natural world and hate seeing it destroyed. So I wrote an op-ed piece, expressing what a lot of us were feeling. It got passed around, generated excitement. People suggested that it should be our political platform, and since I wrote it, I should be the spokesperson. The clincher was Larry Sloane offering to finance our campaign, whatever it cost. With a commitment like that, I couldn’t say no.”

As Wilmot was speaking, he was leaning progressively forward. He paused now and readjusted his posture. “To be truthful, I don’t have much appetite for being the town supervisor. My real goal in winning the election is making sure that Ranzak loses it.”

Gurney checked the time. It was getting late. “I’d like to talk to Larry Sloane. You think you could set up a meeting for tomorrow?”

“Larry’s a creature of habit. He likes to spend some time with clay pigeons every morning if it isn’t raining. So he should be home.”

“He shoots clay pigeons at home?”

“He has a regulation trap-shooting field out behind his flower gardens. It was his father’s favorite sport, and now it’s Larry’s. He’s collected quite a few trophies.”

Rather than calling it a day and setting out directly for Ian Valdez’s Adirondack lodge, Gurney decided to take advantage of the remaining daylight and see if the neighbors of Kay Eliot or Evie Hubble had noticed anything that might be helpful.

The nearest house to the Sterne-Eliot property was nearly half a mile away and appeared unoccupied. A “For Sale” sign on the front lawn bore the photo of the same agent that had shown him and Madeleine around seven years earlier.

Evie Hubble’s cabin did have one close neighbor—a single-wide mobile home on concrete blocks. It sat about a hundred feet back from the road. A blue tarp covered half the roof, and a rusty pickup was parked by the front door. Smoke rose from a portable barbecue grill on one side of the pickup. There was a decrepit doghouse on the other side. What passed for a driveway was a wide dirt path through an expanse of weeds. A corroded tricycle poked out from the weeds. A reddish-brown chicken stood on the tricycle and tilted its head as Gurney got out of his car.

He gave the situation an appraising once-over, put on a friendly smile, and started along the dirt path. He didn’t get more than few feet before a large black Rottweiler emerged from the doghouse, growling.

He stopped, wishing he’d strapped on his sidearm that morning before leaving the lodge. The rottweiler advanced toward him, dragging a long loose chain behind him. Gurney was taking his first careful steps backward when a shouted command halted the dog’s movement. A second command from the man coming out from behind the pickup silenced the growling.

A gaunt figure with weathered skin and a drooping mustache, he reminded Gurney of a minor character in a Western movie. He was carrying a formidable barbecue skewer.

Gurney reanimated his friendly smile. “Impressive dog you have there.”

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you might be able to help me.” He waited a moment for the man to respond. When he didn’t, Gurney continued. “I’m looking for a woman who lives on this road. A neighbor of yours.”

“She in trouble?” The man sounded hopeful. Clearly, he not only knew Evie Hubble but disliked her.

“Possibly. I was up at her cabin, but there’s no sign of her.”

The man displayed a semi-toothless grin and bent over to pat the head of the big dog. “Hear that, Brutus? What goes around comes around, eh, boy?”

Gurney broadened his smile. “Hubble woman’s not your favorite neighbor?”

“She’s nothing but trouble. Nice to see her end up with some of her own.” He looked down at the dog. “Nasty woman’s got trouble. Hear that, boy?”

“I gather she and Brutus aren’t close friends?”

“Woman’s not any kind of friend to any natural thing. Claims to love nature. Crock of crap, that is! Driving by one day in that little bullshit electrified car of hers, she saw Brutus dealing with a possum. Jumps out of the car, starts screaming at Brutus, screaming at me when I come out to see what the hell’s going on. Tells me I got to keep him locked up, calls him a goddamn killer, says she’s gonna report me to some wildlife something-or-other bullshit. Woman’s a loony. Nature lover, my ass. It’s the nature of Brutus to deal his own way with pain-in-the-ass possums. Last thing we need is some smart-ass bitch telling us what’s natural.”

Gurney nodded. “I hear you.”

The man hacked up some phlegm, spit it on the ground, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What did the bitch do to you?”

“It’s kind of a messy legal matter that’s tough to talk about. What I can tell you for sure is that I’d love to get hold of her. The thing is, she managed to disappear sometime between last night and this morning. Any chance you heard or saw anything? Any sign of her coming or going? Noises, voices, strange cars, anything like that?”

“No, sir. However she got away, she did it quiet like.”

“Would you happen to know anyone else she’s had problems with?”

“Everybody.”

“Anybody you’d put at the top of the list?”

He shrugged. “Any hunter, builder, logger, snowmobiler, quad rider—anybody who doesn’t think they were put on earth to save some worthless minnow or trash possum. See, that’s the thing about her. She pisses off everyone with a normal brain.”

“Okay, my friend. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.”

The man bid him farewell with a wave of the barbecue skewer. “I hope you find the bitch and make her regret the day she came to Gladstone.”

Brutus underscored the sentiment with an ugly growl.

The sun had just set behind the hills and the temperature was dropping as Gurney turned onto the state highway that would take him most of the way to the Adirondack lodge. He was less than ten miles out of Gladstone in the middle of a broad river valley when a text message arrived from Wilmot:

Meeting set with Sloane (Rose Lane, Gladstone) at 10 AM tomorrow to discuss evolving status of the situation, nature of your involvement, financial needs, how we should respond to the escalating threats, next steps. See the latest escalation—which I discovered right after you left.

There was a photo of what appeared to be the rear wall of Wilmot’s house. Sloppily painted, dripping red letters extended across its full width.

AMERICA HATERS = DEAD TRAITORS

10

GURNEY PULLED UP in front of a decorative iron gate in a fieldstone wall shortly before ten the following morning. A young man opened the gate and came over to Gurney’s side window. He looked like he was dressed for a stroll on an English footpath and had a pleasant smile, but there was a hard edge to his gaze.

“Mr. Gurney?”

“Yes.”

“Follow the driveway to the parking area at the right of the main house. Mr. Sloane will meet you in the conservatory.”

Gurney followed the manicured gravel driveway for at least half a mile before arriving at a large white colonial. There were no other cars in the parking area, which was located next to a four-bay garage. A bluestone path led from the parking area to a classic greenhouse-conservatory connected to the rear corner of the house.

As he approached the structure, a dark-haired woman in a white shirt and olive slacks opened a multi-paned glass door.

“Good morning, Mr. Gurney,” she said with cool politeness. “This way, please.”

He followed her through a humid maze of exotic plants and through a second door into a cooler, drier room with a brown leather sofa, two leather armchairs, and a low teak chest that served as a coffee table. An oversized book with a flying bird on the cover rested on the chest. The title was Upland Game Birds of North Wales.

“Mr. Sloane will be with you shortly.” Her tone suggested that Gurney was being granted an exceptional favor. Before leaving, she looked around the room, as if making sure there were no loose items of value he might pocket. With a final glance in his direction, she closed the door firmly behind her.

One wall of the room was all glass, so clean it was virtually invisible. It provided an expansive view of a multi-acre mowed clearing that included a freshly painted red barn, a Cotswold-style cottage, a latticework grape arbor, and a stable. A bridle path proceeded from the stable across the width of the clearing into a wooded area. The back half of the clearing sloped down to the edge of the lake, where a mahogany Chris-Craft runabout was tied up at a low dock.

From where he stood, the whole length of the lake was visible. At the far end, three miles away, he could see the outlines of Ranzak’s mansion, a sprawling peach-colored stucco affair of no coherent style or period, as jarringly out of place as a palm tree in the Adirondacks.

He heard the door from the conservatory open and turned to see a large sandy-haired man with unwelcoming eyes and an aggressive chin approach. He appeared to be dressed for a Victorian pheasant shoot—in a vintage brown tweed jacket, tan breeches, and high woolen socks. Gurney’s instant impression of the fellow conjured up the term “landed gentry.”

“I’m Larry Sloane,” he said, extending his hand with a smile no warmer than his eyes. The hand was unpleasantly soft, the grip unpleasantly tight.

“I’m about to have a spot of amontillado. Join me?” The lack of warmth extended to the invitation.

“Early in the day for me. Thanks anyway.”

Sloane uttered an unpleasant grunt and went to a sideboard at the end of the room, where there were several bottles, along with glasses of various shapes and sizes. He returned a minute later holding a tulip-shaped sherry glass brimming with an amber liquid. He sipped it twice, sank down into one of the leather armchairs, sipped it again, then balanced the glass carefully on the broad arm of the chair.

“So, Mr. Gurney . . . shall we begin?”

“I thought Stuart Wilmot would be joining us.”

“I prefer one-on-one discussions.” He glanced at his watch. “So, tell me why you wanted to see me.”

“I assume you’re aware that Stuart asked me to look into the source of some threats and, more importantly, the reason two of his supporters are now missing.”

Sloane nodded and took a long sip of sherry.

Gurney continued, “I’d like to know more about the hostilities in the election campaign. Which means learning about the people involved and what’s at stake. I was told your family has been in Gladstone for a long time, and you know the key players better than anyone.”

Sloane responded with a mild nod of agreement, which quickly soured. “You’re asking for a major education. Be more specific.”

“You might start by telling me about the other prominent Gladstone family.”

“You mean the scum at the other end of the lake? Hardly prominent, in any proper definition of the word.” He rose from his chair, went to the sideboard, and returned with a refilled glass.

When he was seated, he took a long sip before putting the glass back on the arm of the chair. “There was always a crude vein running through the Ranzak family. An unseemly ambition. Particularly in the male members. Rather too sweaty.”

His lip curled as if at the odor of Ranzak sweat.

“What forms did their ambitions take?”

“It all started with the camp. Caleb Ranzak, the present reptile’s grandfather, got the idea of creating a sleepaway camp for city kids. It caught on, especially with upper-middle-class types who liked the idea of stowing their teenage progeny in the woods for two months every summer. Caleb discovered he could charge a lot for giving those parents two months of respite from their hideous children. He used the money to buy land, including the land around the far end of the lake. Ended up with over two thousand acres.”

He took another long sip of his sherry before going on. “By the time that Caleb’s son, Stanley, father of the reptile, took over the camp, times were changing. There were new options for city teenagers from families of means, and they stopped coming. So Stanley switched the focus to upstate kids. Aggressive advertising. Billboards everywhere. And it worked. A financial success. A few downstaters kept coming, but mostly the campers were local. Seemed for a while that every kid in Gladstone was spending time at that camp. While it lasted.”

“While it lasted?”

“Stanley became incapacitated years ago with some lingering illness or other. Donny, the reptile, was eighteen at the time, and he started running the camp—I gather with decidedly mixed reviews. A few years later, Stanley died and the reptile inherited all of Stanley’s assets. I’m sure he was delighted with the money, land, and house, but he clearly had bigger ambitions than operating the camp for the rest of his life. He essentially abandoned it, left the big vulgar house in the care of the housekeeper and gardener, and left Gladstone—reportedly to acquire the requisite financial education and make his mark on Wall Street.”

“Did he?”

“More like a bloody gash. Ran a hedge fund of astonishing profitability, zero morality, and dubious legality. Bought marginal companies, fired half the employees to artificially boost profits and stock prices, then dumped the stock at its peak, moments before the companies collapsed. The fund also bought nursing homes, cut costs, turned them into wretched little profit centers. He finally shut his rotten fund down, just as the SEC was beginning to detect an unpleasant odor.”

“That’s when he returned to Gladstone?”

“Local boy rolled back into town in the guise of conquering hero—including an absurd million-dollar car and an appalling trophy wife.”

“I gather his big plans for the area have impressed a lot of people.”

“Some people, yes—a certain spectrum of society, ranging from quarrymen and loggers at the low end up to hungry business owners on the high end. Self-professed ‘realists’ and ‘straight shooters’ with a shared hatred of the latte-liberal promoters of gay marriage, unisex bathrooms, and environmental regulation. And because he shares their shoddy values and speaks their language, they think he cares about them. Truth is, if he didn’t need their votes, he’d gladly grind them all up and feed them to his dog.”

He raised his glass and studied the amber liquid for a few seconds before finishing it. “Mind you, the alternative’s far from perfect. There’s lots of rubbish in Wilmot’s general philosophy—liberal fantasies that are patently unworkable in the real world, not to mention the antiestablishment tone that encourages a sort of childish anarchy.”

“But you support him, despite some of his political leanings?”

“I do. Somewhat opportunistically, I must admit. I support him, or more accurately, his candidacy, in this time and place because of his focus on conservation—which is a very good cause—and because of his clear opposition to a tawdry development scheme that would be a disaster. Stuart may in some ways be a muddle-brained leftist, but compared to the tasteless ogre he’s running against, he’s the only sane choice.”

Gurney’s next question was put on hold by the ringing of his phone. It was a call from Wilmot; he decided to take it.

Wilmot sounded wild with anger.

“Some disgusting Ranzak moron broke into our campaign office last night and smeared feces over everything. Feces! On our campaign posters, fliers, computers, everything! Jesus!”

“You just discovered this?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“Have you notified the police?”

He let out a loud sigh. “I will. But they’ll do absolutely nothing. Probably just laugh!”

“You say the office was broken into. How?”

“A back window was jimmied open.”

“Are your computers password protected?”

“Definitely.”

“Okay. Do a complete physical inventory of the place, to see if paper files or anything else is missing. Then call a commercial cleaning company. Some have emergency services, so you may be able to get a crew in there tonight or tomorrow morning. One last thing. When the Gladstone police arrive, try to record what they say and do. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He found Sloane watching him with a curiously raised eyebrow.

“That was Stuart. Someone vandalized his campaign office. I should go, but before I do, I’d like to know why so much depends on this election. Is the town supervisor position that powerful?”

“Yes and no.” Sloane rose from his chair and returned to the sideboard to top off his sherry. He took a sip with a savoring smile and settled back in his chair. “It goes back to a commitment my father made to the town board. He promised that our land would never be given over to commercial development, that it would remain a permanent nature preserve. He backed up his promise by giving the town board veto power over any future use of our five thousand acres. Foolhardy, but high-minded. Stanley Ranzak, not to be outdone in the public-image arena, gave the town board the same power over his two thousand acres. You see where this is going?”

“I see that control of the town board could be a big deal.”

“A very big deal—considering Don Ranzak’s plan to convert his father’s pristine acreage into a billion-dollar commercial development. Until very recently, the seven-person Gladstone board was divided four to three against the idea. Then Floyd Parr resigned, creating a three-three tie. Meaning the entire future character of our area now depends on who wins the election.”

Gurney took a moment to consider what was at stake and how many people would be affected. “Would it be fair to say you’re as determined to stop Ranzak’s plan as Ranzak is to pursue it?”

Sloane didn’t immediately reply. He had turned in his chair and was looking out over the lake. “You see those hills in the distance?”

“I do.”

“There’s a river valley beyond them—the loveliest you’ll ever see—then a second line of hills, and a second valley with a lake as perfect as this one. There are spring-fed ponds and streams you can drink from and cherry copses and sugar maples that turn crimson in the fall. There are no poisonous snakes, no poison ivy or sumac, no mosquitos. The air is as pure as it was a thousand years ago. A benign and beautiful place. I want it to remain that way, and I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep Ranzak from destroying it. Does that answer your question?”

“It does.”

“In a place as beautiful as this, change is never a good thing.”

“And Wilmot is your main hope for stopping it?”

Sloane smiled. “Stuart was a pleasant surprise. Bit of a shock, to be honest. You know what he does for a living?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask him.”

“He’s a library assistant—their computer geek. Always been quiet as a mouse. Never voiced an opinion on anything. Then Ranzak announced his big plans. And Stuart woke up. Found his voice. Found himself, you might say. And the environment found a passionate new champion. He galvanized the natural enemies of Ranzak—the pure-water defenders, the nature defenders, the endangered species defenders, the hikers, the bird-watchers, the fly-fishers, the kayakers, the devotees of peace and quiet—in a common effort to defeat the man who could destroy everything they love. Stuart speaks from the heart. His emotion is contagious. What more could you want in a candidate?”

“Do you think he’ll win?”

Sloane sighed. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether he’s still alive on election day.”

Gurney was struck by Sloane’s matter-of-fact tone.

“Do you think there’s a possibility that he won’t be?”

“Threatening Ranzak’s ambition is not without risk.”

“You’re funding that threat. Are you concerned for yourself?”

“I’m adequately protected.”

“By the guard at your gate?”

“My property is more secure than it might appear.”

“What about when you leave it?”

“I don’t.”

“Sorry?”

“I never leave this place. Everything I want is right here.” Sloane made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the lake, the broad clearing, the adjacent woods and meadows, and the elegant old house itself with the conservatory they were sitting in.

Gurney wondered if the man’s goal in financing the defeat of Ranzak’s development plans could be as bizarrely simple as preserving his pleasant view of the distant hills—a vision of an ideal past, a time gone by in which men of a certain class spent pleasant mornings with their engraved shotguns and honey-gold amontillados.

But he suspected there was more to it than that.

11

WILMOT’S CAMPAIGN OFFICE was located off Gladstone’s main street in a space that had once been occupied by a furniture maker so devoted to his favorite wood species that he’d named his shop after it. An obvious attempt had been made to scrub the stenciled letters off the front window, but a faint remnant of “The Walnuttery” remained visible.

A broad alley between it and a vegan restaurant called Granny’s Greens led to a shared parking area, where he found Wilmot’s Blazer next to the open back door of the campaign office. As Gurney was getting out of his car, Wilmot emerged from the open door, his voice full of angry frustration.

“A pair of Gladstone’s finest were just here. They said they were examining the scene so they could file an incident report, but it looked to me like they were just bumbling around. I asked why they weren’t checking for prints around the jimmied window, and they told me that wasn’t done in cases of minor vandalism, where nothing of real value was destroyed or stolen. Is that true, or just another symptom of their incompetence?”

“True, generally speaking. Conservation of resources. I’d like to take a look inside.”

One long room extended from the back wall to the front window. It was furnished with a few tables of different sizes, a dozen or so folding chairs, and a filing cabinet. A large desktop computer and a landline phone sat on one of the tables. Open laptops occupied two of the others. The computers, along with most of the surfaces, had been defaced with thick brown smears and streaks. The odor was sickening.

Wilmot’s anger percolated in muttered curses.

While the mess was understandably provocative, by comparison with the likely abduction of two women, the attack on the office struck Gurney as almost childish. If it was a statement, it was being uttered more likely by drunk teenagers than ruthless political operatives.

“Was anything taken?”

Wilmot shook his head. “Nothing obvious.”

“Anything valuable destroyed?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So, a nasty inconvenience rather than a disaster.”

Wilmot opened his mouth to object, but Gurney cut him off. “I realize it’s part of a disturbing pattern, but right now we need to keep our focus on a situation more serious than a filthy office. Do you have an address or phone number for Evie Hubble’s sister?”

It took Wilmot three calls to find someone who had a current number for Felicity Potts (née Hubble). His call was answered immediately—perhaps with the eagerness of someone desperate for news. When Wilmot explained that Gurney was a highly respected detective, helping in the search for Evie, Felicity agreed to meet with him.

The address she provided was that of her parents’ home in the village of Squatmore.

An hour’s drive from Gladstone, the “village” turned out to be little more than the intersection of two roads in an area of weedy hill pastures and alder thickets.

Gurney’s GPS took him a mile past the intersection onto a dusty side road called Heavenly Lane. A decaying bulletin board in front of an abandoned church informed him in faded letters that “God Knows.” A lone cow stood motionless on the opposing hillside, as if mesmerized by those words.

When the voice of his GPS told him he’d arrived at his destination, he found himself in front of an old farmhouse adjacent to the watery mire of a half-drained beaver pond. There were three dead trees standing in it, blackened by age and rot. He turned onto a down-sloping dirt driveway, stopped amid a flock of wandering chickens, and got out of the car. The air smelled of manure and something acrid. The screen door of the house opened with a scraping sound.

The thin woman standing in the doorway had straight white hair combed back from her bony face, parted in the middle, and tucked behind her ears as though she’d recently emerged from a shower. She was wearing a shapeless white cardigan and baggy white pants that looked like they’d fit someone two sizes larger.

“You the detective?” she asked in a sharp voice, as Gurney mounted the wooden porch. There was suspicion in her gray eyes.

“Yes. I’m Dave Gurney. Mrs. Hubble?”

Without answering she motioned him into the house, eased the screen door shut, and led him into a dark, colorless sitting room that had seen better days. A wide picture window overlooked the beaver-pond mire. At the far end of the room a fat man with a bowling-ball head and no neck eyed Gurney with a look simultaneously sly and dense from an overstuffed armchair. A cup holder in one of the arms held a brown beer bottle. At the opposite end of the room a sad-eyed young woman with dyed red hair clutched the arm of a lumpy couch like a marooned sailor in a leaky lifeboat. She wore old jeans and a black tee shirt, and her neck and arms were covered in elaborate tattoos.

Gurney gave the fat man a nod of acknowledgement, which was ignored, and turned to the young woman.

“Felicity?”

“Yes.” She pointed to one of the sagging chairs by the couch. “I think that one’s the most comfortable.”

He smiled, thanked her, and sat down—angling himself in a way that gave him a peripheral view of the fat man. The woman in the white cardigan seated herself on the couch, one cushion away from Felicity.

“You can talk to both of us. I’m her mother,” she said, giving the word authoritative weight, before adding with a nod toward the fat man, “Earl keeps to himself.”

As if to contradict her, the fat man spoke. “You from Gladstone?” He was smiling loosely, but his voice had the nasty undertone common in a certain stage of drunkenness.

“I’m working there,” said Gurney.

“Gallstone. That what I call it. Felicity, you want to get your good ol’ dad a fresh one?” He raised the beer bottle from the cup holder and turned it upside down to prove its emptiness. A trickle descended into his lap. He didn’t seem to notice. His wife did.

“You’ve had enough, Earl.”

“Wasn’t talking to you. Your name ain’t Felicity, is it?”

Felicity intervened. “I’ll get you one, soon as I can. First I need to talk to this man about Evie. It’s important.”

Earl began studying his inverted beer bottle, as though it were a perplexing puzzle. Then he placed it upside down in the cup holder and closed his eyes. Within seconds he began to snore.

Felicity’s mother bowed her head for a long moment before looking up at Gurney with a resigned sigh. “Sometimes he’s better, sometimes he’s worse. He’s not long for this world.”

Felicity shot her mother a sideways glance. “Been saying that for ten years.”

“So I have.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself.

Felicity turned to Gurney. “I apologize for the distraction. I’m sure you don’t have time to waste. Did you come here to tell us things or to ask questions?”

“There’s not much I can tell you. So, mostly questions.”

“Are the cops still treating this like it doesn’t matter?”

“They’re not viewing it yet as a potential crime.”

“Bastards. Have they confronted Lucas?”

“I doubt they’ve confronted anyone. But if you’re referring to your ex-husband, who your sister pepper sprayed, I’d like to talk to him myself.”

She shrugged. “You can find him on the day shift at the county recycling plant. And he still lives up at the end of Macklin Road, where I used to live before I left the son of a bitch. Most nights after work he hangs out at Jesse’s Roadhouse, that disgusting bar by the cemetery. I can give you directions if you need them.”

“If you approach Lucas, be careful,” her mother interjected. “He’s a big man with an evil temper. He’s made vile threats. Felicity had to get one of them restraining orders.”

Gurney could see a dark memory stirring in the young woman’s eyes.

“Did he ever assault you?”

She didn’t answer, but her mother did. “I’d call it an assault alright. He was accusing her of crazy things she never did. Threatening what he’d do to her. He punched a hole in the bathroom door, right through it, wood splintering in her face. Could’ve blinded her. She had to climb out the bathroom window to get away from him. That’s when Evie finally convinced her to file the divorce papers. She should’ve dumped Lucas Potts years ago.”

The two women sat staring silently into the miserable past.

“Do you think Lucas could have been involved in Evie’s disappearance?”

Simultaneously Felicity said, “No,” and her mother said, “Yes.”

Gurney focused first on the mother.

“Why do you think so?”

“Because I wouldn’t put anything past him. After what happened at the town hall, he’d sure enough want to get back at her.”

Felicity shook her head. “You don’t know him like I do.” She said it with the kind of grim emphasis that comes with multiple repetitions of an unappreciated truth.

She turned to Gurney. “Lucas is a violent idiot. Get in his face and he might try to rip your head off. But it’s all in the moment. Whatever happened to Evie must’ve been planned, and Lucas couldn’t plan his way out of a chicken coop. Besides, I heard Kay Eliot is also missing. They have to be connected, right?”

“A reasonable assumption.”

“That means more planning. And another thing. Evie’s no fool. No way she could be tricked by Lucas. Evie’s the smartest one in the family. Proof is she got out of here. Got educated. Not married, like I did, fool that I am. You get some romantic idea in your head, and then . . . reality arrives.” She was glaring in the direction of her father in the overstuffed chair.

As if the power of her contempt had aroused him, he cleared his throat and began speaking in a phlegmy voice. “The mention of chicken coops brings to mind the lesson of Hiram Bogner. A lesson for the ages.”

Felicity’s mother emitted an exasperated sigh. “Earl, not again, for Godsake.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “A self-educated perfectionist is what you’d call Hiram Bogner. Smartest man in town. Wasn’t nothing he didn’t know better than anyone. Fine carpentry was top of the list. Hiram Bogner had a saying. ‘I make things that’ll outlive me, be my markers in the world when I’m done and gone.’ Well, nothing proved his point better than his chicken coop. You coulda kept an angry bull in that coop. Built like an artillery bunker. Then one day old Hiram accidentally locked himself in the damn thing with a dozen hens, and he couldn’t get out. They found him couple of weeks later, dead of dehydration, covered with chicken shit and dead chickens. That coop still stands on his deserted property, proof of his expertise. Lesson worth learnin’.”

He picked up the empty bottle from his chair’s cup holder and waved it like a flag. “Where the hell’s that beer I was promised? Thought I was too drunk to remember? Got a memory like an elephant.”

He pushed himself ponderously up from the chair, farting as he rose, and walked unsteadily out of the room.

There were tears welling in Felicity’s eyes. Her mother’s face had turned to stone.

Felicity wiped her eyes with the backs of both hands. “Welcome to our world,” she said.

“He reminds me of my father,” said Gurney softly.

They looked at him with surprise and curiosity.

He continued, “The tone, the sourness, the focus on the next beer, the next shot of whiskey. When I was a kid, I used to pray that he’d stop drinking.”

Felicity eyes widened with recognition. “Didn’t work, did it?”

“What it did was destroy any interest I had in prayer.”

She nodded almost imperceptibly. “Is he still alive?”

“No. But he lived a lot longer than I expected.”

“Did he ever stop drinking?”

“He just lied about it more.”

Both women were gazing at him in a hard-to-define way. Their defensive postures had softened into sadness. Or empathy.

“One last question,” said Gurney. “If Lucas wasn’t responsible for the disappearances, do you have any idea who might have been?”

The women looked at each other. Felicity spoke first.

“Maybe someone from the Brotherhood.”

“The Brotherhood?

“It started out as a rowdy, nameless motorcycle gang—a loose pack of drunks, addicts, hell-raisers. Then Harlan Stone took over. Vicious, clever, scary guy. Organized things. Managed to turn the pointless mayhem into a focused protection racket. Got rid of club members who didn’t like taking orders. He gave the group the name, a reporting structure with military titles, even a flag showing ‘The Brotherhood’ in a design that looked like a swastika. He created an organization of obedient psychos who see themselves as some kind of elite special-forces unit with him as their commander.”

“Why would they kidnap Evie and Kay?”

“To threaten Wilmot—scare him out of the race.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Maybe because Harlan Stone is super close to Don Ranzak.”

12

THAT IDYLLIC PICTURE painted by the real estate agent for Dave and Madeleine seven years earlier was starting to look like a whitewashed hell on earth. He had the feeling that whatever was going on in Gladstone was complicated and he was seeing only a tiny bit of it. If he was going to make any progress, he’d need to learn more about the underside of the place from an objective source.

He’d met only one person who might fit that description.

Sitting in his Outback before pulling out of the Hubble driveway, he searched the online white pages for a phone number for Molly Parr. None was listed, but he did find a landline number for Floyd Parr. He recalled her mentioning in their conversation after the town hall pandemonium that he was her father.

Perhaps the man could be persuaded to provide his daughter’s contact information.

Gurney placed the call.

A woman’s voice answered. He was sure he recognized it.

“Molly?”

He spent most of the hour-long drive from Squatmore back to Gladstone mired in childhood memories of his alcoholic father—the man’s unreachable silences, interrupted from time to time by acidic comments about the neighbors or bursts of cynicism about the world in general.

The address Molly had given him turned out to be a well-kept nineteenth-century farmhouse with white wood siding and black shutters. Four rocking chairs on the deep front porch gave it the inviting air of a New England inn. Off to the side and farther back from the road there was a classic red barn.

He pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. There was a warm, sweet scent of spring in the air, and the late-afternoon sun illuminated the green hill behind the barn. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to absorb the peace of the place.

He opened them to the sight of Molly Parr coming toward him across the front lawn with a welcoming smile. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt, faded blue jeans, and sneakers that may once have been white.

“Any difficulty getting here?”

“None at all. Thank you for making time to see me.”

“Such a lovely day, I thought we could sit outside.”

“Sounds good.”

She led the way around the house to a mowed field, bounded on its far side by a stream. A gazebo of weathered gray cedar stood next to the stream. She arranged a pair of cushioned wicker chairs to face each other, waited for Gurney to choose one, then sat in the other.

“So,” she said with a smile that Gurney returned.

“I wish I’d had more time to prepare for this meeting, but the situation is urgent. First, I should explain why I’m in Gladstone. Stuart Wilmot asked me to attend that affair in the town hall because of threats he and his supporters had received. At first, I wasn’t inclined to get involved. It seemed to me that what Stuart really wanted was a bodyguard, and that’s not my specialty. Then Evie Hubble and Kay Eliot went missing, and your local police seemed strangely disinterested.”

“Which naturally intrigued you.” She smiled. “I did a little internet research to add to what I remembered from stories about you in our upstate papers. Turns out, your NYPD background is even more impressive than I thought. Mysteries seem to attract you, and apparently, you’re very good at solving them. In my own small way, I have a similar reaction to mysteries. When something catches my attention, I can’t let it go. So, tell me, what can I do for you?”

“All I can see right now are little pieces of something—like bits of rusty metal sticking up out of the ground. I have the feeling they’re parts of something buried. Something that connects them in a way that isn’t obvious. I’d like to know what that might be. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I do. But I can only answer your questions if you ask them.”

“First question. Where’s all the negative energy coming from?”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I understand the conflict between environment and development. I understand the battle to control the town board. I understand that everyone is suspicious of everyone else’s motives. All of that seems like routine politics. But something else is happening here. What am I missing? Whose cage should I be rattling?”

“How well do you know Stuart?”

“Not well at all. He doesn’t strike me as a natural politician, but his passionate approach to the election seems to have generated passionate support.”

“True. But it might be a good idea to get to know him better. And obviously Don Ranzak should be on your list, especially if you can get him to talk about his life here before he went off to make his fortune.”

“Okay. How about Harlan Stone? Felicity Hubble thinks he might have been involved in the disappearance of her sister.”

“Harlan is a textbook sociopath. Wait, let me revise that. Forget ‘textbook.’ Harlan is the worst kind of sociopath. An extraordinarily intelligent one.” The shrieking of redwing blackbirds above the reeds by the stream interrupted her. Half a dozen were circling and diving at a lone crow that had invaded their territory.

Once the crow had retreated and the redwings had settled down, Molly continued. “Regarding the political divide, which seems to be tearing Gladstone apart, you’ll get a vivid picture of the Wilmot side if you come to the Fallen Angel at seven this evening.”

“The Fallen Angel?”

“It’s a quirky bookstore in a spruced-up barn on Dead Cat Hollow. Windon Clarke is introducing his latest self-published book, Vision Magic. Events at the Fallen Angel tend to draw a high proportion of Wilmot people. I think you’ll find it instructive. If you give me your phone number, I’ll text you the address.”

Gurney gave her his number. She entered it in her phone, tapped a few keys, and a moment later his own phone pinged with the bookstore address.

“There, you’re all set,” she said, smiling at him. “Unfortunately, I can’t be there tonight. I stay home evenings with my father whenever possible.”

“You haven’t told me why he resigned.”

“It’s no great secret. He was becoming forgetful. More so than normal for a man his age. His condition was diagnosed as MCI. Mild cognitive impairment. Sometimes it’s mild, sometimes more than that.”

“It was interfering with his job?”

“With his self-confidence. He was afraid of looking foolish. So he chose to step out of the public eye.” She paused. “My father was a master at maintaining peace. He liked everyone; everyone liked him. He brought out the best in people. Then, quite recently, he took himself out of the equation.”

“And all hell broke loose?”

She nodded.

“You’ve been very helpful. I just have one last—” He was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He glanced at the screen and was surprised to see that the call was from Madeleine. They hadn’t spoken in nearly a month. Despite his curiosity about what she might want—he was sure it would be something she wanted—he let it go to voicemail.

Molly was watching him with interest. “You were about ask one last question?”

“I was wondering what occupies your time when you’re not keeping your father company or observing town hall brawls.”

“I’m a listener.”

“Oh?”

“Officially, I’m a nondenominational minister and a licensed therapist. In reality, what I do is listen to people. That’s what my father did so well in his public role. Because he listened, no one felt the need to shout.”

“Nondenominational? Does that mean Christian but not affiliated with any particular sect?”

“Loosely, yes. But I don’t refer to myself as a Christian. The term has been polluted by those who take political advantage of it. The statements of those so-called Christians are to the teachings of Jesus what sewer water is to rainfall. They’re the very people Jesus drove out of the temple with a whip.”

“Sounds like an issue you feel strongly about.”

She burst out laughing. “You think?”

13

BACK IN HIS car, Gurney returned Madeleine’s call.

“Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry to bother you with this, but you know those weedy trees at the edge of the pond—the ones you were always cutting back? Something needs to be done about them. Permanently. The damn things are spreading. I think the roots are sucking water out of the pond.”

“You want me to take care of that?”

“I did call Jim Smithers about it last week, but his wife said he just got out of the hospital, and he wasn’t ready for outdoor work. She thought maybe I should pour herbicide on the roots, but I don’t want poison leaching into the pond.”

“So, all that’s left is to dig them out, roots and all?”

“I tried that, but the damn roots go deeper than I thought. I don’t have the strength for it.”

“Okay. I’ll deal with it. But right now I’m kind of—”

She cut him off. “Busy. Of course.”

“But, as I said, I will deal with it.”

“Any idea when?”

It was only the tiniest dispute, if even that, but it reflected something deeper in their broken marriage. Every conversation they’d had in the past month had followed the same pattern. He felt a little surge of anger but made an effort to suppress it.

“Hopefully within a week or so,” he said evenly. “I’m in the midst of some craziness in Gladstone.”

“I remember Gladstone.”

He waited to hear what she might add, but she didn’t add anything.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I have a few hours of free time. Are my pick and shovel still in the barn?”

“I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be.”

“I’ll be in touch.” He ended the call before either of them could turn a spark into a blaze.

According to his phone, it was five o’clock. It occurred to him that it might be instructive to spend some time at Jesse’s Roadhouse before going to the Fallen Angel.

Jesse’s Roadhouse was out on the opposite side of Gladstone, between an abandoned farm and an old cemetery with tilting gravestones. Gurney pulled into its bumpy, unpaved parking area at 5:20. Among the motorcycles and dusty pickups parked along the side of the building was a vehicle remembered from the town hall parking lot—the jacked-up truck with the big “Socialists Suck” bumper sticker.

Inside, he was greeted by the mingled odors of stale beer and a greasy grill.

The dimly lit square room was divided roughly in half. Two pool tables, both in use by large leather-vested men, occupied the left side. The right side was devoted to a long bar with a dozen or so stools. Tired-looking men of various shapes and sizes, dressed in work clothes that had seen better days, sat in four of them. One of the men looked familiar.

As Gurney made his way to the bar, a closer look confirmed that the man was Lucas Potts. Gurney chose a spot two stools away from Potts on his right and one stool away from a grim-faced man with stringy black hair on his left. He caught the bartender’s eye and ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s, no ice. He paid for it with a twenty-dollar bill and left the change on the bar. After his first sip, he smiled as if the whiskey were a dear friend. It was something he’d seen his father do more than once.

He let his gaze wander from his drink to the beer taps to the grime-coated tin ceiling and back to his drink, paying attention to whatever he could hear of nearby conversations.

The dominant voice at that moment belonged to a bulky man with a shaved head and shaggy gray goatee. He was sitting on the far side of Potts and addressing Potts’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

“Wasn’t any kind of winter at all. You know what I’m sayin’? Used to be a real snowfall was two, three feet. Now they get two, three inches, got to close the schools. By the time we get the plows and sanders out, it’s all melted. I mean, what the hell?”

Potts nodded and frowned at his beer bottle, tilting it this way and that, like Earl Hubble in his armchair.

“It’s the new people,” said the grim-faced man on Gurney’s other side. “They think three inches is a goddamn blizzard.”

The bulky man with the shaved head responded to the grim-faced man’s reflection. “Maybe that counts for a blizzard down where they come from. Probably never seen real snow, gets mixed so fast down there with dirt and garbage.”

“Yeah, well, they’re confused for sure.”

“City people.”

“Think they know everything, and they don’t know a damn thing.”

A man on the other side of the bulky man joined in. “What they don’t know is how damn crazy they are.”

“You put your finger on it,” said the grim-faced man, tapping his forefinger on the bar to underscore the point. “Crazy as hell. You wouldn’t believe what they’re paying me to do, this fancy couple from the city. They had a new house built, nice colonial, couple million bucks. You know what they hire me to do?”

He waited. No one answered. “They hire me to distress the cabinets, the woodwork, the pine floors. They paid two million bucks for a new house, and they hire me to make it look old. So, I ask them, you want your house to look old, why not buy an old house to start with?”

The other men in the mirror and the bartender were all looking at him. The bartender broke the silence. “What did they say?”

“Nothing. What could they say?”

The bulky man spoke up. “They come here from the city and they want to look like they belong here. My neighbor, Jimmy Pugh, got too sick from the gut cancer to keep up the farm, so he left the old plows and hay rakes out by his barn. They were as worn-out as Jimmy. He woulda had to pay someone to take them away. Then this weird sculptor moves up from Brooklyn and offers to buy all that corroded crap from Jimmy. You know what for? To put in front of his house! Called it an art installation.”

The grim-faced man produced an evil chuckle. “Somebody oughta install a truckload of cow shit on his porch.”

After a few snorting laughs and head shakes, the three men returned to their beers. Lucas Potts didn’t appear to have heard a word of what was said.

Gurney noticed a chalkboard on the wall with a short list of food items. It was an unappetizing place to eat, but he was hungry. He made what he considered the safest choice—a grilled cheese sandwich.

The bartender brought it to him on a paper plate ten minutes later. He had tattoos on his rough hands and around his neck. His dark eyes looked like they’d seen a lot, mostly trouble.

“You want anything to go with that?”

“Bottle of Heineken.”

He made no move to get it. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

“True.”

“What brings you here?”

“Business.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s good. What kind of business?”

“Private security.”

“You securing anything around here?”

“You might say that.”

Another slow nod. “What kind of private security?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why is that?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be private.”

“‘If I told you, it wouldn’t be private.’” The bartender repeated the words slowly, as if savoring them. His dark eyes grew darker. “That’s real clever. I gotta remember that.” He moved away toward the other end of the bar.

The Heineken never arrived. It was his first indication that he’d gotten under someone’s skin. While his comment didn’t approach the level of real cage rattling, he had a feeling it might generate a response. In fact, the looks he got from the leather-vested men at the pool tables made it almost a certainty.

14

HE WAS BACK in his car at 5:40—an hour and twenty minutes before the event at the Fallen Angel. He decided to use the time to pay a visit to the Furry Friends Animal Shelter. The route consisted mainly of a winding road through a series of gentle hills. The north-facing sides were home to thickets of sugar maples with old-fashioned sap buckets affixed to the trunks. On the south sides there were sloping meadows and groups of black-and-white cows. In the low places between the hills, brooks and ponds were surrounded by spring grasses in every shade of green.

Gurney had never considered himself an environmentalist, but he found the possibility of all this beauty and tranquility being replaced by malls, condos, and tourist “attractions” repellent. Although his positive feelings about nature weren’t as top of mind as Madeleine’s, they were there, they were real, and the threat posed by Don Ranzak’s vision of progress was bringing them to the surface.

At 5:55, he arrived at his destination.

The shelter consisted of a farmhouse, a repurposed barn, and a large fenced exercise yard, currently occupied by a dozen or so lively, barking dogs. A few lined up silently at the fence to watch Gurney get out of his car and walk toward the farmhouse.

The office was located in what was once the front parlor.

A scarred oak desk, two folding chairs, and a dark wood file cabinet from another era looked like they’d been acquired from a Salvation Army shop. The woman behind the desk wore a loose sweatshirt. Sun shining through the window next to her illuminated what looked like cat hair on her shoulders. Her own hair was pulled back into a short ponytail. Her smile was warm and weary. The little identification sign on her desk said she was Claire Lovey, Director. When Gurney introduced himself and his reason for stopping by, her expression turned to concern.

“Evie didn’t show up today. It’s not like her to miss one of her regular days without calling. I don’t remember it ever happening before.”

“She’s quite reliable?”

“More than reliable. Dedicated. The most dedicated, caring, positive person. The animals love her. We all love her. She wouldn’t just not show up. That’s not Evie. I called her, of course, but her phone just kept ringing. As far as I know, nobody else has been able to get in touch with her either. I hope nothing’s happened to her.”

“Do you know if she was worried about anything?”

“Worried? I wouldn’t say worried. Concerned, maybe.”

“About . . . ?”

“About the possibility that Ranzak might win the election. The environmental catastrophe he’d create. That’s why she spends so much of her time working for Mr. Wilmot.”

“Is she afraid of Ranzak—not just politically, but personally?”

“Afraid? Lord, no! Evie’s not afraid of anybody.”

Gurney had the passing thought that fearlessness is not always compatible with longevity.

“Do you know anything about her personal life? People she spends time with? People she avoids?”

She shook her head. “You should ask Arbor Lockwood. Do you know her?”

“We’ve met. How about Kay Eliot?”

“They’re both involved in Stuart’s campaign. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.”

“Do you know if Mrs. Eliot has a job, other than the campaign?”

“Not unless you consider being the great surgeon’s wife a job.”

“You don’t like the great surgeon?”

“It’s hard to like a man who adores himself. They’re breaking up, you know. I don’t understand how she put up with him as long as she did.”

“The breakup was her decision?”

“Oh, definitely!”

“Do you happen to know the reason for it occurring now?”

“Straw that broke the camel’s back? Maybe one too many know-it-all comments from a man who actually believes he knows it all.”

Gurney smiled. “Sounds like you and the doctor may have collided in the past.”

Claire Lovey’s lips tightened. “That’s another subject entirely—one I have no intention of discussing. Now, I do need to get back to work. If you find Evie, please let me know. It would be a great relief to know she’s alright.”

Gurney arrived at the Fallen Angel bookstore with ten minutes to spare. He pulled onto the grass verge behind a long line of parked vehicles, most with eco-friendly personalities. Even the pricey German imports were hybrids.

Walking toward the entrance to the gentrified barn, he passed a series of bumper stickers that seemed to describe Wilmot’s coalition: “Water Guardians,” “Gladstone Bird Club,” “Planet Wardens,” “Save the Pollinators,” “Pollution Kills,” “Trans Pride,” “Support Your Local Library.”

It was a mild evening, the sun was still well above the western hills, and the door was wide open. Gurney followed a pair of women in black jeans, khaki tee shirts, and matching turquoise brush cuts into a sort of anteroom to the barn’s main area.

Against one wall there was a counter with drinks and snacks. A quick glance revealed mango-infused water, acai something or other, and mason jars of birch-sap rock candy. Along the opposite wall there was a long table with stacks of books spaced out on it. There was a smiling individual sitting on a folding chair behind each stack, and a poster on the wall behind each chair showed an enlarged photo of the book.

In the order in which Gurney walked by them, the covers read: The Healing Power of Haiku by Yomo Bernstein, The Sun Is a Woman by Elise Sweetwater, The Virus of Male Supremacy by Fran Boodler, Listening to Ferns by Davola Sykes, Dream Voyaging by Margaret Three Deer, and The God in the Flute by Marcus Thurible.

Each of the authors, with the exception of Thurible, was engaged in conversation with one or more interested attendees.

Moving from the anteroom into the larger part of the building, Gurney noted that among the renovations that had turned the dairy barn into a bookstore, the most obvious were the large modern windows that provided views of the surrounding fields and woods and gave the interior a bright, open feeling. The transformation also included a polished concrete floor, freestanding bookcases, a checkout counter, a reading area, and a raised presentation platform with rows of chairs facing it.

Some people were already seated; others stood in small groups. Stuart Wilmot, dressed for the occasion in a pink tee shirt under what appeared to be a fashionably deconstructed beige jacket, mingled among the standing crowd.

As soon as he noticed Gurney, he excused himself and hurried over.

“Glad to see you here! Any news about anything?”

Gurney gave him summaries of his conversations with Larry Sloane, the Hubble family, and Molly Parr.

After listening anxiously, Wilmot said, “Larry called me after your visit. He liked you. He agreed with my suggestion that we offer you an initial retainer of ten thousand dollars to cover your first week, taking us to election day—and fifteen hundred a day if we need you after that. Is that acceptable?”

“Sounds generous.”

“Larry can afford it. And, of course, that amount is just for your time. Any other expenses you incur will be covered in full. Whatever it takes. You’re our main defense against Ranzak—and the only hope for Evie and Kay.”

Gurney didn’t like being put in the “only” position, but before he could object, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and faced a short prematurely balding man with a nervous smile.

“Good evening, Detective, I’m Declan Moore.” When Gurney showed no reaction to the name, he added, “I wrote Desperate Fools.”

It sounded to Gurney like a country music song, but Declan Moore in his maroon ascot and blue blazer was clearly not part of that world.

Wilmot intervened. “Desperate Fools is Declan’s psychological study of politics in America.”

Moore quickly added, “Not just the poisonous cultural polarities but the easy acceptance of lies, the eager belief in irrational conspiracy theories.”

“Interesting,” said Gurney, wondering where this was heading.

“That was my last book. I’ve just begun a new one—Policing in a Misinformed Nation. It focuses on America’s divisions and delusions from the perspective of law enforcement.”

“I see.”

“So I was thinking that a riveting chapter of this book could be devoted to your perspective on Gladstone.”

“My perspective on Gladstone?”

“This town has become a microcosm of American disunion—the bitterness of the current election campaign being a perfect symptom of our societal breakdown. And now there are these disappearances, likely abductions, which are surely police matters. You can see how this ties directly into the theme of my book.”

Gurney responded only with a puzzled expression.

Moore explained, “The theme being how law enforcement responds to crime in this fraught environment.”

“Then you should be talking to someone in law enforcement.”

“The problem is, there are restraints on what active-duty police can share with people outside the system. But you’re free to share your observations with anyone you want, and you know more about policing than anyone in Gladstone.”

Gurney said nothing, but his skepticism was obvious.

Moore’s nervous smile was becoming strained. “Think about it.” He fumbled in the pocket of his blazer, pulled out a handful of business cards, and offered one to Gurney. “Let’s talk more about it, at your convenience.”

Gurney slipped the card in his pocket as Moore moved away to find a seat. The event was about to begin.

“Sorry about that,” Wilmot said. “I had no idea he wanted to rope you into something.”

The microphone crackled, and a smiling woman in a silky beige suit began speaking from the raised platform. “Good evening! What a nice crowd here tonight! So good of you all to come!” She paused while some of the attendees still standing found seats. Gurney moved off to one side of the seating area, Wilmot to the opposite side.

“Before we get to the main event, I want to let you know what’s in store for you next week. We’ll have three—that’s right, three—local authors with their latest books. Reiki master and sculptor Dakota Witherspoon will read us the opening chapter of Spiritual Creativity. Royce Fisher will demonstrate some fun exercises from his amazing Transcendental Juggling. And Violet Jones will surprise us with her offbeat gathering and cooking techniques in Mushrooms! Mushrooms! Mushrooms!”

These announcements were greeted by murmurings of interest and amusement.

She continued, “As a special treat tonight after our main presentation, we’ll be auctioning off one of Gash Goodman’s fun sculptures, Lead Balloon. It’s part of his famous tongue-in-cheek representations of popular phrases. But be warned. If your bid wins, you may need help taking home your prize. It weighs three hundred pounds.”

Chuckles rippled through the crowd.

She lowered her mic to exchange a few words with a pudgy thirtysomething man who, despite his young face, was a poster boy for old-fashioned academia in his rumpled tweedy clothes, disarranged brown hair, and tortoiseshell glasses that magnified his eyes alarmingly. He was holding a hardcover book tightly to his chest, as if he were afraid of misplacing it.

Returning her attention to the audience, the still-smiling woman raised her mic. “Okay, on to our main event! Three weeks ago, Dr. Gordon Phelps, professor of psychology at the state university, gave me a copy of his latest book. I started reading it, and I could not put it down! His revolutionary insight into why we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail is mind-blowing.”

She turned to the tweedy professor. “Dr. Phelps, the podium is yours!”

A round of perfunctory applause followed him onto the platform. He took his place behind the lectern and nudged his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose.

The lectern reminded Gurney of the one used by Ranzak and Wilmot at the town hall. He assumed the present occasion would be more peaceful, given the homogeneity of the audience. To double-check his assumption, he glanced around at the attendees. One of the few attendees who’d remained standing looked both familiar and out of place. He was tall with a thick body, deep-set eyes, and dark hair slicked back into an oily ponytail. His features were set in what appeared to be a permanent sneer. The lack of leather vest and pool cue initially threw him, but then he realized that the man was one of the Brotherhood members he’d seen at Jesse’s Roadhouse.

When Gurney completed his scan of the room, he noticed that the man was gone.

Gordon Phelps placed his book on the lectern. “This evening, I’m hoping to surprise you, even shock you. Let’s start with a question. Why do you sometimes achieve a goal and sometimes not?”

Dead silence.

“Don’t be shy. Speak up. Extra credit for class participation!”

His attempt at humor was met with a smattering of polite laughter.

“Seriously, this is an important question. Anyone here ever decide they needed to lose ten pounds? Simple-enough target. Maybe you reached it, maybe you didn’t. Think about other goals, ones you achieved and ones you didn’t. What was the determining factor?”

Someone called out, “Determination!”

Another voice echoed that.

Yet another voice suggested, “Motivation.”

Phelps smiled and nodded. “Everyone agree with those suggestions?”

His question was answered with positive-sounding murmurs.

Someone who sounded like they were accustomed to being listened to offered a loud and clear summary: “Willpower is definitely the big one. The drive to get to the finish line, smash through the obstacles, endure the pain along the way. That’s what it’s all about.”

More sounds of agreement.

Phelps continued smiling and nodding. “My research confirms that willpower is definitely the number one reason people give for any success that involves real effort. But there’s one small problem with that.” He paused before adding with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smirk, “What we think of as ‘willpower’ doesn’t actually exist.”

From the side aisle where he was standing, Gurney noted expressions of curiosity, bafflement, and antagonism.

“Consider the dieting example. Our diet begins with an envisioned goal—a slimmer waist, a healthier heart, a quicker step, a more attractive presence. For a while the vividness of the goal pulls us through the discomforts of the process. As long as the pleasures associated with a slimmer waist remain vivid in our mind, we are drawn toward that goal. But when the envisioned experience of eating the ice cream in the freezer becomes more vivid, its magnetic power supplants that of the slimmer waist. Desire is by definition aroused by an object of desire. Consider the word ‘attraction.’ We are attracted by something—an object, an imagined feeling, attention, recognition. Our behavior is determined by the power of that attraction. When the attraction fades, our pursuit falters. This is not a failure of our will; it is a failure of our vision.”

Some previously contentious expressions were shifting toward interest.

The professor’s tone, which had become insistent, now seemed more relaxed. “For those of you wondering if we have neurological support for this view, the answer is yes. A section of my book is devoted to measurements of the electrical brain activity generated by envisioning specific goals. These measurements quantify for the first time the relative magnetic power of the things we say we want.”

Phelps began to step away from the lectern, then stopped and said, almost as an afterthought, “Let me leave you with this final thought. Consider the case of the serial killer. Is it willpower that drives him to his grisly goal past all prudence, all obstruction, all danger? Or is it the dreadful magnetic power of his vision?”

He smiled.

Just as the applause was about to begin, he raised his hand and added, “I would be remiss if I failed to use this public opportunity to urge you to vote for sanity and Stuart Wilmot in the most important election in the history of Gladstone.” He gestured toward Wilmot, who was standing by one of the large windows off to the side of the platform.

His endorsement was punctuated by two gunshots.

15

THE FIRST SHOT splintered the top of the lectern, sending Gordon Phelps reeling sideways off the platform onto the floor. The second shot knocked Stuart Wilmot to his knees, screaming. Blood spread down the sleeve of his jacket.

As a tsunami of panic engulfed the crowd, a few individuals with calmer heads were trying to keep the rising pandemonium from becoming as dangerous as the shots. Gurney forced his way through the crowd toward the two downed men.

As soon as he ascertained that Wilmot’s wound was not arterial and that Phelps hadn’t been struck by the bullet that hit the lectern but was merely stunned by his fall, he called 911 and gave the dispatcher the key facts.

“Shots fired at Fallen Angel bookstore. Located about one mile into Dead Cat Hollow. One victim wounded. One victim with possible minor injuries. Shots fired from outside the building, through a west-facing window. There are two medium-caliber bullet holes in the glass. Between thirty and forty civilians present.”

He provided his name and phone number and was told to stand by for a call from responding police officers. He then made his way as quickly as he could to the bookshop door to prevent any ill-advised exits. He grabbed a nearby chair, stood on it, and, after getting as much of the crowd’s attention as he could, announced that it was important to remain in place until the situation outside the building could be evaluated and any threat neutralized.

The call promised by the dispatcher came two minutes later, but not from the responders.

“Mr. Gurney, this is Chief Troutman, Gladstone Police Department. I’m sending a tactical unit and an ambulance. Is the gunshot victim conscious?”

“He is.”

“Is he able to identify himself?”

“The victim is Stuart Wilmot.”

The ensuing three-second silence got Gurney’s attention.

When Troutman spoke again, there was a new tension in his voice.

“Detective Hoskins is on his way. He’ll need to talk to you. Don’t leave the site.”

After ending the call, Gurney checked again on Wilmot and Phelps. Phelps had been helped to a chair, where he sat open-mouthed and blinking. A frightened-looking woman was kneeling beside him. Wilmot was sitting on the edge of the platform, holding his bleeding upper arm.

Gurney figured he had about ten minutes before Hoskins and the tactical unit arrived and took charge of the scene. He wanted to use the time to see if anyone could identify the Brotherhood member who’d been standing at the edge of the audience. Although virtually all the attendees were now on their feet, most were remaining close to the seats they’d occupied prior to the shots. Gurney made his way to where he’d last seen the man and started questioning people in that area.

The first two he approached claimed they hadn’t seen the man he was describing. The third seemed so unsettled by the situation that all she could do was shake her head frantically. The fourth was a willowy young woman with dreamy eyes. She was wearing a hippie-style floral smock and seemed unnaturally calm. She said she’d been aware of the presence of a tall man dressed all in black, radiating a negative aura.

Gurney asked if she had actually seen the man.

Yes, she had seen him, but perhaps not “actually” in the way the word was commonly used. She explained that she frequently saw things more clearly with her eyes shut.

In whatever way she might have seen him, did she happen to know his name?

She had no interest in ordinary names, only the names people chose for themselves.

Gurney sensed that this conversation could go on for some time, and time was a luxury he didn’t have. He moved on to another woman, this one so ancient-looking he had little hope of getting any useful answers.

He quickly discovered how wrong he was.

Although she appeared to be well into her nineties, her eyes were bright, her voice clear and confident. “I saw the man you’re describing. He was standing right there.” She pointed to the spot where Gurney had seen him. “He stayed there until Marian—Marian Lake, the bookstore owner—introduced Gordon Phelps. Then he turned around and headed out the front door. I recall thinking, Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Bad rubbish?”

“I gather you don’t know Tyson Grock.”

“I don’t, but now I’m curious about him.”

“I advise you to satisfy your curiosity from a distance. The Grocks are a wretched family, and Tyson’s the worst. Likes being known as ‘the hatchet man.’”

“Meaning?”

“He’s a competitive hatchet thrower. It’s a target sport. Instead of bows and arrows, they use hatchets. He likes the nickname. No doubt because it’s intimidating.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

There was a flash of suspicion in her sharp blue eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve been retained by Stuart Wilmot to look into some troubling events. The Brotherhood may be involved, and I believe that man is one of them.”

“Oh, he’s one of them alright. You carry a gun?”

“Sometimes.”

“Better keep it handy if you pay him a visit. You still want to know where he lives?”

“I do.”

The promised “tactical unit” turned out to be a pair of Gladstone patrol officers, decked out in Kevlar vests and armed with AR-15s. When Gurney met them at the door, he recognized one as the silent young cop who’d appeared with Hoskins at the Sterne-Eliot house.

Neither looked eager to take control of the situation, to enter the bookstore, or to do anything except wait by the building for further instructions.

Gurney explained that both shots had come from the west side of the bookstore—probably from some trees about fifty yards away. They both nodded but didn’t move. So he stepped outside, led them to the corner of the building, and pointed to an evergreen thicket.

When they appeared unsure how to proceed, he suggested they might consider splitting up and approaching the area at converging angles from less exposed points north and south of the bookstore. They nodded again and, after some hesitation, set out in opposite directions—in crouching positions that looked like they’d learned them from a TV crime show.

Gurney returned to the front of the building as a convoy of vehicles were arriving—an unmarked police car, an ambulance, a forensic van, and a sheriff’s department car. Moments later he was directing a Gladstone cop, two sheriff’s deputies, two EMTs, an evidence-collection specialist, and Detective Hoskins into the bookstore.

Hoskins’s first question was to Gurney. “Is our tactical team securing the perimeter?”

Gurney stifled the temptation to ask if he was referring to the two nervous young men with assault rifles. “They’re checking the woods on the west side of the building. Probable source of the shots. Frankly, I wouldn’t have encouraged them to go out there if I thought the shooter might still be hanging around.”

Hoskins registered the implied criticism by making an unpleasant sucking sound through his teeth. After asking Gurney to repeat the facts he’d given to Chief Troutman, he began issuing instructions—to the sheriff’s deputies to take names, contact information, and brief statements from everyone present; to the local cop to tape off the building and, with clearance from the “tactical team,” the adjacent thicket; to the evidence tech to locate and bag the slugs and to photograph the scene with emphasis on the window entry holes of the two slugs, their final locations, and the lectern.

Curious to see how Hoskins would react to the presence of a Brotherhood member prior to the shooting, Gurney approached him as soon as he’d finished handing out assignments.

“One of the attendees was Tyson Grock.”

Hoskins exhibited a typical detective’s no-reaction reaction.

Gurney added, “I was surprised to see a Brotherhood member at a book presentation.”

“Maybe they’re not all as stupid as you think.”

“He left as soon as Gordon Phelps was introduced. Two or three minutes before the shots were fired.”

“That a fact?”

The EMT people were pushing Phelps and Wilmot in wheelchairs toward the front door. Hoskins sucked at his teeth and followed them out.

16

BY THE TIME Gurney turned from Dead Cat Hollow onto the county road, there was a chill in the air and the colors of the landscape had faded in the deepening dusk. When he pulled into the local hospital parking lot it was already dark, and the business district’s nineteenth-century-style streetlamps were lit.

The ER receptionist, an obese young man with inquiring eyes and a smiling mouth, told him that Mr. Wilmot’s final paperwork was being completed and he would be released shortly.

There were about twenty seats in the waiting area. Three of them were occupied by thin middle-aged women sitting side by side. They appeared to be sisters, if not triplets. All three had short red hair and green eyes. All three were wearing smock-like dresses of raw linen.

Gurney chose a seat across from them. He took out his phone to check for messages. He found a text from Madeleine that had arrived while his phone was muted at the Fallen Angel: “I checked the barn. Your tools are all there. A spade, two long-handled shovels, a crowbar, an axe, a hatchet, two rakes—everything you need to rip out those things by pond. Sooner the better. They’re growing three inches a day.”

When he looked up from his phone, the three women were watching him. The one in the middle spoke first.

“You were at the bookstore.”

“I was.”

“You’re the detective Stuart hired.”

“I am.”

“Then you know about Evie and Kay.”

“I know they’ve disappeared.”

“What do you think is happening?”

“What do you think is happening?”

She exchanged knowing looks with the other two before answering.

“It’s the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”

He blinked at the non sequitur. “Meaning?”

She opened her hands, palms up, as if they revealed the answer.

“A declaration of war.”

He asked who she thought was responsible, expecting the answer to be Don Ranzak.

She leaned forward, a new intensity in her green eyes.

“Satan.”

Unsure whether this was a metaphor, an epithet, or a delusion, he said nothing.

Still leaning toward him, she whispered, “Satan is real. He’s here in Gladstone.”

Gurney was diverted from any follow-up by the opening of the ER door and Stuart Wilmot’s entry into the waiting area.

His blond hair, always neatly combed, looked like it had been pulled in half a dozen directions. There were tremors around his lips and a heightened vigilance in his eyes. His bloodied beige jacket was draped over his left forearm. His wounded right arm was in a sling.

The three women rose in unison and moved toward him with wide-eyed concern.

His gaze settled on Gurney. “Can you follow us t-to the Collective?”

“The Collective?”

“The Blue Moth Collective. It’s a safe haven f-for . . . for people who feel threatened. I’m going to spend the night there. But we need to t-talk.”

Gurney assumed that Wilmot’s new stutter resulted from being shot. However minor the physical wound might be, its emotional implications could be major.

The Blue Moth Collective had no signage, but the chain-link-and-razor-wire fence surrounding the property suggested it was either a confinement facility or a well-protected refuge. A grim-faced woman in a camo outfit opened the gate, and Gurney followed the van carrying Wilmot and the three women to a parking area in front of a two-story farmhouse.

They all gathered in silence on the porch, waiting for the front door to be unlocked. Once inside, Gurney noted an immediate reduction in Wilmot’s anxiety level. One of the three women uttered an audible sigh of relief. The woman who had made the comment about Satan spoke to Wilmot.

“You can confer with Detective Gurney in the office behind the meditation room. Sunny will bring you some chamomile tea.”

Gurney followed Wilmot from the foyer into a large oblong room, furnished only with a dozen sisal mats on a pine floor. Wilmot opened a door at the far end of the room without knocking, startling a wild-eyed man at a cluttered desk. His kinky black hair was standing up on his head, as if electrified.

“Stuart!” he cried. “I heard the terrifying news! Are you okay?”

“Arm’s a little sore. Nerves on edge. You working on your project?”

“Home stretch! Final details! You need the office?”

“Briefly.”

“No problem.” He gathered up a handful of papers from the desk and hurried out of the room.

In addition to the desk, the office contained a sofa, a low coffee table, and two armchairs. Wilmot settled gingerly into one of them. Gurney took the other.

“That was Oliver Bunny,” said Wilmot. “He’s an event artist.”

“Meaning?”

“He designs one-of-a-kind art happenings. Like sculpting a copy of Michelangelo’s David, then having it explode at its first exhibition.”

“He did that?”

“He did.”

“The point being?”

“Hard to say. His new project is clearer—a parody of materialism. It’s called KABOOM! Quite c-clever, really. It’s a unique sort of demolition derby. The cars all have p-price tags of more than a hundred grand. Top-of-the-line Mercedes, BMWs, Lamborghinis, Bentleys. All in mint condition. The starting gun is fired, they gun their engines, and they smash each other to pieces. Capitalism in ruins. The demolition of the one percent.”

A willowy, retro-hippie woman appeared in the doorway with two mugs on a tray.

Wilmot waved her in.

“Chamomile, with a little honey,” she said, placing the tray on the coffee table. “Any news about Evie or Kay?”

“Nothing at all,” said Wilmot.

A visible shiver went through her. “I hate to think about it.”

As if to dispel the thought, she changed the subject. “Harmony told us at breakfast you heard a wolf howling in the woods by your house. Is that true?”

He nodded. “It gave me the chills.”

“They claim there are no wolves in this part of the state, but how do they know?”

When neither man responded, she went on. “They’d know if the wolves came down in a pack from the Adirondacks, but what if it’s not a pack? What if it’s a lone wolf? I read on the internet that a lone wolf can be more dangerous that a whole pack. Did you know that?”

Wilmot said no.

“The thing about lone wolves is that they’re not alone by choice. It’s because there’s something wrong with them, and the pack pushes them out. Once they’re cut off they get crazy and vicious. Instead of hunting for food like a normal wolf, they start killing just for the fun of it. For the taste of blood. Like homicidal maniacs.” She let out a shaky sigh. “Sorry about that. My nerves have been on edge ever since Evie disappeared. And now Kay.”

She retreated and closed the door behind her.

“Who was that?” asked Gurney.

“Sunny Kish. She’s a ‘found-things’ artist. It’s a collage category. Assemblies of objects discovered, for example, on a walk through the woods. Harmony met her at a crafts show. She was living in a van, and her collages weren’t selling. Harmony invited her to stay here.”

“Harmony is . . . ?”

“Harmony is one of the three sisters who were waiting for me at the hospital. The other two are Rainbow and Astra. Their parents were 1960s dropouts. The sisters own the place, run it, decide who gets to stay here.”

Perhaps in response to Gurney’s puzzled look, Wilmot continued. “The house used to be owned by a wealthy Gladstone woman who became incapacitated but refused to go to a nursing home. The sisters took turns caring for her in the last three years of her life. She left them her house, her land, her bank account. They turned the place into what it is today.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“A refuge for members of our society who tend to be hated by bigots and morons. It’s also a temporary residence for controversial artists and a meeting place for aggressive defenders of the environment. All of which makes it a target of threats from the Ranzak crowd.”

“Who actually lives here?”

“In addition to the three sisters, a couple of trans people, a haiku poet, a practitioner of healing music, a vegan activist, a pro bono environmental lawyer, two of our own campaign workers, plus Sunny Kish and Oliver Bunny.”

“Interesting group.”

“Most people would consider them out-of-touch idealists, but they’re closer to reality than our society’s money-grubbers and power junkies. Naturally, Ranzak hates them.”

The battle lines Wilmot was describing seemed to energize him, bringing him forward in his chair. The position caused a sudden pain in his wounded arm. Wincing, he sat back slowly.

“Back at the hospital,” said Gurney, “you mentioned that we needed to talk.”

Wilmot adjusted the position of his arm. The slight stutter, which had temporarily disappeared, returned. “I saw someone at the b-bookstore who didn’t belong there.”

“Tyson Grock?”

Wilmot’s mouth opened in surprise. “How did you know?”

“I’d seen him earlier at Jesse’s Roadhouse. A woman at the bookstore told me his name.”

“Did you notice that he left when G-Gordon Phelps started speaking?”

“Yes.”

“So, he c-could have been the one who shot me.”

“Possibly. He’s on my list of people to talk to.”

“Be careful. He’s a t-total lunatic. If he thinks you suspect him . . .” He left the consequences to Gurney’s imagination. “What’s your next step?”

“Finding a motel and getting some sleep. It’s too late to drive back to the Adirondacks.”

“Stay here. There’s an addition on the back of the house with extra bedrooms.”

Gurney’s inclination was to refuse the invitation, but his weariness persuaded him to accept it.

Sunny Kish ushered him through the house to the newer annex and into a room of monastic simplicity. It contained a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, a small table, and one chair. A shade was pulled down over the single window. The light was provided by a reading lamp on the table.

Sunny smiled. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

“No, but thank you for asking.”

“I’ll be in the meditation room if you change your mind.”

“Do you stay up all night?”

“Always.”

“And sleep in the daytime?”

“Yes. When the goddess is watchful.”

“The goddess?”

“The sun. She watches over me while I sleep.”

“You never sleep at night?”

Her eyes widened. “Evil comes at night, when the goddess is away.”

“Even here?”

“Sometimes it comes as a wolf.”

She fell silent, her gaze fixed on something beyond the confines of the room.

Suddenly she shuddered and blinked, as if shaking off a dream.

“If you’re here tomorrow,” she said in a bright voice, “you can come to Rainbow’s presentation on the vital role of the pollinators.”

Gurney said nothing.

“It’s about the bees,” she explained. “If the bees die, we all die.”

17

ANYTHING RESEMBLING SOUND sleep eluded him. Periods of dozing were troubled by dream images of Frankie Dalasio burying a murdered girl, of lone wolves howling, of Brotherhood members spearing Wilmot with sharpened pool cues.

At four in the morning he gave up, dressed, and made his way to the meditation room. He found Sunny Kish, sitting at a folding table she’d apparently set up during the night. She held a gnarled segment of a tree root in one hand and a jagged shard of bluestone in the other. As Gurney approached, she laid them down carefully on either side of a fan-shaped purple fungus.

She looked up at him with interest. “What can I do for you?”

“I decided to start my day early. How do I get out through your security fence?”

She pouted. “You’re leaving?”

“I can’t sleep, and there’s a lot I need to do.”

“You should have told me you couldn’t sleep. There are wonderful relaxation exercises I could have shown you.”

His imagination ran wild for a few seconds.

“You’ll miss the pollinators,” she said sadly.

He paused. “About that security fence . . . ?”

She picked up her phone from the table with sudden efficiency, and her fingers tapped quickly through a few screens. “Done. The lock’s deactivated. The gate will open when your vehicle reaches it.”

He thanked her and headed out into the chilly predawn darkness.

Of the tasks on his mental checklist he decided to deal first with the one involving Madeleine. By the time he’d arrive in Walnut Crossing it would be dawn, and he’d have enough light to handle the little job by the pond. He also realized that no small part of his motivation was the prospect of seeing her.

Driving through Walnut Crossing an hour and a half later—past the tattoo parlor, the two used furniture shops, the discount cigarette store—he was reminded of the village’s similarity to the sadder sections of Gladstone. But the surrounding countryside—the green pastures, the black-cherry copses, the meandering streams—was every bit as beautiful.

When he reached their property, he decided not to go up to the house and wake Madeleine until the job was done, so he parked between the barn and the pond. Finding the barn door unlocked, he gathered a pick, shovel, and crowbar and carried them over to the scrawny little saplings she wanted removed from the pond’s edge.

The grassy verge of the pond sloped down to the water. The dew on the grass made it slippery, and getting a secure-enough footing to swing a pick was a challenge. Another challenge came from the unexpected tenacity of the interlocked root systems of the three saplings—requiring a lot more pickwork, prying, yanking, and shoveling that he’d anticipated. By the time he’d fully extracted the weedy little trees and dragged them into the woods, the dew on the grass was sparkling in the morning sunlight.

He replaced his tools in the barn, then spent some time going through the other equipment stored there to see if there was anything he might find useful back at the Adirondack lodge. He eventually concluded that there wasn’t anything there that Madeleine wouldn’t have just as great a need for.

As he was thinking about her, he was startled by the sound of her voice behind him.

“Those wretched little things were becoming impossible,” she said. “Thank you for ripping them out.” She stood at the open barn door, smiling. Casually, naturally, persistently beautiful. While some people strove to project a lively personality through their choice of clothing, Madeleine’s outfits—including the silky pink jacket she was wearing—seemed to derive their liveliness from her.

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes.” He immediately regretted the lie and added, “But I could use a cup of coffee.”

Stepping out of the barn, he was surprised to discover that Madeleine wasn’t alone. The two alpacas she’d acquired at the end of the Viper case were standing quietly behind her, their large brown eyes gazing at him.

“When I go for a walk, they like to come along. I don’t think it’s something alpacas normally do, but these ones seem to enjoy it. Whenever they see me come out of the house, they come to the gate in the pasture and wait for me to let them out.”

He noted that she seemed quite pleased with the arrangement.

She added, “I’ll put the coffee on.”

He left his car by the barn and followed her and her companions up the hill to the house.

Sitting at the pine table by the French doors with his familiar coffee cup in his hand, looking out over the bluestone patio toward the bird feeders and the old apple tree, was a disorienting experience—one that grew more troubling when he looked across the table at the beautiful woman from whom he’d been separated for over four months.

This place had been his home for seven years, until their relationship broke apart as the result of their colliding priorities and what they’d each seen as a lack of understanding on the part of the other.

“Didn’t you make any coffee for yourself?” he asked, even though it was obvious that she hadn’t.

“I’m off coffee. I feel better without it. Calmer.”

“Good for you. I don’t think I’d be able to quit. I rely on it too much.”

In the ensuing silence, he looked out again through the French doors. The slanting early morning sunlight was glistening on the dew-moistened leaves of the apple tree. Purple finches were flitting back and forth between the tree and the feeder.

He felt a wave of sadness.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“What? Yes. More or less. Why do you ask?”

“You sound unhappy.”

He heard a question in her observation and decided to give her at least a partial answer. “I’m not fond of the peculiar case I’m immersed in at the moment—or the static surrounding it. Half the town hates the other half. Each side is absolutely convinced they’re right, and even more sure that the other side is either demented or despicable or both.

“I seem to remember you being involved in similarly unpleasant situations in the past.”

“There’s something particularly ugly about this one.”

She gave him one of her searching looks that always made him feel as though she were seeing a part of him he didn’t know was there.

They fell into a long silence.

Inundated by a flood of mixed memories, feeling increasingly confused and uncomfortable—and finding her as daunting as she was attractive—he thanked her for the coffee and headed down past the alpaca pasture to his car.

When he was about halfway to Gladstone, he pulled over onto a wide shoulder next to a field overgrown with wild rose bushes and lowered the Outback windows. The morning sun had taken the chill out of the sweet spring air. He leaned back in his seat and let his eyes drift shut.

He was awakened a quarter of an hour later by the roar of a passing lumber truck. As the wisps of an elusive dream faded away, he glanced at his phone, saw that it was after nine, and placed a call to Stony Burke—one of the few workmates he’d kept in sporadic touch with after leaving the NYPD.

Burke answered on the fourth ring. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Is it the fuckin’ squire himself?” Despite having lived in New York City for over twenty years, Burke still sounded like he was speaking directly from the Dublin slum where he was born and raised.

Gurney had never been sure whether Burke’s overt Irishness was natural or an exaggerated persona he wore like a shamrock pin on his lapel. Whichever it was, it wasn’t as important as the reality of the man himself—a perceptive, inquisitive, tough-minded detective.

“Hello, Stony. How’s everything?”

“Fuckin’ peachy. Crime’s been eliminated.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“How’s life treatin’ you on the fuckin’ mountain?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Happy culminations. Too many lads skip out at twenty-five years, trade in the badge for a place in the sun. Turns out the place in the sun’s just a place to sit around starin’ at the wife, attractin’ flies. Glad that’s not your situation.”

Gurney had no desire to reveal his actual situation. “I had a thought about Frankie Dalasio.”

There was a brief silence.

“Frankie Dalasio.” Burke repeated the name slowly. “Ah, yes. The little shit with the shovel. What the hell put him in your head?”

“I always thought he’d been less than truthful with us.”

“Jesus, man, who hasn’t been? That’s what you called to tell me?”

“His confession never felt right to me, and that feeling’s been getting stronger.”

“It’s a fuckin’ closed case. Closed, as in a positive precinct statistic. Don’t tell me you’ve dug up a reason to reopen it. That wouldn’t be seen by the brass as good news.”

“No tangible reason, not yet. But I wanted to plant the thought in your head, maybe get you thinking along the same lines.”

Burke let out a long sigh. “I’ll admit little Frankie emitted a strong odor of bullshit, but it takes more than an odor to reopen a case.”

“That’s a fact, Stony. An undeniable fact. Now, the main reason I called is I need a small favor.”

“Of course you do.”

“Could you do a quick check on an upstate resident’s past encounters with the system? A thirtysomething male by the name of Tyson Grock.”

Gurney’s first stop back in Gladstone was at the Fallen Angel. He pulled in next to a local police cruiser in the grassy parking area and got out.

Marian Lake stood in the bookstore’s open doorway, watching a uniformed cop remove the yellow crime-scene tape that had been strung around the building and part of the nearby thicket.

“Welcome!” she said with a sardonic smile. “We’re emerging from quarantine, after last night’s horror show. Are you with the police, or are you here to browse?”

“You could say I’m police-adjacent. But I’d also like to do some browsing.”

She eyed him with interest. “You were here last night, weren’t you?”

“I was.”

“Of course! You’re Stuart’s detective! You were the one telling everyone to stay inside. What on earth do you think is going on here?”

“I might have a better answer to that after I look around.”

“Then come in. Please.”

She stepped aside to let him pass. Her silky beige outfit of the previous evening had been replaced by form-fitting jeans and a sweater, which she managed to wear with an air of elegance. He headed for the impact site of the bullet that had grazed Wilmot’s arm.

The hole it made in the front of the checkout counter had been enlarged by the evidence tech’s extraction. He knelt beside it and turned his head toward the window by the speaker’s platform. He oriented his line of sight from the hole in the counter out through the entry hole in the window to establish the shot’s likely point of origin in the pine thicket on the far side of the field.

Puzzled by what he saw, he rechecked the alignment of the impact hole and window hole—with the same result. It appeared that the route the bullet must have taken to make those two holes began at a point in the thicket fifteen feet above ground level.

Discounting the fanciful notion of a military-style drone outfitted with a sniper rifle, Gurney was left with the idea of the shot being fired from a hunting stand or similar structure in one of the thicket trees. But why would such an approach be necessary? Wilmot—or anyone else in the vicinity of the speaker’s platform—could have been hit just as easily by a shot fired from ground level.

He considered the possibility that the bullet’s trajectory could have been altered by its passage through the window or by its contact with Wilmot’s arm, but he concluded that either of those deflections would be too slight to change his calculation of its origin point.

Marian Lake was watching him with interest. “Have you discovered something?”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure what, exactly. I’ll be outside for a while.”

As he headed for the back field, he saw the uniformed cop carry an armful of crime-scene tape to the cruiser. The cop gave him an unfriendly look, seemed about to question his presence, but then just dumped the tape in the trunk of the cruiser and drove off.

Gurney crossed the field to the thicket he’d identified as the source of the shot and proceeded to search for any structures or remnants of structures that could explain the elevated line of fire but found nothing. Similarly, his close attention to the ground produced no bullet casings nor anything else of interest.

He returned to the bookstore and again went to the window, gazing across the field, convinced he was missing something. Suppose Wilmot wasn’t the target, even though he was the one who was hit? Suppose the target was Gordon Phelps, the author of the “no such thing as willpower” book? Both shots had missed Phelps, but that was hardly proof of his irrelevance to the shooting. However, whether the intended target was Wilmot or Phelps, the high trajectory of the attempt remained a mystery.

Gurney’s puzzlement was interrupted by the call he was expecting from Stony Burke.

“Bottom line on your boy Grock is that he’s violent. Eleven arrests for assault, terroristic threats, arson, and—my particular favorite—public defecation.”

“Sounds like he’s done some time.”

“That’s an interesting point. No state time at all, less county time that you’d expect, and more impressive legal representation than your average dirtbag. Bruce Halliwell of Halliwell, Grantham, Garret, and Locke. It appears that Mr. Grock has a powerful protector. Most of the charges against him were dropped when victims changed their stories, refused to testify, or conveniently disappeared. This wouldn’t happen to be a fella whose chain you were plannin’ to yank, would it?”

“I thought I might have a word with him about a recent shooting.”

“Be a good idea to bring along an Uzi.” Burke let out an audible sigh. “And about Dalasio. Bring me some new facts, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll try to dig up a few. In the meantime, thanks for the background on Grock.”

“May the good Lord be your shield, but bring an Uzi.”

Gurney pocketed his phone as Marian approached. “Find anything in the woods?”

She was smiling and exuded a hint of floral perfume. He answered her with a question of his own. “Do you know if the police spent much time out there?”

She cocked her head thoughtfully. “Half an hour last night before it got dark, mostly in the field. Another hour or so this morning, mostly in the woods.”

As she was speaking, Gurney heard a car pulling into the parking area.

“You were keeping an eye on them?”

“From my window upstairs. Bird’s-eye view.”

“You live here?”

“When I bought the barn a few years ago, I turned the ground floor into this.” She made a sweeping gesture that included the new floor, bookcases, presentation platform, checkout counter. “And I had the hayloft converted into an apartment with a picture window. The view is much better from up there. If you’d like to see it . . .” She let her voice trail off. Her tone was cool and businesslike. The look in her eyes was more personal.

“Ms. Lake?”

With a twitch of annoyance, she turned to the source of the interruption. It was Hoskins, standing just inside the open front door, holding a manila envelope.

“Yes?”

“I’ve brought you some information regarding reimbursement for monetary damages you may be entitled to as a crime victim.”

“Monetary damages?”

“Cost of fixing or replacing uninsured property. Maybe a new window over there. The smashed lectern. Bullet hole in the counter. That sort of thing.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

Hoskins nodded, laid the envelope on the checkout counter, gave Gurney a cold glance, and departed.

Gurney followed him out and caught up with him as he was getting into the passenger seat of the cruiser. A uniformed cop was in the driver’s seat.

Gurney stood at the cruiser’s open door. “Did the peculiarity of the shot that wounded Wilmot make any sense to you?”

Hoskins looked confused. “Whatever makes sense to us is police business, not yours.”

Gurney wondered if the man’s hostility was based on knowledge of his collisions with law enforcement during the Viper case or if there might be more to it. It was a question better left for future exploration.

“I was just hoping you could clear up the mystery of why that shot came from a point fifteen feet above ground level. Could be significant, don’t you think?”

18

GURNEY FOLLOWED HIS GPS directions from the Fallen Angel to Tyson Grock’s address, located a few hundred feet off a state road on the opposite side of Gladstone. The route took him into the center of the village, where he found himself stuck behind a dusty white pickup moving at the speed of a slow walk. A loudspeaker was roped to its roof, and the sound level was wincingly high—consistent with the tone of the comments being amplified.

He recognized the truck as Arbor Lockwood’s from when he met her at Evie Hubble’s cabin. From the loudspeaker came a chorus of three chants directed at the police:

“Attention, GLADSTONE POLICE! You’re paid to PROTECT AND SERVE.”

“Two women have been ABDUCTED. Why are you doing NOTHING?”

“Kidnapping is a CRIME. Wake up and DO SOMETHING!”

At the end of Main Street, Lockwood made a U-turn, her loudspeaker still blaring. Gurney sped up and proceeded on his way. A mile later, he passed a strip mall housing a karate dojo, a Chinese takeout, a hair salon, and three vacant storefronts. His GPS told him to make a right on Cully Place.

The turn brought him down an incline into an open field of crabgrass on which single-wide mobile homes were spread out on a grid of dirt lanes. The vehicles in sight were mostly pickups and heavy-duty motorcycles. Several pickups had confederate flags in their rear windows and vulgar suggestions on their bumpers.

Number thirteen had a square of white plywood affixed to the front door. It displayed a black drawing of a swastika made from daggers. An arc of gothic letters above the swastika spelled out “The Brotherhood.”

Gurney removed his 9mm Beretta and ankle holster from his glove box, strapped it on, and approached the door. He could hear the shrieks of delight and wild applause of a TV game show.

He knocked on the plywood panel.

He knocked again, harder.

Then a third time, harder still.

Other than the bursts of hysterical elation from the television, there was no response.

He became aware of another sound, coming from behind the bleak little house—a sharp thunk, repeated every twenty seconds or so.

Before he could investigate its source, the door was opened by a woman in a black tee shirt and skin-tight leather pants. Her short spiky hair was the color of black shoe polish. There was a challenging look in her dark eyes.

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Tyson Grock.”

“Yeah?”

“Is he here?”

“What do you want him for?”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“He doesn’t talk.”

“Is he here?”

“Does it look like he’s here?” Her gaze drifted down around her legs, as if she were searching for a misplaced toddler. She made some rapid sniffling sounds characteristic of a coke addict, followed by a little side step to maintain her balance.

Gurney persisted. “Any idea where I might be able to find him?”

“Lemme think.” She closed her eyes, wrinkling up her face in a parody of memory-racking. “I’m thinking what you might be able to do is go fuck yourself.”

Licking her lips, she stepped back unsteadily and closed the door.

The televised hysteria continued. So did the periodic thunks.

Gurney walked around to the rear of the house.

A tall, thick-bodied man with a greasy-looking black ponytail, black jeans, and a black leather vest was standing with his back to Gurney. He was focused on a massive four-foot-high tree stump about twenty feet from him in the middle of the scrubby yard. Five gleaming steel hatchets, the size and shape of tomahawks, were imbedded in the vertical face of the stump. He held a sixth.

He raised the hatchet slowly above his right shoulder, held it steady for two or three seconds, then whipped it forward, propelling it in a flat trajectory to the face of the stump where, with a thunk, it joined the other five. He let out a satisfied grunt and started toward the stump.

“Tyson Grock?”

He turned and stared at Gurney, his expression moving through curiosity to hostility.

“Yeah?”

“We’re interviewing people who were present last night at the Fallen Angel.” In Gurney’s experience, the use of the pronoun “we” could create the useful impression, without actually lying, that he was part of an official investigation.

Grock’s jaw tightened.

Gurney continued, “You were observed leaving the bookstore a few minutes before two shots were fired through the window.”

Grock said nothing.

“When you left the building, where did you go?”

There was a flash of anger in Grock’s eyes. “Ask my lawyer.”

“The one who picks you up when you fall on your face?”

Grock took a step toward Gurney, thought better of it, and stopped. “Take your fucking questions to him.”

“Expensive.”

Grock blinked. “What?”

“Bruce Halliwell’s not cheap.”

Grock’s reaction looked like a deliberate blankness.

Gurney decided to take a shot in the dark. “Don Ranzak’s paying a lot to protect you. Or maybe to make sure you don’t say anything inconvenient.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Grock said nothing.

Gurney decided to add another jerk to his cage-rattling efforts. “Do you happen to know if your lady has a prescription for what she’s high on?”

The look on Grock’s face hardened into hatred.

19

GURNEY SPENT THE drive back toward the town center pondering the two worlds of Gladstone. There was a seemingly uncrossable chasm between the estate of Lawrence Sloane and the single-wides of Cully Place. Between sporting clays and hurled hatchets.

Disparate worlds, of course, were nothing new. There’d always been a contentious political relationship between the top and bottom inhabitants of the economy, but something had changed in recent years. The separation had become increasingly cultural and increasingly hostile. The voices had grown louder, the positions more intransigent, the language more abusive, the constituents on each side of every issue more distant from each other and less fettered by the truth. Reality had disappeared into a sinkhole.

Gurney’s dark ruminations were interrupted by a call from Stuart Wilmot. His voice was rushed, agitated, half an octave higher than usual.

“I just got off the phone with a contact at the Tri-County Star. The police have finished their initial investigation of the Fallen Angel shooting. Bottom line, they’re not treating it as attempted murder or even as assault with a deadly weapon. I got shot, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Apparently they’re not even calling it a felony. Un-fucking-believable!”

“What are they calling it?”

“According to my contact at the Star, there are four potential charges, none of which will be finalized until they arrest the shooter—something that’ll probably never happen.”

“The potential charges are . . . ?”

“Intentional criminal mischief, discharging a firearm in a prohibited area, injury to another person by the discharging of a firearm, and reckless endangerment.”

“At the very least, those last two could be felonies, depending on the degree.”

“Right, okay, fine, but the point is, I was shot! Someone tried to kill me! And the cops are pretending nothing really bad happened! We have to respond to this! I’m calling an emergency meeting of our campaign staff—eight o’clock tonight at the Collective. You can come, right?”

Gurney had little appetite for a gathering that promised to be high on emotion and short on facts, but refusing the invitation would send the wrong message. Besides, the meeting would give him a closer look at Wilmot’s key supporters.

“I’ll be there.”

Driving into the center of Gladstone, he encountered a long line of spandex-clad cyclists pedaling energetically in the opposite direction—away from the bank of dark thunderhead clouds looming over the village.

Ahead on the left side of the road he saw the redbrick building that the real estate agent had reverently described to him and Madeleine as having historical significance. She’d claimed it had once been New York’s largest woolen mill. Currently it was an office building occupied entirely by the Tri-County Star.

Noting an open parking space near the front door, he pulled into it on an impulse, thinking it might be instructive to discover what owner-editor George Strum thought of the town hall event he’d emceed.

Gurney hurried into the building as fat drops of rain began darkening the sidewalk.

The minimalist interior design was typical of gentrified factories. Chic LED lighting fixtures were combined with artistically displayed pieces of rusty machinery from the building’s original use. The round-faced, rosy-cheeked receptionist had a farm-girl look that made her seem more at home with the machinery than with her Lucite desk. A wide screen on the scoured brick wall behind her displayed the front-page headline of the Star’s current issue:

DEBATE EXPLODES INTO VIOLENCE

Gurney introduced himself, explained his connection with Stuart Wilmot, and asked to see George Strum. The receptionist picked up her phone, repeated Gurney’s information and request to someone on the other end, received a surprisingly quick reply, and directed him to a corner office on the second floor.

The office turned out to be a spacious multipurpose room that echoed the lower floor’s marriage-of-opposites design concept. A Lucite desk, Lucite conference table, and Lucite coffee table between two chrome-and-leather chairs coexisted with a hulking contraption that Gurney guessed might be an antique industrial loom. It sat on a raised platform, indicating its objet d’art status.

Stepping around his desk with a salesman’s smile, George Strum extended his hand. “Welcome to Gladstone, Mr. Gurney. Or do you prefer Detective Gurney?”

He was wearing the same sort of nondescript white shirt and dark slacks he’d worn at the town hall. Along with his graying hair and bland features, he projected an image of neutrality.

Gurney smiled. “Dave will do.”

Strum’s smile widened but failed to reach his eyes. “What can I do for you, Dave?”

“The town hall meeting you hosted the other night was my reintroduction to Gladstone. I was hoping you could help me understand what the commotion was all about.”

“That’s a question with a simple answer. It was about hopes and dreams. Hearts and minds. Gut-level politics. I’ll tell you what it was about in one word. America!”

Gurney mirrored Strum’s smile. “You left out paranoia, bullshit, and pepper spray.”

“Include ’em if you want. The symptoms of conflict. All part of real life in these United States. The look on your face says you don’t approve.”

“Do you approve of the way the debate ended?”

“The way it ended was damn near perfect.”

“Perfect assault, perfect threats, perfect obscenities, perfect mayhem?”

Strum gestured toward the pair of chairs. “Have a seat, Dave. This is a subject close to my heart.”

They sat facing each other across the Lucite coffee table.

“Now here’s the thing,” said Strum with a salesman’s version of intimacy. “That event was designed to create a collision. In bello, veritas. In war there is truth. In the middle ground there’s nothing but the damp handshake of pseudo agreement. Give me the clash of swords, a fight to the death. If politics isn’t a blood sport, it’s just a pail of lukewarm spit.”

“You see polarization as a good thing?”

“Absolutely! Polarization intensifies conflict, and intense conflict is the crucible of truth. Pull those bowstrings back and let the arrows fly!”

“And if the arrows are nothing but competing lies?”

“Then let the best lie win! That’s reality, my friend. You can embrace it or deny it. But the bottom line is simple. In bello, veritas. And the ultimate veritas is the survival of the strongest. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have headlines to write, hearts to inflame, barns to burn, riots to incite.” He flashed a bad-boy grin.

“And newspapers to sell?”

“And newspapers to sell! You bet your ass!”

Both men got to their feet. Gurney started to leave the office, then stopped.

“One last question. I heard that the Gladstone PD has decided the shooting at the Fallen Angel wasn’t an attempt to kill Wilmot after all, just a bit of unpleasant vandalism. Any thoughts on that?”

“My thought is, it’s gonna make a hell of a headline. Some folks’ll love it, some’ll hate it. Love and hate. Makes the world go round. Goodbye and good luck, Detective Dave.” His grin hardened into something less cheery. “Stay in Gladstone much longer, and you’re definitely gonna need it.”

As Gurney left the building, there was a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder, and the threatened downpour began in earnest.

20

THE RAIN PELTING his windshield would make driving difficult, so he sat in the Outback, waiting for the storm to pass and thinking about George Strum.

Although Strum’s love of controversy sounded unhinged, Gurney realized the only thing unusual about it was how openly he admitted it. He was far from the only media owner who relied on people’s darker emotions to boost profits. Aware that fistfights attracted larger audiences than handshakes, many so-called news sources actively encouraged antagonisms. If that required pouring gasoline on fires, so be it.

In Gurney’s opinion, this spreading of hatred for profit was one of the great destroyers of society. He was also painfully aware that it was a phenomenon over which he had no control. As he often did in moments of frustration, he forced his attention toward more tractable problems.

A simple one jumped to the top of the list, along with an immediate solution. He was hungry, and across the road there was a storefront restaurant. The sign in the window read Ella’s Homestyle Eatery. The rain had let up sufficiently to allow him to dash from his car to the restaurant’s door without getting drenched.

It was one of those places where the same local people got together regularly for the same predictable meals. Unlike city restaurants where conversations had a more private feeling, the talk at eateries like Ella’s had an open, often boisterous quality, with comments bridging the space between tables. He entered in the midst of just such an exchange, evidently triggered by the storm.

He found a small table by the front window, picked up a gravy-stained menu, and couldn’t help overhearing the energetic conversation being carried on around him while he tried to decide between pot roast and Salisbury steak.

“Remember the two-day deluge that washed out the Birken Hill dam?”

The speaker was a weathered fellow in denim overalls sitting with an equally weathered woman but addressing a larger group at a nearby table.

“Not likely to forget that one,” said a thin old man in a flannel shirt that would have fit someone twice his size. “Washed rocks and mud down into the middle of Main Street.”

“Rocks and mud and the power failure that came with them,” said a man at a third table. “That was the hell of it. No power for three days, rocks clogging the sewers, food going bad in the market. All the rot and the smell. That’s what sticks in the mind.”

“End of the world, it looked like,” said a large woman at the same table. She had a symmetrical hairdo that resembled a shiny brown football helmet. “Arthur lost his pigs. Flood carried them right out of the barn. Found one of them three days later in Carl’s car wash. Bit of a mess, that was.”

A man with a long stringy beard and angry eyes at a table by himself spoke up in a raspy voice. “They talk all the time about this climate change business, but the fact is the weather was worse back then. Four feet of snow on Easter weekend. Nothing like that in recent years. Nothing even close! But they tell us we got to worry about the climate. Climate this, climate that. Makes you wonder what the hell they’re up to.”

There was a brief silence, broken by the old man in denim overalls. “The snowstorm I remember was the one gave us nineteen inches on May nineteenth.”

The woman at the table with him added, “Killed all the apple blossoms. Pears, too. Near put Ozzie’s orchard out of business. Got to be thirty years ago now.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” said the angry man with the stringy beard. “This climate change hullaballoo’s a put-up job. A way for somebody in the government to make money. Raise taxes. That’s what it’s all about. You mark my words.”

There was another silence, broken this time by a small woman with a small voice at the big table. “They say the South Pole is melting.”

“So what?” said the angry man. “Let the damn thing melt! Better than raising our taxes and shipping our money off to some godforsaken place. They call it loans, but they never give it back.”

“I’m with Calvin,” said a voice at another table. “We got enough to worry about right here without sending our money to the penguins.”

“More than enough,” added the waitress arriving at Gurney’s table. “Our little town’s turning into a horror movie. What can I get for you?”

She was a big, soft-looking woman in shapeless clothes. There was an anxious look in her round eyes.

Gurney responded with a smile. “How’s the pot roast?”

“Ella makes the best. Never heard a complaint.”

“Then that’s what I’ll have.”

“Side of string beans or peas?”

“String beans.” As she was making a note, he said, “Just wondering . . . what did you mean about the town turning into a horror movie?”

She seemed to be considering the question before giving him a knowing look. “Maybe you could tell me, you being the detective.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“New face in town. Not many of those in Gladstone, if you don’t count the weekenders in their Audis and Beemers and such. The ‘glampers’ they call ’em. Means ‘glamor campers.’ Come up from the city to pretend they’re roughing it—roughing it in big yurts with heat and beds and fancy little solar generators. ‘Getting back to nature’ is what they think they’re doing. Can you believe it?” She shook her head in a kind of good-natured bafflement. “But you don’t look like one of them. Besides, word gets around.”

“What’s the word on me?”

“Word is that you’re here to protect Wilmot and maybe find out what’s happened to Evie Hubble and Kay Eliot.”

“Anything else?”

“They say you’re a big murder detective from New York City.” She made the place sound like a nuclear power plant with a radioactive leak.

“How do people feel about me being here?”

“Depends on who you talk to.”

“Does it also depend on how they feel about Wilmot?”

She seemed about to answer, then said instead, “Let me get your pot roast order in, before it sells out.” She crossed the room and disappeared into the kitchen through a pair of swinging doors.

“Last place on earth I’d want to go is New York City!”

He looked over at the source of the comment at a neighboring table—a gaunt woman in faded denim overalls with a hoarse voice and a smoker’s pallor.

“It’s all murders and rapes. I’d be lucky to come back alive. And the politicians down there—they’re the ones forcing all the vaccinations poisoning the children. They want to turn girls into boys and boys into girls and give our money to Mexican drug addicts. I can’t fathom it.”

Gurney glanced curiously around the room. Some diners appeared uncomfortable, some were determinedly expressionless, and some were nodding in grim agreement.

21

AFTER ENDING HIS dinner with apple pie and coffee, Gurney bought a copy of the Tri-County Star from a dispenser at the restaurant’s door and returned to his car. The rain had stopped, leaving the street black and shiny. There were occasional flashes of lightning in the clouds, followed by rumbles of thunder in the hills to the west.

He had some time before the start of Wilmot’s emergency meeting at the Collective, so he took a look at the Star. The front page, in addition to the headline “Debate Explodes into Violence,” included a large photo, probably from the phone of someone in the audience. It showed Evie Hubble aiming her pepper spray into the face of Lucas Potts. The caption read, “Caught on camera—debate attendee assaulted by raging Wilmot supporter.” A headline on page two read, “Political Forum Erupts into Wild Accusations.” The article went on to quote some of those comments, putting the most extreme in boldface type.

It was a perfect example of Strum’s philosophy of inflammatory journalism. Whichever side you were on, the selected facts were designed to ratchet up your animosity toward the opposing side.

The next few pages contained the sort of coverage common to small-town newspapers—zoning arguments at the town board meeting, the arrival of a new pastor at a local church, dates of upcoming Rotary pancake breakfasts, gardening tips, sheriff’s department promotions, and proposed revisions to village ordinances.

The police blotter listed the names of offenders arrested for DUI, possession of a prohibited substance, criminal trespass, bad checks, disorderly conduct, and petty theft.

Then came the “Letters From Our Readers” page—where factual confusion, peculiar grammar, and mental illness were no barriers to publication. The only requirement seemed to be anger at someone or something and a burning desire to express it.

Gurney put the paper down on the passenger seat to answer his phone. The source of the call was Ranzak Renaissance Corporation.

“Gurney here.”

“Mr. Gurney, this is Don Ranzak. You’ve made a big splash in our little upstate pond.” The man’s clear baritone voice was free of the rural grit it had at the debate. “I’ve been told that some of your conversations have included my name. That makes me interested in meeting you. More than interested. Eager, you might say. Secondhand information can be unreliable. And acting on it can lead to regrettable outcomes.”

“The point of this call being . . . ?”

“I’d like you to join me for a friendly brunch and a frank discussion. At my home on the lake. Eleven tomorrow morning. Would that be convenient?”

“Friendliness and frankness. Irresistible.”

“Good. Tomorrow. Eleven sharp. I look forward to it.”

Gurney drove to Wilmot’s “emergency meeting” at the Blue Moth Collective as the evening sun descended into a clear area just above the western hills but below a bank of slate-colored clouds, illuminating the landscape with slanting yellow light. The bright earth under a dark sky created a peculiar atmosphere in which familiar things appeared the way they might in a painting or a dream. The well-kept white colonials with their blooming lilacs, the early pink rhododendron blossoms, the wild purple phlox along the edges of the road—even the swallows swooping through the sky in their quest for flying insects—seemed surreal. Both beautiful and unsettling. Then, as the sun disappeared behind the hills, the weird atmosphere faded into normalcy.

He arrived at the Collective in the grayness of early dusk. Several cars, a pickup truck, and two minivans were parked inside the fenced compound. He was admitted to the grounds by the same unsmiling, camo-garbed woman who was guarding the gate on his earlier visit. As he emerged from his car, Sunny Kish waved to him from the porch.

“David! Just in time! I saved you a seat. Next to me,” she said with a smile. “We’re meeting in the meditation room.”

She led him in through the foyer to the big oblong space which the previous day had been bare except for sisal mats on the floor. The mats were gone now, replaced by a dozen or so folding chairs arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. Most were occupied, but a pair had been reserved. A sheet of paper with the word “Taken” in flowery handwriting had been taped to the seat of each of them. An odor of incense hung in the air.

She pointed across the circle to another empty chair. “Stuart will be over there. I thought you’d like to be facing him.”

Gurney muttered a vague thank-you and sat down. Sunny sat beside him, leaned closer, and with her hand on his arm began telling him about the people present.

“The woman in the chair to the right of Stuart’s is Fran Boodler. Her most famous book is The Virus of Male Supremacy. She argued for the decriminalization of patricide, which got her on a lot of talk shows. Sitting next to her is Colby Albright. He gave up corporate law to do pro bono stuff. He plays the harpsichord. Totally baroque. Next to Colby is Marian—”

Marian Lake caught Gurney’s eye and gave him a warm smile.

“You know her?” Sunny asked in a cooler tone.

“We met at the Fallen Angel.”

“Oh. Well. Next to her, the guy with the Panama hat and the orange sneakers, that’s Justin Claiborne. He owns an art gallery attached to a B and B called the Calico Cat. He has an actual calico cat named Tofu. Justin hates Don Ranzak. When he talks about him, he actually starts spitting.”

“Do you know why?”

“They go way back. Justin is gay, and I think when they were teenagers Ranzak gave him a hard time about that. He was always a mean son of a bitch, especially with anyone he could bully. On the other side of Stuart’s chair are the three sisters, who you already met—Harmony, Rainbow, and Astra.”

With their short red hair, green eyes, and matching linen smocks, they looked exactly the same as when Gurney encountered them in the ER waiting room.

“The woman next to them is Davola Sykes, author of Listening to Ferns—which sounds like she’s like some kind of forest fairy, having conversations with plants. But the truth is, she’s a totally fierce environmentalist. She has two big signs in front of her house: ‘Polluting Nature Is Mass Murder’ and ‘Polluters Deserve to Die.’ She’s a serious person.”

Gurney’s attention moved on to the lean, tight-lipped woman next to Sykes. He recognized her as Arbor Lockwood, the friend of Evie Hubble who’d spent that afternoon trolling the Gladstone police in her loudspeaker-outfitted pickup.

“Next to Davola—” Sunny started saying, then fell silent as Wilmot strode into the room, still wearing his sling. She whispered, “I’ll tell you about the others later,” and gave Gurney’s arm a little squeeze. He remembered being told that she was a “found-things” artist. He had the feeling he was her latest discovery.

Wilmot stood behind his chair and waited until he had everyone’s attention.

“Thank you all for being here tonight. When I asked you to join me at this meeting, I was reeling from the police conclusion that the Fallen Angel shooting was nothing but an aggressive bit of vandalism and that the injury to my arm was merely an unlucky byproduct of that vandalism.” He let out a bitter laugh.

“It felt like reality was being yanked out from under me—from under all of us. But then I realized their assault on the truth was actually a gift. Reality wasn’t being destroyed; it was being clarified. The police had removed all doubt about their position. Up to that point, they’d seemed to be aligned with Don Ranzak. They’d seemed unwilling to look into the threats we’d received. They’d seemed to have no interest in investigating the abductions of Evie and Kay. But now all that seeming has ended. Now we know exactly where they stand. The battle lines have now been clarified, and I for one am glad to have that clarity.”

There were grim nods and mutters of agreement around the room.

A high-pitched shriek erupted from somewhere in the nearby woods.

After a startled moment, Gurney recognized it as the call of a screech owl.

Sunny Kish uttered a little gasp and whispered, “Margaret Three Deer says owls are bad omens, that those eerie calls are warnings of bad things to come.”

Wilmot was still speaking: “. . . and as a perfect example of the bright side of our situation, Marian Lake of the Fallen Angel has an announcement to make.”

Appearing more graceful than ever, she rose from her chair with a self-deprecating smile.

“It may take me a little longer than Stuart to appreciate the benefit in the attitude of our local police. However, their behavior has persuaded me to do more than I’ve already been doing to support Stuart’s election. As you know, Larry Sloane’s generosity has covered virtually all our campaign expenses from day one. I’ve decided to provide that level of support from now until the election. I’m doing it because this contest is beyond politics. Death threats are beyond politics. The disgusting trashing of Stuart’s campaign office is beyond politics. Police corruption is beyond politics. Abductions are beyond politics. Attempted assassinations are beyond politics. This is a battle between good and evil. This is war. You can count me in. One hundred percent!”

The applause around the room was loud and long.

As it died down, Sunny Kish put her hand back on Gurney’s arm and whispered, “I freshened up your room, in case you want to stay here tonight.”

He was considering how to respond when Wilmot began speaking.

“Thank you, Marian! Nothing can stop us now! We have three amazing things going for us. First, your terrific generosity. Second, the stupidity of the Ranzak mob. If they think a botched attempt on my life is going to discourage us, they’re even dumber than they look. Third, the truth is on our side, and the truth will prevail!”

There was another burst of applause.

Wilmot continued, “Before we move on to a discussion of next steps, I suggest that we join together in a moment of meditation, focusing our energy on the goal we all share—the defeat of Don Ranzak and the preservation of our precious natural world.”

Murmurs of approval spread around the circle. Eyes were closed. Slow, deep breaths were taken. A companionable sense of peace filled the room—until an explosion shattered it, sending a shock wave through the house, followed by the whoosh of an accelerating conflagration.

22

PROPELLED BY HALF a lifetime of police training, Gurney jumped from his chair and ran toward the source of the blast.

Pulling open the front door, he was hit by a surge of heat from the mass of orange flames consuming the three vehicles nearest the porch. As he stepped back into the foyer, yanking his phone from his pocket, the three sisters, brandishing fire extinguishers, rushed past him, aiming the hissing vapor at the flames.

The blaze began to shrink, subsiding into a roiling billow of black smoke. The sisters continued spraying the charred, smoldering vehicles until their canisters were empty.

Meanwhile, Gurney contacted 911, reporting the explosion and fire—as well as his belief that it had been caused by a bomb-like device affixed to the underside of one of the vehicles. He added that the fire was being brought under control and the dual priority was a police presence to secure the scene and a forensic team to sift through the debris.

As he studied the destruction, he noted that the middle one of the three charred vehicles was Arbor Lockwood’s pickup. The smoldering remains of the loudspeaker were askew on the roof, the fire having loosened the ties that held it in place. He noted also that the truck now sat in an odd position, the rear quarter panel pressing against the vehicle next to it. He concluded that the device had been detonated under Arbor’s pickup. The blast had lifted it from the ground, ruptured the fuel tank, and propelled flaming gasoline onto the adjoining vehicles—a Subaru Solterra and a Chevy Bolt. The fact that both were all electric with no gas tanks had probably kept the inferno from spreading quickly to the remaining vehicles and the house.

“God fucking damnit!” Arbor Lockwood had come out onto the porch, her hands balled into fists, her furious gaze fixed on the blackened, warped carcass of her truck.

Justin Claiborne and Davola Sykes were standing beside her—their horrified expressions identifying them as the likely owners of the Bolt and Solterra.

Justin was staring at the Bolt, holding his hand to his forehead in a stricken gesture and muttering, “Omigod, omigod, omigod . . .”

Sykes’s voice was icy. “Someone will regret this,” she said softly, then added with a nasty little smile, “Regret it to their dying day.”

“All my things from the market . . .” said Claiborne, moving toward the Bolt.

Gurney put out his arm to stop him. “Not a good idea. The car will be too hot to touch. And we don’t want to contaminate the site.”

“Contaminate it? It already looks like a bomb was dropped on it!”

“It’s a scene-of-crime term. Nothing should enter or leave the site before it’s been examined.”

His eyes widened. “So, you’re saying that this . . . this wasn’t accidental?”

“Highly unlikely.”

Lockwood spoke up. “This was payback for my attack on the useless Gladstone cops! But if they think this is going to stop me, they’re in for one fucking big surprise!”

Other meeting attendees were edging out onto the porch, using their phones to make anxious calls and take multiple photos of the scorched area.

Gurney made sure they didn’t go beyond the edge of the porch. After a while, at his urging, they reluctantly retreated into the house. The emotional pendulum slowly swung from outrage and panic to subdued conversations and long silences.

Two fire department trucks, an ambulance, and a police car with two uniformed officers arrived twenty minutes after Gurney’s call. Once they determined that the fire had been extinguished and no one had been injured—and after hushed conversations with each other and suspicious looks at the big house—the fire and EMS people departed.

The two uniformed officers remained—one with the pragmatic manner and sturdy physique of a farm boy and the other with the cynical eyes, thinning gray hair, and overstuffed belly of a cop whose career goals were to do as little as possible and retire as soon as possible.

The young one busied himself stringing yellow crime-scene tape around most of the parking area. After observing this activity with little interest, the older one mounted the porch with a grunt and addressed Gurney, who was standing in the open doorway to observe the situation and make sure the attendees remained in the house.

“Your name, sir?” The man’s voice was as weary as his movements.

“Dave Gurney.”

He stared at Gurney for a long moment, as if associating the name with something unpleasant, before speaking. “No one leaves the premises. Understood?”

Gurney nodded. “Do you know if a forensic team is on the way?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Do you know if anyone else is on the way?”

“Save your questions for Detective Hoskins.”

After regarding Gurney with the eyes of a dead fish, he retreated to the squad car. The young cop finished his taping job and joined him.

Gurney stepped back into the house and closed the door. He decided to take the opportunity to speak to as many of the attendees as possible before Hoskins arrived, beginning with Arbor Lockwood. With the permission of one of the sisters, he led Lockwood into the office he and Wilmot had used the previous evening.

They sat in the armchairs that faced each other across the cigarette-scarred coffee table. Gurney leaned back, steepling his fingers in front of his chin. Lockwood sat rigidly upright, peering at him coldly through her steel-rimmed glasses.

“So?” she said.

“I’m trying to gather a few facts.”

“We already have all the facts we need.”

“Tell me what they are.”

“If you want the facts in one word, it’s ‘war’! I never thought I’d be quoting Marian Lake, but I have to admit she’s right. A goddamn fucking war is exactly what this is. Exchange of hostile fire. I hit them with the truth, and they bombed my fucking truck. So be it! We need to crush these motherfuckers. Hit them so hard they’ll never get up!”

“What’s going on here might not be as simple as it looks.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I want to know more before I buy into the idea that Don Ranzak and your local police are behind everything bad in Gladstone.”

Lockwood leaned forward angrily. “You’d have to be a fucking moron not to see a connection between my driving up and down in front of the police station in my truck this afternoon and it being blown up tonight.”

In response to her rising agitation, Gurney spoke more softly. “The connection may not be the tit-for-tat link you’re imagining.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“I admit the simplest explanation often turns out to be the right one. But being too sure too soon can lead to disaster.” He decided to shift focus. “Tell me, did you notice anyone hanging around your truck today?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was it parked out of your sight at any time?”

“No. Well . . . briefly, behind the campaign office. I stopped to recharge my phone.”

“Who else was there?”

“Some of the same people who are here tonight, plus part-time volunteers, lunch deliveries, package deliveries. Besides, the parking area isn’t attended; someone could have walked in from the street. In fact, we share that parking area with the restaurant next door. The person who attached that thing to my truck . . . it could be anyone in Gladstone.”

“Apart from political animosity, can you think of anyone who might want to attack you?”

She took a deep breath, puffing out her cheeks as she slowly exhaled. “The world is full of assholes, and Gladstone is no exception. But if you’re asking, do I know an individual who has reason to hate me, plus the balls and resources to pull off something like this? Other than Don Ranzak and Chief Troutman, no, I don’t know anyone like that.”

There were more questions he would have liked to ask, but in the dwindling time available before Hoskins arrived, he wanted to touch base with as many attendees as he could. He thanked her for her time, then returned to the visibly restless group in the outer room. Having no sequence strategy, he chose the nearest individual—the wild-eyed, kinky-haired, absurdly named event artist, Oliver Bunny—and invited him into the office.

Bunny enthusiastically shared that Tyson Grock had once been arrested for arson, an event that surely would make him the prime suspect for that evening’s conflagration. “Arson, you know, is not just any old crime. It has psychological roots. A mental disorder, really. With a sexual component in some cases.” He suggested Gurney should look it up in the diagnostic manual of mental disorders.

Gurney moved on to the three sisters, who insisted on being interviewed together. They interpreted the parking lot attack as a predictable escalation of local hostility toward the Blue Moth Collective. “The Collective is about acceptance and love. Hate is on the rise, and we are its natural target.”

Next was Yomo Bernstein, author of The Healing Power of Haiku. He told Gurney that Don Ranzak was the epitome of evil, a man who spurred his ignorant followers to violence—the puppet master from hell.

“It’s the way of the world, the way of our sick society,” he said in a tone of lofty sadness. “The powerful manipulate the weak and the innocent for their own selfish ends. What they call ‘leadership’ is actually child abuse.”

When Bernstein segued into a sales pitch for his seminar on the tranquilizing effects of seventeen-syllable poetry, Gurney thanked him and moved on to Justin Claiborne. When he ushered him into the office and offered him one of the armchairs, Claiborne remained standing, eager to share his views and too agitated to sit.

“You don’t have to be a genius to connect the dots. First, Evie is abducted. Now, Arbor’s truck is firebombed. So, ask yourself what do Evie and Arbor have in common? Simple. They’re both outspoken gay women who take no shit whatever from the hetero male power structure. That’s what these attacks are about—the rage of the offended patriarchy. That’s what Ranzak is tapping into. Just look at who supports him—the tobacco-chewing morons and gay-hating evangelicals desperate to keep women in their place so they can feel in charge.”

His combination of energy and venom led to a brief silence, which Gurney broke by asking, “What about Kay Eliot?”

Justin blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Your theory of the disappearances is based on Evie and Arbor being gay. How does Kay Eliot fit into that?”

Justin raised an exaggerated eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re naive enough to think that marriage is an inoculation against one’s true nature.”

“So, you believe she’s also gay, and her orientation explains her disappearance?”

“Her abduction. Accurate terminology is essential to clear thinking. Without that we’d be no better than Ranzak’s homophobic bozos.”

While Gurney felt that anti-gay sentiment might be prevalent among Ranzak supporters, he couldn’t see that as the main driving force behind everything that was happening—the death threats, the abductions, the Fallen Angel shooting, and now the firebombing.

He thanked Claiborne and went back out to the main room, thinking that the intense Davola Sykes might have an interesting perspective on the situation. As he was heading toward her, Stuart Wilmot cut him off.

“We need to talk.”

They were barely seated in the little office when Wilmot’s words rushed out. “I have to tell our people something. Give them some information, encouragement, anything.” He was gesturing erratically, gazing imploringly at Gurney. “I have no idea what to say. I can’t just keep repeating myself.”

“It may be too soon to say anything concrete. It’s a fluid situation. You don’t want to say something tonight you’ll have to retract tomorrow.”

“The thing is, they’re all here because of me, because I called an emergency meeting, then this happens. We were bombed! Suppose they were out in the parking lot—they could’ve been killed. What do I say?”

“What would you like to say?”

Wilmot shook his head, turning up his palms in a show of helplessness. He slumped back in his chair, as though Gurney’s question was exhausting him.

“I guess I could talk about the bombing the way I talked about the police downplaying the shooting. A new source of motivation. A reason to pull out all the stops to defeat Ranzak. Ranzak and his corrupt cops bombed us, so now we go nuclear. What do you think?”

“It’s one way of putting a positive spin on what happened tonight. But I’m not entirely sold on the Ranzak part.”

Wilmot’s mouth opened in astonishment. “You think someone else is behind all this?”

“It’s tempting to blame everything on a single enemy. Our brains are built to put things together, find connections, coherence. Problem is, we’re so fond of coherence we sometimes see connections where there aren’t any. That’s what conspiracy theories are all about. We put together a few scattered facts, leap at a theory that unifies them, then ignore any data that doesn’t fit the theory—especially if that data exonerates an enemy.”

Wilmot appeared in succession to be angered, confused, curious. “You have data that exonerates Ranzak?”

“No, but neither do I have any data that incriminates him.”

Wilmot let out an exasperated sigh. “Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.”

“Or maybe that data doesn’t exist.”

“I know it exists. It must. The man is a monster. You need to take a closer look at him.”

“Apparently he wants to take a closer look at me. He’s invited me to meet with him tomorrow morning.”

Wilmot’s features wrinkled into a mixed expression of confusion and alarm. “Where?”

“His place on the lake.”

“That might not be a good idea. It’s definitely not a safe one. If he sees you as a threat . . .” He let his voice trail off, his expression suggesting terrible possibilities.

Gurney was sure Ranzak’s home was the last place the man would want anything unpleasant to happen, but he saw no reason to debate the point with Wilmot.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about. At the Fallen Angel the other night, did you know beforehand that Phelps was going to endorse you?”

“He told me he planned to do that. Why?”

“Do you know if he told anyone else?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“No. Or if I did, I don’t remember. Is it important?”

“The first shot through the window struck the lectern right after he endorsed you. Perfect timing, if someone was trying to make a point.”

“You’re saying that the shooter knew how his speech would end and they were prepared to fire that shot as soon as they saw people applauding?”

“Something like that.”

“Then they took a shot at me.”

“Yes.”

Wilmot hesitated. “But . . . that shot couldn’t have been planned. I could have been standing where they couldn’t see me. So . . . was the second shot a spur-of-the-moment thing? They were set up for the shot at the lectern, then they saw me, and took the opportunity?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“It doesn’t feel right. Half meticulous planning and half impulse—an unusual combination.”

“But what else—”

Wilmot’s question was cut off by a knock on the office door.

Gurney stood up and opened it.

Sunny Kish produced a nervous smile. “The forensic people have arrived. The head one is talking to the unfriendly cop.”

Gurney thanked her, told Wilmot that he wanted to have a word with the new arrivals, and went out through the meditation room. When he reached the porch, he saw the lean, tan-skinned woman he was hoping to see. Kyra Barstow, head of the Forensic Sciences Department at Russell College, was talking to the unfriendly cop.

Gurney was aware that the college’s state-of-the-art resources and fast turnaround time had persuaded many upstate towns to use Russell Forensics not only for lab work but also for crime-scene evidence collection. He’d encountered Barstow during two previous investigations and had been impressed by her intelligence and the range of her expertise. And it didn’t hurt having that expertise delivered with the charming lilt of a West Indian accent.

She’d come with two assistants who, like her, were wearing white Tyvek coveralls, booties, and latex gloves. They were setting up halogen crime-scene lights, which turned nighttime into a weird approximation of midday. There was something surreal in the atmosphere they created, a pool of illumination that seemed to deepen the surrounding darkness.

When Barstow finished with the cop, she spent a few minutes with her assistants, pointing out where she wanted them to start their examinations. That’s when she saw Gurney. She came over with a warm smile, treading carefully on the blackened earth. He hadn’t seen her for nearly six months, not since the middle of the horrific Viper case.

“You again,” she said. “Attracted to trouble, as usual?”

He returned her smile. “There’s an ugly election battle in progress. Bad things have been happening. I’ve been hired to look into the situation.”

“A complicated one?”

A cool breeze was rustling through the trees surrounding the compound. Gentle as it was, it had the welcome effect of attenuating the stench of burnt tires and melted plastic.

“I suspect more complicated than most people think. Speaking of which, there was a peculiar shooting a couple of days ago at a local bookstore. The Fallen Angel. Did the Gladstone cops get you involved in that?”

“Not for evidence collection. They said they had that under control. They just wanted us to handle ballistics.”

“I don’t suppose they mentioned that the gun was fired from a position fifteen feet above ground level?”

Barstow frowned. “Which gun are you talking about?”

“Which gun? The one that fired the two bullets.”

“There were two guns. One bullet from each gun.”

“That’s what the ballistics tests showed?”

“Is that a problem?”

“It’s one more peculiarity. They seem to be multiplying.”

“But you love those, don’t you? Let me get to work. Maybe I’ll find a few more.”

As he was about to head back into the house, he caught a glimpse of a Gladstone cruiser coming up the road. It stopped in front of the compound’s steel gateway—which was physically open but officially sealed by the yellow tape that encircled most of the parking area.

Hoskins got out of the car and opened the trunk. He put on crime-scene booties and gloves but didn’t bother with the requisite coveralls. He ducked under the tape and approached Barstow, who was using her phone to photograph the ground behind one of the burnt vehicles. Gurney couldn’t hear more than a few words of their exchange, but their body language told him Hoskins was trying to assert his authority and Barstow was unimpressed.

When Hoskins saw Gurney, he left Barstow and strode over to the porch.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Gurney shrugged. “I was invited to a meeting.”

“What sort of meeting?”

“Political.”

“That so?” The garlic on the man’s breath added another unpleasant element to the acrid odor of burnt metal. “You witness what happened here?”

“Mainly the fire. The explosion occurred while I was in the house.”

Hoskins sucked at his teeth. “What exactly did you see?”

“A major gasoline fire, engulfing the three vehicles closest to the porch. After the flames were extinguished, I could see some sheet-metal deformation on the center vehicle and a change in position that suggested the blast took place under that vehicle, moving it sideways. An explosive device was probably affixed to the undercarriage, near the gas tank.”

Hoskins raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What kind of explosive device?”

“I’m guessing a homemade bomb with a timer or remote detonator. Russell Forensics will give you more definite answers.”

“We’ll see what they come up with.” His tone seemed designed to make the point that he, Detective Mark Hoskins, would be the final judge of Barstow’s conclusions. “Is everybody still here who was here when it happened?”

“Far as I know.”

“Any of them spouting any theories?”

Gurney smiled. “One theory is that the bomber might be someone in your department.”

Hoskins let out a derisive laugh. “Somebody’s been drinking the Wilmot Kool-Aid.”

“Other opinions point to Ranzak.”

Hoskins shook his head. “More bullshit.”

“How about you, Detective? Any idea who’d want to blow up Arbor Lockwood’s truck?”

Hoskins stared at the formerly white pickup, now blackened by the fire. “That’s Lockwood’s?”

“Yes.”

“She’s blaming the department?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe she blew it up herself.”

“The motive being . . . ?”

“To have something she could blame on the department.”

“Bit of a reach.”

“Maybe she blew it up by accident. Maybe she had the bomb in the truck, to blow up one of her imaginary enemies, and something went wrong with the detonator.”

“You’re suggesting that she was storing a bomb in the undercarriage of her truck, next to her fuel tank?”

“If it was discovered, it would look like someone planted it there and she was the intended victim. Clever, in a crazy way.”

He turned his back on Gurney and strode into the house.

The sisters gave Hoskins the use of the dining room to conduct his interviews. Gurney retained the use of the office behind the meditation room. Between ten and midnight he used it to meet with nine more attendees.

He heard a lot of angry opinions and anti-Ranzak invective, but nothing useful. There was one small bright spot—an invitation from Justin Claiborne to spend the remainder of the night at the Calico Cat. It was a preferable alternative to the bleak little room Sunny Kish had prepared for him in the house’s annex.

23

WITH THE PECULIARITIES of the Gladstone situation churning through his mind and Ella’s pot roast gravy doing its own relentless churning, he didn’t get to sleep until the wee hours. It was after ten that morning when he awoke to the sun shining through the window of his Victorian room at the Calico Cat.

“You just missed your fellow guests. Lucky you!” said Justin Claiborne, when Gurney arrived downstairs in the dining area, a bright, airy space with flowery wallpaper and the aroma of something freshly baked.

“A thirtysomething couple—very chic, insanely demanding, with two hideous children who never looked up from their phones. They plan to spend the day photographing barns, as possible ‘locations’ for God knows what. They wanted to know where they could find one with a picturesquely dilapidated silo and a cow or two. I sent them off in their shiny Range Rover to Barley Bottom Road, one of our local hotbeds of dilapidation. Care for a black currant scone, fresh from the oven?”

“Just coffee would be great, thanks.”

Brushing a speck of flour off his white chef’s apron, Claiborne left the room through an open doorway to the kitchen. Gurney walked over to a large window that overlooked a meadow, dotted with tiny spring flowers—blue, yellow, and orange.

He paid special attention to the orange ones. With tiny red petals around their edges, they looked like miniature marigolds. Indian paintbrushes—that’s what Madeleine told him they were called during one of their walks through the fields around their house. She’s told him the name of the little yellow ones as well. Coltsfoot—which had reminded him of the names of flowers mentioned by Shakespeare.

“Cream and sugar?”

Claiborne’s voice pulled him back to the present.

“No, black’s fine.”

“Arabica beans. I grind a fresh batch every morning.”

Claiborne carried a tray with a silver carafe and a china cup and saucer to the table. He placed the cup and saucer in front of one of the chairs and filled it with coffee from the carafe.

Gurney took a seat and thanked him.

Claiborne took the seat across from him. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Gurney responded with a fleeting smile. “Just thinking about a place I used to live.”

“Hmm. Past lives. Tricky places. Full of what we think are memories.”

Gurney gave him a curious look.

Claiborne went on. “I was reading something recently about memory. Seems that memory’s not what we think it is. We have the illusion that we’re playing back an accurate recording of something that happened. But it’s nothing like that. Some memories are total fiction but seem totally real. Others are partly real, partly invented. But we trust them all a hundred percent. Hard to get my mind around the fact that my mind could be lying to me about my past. What are we supposed to do? Ask someone who was there what they remember? But what if their memories are as faulty as ours? What if the past I remember so vividly never happened?”

A large gold, white, and black calico cat jumped up soundlessly on the far end of the table and settled down in a sphinxlike position, its pale green eyes fixed on Gurney.

Claiborne smiled. “Tofu, meet Mr. Gurney.”

The cat maintained its steady gaze.

Gurney took a long sip of his coffee. “Did the past you remember occur here in Gladstone?”

“Oh, yes. Right here. Not in this house, but not far from it.” His gaze seemed to drift to the place he was recollecting. “Mom was an artist. Avant-garde, at least by Gladstone standards. Cubist images of genitalia. And squirrels. She was fond of squirrels. Dad was a hog farmer. Less said about that, the better.”

He paused and displayed a twisted smile. “I wish I could say that, despite the chasm of their differences, love conquered all. Not quite. Not even close. Love, in my sorrowfully limited experience, is a temporary fog obscuring the truth. Whoever said no man is an island was lying, blind, or stupid. How do you like that coffee?”

“It’s nice and strong.”

“Sorry to bore you with my bad attitude.”

“Tell me, as a Gladstone native, how long have you known Don Ranzak?”

He leaned back from the table and folded his arms. “Too long.”

“Not one of your favorite people?”

Claiborne’s gaze rose to the ceiling, as if the right words might appear there. When he spoke, it was with the tight voice of someone trying to control his anger.

“I’ve heard the man referred to as a garbage can. But that doesn’t do him justice. Garbage cans may reek, but they don’t hurl their sickening contents at the world. They don’t inject poison into everything and everybody around them.”

“You mentioned earlier that you believe homophobia was the motive behind the abductions and the explosion. But you didn’t say whose motive it was. Is it possible—”

“That it was Ranzak? More than possible. Hatred of the LGBT community is one of his charming attributes. It oozes out of him. Always has.”

“It’s not just a recently adopted attitude to appeal to a certain kind of voter?”

“Lord, no! It’s a core ingredient of his hateful, bullying soul.” Claiborne unfolded his arms and leaned forward, gazing keenly at Gurney. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“What don’t I get?”

“Don Ranzak is evil. There is nothing good in him. Not a speck of kindness or generosity. If I had the courage . . . I would hammer a stake through his heart.”

His hand on the table was shaking.

According to his GPS, the distance from the Calico Cat to Ranzak’s home was twelve miles, and the trip would take fifteen minutes. Gurney used the drive to sort through recent events and find an explanation other than Claiborne’s. The effort got him nowhere, due, in part, to two distractions.

The first was the bearded man on the motorcycle he’d spotted following him on other occasions. When he sped up, the motorcycle sped up. When he slowed down, the motorcycle slowed down. When he pulled off onto the shoulder, the motorcycle zipped past him and disappeared over the next hill.

The second distraction was the shadow cast by Justin Claiborne’s avowedly homicidal hatred of Ranzak.

Also, the events Gurney was turning over in his mind seemed to lack consistency. He’d never been put off by the challenge of assembling the oddly shaped pieces of a case, but these pieces didn’t seem part of the same puzzle. That brought him full circle to the caveat he’d shared with Stuart Wilmot. Maybe there was no single explanation, no individual malefactor responsible for everything. Maybe the quest for one solution was doomed to lead nowhere.

But even that possibility didn’t feel right.

Nothing about the chaos in Gladstone felt right.

The navigation app announced his arrival at his destination: the mouth of a meticulously groomed gravel lane—marked by an engraved sign on a brass post, set in a square bed of purple irises.

The letters on the sign spelled out “Ranzak Renaissance Corporation.”

Gurney turned onto the lane and followed it on a gentle downslope through several acres of sugar maples. The woods gave way to a wildflower meadow, many times larger than the one behind the Calico Cat. Beyond the meadow the lane descended more steeply toward a golf course–like area of freshly mowed grass—at the far side of which there was a building that looked like an upscale hotel.

The lane, which he realized was actually Ranzak’s driveway, split at the end to encircle a bed of multicolored tulips, bordered by a low boxwood hedge. A wide parking area was nestled between the tulips and the house.

As Gurney emerged from his car, the massive front door of the hotel-like house opened, and Don Ranzak stepped out onto the broad stone porch. His square-shouldered stance, his perfectly tailored sport jacket and slacks, his raised chin and conspicuous gold watch sent a message of power, wealth, confidence.

While the message of power and wealth was clear, it struck Gurney that the very effort to convey confidence undercut its reality. Still, it would not be wise to underestimate this man.

“Mr. Gurney,” he said in his hearty baritone, minus the rural grit he employed at the town hall debate, “good of you to come.”

Neither offered a handshake. With the kind of aggressive pride that masquerades as nonchalance, Ranzak led the way into an atrium-like foyer, illuminated by the largest skylight Gurney had ever seen. The distinctive scent of boxwood drifted in after them.

As they passed the open door of a small room off the foyer, Gurney caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a video security system with an array of monitors.

Noting Gurney’s line of sight, Ranzak remarked, “More effective than fences. Expensive, but well worth it. Especially now, with Wilmot stirring up the tree-hugging loonies.”

He continued walking, then stopped, as though to make a new point. “But you know what? All those security cameras surrounding my property—they’re just a backstop to my real source of protection. What do you think that is?”

Gurney had a pretty good idea but chose not to play the game. “No idea.”

“My supporters. The people who want what I want. Who appreciate what I’m doing for them. They’re my real protection. They’ll deal with the maniacs who want to stop us.”

“What kind of ‘dealing’ are you talking about?”

“Action appropriate to the threat. We live in a crazy world, Mr. Gurney. The freaks and the socialists are out to destroy us.”

They continued across the cream-colored marble floor into a wide hallway that opened into a solarium with an expansive view of the lake. Everything about the glass-enclosed space proclaimed high-end interior design, along with its accompanying disregard for anything warm or human. Or comfortable—as Gurney discovered when he sat, at Ranzak’s suggestion, on an object that looked more like an abstract sculpture than a chair.

Ranzak took a seat on something similar on the opposite side of a third object that looked like a chilly relative of a coffee table.

“Olivia,” he said, waving an explanatory hand at the furnishings. “My wife has degrees in fine art and curation. Her taste is remarkable—and remarkably expensive. But bringing her visions to life makes her happy. A happy wife is better than an unhappy one.”

He paused slightly, before adding, “As I’m sure you’d agree.”

The intended message was clear. Ranzak had done his research on Gurney.

As though he’d missed the implication, Gurney asked blandly, “What does Olivia curate?”

Ranzak flashed an empty smile. “Everything. She has a talent for arrangement—for creating a world she wants to live in.” He paused, as though an interesting thought had occurred to him. “So do I, of course. On a much larger scale. It’s a trait we have in common.”

“Is that what your development plans are about—creating a world you want to live in?”

“Absolutely. Vision and execution. The essential elements of progress.”

“And Stuart Wilmot is trying to stop you.”

“Wilmot and his posse of obstructionists. Stop me, stop progress, stop everything. That’s their absurd goal.”

A door opened at the far end of the solarium. A white-jacketed dark-skinned young man entered, guiding a linen-covered rolling buffet to an open space by the outer glass wall.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” he asked in an accent Gurney didn’t recognize.

Ranzak shook his head. “Not at the moment.”

The man made a little bow and departed the way he’d entered, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

“Pleasure before business,” said Ranzak, standing up and gesturing toward the buffet.

There was enough food on it for half a dozen people. Plates of smoked salmon, bright green asparagus, thin slices of rare roast beef, sliced tomatoes and avocados, cheeses, prosciutto, an assortment of breads, and a bowl of blackberries.

Ranzak picked up a plate and loaded it with portions of everything except the tomatoes and blackberries. Gurney chose some roast beef, tomato slices, and whole wheat bread. They brought their plates and silverware to a table next to the buffet and ate in silence.

When Ranzak was finished, he wiped his mouth with his linen napkin. It was a demarcating gesture. Along with a subtle hardening of his expression, it indicated that the first phase of their meeting was now behind them.

“You asked if my development plans were aimed at creating the sort of world I want to live in. Only a fool would create a world they didn’t want to live in. And let me assure you, Mr. Gurney, I’m not a fool. My investment choices have earned me well over a hundred million dollars—hardly the achievement of a fool. But my vision for this part of the world goes far beyond aesthetic preferences. It’s about engineering the greatest economic turnaround ever seen in this country. It’s about making something happen that’s never happened before—here or anywhere. Our current elected officials accomplish nothing. They sit on their hands and watch things fall apart. Worse, they adopt regulations that make change impossible. They legislate against progress. They invent nothing, contribute nothing, build nothing. The call themselves environmentalists. They claim to be saving the world, when all they’re doing is letting it rot. Putting the welfare of some obscure moth—some useless flying bug—ahead of everyone’s economic welfare is lunacy. What’s next? A campaign to save the termites? These ‘environmental saviors’ are nothing but spoiled children trying to sabotage the adults. They claim to love nature, but they only love the part of nature that’s weak and dying. They hate strength. They hate ambition. Most of all, they hate success. You know why? Because they’re losers—pathetic, do-nothing, soak-the-rich losers.”

“Is that the way you see your election opponent?”

“That limp-wristed little psycho? He’s not even my main opponent.”

“Who’s that?”

“The man who pays his bills. Lawrence Sloane. Brain-fogged arrogant prick who never worked a day in his life and has no interests beyond preserving his antiquated way of life. His father was the same. Drove a Bentley, claimed it was in better taste than a Rolls—as if they were the only two cars a man of his breeding would consider. My father had to work for a living. Twelve hours a day in the winter, eighteen in the summer—the camp, the used-car business, the repair shop. Hardly had time to take a shit. Rough language, but that’s the kind of language he used, because that’s the kind of life he led. A life he was proud of. So here’s my bottom line, Mr. Gurney. If anyone thinks I’m going to let the lazy Sloanes and crazy Wilmots of the world stand in my way, they’re delusional. Nobody—and I mean nobody—is going to stop me. I will do whatever is necessary to achieve my goal. Period.”

“I’m impressed.”

Ranzak studied Gurney for a long moment. “You puzzle me. I know who you are, what you’ve accomplished in your career. What I don’t understand is why you’re supporting a mentally disturbed liar.”

“I’m not supporting anyone. I’m looking into certain threats, disappearances, a shooting, and a vehicle explosion.”

“And letting the chips fall where they may?”

“Yes.”

“Admirable objectivity.” Ranzak’s expression combined skepticism with curiosity.

Gurney said nothing.

Ranzak shifted in his chair as if to indicate that he was moving on to a new subject.

“I bet you’ve encountered some bizarre cases in your homicide career.”

“Safe assumption.”

“Some horrendous sights.”

“Yes.”

“Crimes like that are rare in our upstate world. But once in a while we get a reminder that psychopaths don’t all live in big cities.” He paused, as if this were a point he wanted Gurney to respond to.

He chose not to.

Ranzak went on. “Ever hear about the murderer the media called the Rototiller Killer?”

“No.”

“Happened almost twenty years ago, when I was a teenager, working at our family camp. There was a farm that bordered the far end of our property, owned by the Bingle family—mother, father, and three teenage sons. Churchgoing family. It was their unexplained absence from church one Sunday that led to the discovery. The minister took a drive out to their place to see if they were alright. Couldn’t find any sign of them. The farm was outside the Gladstone town limits, so the minister got the sheriff’s department involved. Eventually, they found the family, in a manner of speaking. They’d been tied up, laid out side by side in their cornfield, and run over repeatedly with a high-powered rototiller, the kind that breaks up hard, stony ground. The family had been turned into a five-person mash-up of flesh, bones, blood, and dirt. Once it was described to me, I couldn’t stop picturing it—those rototiller blades spinning around, ripping those bodies apart, mixing them up with the mud and fertilizer.”

He stared off into the distance, as if picturing it again. “You ever deal with a crime like that?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. I bet, if you were here at the time it happened, you would’ve solved it. Brought the Rototiller Killer to justice. No one ever did. He’s still out there somewhere. Gives you a chill to think about it, eh?”

If that was an actual question, Gurney chose to ignore it.

Ranzak smiled. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Gurney. But I still don’t understand why a man of your intelligence would want to get entangled with someone as dangerously unstable as Stuart Wilmot.”

If that was a final attempt to get Gurney to rise to the bait, it failed. Both men stood up from the table, and Ranzak led the way out of the solarium.

They were halfway across the marble-floored foyer when a man stepped out of the video security office. His genteel country-club attire—navy blazer, yellow polo shirt, pale green slacks, loafers with no socks—was belied by something feral in his dark eyes.

“David,” said Ranzak, producing his chilly imitation of a smile and using Gurney’s first name for the first time, “have you met Harlan Stone?”

“No.”

“Harlan’s one of my indispensable people.”

Gurney looked the man over. “Interesting job description. What exactly do you do?”

Stone gave no indication of having heard the question.

Ranzak continued smiling. “Harlan does a bit of everything, mostly in the area of security. Increasingly important. So much hostility in the air.”

Gurney looked curiously at Stone, as though a thought had just occurred to him. “I recently heard the name Stone mentioned in connection with a group called the Brotherhood. Could that be you?”

“Could be.” Stone spoke in low monotone.

“What kind of organization is the Brotherhood?”

“Civic-minded. Peacekeeping. Good deeds.”

“Sounds admirable.”

“Yes.”

“Peacekeeping must be difficult these days.”

Stone said nothing. If looks could kill, Gurney would have been struck dead.

He mirrored Stone’s glare back at him, punctuating it with a slight grin. A second later he saw in the man’s dark eyes the hate-filled realization that he was being mocked.

Gurney thanked Ranzak for the meal, said he was sure they’d meet again.

PART TWO

MURDER

24

GURNEY HOPED HIS cage-rattling exit from Ranzak’s estate might provoke a revealing response. While waiting to see what form it might take, he made an overnight visit to the Adirondack lodge.

After building a modest fire in the lodge’s huge stone hearth and making a pot of much-needed coffee, he did a routine inspection of the house and property, split a few dozen logs, and spent a fruitless hour reviewing the video of his interview with Frankie Dalasio. He was tempted to call Stony Burke again but, realizing that the prodding would be more likely to annoy the man than motivate him, he decided to postpone further contact until he had something concrete to pass along.

As evening approached, he stacked the split logs then made himself a breakfast-style dinner of three scrambled eggs, four slices of bacon, and two pieces of toast.

Before turning in for the night, he checked the window and door locks, made sure the fire screen was in place in front of the glowing embers, and placed his loaded Beretta on the table next to his bed.

In the morning, he packed a suitcase with multiple changes of clothing, a windbreaker, a rain slicker, a pair of rubber boots, his laptop, and an extra magazine for the Beretta. After two cups of strong coffee, he headed back to Gladstone.

It was a shockingly beautiful spring morning. A rain shower during the night had left the green hillsides glistening in the sunlight and the sky an electric blue. The white farmhouses and red barns, the Black Angus cows in the pastures, the ubiquitous cyclists in yellow spandex—the world had a postcard look about it, a pastoral world at peace.

Approaching Gladstone, he was jarred into a different reality by a series of billboards that seemed to be shouting at each other:

WILMOT STANDS FOR

SWAMPS, SNAKES, BUGS,

POVERTY, DRUGS, CRIME

RANZAK PLANS TO BULLDOZE

OUR MEADOWS, OUR FORESTS,

OUR STREAMS, OUR WAY OF LIFE

WILMOT = ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

RANZAK = POISONED WATER

As he pulled into the shaded parking area in front of the Calico Cat, his phone pinged with a text from Wilmot: “Ranzak is being interviewed at noon by George Strum of the Tri-County Star. Livestreamed on the Star’s website. Being promoted as a ‘Hard-Hitting Election Special.’ Hope you can watch. It won’t be objective but it should be revealing.”

Gurney wondered how much more revealing it could be than his own encounter with the man, but the more he could learn about Ranzak, the better. Getting out of his car, he was greeted by a gentle breeze, the scent of lilacs, and Justin Claiborne in his baker’s apron standing in the doorway of the inn.

“I heard a car crunching the gravel,” said Claiborne. “I thought it might be the guests I’m expecting.”

“Just me. I’d like to make arrangements to stay for a few more days.”

“No problem. A couple from the city has reserved the room you had the other night, but there’s a nicer one for the same price at the head of the stairs.”

Gurney got his suitcase from the back seat and followed Claiborne into the broad entry hall, where there was a small table with a desktop computer. Claiborne stepped behind the table and began tapping the keyboard.

On his earlier visit, Gurney had been too tired, too preoccupied, too hurried to pay attention to the details of the house. But now he looked around with greater interest, beginning with the framed prints on the walls, mostly of calico cats. Shelves displayed hand-carved ducks. A woven inscription in a tapestry on the wall spelled out “Home Is Where the Heart Is” in cursive script. The odor of potpourri was strong.

“You’re all set,” said Claiborne, looking up from the computer. “Is there anything I can get for you? Coffee? Tea? Acai juice? A blueberry muffin?”

“Just the access code to the house Wi-Fi.”

“If I may ask . . . is it for confidential business or for entertainment?”

“It’s for viewing a Livestream event.”

“Might that event be occurring at noon?”

“Yes.”

“Well, rather than using your laptop, you’re welcome to view it on the large screen in my sitting room. I find watching Ranzak a horrible experience, but I can’t resist it. Maybe I’m hoping he’ll choke to death on one of his lies. Care to join me?”

Gurney’s first impulse was to say no. But, since better sound and video might better display subtleties of tone and expression, he accepted the invitation.

“Thank you. I’ll be there. Where is it?”

Claiborne pointed through the foyer to a door on the far side of the guests’ parlor.

Gurney picked up his suitcase and climbed the stairs to his room. The wallpaper design was of intertwined flowery vines. Puffy pillows in flowery cases covered half the bed. He moved the pillows out of the way, set his phone alarm, took off his shoes, and settled down for a short nap.

Gurney entered Claiborne’s private quarters a minute before noon and found the man perched on the edge of a leather sofa in front of a wall-mounted screen.

Gurney recognized the interview location on the screen as Ranzak’s glass-walled solarium. Strum and Ranzak were seated on the same artsy chairs where he and Ranzak had been seated prior to the arrival of the rolling buffet.

Claiborne motioned Gurney to a place on the couch.

The sound came on. Strum was in mid-sentence, looking into the camera.

“. . . to have the opportunity to visit with Gladstone’s well-known investor, major landowner, and current candidate for town supervisor. We’re sitting in his magnificent home, overlooking gorgeous Wynderly Lake.”

Strum turned toward Ranzak. “For the benefit of our viewers who aren’t aware of the extent of your family estate, how much land do you own?”

Ranzak flashed his mouth-only smile. “Roughly two thousand acres. As soon as the town board approves our plan, we’ll be exercising our option on an additional seven thousand acres—making our endeavor the largest residential, recreational, commercial development in the history of our state, with a revolutionary impact on the local economy—thousands of new jobs in an area that career politicians have been sadly allowing to decline. Was that because they were too lazy? Too incompetent? Too corrupt? Those are questions worth asking.”

Strum leaned forward. “Would you like to name some names?”

“Once we’re elected, we’ll take a hard look at that. Some bad actors could end up in jail. But what your viewers need to be concerned about right now is the radical agenda of the so-called environmentalists who create nothing but stagnation and poverty. They’re the true enemies of our town, our state, our country. They aren’t just a goofy pack of moth lovers and minnow counters. They’re the enemies of progress, enemies of the American spirit.”

“Strong language,” said Strum with more than a hint of sympathy. “I suspect not everyone agrees with you.”

“Absolutely true, George. So, let’s take a look at who agrees with me and who agrees with my opponent. My support comes from the best people in Gladstone. The Economic Power Coalition, the Prosperity First Alliance, the Tri-County Business Association, the Gladstone Hunting and Fishing Club, the Stock Car Racing Association, the Church of Supernatural Success. By the way, the pastor of that church, which has one of the biggest congregations in the state, points out that material progress is part of the Divine Plan, and the drivers of that progress are partners of the Lord.”

“An impressive group of backers,” said Strum, looking impressed.

“You bet they are! Now, look at the pack of crazies backing Stuart Wilmot. The Defenders of the Blue Moth, the strident LGBTQ crowd, the Bog Savers, the Herb Walkers, the Eco-Vegans, the Pollinator Commandoes. So, you’re right. Not everyone supports me. Only the sane people. Salt-of-the-earth folks. Loggers, construction workers, small-business owners. Not the fancy transplants from the city, cruising around in their little eco-cars, gushing about ramp pesto and organic arugula, and trying to block any initiative that might help hardworking Americans.”

Strum pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Are you including Stuart Wilmot in that crowd of naysayers?”

“Wilmot’s not just in that crowd. He’s waving the banner. And now he’s brought in some muscle from the city. Dave Gurney. Ex-cop from the NYPD. I heard he’s over at that place called the Calico Cat, owned by Justin Claiborne. Which suggests that he’s up to no good.”

“Mother of God!” cried Claiborne, on the verge of levitating from the couch. “What the hell is he trying to do?!”

Gurney shrugged. “At best, emphasize my connection with you and Wilmot—to cast doubt on anything I might dig up that would embarrass him.”

“And at worst?”

“What he said could encourage some of his nuttier followers to show up here. Create a commotion. If anything like that happens when I’m not here, call the cops—the Gladstone department, the sheriff’s office, the state police. Make sure the crazies know the cops are on the way and you’re recording everything. That should keep things from getting out of hand.”

Claiborne hissed his words out through clenched teeth. “That rotten son of a bitch!”

Gurney returned his attention to the screen, as Ranzak was just concluding another comment with the phrase “. . . obstructionists and worse.”

Strum commented, “You certainly don’t mind making enemies.”

Ranzak laughed. It was a hard, humorless sound. “As my grandfather used to say, if you’re not making enemies, you’re not being honest.”

Strum nodded. “Words to live by. Now it’s time to take some questions from our viewers.” He pointed to someone off-screen. “Put our first caller through.”

A brief silence was broken by rough male voice. “How do we keep this trans crap out of Gladstone?”

Ranzak adopted an earnest expression. “The way to deal with these issues is by electing the right people to office. The right people for the school board, the right people for the town board. The right people deliver the right solutions. Your vote could make all the difference.”

“Next caller,” said Strum.

Another angry male voice said, “I heard that all this environmental nonsense on the mainstream media is a smoke screen for the gay agenda. What do you think about that?”

Ranzak mirrored the caller’s anger. “The environmental movement is full of secret agendas. They want to destroy the principles that made our country great. They want to paralyze us, stop progress, bring us to our knees!”

Strum grinned. “Next!”

Gurney noted that the angrier the callers sounded, the happier Strum looked.

The next one sounded like the youngest so far. “There’s a rumor they want to ban the sale of crossbows at the Spring Fair. Is that for real?”

“Not if I’m elected supervisor. This is a free country, and I’ll make sure Gladstone stays that way.”

The next caller was a woman. A quaver in her voice made her sound old. “Mr. Ransack, can you tell us what’s going on with those bright lights we’ve been seeing in the sky?”

He hesitated. “Could you describe them to me?”

“Well, they’re bright, like I said. Sometimes they move quick like. Other times they don’t move at all. The worrying part of it is, they mostly stay over the reservoir. I asked my nephew Colby, who’s in the U.S. Air Force, could they be extraterrestrials, and he said he didn’t know, but they could be. The worrying thing is the reservoir. With them being right over it, it makes you not want to drink the water, for fear of what they might be dropping into it. That why I’m calling, so when you’re elected, which I pray you will be, you could look into it, if it’s not something you’re already up to speed on.”

With a thoughtful nod, Ranzak promised to look into those mysterious lights, as well as plenty of other things troubling the people of Gladstone.

“I’m Wayne Macklin,” announced the next caller with a strong upstate accent. “I’m a shift supervisor at the waste-treatment plant. I just want to say, Mr. Ranzak, I believe in my heart you’re the dynamite this town needs. You tell it like it is. No pansy bullshit. You know what’s got to be done. Blow up the rotten system and start over. Thank you, sir.”

While he was talking, a young woman with a clipboard and a worried expression entered the frame and handed a note Strum, whose expression of curiosity darkened into a frown.

“Excuse me, Don,” he said, “I need to step in here. I was just handed some late-breaking news. It says here that longtime Gladstone resident Deke Loomis has been arrested in connection with an incident of property damage. Witnesses claim Mr. Loomis drove a backhoe into the plate glass window of the Wilmot campaign office—shouting, ‘Live free or die.’ Police at the scene said Loomis appeared to be inebriated. I believe he was one of the town hall attendees who spoke in favor of your candidacy. Do you have any comment on this development?”

“I’m sure the Wilmot crowd will have a lot to say, but the only fair thing is to wait until we have all the facts.”

“It does seem to be a fact that one of your supporters has damaged your opponent’s campaign office. Are you willing to condemn that?”

“As you know, George, I don’t advocate any form of violence. But frustration with what’s going on these days can drive people to desperate actions.”

“On that note, Don, I’d like to thank you for sharing your perspectives with the viewers of this Tri-County Star Livestream Special—and our thanks to our generous sponsor, the Gladstone Spring Fair Committee.”

Strum turned to the camera, as it slowly zoomed in on him. “This year’s Spring Fair is set to be the biggest and best ever—featuring Gladstone’s annual stock car race, the big archery contest, the high school pistol-shooting championship, Ella’s fried peanut butter balls, cow-flop bingo, carnival rides, flagpole climbing, your favorite country music stars, and the always-popular Bunker Hill reenactment. Come early and stay late!”

Claiborne turned to Gurney with an acid expression. But before he could say a word, there was a flash of light at the window, followed by a series of five explosions on an upper floor of the house and the sound of squealing tires on a vehicle racing away.

25

BY THE TIME the police arrived—the same pair who’d responded to the bombing of Arbor Lockwood’s pickup—Gurney’s examination of the site had revealed some basic facts.

The source of the explosions was a large fireworks rocket, launched up from the street into an open attic window, where its main explosive charge had detonated, releasing five secondary charges, which in turn propelled showers of metallic sparks into every corner of the mostly empty space. Given the modest size of the window opening, he also concluded that whoever fired the rocket must have employed a more precise aiming device than the short mortar tubes used for Fourth of July displays.

Due to the presence of fire extinguishers on every floor, including the attic, he’d been able to limit the damage to several charred areas on the attic floor, walls, and rafters.

The older, fatter, wearier cop announced that he’d be submitting an incident report and that Claiborne could come to the station and file his own complaint form, if he wanted to. His tone suggested, however, that this would be a waste of everyone’s time.

“Teenagers,” he muttered. “You legalize fireworks, and this is the kind of crap we have to deal with.”

It was clear that the “crap” he was talking about included not only the damage caused by rockets but, more importantly, the annoying need to respond to incidents like this one.

Once the pair of cops had left and Claiborne’s panic had subsided into quiet fury, Gurney retreated to his room to give some thought to the who, why, and how questions raised by the attack.

The question of who was responsible for it hinged, of course, on the meaning of “responsible,” since the inciter of an action could be as much to blame as the doer. As for the actual launcher of the rocket, Gurney found himself reluctantly agreeing that it was probably a teenager—or someone with the mentality of a teenager. He’d had that same feeling about the person or persons who befouled Wilmot’s campaign office. But the identity of the individual influencing the actions of those teenagers was another matter.

The why of the matter involved layers of motivation, often a complex element in even the simplest of cases. And whether the fireworks attack had the same goal as the abductions was an open question. Was it the product of a hostile impulse, or was it one element in an orchestrated scheme of intimidation? Realizing that this would have to remain an open question for the time being, he moved on to the matter of how.

The screeching tires of the vehicle racing away suggested to Gurney the presence of at least two individuals, the driver and the launcher of the rocket—which brought him back to the mechanics of aiming the rocket at a small attic window and the need for a launching tube that would make the rocket’s path more controllable than a short mortar would.

The word “tube” itself brought to mind the mailing tubes that were simple, cheap, and readily available in all sizes from office-equipment and UPS stores in every mall in America. His next thought was a question. Would the perp keep it or toss it? Since it would be directly incriminating if it remained in his possession, the natural urge would be to toss it. And since tossing it sooner rather than later would make sense, Gurney decided to spend some time checking the sides of the road in the direction in which he’d heard the vehicle departing.

Within a few minutes of starting his search, he found a five-foot-long mailing tube in a drainage ditch less than a hundred yards from the house. The odor of burnt black powder left no doubt about its use. He picked it up carefully, using his handkerchief to minimize the smudging of possible fingerprints, and carried it back to the Calico Cat. He put it in the trunk of his car and was about to take it to the police station when his phone rang.

It was Wilmot.

Gurney expected an angry burst of invective about the Strum-Ranzak interview. Instead, Wilmot sounded frightened.

“I haven’t been able to get in touch with Marian Lake. She didn’t open the bookstore today. I’m here now. So is her car. The door to her apartment over the store is unlocked, but she’s not here and she’s not answering her phone. Something’s wrong, I can feel it.”

“Have you called the police?”

“They’re useless! Could meet me here? Please?”

Gurney suspected that Wilmot’s panicky tone arose from a fear that Lake may have met the same fate as Evie Hubble and Kay Eliot.

“I’ll be right there. I just have to make one stop first.”

The police station was one of the renovated and repurposed nineteenth-century buildings that contributed to Gladstone’s historical personality, but the impression created by the antique brick facade was destroyed inside by fluorescent lights, gray metal desks, and vinyl tile flooring.

Gurney had locked his Beretta in his glove compartment before entering the building, and the only item of interest to the expressionless cop manning the metal detector in the entry foyer was the bazooka-sized mailing tube, which Gurney was using his handkerchief to grip.

The cop frowned and extended his hand toward the tube. “I’ll need to inspect that.”

“Not with bare hands. It’s from a crime scene. It may contain evidence of interest to Detective Hoskins.”

“It still needs to be inspected.”

“Mark may want to take care of that himself.”

Gurney’s use of the detective’s first name had the desired effect. The cop picked up his phone, explained the situation to someone, and listened to their reply.

“Okay,” he said to Gurney with an approving nod, pointing to a row of glass-enclosed cubicles along one side of an open-plan office area. “Next to the last one on the left.”

The odor of a pine-scented floor cleaner and the distinctive buzzing of the fluorescent lights put Gurney back for a moment in his old NYPD precinct house.

The smell and the buzzing were only a bit fainter inside Hoskins’s cubicle.

The man looked up from his desk, frowning first at Gurney, then at the tube.

“What’s this all about?”

“I assume you’ve been told about the Calico Cat incident.”

“So?”

Gurney held up the tube. “I thought you might be interested in this. It was used to improve the targeting potential of the rocket—to fire it from a position on the street up through a small attic window.”

Hoskins’s expression conveyed nothing.

Gurney continued, “That attack was carefully planned and executed. The house could have burned down. There could have been serious injuries.”

Hoskins sat back, steepled his fingers, and gazed at the tube.

“I’ll leave it with you,” said Gurney. “Might have a few fingerprints on it.”

He leaned it against the man’s desk, thanked him for his time, and left the building.

Back in his car, he mentally replayed the brief meeting. There had been something unexpected in Hoskins’s attitude. He’d been less combative than Gurney had expected. Perhaps he was actually more objective than he’d originally appeared to be.

On the other hand, his thoughtful-looking silence could have a darker meaning.

26

GURNEY STOPPED AT the drug store in the village to pick up some latex gloves. Based on Wilmot’s call, he intended to investigate Marian Lake’s apartment over the bookstore as a possible crime scene. He had no intention of collecting physical evidence, but if some happened to be present, he wanted to avoid corrupting it. In lieu of Tyvek booties, some plastic bags and rubber bands would do—which he picked up at the Gladstone Dollar Store.

The route from the village center to the Fallen Angel meandered through a series of wildflower meadows full of yellow coltsfoot, purple phlox, and blue cornflowers, but he hardly noticed.

The parking area in front of the Fallen Angel was empty. Gurney followed a narrow dirt driveway that curved around to the back of the converted barn, where it broadened into a gravel-covered space large enough for four or five cars. He parked between a sleek silver Audi and Wilmot’s scruffy old Blazer.

Wilmot was standing next to an enclosed wooden staircase that was attached to the side of the building and rose to the level of the former hayloft.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” he said with a note of complaint in his voice.

Gurney decided not to alarm Wilmot any further by describing the rocket attack at the Calico Cat and his subsequent stop at the police station.

“There was something I needed to take care of. Tell me about the situation here.”

Wilmot took a deep, shaky breath. “There are two entrances to Marian’s apartment—one inside the bookstore and one at the top of this staircase. The store door is locked, but the one up there isn’t.” He pointed up the stairs.

After they both donned gloves and makeshift booties, Wilmot led the way up to a landing and the apartment door. He opened it, half reluctantly, and stepped aside for Gurney to take the lead.

The large interior space had retained the openness of the original hayloft. Gurney could see that insulation had been added between the roof rafters and covered with the same whitewashed pine boards that covered the walls. The combination of white walls with picture windows in three of them and a floor-to-ceiling mirror on the fourth created a bright atmosphere.

The area included a kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a dining area with a Shaker-style cherry table, and a sitting area loosely arranged around a woodstove. The furnishings had a clean, tasteful, expensive look. A vase of blue and white lilacs sat in the center of the dining table. Their perfume filled the room.

“Marian has a keen eye,” said Wilmot, as if reading Gurney’s mind. “A vision for how things should relate to each other, and the money to make it happen.”

The mention of money prompted Gurney to ask, “Did Marian make the donation to your campaign that she’d promised in her speech at the Collective?”

Wilmot shook his head. “That’s why I was trying to get in touch with her. We were planning to run a series of ads in the Star. But Strum is insisting on payment up front.” He paused, frowning. “Do you think someone . . . wanted to stop her from giving us the money?”

“Let’s take a look around before jumping to conclusions.”

Wilmot took another shaky breath. “What are we looking for?”

“Anything that might indicate a struggle. Any sign of interruption—running water, an open drawer, an appliance left on that would normally be shut off, an unfinished meal. Anything out of place. Anything still here that a person normally would take with them—phone, wallet, checkbook, keys. Anything that catches your eye or raises a question. Look at everything, touch nothing.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Same thing you’re doing.”

Gurney’s progress through the room brought him to the wall with the big mirror. He discovered a door next to it, so flush with the wall’s surface that it hadn’t been immediately obvious. It opened into a hallway that led to a large bathroom and a bedroom as elegant as the rest of the apartment. He saw nothing of troubling significance.

Back out in the kitchen area, he found the electronic key to the Audi on a countertop—no surprise, given the presence of the car downstairs. There was an unwashed plate in the kitchen sink and a multifunction remote on a lamp table next to an armchair. There was a cell phone on the dining table, which Gurney quickly discovered was password protected.

In short, there was nothing that provided any more insight into Marian Lake’s absence than that of Evie Hubble or Kay Eliot. Arguably, Lake’s was the most significant so far, given its financial implications. Gurney wondered if that might qualify it as an escalation.

His train of thought was interrupted by Wilmot asking with anxious impatience, “Is there anything else we should be doing?”

“Not at the moment. If the police start taking the situation seriously, they can initiate a forensic search—vacuum for trace evidence, dust for prints, examine phone call records, internet searches, financial transactions, et cetera. For now, we’ve done all we can.”

Wilmot let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I don’t feel like we’ve done anything. Are you sure you can’t get into her phone? She might have tried to call someone.”

“Do you know her password?”

“No, but . . . the password for the computer down in the bookstore is Wynderly, like the lake. We could try that.”

Gurney went to the table, picked up the phone, and tapped in the letters.

“No luck.” He put the phone back on the table. “Another forensic task, if the police get interested.”

“How about we take the phone to someone who knows how to hack these things?”

“If this is a crime scene, removing a piece of evidence is not something we want to do. I’d rather approach Hoskins again, try to talk him into—”

Gurney’s comment was cut short by the CRACK! of a bullet striking the mirror on the wall, accompanied by the simultaneous sharp report of gunshot from outside the building. The bullet had created a small round hole in the mirror, sending spidery cracks out in all directions.

Gurney whirled reflexively toward the sound of the gunshot, spotted an entry hole in the picture window opposite the mirror, took a few quick strides toward Wilmot, and shoved him toward a corner of the room away from the window.

“Jesus! Fucking! Christ!” Wilmot’s breathing was shallow, panicky.

Gurney pulled out his phone and dialed 911.

27

AFTER GIVING THE dispatcher the necessary facts, he crawled over to the mirror, staying well below the trajectory of the shot. Even without raising himself high enough to precisely align the entry hole in the window with the hole in the mirror, he could see that the shot, like the one in the bookstore, had originated from a point above the height of any shooter standing on the ground, but from a lateral angle that was different from the two shots that had come through the Fallen Angel window downstairs. Meaning it was probably fired from a different spot in the same thicket.

Wilmot was hunkered down where Gurney had left him, wide-eyed, arms crossed tightly across his chest—as though he were literally trying to hold himself together.

Gurney turned toward him. “Did you tell anyone we were meeting here?”

He shook his head so hard and fast it looked like he was shivering.

Several minutes later, blaring sirens announced the arrival of what sounded like more than one vehicle. Gurney crawled out the apartment door and hurried down the enclosed staircase. He saw two squad cars—one behind his Outback and the other partly on the gravel, partly on the grass—red and blue lights flashing, doors wide open.

Two officers in SWAT protective gear were hunkering down next to one of the squad cars, checking the magazines on their AR-15 assault rifles. Hoskins, wearing just a Kevlar vest over his street clothes, crouched behind the open door of the other squad car.

He saw Gurney and ran, bent over, to the shelter of the staircase.

“What’s the situation?”

Gurney gave him the details of the attack, including his estimate of the bullet’s origination point.

“It didn’t come close to either one of you?”

“Its path was six or seven feet to my right. About the same to Wilmot’s left. Shook him up. He’s up there huddled in a corner.”

“Where’s Marian Lake?”

“Open question. Didn’t open the bookstore today and wasn’t answering her phone. That’s why we’re here.”

“Wilmot has a key to her apartment?”

“He says he found the door unlocked, didn’t want to go in alone, so he called me.”

Hoskins looked like the circumstances were giving him indigestion. Ducking down again, he hurried over to his tactical team, conferred with them briefly, and returned to Gurney.

“They’ll check out the thicket where you say the shot came from. Ten to one the shooter’s gone, but better to be sure.”

He retrieved gloves and booties from the car he came in, put them on, and followed Gurney up the stairs to the apartment.

Wilmot was still in the corner where Gurney left him, but now he was standing, looking no less terrified.

Hoskins focused his attention on the big open room. His gaze lingered on the entry hole in the window and then on the impact hole in the mirror.

“You touch anything, move anything, find anything?”

Gurney pointed to the phone on the Shaker-style dining table. “I picked that up to see if I could find any messages that would explain her disappearance. But it’s password protected.”

Hoskins sneezed, blew his nose, and glared at the vase of lilacs.

“Fucking allergies.” He made his way to the mirror and studied the bullet hole. Then, keeping his head at that level, he looked across the room toward the hole in the window and the woods beyond.

He appeared appropriately perplexed. After a few seconds, he straightened up and tapped on the wall. “What’s behind this?”

“A bedroom and bathroom. Through there.” Gurney, pointed at the door to the right of the mirror.

“You went in there?”

“Yes. No discoveries. No exit hole on the other side of the wall. The bullet is probably lodged in a wooden stud behind the mirror. Could be in reasonable shape for ballistics.”

Hoskins nodded vaguely, walked over to the window, and gazed out across the small field to the thicket. His troubled frown gave Gurney an opening.

“So, where do you think the shot came from? Hunting stand? Top of a ladder? Armed drone? And why go to all that trouble just to blow a hole in a mirror?”

Hoskins turned from the window and looked at the mirror.

“Where were you standing when the shot was fired?”

“I was standing by the dining table, next to the spot where I put the phone down.”

“Go over and stand there now.”

Gurney did so.

Hoskins smiled. “The shooter wasn’t trying to blow a hole in the mirror. He saw your reflection in it and thought it was you. You were the target.”

Unsurprisingly to Gurney, Gladstone’s makeshift tactical team once again encountered no one on the ground or up in the trees. They found no ladders, no hunting platforms, nothing that would explain the shot’s elevated origin point.

After Hoskins instructed them to enter their search report in the system as a draft document, which he’d append later to his own incident report, they departed in one of the squad cars—leaving Hoskins, Gurney, and Wilmot in the parking area behind the barn.

Anxiety was still evident in Wilmot’s eyes and voice. “The fact that they didn’t find anything out there—does that mean the shot was fired from a drone?”

Hoskins looked doubtful but said nothing.

“Unlikely,” said Gurney. “A drone with that level of weapon integration and targeting precision would be expensive. It’s hard to imagine what advantage it could offer that would be worth the cost. Besides—” He was interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

It was a call from Justin Claiborne, sounding as frightened as Wilmot.

“I just got an anonymous text message. It says, ‘The rocket was a warning. Get rid of Gurney. The wrong friends can be fatal.’ What should I do?”

“Go to the police station, fill out a report, show the police the text on your phone, tell them you fear for your life, and ask for protection. I doubt they’ll provide it, but ask for it anyway. Take someone else with you, an attorney if possible.”

“Right. Okay. Thank you.” His breathing was fast and erratic. He ended the call.

Gurney told Hoskins and Wilmot about the text.

“My God,” cried Wilmot, “it just keeps getting worse!”

Hoskins said nothing.

28

DURING GURNEY’S DRIVE back to the Calico Cat, the shot in the mirror was very much on his mind, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. It wasn’t just the mystery of the shot’s trajectory. It was the complexity of the setup.

If Hoskins’s comment was correct—that he, rather than the mirror, was the gunman’s target—then the baffling question was why wait until he was upstairs in the apartment to take the shot? Anyone with a scoped rifle could have put a bullet in his head the moment he got out of his car. Or when he was entering or leaving the Calico Cat. Or virtually anywhere other than inside Marian Lake’s apartment.

Was it a bizarre game? A cat-and-mouse thing? A psycho’s idea of fun? If someone wanted him dead, there were easier ways and no shortage of opportunities.

So, maybe the goal wasn’t to kill him after all. Maybe he was just supposed to think it was. Maybe they were supposed to arrive at the conclusion Hoskins had about the mirror. Maybe that conclusion was part of the game. Maybe the perp pulling the strings didn’t want him dead, just frightened off.

That made more sense. But not a lot more. Because if the objective was to scare him off, there were more direct ways to go about that as well. Which led to another puzzling question. If neither murder nor intimidation was the goal, then what was it? Whatever it was, it justified a hell of a lot of planning, time, and effort.

He was sitting in his Outback in front of the Calico Cat, still wrestling with this question, when he got a call from Madeleine.

Her tone was cold, accusatory. “I had a visit this morning from a creep on a very loud motorcycle. Possibly someone you know.”

“Sorry?”

“I was cleaning out the alpaca shed, and I could hear him roaring up the town road. I assumed he was some idiot out to fill the world with noise pollution and that he’d turn around at the barn and head back down the road. But he didn’t. He rode up through the low pasture all the way to the house. I came out of the shed to ask him what he wanted. He said I had a nice house, very private. The way he looked at me made me wish I had the shotgun with me. He asked me if I ever worried about the kind of things that could happen to a woman in such a lonely place.”

“Jesus!”

“He smiled the ugliest smile I’ve ever seen. Then he rode his hideous noise machine down through the pasture—very slowly, like he was casing the property.” She paused. “This mean anything to you?”

“Can you describe him?”

“Muscular arms. Dead eyes. Greasy black ponytail. Nasty little item hanging from his belt. A shiny hatchet—shaped like a tomahawk. Sound like anyone you know?”

It sounded a lot like Tyson Grock. And the message he seemed to be delivering was, You fuck with me and you’ll pay a big fucking price.

Gurney admitted it might be someone he knew.

“So, once again,” cried Madeleine, “your appetite for poking at snakes has brought one out of his hole and into my life.”

Gurney took a long slow breath. “Did you happen to see his plate number?”

“I wish I could forget it.”

“What was it?”

She spelled out the letters. “A-X-M-A-N.”

“Okay,” said Gurney as calmly as he could, “I’ll handle this.”

As soon as she disconnected, he placed a call to Stony Burke’s personal number and left a message: “The situation up here in God’s country is becoming hellish. The latest shot across my bow was a threatening visit to Madeleine by a local goon on a motorcycle, whose identity I’d like to confirm. His vanity plate reads A-X-M-A-N. I’m guessing it belongs to Tyson Grock, but I want to be sure before I . . . respond.”

His mind was so full of the scene he was picturing between Madeleine and Grock, and his heart so full of anger, he’d almost forgotten where he was—in the parking area in front of the Calico Cat. He got out of his car and went into the house.

As he was heading for the stairs, he heard a door opening on the far side of the guests’ parlor. Justin Claiborne peered out.

“Are you okay?” asked Gurney.

“As okay as anyone can be when their life is at stake.”

“Would you feel safer if I went somewhere else?”

“No! I may be in danger because you’re here, but I could be in greater danger if you left.”

“Did you report the text to the police?”

“To the desk sergeant. I filled out the form he gave me. He didn’t show much interest.”

“Did you ask for protection?”

“He laughed at me. He said I’d been watching too much TV.”

“Did you take anyone with you?”

“I should have. I know. But I just wanted to get it over with.”

After taking a long, tension-relieving shower, Gurney put on fresh clothes and checked his phone for messages. He was surprised to find one from Stony Burke—short and to the point.

“Your guess regarding the individual’s identity was correct.”

So. Tyson Grock.

With that question resolved, another took its place. Was Grock’s visit to Madeleine his own reactive counterpunch to Gurney’s intrusion into his life, or was it directed by someone higher on the food chain? Was it emotionally driven or strategic? If strategic, was the goal to pressure Gurney to abandon Wilmot and return like a protective husband to Walnut Crossing?

How did it relate, if at all, to the shot in the mirror? The rocket attack at the Calico Cat? The wounding of Wilmot at the Fallen Angel? The explosion of Arbor Lockwood’s pickup? The disappearances of Evie Hubble and Kay Eliot and Marian Lake?

Were all these events being orchestrated by the same person? Were they all aimed at discouraging Stuart Wilmot’s political candidacy, or were other objectives at play? Gurney knew from past investigations that searching for unity where there was none could be a frustrating time-waster. But if it did exist, failing to understand it could be fatal.

That brought him back to the question at hand. Was Tyson Grock’s visit to Madeleine his own idea or someone else’s?

There was one way to find out.

Ranzak’s mile-long private lane brought Gurney through the now-familiar copses of sugar maples and picture-book wildflower meadow into the fairway-like lawn. While he was still a good hundred yards from Ranzak’s mansion, he saw Harlan Stone stepping out onto the granite porch. No doubt his approach had been noted on the estate’s video surveillance system, a conclusion supported by the appearance of a large black SUV at the corner of the house.

Gurney drove slowly around the boxwood-enclosed tulip bed and came to a stop behind the gleaming acid-green convertible he’d seen in the town hall parking lot. It looked like an exotic cross between a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, and Fort Knox.

As soon as he got out of his car, Stone came to the edge of porch and looked down at him. “Mr. Ranzak is not available. You should back away from his vehicle, turn around carefully, and leave the way you came.”

Gurney smiled. “I don’t need to see him, Harlan. You’ll do.”

Stone’s gaze hardened.

Gurney continued, “It’s about your boy, Tyson Grock.”

“He’s not my boy.”

“Good to know. I wouldn’t want to think you sent him.”

Stone’s rigid expression wasn’t entirely concealing his confusion.

“Sent him where?”

“To the house where my wife lives. He made some comments that seemed to suggest how easy it would be to hurt her.”

While Gurney was speaking, Ranzak came out on the porch and stood near Stone.

“You’re talking about Tyson Grock?”

“Yes.”

“You say he threatened your wife?”

“Yes.”

“That’s terrible. But . . . why are you here?”

“I thought someone here might have sent him.”

“Where would you get such an idea?”

“From your hostile mention of me in your interview with Strum.”

Ranzak displayed his ice-cold smile. “No hostility, Mr. Gurney. Just politics. As for Tyson Grock’s behavior, I don’t control him. I don’t send him anywhere. I have no connection with him at all. Is that clear?”

“No connection at all. Makes his own choices. Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“What’s your point?”

“If his visit to my wife was his own idea, then I can deal with him directly. I like the simplicity of that.” He mirrored Ranzak’s smile and added, “For your personal safety, I’d advise you to stay far away from him.”

29

AS GURNEY DROVE back toward Gladstone, the clouds in the western sky were on fire with the reds and corals of a spectacular sunset.

His brief encounter with Ranzak and Stone had convinced him that neither man was responsible for Grock’s visit to Madeleine. He was also pleased to note that they’d been unsettled both by the news of Grock’s behavior and by his own promise of retaliation. Moreover, it suggested that not all of the turmoil in Gladstone could be attributed to any single malefactor or even to the upcoming election. Less obvious causes could be motivating some of what was going on. In fact, the difficulty in understanding certain events could be due to the background noise created by other events. There were cases in which natural disasters had provided the perfect camouflage for murders. Bodies recovered from a collapsed building weren’t checked for ice pick wounds.

Unraveling a complex case in a chaotic environment invariably came down to understanding the relationships and resentments at play. And Gladstone seemed to provide quite a tangle of both. It might be time for another visit to Molly Parr.

Halfway back to Gladstone, he pulled onto a grassy shoulder, took out his phone, and located her in his list of contacts. As the call was going to her voicemail, she picked up.

“David?”

“Hi, Molly. I’m on the road between Wynderly Lake and Gladstone. I was wondering if you might be available to help me understand some things that have come up since our last talk.”

“Things like exploding trucks and bullet holes in mirrors?”

“You’re well-informed.”

“News gets around, and I’m a good listener. If you want to drop by now, we can meet in the gazebo. It’s a beautiful evening.”

“I can be there in ten minutes.”

Nine minutes later he slowed down in front of the red barn and turned into the driveway of the big white farmhouse with the black shutters. The green hill behind the barn was touched by the final gold rays of the setting sun. He spotted Molly Parr standing at the edge of the stream. As he walked across the freshly mowed lawn, she waved to him and entered the gazebo.

They sat facing each other in the wicker chairs they’d used before. She was wearing what appeared to be the same colorless sweatshirt and jeans she’d worn at the town hall. He realized that not only was she quite attractive, but she was one of those rare individuals who had no interest in drawing attention to that fact.

“So,” she said pleasantly, “what can I help you with?”

“Since you already know about the gunshot at Marian Lake’s place, I assume you also know she’s missing—or at least not responding to phone calls?”

She nodded. “Stuart was calling around last night and again this morning, asking if anyone knew where she was.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

She gazed out across the stream. The gold light had disappeared from the green hill. “Marian definitely came from the right side of the tracks. Effortlessly elegant, charming, but rather cool to the touch. Swarthmore graduate. On the arty side, but not ridiculously so. Well off, but not in the same league as her brother. Few people are. Some bad blood there but never displayed to the public eye.”

“Her brother is . . . ?”

“Larry Sloane. The name Lake came from a brief marriage to a man her parents despised. Which is probably why she married him, and which accounts for her share of the Sloane millions being smaller than Larry’s.”

“So, she comes from a family with a longtime antagonism toward the Ranzaks.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you known Don Ranzak?”

“We went to different elementary and high schools, so we didn’t cross paths until the summer I was at the camp, just before I left for college. His father had a stroke that summer and handed day-to-day management of the camp over to Donald, who was just eighteen at the time. From the day he took over, the feeling of the place changed. Even then, there was something polarizing about him. You were with him or against him. The atmosphere flipped from Swiss Family Robinson to Lord of the Flies. Kids who followed his orders were rewarded. Those who didn’t paid the price.”

“What sort of price?”

“They would be dragged off in the middle of the night to the ghost barn. A decaying equipment barn in an isolated part of the camp. No one who was taken there for ‘correction’ ever revealed what was done to them.”

“They were taken there by force?”

“Yes, that much I know. Donald had his cadre of teenage goons. The summer I was at the camp, the main ones were Harlan Stone, Tyson Grock, and a downstate character by the name of Johnny Lemino.”

Gurney’s imagination was conjuring up a picture of the camp—half idyllic, half nightmare. “How did Wilmot fit into all of this?”

“Not well. He never managed to fit in with any of the cliques. He was the outsider looking in. Children can be cruel, especially toward anyone who seems anxious or needy. Stuart was both. Desperate for acceptance, without a clue how to get it. The stressors of summer camp can magnify all of that.”

“Where did you fit into the social pressure cooker?”

She looked out across the stream and the meadow beyond it. “I didn’t, really. I’ve always been more an observer than a participant. It’s my strength and my weakness. I see things other people miss, but I miss out on some of the closeness, the comradeship.”

“Ranzak never tried to terrorize you?”

She smiled. “I’d like to think it was because he sensed my strength of character. But it was probably because my father was a powerful local politician. Power has always been something Ranzak respected—or perhaps just feared and envied. When he had it, like he did at the camp, it was about domination—being a rung above other people and insisting they recognize it and punishing them if they didn’t.”

Whatever she was picturing at that moment darkened her expression. “I’ve never seen anyone get such pleasure out of humiliating people.”

“Did his targets include Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, and Marian Lake?”

“I don’t think so. They’d been given junior counselor jobs by his father, which put them in a protected category.”

“Did they ever criticize his behavior?”

“Not that I was aware of. At the very least, it was a case of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

“At the very least?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a bit of a crush on him—like a lot of the girls at the camp. Perhaps they’re making up for their attitude then by supporting Wilmot’s anti-Ranzak campaign now.”

“An interesting possibility.”

“Just a guess.”

There was something about this woman’s quiet frankness that gave Gurney considerable faith in her guesses. Moreover, that particular guess fed his suspicion that what was happening in Gladstone now had its roots in the Ranzak camp.

His phone rang. It was a text from Stuart Wilmot: “Declan Moore is missing. You met him at the Fallen Angel. He’s not at home. Not answering his phone. Hoskins doesn’t want to hear about it. Can we meet? I’m at the Blue Moth Collective.”

Gurney had little appetite for what would likely be another session of hand-wringing and cop-bashing, but he was curious about this latest “victim,” if that’s what Moore actually was.

He texted back, “I can be there in 20 minutes.”

After a few more questions about the camp, he thanked Molly Parr for her candor and headed out into the gathering dusk.

30

DURING HIS DRIVE to the Collective, the weather changed. Low clouds blew into the area, sending periodic whooshes of wind through the roadside trees. Loose leaves swirled across the pavement.

As he approached the Collective’s security fence, the chain-link gate slid open. He drove in on the fire-blackened earth between the fence and the house and parked in front of the porch. Wilmot was standing in the front doorway with the hypervigilant expression that was becoming a permanent part of his face.

“Still no word from Declan,” he said ominously, and led the way to the little office where they’d met before.

“I got another threatening message,” he said as soon as they were settled into their chairs. He held up his phone, the screen facing Gurney. The message was in capital letters: “DEAD MEN DON’T WIN ELECTIONS.”

“I know what you think of the Gladstone Police Department,” said Gurney, “but you need to visit the station and create an official record of this.”

There was a low rumble of distant thunder.

“I’ve done that with the other threats—the brick through my window, the graffiti on my house, even the occasional jerk yelling at me on the street that I ought to be shot.” He shook his head. “I’m sure the minute I leave the station, whatever form I filled out gets tossed in the shredder.”

“This time bring along a witness to the process.”

Wilmot shook his head in a gesture of despair. “This whole thing is a nightmare. Three women disappear off the face of the earth, and the police seem to be suggesting they ran off together on a secret vacation. And now Declan Moore. Christ!”

“Was Moore raised here?”

Wilmot shook his head. “He’s a transplant from the city. He came here a few years ago for the peace and quiet, the bucolic fantasy. The fantasy didn’t last long. Last year he wrote a book depicting the local people as a pack of malignant morons. Didn’t go over well, especially with the Ranzak acolytes. Why did you ask if he was raised here?”

“I have a feeling a lot of what’s happening here may be connected to the old Ranzak camp.”

Wilmot looked puzzled. “How so?”

“I was told that Don Ranzak was a divisive presence, even then.”

Wilmot nodded slowly. “True enough. In fact, ‘divisive’ is a gentle way of putting it. There were predators and prey. Ridiculers and targets.” He paused. “Interesting how those divisions evolved in our adult lives. Carnivores and vegetarians. Despoilers and environmentalists. Gun club and bird club.”

“Interesting observation.”

Wilmot smiled. “Interesting observations are the main weapons of underdogs.”

“I gather you didn’t have a happy time at the camp.”

A streak of bitterness entered his smile. “That’s fair to say. Before you ask, the answer is yes, my dislike of Don Ranzak, which began at the camp, is certainly part of my opposition to him now. Next question?”

“Did you grow up in Gladstone?”

“I did.”

“You don’t sound like an upstate native.”

“You mean I don’t sound like I was just mucking out a pigpen?”

Gurney smiled.

Wilmot continued, “My mother and father met in college. She was an English major with an interest in romantic poetry. He drifted from major to major, looking for the one that required the least work. His real major was drinking, which she preferred not to notice. The ways of the human heart are baffling, are they not?”

Gurney said nothing.

“During their senior year he inherited a small farm from an uncle out on Gomorrah Hill Road—actual name, by the way. He immediately dropped out of college with notions of becoming a gentleman farmer. She graduated, they married, and they moved to the farm, full of naive notions of life close to the earth. I was born a year later, at which point Dad was a fall-down drunk and Mom was losing her mind. She treated me as if I were her doll. A doll who would grow up to be a prince. A prince who would someday take her to his castle. She certainly didn’t see me as the frightened offspring of a demented couple living in the manure-filled wreck of a failing farm.”

He paused, seemingly transported to that world by his description of it.

Gurney waited.

Wilmot cleared his throat. “Dad drank himself to death. Mom sold the farm. She and I moved to the house where I still live. She took up sculpture. She wasn’t any good at it. Angels were her favorite subject. They all ended up looking like demented birds. But her little prince had to be perfect. Accent-free enunciation was among the elements of perfection. My speech was relentlessly corrected. Does that help you understand why I sound the way I do?”

“In greater detail than I expected.”

“The devil is in the details. Or so they say.”

There was a crash of thunder. The storm had arrived in full force.

31

GURNEY LEFT THE Blue Moth Collective, and within minutes the wind-lashed rain made driving so unsafe that he pulled over in the first spot where the sloping shoulder appeared wide enough to accommodate the Outback without tilting it into a drainage ditch.

Wilmot’s family history resonated uncomfortably with his own—not the farming part or the parents-meeting-in-college part, but the alcoholically distant father and the fantasizing mother. Whenever a story like Wilmot’s stirred up unpleasant memories of his childhood, he replaced them with something of interest in the present. The replacement in this instance was Declan Moore.

Being male and a recent transplant from the city, Moore seemed an odd addition to the three-member abduction group. But, as Gurney was discovering, there were some less-than-obvious connections among Gladstone residents. He didn’t want to wear out his welcome with Molly Parr, but he considered her his most objective resource—perhaps his only one. He took out his phone.

“What now, Detective?” She sounded more amused than surprised or annoyed.

“What can you tell me about Declan Moore?”

“Made a lot of money in advertising. Retired early. Moved up here to smell the roses and put the crass commercial world behind him. Wrote a nasty book about the intellectual and cultural deficits of his new neighbors. A big hit in the crass world he left behind. Not so much up here. Why do you ask?”

“Stuart Wilmot told me he’s missing—based on the fact that he’s not at home, but his car is there, and he’s not answering his phone. I’m wondering, is there anything that might connect him with the three women who are actually missing?”

She uttered a small, humorless laugh. “I never saw any sign of Declan being connected with anyone. He’s a critic, not a connecter. If you wanted to know what was wrong with any person, any group, any idea, he’d be more than willing to tell you.”

“So, not a major Wilmot supporter?”

“At most, he might despise him less than he despises Ranzak.”

“Has he ever voiced any environmental concerns?”

“He couldn’t care less, as far as I know.”

“Enemies?”

“Half the people in Gladstone—the half he ridiculed in his book. But it would be hard to imagine them kidnapping him.”

Gurney couldn’t argue with that. “I’m afraid Wilmot is leaping to a conclusion that could damage his credibility. More importantly, if Moore shows up, it could undermine whatever interest the police might have in looking for the women. I can hear Hoskins saying, ‘They’ll eventually show up, just like Moore did.’ It seems shortsighted for Wilmot to be lumping the four situations together.”

“You sound like you have mixed feelings about your client.”

“I have mixed feeling about most people. By the way, the term ‘client’ makes me sound like a lawyer for the person who’s paying me. That’s not what I am.”

“What are you?”

“More an archaeologist than an advocate. I’m interested in what’s buried, no matter who’s ground it’s buried in. Wilmot’s my client in the sense that he’s paying my hourly rate, but I’m not on his side, or anyone else’s. I’ll only help him to the extent that the truth helps him.”

“He’s willing to pay you for that?”

“So far, yes.”

“No matter whose garden you’re digging in?”

“So it seems.”

“Hmm.” Parr managed to fill that syllable with a paragraph of skepticism.

“One final question. During our meeting in the gazebo, you told me a kid by the name of Johnny Lemino was part of Ranzak’s goon squad at the camp. You said he was from downstate. Do you know anything else about him?”

“I have a vague memory that his father was in the construction business, and there was a rumor of mob involvement, but don’t quote me on that.”

The bell that rang in Gurney’s memory at the earlier mention of the Lemino name rang louder now. It was a line he’d seen at the bottom of one of the billboards supporting Ranzak’s candidacy: “Paid for by Frank Lemino & Son Concrete Construction.”

After thanking her and ending the call, he remained parked on the shoulder, listening to the surges of the rain and wind and pondering what he knew—and didn’t know—about the abductions of Evie, Kay, and Marian.

The absence of any signs of struggle suggested that all three had been taken from their homes by someone they trusted. A supposed friend? A business or political associate? A police officer? The lack of any subsequent communication from them or their abductor seemed ominous. If ransom was the objective, the demand was almost always received right away. The fact that no such demand had been made was not encouraging.

There was another possibility, unique to the current circumstances—a desire to damage Wilmot’s campaign by removing three of his key supporters and, at least in the case of Marian Lake, a major financial resource. This seemed to be the way Wilmot himself viewed what was happening.

The ultimate explanation would surely lie in the answer to the simple question at the heart of every complex criminal investigation: Cui bono?

Who benefits?

That often translated to “follow the money.”

But not always.

Because some motives are sicker than greed.

32

AT SOME POINT during Gurney’s ruminations the rainstorm moved on, the wind died down, and the gray dusk faded into a black moonless night.

He restarted the Outback and headed for the Calico Cat. His route took him through the center of the village, where he noticed that the Chinese place with the amusingly simple name, Best Restaurant, was still open. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After devouring a large order of kung pao chicken, he continued on his way. The only downside to the late dinner was waking up twice during the night, desperately thirsty.

He got up the next morning with a plan in mind. Or more modestly, an idea for a next step. The sunlight streaming through the window of his room might have given his idea a brightness it didn’t deserve, but the urge to do something was stronger than his usual inclination to consider every possible consequence.

After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and two cups of strong arabica coffee—served by an uncharacteristically quiet Justin Claiborne—he retreated to his room to search the internet for information on Frank Lemino & Son Concrete Construction.

The Lemino website had an unappealing industrial look—consisting mostly of photos of heavy equipment and piles of sand and gravel. It included an address Gurney knew to be in a bleak commercial neighborhood in the Bronx, as well as an email address and a phone number. He called the number and got a recorded message in a rough female voice.

“Lemino Construction. Leave your name, number, and purpose of your call.”

“This is Detective David Gurney for Mr. Lemino. I’m a private investigator, looking into a situation that may affect Don Ranzak’s development plans.”

He left his number, figuring he had a fifty-fifty chance of getting a return call—the timing of which would depend on how long it took Lemino or his father to get in touch with Ranzak. He knew he was making a major assumption—that the Lemino company had a stake in Ranzak’s plans and wasn’t just sponsoring a campaign billboard.

The return call came ten minutes later. The voice on the phone sounded like the unpleasant female voice he’d heard on the company’s recorded message.

“Mr. Lemino is available this afternoon at two o’clock. He’s looking forward to meeting you.”

She made it sound like a spider anticipating the arrival of a fly.

Frank Lemino & Son Concrete Construction was situated in a fenced compound that covered half a square block. The other half of the block was home to an abandoned apartment building surrounded by a field of weeds and a few straggly trees whose leaves had a dusty look. There was no movement in the air. The place was quiet in a way that conveyed paralysis rather than peace. It was like the way it was forty years earlier when he was growing up in this bleak corner of the Bronx—just duller, grayer, and in some peculiar way more menacing.

In the Lemino compound there were cement trucks, dump trucks, an enormous excavator, an equally enormous bulldozer, a corrugated steel building that looked like an airplane hangar, a dusty pickup, a gleaming Lincoln Navigator, and a residential trailer that Gurney guessed was the company office.

He parked on the street near the compound’s open gate, got out, and entered the fenced area. The door of the dusty pickup opened, and a man the size of an NFL lineman stepped out. He was nearly bald. Black chest hair was curling out of the neck of a tee shirt that might have fit him fifty pounds ago.

“Can I help you?” he asked, walking toward Gurney. His tone was polite, but he didn’t have the eyes of someone interested in helping people.

“David Gurney to see Mr. Lemino.”

The man raised a massive arm and pointed toward the trailer.

The trailer door opened before Gurney reached it. The woman who let Gurney in was a third the size of the man outside, but her gaze was equally cold.

The interior of the trailer was a surprise. The rococo furniture with velvet upholstery looked like it came from a seventies Mafia movie. The man sitting behind the oversized desk at the far end of the room looked like he’d been imported from the same movie. Gurney’s first impression was that he must be Johnny Lemino’s father—the Frank in the company name. But a closer look revealed that he was probably in his early thirties—a young man sporting the rigid pompadour, deep tan, and silvery silk shirt of an old-fashioned mobster. The impersonation was so extreme it was almost funny. But there was nothing playful in the man’s empty smile.

“Have a seat, Mr. Gurney.” His gravelly, gangsterish voice complimented the furniture. “May I call you Dave? I’m Johnny Lemino. You’re a detective. Private, right?”

Gurney sat in a velvet-cushioned chair across the desk from Lemino. “That’s right.”

“Good. Private. Independent.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself that independence was good. “Why do you want to see me?”

“I think we might have a common interest.”

“What could this interest be?”

“There’s a lot of confusion in Gladstone right now. Threats, gunshots, explosions, people disappearing.”

“I heard about these things.” He shook his head, clearly disapproving. “So, I ask you again. What is this common interest?”

“Putting an end to the chaos. It’s not good for anyone’s business. The attacks on Stuart Wilmot may actually be doing more harm to Don Ranzak. I think you’d like to see him win the election and move ahead with his development plans. The crap going on in Gladstone will not get him any closer to that.”

Lemino rocked his head slowly from side to side in an expression of uncertainty. “Tell me. If the craziness could help Wilmot, the man who’s paying you, why do you want to stop it?”

“Simple. I don’t like it. I don’t like being shot at. I don’t like nice people disappearing. You know what I don’t like most of all? I don’t like scumbags threatening my wife.”

“That’s understandable.”

“You see, Mr. Lemino, I am normally a calm, forgiving man. But certain things could force me to respond less forgivingly. I’m trying to avoid that.”

“You don’t like to kill people?” He made it sound like a normal question.

“I’m trying to avoid it. That’s why I’m here.”

He studied Gurney with new interest. “So, you’re telling me our common interest is ending the Gladstone craziness?”

“Yes.”

Lemino leaned back in his chair, his features taking on a puzzled expression—except for his eyes, which remained observant and unblinking. “I share your preference for order, for predictability. These things are good. But what do you think I am able to do about this?”

“I don’t know what you’re able to do. Or willing to do. Some people in law enforcement suspect that you might even be part of the problem. Your company could get millions of dollars in contracts if Wilmot dropped out of the race and Ranzak moved ahead with his development plans. They tend to look at these situations from a cui bono point of view. The answer could put Frank Lemino & Son Concrete Construction at the top of their list of suspects.”

Lemino pointed a finger at Gurney. “Hey! This is bullshit! You come here with some bullshit accusation—”

“Hold on. I’m telling you what some people think. It’s not what I think. I think something else is going on. Something that has nothing to do with money.”

Lemino leaned forward, as though he were having trouble hearing.

Gurney continued, “I think what’s happening now started a long time ago. Maybe one summer at the Ranzak camp. Maybe the summer you were there.”

The first flash of defensiveness appeared in Lemino’s eyes. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“Did something happen that summer?”

“Let me get this straight. You’re telling me all this shit in Gladstone—shootings, explosions, people disappearing—it’s all because of something that happened in that camp fifteen fucking years ago?”

He turned his palms up in an exaggerated gesture of disbelief, before going on. “I checked on you after you called. I know you were a big deal in the NYPD. Homicide genius. Decorations. Respect. So, how could a smart guy like you have this idea that makes no sense?”

“What can you tell me about the ghost barn?”

Lemino blinked but otherwise remained very still. “The what?”

“The old barn with the scary reputation.”

Lemino gave Gurney a long look before shaking his head. “You’re wasting my time. All this crap in Gladstone, you want to know what it’s about? The election. Period. A battle for a big job. All this speculation, it don’t amount to nothing. I’m telling you. It’s the election. End of story. I’ll put a grand on that. Friendly wager. You want to bet against me?”

The last question had the unmistakable sound of a threat.

33

THE BURIAL SITE at the heart of the troubling Frankie Dalasio confession was less than half an hour’s drive from the Lemino compound. On the way, Gurney called Stony Burke. Surprisingly, the man answered immediately.

“Are you calling to tell me you’ve tracked down the little fucker and caught him with a smokin’ gun in his back pocket?”

“I wanted to let you know that I’m on your turf and heading for that shady spot by the stream—in case you’d want to join me.”

“I fear for your mental health.”

“Just a courtesy call, Stony. Wouldn’t want you to think I was doing anything behind your back.”

It had been seven years since Gurney had visited the area where Pamela Espinoza’s body was buried. The neighborhood around the so-called park was in decline back then, and nothing in the interim had reversed the process. The chain-link fence that segregated the park’s wooded area as a toxic waste site was tilted and corroded.

Gurney drove around its perimeter to the unfenced entry point he’d been shown by Dalasio. To his surprise, he noticed that he wasn’t the only one with an interest in that location. A black Dodge Interceptor was parked in the tall grass just past the overgrown lane that led into the woods.

He got out of his car, checked to see if anyone was in the Interceptor, and entered the lane on foot. The air was humid and still. Each step stirred up a new swarm of gnats.

When he emerged from the damp woods into a sunny clearing, he saw a thickly built man with sandy-red hair standing by the stream where Pam Espinoza had been buried. He was gazing up at the only tree in the clearing.

Gurney grinned. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” said Burke, turning toward him. “I’m not here because I think the fuckin’ burial site is the key to some grand revelation.”

“Why are you here?”

“It beats the alternative. The wife’s cousin showed up without warning, with the wretched fruits of her womb in tow. Three little hyenas without a speck of discipline.”

“I see you’re standing next to the very tree that shaded young Frankie.”

“I am—if we can believe a single word the little fucker said.”

Gurney’s gaze moved slowly around the little clearing, lingering on the stream and finally settling on the tree.

“Taller than I remember it.”

Burke shrugged. “I suppose they keep growing as long as they’re alive. Hell of a thing if it happened to us. My grandmother would be a fuckin’ monster.”

“Any idea what it is?”

“Leaf’s a bit like a willow, but willows have them droopy branches, not like these.”

Gurney took out his phone and snapped a photo. “I don’t have one of those plant-identification apps, but I’ll show this to someone who knows about trees.”

“What the hell difference does it make?”

“Probably none.”

A brief silence fell between them, broken by Gurney.

“How about we reenact the scene Dalasio described? I’ll be Frankie, you can be his crazy brother. If we go through it right here on site, maybe we’ll see what’s wrong with it.”

Burke stared at him.

Gurney shrugged. “What have we got to lose?”

“The captain who controls my career might not be thrilled to hear that a case he was happy as a pig in shit to mark ‘Closed’ needs to be reopened.”

“Ah, Stony, you know in your Catholic heart that the truth is its own reward.”

Burke sighed with dramatic resignation. “Fine. Let’s get this suicide mission over with.”

With Gurney repeating from memory the actions Dalasio had described in his confession, he and Burke walked through them—the brothers digging with pick and shovel by the stream, dragging Pam Espinoza’s body from the trunk of the car, rolling it into the shallow grave, Frankie shoveling the dirt back onto the body, his brother jumping on the loose soil to compact it—all in the welcome shade of the adjacent tree.

“So,” said Burke when they came to end of the process, “what in the name of God did that accomplish?”

Gurney shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I’m more convinced than ever that something’s wrong with the whole scenario.”

Burke sucked at his teeth. “Sounds like my whole fuckin’ life.”

Another silence ensued, this one broken by Burke.

“How’s the upstate private-eye work going?”

“I’m coming up with more questions than answers. In fact, maybe you can help me with one of the questions. I’m curious about an outfit called Frank Lemino & Son Concrete Construction here in the Bronx. The son, Johnny Lemino, has a mobbed-up look. I’d like to know how deep it goes.”

Midway on the two-hour drive back to Gladstone, Gurney got a call from Stuart Wilmot.

He explained that a few hours after he’d posted on his campaign’s website and Facebook page that Declan Moore had disappeared—and that the Gladstone police were reacting with a criminal lack of interest—Moore had resurfaced.

It struck Gurney that Wilmot sounded more annoyed than relieved that the man was unharmed. “Have you corrected your posts?”

“I have not,” Wilmot replied emphatically, “and I don’t intend to. If people continue to think that Moore is missing, so be it. This is no time for mea culpas.”

Thoughts about Wilmot, the Lemino company, and the burial site of Pam Espinoza were occupying Gurney’s mind as he approached the Calico Cat, where he hoped to have a restful evening. As he came over a rise in the road, however, his first sight of the place was anything but restful. Three police cruisers were parked at odd angles in the gravel area in front of the house, their doors wide open. Justin Claiborne was standing at the edge of the porch, gripping the top of the railing and seemingly riveted by the scene in front of him.

Half a dozen uniformed cops formed a rough circle around a shirtless, dark-haired man who was screaming obscenities at Claiborne and waving what appeared to be a hatchet in wild circles over his head.

One of the cops pointed a gun at the man and shouted at him to drop the hatchet. Another brandished an old-fashioned wooden truncheon in a way that communicated an itch to use it. A third cop was moving in small, slow steps toward the hatchet wielder, talking to him in an earnest, cajoling way.

Gurney pulled to the side of the road about thirty feet from the confrontation and got out of the car. He was close enough now to recognize the hatchet wielder as Tyson Grock. As he watched, the largest of the encircling cops rushed Tyson from behind and knocked him to the ground.

Grock was disarmed, handcuffed, and hustled toward one of the cruisers.

Before they got him into it, he spotted Gurney and began shouting again, his face contorted with drunken rage. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! You’re a fucking dead man, you pansy fuck!”

The big cop who’d tackled him wrestled him into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door. He got into the front seat and drove off toward the village, followed in a second cruiser by most of the response group.

The cop who’d been trying to calm Grock down was talking to Claiborne, who was still grasping the railing.

Gurney kept a respectful distance. He was, however, close enough to notice five tomahawk-shaped hatchets embedded in the front door.

The cop, whose uniform stripes indicated the rank of sergeant, was speaking in a low, even voice. Claiborne was clearly agitated, his hair and clothing disarranged, his voice breaking as he yelled, “Unbelievable! Outrageous! Unacceptable!”

The cop showed little reaction beyond the slow, empathetic nodding of someone trained to deal with distraught citizens.

Claiborne suddenly turned his back on the cop, stormed into the house, and slammed the door behind him—dislodging one of the hatchets, which fell onto the porch with a loud clatter. The cop eyed it for a few seconds, then picked it up, removed the other four hatchets from the door, carried them all to the remaining cruiser, and drove off in the direction of the village.

Gurney got back in his car and drove into the now-empty parking area.

Claiborne greeted him in the foyer with a wild look in his eyes.

“Do you have any idea what just happened here?!”

“It looked like Grock went off the rails.”

“Did you see my door? Did you see what he did? If I’d opened the door when one of those things was flying through the air, I would have been killed! He was screaming your name, screaming that he wanted to kill you.”

“I asked you before, now I’ll ask you again, would you feel safer if—”

Claiborne cut him off. “These people are crazy. They’re not going to say, ‘Oh, he’s not staying at the Calico Cat anymore, so everything’s fine.’ No, they’re just as likely to burn the place down because you used to be here. So, please, stay as long as you want.”

“Do you have a firearm?”

“What?”

“Do you have a gun? For protection?”

He shook his head emphatically. “I hate guns. They scare me to death. They—”

He was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling into the gravel parking area. “Omigod, what now?”

Gurney went to the window next to the front door. He watched as Hoskins stepped out of a dark sedan and climbed the porch steps. He was carrying a manila envelope.

Gurney opened the door.

Hoskins flashed a hostile smile. “At the request of the county sheriff, I’m serving you with this restraining order, signed by Judge Harold Klemper.” He handed the envelope to Gurney before continuing.

“As the result of your harassment of Mr. Donald Ranzak and Mr. Harlan Stone, you are prohibited from approaching either of them or communicating with them in any manner. You are also prohibited from entering the property of Mr. Ranzak at any time for any reason. Any violation of this injunction can result in arrest, fines, and jail time. Is this understood?”

“Yes. Now I have a question for you. Are you continuing to insist that the disappearances of three Gladstone women have no law-enforcement significance?”

“That’s none of your business. Your presence in this town is not welcome. Your questions are not welcome.”

“I’ll give you a word of friendly advice. Check those women’s phone records for calls they received in the twenty-four hours prior to their disappearances.”

“The point being?”

“If they each received a call from the same number, that would be a good starting point for your investigation. If you don’t have their physical phones or if you can’t unlock them, get a warrant for the call records from the phone company. I’m betting all three got a call from the same number, and the number will turn out to be attached to an untraceable burner.”

“Great idea. A warrant that leads to a dead end.”

“That ‘dead end’ would indicate a link among the disappearances—enough of a link to turn this into a triple missing-persons case, with a likelihood of its being a triple abduction. The only question is how long you’re going to sit on your hands.”

Hoskins’s lips tightened into a line that looked more like an incision than a mouth.

“You want me to get a phone-records warrant? How about I get a second restraining order—to keep you away from any police matter whatever? Better yet, how about I arrest you right now for interfering in an investigation?”

“You want to charge me with interfering in a nonexistent investigation? That could be embarrassing.”

“You’re on thin ice, Gurney. Very thin ice. You’ve got a disrespectful history with law enforcement. That’s not a healthy place to be.” Hoskins sounded like a dog barking at someone just out of reach.

34

WHEN GURNEY CAME down the next morning for breakfast, Claiborne looked emotionally drained. Fear and anger had given way to exhaustion.

“What can I get for you?” he asked weakly.

“Just toast and coffee.”

“There are some cranberry scones,” he said, gesturing toward the sideboard. “Take as many as you want. In fact, take them all. My other guests are gone. They’re all demanding refunds. God only knows what kind of reviews they’ll post on Tripadvisor.”

“Since Grock’s attack was really aimed at me,” said Gurney, “and since I’m in Gladstone at Wilmot’s request, I’ll ask that his campaign fund cover your loss.”

Claiborne responded with a muttered thank-you, then added, “Speaking of Wilmot, I don’t suppose you saw today’s edition of the Star’s Morning Sound Bites?”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s a one-minute feature that George Strum posts on the Star’s website every morning. It’s made up of short excerpts from video calls he makes to people he considers hot newsmakers. Today’s excerpts are from calls he made to Wilmot and to Ranzak. They’re pretty extreme.”

He hurried into the kitchen, came back with a mug of coffee, and handed it to Gurney. “Come, you’ll want to see their dueling sound bites on the big screen.”

Gurney followed Claiborne through the dining room and the guest parlor into his private sitting room. Claiborne used an app on his phone to activate the giant screen and open the Morning Sound Bites feature on the Star website.

The first image was of Wilmot. Only a little of the background was visible, but Gurney recognized the severely modern room in Wilmot’s house where he’d met with him. Only some days had passed, but it seemed like ages ago.

The voice, at the other end of the video call, was Strum’s. “So, Stuart, in thirty seconds or less, why should we vote for you and not for Don Ranzak?”

Wilmot’s expression was fierce. “Because I’ll save our precious countryside from destruction. And I’ll save Gladstone from Don Ranzak—a liar, a thief, a kidnapper, and a probable murderer. The choice couldn’t be more crucial. You can vote for me or for a criminal monster!”

The scene switched to a close-up of Ranzak in his solarium, looking furious.

Strum’s voice on the video call said, “You heard your opponent’s shocking attack. What’s your response?”

“The moment I get off this call, I’ll be instructing my attorneys to file a lawsuit for slander. Wilmot will be ruined financially, politically, personally. He will regret those lies to his dying day.”

The screen displayed a statement in white letters on a black background: “Morning Sound Bites is an exclusive feature for Tri-County Star subscribers. Details on our website.”

Claiborne eyed Gurney expectantly. “What do you make of that?”

“Fascinating.”

“Is it conceivable that Stuart can back up what he said?”

“If he can’t, I don’t know what game he’s playing.” Gurney took out his phone and placed a call to Wilmot’s number.

Wilmot’s voicemail told him to leave a message.

He left a brief one. “Thief? Kidnapper? Murderer? What do you know that I don’t?”

“He’d better know something,” Claiborne said, “and be able to prove it. When Ranzak was running his hedge fund down in the city, he was famous for using lawsuits to destroy people.”

Gurney’s phone rang as he was putting it back in his pocket. It was Wilmot.

“Just got your message. No worries. It’s all true.”

“You have evidence that will stand up in court?”

“There won’t be any court.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s all true.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know Don Ranzak.”

“Meaning what?”

“I know what he’s capable of.”

“Capability is not the issue. And it’s sure as hell no defense against a slander lawsuit.”

“He’ll drop the suit threat. He won’t risk perjuring himself.”

“How can you be so sure about that?”

“I told you. I know him. I’ve known him since I was twelve years old. I don’t have an inch of doubt that he kidnapped those women, and he must have murdered them. It would make no sense to let them live.”

“I feel like I’m missing something here.”

“What you’re missing is that Don Ranzak is a psychopath. A clever, greedy, ambitious psychopath.”

“You’re sure he’s a kidnapper and murderer because you’re sure he’s a psychopath? Am I hearing that right?”

Wilmot’s voice softened. “I know how it sounds. I know it doesn’t stand up to logical dissection. Powerful convictions rarely do. But they can get us closer to reality than logic ever could.”

Gurney took a moment to ponder that statement and the certitude with which Wilmot delivered it. It sounded like something a desperate person might cling to.

“You say you’ve known Ranzak since you were twelve?”

“Yes.”

“From the camp?”

“I saw what he was back then, and he hasn’t changed.”

“What was it you saw?”

“A malignant, sadistic bully who enjoyed other people’s pain.”

“He inflicted physical pain?”

“Mental pain. What he really enjoyed was other people’s fear.”

“How did he create that fear?”

“There was a weird old barn in an isolated corner of the property. Anyone he didn’t like would be dragged away to that place in the middle of the night, and . . . things would be done to them.”

“What things?”

“No one would ever say.”

“Was it the place the campers called the ‘ghost barn’?”

“How did you know that?”

“Someone who was at the camp told me. Did you ever go there out of curiosity?”

“I did. But it was years later, after Ranzak went away to college and the camp was closed down. Even then, I could only look at it from a distance. That was the kind of fear the place inspired. It got into us in a way that never left us.”

Gurney got the impression that the fear was gripping Wilmot at that very moment.

“Do you think beating him in the election will make the feeling go away?”

“This election isn’t about making me feel better. What matters is that Don Ranzak must be defeated!” Wilmot’s tone had moved in a few seconds from anxiety to fury.

Gurney wondered how much of the man’s electoral support was coming from former campers who were eager for a chance, however belated, to vanquish their tormentor. He knew from experience that some resentments had a very long life—a fact that was making him increasingly curious about the ghost barn.

35

AFTER HIS PHONE conversation with Wilmot, Gurney went up to his room to consider next steps.

He’d gotten the impression from both Molly Parr and Wilmot that the structure known as the ghost barn was outside the main area of the campground but not far from it, and definitely within the sprawling Ranzak estate.

That meant it would be covered by the restraining order forbidding him to set foot on that property. The legal implications gave him pause. However, he doubted that Ranzak’s video security system was deployed throughout the thousands of acres at his end of Wynderly Lake, and the likelihood of being apprehended seemed small.

But why risk going there at all? The main benefit that occurred to him would be to bring some reality to the images his mind had formed from Molly’s and Stuart’s comments. He knew that imagination could be the most misleading of all mental faculties. The vividness of the details it created were too easily mistaken for facts.

The next question was how to find his way to the ghost barn. Molly Parr came to mind as a possible resource. He took out his phone and made the call.

“David. What a surprise!” The sarcasm in the words was offset by the smile in her voice.

“Sorry to bother you again, but I wonder if you could take a moment to locate the ghost barn for me on Google Maps or something similar with a satellite-view option. If you put the mouse pointer on it, its geo coordinates will appear. That’s all I need.”

“Sounds easy enough.” She was quiet on the line for a moment while conducting the search. “You should be receiving a text message with the coordinates momentarily.”

As if on cue, his phone vibrated. He clicked on the notification and confirmed that the coordinates had come through.

“Thank you. I promise I’ll stop bothering you.”

“If you’re serious about going there,” she said, “be careful. It’s one of the few areas around here with rattlesnakes. I remember one poor kid at the camp was bitten, got lost in the woods, and nearly died.”

The Great Outdoors was located between an Asian buffet restaurant and a discount shoe store in a strip mall forty minutes from Gladstone. The ghost barn coordinates Molly furnished him with were far from any road. If he was serious about visiting the thing, he’d need something more robust than the GPS on his phone to get him there. A young salesman, who struck Gurney as more techie than outdoorsy, took a navigation device from a showcase and announced it was exactly what Gurney needed.

“It will direct you along old logging roads, marked trails, hiking paths. If there aren’t any, it will give you the most efficient bushwhacking route to whatever coordinates you input. It will even minimize stream crossings and altitude changes. It’s like having your own wilderness guide right there with you.”

Gurney made the purchase, took it out to his car, and checked the time. It was 3:05 p.m. The time of day, combined with the sight of the Asian buffet restaurant next to The Great Outdoors, reminded him that he was hungry.

Entering the restaurant, he had the feeling that he’d been there before. It was a feeling he had every time he walked into one of those buffet places. From the perfunctory greeting and rapid arrival of silverware to the layout of the steam tables and arrangement of the seating, they all seemed to have been extruded from the same gigantic 3D printer. Even the food was identical in every location, as if it had been prepared in the same kitchen.

Gurney devoured generous helpings of steamed dumplings and beef with broccoli, then sat for a while, drinking hot tea, pondering his planned expedition and Molly Parr’s warning.

He should probably bring a bolt cutter, in case he encountered chains or padlocks. He took out his phone and checked the internet for local hardware stores. He found entries for Ace, Lowe’s, and Home Depot. The nearest was Home Depot. Twenty miles away, in the opposite direction from Gladstone, it wasn’t convenient, but since he planned to wait for dark to enter Ranzak’s property, he had plenty of time.

Due to a logging truck on a winding road that offered no opportunities for passing, the twenty-mile trip took nearly forty minutes. But he managed to acquire a tool any burglar would be proud to own. The logging truck that had impeded his progress to Home Depot was replaced by a massive hay wagon on his drive back to Gladstone.

Up in his room at the Calico Cat, he pulled up a satellite-view map on his laptop. He entered the ghost barn’s coordinates, and the screen showed a dense forest with a dark structure in a tiny clearing. He tapped the pointer several times on the icon that expanded the view, until the screen included a second clearing, larger than the first, with a dozen or so structures—no doubt the main part of the Ranzak campground.

He expanded the view again until it showed the nearest public road and a much narrower road connecting it to the camp. He checked the distance-per-inch scale in the corner of the screen and estimated the length of the entry road at a bit over a mile and the additional distance from the camp clearing to the ghost barn at another half mile. That final half mile was densely forested, with only sporadic hints of an overgrown pathway passing through it.

He further expanded the view to include the village of Gladstone and the roads in the surrounding area. That larger view revealed that the ghost barn was actually closer to one of the bordering roads than it was to the central area the campground. The idea of approaching the barn from that less obvious direction appealed to him. He focused the screen image on that area, looking for the best route through the forest. He found one possibility that had the look of an abandoned trail, leading down from the road in the general direction of the barn.

Referring again to the map scale, he figured the distance from the Calico Cat to that alternative entry point to be about twelve miles.

His eyes felt like they wanted to close. He set the alarm on his phone for 8:30 p.m., lay down on the bed, and sank into the pillow-soft quilt.

36

IT WAS 9:00 p.m. when he arrived at the trailhead he’d identified on his screen, which he would have missed entirely had he not caught a glimpse in his headlights of the “Keep Out” sign, partially obscured by a drooping pine branch.

He found that he could drive in slowly on what might once have been a narrow gravel road but was now a debris-covered lane with encroaching bushes and saplings on both sides. Eventually, he came to a corroded metal gate of the sort used on the entrances to cow pastures. It was hinged to a wooden post on one side of the weedy lane. A chain wrapped around a similar post on the other side held it shut.

He got out if the car with his new bolt cutter and inspected the chain. To his surprise, it was only loosely encircling the post. The old padlock that had once secured it was lying in the weeds at its base. It had been cut, apparently by a tool similar to Gurney’s. He unwound the chain and pushed the gate open. The rusty hinges made a sharp, scraping sound, and somewhere in the woods an owl responded with an eerie shriek.

Then he noticed something else on the ground—tire impressions. They passed through the gateway and continued on ahead as far as he could see. He studied them more closely and realized that there were two sets. So, either two vehicles had passed this way and had remained somewhere ahead, or one vehicle had been driven in and back out. He considered the latter scenario more likely, but any possibility of an encounter gave him pause.

After a few moments of uncertainty, he decided to proceed—but on foot.

He took out his new off-road navigation device. The screen’s satellite view of the area showed several winding and intersecting trails, the campground clearing, the ghost barn clearing, the corner of Wynderly Lake, his current position, and an arrow indicating the direction in which he should head.

At first, he made his way with the help of his phone’s flashlight app, but he soon discovered he could do without it, as his eyes adjusted to the faint illumination of the crescent moon.

By walking in the tire impressions he was able to minimize the number of times his feet got tangled in the lane’s weedy vines, reminding him of how he’d followed Stony Burke’s footsteps to Pam Espinoza’s burial site. More interestingly, he discovered that the route taken by the vehicle—which departed from the main lane into the trail system—was the route his navigation device was using to get him to the ghost barn.

After following the guidance of his device and the tire tracks for another few minutes, he stepped from the trail into a weedy clearing and was startled to find himself facing, no more than fifty feet away, a looming dark mass.

In the dim moonlight he could see that there were no vehicles in the clearing. He made his way forward slowly, his pant legs getting wet from the dew on the weeds. Thorns on the whiplike stalks of wild roses pierced the denim fabric of his jeans, producing painful little stings. The air was cool and clammy.

As he moved closer to the building, the crescent moon seemed to move like the curved blade of a sickle over the peak of the roof. Stepping softly, he proceeded around the perimeter, searching for a way inside.

He found a set of double doors. A rusty iron U-brace was bolted to the front of each door, and a weathered two-by-four was placed across the doors with one end in each of the braces. When he lifted the two-by-four out of the braces and laid it aside, one of the doors began to open. He jumped back. As the door moved slowly toward him, it emitted a raspy moan, raising gooseflesh on his arms.

Looking inside, all he could see was darkness. He turned on his phone’s flashlight and aimed it into the cavernous space. He saw several large sharp-ended hooks screwed into the rough wooden walls but nothing that would reveal their use. A musty odor permeated the air with a faint note of something rotten.

At the far end of the open space, he could just make out in the dim light from his phone a door, slightly ajar. He approached cautiously, listening for any signs of life. There were none. He grasped the cold iron handle and eased the door open. Something dark flitted past his head, so close he felt a flick against his temple. He whirled around, shining his light everywhere, but saw nothing but dust motes and spider webs.

He stepped gingerly through the doorway into a large dirt-floored room, which appeared at first to be entirely bare. As he swept the increasingly weak beam of his light around it, he noticed a pick and a shovel leaning against the wall in one of the corners.

As he started toward them, he was frozen in place by the moan of the barn’s outer door. He cursed his decision to leave his Beretta in the Outback’s glove box. Then the susurrus of a passing breeze offered a plausible explanation for the door’s movement, and he continued toward the tools.

When he was about twelve feet from them, the dirt floor underfoot became softer. He stopped and swept his failing light across the ground. Between where he was standing and the tools in the corner, something in the disturbed earth caught his eye, something lighter in color than the soil around it. He took a step toward it, then stopped suddenly, as he realized what he was looking at.

It was the back of a human hand.

PART THREE

GUILT

37

AFTER HE’D LED the Gladstone police to his grotesque discovery, he was barred from the area by its designation as a crime scene and the establishment of a circular perimeter extending out three hundred feet from the barn.

His violation of the restraining order prohibiting him from entering Donald Ranzak’s property was noted by Hoskins, who made a point of saying that it would be addressed later. He also told Gurney he’d be summoned the following day to be interviewed and to provide a formal statement. He cautioned him against mentioning his discovery to anyone else and told him not to leave the Gladstone area until further notice.

It was nearly two in the morning when Gurney got back to his room at the Calico Cat. The window was open, the air pleasantly cool, the bed welcoming. But sleep was impossible.

In his long career as a homicide detective, he’d come upon some horrific crime scenes—severed heads; rooms with blood all over the walls, even the ceilings; chopped-up corpses in bathtubs; god-awful mutilations—but often it was the subtler sights that stayed with him, that came back with unsettling clarity when he closed his eyes—as if to say, Don’t ignore me, don’t walk away, don’t forget me. That’s the way it was in the wee hours of that morning. That hand, white against the brown soil, was all he could see, all he could think about. He wondered which of the missing women that hand was attached to and whether all three had been buried together.

He got up at sunrise and took a long shower, hoping it might provide the sense of renewal that sleep normally did. It didn’t do that, but it did make space in his mind for thoughts beyond that pale, helpless hand. After drying off, shaving, and dressing, he checked his phone for messages. He found a text from Stony Burke: “Looked into Frank Lemino & Son Concrete Construction. Frank’s a hard man. Currently doing five to ten in Attica for extortion. Jury’s still out on son Johnny. Standing in his father’s shadow. Eager to prove himself. Rumor is he’s a bit of a psycho.”

Burke’s “psycho” comment reinforced Gurney’s impression. He wondered if the man’s eagerness to prove himself—by helping Ranzak get elected and thus securing a multimillion-dollar construction contract—was a powerful-enough motive to kidnap and murder three Wilmot supporters. It sounded bizarre, but he could recall scores of murders committed with shakier rationales and less at stake. And if Lemino was, in fact, mentally unbalanced . . .

Gurney spent the rest of his morning at the Calico Cat, awaiting the promised summons to appear at the police station and checking the internet for any announcement of the previous night’s macabre discovery.

The news came in the form of a sequence of three alerts on the Breaking News section of the Star’s website. The first revealed that a partially buried body had been found in a remote area near Wynderly Lake. The second expanded the description of the discovery to include three bodies. The third announced that the bodies were those of the three local women who had recently disappeared. It promised a Livestream briefing at two o’clock by Gladstone Police Chief Rand Troutman.

Gurney’s first inclination was to view it in the privacy of his room. Then it occurred to him that it might be interesting to see how Wilmot supporters at the Blue Moth Collective would react to Troutman’s characterization of the event.

Perhaps because everyone in Gladstone not at work would be glued to the Star website, he encountered no traffic at all on his way to the Collective.

The mechanized security gate slid open as he approached. He drove into the charred parking area and found an open space in a line of Subarus and Priuses.

Sunny Kish, whose antenna seemed remarkably well attuned to his arrivals, met him with a smile at the front door and ushered him, her hand lightly on his arm, into the meditation room.

The doors of a shallow cabinet on the wall were open, revealing a large screen. Twenty or so folding chairs were facing it. Many were occupied by people he’d met before—the three sisters with their short red hair, green eyes, and smock-like dresses; Davola Sykes, the environmentalist with the “Polluters Deserve to Die” lawn sign; Oliver Bunny, the wild-eyed event artist known for his exploding replica of Michelangelo’s David and his plans for the KABOOM! demolition derby.

Arbor Lockwood, whose truck had been bombed, sat next to Stuart Wilmot. Joining them were the two trans women, the pro bono lawyer, the healing-music practitioner, the haiku poet, and the vegan activist—whose faces were familiar but whose names Gurney couldn’t recall—plus three women with violet buzz cuts.

Sunny Kish, following Gurney’s gaze, whispered, “They’re part of Stuart’s campaign staff. Transplants from the city.”

The expressions on the faces Gurney could see around the room ranged from stunned to horrified. Most of the eyes in the room were fixed expectantly on the blank screen—which came suddenly to life. Sunny motioned Gurney to the chair she’d saved for him, next to her own.

The screen showed a weak-chinned man with a peculiarly round head, far too large for his small eyes. Thin dark hair clung to his shiny scalp in a wet-looking comb-over. He was wearing a dark blue uniform with four stars on the collar. He was sitting behind a polished mahogany desk, looking straight into the camera. He began speaking with the forced confidence of a man who had very little of the real thing.

“I’m Chief Rand Troutman of the Gladstone Police Department. As you may have heard, a grisly discovery was made last night in an abandoned barn near Wynderly Lake. A search of the premises unearthed three bodies—those of Evelyn Hubble, Katherine Eliot, and Marian Lake—all victims of foul play. A thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding these deaths has begun. We have enlisted the support of the Russell College Forensics Department to assist in collecting and analyzing evidence. We’re also receiving logistical and personnel support from police departments throughout the county. As I speak, Russell Forensics experts and more than a dozen law-enforcement officers are going over the burial site with a fine-tooth comb. These extensive crime-solving resources are reporting to me personally, and I can assure you that these heinous crimes will be solved and the perpetrator brought to justice. At the present time, we have no reason to believe there is any ongoing danger to Gladstone residents, but we ask that any suspicious activity be reported to us immediately. Thank you for your attention.”

The live video was replaced by a dark screen with a message in white type: YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING AN EXCLUSIVE TRI-COUNTY STAR LIVESTREAM BULLETIN.

Since Troutman’s speech contained few facts that the people at the Collective weren’t already aware of, there were no exclamations of shock. There were, however, a number of observations.

“Interesting that he failed to mention that the barn is on Ranzak’s property?”

“Tells you something.”

“Tells you Troutman is in Ranzak’s pocket.”

“Money talks.”

“That old building is what they used to call the ghost barn.”

“Strange stories about that place.”

“If those victims were found on Stuart’s property, you can bet Troutman would’ve been more specific about the location.”

“All we’d be hearing is ‘Wilmot, Wilmot, Wilmot.’”

“Corrupt son of a bitch.”

“Donny Boy’s lapdog.”

Gurney was thinking that Troutman may have revealed something else about himself, not by what he said or didn’t say but by bringing in an army of helpers. The man was trying to give the impression of having such an abundance of local resources that no one would demand the involvement of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. His posturing was all about maintaining control of the situation. The only question was, to whose advantage? Was it to protect Ranzak? Or did Troutman have his own reasons for wanting to keep BCI at a safe distance?

Everyone who’d been sitting in front of the screen was now standing, seemingly with too much nervous energy to remain seated. Sunny Kish stood up when Gurney did. She leaned toward him and spoke in a near whisper.

“Do you know who found the bodies?”

“I do, but I should leave any disclosure about that to the police.”

“Was it you?”

He didn’t answer.

“I bet it was you,” she said with a canny tilt of her head.

They were interrupted by one of the red-haired sisters, addressing Gurney in a soft but insistent voice. “Sorry to intrude, but there’s a police officer out front, asking for you. He says it’s urgent.”

Gurney excused himself and made his way to the open front door. On the porch, he found the young cop he’d seen at the Fallen Angel the day after the bookstore shooting. He looked uneasy. His cruiser was parked behind one of the Priuses, its red and blue lights flashing.

“Detective Hoskins sent me to get you. He’s waiting at the station.”

Gurney smiled. “Glad to hear it.”

He started toward his Outback.

The cop sidestepped, partly in Gurney’s way. “I was told to pick you up.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“No, sir.”

“Then we’ll go in separate cars.”

Gurney pulled out first. The young cop followed him to the station, parked behind him, and watched as he entered the building.

Gurney was led to a windowless interview room with a gray metal table and two chairs. The rumbling ventilation system competed for attention with the buzzing fluorescent lights. The environment brought back a memory of sitting across a similar gray metal table from the rat-faced Frankie Dalasio. It was accompanied by the unpleasant feeling he’d had at the time—the feeling that came with knowing he was being lied to and knowing he couldn’t prove it.

Hoskins’s arrival dissolved the memory, but the bad feeling lingered. The man looked sour and weary. He was carrying a cup of coffee, which he placed on his side of the table. He sniffled and cleared his throat.

“You know the routine. Recorded interview. Signed statement. Any questions?”

“You get any sleep?”

“Not since your phone call last night from a crime scene where you didn’t belong. Let’s get this over with.” He leaned toward a recorder at the end of the table and switched it on.

“This is Detective Mark Hoskins. I’m with David Gurney in interview room one, Gladstone Police Station. The time is three fifteen. The date is May twenty-fourth. The subject is here at my request.”

He looked across the table at Gurney. “State your full name and occupation.”

“David Gurney. Retired NYPD homicide detective.”

Hoskins leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Did you make a 911 call at approximately eleven o’clock last night?”

“I did.”

“What was the substance of that call?”

“My discovery of a partially buried body in a barn at the abandoned Ranzak campground.”

“Explain your presence at that location.”

“I had been asked by Stuart Wilmot to investigate threats made in connection with his election campaign. That assignment widened into an investigation of the disappearances of Hubble, Eliot, and Lake. I learned that these individuals, as well as Mr. Wilmot and his opponent, had been present at the Ranzak camp at the same time. I was told that many of the town’s personal and political antagonisms had their roots in that camp. I was told that the barn, a.k.a. the ghost barn, aroused intense feelings, due to experiences there that no one would speak about. I wanted to acquaint myself with the location of those experiences.”

Hoskins produced an expression that was both disbelieving and disapproving. “Even though a court order expressly prohibited you from entering Mr. Ranzak’s property?”

“The order failed to specify the boundaries of that property, making it unenforceable.” Gurney wasn’t sure that was true, but his tone was confident.

“We’ll put that aside for the moment. Is it true that you drove your vehicle from the county road into the overgrown lane where it was located by the first responders?”

“Yes.”

“Describe your movements and observations from the moment you exited your vehicle up to my preliminary interview with you at the site.”

Gurney recounted in detail everything he did and saw, with particular emphasis on the severed padlock and the tire marks left by the previous visitor to the area.

Hoskins appeared both intrigued and troubled by Gurney’s narrative. He was silent for a minute after its conclusion, then cleared his throat and adopted a bureaucratic tone.

“Can you provide any other information or observations that might assist our investigation into the deaths of the three women?”

“One key question comes to mind. Why were they buried in the ghost barn? I believe the answer will identify the killer.”

38

RATHER THAN RETURN to the Blue Moth Collective, Gurney headed for the Calico Cat.

He found Justin Claiborne, still on edge from the hatchet attack, vacuuming the guest parlor with great intensity and glancing every few seconds out the front window.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he said with a loud sigh of relief. “The new couple who arrived an hour ago just took their kayaks over to Badger Lake. I have a brand-new phobia of being alone. Will you be here for a while?”

Gurney wasn’t sure, but he said yes.

Claiborne looked pleased, then anxious.

“Did you hear? That detective person, Hoskins, is going to be interviewed at six this evening—another of those Livestream things. God only knows what he’s going to say, or how much of it will actually be true.”

God only knows, indeed, thought Gurney. Gladstone, despite its apple-pie image, was turning out to be a place where animosities ran deep and the truth was in short supply.

“Feel free,” added Claiborne, almost imploringly, “to come and watch the Hoskins thing on my big screen.”

At two minutes past six, Gurney arrived at the doorway of Claiborne’s private sitting room. The man waved him in, gesturing toward the couch. “It just started.”

Gurney recognized the video location as the part of George Strum’s office where he’d listened to Strum expounding his philosophy of conflict and explaining why encouraging it was beneficial to all concerned.

Strum was in the same chair he’d occupied then, and Hoskins was in Gurney’s. Strum was in mid-sentence.

“. . . still very early in your investigation of the three murders, but I hear you’ve already made some shocking discoveries. In fact, a disturbing rumor is circulating that some torture may have been involved. Is that true?”

Hoskins looked like he was regurgitating vinegar. “It appears that the fingers of all three victims were subjected to a particularly painful form of injury.”

Strum shook his head, as if disheartened by the presence of such evil in the world. “What does that tell you about these murders?”

“It suggests something ritualistic.”

“Ritualistic? That sounds to me like satanism. Is that what we’re dealing with here?”

“That, or possibly some form of sadistic derangement.”

“You’re saying we may have a sick killer on the loose?”

“Anything’s possible at this stage of the investigation. But let me add that any danger to the general population is unlikely. These attacks were very targeted—against three women who knew each other and had other factors in common.”

“We’re hearing that the bodies were discovered on a remote part of the Ranzak estate. How important a factor is that in your investigation?”

Hoskins shifted uneasily in his chair. “Location is often a consideration, but it’s important not to overemphasize its significance.”

“Can you tell us a little more about that?”

“In a situation like this, the location could be intentional or accidental, symbolic or meaningless, a matter of convenience or an attempt to incriminate an innocent party.” Hoskins sounded like he was teaching a course at the police academy.

Strum nodded like a good student. “Can I take that to mean you haven’t put Don Ranzak on your list of suspects?”

“We have no reason to do that. In fact, there’s no evidence that the murders were committed where they were found, or anywhere at all on Mr. Ranzak’s property.”

“Apart from the damage done to the fingers of the victims, are you focusing on any other distinctive clues to these crimes?”

“I don’t want to get into detail at this stage, but it’s likely that the three women were familiar with their abductor and went along without a struggle.”

“Could the abductor be someone right here in town?”

“We’re considering all possibilities. Let me emphasize that Chief Troutman has assembled the largest task force in the history of Gladstone to bring the perpetrator of these heinous crimes to justice.”

Strum thanked Hoskins for his candor and promised the Livestream viewers “continuing up-to-the-minute coverage of this shocking case.”

Claiborne got up from the couch and turned to Gurney. “What did you think of that?”

Before Gurney could answer, his phone rang.

It was Wilmot. His voice was even angrier than Claiborne’s.

“Hoskins was just interviewed by George Strum. He bent himself into a goddamn pretzel, trying to deflect suspicion from Ranzak. I can’t believe what a transparent whitewash job—”

Gurney broke in, “I just watched the interview.”

“Oh. Then you know what I mean. Hoskins says he has no reason to believe that Ranzak might be involved?! What bullshit! I’m going to call Strum! I’m going to demand equal time! That wasn’t a news interview, that was pro-Ranzak bullshit in the middle of an election campaign!”

Gurney said nothing.

Wilmot’s voice lost some of its stridency. “Do you disagree?”

“Strum will be happy to give you equal time. He loves conflict. The angrier you sound, the happier he’ll be.”

“Fine! Good!” The stridency was back in full force. “He wants conflict? I’ll give him conflict! We don’t have a Gladstone police force, we have a Ranzak protection society! We don’t have a news source, we have a Ranzak propaganda machine! Goddamnit, I intend to put an end to that!”

As Gurney was getting up from the couch and slipping his phone back in his pocket, Claiborne announced, “I absolutely cannot stand that man.”

Gurney thought for a second that Claiborne was referring to Wilmot, then realized he wouldn’t have known who was on the phone. “You mean Hoskins?”

“No, I was referring to George Strum. He knew Hoskins would defend Ranzak and it would get anti-Ranzak folks up in arms. Social warfare means good business for George.”

If Strum’s goal was to generate anger, thought Gurney, he sure as hell had succeeded with Wilmot and Claiborne. His own reaction, however, was weariness. As far back as he could remember, other people’s displays of anger anesthetized his own feelings. A therapist once suggested it was a reaction to the acrimony he’d witnessed between his volatile mother and secretive father. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But he had to admit that when all other explanations for his unusual emotional reactions fell short, the answer probably lay in his childhood.

Perhaps there was a ghost barn in everyone’s past, and the things that happened there were never really put to rest.

39

AS THE CORALS and roses of sunset were softening into dusk, Gurney returned to his room.

Was it possible that the shouts and threats, the assaults and vandalism, the gunshots and the wounding of Stuart Wilmot were unrelated to the murders of the three women? Or were the same animosities responsible for everything that had happened? Was the chaos actually a coordinated conspiracy to defeat Wilmot—a theory that Wilmot himself seemed to embrace?

To add another layer of complication, Gurney wondered if all three murders were committed for the same reason. He had a vivid recollection of a case in which six people had been killed for no other reason than to obscure the motive for the seventh. But if only one of the Gladstone murders mattered to the killer, which one was it?

Gurney’s train of thought was interrupted by a text.

He gazed with a deepening frown at the melodramatic message on the screen: “You have until sunset tomorrow to leave Gladstone. You ignored our last warning. Ignore this and there will be blood.”

The wording struck him, oddly, as being just extreme enough to be taken seriously. As he was rereading it, the phone rang again, this time with a voice call. The name on the screen was Donald Ranzak.

“Yes?” Gurney kept surprise out of his voice.

“You and I need to have a little talk.”

“I thought your restraining order was designed to prevent that.”

“The order is designed to prohibit you from trespassing on my property. It has teeth that make that a serious offense. It prohibits you from harassing me. It prohibits you from harassing Harlan Stone. And to avoid legal quibbles about what constitutes harassment, it prohibits you from initiating any communication with us. However, I’m choosing to initiate this conversation. That’s my prerogative. Beyond that, the order remains in full force.”

Gurney was on the verge of responding to Ranzak’s arrogance with a heartfelt suggestion that the man go to hell, restraining order in hand. But his curiosity was stronger than his annoyance.

“So, what’s the reason for this special exception?”

“The murders. The murders have changed everything. That’s why we need to talk.”

“Fine. Talk.”

“Not on the phone. I’ll come to the Calico Cat, or you can come here.”

“I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

“This is not something that can wait.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Gurney repeated and ended the call.

The two location choices made Ranzak’s offer sound like a card trick.

Gurney called Molly Parr.

“You again?” she said with mock surprise.

“With yet another request. I’m wondering if I could use your gazebo this evening. Ranzak wants to meet with me, and I’d like to do it somewhere other than where he suggested.”

“Any idea what he wants?”

“Something has rattled him. He said the murders changed everything.”

“And you’d love to find out what he meant.”

“Of course.”

“And you want to do this in my backyard?”

“Yes.”

She uttered an ironic little laugh. “Shall I turn the gazebo lights on?”

“Please. I’d like to be able to watch his eyes.”

“The windows of the soul.”

“So I’ve heard.”

It was a cloudy, starless night. Gurney had settled into a wicker chair in the lit gazebo. His back was to the softly gurgling stream that separated the mowed lawn from the meadow, now just a dark expanse.

I’d be an easy target for a sniper, he thought, with a touch of anxiety. Then he told himself he was no more vulnerable here than he was in most places. Moreover, if Ranzak wanted him dead, it probably would have happened already.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an approaching vehicle. A few moments later a large SUV came to a stop on the shoulder of the road in front of the lawn. The rear door opened. A tall figure emerged and came toward the gazebo.

“Good evening, Mr. Gurney.” Ranzak stepped up into the screened enclosure with a cool smile. He was dressed in a style Gurney thought of as costly casual—the sort of clothes, often involving a cashmere sweater, that celebrities wore in ads for fifty-thousand-dollar wristwatches.

Gurney gestured toward the matching wicker chair directly across from him.

After glancing around the gazebo and making a small adjustment in the position of his chair, Ranzak sat down and flicked a bit of lint off his pricey-looking jeans.

“Peculiar place to meet,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“You think I have it bugged?”

“I couldn’t care less. If you’d like to record our conversation, go right ahead.”

Gurney smiled. “What’s on your mind?”

“Bodies buried on my property is not an acceptable situation. I don’t understand it. That makes me uncomfortable.”

“Troutman seems to be pulling out all the stops to get to the bottom of it.”

Ranzak sucked at his teeth. “Troutman’s good at calming the natives. Lots of feet on the ground. But a triple murder is a bit above his pay grade.”

“Your point being?”

“I want to know what’s going on. I’ve been told if anyone can figure it out, you can.”

“I’m flattered,” Gurney said in a tone that said the opposite.

Ranzak raised an eyebrow. “You don’t care what people think of you?”

“I’m too old to waste time thinking about what other people think of me.”

Ranzak gave him a long, unblinking look. “I want to hire you. I’ll pay you three times what Wilmot is paying you.”

“Hire me to do what?”

“Find out who killed those women and why he buried the bodies in that barn.”

“That’s part of what Stuart Wilmot is already paying me to do.”

“Fine. You can keep doing exactly what you’re doing. The only difference is, if you do it for me, your income gets tripled, and that’s not all. As soon as I win the election, my project will move forward. I’ll need more sophisticated security arrangements. You can have a rewarding future with the Ranzak Renaissance Corporation. And there’s no future for you with Stuart Wilmot. None.” He punctuated the statement with a benevolent smile.

The smile faded slowly as Gurney remained silent.

Ranzak leaned forward. “Talk to me.”

“You’re asking me to switch clients in the middle of an investigation. That’s not something I’d be comfortable doing.”

Ranzak steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “You confuse me, Mr. Gurney. You’ve confused me from the day you arrived in Gladstone.”

“I didn’t know I merited that kind of attention.”

“You have a reputation for discernment. Intelligence. But you’ve attached yourself to a mentally unstable troublemaker. You understand my confusion?”

“I do.”

“You understand, but you don’t see the contradiction?”

“I don’t see any mental instability.”

“He has you fooled. He has you believing he’s a nature lover, defending the world against evil developers. Despite all your detection skills, you’ve swallowed this fiction.”

“So it would seem.”

“Then we have nothing more to talk about.”

“I have a question for you. Who benefits from the three murders?”

“I have no idea.”

“The people around Wilmot see you as the primary beneficiary.”

“That’s ludicrous!”

“Those women were his most devoted supporters. Marian Lake was about to fund the rest of his campaign.”

Ranzak was shaking his head impatiently. “I’m on my way to winning this election by a landslide. The citizens of this town are not going to give up real financial opportunity, real jobs, real progress to save . . . to save what? A moth? A lizard? A minnow? They’ll vote in their own practical interest, which means voting for me. The suggestion that I’d kill three women to weaken an already-weak opponent is crazy.”

“I agree.”

“You agree? Then why the hell are we talking about this?”

“Is it possible that you have a devoted supporter crazy enough to believe that removing those women would help you?”

Ranzak looked unsure for a second or two, then shook his head. “That’s nothing but empty speculation!”

“Not even Tyson Grock? Harlan Stone? Johnny Lemino?”

Something shifted in Ranzak’s eyes, but the conviction in his voice remained. “Absolutely not!”

“I was told the four of you made quite a team at your camp. You were top dog, right? Tell them to jump, and they’d ask how high. Loyal followers can be a great resource.”

There were sparks of anger—or was it alarm?—in Ranzak’s eyes.

“You’re rambling, Mr. Gurney. Is incoherence a new interview technique?” He looked impatiently at his gold watch.

“What can you tell me about the ghost barn?”

Ranzak stood up abruptly, his expression curdling into a cold smile. “I came here to make you a generous offer. You’ve chosen an insulting way of refusing it. There’s nothing more to say—except that your attachment to Stuart Wilmot is more dangerous than you realize.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“I don’t make threats. I just do what needs to be done.”

40

GURNEY STAYED WHERE he was until the big SUV departed with Ranzak in the back seat. There was a chill in the evening air. A shiver ran through him as he stepped out onto the damp grass.

“Did your meeting provide any revelations?”

He recognized Molly Parr’s voice before he made her out, coming toward him from the side door of the house. Her hair smelled just-washed.

“I caught a glimpse of something in Ranzak I hadn’t seen before—a moment of uncertainty, triggered by my mention of his cohorts at the camp. And when I asked about the ghost barn he stood up and left.”

“Did he say why he’d wanted to meet with you?”

“To hire me away from Stuart with big money and a big job.”

“An offer I assume you chose not to accept. So, what’s next?”

“I’ll go back to my plush room at the Calico Cat, drift off to sleep, and hope I wake up with a plan.”

“You don’t strike me as a man who drifts anywhere. And I suspect you always have a plan, even if it’s not completely worked out.”

“Problem is, I’m still struggling with the turmoil in Gladstone.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s so much hostility in the air, it’s hard to sort out—”

“The homicidal hatred from the garden-variety contempt?”

“Good way of putting it. A few years ago, I was working on a case in which a sniper used the background racket of firecrackers to obscure the sound of his rifle. It was very effective.”

“It does complicate the situation.”

“Ranzak told me he’s confident that he’ll win the election. What do you think?”

“I think you should go to the fair.”

“The fair?”

“The Spring Fair opens tomorrow. If you want to put your finger on the political pulse of Gladstone, there’s no better place to do it. And you wouldn’t want to miss Ella’s deep-fried peanut butter balls.”

The following morning Gurney shared the breakfast table at the Calico Cat with the couple who’d spent their first vacation afternoon, according to Claiborne, kayaking on Badger Lake. They looked like they’d just stepped out of a high-end sportswear catalog and were taking a break from their demanding jobs in the hottest new something or other.

After acknowledging his presence with perfunctory nods and fleeting smiles, they immersed themselves in their pancakes and phone screens. Their lack of communication with each other or with Gurney reminded him of being on a Manhattan elevator.

After some scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee—and a brief encounter with Tofu, the resident calico cat of the Calico Cat—he set out for the fair.

The last time he’d attended an upstate fair—on the trail of a psychotic assassin know as Peter Pan—all hell had broken loose, in the form of explosions, panic, and mass murder. It was at that same fair that he’d observed, in the heart of the mayhem, Madeleine risking her life to save a pair of alpacas from a raging fire. It was his most vivid memory of that chaotic day.

At first glance, as he paid his five-dollar admission price to the smiling volunteer at the entry gate, the Gladstone event appeared comparatively benign.

Apart from the parking area, the fairground was divided into three sections—a tented area where the retail and organization booths were located; a freshly mowed field where farming, recreational, and other outdoor equipment was displayed; and an open-air arena for events and entertainments.

A bulletin board at the arena entrance listed the time slots for the demolition derby, the high school pistol-shooting competition, the flagpole-climbing contest, the Bunker Hill reenactment, musket target shooting, cow-flop bingo, the longbow archery contest, tractor races, go-kart races, and country music shows.

The arena was empty, with the first event of the day not scheduled to begin for another hour. Gurney noted that some people, mostly men and boys, were milling around the tractors and UTVs in the equipment field, but most of the fairgoers were in the big tent, so that’s where he headed.

The first booth belonged to the Gladstone Bird Club, and the banner above it read “Save the Snowy Owls.” A small colorless woman was sitting behind a table on which there were half a dozen large photos of colorful birds with an identification line on each: rose-breasted grosbeak, red-bellied woodpecker, purple finch, Baltimore oriole, northern cardinal, and eastern bluebird.

The bluebird photo brought to mind something Wilmot told him at their first meeting. The president of the local bird club, known to be devoted to bluebirds, had found a dead one in her refrigerator after writing a letter to the Star critical of Ranzak.

He stepped closer to the booth. The woman gave him a questioning look.

“My name is Dave Gurney. Are you by any chance Dorothy?”

“I am.”

“I’m a retired detective, working with Stuart Wilmot.”

“I know who you are. Gladstone is a small world.”

“Stuart told me about your bluebird incident.”

Her expression darkened. “I considered it dreadful at the time. Far more dreadful things have happened since. That poor little bird was just a hint of what was to come. Are you making any progress in bringing the monster to justice?”

“It’s hard to say. Was there any investigation of your incident?”

“Of course not. Our local cops are . . . useless, at best. Feel free to quote me.”

She turned her attention to a young couple admiring the bird photos, and Gurney moved on—strolling past booths selling homemade venison sausage, local honey, antler-handled hunting knives, camp stoves, and neon-colored jelly beans. He stopped at a triple-wide booth with a broad banner that read “Vote for Gladstone. Vote for Progress. Vote for Ranzak.”

There was a long table at the front of the booth, draped in red-white-and-blue cloth. On it were neat piles of red-white-and-blue Ranzak buttons, bumper stickers, and yard signs. There was an easel in the center of the table with a sign reading, “Exclusively for Gladstone Voters—Free Stock in Ranzak Renaissance Corporation.”

In back of the table, three fresh-faced young women appeared to be getting instructions from a thirtysomething woman with ash-blond hair and a socialite look about her.

After she’d finished with the younger women and sent them away, she gave Gurney a businesslike smile. “See something that interests you?”

He pointed to the sign on the easel. “Clever way to buy votes.”

Her smile vanished. “It’s an encouragement to local citizens to exercise their voting rights.”

“And if Ranzak wins, the value of that free stock goes up.”

“You’re not a resident. So this has nothing to do with you.”

“How do you know I’m not a resident?”

Before she could answer, a rotund woman in a polka-dot sundress pointed to the pile of yard signs. “Can I take a few of these, sweetheart?”

The woman behind the table turned away from Gurney and reanimated her smile. “Take as many as you’d like. We’d love to have one in front of every house in Gladstone.”

“Our whole family plans to vote for Mr. Ranzak. He’s the best thing that ever happened to this town.”

“Isn’t that the truth!” Her tone was sweet enough to put a diabetic in a coma.

Gurney stepped away from the table. As he moved along the row of booths, he became aware of three large, leather-vested men moving at the same pace about thirty feet behind him. He continued his casual progress through the tent, stopping when he came to the Wilmot campaign booth.

It was manned by two women. A name tag on the tall dreamy-looking one said she was Elise Sweetwater. The tag on the short sharp-eyed one said she was Fran Boodler. Both names were familiar to Gurney—from at the authors’ table in the Fallen Angel the night of the shooting and he’d seen Boodler at the Collective the night of the truck explosion.

The table in front of the booth displayed photos of sylvan streams, a fawn at the edge of a pond, a field of black-eyed Susans, a monarch butterfly on a lavender milkweed blossom. A green satin banner affixed to the rear wall of the booth read “Save Our Beautiful World. Vote for Wilmot.”

Several individuals were gathered in front of the table, gazing at the photos. They had the look of weekenders, getting away for a few days to their restored farmhouses. The “look” involved nicely trimmed beards, designer sunglasses, perky haircuts, and a fondness for teal. One couple had an infant in a stroller that resembled a moon-exploration vehicle.

The sign on the booth directly across the aisle from Wilmot’s promised “Special Deals Today on Uncle Todd’s Turkey Jerky.” A tall, bony man in the booth was deftly rotating a fifty-cent coin through the fingers of his left hand, as his eyes followed a lightly clad young woman ambling by.

The sign on the next booth offered “Bowls, Table Legs, Baseball Bats.” The small man sitting behind the booth’s table was wearing a tee shirt with the words “Gladstone Lathe Works.” He was reading a copy of the Star with the headline, “TROUTMAN HEADS MURDER TASK FORCE.”

Gurney noted the continuing presence of his three followers, still thirty feet or so behind him. He was tempted to buy one of the Lathe Works baseball bats but decided against it. The Beretta in his ankle holster could provide more effective deterrence.

He passed booths for gunstock engraving, homemade jams, and grass-fed beef. The next booth stopped Gurney in mid stride. Its back wall was covered with a larger-than-life photo of Stuart Wilmot. The crosshairs of a telescopic gun sight were superimposed on his face. The headline across the top of the photo read, “Colby’s Custom Targets—The Image Says It All.” What said it all for Gurney were the smiles of amusement and approval from most of the people passing the booth.

At the end of the aisle, there was a security kiosk manned by a Gladstone cop. Gurney recognized him as the younger of the pair at the Blue Moth Collective after the firebombing of Lockwood’s truck. His name tag identified him as Trey Nolan.

“Officer Nolan,” said Gurney, “are you familiar with the members of the Brotherhood?”

Nolan hesitated. “Is there a problem, sir?”

Gurney gestured toward the three leather-vested men standing next to the turkey jerky booth. One was licking a red lollipop. His predatory eyes and colorful lollipop created an image of demented menace.

“Those three Brotherhood boys have been following me since I got here.”

“How do you know that, sir?”

“When I walk, they walk. When I stop, they stop. I was a city cop for twenty-five years. I know trouble when I see it.”

Nolan turned into the proverbial deer in the headlights. Then, looking back along the aisle, his expression relaxed.

“The men you’re talking about are walking away.”

Gurney turned and watched the three hulking figures retreating into the crowd. He hadn’t expected Nolan to take any action, but he’d hoped the sight of his exchange with him would have the effect that it did.

He went out through the open end of the tent and doubled back toward the fair’s entry gate. As he entered the parking field, he caught sight of the Brotherhood trio passing through the exit on matching black motorcycles. The roar of their exhaust suggested systems that had been modified to amplify rather than dampen the sounds of combustion.

After his initial irritation at the racket, he was struck by the emptiness of the ways some people tried to expand their presence in the world. Big titles, big academic degrees, big houses, big cars, big guns, big opinions, loud clothes, loud voices. The danger lurking in that inflation was that any infringement of it was felt as sharply as a knife in the gut.

As he approached his car, he noticed some glittering points of light on the ground in front of it. Before he got there, he knew what he’d find: bits of glass from his shattered headlights.

41

SEEING NO OTHER aggressive characters in the parking area, Gurney settled into the front seat of the Outback and took out his phone to do some internet research.

The prospect of not being able to drive after dark made getting his headlights replaced an urgent matter. He located a Subaru dealership that could accommodate him that afternoon. His next priority was the acquisition of some basic investigatory and forensic tools. Up to the point of his gruesome discovery in the ghost barn, there had been no obvious crime scene and therefore no need for them. Even now, that need was debatable—given his faith in Russell Forensics.

However, he wanted to take some action other than jabbing at bad actors in the hope of provoking revealing responses—especially since the only concrete responses he’d provoked so far were a bullet through his image in Marian Lake’s mirror, Tyson Grock’s menacing visit to Madeleine, hatchet and fireworks assaults on the Calico Cat, a get-out-of-town-by-sunset death threat, and now two broken headlights, none of which came close to identifying Gladstone’s triple murderer. It was time for some routine detective work.

Most of his forty-five-minute drive to Godzilla Electronics was occupied by his recollections of the fair. It had offered a fairly good picture of the area’s social spectrum—with the exception of the Lawrence Sloane types at one end and the reclusive inhabitants of the darker hollows at the other end. But the hundreds of fairgoers present were more than sufficient to paint a picture of Gladstone’s cultural division.

There were local people who appeared to be earning their livelihoods in the hardscrabble world of the declining upstate economy. And there were what the local people called “the city people”—second-home owners, telecommuters, and wealthy transplants—whose incomes had nothing to do with working outdoors in freezing winters or splitting a seventy-hour workweek between subsistence farming and a job at Walmart.

But the separation didn’t stop with living in different social silos. It showed itself most destructively in the contemptuous views each group had of the other. The city people saw the locals as dumb, bigoted flag-wavers. The locals saw the city people as pretentious, unpatriotic snobs. It was a division made in heaven for ambitious politicians.

None of this was news to Gurney. What he’d seen at the fair had merely attached more faces to the ugly facts. What did get his attention, though, was the ratio of Ranzak buttons to Wilmot buttons—a ratio that heavily favored Ranzak, consistent with the man’s contention that he was on his way to an easy victory.

The fact that his support had not been dampened by the discovery of three murdered women on his property did not bode well for Wilmot’s chances. Gurney wondered if anything could change minds in such a bitterly divided town.

The other question troubling him had to do with the headlight incident. Was it just an outburst of moronic aggression? Or was it a calculated attempt to limit his nighttime mobility?

If he had to choose, he’d bet on moronic aggression—akin to Tyson Grock’s hatchet hurling.

Still . . .

Godzilla Electronics turned out to be the largest store in a large mall. A pulsating orange sign over the store’s entrance read “Best Brands Best Prices Best Service.” The music filling the cavernous space was predictably electronic and unpleasantly loud.

Gurney approached a plump young person with a Godzilla logo and the name Randi on their orange shirt and asked where he could find surveillance devices. He was directed to a department at the far end of the store. Half an hour later Gurney emerged from Godzilla Electronics with a surveillance-device detector and a prepaid flip phone.

His next intended stop was Wacker’s Hobbies and Crafts. The traffic was fast-moving, and less than twenty minutes later he was pulling into a small strip mall. The shop’s display window was a jumble of model planes, radio-controlled boats, robots, drones, embroidery kits, beading kits, and board games. Inside, the place was more organized. Games, crafts, and remote-control devices occupied separate areas. As Gurney was checking the shelves in the remote-control area, a rumpled, anxious-looking man approached him.

“Looking for something in particular, sir?”

“Your website said you sell professional-level drones.”

“Ah. Yes. Did you have a price range in mind?”

“Your website showed one with a fifty-five-minute flight time for a little over five hundred.”

“Ah. Yes. Wonderful piece of aeronautic technology. Are you drone proficient?”

Before Gurney could answer, the man went on, “Not that any special skill is required. The manual is self-explanatory. A child could operate one of these, but I don’t recommend that. Would you want to take it with you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. No problem. Will there be anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

Ten minutes later, with his purchase in the back seat, Gurney set out for the Subaru dealership. It turned out to be a clone of the one near Walnut Crossing. After giving his keys to the service manager, he found the coffee machine and inserted a dark-roast pod. A minute later he carried the hot brew into the service department’s waiting room, settled into a fairly comfortable chair, took out his phone, and placed a call to Stuart Wilmot—who picked up on the first ring.

“David! Are we any closer to putting Ranzak away for murder?”

“Depends on what Russell Forensics comes up with.”

“I hear you’re tight with Kyra Barstow.”

Gurney didn’t like the sound of that. “I know her.”

“Well enough to get us a heads-up?”

“You want to know what’s in her report before she delivers it?”

“Before Troutman and Hoskins can leak whatever might favor Ranzak and bury the rest. Also, before my Livestream interview with George Strum. I want to rip apart his interview with Hoskins—which was nothing but a Ranzak whitewash job.”

“I’ll see what she’s comfortable telling me. It may not be much.”

“I’m up against a pack of liars! I need all the ammunition I can get!”

Gurney was thinking, but didn’t say, You’re up against an opponent with unlimited resources—and an army of followers that makes your army look pretty small by comparison.

Instead, he told Wilmot about being followed at the fair by the three Brotherhood members and the subsequent headlight destruction.

“See?” cried Wilmot. “That’s my point! If Ranzak wins, those are the people who’ll be running this town. Gangsters! Vandals! They have to be stopped!”

Gurney said nothing.

“You still there?”

“I’ll talk to Kyra Barstow.”

“Thank you!”

Gurney ended the call.

He sipped his coffee, which had lost its warmth in the air-conditioned waiting room.

42

HE PASSED JESSIE’S Roadhouse on his way back to Gladstone. Gurney noted half a dozen motorcycles in the dirt parking area. He was tempted to engage in some reciprocal headlight smashing, but sanity prevailed, and he drove on to the Calico Cat.

When he arrived, he decided to call Barstow from the privacy of his car. He rang her personal number.

“David?”

“Sorry to bother you after work hours. It’s about the bodies that were buried in the barn. Any chance you could give me the cause of death for each one?”

“That information is supposed to go directly from the medical examiner to the chief investigating officer.”

“I was under the impression that you and the ME sometimes exchange facts that can be mutually useful. I was hoping this might be one of those cases.”

She sighed. “Remember, you didn’t get this information from me.”

“Understood.”

“Same cause for both Hubble and Lake, asphyxiation. For Eliot, myocardial infarction.”

“How old was she?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Pretty young for a heart attack.”

“She did have a congenital heart defect, but nothing I’d expect to be fatal.”

“So . . . ?”

“Though it’s quite rare, a contributing factor may have been sudden, intense panic.”

“Are you suggesting she may have been frightened to death?”

“I’m saying that severe emotional stress, combined with physical stress and an organic weakness, may have contributed to a fatal coronary event.”

“You’re saying that extreme fear could have been a factor?”

She hesitated. “I only say that because of the condition of her fingernails. Some were broken, some were bent back, a few were torn off. Similar damage was apparent on the fingers of the other two women.”

“They were tortured?”

“That would be a reasonable inference, but not the way you’re imagining.”

“Meaning?”

“In addition to the ripped fingernails, there were bruises to the hands, feet, elbows, and knees of all three women. Combined with the asphyxiation of two of the victims and the myocardial infarction of the third, the most likely scenario is that they were each subjected to confinement in a very limited space—which they were trying to punch, kick, and claw their way out of.”

From early childhood Gurney had suffered from episodes of claustrophobia. Even hearing stories about miners trapped in cave-ins could make him uncomfortable. He could imagine no death more terrifying than being held in a cramped spot, unable to move, unable to breathe.

After a silence, Barstow added, “There were traces of wood and satin fibers in the dried blood on their fingers. Those materials suggest that the fatal vehicle of confinement may have been a coffin.”

After thanking Barstow and ending the call, Gurney sat for a while in his car, trying to replace his horror at the manner of the deaths with investigatory questions.

The ones that came first to mind began with “why.” Why these three women? Why such a sadistic and cumbersome method of execution? Why bury them in that barn?

Then came questions that began with “where.” Where, if not in that barn, did their abductor force them into the coffin that killed them? Where was that coffin now?

The final questions began with “who.” Who in Gladstone stood to benefit from those deaths? Who was calculating enough to carry out such a complex triple crime? Who was demented enough to inflict such suffering?

He was sure Wilmot’s answer to the “who” questions would be Don Ranzak.

Was it conceivable that Ranzak was psychopathic? Could that paragon of financial success and political appeal actually be, in his heart and soul, a monster?

Gurney was willing to view Ranzak as an unprincipled man, driven by the desire for power, money, recognition; a selfish man with no compunction about embracing or discarding people according to their usefulness; in short, a man with much in common with other would-be billionaires. But a charismatic politician who was also a sadistic multiple murderer? Wasn’t that a step too far into the realm of fiction?

One of the three sisters had called him an incarnation of Satan. It seemed a wild exaggeration, but maybe she’d seen something in him that justified it—something beyond the ordinary sliminess of a greedy man.

Something truly evil.

43

THAT NIGHT IN his room at the Calico Cat was one of the worst in Gurney’s memory. Images of bodies half buried in open graves gave way to the panic of being trapped in a tunnel with no outlet, a staircase descending into darkness.

His eyes kept closing and nightmares kept forming, until at the first light of dawn he forced himself out of bed and into the shower. The pelting massage of warm water on his neck and back performed its magic, restoring his brain to something like its normal function.

By the time he’d dressed and made his way downstairs, the sun was shining through the east window of the dining area. The country-sporty couple were standing at the sideboard inspecting the scones.

Gurney stopped at the kitchen door, said good morning to Claiborne, who was flipping pancakes, and placed his order for scrambled eggs, toast, and a large coffee.

“Arabica, Kona, or Blue Mountain Jamaican?”

“Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s strong.”

Claiborne eyed him with concern. “Didn’t sleep well? I hope the bed wasn’t to blame.”

“Nothing at all to do with the bed.”

“Glad to hear it. There’s black currant jam on the sideboard. Very nice on toast.”

Gurney’s phone rang. Madeleine’s name was on the screen. He turned away to answer it.

“David?” She sounded as if she’d been crying.

“What is it?”

“Come here! Come now!”

There was a desperation in her voice that he’d never heard before.

“My God, Maddie, what’s wrong?”

“Come now! Please!”

“Just tell me what—”

“JUST COME! NOW!”

“Are you at the house?”

“YES!”

The urgency, panic, and fury in her voice pushed everything else out of his mind. He ran up the stairs for his wallet and car key and left without a word to Claiborne. His efforts to imagine the cause of the wild emotion in Madeleine’s voice shot off in all directions. For a medical emergency, she would have called 911. Ditto for an intruder. Driving far over the speed limit made the trip go by in a fraction of the normal time.

When he reached the point where the town road ended and he caught sight of the house, everything looked normal—which, oddly, added to his fear. He continued up along the overgrown pasture lane, past the fenced area for Madeleine’s pair of alpacas, and came to a stop by the asparagus patch. That’s when he saw her, standing next to the alpaca shed, holding a shotgun.

“Jesus,” he began, getting out of the car. “What . . . ?”

Her face was pale, hair disarranged, mouth set in a grim line.

She pointed to the open door of the shed—the door they’d installed together before the Viper case ruptured their marriage.

When he hurried over and peered inside, he saw one of the alpacas standing there, facing him. There was a stunned look in its sensitive, intelligent eyes. A barely audible sound was coming from its closed mouth, a wavering hum that could only be described as mournful.

Then he saw the other alpaca, lying on its side on the straw-covered floor. A pool of coagulated blood surrounded a deep gash across its throat.

“Someone killed her.” Madeleine’s lips tightened, in the way of someone trying to control a surge of raw emotion.

Gurney had always been saddened by the sight of a dead animal. But this was different. This wasn’t roadkill or nature’s grim dance of prey and predator. This was a form of murder.

Gurney looked again into the animal’s eyes, then into Madeleine’s, and the grief he saw there brought him close to tears.

The simple reality of the situation was sad enough to explain his reaction, but he suspected that something else was intensifying it. A therapist had once explained that when a strong emotion was repressed in one situation, it often came to the surface in circumstances that were is some way similar.

Madeleine’s voice, now more controlled, interrupted his train of thought.

“We need to bury her.”

“Yes,” he said, glad of a task to focus on.

“It can’t be just anywhere. It has to feel right.”

He nodded.

They started by walking down through the low pasture to the barn, then around the pond.

He had questions about the killing of the alpaca that he was waiting for the right moment to ask. Perhaps now, he thought, while she was focusing on a practical task

“Is there anything you can tell me about last night—anything you saw? Heard? Voices, vehicles, odd noises, anything at all?”

She stopped walking. “Nothing like that. But . . . ” Her voice trailed off.

“But what?”

She pulled a phone out of the pocket of her jeans, tapped the screen a few times, and handed it to him. There was a text message on the screen, all in enlarged caps.

YOUR FUCKING HUSBAND

IGNORED OUR WARNING

THE BLOOD IS ON HIS HANDS

He looked at Madeleine and saw pain and confusion on her face.

He felt that he had to explain, even though it involved more deaths. “Three women were murdered in Gladstone. Someone doesn’t want me on the case. I got a text the other day, telling me to leave town. I didn’t. That’s what this is about.”

“This was a way of punishing you?”

“It may also be another warning. An escalation.”

She stood motionless, staring into her own thoughts, perhaps imagining what an escalation might mean.

“Come,” she said finally. “We have to find a place to bury her.”

They proceeded along the mowed swaths that separated their fields from the woods around them. The sun was warm, and the remaining dew on the grass was glistening. Madeleine stopped in the shade of an ancient oak at the west-facing edge of their highest field.

“Here,” she said. “It’s beautiful at sunset.”

He knew that the rocky soil and tree roots would make digging a suitable hole there difficult but kept it to himself.

She looked at him, as if reading his mind. “I can ask Jim Smithers to come up with his backhoe.”

At the mention of the man’s name, Gurney pictured the shrinking herd of dairy cows that made the man’s small subsistence farm a mirror of the region’s agricultural decline. But Smithers himself seemed as durable as one of his stone walls.

After an early lunch that made up for the breakfast they’d both missed, they sat for a while in Adirondack chairs on the patio outside the French doors. Bees drifted around the blossoms on the old apple tree.

Gurney asked if the security cameras on the house and barn were still operational. Madeleine said she’d had them rewired to a solar system that kept their batteries charged. However, she’d turned off the notification alarm on her phone because beeps were constantly being triggered by passing deer.

“Did you also turn off the storage function?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“Unless you deselect that function, the system automatically retains the previous seven days of videos. We may be able to see who came up here.”

She took out her phone and handed it to him.

He went through the menu, found Saved Videos, and selected Today.

The first video segment’s timecode read 01:05:34 a.m. The green infrared image showed a deer crossing the grassy area in front of the barn. There were two more deer videos, one down at the barn, the other by the apple tree behind the patio. The next showed a raccoon in the asparagus bed.

It was the following one, time-coded 03:20:24 a.m., that riveted Gurney’s attention. A dark full-sized pickup truck, headlights extinguished and license plate obscured, entered the frame from the end of the town road and came to a stop in front of the barn. A dark-clothed figure emerged and moved in the direction of the pasture lane that led up to the house. The next video, from a camera mounted on the house and time-coded three minutes later, showed the same figure moving past the asparagus bed in the direction of the alpaca shed—which stood in a blind spot between the two cameras on the house.

The next video, time-coded four and a half minutes later, showed the same figure going back past the asparagus bed. In a final relevant video from the barn camera, the figure got back in the truck. With its headlights still extinguished, the truck disappeared onto the town road.

Madeleine had gotten out of her chair and had come around behind Gurney’s to watch the videos with him. After the last one, she asked, “Should we give them to the police?”

“Not to the local police. It’s not really a local issue. And the Gladstone police are useless, or worse. I’ll email the files to someone I know at the town’s consulting forensic company. They may be able to enhance them and see something we can’t.”

She was gripping the back of his chair so tightly he could feel her trembling. He stood up and turned toward her. There were tears of rage in her eyes. He stepped around the chair and held her until her body and breathing relaxed.

When he let go, she wiped her eyes, took a shaky breath, and went into the house.

After typing a note to Kyra Barstow and appending the videos of the intruder, he went into the house to give the phone back to Madeleine. He heard her voice coming from the landline in the den. He picked up their lunch dishes from the table and carried them to the sink.

“He can do it,” she said, as she came back into the kitchen.

“Sorry?”

“Jim Smithers. He can come up with his backhoe, but not for another hour or so.”

“Did you tell him . . . ?”

“Only that we needed him to do some digging. I didn’t want to talk about the reason.”

She went to the sink and turned on the water. She picked up a dish and began washing it with fierce concentration.

When she’d washed all the items in the sink and had transferred them to the drying rack, she asked with forced calmness, “What do you plan to do?”

“I’d like to go down the road and find out if anyone saw anything.”

“Like the truck?”

“Truck, driver, license plate, anything at all.”

“Do it now.”

44

THE DIRT-AND-GRAVEL ROAD from their property to the county route ran alongside a rocky stream that began at their spring-fed pond and eventually joined the river in the valley below. The stream and the road were hemmed in on both sides by forested hills.

There were only two places between the road and adjacent hillside wide enough to accommodate anything more than a campsite. The first consisted of a thorny half acre on which gangly sumac trees crowded around a single-wide mobile home. During a previous investigation, he’d interviewed the owner—a beer-soaked fellow with a crazed dog and a son in prison.

He pulled over next to a front yard that had been invaded by waist-high thistles and briars. He got out and made his way carefully to the house. The blinds were closed, and streaks of black mold on the siding gave the place an abandoned look. The only sign of life was the heavy beat of a cacophonous music genre.

The man who answered Gurney’s repeated knocking on the flimsy door bore a strong resemblance to the man he’d encountered on his previous visit—the only differences being more hair on his head, fewer wrinkles on his oily skin, and the presence of prison tattoos on his face and arms.

“Yeah?”

His voice was as rough as his father’s, creating an unpleasant sense of déjà vu.

Gurney smiled. “I live up at the end of the road. One of our animals was killed sometime before dawn this morning. We were wondering if you might have seen or heard someone passing by on the road.”

The man gave Gurney a cagey look, as though it might be a trick question. “What do you mean?”

“Someone drove up this road an hour or two before dawn today. Did you hear or see any vehicles, anything at all?”

A dumb grin began to widen his mouth. “Fucking owls.”

“You heard owls this morning?”

“You can’t shoot the fucking things. They’re protected.” He articulated the word with contempt. “What fucking good is a fucking owl?”

Gurney made his way back through the hostile weeds to his car and continued his drive down the road.

The canyon-like topography widened as it approached the valley floor, and the cabin he was heading for was set back from the road in a dense thicket of hemlocks. The place was a source of amusement to local folk. According to Jim Smithers, it had nothing but an old iron woodstove for heat and cooking, kerosene lamps for light, and a hand-operated pump to bring water up from a shallow well.

But these rustic limitations had turned out to be the heart of its appeal. Smithers had confided that Brooklyn hipsters were willing to pay twice the price of a comfortable hotel room to be rustically inconvenienced, awakened in the wee hours by coyotes, and chilled by drafts from the unchinked spaces in the log walls.

The first thing Gurney saw as he pulled over to park by the hemlock thicket was a massive gas-guzzling pickup truck—hardly the vehicle of a city hipster. He parked behind it, got out, and followed the shaded path to the cabin. A wiry man was stacking firewood on the creaking porch. The logo on the back of his tee shirt read “North Mountain Metal Fabricators.”

The man turned, a split log in each hand. He looked at Gurney with mild curiosity, as one might look at an odd tree stump.

Gurney asked his question about anyone passing by earlier on the road.

“You talking about this morning?”

“Yes. While it was still dark.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t get here till sunrise. To split logs for the next renter. You don’t want to be swinging an axe in the dark.”

“You own this place?”

He let out a contemptuous one-syllable laugh. “Woman who owns it lives downstate, pays me to make sure the renters have firewood, no animals got in, no snakes. She owns another of these things, worse than this one. You can’t even drive to it. You gotta walk up a trail that turns into a stream if it rains.”

Gurney thanked the man and walked back to his car. Before heading back up the road, he took a long look at the man’s big black pickup. It looked like the pickup on the grainy security video. But it seemed unlikely that a part-time firewood supplier and cabin cleaner with a day job at a metal fabricating shop would also be a hired alpaca killer with Gladstone connections.

Later that afternoon, Jim Smithers came with his backhoe-outfitted tractor and dug an appropriate hole in the spot Madeleine had chosen. He appeared satisfied with the hundred dollars Madeleine offered him. True to his laconic nature, he asked no questions.

At sundown, Gurney and Madeleine went to the shed, wrapped the dead alpaca in a soft flannel sheet, and carried it together to the open grave. They lowered it gently, as if not to disturb its sleep. After the earth had been mounded over the grave and a flat piece of bluestone placed on it as a marker, they stood there for a while, side by side, facing a crimson sky.

As they were walking back from the field, Madeleine asked if he’d be willing to stay in the house with her overnight. Her tone and phrasing made it clear that the request had definite boundaries. He agreed to stay and offered to take one of the upstairs bedrooms, and she seemed pleased with that arrangement.

The combination of a bed he’d never slept in before and the day’s emotional turmoil contributed to his restlessness that night, but it was the impact of certain thoughts about himself, about Madeleine, and about their marriage that made sleep impossible.

Ever since his early years in the NYPD, he’d believed that being a detective—searching for the truth beneath the lies—was the purpose of his life, his natural place on earth. But suppose that view of himself—a crusader in pursuit of clarity—was the bright surface of something darker.

When he looked at the efforts of others to establish and fortify their positions in life, what he saw were efforts at expansion, aggrandizement—a material gluttony for which he felt only contempt. However, there was a subtler way of proving one’s importance—not by expansion but by intensification. By concentrating on a single part of one’s life to the exclusion of all else.

To the exclusion of all else. The phrase raised a troubling question. What had he given up in exchange for his sense of importance and identity?

It was painfully clear to him, lying by himself in that spare bedroom in a house where he no longer lived, that one price he’d paid for his singular focus was a broken marriage—broken by countless corrosive decisions that all began with the pronoun “I” and none that began with “We.”

Their partnership hadn’t dissolved. It had never existed.

At that moment, lying there in the dark, he felt a terrible loneliness.

At breakfast, sitting across from Madeleine at the little table by the French doors, he remained quiet. He barely noticed that the spring blossoms on the old apple tree had multiplied overnight. Or that on the forested hill beyond the pond there were new leaves in every shade of green. Or that the pond was as blue as the sky.

When he and Madeleine finished their oatmeal, he laid down his spoon and said, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I should drop the case.”

Her spoon was halfway to her mouth. She slowly lowered it.

“What happened here is my fault,” he said. “My hell-bent determination to kick the hornet’s nest in Gladstone led to more than I anticipated. A lot more. My blindness is dangerous. You’ll be safer if I back away.”

“Finding and stopping people who do things like this . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she began again. “You’re a detective. Isn’t that what you do?”

“It’s too much of what I do. And in this case, I don’t seem to be doing it very well.”

She gave him another of those long looks that made him feel that she was seeing into his soul and seeing something he didn’t know was there.

She placed her hands on the table, interlocked her fingers, and spoke with a slow intensity. “Yesterday morning in the alpaca shed, I saw evil.” Her hands were clasped so tightly together the knuckles were white. “When I was a therapist in the city, I listened to psychopaths, sociopaths, victims of abuse, perpetrators of abuse. Hundreds of mentally scarred people. I thought I’d seen it all. But something in the slaughter of that helpless animal stabbed my heart. Something in the desolation of the one left standing . . . ” There were tears in her eyes. “Abandoning the case would be turning your back on what happened here.”

“If I stay on the case, if I go back to Gladstone, you won’t be safe.”

“I’ll come there with you.”

“That might be the most dangerous place of all.”

She replied with a decisiveness that ended the discussion.

“We’ve been apart long enough.”

45

AN HOUR LATER, Gurney was still trying to grasp what had happened—how a five-month separation had suddenly ended—a separation that he had angrily initiated and self-righteously prolonged and that Madeleine had now declared over with one short sentence.

Since it would be difficult to pursue the Gladstone triple-murder case from Walnut Crossing, choosing a better location was the first task facing them.

The first option to be discarded was the Adirondack lodge. While it was marginally closer to Gladstone, it was too isolated. The Blue Moth Collective offered the advantages of a convenient location and a security fence—along with the disadvantages of marginal accommodations, the distracting attentions of Sunny Kish, and too many unpredictable people coming and going. The remaining options were the Calico Cat and a local motel. Familiarity, comfort, and an innkeeper who appeared to be on the side of the angels decided the matter.

The next issue involved the care and feeding of the remaining alpaca. Madeleine arranged for Jim Smithers to temporarily board it in his old dairy barn.

After an early dinner of omelets and home-grown asparagus, they set out for Gladstone.

On a winding road north of Walnut Crossing, they were passed by a long line of motorcyclists. Although they appeared harmless enough, they prompted him to ask if she’d had any subsequent encounters with Tyson Grock.

She shook her head. “No, thank God. Just thinking about that man gives me the chills.”

As they were descending into the valley where the Calico Cat was located, she opened her eyes and looked with interest at the opposite ridge line.

“We’ve been on this road before,” she said.

“When we were house hunting?”

She nodded. “The real estate agent brought us out here to look at two or three places. One was a total wreck. An ideal fixer-upper, she called it. There were vultures nesting in a dead tree in the backyard. You remember that?”

“I do.”

After another few miles, the Calico Cat came into view. The big white colonial was bathed in the soft yellow light of the setting sun—an image of warmth and peace that seemed almost too perfect.

A spotless green-and-white sign at the entrance to the parking area identified the place as the Calico Cat Inn and Fine Art Emporium. The emporium part, to which Gurney had never paid any attention, consisted of a cottage-like structure. It was painted white and had dark green shutters, matching the main house, to which it was connected by a covered walkway.

There were two vehicles in the parking area—a new Lexus SUV at one end and an old Forester with two kayaks strapped to the roof at the other end. Gurney pulled in halfway between them. Madeleine took the suitcase she’d packed, he took his Godzilla Electronics and Wacker’s Hobbies and Crafts purchases, and they carried them up onto the porch.

The hatchet indentations had been filled in, the dark green door had been repainted, and the antique brass knocker had been polished. The door opened before he reached it. Justin Claiborne’s expression morphed from anxiety to relief.

“Stuart Wilmot just called. He’s been trying to reach you but keeps getting your voicemail.”

Gurney had turned his phone off the previous evening to avoid any interruption while he and Madeleine were burying the alpaca. He’d forgotten to turn it back on. He felt a twinge of insecurity, realizing how much depended on a faculty as uncontrollable as memory.

He introduced Claiborne to Madeleine and explained that she’d be staying with him for the next few days.

“Another guest is always a pleasure,” said Claiborne, looking more worried than pleased.

They carried their things into the house and up the stairs to his room. He took out his phone, noted three messages from Wilmot, and called him back. He answered immediately.

“Finally! My God, where have you been?”

“Other obligations.” He heard the vagueness in his voice and realized he was shying away from the details of the alpaca killing.

“Where are you now?”

“At the Calico Cat. Has something happened?”

“What’s happened is that I’m scheduled for a Livestream interview with George Strum at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and I desperately need to know whatever you found out from your contact at Russell Forensics.”

Gurney considered how much he could divulge without creating a problem for Kyra Barstow. He decided to keep it general, omitting any references to asphyxiation or coffin-like confinement.

“You still there?” asked Wilmot, a shrill note in his voice.

“She told me there were signs that all three women had suffered terrible deaths.”

“Terrible in what way?”

“She was uncomfortable sharing legally confidential facts.”

Wilmot sighed audibly. “That doesn’t help me much. Hoskins has already admitted there was some painful damage to their fingers.”

“Tell me something. Without knowing the details of these murders, how can you be so sure Ranzak was involved?”

“How many times in your career were you sure of someone’s guilt, even though you didn’t have every detail? You could see it in their eyes, couldn’t you? Hear it in their voice. You may not have known the details, but you knew the truth. You think I’m taking a big risk, making my accusations. But I know Ranzak. And I know that pressure can force the truth to the surface. Just wait. You’ll see.”

Gurney had no immediate reply. He had to admit there were occasions when he’d applied pressure to force someone to do something revealing. In fact, wasn’t that the objective behind his visits to Tyson Grock and his girlfriend, to Jesse’s Roadhouse, to Ranzak and Stone?

He decided to talk about the thing he didn’t want to talk about.

“Yesterday before dawn an animal belonging to my wife was killed. An animal that meant a great deal to her. And she got an anonymous text claiming it was retaliation for my activities in Gladstone.”

“That’s horrible. You should leave. Go home. Be with her.”

“She’s here with me now. We intend to respond to the attack.”

“How?”

“To begin with, by finding out who did it.”

“Someone who’s afraid you’re onto something. Almost certainly Ranzak.”

“Possibly. But I need more facts. Anything connecting him to Evie, Kay, and Marian—beyond seeing them as political enemies. Something deeper—in their present lives or as kids at the camp.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“Meaning?”

“At the camp, most of the teenage girls adored him. What they saw was a handsome rich guy whose father owned the camp. They were blind to the bully who made the lives of the smaller boys a horror show. He took advantage of the girls’ infatuation with him. But some of them eventually woke up and saw him for what he was.”

“You think Evie, Kay, and Marian were among the ones who woke up?”

“I never heard them talk about the things that happened in his private room at the camp, but I know as adults they ended up despising him.”

“He had a private room at the camp?”

“He had whatever he wanted. His father let him run the place. He had his own room and an isolated shed where he’d take the girls.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t see its relevance. We’re facing the imminent threat of an environmental disaster. I wasn’t thinking about his teenage sex life. Do you think it could be connected to the murders?”

“Until I have more puzzle pieces, I can’t tell which ones fit together. I’d like you to do something for me. Go to one of the satellite sites on the internet and print out an aerial-view map of the camp. On a separate sheet, write down everything you can recall about each building—what it was used for, what happened there. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely. I’ll work on it right now. I can drop it off for you tomorrow morning on the way to my interview with Strum.”

“Thank you.”

“While I have you on the phone, there’s something I should say. That attack in Walnut Crossing—that’s not what you signed up for. I never imagined you’d become a target. I want to double what I’m paying you. Think of it as a combat bonus. I hope that’s acceptable.”

“It’s very generous. But the answer is no. The truth is, from now on, I don’t want to be paid at all. Yesterday morning this became my fight. Mine and Madeleine’s, as much as yours. Someone declared war on us. I don’t want to be paid to fight back.”

There was silence on the phone.

“You still there, Stuart?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just bring me that map in the morning.”

He ended the call and filled Madeleine in on the details she hadn’t already figured out from his side of the conversation. He went on to describe the background events that led up to his discovery of the burial site in the ghost barn.

“Where are the police in all of this?”

“That’s a good question. Mark Hoskins, the Gladstone detective involved in the case, was interviewed by the local newspaper editor about the three bodies. His answers all seemed designed to create as much distance as possible between the bodies and Don Ranzak.”

“Hoskins is corrupt?”

“The interview did create that impression.”

“Which would suggest that whoever he reports to may be just as corrupt.”

“Or more so.”

“Did he say anything about the victims? About what had been done to them?”

“He said their fingers had been injured.”

Madeleine’s expression grew wary. “Injured?”

“Yes. But I heard from a reliable source that ‘injured fingers’ don’t begin to describe the reality of the situation.”

Madeleine’s eyes widened in a kind of anticipatory horror.

“The women had each been confined in an airtight box, which they then tried to scratch, punch, kick their way out of—until they were dead.”

“An airtight box?”

“Probably a coffin.”

Madeleine had been standing throughout this fraught conversation. Now she moved unsteadily toward one of the room’s wing chairs and sat down.

He didn’t know what to say, fearing he had already said too much. He went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, dried it with one of the towels, and went back out into the main room.

Madeleine had a determinedly controlled expression.

She pointed to the two shopping bags he’d carried in from the car, now sitting side by side by the bed. “What’s all that?”

“A drone, a bug detector, and an anonymous flip phone.”

“Sounds like we’ll be busy.”

“We will.”

“Good.”

46

HE AWOKE AT sunrise to the sound of Madeleine showering.

Rather than getting up, he decided to close his eyes for a few more minutes. When he was awakened again by a knock at the door, he saw Madeleine, now dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, crossing the room to open it.

Justin Claiborne appeared exaggeratedly apologetic. “So sorry to disturb you.” He looked past Madeleine to Gurney in the bed. “Stuart dropped this off for you. He insisted I bring it up to you.” He handed a manila envelope to Madeleine and, with a little bow of his head, turned and disappeared down the stairs.

She laid the envelope on the foot of the bed. “See you down at the breakfast table.”

After showering and dressing, he opened the envelope and saw that the contents were exactly what he wanted. He slipped the envelope into the drawer of the night table and made his way down to the dining area—where he found a thirtysomething couple with fashionable haircuts sitting at the breakfast table, typing on their phones with feverish concentration. He continued past them into the kitchen, where Madeleine was talking to Claiborne.

She turned to Gurney. “Justin was telling me about the evening of the flying hatchets.”

“And the night of the rocket attack,” he added in a tone that conveyed some distance from the panic he’d experienced. “Quite unforgettable. The stench of gunpowder has become a permanent feature of the attic.” He was stirring a bowl of pancake batter energetically.

Gurney saw that his own presence was interrupting the rapport Madeleine was establishing with Claiborne and it might be a good idea to leave the kitchen and let her develop it further. But an urgent issue on his mind edged that thought aside.

“Tell me, Justin, did you spend any summers at the Ranzak camp?”

Claiborne’s stirring lost some of its verve.

“A few, mostly before Donald took over.”

“That changed things?”

“Oh, indeed it did.”

“I was told that he got involved with some of the girls.”

“Quite a few, actually.”

“Including Evie, Kay, and Marian?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. I stayed as far away from him as possible.”

“Why?”

“He was . . . homophobic. I believe that’s the accepted term for it.” He stopped his stirring, as if visited by an unpleasant memory, before adding, “Homophobic with a vengeance.”

After their pancake breakfast, Madeleine called Jim Smithers to be reassured that the alpaca had been moved successfully to his barn. Gurney, meanwhile, went out onto the front porch to call Kyra Barstow—who answered, as usual, immediately. He wondered if it was because she welcomed his calls or because she hated, as he did, the accumulation of voicemail. One thing he was sure of—she liked him to get to the point.

“Two things, Kyra. First, thank you again for the autopsy information. Second, was your on-site evidence search limited to the barn and the area around it?”

“Yes.”

“It didn’t include any other camp buildings?”

“No.”

“I assume Chief Troutman established those limits?”

“Correct.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” A subtle note of emphasis gave the cliché a literal meaning.

He ended the call and checked the time. It was exactly 8:00 a.m.—just an hour until the Livestream interview with Wilmot. He decided to use the time to familiarize himself with his new drone.

Claiborne ushered Gurney and Madeleine into his sitting room a few minutes before nine and motioned them to the leather couch in front of the screen on the wall.

When they were seated, he asked Madeleine if she’d met Wilmot.

“No, but Dave’s given me a vivid picture of him.”

“Of his new incarnation, I assume.”

“Sorry?”

“We local folk have known two Stuart Wilmots—the invisible library techie and the bold politician. There was a character in old comic books—a crippled newsboy who could transform himself into a superhero and defeat evildoers. Our Stuart is rather like that.”

A Tri-County Star logo appeared on the screen for a few seconds before dissolving into a shot of George Strum and Stuart Wilmot in the same chairs Strum used for his interview with Detective Hoskins.

Strum turned toward the camera. “Good morning. Welcome to a special early edition of Livestream. Our last edition featured an interview with Detective Mark Hoskins. It focused on the local discovery of three murder victims. One of the candidates in the upcoming election for town supervisor has expressed concern about the fairness of that interview and has asked for equal time. Fairness is our guiding principle here at the Star, so we agreed to his request.”

Strum turned toward Wilmot, who was leaning forward in his chair with the tight-lipped look of barely controlled anger.

“Welcome to Livestream, Mr. Wilmot. You strongly disagree with the police view of the triple-murder case. Our viewers would like to know why.”

The camera slowly moved in on Wilmot. His voice had a sharp edge that went with his coiled-spring position. “The police view is nothing but a get-out-of-jail-free card for Donald Ranzak. It totally ignores his prior connection with the victims, going all the way back to the horrors of his father’s camp. It ignores his history of brutality and sadism. It ignores the importance of those three women to my campaign. It ignores their intense desire to defeat him. It ignores his corrupt influence over the Gladstone Police Department. It ignores every piece of evidence pointing to his hands-on involvement in those three murders. The murders of Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, and Marian Lake.”

With an expression of grim satisfaction, Wilmot leaned back in his chair.

Strum, despite his professed appetite for the angry give-and-take of political warfare, seemed momentarily taken aback by the fire in Wilmot’s accusations.

“Well, now . . . you’ve certainly had your say. And it’s not the first time you’ve accused Mr. Ranzak of murder. You did it last week on our Morning Sound Bites—with the result that Mr. Ranzak’s attorney, Bruce Halliwell, has filed a complaint against you, the first step in a lawsuit for defamation.”

Wilmot waved a hand, as though brushing away a fly.

Strum held up a sheet of paper, then continued. “I’d like to read you a brief excerpt from that complaint. ‘Due to Mr. Wilmot’s odious, outrageous, unfounded lies—designed to destroy Mr. Ranzak’s personal reputation, standing in the community, business opportunities, and political aspirations—we ask the court to award compensatory damages in the amount of fifty million dollars.’”

Strum paused, looking impressed. “As you may know, the tort litigation statute gives you twenty days to respond in writing to this filing, but perhaps you’d like to share your immediate reaction with our viewers.”

Wilmot smiled indulgently. “It’s pathetic bluster. And for the information of your viewers, I’ll be adding to my kidnapping and murder accusations the charges of aggravated assault, imprisonment, and torture. I will also be asking the court to expedite all the procedural steps, so the case can come to trial as soon as possible and Ranzak’s crimes can be ervealed to the world.”

Strum turned to the camera. “Well, folks, there’s no way I can top that. Keep an eye on our website for news of the next edition of Livestream, brought to you by the Tri-County Star.”

The screen displayed the Star logo, then went blank.

Claiborne turned to Madeleine and Gurney, awaiting a reaction.

Madeleine delivered hers as a question to Claiborne. “When did the shy librarian turn into that?”

“Shortly after Ranzak announced his candidacy and development plans. The crippled newsboy donned his magic cape, our local environmentalists found their hero, and he’s been on the attack ever since.”

“Does he have any proof for the accusations he’s making?”

“I hope to God he does.”

Gurney said, “I haven’t seen any.”

Madeleine frowned. “So, either he has something up his sleeve or he’s suicidal.”

Gurney nodded. “Based on what you just saw, which do you think it is?”

Madeleine frowned. “My first impression is that he’s cognitively sound, intelligent, and obsessed. Beyond that, I can’t say. He’s not easy to read.”

Gurney turned to Claiborne. “What do you think, Justin?”

“I think the lady just said it all.”

“Hardly all,” retorted Madeleine. “I only commented on his obvious mental qualities. Whether he’s right about Ranzak is another matter.”

“If you mean right about Ranzak being a murderer,” said Claiborne, “you won’t find any doubt about that in Gladstone. Some folks have absolutely no doubt that that he is. Some have absolutely no doubt that he isn’t. And the scariest fact of all? Some people who believe he’s guilty will vote for him anyway. It’s frightening that one’s neighbors could be that addlebrained. The man is vile. Evie Hubble expressed it perfectly when she said that the idiots supporting him were genuflecting in front of a garbage can.”

“Colorful,” said Madeleine. “David, it’s almost nine thirty. We need to make those calls we talked about.”

They excused themselves and headed upstairs. In their room, with the door closed, Madeleine explained that she had questions she didn’t want to ask in front of Claiborne.

“Such as?”

“Do you believe Ranzak is our target?”

“Probably.”

“You’re not sure?”

“There are some peculiar elements in the case. Some nasty bits of aggression seem to have had practical purposes; others seem pathological. Some seem carefully planned, others impulsive. Some clever, some idiotic.”

“Sounds like the actions of different people with different motives.”

“True. But even if we focus only on the murders, there are a hell of a lot more questions than answers.” He took out his phone, located the list of “why,” “where,” and “who” questions he’d compiled, and showed it to her.

Why these three women?

Why such a sadistic and cumbersome method of execution?

Why bury them in that barn?

Where, if not in that barn, were they forced into the coffin that killed them?

Where is that coffin now?

Who in Gladstone stands to benefit from these deaths?

Who is calculating enough to carry out such a complex triple crime?

Who is demented enough to inflict such suffering?

Madeleine read through the list slowly before speaking.

“I’m looking at your last three questions. Could Ranzak be the answer to all three?”

Gurney sighed. “The best response I can come up with is, ‘Yes . . . but.’”

“Meaning what?”

“Yes, because Ranzak would benefit from Wilmot’s loss of support from all three women. But the cost, in terms of risk alone, would grossly outweigh the benefit. And yes, his financial success would suggest a calculating mind, theoretically capable of managing the murders. But again, the risk-reward calculation seems way off. And yes, there is an icy core in Mr. Ranzak, as there is in most people driven by a hunger for money and power. But coldness alone doesn’t account for the sadism involved in these crimes. There seems to be a disconnect between the extraordinary ugliness of the murders and the practical goal of winning an election.”

Madeleine looked like a sour taste had invaded her mouth. “Perhaps there’s more to Mr. Ranzak and his motives than meets the eye.”

“Or he has a supporter who’s crazier than he is.”

“You have someone in mind?”

“Possibly one of his three followers from the camp.”

“I’m hearing some doubt in your voice.”

“Tyson Grock, who threatened you back in Walnut Crossing, is not smart enough to manage the logistics. Johnny Lemino has a fortune at stake, but I can’t see him coming up from the Bronx and dealing with the intricacies of three successive kidnappings. As for Harlan Stone, he has the dead eyes of a hit man, but he’d only act on Ranzak’s instructions. And if Ranzak wanted him to get rid of those women, he would have found a simpler way of handling it.”

“Where does that leave us?” There was frustration in her voice, an itch to move forward.

He opened the night table drawer and took out the envelope containing the materials Wilmot had prepared for him—the aerial map of the campground with GPS coordinates for each of the buildings, along with a sheet describing what the buildings were used for.

“I have a growing suspicion that the awful things happening in Gladstone have their roots in the old Ranzak camp. So we’re going to do some reconnaissance.”

“Now?” Her eyes brightened.

He picked up his laptop, drone, and key to the Outback. “No reason to wait.”

With the help of the camp map, Wilmot’s annotations, and, on his own laptop, a satellite view of the roads surrounding Ranzak’s property, he was able to reach a spot on a lonely stretch of road that was about the same distance from the main camp clearing as his previous entry point had been from the ghost barn. He drove as far as he could into the weedy verge of the woods. Although traffic was rare on these winding rural roads, there was no point in attracting attention.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“It’s a safe, secluded spot, and it’s less than half a mile through the forest to the campground.”

“Why not use the same trail you used to get to the ghost barn?”

“The barn and the main camp area are in separate locations. This is a much closer starting point to get to the buildings I’m curious about.”

He got out of the car with the drone, extended its propeller arms, and readied it for flight as Madeleine watched, frowning at the fragile-looking little aircraft. “What can that thing show us that we can’t already see on Wilmot’s map?”

“The map images are from the last pass of the satellite over this area, which may have been months ago. The drone can show us if anything’s changed. Also, there are legal limits on the degree of close-up resolution that can be displayed in satellite photos for public use. But we can fly the drone as low as we want to see as much detail as we need.”

An hour later, the drone had accomplished this and more. Of particular interest were the photos it took of the structure Wilmot had described as the shed where the teenage Ranzak had taken certain girls.

From the hundred-foot altitude at which Gurney had been operating the drone, he’d been able to see that signs had been posted on that structure. But he hadn’t been able read them from that altitude and angle, so he flew the drone down to just six feet above the ground. Piloting it carefully around the structure, he’d found four identical signs—one on the padlocked front door and one on each of the other three sides.

DANGER

TOXIC SPILL SITE

DO NOT APPROACH

He’d then directed the drone to resume its hundred-foot altitude and activated its Return to Home feature. Two minutes later, it landed smoothly at its take-off point on the hood of the Outback. He switched it off, folded its propeller arms, and put it in the back seat.

He answered the question he saw in Madeleine’s eyes.

“We’ll come back tonight with my bolt cutter, off-road GPS, and latex gloves.”

Her look of curiosity changed to concern.

“You’re going to ignore the toxic-spill warning?”

“I am.”

47

EARLY THAT EVENING, as he was going through the drone manual with Madeleine, she suddenly announced, “I’m hungry. Shall we go out for dinner?”

He shrugged. “There’s a marginally okay place in the village, if you don’t mind dealing with a touch of heartburn. Ella’s something-or-other.”

She made a face. “How about the Goose and Gander?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“We ate there one night about eight years ago. Big windows, flowers on the table.”

“Your memory for restaurants is better than mine.”

“We sat by a window that looked out over a brook. There was a beaver. You insisted it was a woodchuck.”

“Ah, yes. The furry brown creature. Old-fashioned French food. Gimlet-eyed woman sitting on a stool by the cash register.”

“Let’s go there. Maybe we’ll see the beaver.” There was a childlike light in her eyes.

“Sounds good.”

While she busied herself on the internet, making sure the restaurant still existed and getting its contact information, he brought everything they’d need for their later endeavor down to the Outback.

He was closing the trunk lid when she came outside and handed him a scrap of paper. “That’s the Goose and Gander address, in case you don’t remember where it is.”

There was a faint note of criticism attached to that possibility, but it was erased by the smile in her eyes. “I made a reservation for six thirty.”

The restaurant occupied the ground floor of a colorful three-story Victorian mansion. Like all places visited after a passage of years, it looked both familiar and unfamiliar. As Gurney knew well from interviewing crime-scene witnesses, memory distorts as much as it preserves.

Inside the front door there was a wide chestnut-floored foyer. Off to one side of the foyer was a busy bar. On the other side was the dining room whose rear windows looked out on the shaded glen where they’d seen the beaver-woodchuck ambling along by the brook.

In place of the steely woman and her antique cash register, there was a glass-topped desk with a computer, operated by a trendy young blue-haired person of indeterminate gender. After checking their reservation, they handed Gurney and Madeleine off to a server, who showed them to a table by one of the windows.

Madeleine studied the menu, first with a curious eye, then with a smile. “They’ve redesigned it, but the choices haven’t changed.”

Guided by her recollection, they ordered the same starters and main courses they had on their first visit—a small salade Niçoise, followed by local trout with a lemon-butter-caper sauce for Madeleine and an onion quiche followed by coq au vin for Gurney.

As they ate in easy silence, it felt to Gurney like they were starting over, going back to a happier time in their lives—when they’d just left their jobs in the city and their future appeared to be a blank canvas on which they could paint any picture they wished. It soon became apparent, however, that there was no unified “they.” There was he and there was she, and they were imagining different pictures on that canvas.

Their divergent views of the future were at first obscured by their shared appetite for the rural location of their new home—for the peace and pastoral beauty of the place, for the old farmhouse itself, the sloping pastures, the pond, the classic red barn, the purity of the water, the mountain air, the copses of black cherry and sugar maples, the wildflower meadows. Their mutual fondness for these surroundings created the temporary illusion of a larger agreement on the direction of their lives—how they would spend their time in this idyllic place.

The first sign of a fissure in their respective visions of the future was his decision to investigate the murder of a former schoolmate in the “think-of-a-number” case, rather than leaving the matter to the state police. The fissure widened with his involvement in the particularly sordid case of the beheaded bride.

Their relationship weathered the storms and perils of several more upstate murders that he couldn’t resist immersing himself in, despite nearly losing his life on more than one occasion. Then came his obsessive pursuit of the Viper, the case that put his associate Jack Hardwick in a coma and finally strained the Gurney marriage to the breaking point.

Now, they were in the same restaurant, where eight years earlier they were happily imagining their future together.

He looked across at her, once again amazed by her beauty, by the deep intelligence and hint of humor in her eyes. Amazed at how the long-developing distance between them now seemed to be disappearing. Amazed at how his willingness to step away from the Gladstone case had been greeted by her insistence that he pursue it—in fact, that they pursue it together.

He wondered, was it all happening as the direct result of the alpaca horror? Or had that just broken the dam of isolation and resentment, allowing them to flow back into each other’s arms, where they’d always belonged?

As they were finishing the last bits of the plum tart they’d ordered for dessert, Madeleine said, “We should head for the camp.”

Gurney pulled into the same secluded spot in the tall weeds at the edge of the woods where they’d stopped that morning.

In the fading light of dusk, he set up the drone with its recharged battery, verified its video-transmission link to the screen on the handheld controller, and reviewed the details of its operation with Madeleine—explaining that she should keep the drone at a hundred feet above ground level and follow his progress through the forest to the campground buildings. If the controller screen revealed the presence of anyone or anything odd or threatening in the drone’s visual field, she should let him know via an immediate text to his phone.

She placed the drone on the hood of the car, activated the propellers, and flew the little device straight up to an altitude of a hundred feet. He put on his latex gloves and makeshift booties and got his off-road GPS and bolt cutter from the car. He checked the map Wilmot had provided with location coordinates for each of the campground buildings and entered in his off-road GPS the coordinates of the teenage Ranzak’s special shed.

He turned to Madeleine. “Any questions?”

She glanced up at the hovering drone. “How much battery time do we have?”

“Fifty-five minutes, max.”

“You’re sure that’s enough?”

“It’ll have to be.”

He smiled and kissed her. With the bolt cutter under his arm, the GPS in one hand, and his phone in the other, he headed into the woods, followed by the faint whirring of the drone.

Apart from the thorn bushes grabbing at his pant legs, his trek, illuminated by a rising moon and his phone’s flashlight, was uneventful. His first sight of the shed with its toxic-spill signs was partly consistent with his view of it that morning on the drone’s controller screen, but the actual structure in the slanting moonlight was more forbidding. Its eerie resemblance to the ghost barn raised gooseflesh on the back of his neck.

The shed—an odd designation for something this imposing—stood by itself at the edge of the campground clearing. Behind it, two giant hemlocks reached out toward its roof, their branches moving ever so slightly from side to side in the unsettled night air, suggesting a sinister game of blindman’s bluff.

He began sweeping the beam of his phone’s flashlight back and forth over the ground in a widening arc, as he moved slowly forward, careful not to let his steps contaminate any criminal evidence that might be present. The ground was a combination of bare soil, smoothed by years of wind and rain, along with patches of flat crabgrass-like weeds. As he got closer to the shed, he noticed tire tracks, some in earth compressible enough to retain clear tread impressions.

With only his phone light and weak shafts of moonlight shining through the hemlocks, it was difficult to determine the movements of the vehicle that had left the impressions. Studying the few distinct arcs in the soil, he concluded that the vehicle had probably approached from the direction of the camp’s main entrance, made a turn in front of the shed, backed toward it, and stopped a few feet from the padlocked door. So, a delivery. Or a removal.

When he approached the shed door, he discovered that the lock and its surrounding hardware were made of heavier steel than the impression conveyed by his earlier drone reconnaissance. Cutting through the shackle took all his strength and a good ten minutes. But once it was severed and removed, the door swung open easily.

He stepped inside. The floorboards creaked under his weight. He moved the beam of his phone light slowly around the single large room. There were two windows in each wall, but all were shuttered. The air was heavy with the odors of dust and desiccated wood.

The walls were bare, the rafters covered with cobwebs. He was about to conclude that the space was empty, when his phone light fell on a large dark object on the floor near the far wall. He took a few steps closer before realizing with a sudden frisson that he was looking at a coffin.

48

GURNEY’S INVESTIGATORY INSTINCTS were screaming at him to lift the lid. He was, after all, wearing crime-scene gloves designed to prevent evidence contamination. But the quieter, and ultimately more persuasive, voice of caution warned that opening the coffin could have unforeseeable consequences.

He slipped his regular phone back in his pocket and he took out the anonymous one he’d purchased at Godzilla. He began taking photos—first of the coffin, then of the interior of the shed, then of the surrounding area. He included close-ups of the few tire tracks that were distinct enough to run through a tire-tread database. With any luck, that process would create a list of vehicles equipped with the brand and model of the tires that created the impressions.

He selected the best photos of the shed, coffin, and tire tracks and attached them to a laconic text message:

Enclosed images show a possible murder site at the Ranzak campground. Everything is shown as it was found, except for the necessarily severed padlock on the shed.

He added the shed’s location coordinates to the message and sent it to Chief Rand Troutman and Detective Mark Hoskins at Gladstone PD; to Kyra Barstow at Russell Forensics; and to George Strum at the Tri-County Star.

He put the flip phone back in his pocket, took out his regular phone, turned on its flashlight, and retraced his steps back through the woods to the car—followed by the reassuring whirring of the drone, flying safely above the giant hemlocks.

After Madeleine landed the drone gently on the hood of the car, she asked if he’d seen or smelled any evidence of toxic chemicals.

“Nothing at all. I suspect the warning signs were just a way of keeping anyone who might venture onto the property away from the shed.”

As they drove back to the Calico Cat, he described what he’d discovered and whom he’d anonymously notified.

“Do you think they’ll suspect that the photos came from you?”

“Probably. But there’s nothing Troutman or Hoskins can do about it. Kyra will assume it was me, and that’s okay. And all George Strum cares about are the headline opportunities. The main thing is too many people have the photos for anyone to bury them.”

“Would the police want to try?”

“They’re clearly on Ranzak’s side, but how long they can stay there is another matter. A lot depends on what Russell Forensics comes up with, and how much of it becomes public.”

Gurney’s eyes were on the winding road ahead, alert for suicidal deer, but he could sense Madeleine watching him. Her voice was deceptively calm.

“Are you finally convinced that Ranzak is . . . responsible for everything?”

“Convinced beyond a reasonable doubt? Not quite.”

“Not quite? Three women were suffocated, or literally frightened to death, in a coffin. Tonight you found a coffin in Ranzak’s shed. It has to be the coffin, right? I mean, how many coffins can be lying around out there? How much more proof do you need?”

“I want to know exactly what happened in that shed, and where Ranzak was when it happened.”

“You think sending those photos to those people will give you those answers? Or was that just another rock you were tossing into the hornet’s nest?”

“More like a grenade than a rock.”

When they arrived at the Calico Cat, she got out of the car first and went directly into the house. He was tempted to follow her and try to close the gap between their perceptions of the situation, but he suspected the effort would only widen it.

He decided instead to call Wilmot.

The man answered on the first ring. “Dave? Any news?”

“I discovered something I’d like to discuss with you in person. Can you come to the Calico Cat in the morning?”

“Is there a problem?” Fear had elevated his voice half an octave.

“Let’s talk about it in the morning. Eight o’clock okay?”

“Sure. Fine. See you then.”

Gurney left the bolt cutter in the car but brought the drone into the house.

Claiborne was emerging from the kitchen. He pointed with surprise at the drone. “I didn’t realize you had one of those, too. Luke and Heidi—the other couple staying here—were just telling me about the one they make their videos with. They’re influencers.”

“Influencers?”

“They visit sights, shops, inns, bars, restaurants. Their drone records it all, creating a video travelogue. They post it on TikTok. They have four million followers.” He articulated the number with an expression that combined astonishment with reverence.

Then he paused, looking puzzled. “What do you do with your drone?”

Before Gurney could decide on an answer, Claiborne offered his own. “Surveillance, I bet!”

Gurney smiled. “See you in the morning, Justin.”

When he went up to his room, Madeleine was already in bed but very awake.

“When do you expect forensic results to be available?” she asked, as soon as he stepped into the room.

He shut the door behind him, laid the drone on the bureau opposite the bed, and put its battery in its charger.

“Assuming my text message gets things moving tomorrow morning, some basic information should be available by the end of the day. Analysis of any DNA that might be present will take another day or two. Ditto tire-tread identification. The wild card in the process is whatever Russell Forensics might find in other parts of the campground.”

Madeleine’s face was alive with impatience. “You’ve been through these things a thousand times. How do you deal with the waiting?”

“By revisiting open questions that don’t depend on lab results. Or continuing to talk to people connected to the case. In fact, I’m meeting with Stuart Wilmot tomorrow morning.”

She propped herself up on her pillow. “After Wilmot appeared on that Livestream thing, you asked my opinion of him, but you never told me yours.”

Gurney shrugged. “Nerdy and passionate. Reclusive and aggressive. Logical and impulsive. A bundle of contradictions.”

“Crippled newsboy and caped crusader?”

Gurney nodded. “Sometimes on the same day.”

“Do you think he’ll win the election?”

“Not unless Ranzak crashes and burns.”

“Which that coffin makes increasingly likely.”

Gurney wasn’t so sure. He saw Ranzak as the sort who has an answer for everything.

49

THE FOLLOWING MORNING Gurney made his way down to the dining room at 7:40 a.m.

At his request, Claiborne prepared some scrambled eggs and served them with whole wheat toast and strong coffee. At two minutes before eight, Gurney took his final bite of toast and went out onto the front porch. The dew on the overgrown field across the road was glistening in the morning sunlight. Wilmot arrived in his rusty Blazer at exactly eight.

He parked and got out, glancing around anxiously. His neatly coiffed blond hair, pressed jeans, and blue puffer jacket were all exactly as they were that morning at the Adirondack lodge when he described his concerns and asked Gurney to attend the town hall debate. He looked worried then and more so now.

Gurney stepped down from the porch. “It’s a nice morning. Let’s take a little walk.”

He led the way around to the rear of the house, where a mowed swath curved out toward a shallow stream. There was bench by the stream. Gurney sat down. After looking around uneasily, Wilmot joined him.

“Last night,” said Gurney, “I visited the campground—specifically the building you described in your notes as an isolated shed.”

He took out his flip phone, located an interior photo of the shed that included the coffin, and showed it to Wilmot, who stared at it with a deepening frown.

“What’s that doing there?”

“Yet to be determined.”

“You think it’s connected to the murders?”

“I do.”

A look of revulsion grew in Wilmot’s eyes. “Connected . . . how?”

“It’s possible that each woman was locked inside it until—”

Wilmot recoiled with a gasp. “There was a rumor one summer that Ranzak had forced one of the kids into a shipping crate and made him believe he was burying him.”

“Was the rumor true?”

Wilmot shuddered. “I believed it at the time.”

“The kid never reported him?”

“Nobody reported anything. We were all scared to death of him.”

Wilmot’s eyes were on the stream, but his mind was obviously elsewhere.

Gurney waited.

Wilmot pointed at the image on the phone. “Did you give that picture to the police?”

“I did.”

“Suppose they ignore it?”

“I also sent it to Russell Forensics and the Tri-County Star.”

“Good!” Wilmot seemed to be regaining his composure. “Actually, the timing couldn’t be better. The first court hearing in Ranzak’s lawsuit against me is in three days. With any luck, he’ll be in custody by then, and I’ll be the least of his problems. Oh, speaking of Ranzak, I have this weird feeling that my Blazer might be bugged. For the past week or so, if I call someone from it to set up a meeting, the meeting place ends up being watched.”

“Watched by . . . ?”

“Someone in a big black SUV. I tried to confront him the other day. But he drove off.”

Gurney got up from the bench. “It’s easy enough to check for surveillance items.”

He led the way back to the parking lot and told Wilmot to wait there while he went upstairs and got the bug detector from one of the shopping bags he’d left by the bed. He checked the charge level of the battery and returned to the parking lot.

Less than two minutes later, he found a GPS tracker with audio-transmission capability under the Blazer’s dashboard. He recognized it as a high-end model commonly used by trucking companies.

As he described its location-tracking and voice-transmitting functions to Wilmot, the man’s eyes widened in alarm.

“So, someone’s been listening in on every phone call I’ve made from this vehicle?”

“Or recording them, or both. When you park it, do you normally keep the doors locked?”

“Never, actually. Anyone could have gotten into it, anywhere. Gladstone used to be a safe place. God.” He stared in dismay at the device in Gurney’s hand. “Now I’ve got to try to remember every phone call I made and what I said.”

He sighed with a kind of bleak resignation, thanked Gurney, announced that he’d be spending the rest of the morning in his campaign office, and drove off.

Although Gurney had no reason to suspect the presence of a monitoring device in the Outback, he decided to check it anyway. To his surprise, he found a similar tracker-transmitter under his steering column.

The location part of the device would have transmitted a record of the car’s movements, which he didn’t consider a cause for much concern. The only potentially interesting data points would have been his stops on the public road adjacent to the campground, but he couldn’t imagine those being interpreted in a way that could cause him any trouble.

Its audio-transmitting function demanded more thought, and not knowing how long it had been in place complicated the matter. He tried to reconstruct the live and phone conversations he’d had in the car, mainly with Madeleine. He ended up concluding that nothing he said would be fatal to his ongoing efforts. Of course, none of it would endear him to anyone, especially not to Hoskins or Troutman, but so be it.

As for how and when the device had been installed, it was impossible to say. Unlike Wilmot, he did generally lock his car doors, but not always. In retrospect, that carelessness had been a foolish oversight. It wouldn’t happen again.

He decided, for now, to leave the bug undisturbed—having realized during a past investigation that a listening device left in place could be an ideal way to misdirect its planter. He locked the car and went back into the house, where he found Madeleine and Claiborne at the breakfast table, engaged in an animated discussion.

“Influencer is the archetypal hot-at-the-moment occupation,” Claiborne was saying. “Conceived, birthed, and nourished in the vile cradle of social media. But it’s a reality that people in my business have to deal with.”

Claiborne turned from Madeleine to Gurney. “What can I do for you?”

“Speaking of occupations, are forestry and logging still major ones in this part of the state?”

“Well . . . I wouldn’t say major, but there are still people out there cutting down trees for lumber and firewood. Why?”

“I’d like to find a store that stocks the tools of the trade—saws, pruners, things like that.”

“You might try North Country Lumberjack in Burr Creek. Owner has a crotchety reputation, but he’d be your best bet.”

“Burr Creek?”

“Pronounced ‘Crick’ by the locals. It’s a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. North Country Lumberjack’s the only sign of life there. Take the state road out to the abandoned Methodist church, make a right on the Hawthorne spur, take that to the bottom of the hill, and there you are. Big sign in front shows a cartoon lumberjack with a big axe and a loony grin.”

Madeleine was eyeing Gurney with growing curiosity.

“Are we in the market for a chainsaw?”

“I’ll explain when I get back.”

North Country Lumberjack appeared to be the only inhabited structure in Burr Creek. The building was a farmhouse whose ground floor had been converted into a store.

Gurney parked next to a pickup with a mud-spattered ATV in the bed and a red-white-and-blue “Vote Ranzak” sticker on the rear bumper. He took out his phone and went to the internet to refresh his recollection of some research he’d done after his last visit to Pam Espinoza’s burial site.

Once he was satisfied that he knew exactly what to ask for, he entered the store—which turned out to be a bare, windowless ground-floor room about twenty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, lit by a single fluorescent fixture.

In front of the far wall was a wide wooden counter, housing a display case with nothing in it. A short, prodigiously bearded man was standing behind it, completing a transaction with a much larger man on Gurney’s side. Across the back of the large man’s tee shirt, “The Brotherhood” was spelled out in spiky Germanic lettering.

The small man slid a chainsaw across the counter. The large man picked it up, turned, and headed for the door. He did a double take as he passed Gurney.

Gurney smiled. “There’s a rumor Ranzak may go down for murder. What do you think are the chances?”

The man stopped in the doorway. “Fuck your rumor. Fuck Wilmot. Fuck you.”

As soon as the man left, Gurney walked over to the counter where the short man with the prodigious beard eyed him with an unfriendliness that seemed more innate than related to what had just occurred.

“I need a three-threaded increment borer,” said Gurney matter-of-factly.

There was a glimmer of surprise in the man’s eyes, which disappeared so quickly Gurney wondered if he’d imagined it.

“Diameter?”

“Four point three.”

“That’ll run you close to two eighty . . . with tax.” He made those last words sound like a cause for revolution.

“Fine.”

The man disappeared through a door behind the counter.

When Gurney was beginning to suspect that he’d left the building, he reappeared with the tool in hand—a Teflon-coated hollow steel drill, about a foot long, with a T-shaped handle on one end.

“That’ll be two hundred seventy-seven dollars and thirty-eight cents.”

Gurney handed him a credit card. He took it with a suspicious frown and disappeared. He reappeared more quickly this time, with a printout for Gurney to sign.

“You from the city?” he asked with a note of contempt.

“I am.”

“That’s what you people call it, right? The city. Like it was the only one. In China there’s thirty cities bigger than New York.”

“Lots of people in China,” said Gurney pleasantly. “They need lots of big cities.”

He picked up the borer and walked out to his car.

The loony lumberjack on the sign seemed to be grinning at him.

On his drive back to the Calico Cat, he asked himself why he’d chosen to needle the Brotherhood guy. He suspected the cause was his frustration at the case’s continuing lack of clarity, the coffin discovery notwithstanding. From the beginning, there’d been an unsettling murkiness at the heart of the situation. Motivations were obscured by the general atmosphere of hostility, polarization, and chaos. He was reminded of a wise comment he once heard: “Chaos is the perfect camouflage for evil.”

It didn’t help that the town was controlled by a police department whose intentions were ambiguous at best—a department in which he had no allies. Wilmot, Claiborne, and the characters at the Blue Moth Collective were nominally on his side—but only, he suspected, as long as they deemed him sufficiently anti-Ranzak.

50

BACK AT THE Calico Cat, he found Madeleine and Claiborne sitting on the couch in front of the big screen, which was displaying a Tri-County Star logo.

“We were watching the Star interviews with Wilmot and Ranzak,” said Madeleine, glancing over her shoulder at Gurney, who had remained in the sitting room doorway. “Their comments are definitely in the danger zone.”

“Meaning?”

She shifted around on the couch to face him. “Calla Davidoff at the Institute for Political Discourse developed a system to quantify the links between speech and violence. It examines elements like negative superlatives, dehumanizing adjectives, combat terminology, and blame narrowing—and relates each of those to ensuing acts of violence.”

“Blame narrowing?”

“Blaming all the problems in voters’ lives on a single scapegoat you promise to destroy if elected.”

“You think Ranzak and Wilmot both do that?”

“Each claims the other is a monster, out to wreck everything that good people value.”

“Davidoff says statements like that are intended to promote violence?”

“She says they legitimize hatred and make violence acceptable.”

Her gaze moved to the tool in his hand, which he’d brought in from the car.

“What’s that?”

“A simple device to test a theory I have about an old murder case.”

“What old murder case?”

“One that ended with a peculiar confession.”

She stared at him. “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

“If you want to drive down to the Bronx with me, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

With more curiosity than enthusiasm, she agreed to join him—after changing into lighter clothes for a day growing rapidly warmer.

Before they got in the car, he filled her in on the presence of the bugging device, its capabilities, and why he’d chosen to leave it in place. “It may give me the ability to mislead whoever put it there. But the thing is, what I let them hear from now on is crucial.”

“Does that mean we shouldn’t talk during this trip?”

“We can talk about anything except what’s going on in Gladstone. In fact, the more sensitive the subject sounds, the better. It will defuse any suspicion that I might be aware of the bug.”

Once they were underway, as if to provide an example of what he meant, he described the Pam Espinoza case, complete with the burial details provided by Frankie Dalasio.

She listened with growing interest. “You had some reason not to believe Dalasio?”

“Reasons, plural. First, he came across as a well-scripted liar. He read a carefully worded confession to us in the presence of his attorney. Second, his stated reason for coming forward seemed more altruistic than anything that would actually motivate him. Third, sleaziness was oozing out of him like rancid sweat.”

“So, you didn’t believe his confession?”

“No.”

“Did you pass your concern up the chain of command?”

“I did.”

“But they decided to take his confession at face value?”

“They did.”

“Why?”

“A cleared case is a cleared case. The higher you rise in the chain of command, the more important statistics become. The truth can get buried, sometimes with a handful of dust, sometimes with a bulldozer.”

“You expect that new tool of yours to resurrect it?”

“It has that potential.”

She sat gazing out at the passing foothills of the Catskills as the parkway carried them south toward the city’s suburbs. Her deepening frown told him that a question was imminent.

But all she said was, “I’m dying for something to drink. Can we stop at that big fast-food place that’s a few miles ahead?”

“No problem. I’m pretty thirsty myself.”

When they pulled into the facility parking lot five minutes later and got out of the car, she showed no interest in getting anything to drink. But she definitely looked edgy.

“I’m confused. I couldn’t ask you in the car, but how does this diversion get us any closer to the truth of what’s going on in Gladstone?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, she added, “You seem to be revisiting an old murder case that has nothing to do with the horrible things happening now.”

“This may seem like an odd explanation, but bear with me. When I look at the people and events in Gladstone, I see contradictions everywhere. Nothing adds up. Nothing is clear. Nothing is new.”

“The coffin is new.”

“But it comes with more questions than answers. Its location points at Ranzak. But its use as an elaborately impractical murder weapon points away from him. That’s the problem. No event, no crime, no piece of evidence points in the same direction as another.”

“Fine, I get that, but what’s it got to do with Frankie Dalasio?”

“Very little. Which is the point. The Dalasio affair is also a murder case, but a totally different kind—with different characters, different motives, different deceptions. Which makes it an ideal way to give my thinking a jolt. Get me off the merry-go-round, so I can go back to Gladstone with a clearer mind.”

Madeleine nodded with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. After enough time had passed to give credibility to their having stopped to buy drinks, they got back in the car and pulled onto the highway.

Gurney started paying closer attention to the traffic around them. The nearer they got to the Bronx, the more combative the drivers were becoming.

The derelict fenced-off area of untended trees, aggressive thorn bushes, and flourishing weeds looked the same as it did on Gurney’s recent visit with Stony Burke.

He parked in the same spot, near the hidden breach in the fence. New tool in hand and with Madeleine following him, he led the way through the thicket to the grassy clearing. The sun was high in the sky, the air was warm and still, gnats were everywhere. Due to the recent lack of rain, the stream was lower and quieter than he remembered it.

Madeleine was looking around with growing interest. She asked where the girl’s body had been buried.

Gurney pointed. “By the stream. In the shade of that tree.”

She took a few steps closer. “I would have said it was a beautiful spot, if I didn’t know what it was used for.” After a moment of silence, she added, “Murder poisons everything.”

He wondered if she might be referring to the effect his career-long involvement in murder cases had on their marriage.

She looked at the tree. “Is that the source of the shade Dalasio mentioned in his confession?”

“It’s the only tree near the grave.”

“You say that like it might be a problem.”

He held up his steel tool. “I’m about to find out whether it’s a problem or a solution.”

He approached the tree, pressed the hollow point of the borer against the trunk, and began rotating the T-shaped handle. With each full turn, the shaft penetrated a few millimeters deeper into the wood. When it reached the halfway point in the diameter of the trunk, he stopped rotating it and carefully removed it, bringing out within it the pencil-like core sample it was designed to capture.

A quick perusal assured him that it contained the information he needed—information that had the potential to reboot the Pam Espinoza murder investigation.

He brought the core sample out to the sunny part of the clearing, took a pen out of his shirt pocket, and used the point to help count the growth rings. After swatting a swarm of gnats away from his face, he counted them again. He had to be sure of the number.

“You’re smiling,” said Madeleine.

“I’m smiling at the dumbest oversight in my NYPD career.”

He handed her the borer and core sample, took out his phone, and called Stony Burke.

The man answered as the call went to voicemail. “I was going to let you leave a message, but then I’d have to call you back, which only delays the annoyance. What do you want?”

“I’m fine, Stony, thanks for asking. How are you?”

“Fuckin’ peachy. Speak.”

“I have some news about Frankie Dalasio’s shade tree. Specifically, its age.”

Burke remained silent.

“When Pamela Espinoza was buried, it was less than three years old.”

It took Burke a few seconds to react. “What the fuck . . . ?”

“It was a scrawny little sapling. No shade at all.”

“Why would the little fucker lie about a thing like that?”

“That’s a very interesting question.”

“There’s a smirk in your voice, Gurney, like you know the answer.”

“I think I do. And his lies go way beyond the size of the tree. But before I say anything more, I need you to check a few things—the date of his brother’s death, the date of the Open Files segment on Pam Espinoza, and the date Dalasio came in with his lawyer. Also, take a look back into his finances—bank accounts, credit cards, loans, visible cash purchases, lifestyle changes—around the time he spoke to us.”

“You want me to track the little fucker down, question him in person?”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to.”

“Why not?”

“He’s almost certainly dead.”

“Why the hell would he be dead?”

“Because he was too shortsighted to realize that’s the way it would have to end.”

“The way what would have to end?”

“Do me a favor, Stony. Look at his money situation. Tell me about that, and I’ll tell you the rest. If I told you now, you’d think I was crazy.”

“Christ, you’re askin’ me to drop my real assignments to check out an idea that’s too nuts to talk about?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What the fuck’s the other way? More to the point, why would I want to do it?”

“Fame and fortune, Stony. Fame and fortune.”

That provoked a harsh Dublin laugh. “What I’d prefer is a bit of a hint where this crackpot hunt is heading, and why now.”

“We’re on it now because seven years ago we got the whole case ass backward.”

Even though Madeleine heard Gurney’s side of his phone call with Burke, she didn’t say anything until they were back in the car, heading north.

“Ass backward?”

“That’s the best way I could think of to describe the way we approached the case.”

“How so?”

“Frankie insisted he’d only had a relatively minor role in his brother’s crime. In fact, hardly any role at all. Just buried the body, and even that was under duress. We assumed he was minimizing his role. Although we couldn’t prove it, we were sure he had to be more involved than he was admitting. It never occurred to us that he might be less involved.”

“How much less involved could he be?”

“I don’t think he was involved at all. Neither one of them. Not Frankie, not his brother. The whole story was a fabrication, start to finish.”

“What are you saying?”

“Those brothers were a pair of dirtbags. But I’m betting neither one had anything to do with the murder or the burial of that girl.”

“But you said he described the scene to you perfectly, how the grave was laid out by the stream, how the girl was positioned in it. He led you to it. He had to have been there before.”

“Oh, he was there before—probably a day or two before he came in with his story.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Suppose it wasn’t Frankie who was motivated by that segment of Open Files. Suppose it was the real murderer. Suppose he was worried about the way the program refocused attention on the missing girl. Publicity like that can move a cold case back to the top of some precinct captain’s priority list. Suppose in that anxious moment the murderer thought of someone he knew—a greedy little dirtbag with a recently deceased dirtbag brother. And suppose he was clever enough to see how he could get that open case closed for good.”

Madeleine’s eyes lit up. “By paying Frankie to ‘confess’ that his dead brother had done it.”

“Right. So he took Frankie to the site. Pointed out the location of the grave. Told him how the girl was laid in it. Even described the weather on the day of the burial five years earlier. Frankie absorbed all that. Studied the place. Approached the task like the careful liar he was.”

“Ingenious.”

“Except for one small problem. It never occurred to Frankie that the big tree shading the grave couldn’t have provided any shade at all at the time of the murder. The other thing that never occurred to him was that the man who hired him would make damn sure, once the case was officially closed, that Frankie would never be heard from again.”

“So, what happens now?”

“That depends on what Stony Burke manages to find out. If he discovers that Frankie’s financial status improved significantly around the time of his confession, he’ll get the case reopened.”

Madeleine frowned. “I gather his overall situation wasn’t examined too closely at the time.”

“Exactly right. The brass wanted the win, period. Positive statistics were the god they worshipped. Once we had what appeared, at least on the surface, to be a credible confession, along with the identity of an accused perp who happened to be dead, with no likely defenders, no living family other than Frankie, the pressure from the top was to close the case, mark it solved, deliver closure to the Espinozas, no further action required, no more time or resources to be wasted on it.”

“Bureaucratic thinking. A mistake dressed up as success.”

“Exactly. But if Burke discovers what I think he will, the mistake can be corrected. Then, once the case is reopened, it’ll all be legwork, tracking down Frankie’s old contacts in the neighborhood, dealers, addicts, fellow dirtbags—as many as possible. The next phase will consist of narrowing the list to persons of interest. Longer interviews leading to serious interrogations, winnowing the list down to a few credible suspects. Then max pressure on the last man standing. Reconstructing his life, contacts, and movements at the time of the murder. Conference with the DA’s office, et cetera.”

Madeleine nodded slowly. “So, you figured it out.”

“I think so.”

“Did figuring it out serve its other purpose?”

“Maybe—to the extent that I suspect I’m getting something backward in Gladstone as well.”

Something his old NYPD mentor had said came to mind: When the answers to the puzzle don’t make sense, you’re probably asking the wrong questions.

51

FEELING NO GREAT urgency to get back to Gladstone, Gurney chose a roundabout route that included their home in Walnut Crossing.

When they arrived, the first thing they did was open the ground-floor windows to let fresh air circulate. Noting that the grass around the house had grown thicker, Gurney decided to give it a quick mowing, while Madeleine took a ride down the road to visit her surviving alpaca at the Smithers farm.

By the time she returned, Gurney had defrosted a pound of shrimp, had sautéed it in butter with a final late-season harvest of asparagus, and was ready to serve it over bowls of steaming penne.

The jumble of recent events made their previous meal at the little table by the French doors seem long ago. Relaxation was elusive. But there was an ironic feeling of closeness in their shared sense of dislocation—and a silence more intimate than conversation.

They went to bed early that night.

Madeleine was up first the following morning. When Gurney had showered, shaved, and dressed, he found her at the kitchen stove, patiently stirring a pot of oatmeal.

“When do you think there’ll be a public statement?” she asked without looking up from the pot.

“You mean, from the Gladstone police?”

“Police, DA, whoever.”

“Depends on when Russell Forensics completes their analysis, whether there’s evidence that directly incriminates anyone, how compromised the police are. Lots of factors.”

“Best guess?”

“Sometime tomorrow.”

She ladled the oatmeal into two bowls and brought them to the table with spoons and brown sugar.

“You trust that woman at Russell Forensics?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then it all comes down to how corrupt Troutman is.”

“Or how cautious.”

They took their customary seats at the table. The view through the glass doors from Gurney’s side included the old apple tree with its fading blossoms, the bird feeders that needed refilling, the alpaca shed.

His phone rang. In one of the coincidences that logic told him was meaningless, it was Kyra Barstow. She sounded as if she’d been working all night.

“I’m guessing you were the source of the photos I received the night before last.”

“I was.”

“I have some information about the things you photographed.”

He put down his oatmeal spoon. “I’m listening.”

“The coffin contained fingerprints, blood, skin, sweat, urine, and saliva from all three women. There were no identifying traces of their captor inside the shed. However, there was a cigarette butt in some scuffed-up dirt outside with retrievable DNA. No match to state or federal databases.”

“It’s still a major find.”

“There’s more. Troutman established a crime-scene perimeter that included the campground office.”

“And?”

“We found three small xenon canisters, a flip phone, and several pieces of broken glass—all with fingerprints, mostly smudged, but one clear, and one with extractable DNA that matches the cigarette butt by the shed.”

“Xenon canisters?”

“Interesting, don’t you think?”

“Xenon? As is xenon headlights?”

“It’s also an inhaled anesthetic. Ideal for immobilizing a victim—for abduction, transportation, or—”

“Placement in a coffin?”

“Yes.”

“This stuff is readily available?”

“Readily enough, like anything on the internet.”

“Jesus.”

“Indeed.”

As soon as he ended the call, he shared the facts with Madeleine.

The look of excitement and gratification in her expression faded to uncertainty.

“Does this mean . . . he’s finally been trapped?”

“It means that whoever that DNA belongs to will have some explaining to do.”

“Are you suggesting it might not be Ranzak?”

“I’m suggesting that we need to keep an open mind.”

“Can he be forced to provide his DNA for comparison?”

“Technically, only if a judge issues an order compelling it. But as a public figure approaching an election, refusing a police request for a sample would be almost inconceivable.”

“Suppose he does provide a sample, and it’s not a match?”

“Then we move on to whoever is next in line. Harlan Stone, for starters. Although I have my doubts, it’s conceivable that Ranzak issued the orders and Stone carried them out.”

“Including the murder in our alpaca shed?”

“Including that.”

“So, what do we do now? Sit on our hands until the DNA question is answered?”

“We go back up to Gladstone and play it by ear.”

She stared straight ahead—seemingly at a horizon that kept receding.

“Do you mind if I bring our shotgun?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“Whatever makes you feel safe.”

The flinty look in her eyes told him it wasn’t about safety.

It was midafternoon when they arrived at the Calico Cat. Claiborne met them in the foyer, nervously drying his hands on a dish towel.

“I hear there’s been a breakthrough in the triple-murder case. Do you know anything about it?”

“Has something been announced?”

“Just a short news item on the Star website stating that significant discoveries have been made and Chief Troutman will be making a statement at 4:00 p.m. Do you think . . . ?” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Madeleine’s shotgun—and in her other hand, a box of shotgun shells.

He cleared his throat. “Are you expecting trouble?”

Madeleine didn’t reply.

“No expectations,” said Gurney. “Just an abundance of caution.”

Showing no sign of having been reassured, Claiborne forced his gaze away from the gun. “Well . . . anyway . . . you’re welcome to join me in front of the big screen at four.”

Gurney glanced at his phone. Only ten minutes away. He and Madeleine went up to their room, put the shotgun in the closet and the shells in the bed table drawer, locked the door to the room, and went down to Claiborne’s sitting room.

When the screen came to life, Troutman was staring into the camera from behind his formidable desk, which seemed more suitable for a state governor than for a rural police chief. Perhaps in an effort to look like a man in the trenches, he’d taken off his formal uniform jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. With a look of great determination, he leaned forward, bare forearms on the desk.

“Good afternoon. Our task force—one of unprecedented size and capability—has been working day and night to solve the heinous murders that have horrified us all. I’m pleased to report the discovery of important evidence, including the DNA and fingerprints of an individual present at the crime scene. We’re hopeful that this will lead to the apprehension and conviction of the person responsible for these crimes. Along with this news, I have a special request. For elimination purposes, if you have been anywhere in or around the old Ranzak campground at any time during the past two weeks, we need you to drop by the police station to provide a DNA sample. To encourage others to do the same, Mr. Ranzak himself will be visiting the station tomorrow morning at nine thirty. His estate gardeners and security personnel are all scheduled to come in later in the day. Cooperation is the key to success. Thank you for your attention.”

The screen faded to black. Claiborne turned to Gurney.

“Did he just say they have the killer’s DNA?”

“Sounded like that, but he said it in a way that gives him a legal back door, in case the DNA turns out to belong to someone other than the killer.”

Claiborne raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Someone who innocently happened to be present at the murder scene?”

It wasn’t a conversation Gurney was interested in continuing. He was saved by the ringing of his phone. Seeing Hoskins’s name on the screen, he was tempted to let it go to voicemail, then decided to get it over with.

“Let me guess. I’m one of the people you want a sample from.”

“You should be a detective,” said Hoskins drily.

“How about I come in right now?”

“Very cooperative. I’m impressed.”

Gurney glanced at the time. “I’ll be there at four forty-five.”

At four forty he walked into the Gladstone Police Station and told the cop manning the metal detector why he was there. After giving him an unfriendly once-over, the cop made a call. A couple of minutes later Hoskins appeared and motioned Gurney to follow him to his office.

It was no more inviting than on his previous visit. Its gray metal furnishings, murky vinyl-tile flooring, and buzzing fluorescent light fixtures were the persistent emblems of mediocre bureaucracies everywhere.

“So,” said Hoskins, standing behind his desk. “Someone sent us a batch of crime-scene photos. Any idea who that might have been?”

“Likely a public-spirited citizen.”

“More likely someone interfering in an active murder investigation.”

“Or injecting new life into one that was going nowhere.”

There was a twitch at one corner of Hoskins’s mouth. He spoke in a controlled voice that couldn’t be more hostile if he were shouting. “You came here to give us your DNA. Go see Hernandez. Now.” He pointed through the glass wall of his office at a female officer at a smaller version of his own gray desk.

Gloria Hernandez was professionally pleasant. Which is to say, not noticeably unpleasant. The swabbing and the labeling of the sample with his name, address, and date of birth took less than three minutes.

Gurney smiled. “I understand from Troutman’s announcement you’ll be doing this with Don Ranzak at nine thirty tomorrow morning.”

“That’s what the chief said.”

“Is Harlan Stone in your schedule?”

She gave him a suspicious look. “You can ask Detective Hoskins.”

He thanked her and left.

He was about to head straight back to the Calico Cat, but noting the time, he decided to stop for some takeout Chinese at Best Restaurant. He wondered for the hundredth time whether Chinese restaurant names were brilliant or idiotic. It seemed an unanswerable question.

52

THAT EVENING, DESPITE Madeleine’s tossing and turning on her side of the bed, Gurney finally fell into a real sleep, from which he didn’t wake until well after sunrise.

After his regular shower-shave-dress routine, he went downstairs and was puzzled to find no one there—until he spotted a yellow Post-it Note on the place mat in front of the chair he usually sat in for breakfast. The handwriting was Madeleine’s.

There’s coffee, fruit, and cereal in the kitchen. Justin and I are next door in the gallery.

He decided that breakfast could wait. He filled a mug with strong arabica coffee and stepped out onto the porch. He was surprised at how much the temperature had dropped overnight. The combination of the chilly air, bright morning sun, and shockingly blue sky filled him with an unexpected sense of peace.

It was a feeling he’d first experienced during his childhood visits to the home of an aunt in a quiet rural area—a place of cool spring mornings and air that smelled of mown grass and woodsmoke—a world apart from his grim neighborhood of faded brick buildings and weedy vacant lots.

A flock of doves took flight from the field across the road. He finished his coffee, laid the mug on the porch railing, and walked over to the gallery. With its smaller porch and fewer green-shuttered windows, it looked like a scaled-down version of the main house.

He went inside and found himself in an anteroom whose walls were cluttered with posters promoting cultural events—painting and sculpture shows, obscure film revivals, photography exhibits, a symposium on the politics of gender, and book signings by local authors. Some of their names were familiar to him from the chaotic night at the Fallen Angel.

He passed through an arch into the gallery’s main room, where an easel supported a stiff white board with a statement he found puzzling.

A MANIFESTO OF CONNECTION

In the beginning, there was nothing but everything, which was one thing, until it was shattered by the myths of separation. It is our purpose to put Humpty Dumpty together again by erasing the lines between light and dark, tall and short, loud and silent, coming and going, male and female, this and that. We act on behalf of the yearning gravity that attracts all to all.

—Iroquois Riverwater—

The art on the walls consisted of nineteen square canvasses, all painted gray, contrarily priced from one thousand dollars for the largest to nineteen thousand dollars for the smallest. In the center of the room there were nineteen gray spheres, ranging in size from a beach ball down to a Ping-Pong ball, each perched on a pedestal and priced at one thousand for the beach ball and nineteen thousand for the Ping-Pong ball.

On the far side of the room, there was another easel supporting another white board. Claiborne and Madeleine were standing in front of it. The type was large enough for Gurney to read from where he was standing.

ABSURDITY

I sally forth to save

the sparrow from the hawk,

the rabbit from the fox,

the barn mouse from the feral cat,

that from this and this from that.

I tell myself

I’m chasing death away,

keeping all the claws

of night at bay.

But there’s a price to pay.

I starve the hawk, the fox, the cat—

and by the saving of the hunted life

take from the hunter hers.

This quirk of separation

condemns me to be taking sides,

to judge where worth abides,

to see myself in this but not in that.

Shall I save the wildcat or the rat?

—Iroquois Riverwater—

“Can I help you?”

The softly spoken question came from behind him. He turned and found himself facing a slim young man with a neatly trimmed beard who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

“I’m just . . . waiting for my wife.” He gestured in the direction of Madeleine.

“Are you the policeman? Of course you are. Justin told me about you. The plot is thickening, is it not? Or perhaps unraveling. We can only hope.”

Gurney said nothing.

The young man went on. “So, they found DNA and fingerprints at the murder scene! Meaning that the villain forgot to wear gloves? Extraordinary oversight, don’t you think?”

Gurney nodded. “We’ll soon know more, according to the police chief.”

“The well-fed Trout! Have you had the pleasure of meeting him?”

“No.”

Claiborne was making his way through the gray-ball pedestals. “For Godsake, Ziggy. Don’t you have anything to do?”

“Apologies. Just making pleasant conversation with a potential customer.” He stepped back and managed to disappear as smoothly as he’d appeared.

Claiborne regarded Gurney with a combination of skepticism and hope. “A potential customer? In that case, I hope you find the Riverwater oeuvre intriguing?”

“The poem is interesting. But I’m not in the market for any nineteen-thousand-dollar Ping-Pong balls.”

“Ah. Yes. Well. It’s worth noting that a percent of any revenue goes straight to Wilmot’s campaign chest. I admit that some of the orbs and canvasses are a tad pricey, but framed copies of the poem can be had for a pittance.”

“How large a pittance?” asked Madeleine, who’d been studying the blown-up version on the easel.

Claiborne smiled broadly. “Only one hundred dollars. Quite a bargain.” He turned to Gurney. “Don’t you think?”

Gurney didn’t answer.

Claiborne went on. “The thing is, it’s unique. It’s Riverwater’s only poem. The framed copies are signed and numbered. Collector’s items, really. Who knows what they may be worth in the future.”

When Gurney reacted only with a dead stare, Claiborne made an awkward leap to another subject, one that clearly worried him. “Tell me something. Is it conceivable that the DNA and fingerprints Troutman was talking about might not be Ranzak’s?”

Gurney glanced at his watch. “We’ll find out soon enough. It’s 9:44. He’s probably already been swabbed.”

“How long will it take the lab to render a verdict?”

“Knowing Russell Forensics, I’m guessing they’ll have results by tomorrow morning. Possibly as early as this afternoon.”

“I hope this nails the son of a bitch.” His hope contained a strong dose of venom.

Worry lines appeared on Madeleine’s face. “Why would Ranzak volunteer his DNA if he knew it would incriminate him?”

No one offered an answer. Gurney announced he was going back to the main house for breakfast and a second cup of coffee. Madeleine and Claiborne followed him.

At ten fifteen he was still sitting at the breakfast table, now nursing his third coffee and feeling decidedly restless, when his phone rang. He was surprised to see Barstow’s name on the screen. Assuming Ranzak had shown up at the police station to provide his DNA at nine thirty as scheduled, Russell Forensics couldn’t possibly have picked it up, transported it back to their lab, processed it, and compared it to the crime-scene sample in less than an hour.

“Kyra?”

“Something’s happened. Do you know anything about it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I sent a lab tech to Gladstone PD this morning at nine thirty to pick up Ranzak’s DNA. She was there on time, but Ranzak never showed up. Twenty minutes later, someone at the station got a call, my tech heard the name Ranzak mentioned, cops started running around the place like the proverbial headless chickens, and squad cars went racing away. You haven’t heard anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s major, and it involves Ranzak.”

“If I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.”

Madeleine and Claiborne, alert to Gurney’s tone, were standing across the table from him, their expressions caricatures of curiosity.

“Ranzak failed to appear at the station for his scheduled swabbing. Then the police got a call, and their reaction suggests that something serious has happened.”

“Like a car accident?” suggested Madeleine.

“Or something worse?” Claiborne added hopefully.

53

MADELEINE AND GURNEY retreated to their room. They settled into the wing chairs that faced each other on the side of the room opposite the bed. They agreed not to speculate on the nature of the crisis. Thinking about it, of course, was another matter. To quiet the mental merry-go-round, Madeleine introduced him to a series of relaxation exercises, which he had a hard time embracing.

The effort was eventually terminated by a frantic knocking at their door.

Gurney opened it and found Claiborne standing there with a wild look in his eyes, holding an open laptop computer.

“This is insane! Look!”

He turned the laptop around, facing Gurney.

It showed the Star’s website. A boldface headline filled the screen.

BREAKING NEWS!!!!

VISIONARY MILLIONAIRE DON RANZAK

FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE

Madeleine joined Gurney at the open door. They muttered “Jesus” in unison.

“Jesus, times ten!” said Claiborne.

“Are there any details?” asked Gurney.

Claiborne shook his head. “All they say is that it’s a fast-developing story, stay tuned, more information to come. I can’t believe that son of a bitch offed himself.”

“Neither can I. Thanks for bringing us the news.”

“It’s just so . . . so unbelievable!”

“I agree. I need to make some phone calls.”

It took Claiborne a few seconds to get the hint.

“Oh. Right. I’ll be downstairs.” He closed the laptop and backed away.

Gurney shut the door and looked at Madeleine.

“Make your calls,” she said. “Find out what you can.”

He called Barstow.

“You got the news?”

“I did.”

“Where are you and what can you tell me?”

“I’m at the scene—beside the barn where the women were buried. Ranzak’s body is just being loaded into the ME’s van. Body was found in the driver’s seat of Ranzak’s car. Glock 9 in his right hand, entry wound in the right temple, left side of the head blown away. Hollow-point slug fragments embedded in the detached part of the skull, as well as the car’s roof lining. Driver’s side is the bloody mess you’d expect.”

“No doubt about it being Ranzak?”

“None.”

“Who found the body?”

“Hoskins, along with six Gladstone cops.”

“Responding to what?”

“An apparent suicide text from Ranzak.”

“Apparent?”

“It didn’t say ‘I’m about to kill myself,’ but the bitterness and finality were clear.”

“Who did he send the text to?”

“Troutman, Hoskins, the county DA, Lawrence Sloane, George Strum, and Stuart Wilmot.”

“Did he reveal his location?”

“Not in the text. But as soon as Hoskins received it, he got a call-origination location from the phone company. Not terribly exact. Call locations up here rarely are. But close enough, and the fresh tire tracks from the adjacent road down to the ghost barn helped.”

“Have Sloane and Wilmot reacted to their copies of the text?”

“No idea. Ask Hoskins, if he’s still speaking to you.”

“You read the text?”

“Yes. It was the final entry in the Sent file on Ranzak’s phone. The phone was on the seat beside him in the car.”

“You have a gut reaction to its legitimacy?”

“The anger in it seems real. Frighteningly real, to be honest.”

“Too bad it’s not handwritten.”

“Nobody writes anything by hand anymore. Not even suicide notes.”

“Can you send me a copy of it?”

“As soon as this call is over.”

“Any final thoughts you want to share?”

“I’m thinking it’s pretty likely that Ranzak’s DNA and fingerprints, both of which we now have from the body, are going to match what we found at the crime scene.”

She ended the call, and a minute later the text appeared on Gurney’s phone.

He read it, was struck by its vitriol, then read it again.

I had a perfect plan for Gladstone.

Three whores were trying to destroy it.

Lying about everything. Propping up Wilmot

with their money and lies. Hating us. They

deserved to die. Lawrence Sloane, rotten

aristocratic garbage, should pay for his sins;

and Wilmot should pay the worst price of all.

MAKE ALL THE BASTARDS PAY!!!

He hoped Troutman and the DA’s office would apply whatever pressure they could to its other recipients—especially George Strum—to keep the damn thing from going public. If ever there was an incitement to violence . . .

It took a while for Gurney to stop envisioning the lunatic scenarios that could ensue under the banner of making the bastards pay. The Brotherhood would be eager to start shooting and looting. Plenty of Ranzak supporters would happily join in. Righteous retribution was a motive as appealing as it was dangerous.

Eventually Gurney was able to put these thoughts aside, realizing that the imagined wreckage of the future was not a good place to spend his time. There were enough problems in the present.

His natural detective’s curiosity tempted him to drive out to the campground and try to weasel his way into the site of the suicide, if that’s what it actually was. But realism prevailed. Troutman would have volunteers from every village police force in the county setting up and enforcing a hard perimeter. In this high-tension situation, he knew he’d be more likely to get arrested than to get anywhere near the ghost barn.

Despite the bombshell news of Ranzak’s death—along with what appeared to be not only a suicide note but an implied confession to three murders—Gurney found himself once again in the uncomfortably passive position of waiting for the next significant revelation—the answer to the question of whose DNA and fingerprints were on the items recovered the previous day from the campground office. The odds were definitely tilting in the direction of Ranzak, but a tilt was far from a sure thing.

He told Madeleine everything he’d learned from Barstow and showed her a copy of the “suicide” text.

She read it slowly with a deepening frown.

“How much do you really know about this man?”

“As a teenager, he was at least a bully and possibly a sexual predator. In his twenties, an increasingly wealthy manager of an ethically challenged hedge fund. A longtime associate of lowlife characters like Harlan Stone, Tyson Grock, and Johnny Lemino. After his return to Gladstone, a charismatic politician with controversial plans. Worshipped by some, despised by others.”

“That’s all very general. But you’ve spoken to him directly—in his solarium. You must have gotten a more specific sense of the man.”

“You’d think so. But the difficulty in getting to know someone like Ranzak is that the image is so carefully cultivated, it’s hard to tell what’s real.”

“But even the effort at concealment would reveal something, wouldn’t it?”

Gurney took his mind back to the solarium, sitting across from Ranzak on those peculiar chairs, listening to the man’s aggressive self-promotion. He recalled the unblinking gaze, the voice that was honed to override objections, the combative position of the shoulders.

“I got the impression that winning was everything to him. Having more power, more money, more of everything. It was about fighting his way to the top, being the biggest, the most admired, the most envied. I had the sense that nothing else mattered to him. Certainly not anyone else’s rights or happiness.”

“Sounds like a man who might kill people standing in his way—or who might prefer suicide to the humiliation of arrest and incarceration.”

“Maybe. But the things I just said about him were only my impressions. Don’t mistake them for facts.”

“The text you showed me is a fact.”

“The text is a fact. But there’s no proof that Ranzak wrote it or sent it.”

There was a flash of impatience in Madeleine’s eyes. “It’s consistent with his suicide. Consistent with his having killed those women. Consistent with the egomaniacal personality you described.”

“True,” said Gurney in his mildest tone. His unspoken thought was that consistency was no proof of anything. In fact, too much consistency worried him.

The strain caused by their divergent views was soon apparent in the half-heartedness of Madeleine’s agreement to have lunch with him at Ella’s Homestyle Eatery. Disagreement about one thing tended to seep into other things.

The scene at Ella’s surprised him. He’d expected the lunch crowd to be buzzing with comments about the “suicide” announcement on the Star website. But there was no buzzing. The mood of the place was funereal.

The middle-aged waitress who took their order—a cheeseburger for him, an aggressively healthy spinach salad for Madeleine—barely looked at them. Her red eyes said she’s been crying. The occasional voices at the other tables were muted. The expressions around the room were sad, grim, or shocked.

On the drive back to the Calico Cat, he pointed out on a green hillside a herd of white Charolais cattle—a breed that Madeleine had always spoken of admiringly.

“Hmm,” was her only reply.

As they were getting out of the car in the parking area in front of the inn, she announced that she was going to take another look at the things in the gallery.

Up in their room he opened one of the water bottles in the mini-refrigerator and drank half of it to quench the thirst generated by the cheeseburger. Then he settled down in one of the wing chairs to check his phone for messages, hoping to find one from Barstow. Instead, he found one from his son, Kyle, who he hadn’t heard from in weeks. Or was it months?

The lack of communication between them was nothing new. Nor, he told himself, was it a sign of estrangement. They were always happy to see each other on the occasions when that occurred. And they were closer to each other than he had been with his own father. So, relatively speaking, the situation was . . . okay.

He listened to the message.

“Hi, Dad. How’s everything? Hope you and Maddie are well. It’s been a while. How are the alpacas? Ever think of getting a few more and going into the wool business? Just kidding. I plan to take some time off from my lawyering this summer. Maybe spend a day or two in the bucolic peace of Walnut Crossing. Let me know if there are times that would be best for you guys. Love you.”

While he was listening to it a second time, Madeleine came into the room, carrying a fancy miniature shopping bag. It was glossy green, like the Calico Cat’s front door and shutters. She laid it on the night table on her side of the bed.

“I bought one of the framed poems.”

“Oh?”

“I love the idea. The human instinct to take sides, even when we have no sense of the consequences. Shall I save the wildcat or the rat? Fascinating question, don’t you think?”

He wasn’t sure what he thought about it. But this was no time for equivocation.

“Absolutely!”

She eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then smiled.

He smiled, too—at the mysterious ease with which tensions between them could appear and disappear.

As the afternoon progressed, the sun disappeared behind a bank of clouds. By four o’clock, the gentle breezes of midday had become erratic and the air damper and chillier. A drizzle began around five and strengthened into a slanting rain by five thirty.

At 5:35 the call came from Barstow. As usual, she got directly to the point. “The DNA on the cigarette butt is Ranzak’s. The fingerprints on the Xenon canisters were smudged, but they’re a sixty percent match to his. The DNA we extracted from one of the canister prints is his. The flip phone that we found in the same office area turns out to have been the source of threatening texts sent to you, to your wife, and to Stuart Wilmot.”

“The noose seems to tighten,” said Gurney.

“‘Seems’ is the operative word,” said Barstow. “None of this constitutes proof that he killed the women or was present at the time the murders took place. However, combined with the appearance of suicide and the language of the final text, Troutman and the DA have deemed the evidence adequate to establish a presumption of guilt.”

“Sounds like the phrase ‘rush to judgment’ was invented for that decision.”

“I don’t disagree. I’m just reporting the facts.”

“Their eagerness to close the case has a political odor.”

“As does the fact that the ME is about to formalize a verdict of suicide.”

“A new record for government efficiency.”

They ended the call with a shared sense of unease.

Apparently, that unease was not shared by George Strum.

At seven o’clock that evening, a new headline appeared on the Star website in screamingly large type, followed by what struck Gurney as a needlessly brutal subhead.

FATAL GUILT

Rather than face multiple murder charges,

wealthy entrepreneur Donald Ranzak took own life

with a bullet to the head.

PART FOUR

MONSTER

54

THE DAY AFTER the official proclamation of suicide and his designation as a multiple murderer, Donald Ranzak was elected Gladstone town supervisor.

The Star headline the next morning was bold, crude, and predictable.

DEAD MAN BEATS WILMOT

The story included interviews with Ranzak voters, revealing some reasons for the bizarre outcome.

“Never in a million years could I vote for a little creep like Wilmot.”

“Wilmot hates God, guns, and the USA. So I sent him a message.”

“Dead or alive, Ranzak’s a better man than Wilmot.”

“The contest was between socialism and America. I voted for America.”

Half a dozen Ranzak voters insisted his death was fake news.

Two mistakenly thought they were voting for Wilmot.

But the twists had just begun. The time between Ranzak’s death and the election had not been sufficient to choose a new candidate to oppose Wilmot or to reprint ballots. There was nothing in the Gladstone election bylaws that anticipated the unusual situation that had arisen. However, there was a provision stipulating that if a winning candidate was unable to assume the duties of supervisor, the position would be awarded to the runner-up. Because of this provision, on the day after Ranzak’s posthumous victory, Stuart Wilmot was sworn in as town supervisor.

That, however, was not the end of the matter. On the day after his swearing in, Wilmot posted a statement on the town website, on his Facebook page, and in a full-page ad in the Star.

A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE

Lacking the electoral support of a majority of my fellow citizens,

I can’t help but have a feeling of illegitimacy. Therefore, I will

resign the position of supervisor as soon as the board can pass

an appropriate ordinance to cover the appointment of an interim

supervisor to serve until the next scheduled election. My hope

is that we may be able to put our animosities aside for the good

of our common future in this beautiful place.

God bless Gladstone.

Stuart Wilmot

The whiplash effect left most of Gladstone in a stunned silence that felt like the stillness in the eye of a hurricane.

The weirdness, however, wasn’t intriguing enough to keep Gurney and Madeleine in Gladstone. They packed their bags, thanked Claiborne for his hospitality, and returned to Walnut Crossing—where the first thing Madeleine did was ask Jim Smithers to return the alpaca he’d been minding for them.

Her attention to the lonely creature, to the neglected bird feeders, and to the asparagus bed, along with Gurney’s renewed maintenance of the swaths around the fields, the grassy lane down to the barn, and the trails through the woods, helped shift their thoughts away from the peculiar denouement of the Gladstone affair.

One morning, however, a week after their return to Walnut Crossing, that shift was reversed by the arrival of an unexpected visitor.

An eerily quiet black Mercedes crept up through the low pasture and came to a stop behind the Outback. A hard-faced woman in a green military-adjacent outfit emerged from the driver’s seat and opened the car’s rear door.

Gurney stood up from the café table on the patio, where he’d been enjoying a second cup of coffee, as a tall blond woman in a cream linen pantsuit stepped out of the Mercedes, her gold necklace glittering in the morning sun.

After a brief appraisal of her surroundings, she noticed Gurney and made her way around the asparagus bed to the patio. She smiled without any hint of friendliness.

“I’m Olivia Ranzak. Is it true you’re no longer connected to Stuart Wilmot?”

He suppressed an urge to quibble with “connected.” “True enough. Why do you ask?”

“I want to hire you, if you’re free of competing loyalties. I’ll pay you double what Wilmot was paying you.”

“Your husband made me the same offer.”

“And you turned him down. Something to do with the ethics of abandoning a current client.”

“Something like that.”

“High principles. Pretty clothes for real motives.” She showed her teeth in another emotionless smile. “Are you wondering why I want to hire you?”

“Because you don’t like your husband’s death being ruled a suicide?”

“Donald was capable of many things. Blowing his brains out was not one of them.”

“You want me to prove he was murdered, because his life insurance policy excludes suicide but not murder.”

She appeared taken aback but only for a second. “I don’t like the fact that a corrupt verdict is costing me ten million dollars that I’m entitled to.”

“Are you the sole heir to his other assets?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve heard those assets could be in excess of a hundred million dollars.”

“Your point being?”

“Context.”

“Let me spell it out for you. It’s true that the ten million is a relatively small part of the total coming to me. But I am entitled to it, and I am determined to get every cent of what I am entitled to. Is that sufficient context?”

“Have you shared your opinion of the suicide verdict with the authorities?”

She uttered a short, harsh laugh. “If you mean our chief of police, medical examiner, and district attorney, I wouldn’t waste my time talking to them. The last thing they’d want is an investigation that could reveal the details of their relationships with my husband.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“There was nothing simple about Donald’s relationships.” She glanced around, her gaze resting on the French doors that led from the patio into the house. “I’m thirsty.”

“Sorry?”

“I’d like some water.”

He went into the kitchen, filled a glass, and came out to find her on her phone, sitting at the café table. He placed the glass in front of her. When she ended her call, he sat across from her.

She sipped her water. “An interesting challenge, don’t you agree?”

“Why come to me? You could easily hire a major security firm with a team of investigators. Or have your husband’s attorneys manage the investigation. They would have the necessary resources.”

She ran the pink tip of her tongue along her upper lip. There was something serpentine about it.

“You had a unique impact on Donald. He thought about you a lot.”

“I’m surprised. I didn’t think he liked me.”

“He loathed you. You frightened him. And he was not an easily frightened man. Which makes you a very unusual man. And you’re familiar with Gladstone. Unlike an outside security firm, you can start with your feet on the ground. I’m interested in results, and I see you as the best way to get them. Can we make an arrangement?”

Gurney chose not to answer her question. “What’s the most important thing you can tell me about your husband?”

“Dead husband. I’ll tell you three things. He was practical, clever, and resilient.”

“Those words could add up to almost anything.”

“I’ll tell you what they add up to. The idea that a potentially embarrassing DNA test would motivate Don Ranzak to put a bullet in his head is laughable. Local law enforcers giving it their stamp of approval would be absolutely hysterical, if it weren’t costing me ten million dollars. His practicality, cleverness, and resilience add up to the fact that the suicide verdict is bullshit.”

She paused, held his gaze, and added, “He was not a nice person. You may have gathered that. Neither am I. Like him, I am a pragmatist. I do whatever gets me what I want. But I’m betting your curiosity—your itch to know what really happened—will outweigh your disapproval of people like me.” The tip of her tongue reappeared. “Do we have a deal?”

“I’ll discuss it with my wife and let you know.”

She stood up from the table and displayed her perfect teeth in a distant relative of a smile.

“Soon, I hope. I want my money. All of it.”

Madeleine came home at noon from a practice session with her string quartet. She’d been pushing herself back into the normal routines of her life that had been shattered by the alpaca killing—or murder, as she preferred to call it.

Gurney was at the sink island, washing the water glass used by Olivia Ranzak—washing it thoroughly, an indication of his reaction to the woman.

Apparently noting something unusual in his expression, Madeleine asked a bit too casually, “Anything happen while I was out?”

He placed the glass in the drying rack next to the sink. “Olivia Ranzak paid me a visit. She’s sure that someone murdered her husband—that he was the victim of an elaborate setup.”

A series of emotions flashed through her eyes. “Suggesting that he’s not the murderer we were after?”

“Right. But her opinion is far from objective. There are millions of dollars riding on it.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I don’t disbelieve her.”

“Nice distinction,” she said, clearly annoyed by the distinction. “Tell me about her.”

“Attractively put together. Expensively maintained. Glittery. An odd combination of brutal candor and moral vacuity.”

“Like Ziko Slade’s wife.”

Her comment brought back the image of the seductive woman with ice-cold eyes whom he’d interviewed during his pursuit of the Viper.

“In some ways, yes. But Slade’s wife was off-the-wall impulsive. This Ranzak woman is all about control.”

Madeleine looked across the sink island at him, her expression unreadable. “There was a sign in the office of my therapy practice in the city. ‘Control is the face of concealment.’”

“I’m not saying I trust her. But she might be right about her husband.”

“Right how?”

“That he was too combative to kill himself.”

Madeleine was silent for long moment, as if absorbing the implications. “What do you want to do?”

“I’m thinking it might make sense to take a closer look at the life and death of Don Ranzak. But that’s a decision we need to make together.”

“If you believe there’s a chance that this thing isn’t really over, then it doesn’t seem right to walk away from it.”

55

THAT NIGHT THEY fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The following morning Gurney packed the necessary items for his return to Gladstone. Madeleine spoke to Jim Smithers about taking care of the alpaca for at least the next few days, then made arrangements to spend some time with her sister down in New Jersey, skirting around the reason why.

She explained to Gurney, “It seems like just the other day I was sure that I should be in Gladstone with you, that we’d catch the killer together. But I don’t think my presence there helped. You’re the detective, not me. Besides, two of us together make an easier target.”

“You’ll be safer at your sister’s house than you would be here alone, or even with me, but—”

She interrupted. “But you remember how angry I was when I had to leave here during that awful beheaded-bride case. That was different. I said I was angry at having to go somewhere else to be safe. But my real anger was at you—for doing your job. I saw that as the cause of everything negative in our lives. I don’t feel that way now. I love you, and I want you to do what your mind was made for.”

After that, it seemed there was nothing more to be said. They had a quiet breakfast together, refilled the bird feeders, raked apple-blossom petals off the patio, and waited for Jim Smithers to come for the alpaca. Then, after some quiet time together and a long embrace, they departed in their separate cars.

Gurney spent most of his drive to Gladstone making a mental list of the people he needed to talk to and what he wanted to ask them. He wondered how open he should be about Olivia Ranzak’s suicide skepticism. He thought he should leave that decision up to her.

Since there were other issues he wanted to discuss with her and since his route to Gladstone took him past the Ranzak estate, he decided to return the “favor” of an unannounced visit.

The tall rangy woman, whom he recognized as Olivia’s driver, led him through the mansion’s atrium and center hall into the solarium where he’d met with Don Ranzak. On the far side of the solarium, she slid open a glass door and motioned Gurney out onto a slate patio ten times the size of his own. The view from the patio was of Wynderly Lake.

Olivia Ranzak was sitting at a minimalist glass table. A delicate vase held a single lilac blossom. She wore form-fitting black jeans and a satiny cream-yellow tee shirt. Her hair was brushed back from her face, drawing attention to her perfect cheekbones and flawless skin. She pointed to a second chair at the table.

“You discussed my offer with your wife?”

“I did,” he said, taking the offered seat.

“You’ve decided to accept?”

“I’ve decided to reinvestigate everything that happened, but I don’t want any money from you.”

“What do you want?”

“For now, just honest answers.”

“Ask me whatever you like.”

“How would you describe your relationship with your late husband?”

“Made in heaven.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“Mutually advantageous.”

“In what way?”

“We had similar appetites.”

“Any areas of conflict?”

“None come to mind.”

“Rare thing in a marriage.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Did your late husband have enemies?”

“Everyone with his level of ambition has enemies. Incidentally, please drop the ‘late husband’ formality and call him by his name. ‘Late husband’ sounds like he had trouble arriving on time.”

He wondered if that hard edge was intended to reveal or to conceal her feelings.

“Did he have an enemies list that he shared with you?”

“An ever-changing one. You were at the top of his last one.”

“You told me yesterday that I frightened him. What was he afraid of?”

“He didn’t say.”

“You never asked him?”

“We didn’t intrude into each other lives, unless we were invited.”

“Sounds wise.”

“Yes.”

“But if you had to guess—”

“From time to time, he operated close to the boundaries of legality. It can be a dangerous place.”

“So, he dealt from time to time with—”

“With disreputable people? Yes. Frequently.”

“People capable of murder?”

She shrugged. “Probably.”

“Do you think any of them may have been involved in his death?”

“No. One of his great gifts was an ability to convince dangerous people that he was worth a lot more to them alive than dead.”

“How about his old camp buddies—Lemino, Stone, and Grock?”

“His death was a disaster for all three.”

“How about Stuart Wilmot, in a desperate attempt to win the election?”

“To a position he immediately resigned from? That doesn’t make much sense.”

Gurney couldn’t argue with that. “Speaking of his camp buddies, I see you’ve replaced Harlan Stone with that formidable-looking woman. Have you decided not to rely on Stone and the Brotherhood for your security?”

“My security arrangements are a private matter.”

“One final question. Do you know of anyone, besides yourself, who stands to make a fortune from Donald’s death?”

“No. But money isn’t the only reason for murder.”

56

BY THE TIME he arrived at the Calico Cat, it was close to noon.

His mental list of the people he wanted to talk to included Wilmot, Kyra Barstow, Justin Claiborne, George Strum, and Lawrence Sloane. He hadn’t decided who to start with, but meeting Claiborne in the foyer provided a convenient answer.

“Detective Gurney! Good to see you!” The welcoming words were belied by a shadow of anxiety in his eyes. “I got your message, and the answers is yes, I do have a room for you, the same one you had before. Your wife not with you?”

“Not this time.”

“How long do you plan to stay?”

“Several days. I can’t be more exact than that.”

“Anything to do with Ranzak’s suicide?”

“Actually, that’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

The anxiety in Claiborne’s eyes intensified. “I’ll make some coffee.”

“I’ll put my suitcase upstairs and meet you in your sitting room, if that’s convenient.”

“Perfect,” said Claiborne with more concern that conviction.

When Gurney came down a few minutes later, Claiborne was placing mugs of coffee on a low table between a pair of armchairs in the corner of the room farthest from the big screen on the wall. He waited for Gurney to choose a chair, then perched stiffly on the edge of the other.

“You look worried,” said Gurney.

“I can’t imagine anything you’d want to talk to me about at this point being a pleasant topic.”

“I just have a few questions.” He picked up his mug and took a sip of coffee. “Would you say there’s a general desire around Gladstone to close the book on the Ranzak affair?”

“Absolutely. A horrible person did horrible things, then put an end to his horrible life. The nightmare is over. It’s time to move on.” He picked up the other mug and held it between his hands as if to warm them.

“Is it your sense that everyone in Gladstone is satisfied with the suicide verdict?”

“The people I speak to are more than satisfied. There’s a nice sort of karma in a killer killing himself. It was like the sun coming out after years of darkness.”

“You hated him that much?”

“So did a lot of other people. Hated and feared him.”

“Going back to his days at the camp?”

“Even before that. Did you know he had a brother who drowned?”

“No.”

“Donald was twelve. His little brother Dylan was four. A happy little kid. Donald took him out on the lake in a canoe. The canoe capsized. Donald made it back to shore. Dylan didn’t.”

“You’re suggesting it was something other than an accident?”

“They weren’t wearing life jackets. Donald knew how to swim. Dylan didn’t.”

“Still . . .”

“The thing is, everyone loved Dylan. Everybody talked about what a great little kid he was. Nobody ever said that about Donald. Their parents said things like, ‘If only Donald were more like his little brother.’ Nobody believed the canoe capsized accidentally. But the Ranzak family had money. They made sure there was no investigation. They made the whole thing go away. But it never went away in our minds. Later, when Donald’s father gave him free rein to run the camp, and he started bullying the younger boys, it brought it all back to life. We thought, if he killed his own little brother, he could do that to us, too.”

Gurney frowned in surprise. “That strikes me as quite a significant event, especially in light of the current situation.”

Claiborne responded only with a vague nod.

“I’m surprised you didn’t mention it to me sooner.”

“It’s not something I like to talk about. In fact, I seem to have a mental block that usually keeps me from even thinking about it. And the thing is, no one except Ranzak knows what actually happened. Which makes it worse, in a way. Not knowing.”

“It’s interesting that whatever happened back then, even possible fratricide, doesn’t seem to have discouraged his present voters.”

Claiborne wrapped his hands around his coffee mug again. “I think there are two reasons for that. One, most of his voters are morons. Two, if he did kill his brother, the key fact is that he got away with it, giving him an aura of power, and his followers adore power. In fact, power is his real message—‘I’m your champion. Elect me, and we’ll show the latte-sipping, tree-hugging phonies who’s really in charge!’”

Gurney nodded. “So, even dead, he won the election.”

Claiborne nodded grimly. “But the bright side is that Evie Hubble’s murderer is dead. Kay Eliot’s murderer is dead. Marian Lake’s murderer is dead.” He looked anxiously at Gurney. “I hope you haven’t come back to Gladstone to tell us none of that is true.”

“Maybe it’s true. Maybe it isn’t.”

Claiborne looked like he’d been punched but said nothing.

After taking a few more sips of his coffee, Gurney went up to his room and transferred the contents of his suitcase to the bureau. He hesitated briefly over what to do with his Beretta, then slipped it into his ankle holster and strapped it on.

The gun brought the Fallen Angel shooting to mind—an incident that made less sense every time he thought about it. Like the mirror shooting in Marian Lake’s apartment, it tantalized and frustrated him.

Although he had little hope that it would produce any revelations, he decided in the spirit of thoroughness to revisit the Fallen Angel.

He stopped along the way at a hardware store to pick up an extension ladder. He stopped again for a lunchtime slice of convenience-store pizza and a diet cola, a probable heartburn-producing combination, but his hunger was real and the consequences still theoretical. So he ate the pizza and drank the cola and drove on. By the time he reached the barn that housed the Fallen Angel bookstore downstairs and the Lake apartment upstairs, the consequences were becoming more than theoretical.

His attention, however, was diverted by a crew-cab pickup in the parking area and a dumpster at the bookstore’s front door. As soon as he got out of his car, he could hear the banging, prying, ripping sounds of demolition coming from inside the building.

He squeezed past the dumpster and entered what was once the bookstore but was now an open area of deconstructed bookshelves, twisted metal, and plaster dust. Dust-coated workers were organizing the debris into separate piles of plasterboard, wood, and scrap metal. A short brown-skinned man who seemed to be in charge approached Gurney.

“Can I help you, sir?” His tone translated the words into Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?

“I’m an investigator, looking into a shooting that occurred here a couple of weeks ago.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Gurney tried asking a question in a way that implied he knew more than he did. “You and your crew just handling the demolition or the whole conversion?”

“That’s up to Mr. Sloane.”

Gurney nodded knowingly to hide his surprise that the control of the place had apparently ended up with Marian’s estranged brother. “Larry does like to take his time with decisions.”

The man’s expression was unreadable.

Gurney added, “I’ll be out of your way in a minute. I just need to check a couple of bullet holes.”

Bullet holes were obviously news to the man, news that gave Gurney new status. He stepped back to let him pass.

The checkout counter that had served as the final location of the bullet that grazed Wilmot’s arm was still in place. The lectern shattered by the other bullet had been removed, but the impact point in the checkout counter would serve the purpose he had in mind.

He began by repeating the exercise he went through during his previous exploration of the bullet’s trajectory—eyeing its path in reverse, from the impact point out through the entry hole in the window and across the field to its origin point in the evergreen thicket. Keeping his eye on the origin point, he went to the window and photographed that area of the thicket with his phone.

Recalling that Wilmot told him there was a private staircase connecting the bookstore with her apartment, he eventually found it behind a sliding door behind the podium.

The apartment looked the same as it had on the day his reflection in the mirror was shattered, perhaps a little dustier. He repeated his trajectory-establishing process—creating a straight line from the impact point on the mirror out through the entry hole in the apartment window to the origin point in the thicket, which he then photographed. He noted that it was equally elevated but at least ten or fifteen feet horizontally separated from the origin point of the shot that hit Wilmot. He guessed the likely reason for the difference was that no single position would give the shooter a clear view through both windows.

Before leaving the apartment, he called Lawrence Sloane. The call went to voicemail, and he left a message.

“This is Dave Gurney. I’m back in Gladstone for a second look at the Ranzak affair. I’d love to get the benefit of your recollections and insight. I can drop by whenever it’s convenient for you. Let me know. Thank you.”

He went back downstairs and out through the gutted bookstore to his car to get his new extension ladder. With the photo on his phone guiding him, he started across the field toward the thicket, ladder in hand.

The wild grasses and scattered briars had nearly doubled in height since his previous visit, obscuring the ground and entangling the ladder. After several stumbles, he reached the pine his experiment identified as the origin of the shot that wounded Wilmot. He looked up past the lower branches to an area he estimated to be about fifteen feet above the ground, where the trajectory began. He extended the ladder to its full height, steadied it against the trunk, and made his way up.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Perhaps the attachment hardware of a minimalist tree stand or rifle support device that had been removed prior to his inspection of the area the morning after the shooting? Perhaps some screw or nail holes in the trunk?

He saw nothing that intrusive, nothing that obvious, nothing at all . . . except . . . an almost-invisible abrasion on the bark just below the top rung of his ladder. It was the sort of mark that might have been made by another ladder. By itself, it meant little. It did encourage a renewed examination of that area, but he saw nothing else of interest.

Then, as he was rebalancing the ladder against the trunk to steady it before descending, his hand touched something sticky. Curious, he felt around the sides of the trunk and discovered several more sticky spots. His first thought was that they might be bits of dried sap. But he knew from his trees in Walnut Crossing that sap deposits tended to be shiny. These were dull.

His phone rang. Hanging on to the ladder with one hand, he extracted it from his pocket with the other. The name on the screen was Lawrence Sloane.

The man’s voice was as smooth and cool as polished gold.

“If you come now, I can give you half an hour.”

The same young man who opened the iron gate on Gurney’s first visit was on duty again. The easy smile and casual attire of a pampered Ivy League golfer was belied by steely eyes and the hard-muscled arms of a middleweight boxer. He spoke with military-style precision.

“Mr. Sloane will see you in the main house. Follow the driveway and park behind his Land Rover. The housekeeper will meet you at the front door.”

The long gravel driveway was remarkably free of detritus from the surrounding woods. The Land Rover was of the vintage seen in old safari movies.

As Gurney stepped onto the porch of the big white colonial, the front door opened, and a female version of the gatekeeper regarded him with a cool smile and cold eyes. She led him through a carpeted hallway to a room whose built-in bookshelves, huge fieldstone hearth, and dark leather furniture reminded Gurney of a British movie version of a rich man’s den.

Sloane was sitting in a maroon leather armchair to one side of the hearth. He wore a tweedy-looking sport jacket with suede elbow patches. A glass of sherry rested under a Tiffany reading lamp on a small antique table by his chair. He motioned Gurney to a similar chair facing his on the opposite side of the hearth. He picked up his sherry, sipped it appreciatively, and placed it back on the table. He waited until Gurney was seated before speaking.

“I understand you were traipsing around the Fallen Angel, talking about bullet holes, heading off into the woods with a ladder. Care to explain?”

“Gladly. But first, let me express my condolences at the death of your sister. During my brief contact with her, I found her to be a charming, intelligent woman. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“To be perfectly honest, I experienced no great sense of loss. It was many years since we’d had any meaningful contact. Marian believed in rebellion for rebellion’s sake. She was a lifelong adolescent. A fantasist. Quite tiresome.”

The unnecessary criticism of the dead woman irked Gurney. “Apparently she felt close enough to you to leave you the Fallen Angel property.”

Sloane’s expression combined surprise and annoyance. “There was no closeness involved. The transfer of ownership was stipulated in a contract. I provided assistance in her acquisition of the land and building, with the understanding that it would revert to me in the event or her death or incapacity. In effect, I was lending her the temporary use of the place. But none of that should be of concern to you. Now, perhaps you’ll tell me what you were doing there.”

“I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened the night Stuart Wilmot and Gordon Phelps came close to being killed.”

“I was told the police had concluded that Gladstone’s recent crimes were engineered by Don Ranzak and that his suicide was, so to speak, the final nail in his coffin. You don’t agree with that assessment?”

“I don’t agree or disagree. I’m just curious about certain peculiarities.”

“Such as?”

“To begin with, the two shots fired into the Fallen Angel bookstore came from different guns, both apparently fired from halfway up a tree.”

Sloane picked up his sherry and studied it as though it might contain an explanation. “Perhaps Ranzak had a confederate with him—or sent two confederates.”

“Two confederates? Halfway up the same tree? Then, a couple of days later, he sent another confederate up another tree to take a shot at my reflection in Marian’s mirror? Apart from the comical awkwardness of assassins dragging ladders in and out of the woods—the real question is, what was the point?”

Sloane continued examining his sherry, tilting the elegant little glass from side to side. “Perhaps to scare Wilmot out of the race for supervisor? And scare you out of Gladstone?”

“Possibly. But the thing is, both shootings had the opposite effect—making Wilmot more determined to win and presenting me with the sort of challenge no detective worth a damn would ignore.”

Sloane shrugged. “Maybe scaring you wasn’t the goal. Maybe both events were attempts at murder.”

“But why make it so difficult? The day Wilmot and I visited Marian’s apartment, we met outside in her parking area. If someone wanted us dead, why not shoot us both right there? Why wait until we were upstairs in her apartment, and then just shoot at my reflection in a mirror?”

“Quite a conundrum.” Sloane laid his sherry glass on the table. “But surely you didn’t come here to mystify me with these questions.”

“True. What I’m more interested in is your perspective on certain past events. For example, the drowning of Dylan Ranzak.”

Sloane blinked—the closest Gurney had seen him come to showing surprise.

“What on earth are you suggesting?”

“It seems to have been the root of some local animosities toward Donald Ranzak.”

“You’re talking about something that happened more than twenty years ago.”

“Some hatreds grow more poisonous as time passes.”

Sloane reached out vaguely in the direction of his sherry glass and knocked it over. He frowned at the toppled glass, as though it had misbehaved.

“Carla!”

The woman who’d led Gurney to the room appeared at the doorway. Sloane pointed to the toppled glass. She stepped away, reappearing less than a minute later with a fresh glass of sherry and a towel. She wiped up the spilled liquid and retreated with the original glass.

“Yes, some hatreds do grow deeper as the years pass,” said Sloane, responding to Gurney’s last comment as though their conversation hadn’t been interrupted. “Like untreated infections.”

He paused for a sip of his new sherry. “So, what exactly are you asking me?”

“I’ve been told the accidental-death verdict was met with general disbelief. Why?”

“Mainly because of Donald’s vile character.”

“Even as a twelve-year-old?”

“Some people at the time considered him quite capable of fratricide.”

“Were you one of those?”

“I was. The Ranzak family character had always been rather sketchy. Bit of good, bit of bad—mostly bad, but not irredeemable. Tricky dealing, an unseemly aggressiveness, heavy finger on the butcher’s scale, if you get my meaning.”

“I do.”

“But then a curious thing happened. The family produced those two boys, Donald and Dylan. Night and day. Everything dark in the Ranzak gene pool ended up in Donald, everything bright in Dylan. An unfortunate dichotomy. Cain and Abel.”

“How thoroughly was Dylan’s drowning investigated?”

“A few polite questions, answers taken at face value.”

“The family was that powerful?”

“The Ranzaks always invested in positive relationships with the local police. They wanted the drowning case closed quickly, and it was. I’m not an ideal source of information on the subject, not having been in Gladstone when it happened. My mother’s family had a pleasant getaway in the Scottish Highlands, and we often spent summers there. Delightful that time of year. Winters another matter entirely. Probably why the Scots drink so much.”

He picked up his glass of sherry. As he studied the amber liquid, the frown lines on his forehead deepened. “Do you believe there may be something not quite right about the police version of our recent tragedies?”

“I suspect some details may have been overlooked.”

“Details concerning Ranzak’s suicide?”

“Among others.”

He lowered his glass and stared at Gurney. “You think someone else may have blown that son of a bitch’s head off?”

“It’s possible.”

“Anything is possible. What I’m asking is, in your opinion, was it suicide or not?”

“I don’t have enough evidence to have an opinion. Let me ask you a more interesting question. Which would you prefer Ranzak’s death to be—murder or suicide?”

“Suicide, without a doubt.”

“Why?”

“Because I can imagine no experience worse than being trapped in a situation so awful you can only escape from it by killing yourself.”

“That’s what you hope happened to Don Ranzak?”

The cold smile on Sloane’s face was answer enough.

57

GURNEY SPENT MOST of the drive to the Calico Cat pondering Sloane’s wish for Ranzak. He’d rarely heard such hatred expressed so calmly. If, as the saying went, revenge was a dish best served cold, Sloane seemed to have achieved the ideal temperature.

But revenge for what? Surely, it would have to be something more personal to him than the drowning of Dylan Ranzak. More to the point, was it conceivable that Sloane was involved in Ranzak’s death? Could he have been that desperate to stop Ranzak’s development plans? Had those plans posed an existential threat to his cherished way of life—or to his life itself?

It was hard to imagine a development plan that could only be responded to lethally. People with Sloane’s financial resources could find ways to tie things up in the courts for years. Wouldn’t a complex lawsuit be more his style than a hollow-point slug to the head?

His train of thought was broken by a call from Wilmot.

He pulled over on the shoulder to take it.

“Stuart?

“Tell me it isn’t true!”

“Sorry?”

“Justin Claiborne just told me you want to reopen the Ranzak case.”

“I don’t have the power to reopen anything.”

“But you’re back in Gladstone. Asking questions. Why?”

“Loose ends trouble my sleep.”

“What loose ends?”

Gurney wasn’t sure how much more of this conversation he wanted overheard by whoever had planted the bug in his car. He decided to play it safe. “I’ll be at Latte-Latte in about ten minutes. We can talk about it there.”

Latte-Latte perfectly embodied the image the town was endeavoring to project—up-to-the-minute with pomegranate juice, acai-infused everything, and obscure varieties of kombucha, all wrapped in a faux-industrial environment of exposed brick walls, distressed pine flooring, and antique lighting fixtures. The goal seemed to be the creation of a comfort zone for hipsters. There were few aesthetic concepts Gurney found less attractive. But the coffee was quite good, as long as one steered clear of the more imaginative concoctions.

He chose a table farthest from those occupied by the late lunchers. While he was waiting for Wilmot, he sent a text to Olivia Ranzak: “Would you have any objection to my telling Wilmot about your dissatisfaction with the suicide verdict?”

A reply text arrived less than a minute later: “TELL ANYONE YOU WISH. TELL TROUTMAN AND HOSKINS YOU’RE BACK. TELL THEM YOU PLAN TO REVEAL THE TRUTH. MAKE THEM SWEAT.”

Gurney wondered if the shouting tone of the typography represented a heightened commitment to the battle or too many gin and tonics. He glanced up and saw Wilmot making his way toward him with a worried frown.

He started speaking when he was only halfway seated. “When you mentioned ‘loose ends,’ you weren’t referring to anything major, were you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“About what?”

“How well the evidence supports the police conclusions.”

“Their conclusions about Ranzak’s suicide?”

“His wife claims he was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Wilmot’s expression morphed from anxiety into shrewdness. “But that would be to her advantage, wouldn’t it? From an insurance point of view?”

Gurney said nothing.

“You were talking to her?”

“Yes.”

“Did it sound like wishful thinking? Or does she actually know something?”

“She’s sure that suicide would be out of character.”

“Maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.”

Gurney stood up from the table. “I’m going to the counter to get a coffee. Can I get one for you?”

“Small latte.”

Five minutes later, Gurney returned with Wilmot’s latte and a double espresso for himself. He settled down on his fashionably rickety chair and took a sip of his espresso.

“I saw your resignation announcement online. Caught me by surprise.”

“It seemed the right thing to do, under the circumstances.”

“I assume not all of your supporters agreed.”

“Not all. Possibly none. But they’ll come around. What we fought for will be preserved. My resignation won’t become effective until the election bylaws are changed and there’s a process for appointing my successor. I’ll continue as supervisor until then, with a lot of influence over the changes. The protection of our environment will be codified, with no chance of anyone reviving Ranzak’s plan. Then I can go back to my job at the library, which I’m looking forward to.”

A silence followed, broken by Gurney. “Let’s suppose for a moment that Olivia is right, and it wasn’t a suicide.”

Wilmot’s lips curled in an expression of distaste.

Gurney continued, “That would mean that the killer was either with him when he left home for his DNA appointment at the police station or that the killer stopped him on the road or met him at the ghost barn. It was almost certainly someone he knew. Do you have any idea who that might be?”

Wilmot shook his head. “When you say ‘someone he knew,’ that doesn’t narrow it down. Everyone knows everyone in Gladstone. And God knows he had enemies. Pretty much everyone who voted for me, for starters.”

“How about Lawrence Sloane?”

“Are you serious? Amontillado-sipping, country-squire Larry, who imagines he lives in the nineteenth-century Cotswolds?”

“I just spoke to him, and his comments on Ranzak were chilling. I’m not talking about the kind of contempt that’s part of social snobbery. This was deep-seated hatred.”

“Really? I would have sworn Larry’s bloodlust was limited to pheasants.”

“Maybe it is. If hate always led to murder, the population of our planet would be a lot smaller. But Larry Sloane definitely has a dark side, and it’s not a pretty thing to see.”

A brief silence was broken by Wilmot. “The loose ends you mentioned—were they connected with Larry?”

“Not necessarily. And ‘peculiarities’ may be a better term. The murders of Evie, Kay, and Marian seem needlessly elaborate, if the goal was simply to get rid of them. And the theory that Ranzak committed suicide to avoid being implicated in those deaths seems weak. A man with his money would be more likely to leave the country for a comfortable life somewhere else or have a team of high-powered attorneys rip the prosecution’s case to shreds. Also, the gunshots at the Fallen Angel and in Marian’s apartment don’t make much sense. In fact, nothing that’s happened here seems logical.”

Wilmot gazed darkly at his latte, as if it were part of the puzzle.

“What do you plan to do?”

“I’m going to talk to George Strum, ask if he might be interested in having a controversial guest on his next Livestream webcast.”

58

SINCE THE GENTRIFIED factory building that housed the Tri-County Star was only a few blocks away, Gurney left his car across from Latte-Latte and walked there.

The rusty-chic decor of the lobby, featuring an artistic display of corroded machinery, was as he remembered it—as was the rosy-cheeked young woman at the reception desk and the big screen on the wall behind her, which displayed the front page of the Star. The current headline was accompanied by a photo of a huge slurry tank at the edge of a muddy field.

BIG STINK DIVIDES NEIGHBORS

Town Board Hears Odor Complaints

Owners of the Tibetan Tea Shop claim fertilizer

tank on nearby farm is driving customers away

Evidently, the Star had moved on from the seemingly settled Ranzak affair to the latest local controversy.

The receptionist smiled inquiringly. “Can I help you?”

“Dave Gurney to see George Strum.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

Her smile turned to concern. “He’s quite busy.”

“Tell him the Ranzak suicide verdict may have been a giant screwup, and some important people may end up embarrassed. Or worse.”

Two minutes later, Gurney was in Strum’s big corner office, facing his formidable piece of rust art. Strum stood up from his desk and made his way gingerly around the display’s jagged edges.

“A giant screwup?” His tone was skeptical, but there was excitement in his eyes.

“There’s a decent chance that Don Ranzak was murdered, and that the quick suicide verdict was an attempt to avoid a serious investigation.”

Strum raised his head slightly, a predator catching the scent of blood.

After a brief conversation, that scent resulted in an invitation to Gurney to be interviewed that evening—an interview teased in an emergency bulletin on the Star website:

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR LAUNCHES EXPLOSIVE

ASSAULT ON RANZAK SUICIDE VERDICT

SHOCKING DETAILS AT 7:00 P.M. ON STAR LIVESTREAM

Having committed himself to an aggressive approach, Gurney wanted every bit of information he could get. As soon as he got back to his room at the Calico Cat, he called the only source he really trusted.

“Hi, Kyra. In an effort to shake things up in Gladstone, I’ve maneuvered myself into a somewhat challenging position.”

“How surprising.” Her tone was cool but not unfriendly.

“I need a clearer perspective on the evidence. You gave me a quick description of the scene by the ghost barn where Ranzak’s body was found. You also mentioned DNA and fingerprint evidence that seemed to put Ranzak at the location of the three murders. Everything you told me seemed consistent with the official verdict of suicide and the presumptive verdict of his guilt in the murders.”

“So?”

“Am I right in assuming that Troutman wanted your report to be limited to a description of the physical evidence, as opposed to possible interpretations of that evidence?”

“That would be fair to say.”

“Might you be willing, off the record, to poke holes in the police interpretation of the facts you provided?”

“I’m not crazy about the ‘poking holes’ idea. However, there is an evidentiary oddity that didn’t occur to me until after the suicide verdict was announced—at which point the police had zero interest in any further discussion.”

“An oddity?”

“The final entry in the nav system in Ranzak’s car was the geolocation of the ghost barn.”

“Which is where he ended up.”

“Exactly.”

It took a moment for the key question to occur to him. “Why would Ranzak bother to enter the coordinates of a place he was familiar with? A place less than ten minutes from his home? A place he’d visited God only knows how many times in his summer-camp years?”

“Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“None at all,” replied Gurney. “Not if we accept the official version of what happened.”

“Can you think of any version in which it might make sense?”

“How about a version in which someone else entered those coordinates?”

Barstow sounded intrigued. “Who could that be?”

“The person who shot him.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Ranzak was supposed to be driving that morning to the police station to provide his DNA sample. His appointment time was public knowledge. Troutman had announced it. There’s only one route from his home to the village. Suppose someone stopped him on that road, leaned into the car, shot him, then programmed the self-driving feature, so the car would take him to the ghost barn.”

“Sounds possible. But don’t those self-driving systems require some involvement from the driver? And by the way, Ranzak did have gunshot residue on his hand.”

“Gunshot residue is easy to set up. In fact, it was done to me, when someone was trying to frame me in the middle of the Viper case. You just hold a gun in the unconscious victim’s hand and fire it. As for the required driver input in self-driving systems, I’ll bet the system in Ranzak’s million-dollar car requires very little. Probably none.”

“Sounds logical enough. But it might not be the only explanation.”

Gurney was irritated by her comment, but he couldn’t deny the truth of it. He knew the danger of committing too soon to a bright idea.

“The DNA and fingerprints connecting Ranzak to the murder scene—how solid is that?”

She hesitated. “Sometimes that sort of evidence can seem more incriminating than it actually is.”

“Could this be one of those times?”

“A good defense attorney would think so. The main DNA source was on the cigarette butt we found outside the building where the coffin was located. It’s definitely Ranzak’s, but it could have been planted. The DNA attaches him to the cigarette, not to the scene. The situation is similar with the fingerprints. The only perfectly clear one is on a piece of a broken water glass in the camp office. Again, it’s Ranzak’s, but easily portable. There are other prints on objects in the office—the xenon canister, for example—but they’re smudged. As you know, fingerprints can be transferred, using lifting tape, from an original source to a secondary object. Sometimes that process leaves microscopic residues from the tape, but not always.”

“So, you’re telling me there’s no incontrovertible evidence connecting Ranzak to the murders of those women. And the GPS peculiarity raises a definite question about his supposed suicide.”

“Christ, David, you know as well as I do that incontrovertible evidence of guilt is a rarity, and its absence is no indication of innocence.”

“True. But Troutman’s rush to issue the verdict he did raises serious questions.”

“Questions I’m sure you’ll be asking.”

“Which reminds me—did the police send the ‘suicide’ text out for forensic linguistic analysis?”

“Not through my office.”

“That probably means not at all. Could you have that done?”

“I could send it to an outfit I know of in Albany, along with samples of Ranzak’s published letters to the editor for comparison.” She paused. “Do you want Russell Forensics to cover the cost of that?”

“Absolutely not. I’ll take care of it. And thank you. Again.”

“My motive is not unselfish. I like to see evidence used honestly, not as a justification for a predetermined objective. It should be respected, and respect is demonstrated by thorough examination. End of soapbox speech. What I’m saying is, if you need help in looking closer at the evidence in this case, I’ll do what I can.”

“Got it.”

At 7:00 p.m., Gurney was sitting across from George Strum at the Lucite coffee table in the corner of his huge office.

A willowy young man with a platinum crew cut and shiny facial piercings was operating an expensive-looking camera on a tripod. Strum turned in his chair to face the camera.

“Welcome to this special edition of Livestream. I’m George Strum. My guest this evening is David Gurney, the investigator who’s taken a personal interest in Gladstone’s recent tragedies. He’s come here this evening to share his highly controversial opinion regarding the official verdicts on the murders of Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, and Marian Lake and the subsequent suicide of Don Ranzak.”

He turned toward Gurney. “You say that the police, the medical examiner, and the district attorney got it all wrong. That’s a pretty outrageous claim. Can you back it up?”

Gurney leaned forward. “First, let me correct that introduction. I’m not claiming they got it all wrong. I’m saying there’s no compelling evidence that they got it right. Bits of evidence have been stitched together that might connect Ranzak to the three murders. Or they might not. Regarding his supposed suicide, the evidence for that is shaky, to put it mildly. In fact, some evidence suggests the suicide scene was staged by a clever killer.”

“Are you telling us we may have a multiple murderer—not only of the women but of Don Ranzak—on the loose in Gladstone?”

“I’m telling you that the purpose of my investigation is to reach a conclusion based on the facts—not on a half-baked investigation and a rush to judgment.”

Strum turned toward the camera. “Wow! There you have it, folks. The battle lines have been drawn. On one side, we have former New York City detective Dave Gurney, no newcomer to defying our upstate police departments. On the other side, we have the entire law-enforcement establishment of Gladstone! Watch our website for up-to-the-minute bulletins on this fast-developing and very volatile situation!”

Strum rose from his chair and gave Gurney a quick, perfunctory smile.

“If you have anything else outrageous to say, we’re here for you. Free speech ain’t worth a damn without drama. You have a nice day!”

As Gurney was passing through the lobby, his phone rang. It was Olivia, sounding like she’d had one too many gin and tonics.

“Bravo!”

“Thank you.”

“Stick it to them. Make the pigs squeal.”

“I appreciate the advice.”

“Drop by for a drink, and I’ll give you some more.”

“Another time. Right now, I need to keep a close eye on the reactions to my interview.”

By the time he reached his car, text messages had begun accumulating on his phone.

From Stuart Wilmot: “Why are you trying to rehabilitate the image of Don Ranzak?”

From the three sisters at the Blue Moth Collective: “Why are you protecting that devil from the judgment he deserves? Everyone here is sad and furious.”

From Justin Claiborne: “What?!?!”

From Felicity Hubble Potts: “Are you the new mouthpiece for the piece of garbage who murdered my sister? Who’s paying you to spout that ‘no compelling evidence’ bullshit?”

From Arbor Lockwood: “I thought you were one of those rare cops with integrity. You just proved I was wrong.”

From Dr. Aldon Sterne: “Interesting interview, Mr. Gurney. I gather you’re keeping an open mind about Ranzak’s guilt, as well as his reported suicide. Rushing to judgment is among the more pernicious mental quirks of our species—perhaps the most dangerous, since it often masks an ugly agenda. I commend your search for the truth—a rare commodity in our angry world.”

He reread Sterne’s text with mixed feelings. He appreciated its rational tone, but it seemed more than a little chilly in the context of Kay Eliot’s terrible death.

The text messages came only from that handful of Wilmot supporters to whom he had given his cell number. He’d surely find a different range of responses on the Star website.

Positive opinions from Ranzak fans filled the comments section, but while those opinions endorsed his words, they were critical of him personally. The first one set the aggressive tone for all that followed.

So, the big-city detective finally got his head out of his ass and realized that Don Ranzak was the innocent victim of a frame job complete with planted evidence and a so-called “suicide” that everyone knew was OBVIOUSLY FAKE and an attempt by socialist scum to destroy his GREAT PLANS for Gladstone. This is TOTAL VINDICATION for Don Ranzak!!!!

Clearly, the divided feelings about the man hadn’t been diminished by his death. If anything, they’d grown deeper and more aggressive.

As he followed the gently curving road through the valley toward the Calico Cat, the sun was just above the ridgeline of the western hills, bathing the world in a soft golden light, so incongruous with local emotions it might have been interpreted as a message from the universe to keep things in perspective.

After pulling into the parking area, he sat there for a while, pondering his next move. Several minutes of considering and dismissing possible options ended with his phone ringing and Madeleine’s name appearing on the screen.

Assuming the bug was still active, he opted for caution and got out of the car before answering. “I’m here. Just arrived at the Cat.”

“I saw you being interviewed by that Strum person.”

“And?”

“I got the impression you were doing that thing you call ‘strategic disruption’—making people believe you know something that’s going to turn the case upside down, then watching to see if any rats leave the ship. Am I right?”

“More or less.”

“And despite its dangers, you’ve always been lucky enough to get away with it.”

“You sound like you think this time may be different.”

“You claimed that a man accused of killing three women and himself probably didn’t.”

“Possibly didn’t.”

“Nice distinction. But I’m sure what most people heard was ‘probably’—or even ‘definitely,’ if they didn’t want to believe the police verdict in the first place. They heard there’s no proof that Ranzak killed anybody. Therefore he didn’t. Therefore someone else did. Therefore everyone is lying to us. This time you haven’t tossed a hand grenade through some anonymous villain’s window, you’ve tossed into the middle of Gladstone.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you’ve turned a tense situation into an explosive one. Be careful.”

He thanked her with very little gratitude in his tone and ended the call. He suspected she was right, but—

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of crunching gravel, as a dark sedan turned into the parking area and came to a stop next to him.

Hoskins got out of the driver’s seat and approached Gurney, who was still standing by the Outback. The man’s expression suggested an attack of acid reflux. He stared at Gurney for a long moment before speaking.

“What the hell are you playing at?”

Gurney opted for honesty.

“Let’s take a little walk, and I’ll explain what I’m trying to do.”

Hoskins looked surprised and suspicious. Gurney persuaded Hoskins to follow him around the inn and across the field to the same bench where he’d spoken with Wilmot. Only the tip of the sun was still visible above the western ridge. Due to the semi-drought, the sound of the stream had become a soft murmur.

Gurney sat at one end of the bench. Hoskins remained standing, glaring alternately at the bench and the surrounding field. Gurney spoke first.

“You asked what I’m playing at. It’s not a bad question. I’m trying to make someone feel insecure enough to react unwisely.”

Hoskins glared at him. “The hell is that supposed to mean? Looks to me like you’re trying to start a fucking war.”

“If someone other than Ranzak killed those women, I want him to think he’ll be the target of a reopened investigation. If he’s agitated enough, he’ll make mistakes.”

“We’ve got enough goddamn agitation in Gladstone without you stirring up more of it. You walked into this town, not knowing a fucking thing about the people here. But that didn’t stop you from having big opinions. When those women turned up dead, you said we were too easy on Ranzak. You said everything pointed to him. You went searching for evidence to incriminate him. You said you weren’t on anybody’s side, but that was bullshit. You were right in the middle of Wilmot’s crowd of freaks. But as soon as we concluded that Ranzak was guilty of murder and suicide—based on DNA and fingerprints—you did a fucking pirouette!”

Hoskins was pacing back and forth between the bench and the stream, his voice rising. “‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ you said. ‘There’s no real evidence against him, nothing! The police department is corrupt! Ranzak’s getting framed!’ Jesus fucking Christ! What bullshit! Have you lost your fucking mind? You get on that fucking Livestream thing, you take a closed case, you slander everyone responsible for closing it! What’s the next pirouette? I can’t wait to hear what bullshit comes out of your fucking mouth tomorrow. Maybe Chief Troutman killed everyone? Or maybe the governor? Or Mother fucking Teresa! You getting my point, Gurney?”

Gurney produced a weary smile. “Loud and clear. But you’re missing mine.”

Hoskins stopped pacing and took a truculent step closer to Gurney’s end of the bench.

“I’m missing your point? The point that keeps changing? That’s what I’m fucking missing?”

“Nothing’s changed. I never believed in Ranzak’s guilt, and I don’t believe in his innocence now.”

“What kind of double-talk bullshit is that?”

“What I’ve believed from the beginning is that the evidence needs to be examined closely and questioned—not only for what it might mean, but for why it might be present. My message to you, to George Strum, to anyone willing to listen, has always been the same. Study the evidence. Question the evidence. And question your possible motive for seeing it the way you do. Even the best detectives can fool themselves about the reasons for their conclusions. Convenience is a deadly warper of judgment. Which reminds me—did you subject Ranzak’s ‘suicide’ text to a forensic linguistic analysis?”

Hoskins didn’t reply.

“If he didn’t write it, the suicide verdict goes out the window, along with his responsibility for the three murders.”

“Fuck you! There was a lot more evidence than that text. As for forensic linguistics, it’s about as scientific as tea leaves.”

Gurney decided not to argue the point. There was another door he wanted to open.

“The evidence I’m aware of supports half a dozen plausible scenarios. The official version is just one of them, and probably not the best.”

Hoskins made a scoffing sound, but there was curiosity in his eyes.

Gurney let that curiosity grow for a few seconds before proceeding in a speculative tone. “Suppose someone killed those three women for personal reasons. Maybe very sick reasons, considering the awful way they died. Suppose the killer did it in the midst of a hate-filled political battle to throw up a smoke screen and did it on Ranzak’s property to incriminate him—then killed Ranzak and staged it as a suicide to make sure that’s where all the attention and suspicion would flow. It would take a very smart, very cool killer to pull it off, but it strikes me as a credible possibility—maybe not far from your own first thoughts when you saw the burial site in the ghost barn.”

Hoskins turned away and gazed at the stream.

Gurney added, “If you want to take a second look at the case, the logistics involved in the acquisition of the coffin would be a good place to start.”

If Hoskins’s mind had been open for a moment, the moment passed.

“Nobody’s taking any second looks. A closed case is a closed case.”

He strode back across the field and around the inn to his car. A few seconds later, Gurney heard it departing in the direction of the village.

Hoskins’s lack of interest in the sourcing of the coffin seemed to confirm, as much as any other detail of the investigation, an avoidance of available facts. Which made Gurney all the more eager to dig into them. But first, he needed some information from Barstow.

He resisted an urge to interrupt her evening with a call to her personal number. Instead, he left a message on her office voicemail.

“Quick question about that coffin. When you examined it, did you find the manufacturer’s name, or a model number? Any identifying information would be helpful.”

When Gurney awoke the following morning, a text from Barstow was already on his phone:

Source: Comfort Caskets LLC

Address: Glory Road, High Valley, Maine

Model: Fond Memories

He showered, shaved, dressed, and went downstairs for a breakfast of coffee, scrambled eggs, and one of Claiborne’s croissants. Over a second cup of coffee, he searched the internet for Comfort Caskets LLC. The headline on their website was set in elaborate cursive type: “Say Farewell to Your Loved One With Style and Grace.”

It was only a minute past eight, but he decided to try the phone number on the site anyway. He finished his coffee and retreated to his room for privacy.

To his surprise, the call was answered immediately by a live voice. The tone was syrupy.

“Good morning. I’m Gideon Hartley of Comfort Caskets, the gentle way to say goodbye. How may I be of assistance?”

Gurney spoke with a strain of sadness in his voice.

“It’s a . . . difficult subject to discuss, Mr. Hartley.”

“It always is. I understand completely. Take your time. And please, call me Gideon.”

“Thank you, Gideon. I’m inquiring on behalf of a close relative who wants to manage his own end-of-life experience.”

“As so many do these days, for so many good reasons.”

“Well . . . he’s asked for my help in making certain inquiries, if you get what I mean.”

“I understand perfectly, Mr. . . . ?”

“Bottomly. Charles Bottomly.”

“As I was about to say, Mr. Bottomly—”

“Charles.”

“Ah. Well. Charles. As I was saying, I understand perfectly. Planning the arrangements, acquiring the necessities, choosing a suitable casket in harmony with one’s personality. It can all seem rather daunting.”

“Exactly. I’m trying to help my relative at this difficult time, but I have no experience, just questions. Must I deal with a funeral home? Or some sort of casket retailer? Or might we be able to deal with you directly?”

“You can deal with me directly, but there’s an even simpler option you might prefer. It might sound surprising at first, but it’s become popular these days, as more people choose to control the details of their own passing. You can actually order the casket of your choice from our dedicated site on Amazon—and have it delivered within forty-eight hours by our special freight service, at no extra charge. It’s simple, fast, and economical.”

“I’d never have imagined it could be that easy.”

“Many of the folks we’ve served have said exactly that.”

“You can deliver anywhere?”

“Anywhere is the good old USA.”

“I ask because we live in a very rural part of upstate New York. Delivery people have been known to get lost here.”

“I’m sure there’ll be no problem. Where exactly do you live?”

“We’re north of the Catskill Mountains, between the Catskills and the Adirondacks. The nearest town would be Gladstone.”

“Gladstone? Hold on a moment, while I check something.”

Gurney heard tapping on a keyboard. Then Hartley’s voice.

“You’re in luck, Charles. We had a recent delivery in your area—just a couple of months ago. And there was no problem at all.”

“Here? In Gladstone? And no delivery problems at all?”

“None.”

“Do you happen to know if the delivery was in a hilly part of town? I ask because it’s very hilly where we are, and the roads are on the rough side.”

“I can’t tell anything about the terrain from the information I have here. But you might be familiar with the area. The address was on Snake Pond Road.”

“Oh, my goodness, I know it well. There are only three houses up there. Was it the McIntyre place?”

“The name I have here is Agatha Stolz.”

“Of course. The old Stolz farm. I should have realized. Well, it’s good to know your delivery people have experience with our roads. One less thing to stress over. You’ve been very helpful, Gideon. Let me discuss this with my relative, and we’ll get back to you.”

Gurney entered the name Agatha Stolz in an internet “people finder” site, which showed her address as 7 Snake Pond Road, Gladstone, New York. He hurried downstairs and out to his car.

After a few miles on a winding town road and a series of progressively narrower lanes, the voice of his GPS announced that he had arrived at his destination—a rutted dirt driveway that curved up into a shadowy pine thicket.

He stopped, checked the Beretta in his ankle holster, then turned onto the driveway and proceeded slowly up the bumpy incline into the thicket. After a hundred yards or so he emerged into a clearing with two modest structures—a log cabin and a separate one-car garage. He came to a stop in front of the cabin, lowered his window, and listened. Nothing.

He got out of the car, which set off a loud cawing of crows taking flight from the surrounding treetops. The morning sun hadn’t yet reached the clearing. The air was cool and damp. The grass around the cabin was overgrown and wet with dew. The complaints of the departing crows faded into a deep silence. He was struck by the isolation of the place. No neighbors, no passing traffic, no visibility from the road.

He approached the cabin in a high state of alertness. The shades were drawn down inside its small windows. He stepped up onto the dusty porch and knocked on the door. There was no response. He knocked again, more firmly. Again there was silence. He knocked a third time.

He went to his car, put on latex gloves, then returned to the door and tried the knob. To his surprise, it turned easily, and the door opened with a sharp creaking sound.

The stench was nauseating and instantly recognizable.

He turned away from the doorway to fill his lungs with fresh air, then took a step inside. A quick look was all it took to locate the source of that odor that no homicide cop ever got used to. Sitting in a threadbare armchair by a simple stone fireplace was the mostly decomposed corpse of what appeared to have been an old woman.

Gurney’s attention was drawn to the instrument of her death—a gleaming stainless steel hatchet, in the shape of a tomahawk, half buried in the top of her head.

59

TWENTY MINUTES AFTER Gurney’s call to 911, Hoskins showed up in an unmarked sedan, followed by two cruisers with four uniformed cops.

Hoskins emerged from the sedan slowly, looking around the clearing with distaste. His gaze lingered on the cabin, as though it might present a particularly troublesome problem. After directing the four cops to establish a yellow-tape perimeter around the clearing, he approached Gurney, who was leaning against the Outback.

“Here you are again, attracted to corpses like a fly to shit.” He cleared his throat and spit on the ground, unpleasantly close to Gurney’s feet. “I want to know exactly what brought you here and what you did from the second you arrived.”

Gurney went through it all, including his revealing conversation with Gideon Hartley, leaving out the fact that Barstow had been the source for the name of the coffin company, attributing the information instead to a confidential informant. Hoskins was predictably unsatisfied with that explanation, but Gurney’s description of his grotesque discovery displaced it as a matter of immediate concern.

Hoskins went back to his car, donned crime-scene coveralls, approached the cabin, and, with obvious reluctance, opened the door and went inside.

Less than two minutes later, he came back out with the tight-lipped grimace Gurney had seen on the faces of cops at homicide scenes where the maggots had arrived first.

“Fucking horror show,” said Hoskins to no one in particular, moving away from the cabin. “Russell Forensics is welcome to it.”

He turned his attention back to Gurney. “Did you go anywhere else on the property?

“No. But the garage in back of the cabin should be interesting.”

“Why?”

“The coffin must have come in a shipping crate. As far as I know, no such crate was found at the campground. The coffin must have been unpacked here before being transported to the shed, to be used in the murders. I’m thinking that garage would be a logical place for it.”

Hoskins stared at the garage for a long moment before speaking.

“Anybody ever tell you the story of Collard Stockman?”

“No.”

“One summer in the early nineteen sixties, there were three murders in the Gladstone area in less than a month. All local farmers. There was this kid, Collard Stockman, home from college that summer. Criminology major. Smart. Real smart. Had lots of theories about the murders. Every time the cops made a new discovery, the kid had a new theory. He showed up at the crime scenes, told them what they should be looking for, who they should be talking to, how they should interpret the evidence. Real wiseass. But he was right often enough that the cops started paying close attention to him.”

Hoskins produced an ugly smile. “Can you guess how the story ends?”

Gurney said nothing.

“They figured the only way the kid could know as much as he did would be if he was the perp. Prosecutor agreed. Jury agreed. Collard Stockman was convicted for one reason. He couldn’t stop trying to prove how smart he was.”

“Hell of a story.”

“You should visit Stockman up in Attica. You have a lot in common.”

As Hoskins was speaking, the Russell Forensics van entered the clearing. Kyra Barstow and an evidence tech got out. They opened the van’s rear doors and put on crime-scene coveralls, booties, and gloves.

Hoskins headed over to talk to Barstow.

Gurney got into the Outback and drove down Agatha Stolz’s rutted driveway. He could touch base with Barstow later. Besides, he had a pretty good idea what she’d find—and wouldn’t find.

Since he still had the extension ladder in the Outback, he decided to revisit the Fallen Angel property. He made a brief detour to purchase a utility knife.

When he arrived, the bookstore was still in the demolition phase of renovation. He drove around to Marian Lake’s parking area between the building and the back field. Carrying the ladder and the utility knife, he made his way through the weedy undergrowth to the thicket and the tall pine on whose bark he’d discovered the sticky spots.

He extended the ladder, steadied it against the trunk, and climbed to the place where he’d found the spots. He located them again. He chose the one that felt the stickiest, then slid the razor-like blade of the knife open and used it to shave off the square inch of the bark containing the spot. To prevent contamination, he put the bark inside a latex glove.

The workers inside the former bookstore showed no interest in his presence on the property or in his departure.

He spent the drive back to the Agatha Stolz crime scene figuring out how to talk his way past Hoskins so he could give the bark sample directly to Barstow.

He needn’t have bothered. Hoskins had left for lunch with two of the cops, and the remaining two didn’t try to stop him when Barstow waved to him from the cabin porch.

“You were right about the garage,” she said. “There’s a crate in there with an April 2 shipping date. Seems your triple murderer was planning ahead—or your quintuple murderer, if we include the old woman with the hatchet in her head and Ranzak with half his head blown off. This leading you anywhere?”

“Only to more questions. I can’t recall a case with so many oddities.”

He took the folded latex glove out of his pocket and handed it to her. “It contains a bark shaving from the tree the shots came from the night Stuart Wilmot was wounded. There’s a trace of a sticky substance on it. I’d love to know what it is.”

“Hoping it’s the clue that’ll explain everything?” Smiling, she slipped the folded glove into the pocket of her coveralls.

“In my dreams. But I have so many questions, even one small answer would be nice.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

When he got back to the Calico Cat, he was surprised to find three vehicles in the parking lot—a pair of custom-painted pink Porsches and a vintage Harley from the era when they were every state trooper’s ride of choice. He parked next to the Harley.

Claiborne met him in the foyer, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Influencers.”

Gurney looked past him into the dining area, where two sharply dressed twentysomething men with matching beards were sitting across from each other at the table, peering into their phones.

Claiborne continued in his confidential voice, “They’re doing a webcast on upstate inns. I didn’t want to scare them away, so I sent your visitor over to the gallery to wait for you.”

“My visitor?”

“He said you were expecting him.”

“I’m not expecting anyone.”

Claiborne blinked nervously. “Oh, dear. What should we do?”

“Can you describe him?”

“Rather frightening.”

“Threatening?”

“Definitely.”

“In what way?”

“A very chilly way. Spoke softly. Was wearing mirrored sunglasses. He absolutely radiated danger.”

“He’s in the gallery?”

“Waiting for you. Should I call the police?”

“Not yet.”

Despite being in his early fifties, Gurney still had confidence in his combat skills. And it didn’t hurt that his Beretta was still strapped to his ankle.

He left Claiborne standing in the foyer and went next door. As soon as he entered the gallery, he saw the back of a man in black riding leathers on the far side of the big open room. He was standing in front of the pedestal that displayed the largest of the gray balls.

Gurney stopped about ten feet from the man. “You asked to see me?”

“That’s right,” said the man, without turning. His voice was low, raspy.

“You find that ball interesting?”

“I love things on the cutting edge of bullshit.”

“Good to know. What do you want?”

“I got sick of reading about you, seeing you on that fucking Livestream thing. You got any fucking idea what you’re doing?”

The voice had changed since he’d last heard it, gotten rougher, maybe the result of a bullet in the chest. But the attitude hadn’t changed.

“Jack?”

“Sherlock strikes again.”

The man turned, removed his mirrored sunglasses, and gazed at Gurney with those unsettling ice-blue eyes.

The shock of seeing Jack Hardwick, not only alive but restored to his old hard-as-nails condition, left Gurney momentarily speechless.

“You . . . you’re all in one piece?”

“Yeah, one piece. Plus a few new scars and a nine-mil slug next to my heart they didn’t have the balls to try removing. Afraid of me bleeding to death or some such crap.”

“You were in a coma for weeks. Esti wouldn’t tell me anything. Wouldn’t let me near you. Does she know you’re here?”

“Esti’s gone.”

“Her decision or yours?”

“Mostly hers. Her fucking fantasy life depended on believing that you were responsible for my getting shot in that showdown with the Garville scumbags.”

“She may have had a point.”

“Horseshit. I have an appetite for showdowns. They clear the air. When that Cadillac Escalade pulled into the parking lot, I was thinking, I can leave now, or I can blow these fuckers away. The second option made me smile. Simple as that. So. I end up in a coma, and the useless fuckers end up dead. I told her I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“That’s the reason Esti left?”

“Part of the reason. The emotional part.”

“What was the other part?”

“The practical part. Being involved with me was no longer a plus for her career. The woman is ambitious. Wants to be the first Latina captain in the state police. Moved out last month. With my blessing.”

“The move have any effect on your life?”

“Less sex, more freedom.”

“Freedom to do what?”

“Anything at all. With no need to explain.”

“Anything?”

“Within reason. You’re a big fan of reason, right, Sherlock?”

Something glittery flashed in his eyes. “We should catch up. Buy me lunch today at that redneck dump in the village. You can fill me in on the evils of Gladstone. One o’clock.”

60

JACK HARDWICK HAD a way of absorbing most of the space in Gurney’s head. For an hour after the man went roaring off on his pampered Harley, Gurney could think of little other than their history of dramatic, jarring, life-risking encounters—beginning with their bizarre collaboration on the Peter Piggert case.

Their connection was strengthened when they were both looking into the death of Mark Mellery in the strangest serial murder case of Gurney’s career. That was followed less than a year later by the horrors of the beheaded-bride affair. Their next collaboration—on the deceptive luxury-car murders—led to Hardwick’s expulsion from the state police and the beginning of his career as a private investigator. His vital interventions in the Peter Pan, Wolf Lake, and White River cases—along with his role in the capture of the Harrow Hill killer—had all served to cement the bond between them. From the start, Hardwick’s contributions to Gurney’s efforts had combined aggressive skepticism, vulgar observations, acute insights, and absolute fearlessness.

Then there was the Viper case, and Hardwick’s near-fatal wounding.

The man seemed surprisingly unchanged. Oddly, he seemed more himself than ever. Perhaps their lunch at Ella’s would reveal something new. In the meantime, Gurney decided not to waste time imagining what that could be.

Shifting gears, he settled down in one of the wing chairs in his room and placed a call to Stony Burke.

“Ah, Davey, I was about to give you a shout—let you know you were right about Frankie Dalasio falling off the map. The last person to see him—last one I spoke to—was that oily lawyer of his. Got older. Oilier than ever. Told me he had a final meeting with Frankie two weeks after his confession. After which Frankie evaporated—or got himself killed, as you suggested. I also looked into the questions you asked regarding changes in his finances around the time of his confession. You must be fuckin’ clairvoyant. The little shit paid off a maxed-out credit card and a car loan—all the same week of his confession. I also spoke to his landlord, who lived in the same building.”

“About?”

“Anything he noticed in the way Frankie was behaving. He told me he stopped paying his rent. The date of his last payment coincides with his visit to us. He wasn’t answering the door, the phone, nothing. After three months, the landlord went into the apartment to confiscate whatever he could in lieu of the rent. And here’s the thing. He found a bunch of fancy clothes, never worn, a gold watch still in a box. Seems that Frankie bought some pricey stuff, then disappeared and left it all behind.”

“Dead people don’t take their stuff with them, Stony.”

“Thanks for that insight. You also asked me to check on the date of Frankie’s brother’s death and the date of the Open Files segment on Pam Espinoza’s unsolved disappearance. The brother’s death was four months before Frankie came in to see us, and the Open Files segment was two weeks before he came in. That mean anything to you?”

“It means the confession was bullshit, and the reason for making it was bullshit. He told us his brother’s death was the thing that finally freed him to come and do the right thing. So, how come it took four months? No, the brother’s death wasn’t the motivating factor. It was the Open Files program. And it wasn’t even Frankie who was motivated.”

“You lost me on that last curve, Davey.”

Gurney described his hypothesis—which he now believed had moved into the realm of certainty—with all the details he’d shared a week earlier with Madeleine.

Burke’s silence lasted so long Gurney was about to ask if he was still there when he replied grimly, “So the bloody Espinoza case really does need to be reopened.”

When Gurney arrived at 12:59 p.m., some early lunch customers at Ella’s Homestyle Eatery were already working their way through enormous portions of Ella’s homestyle apple pie.

A few seconds after settling into a window booth, he heard the distinctive rumble of an old Harley. He watched as Hardwick pulled in against the curb, dismounted, and tilted the gleaming monster onto its kickstand.

When he entered the restaurant, he’d already removed his minimal helmet, leather jacket, and mirrored glasses. The hard-muscled physique under his black tee shirt showed the effort he’d put into combatting the debilitating effect of his injuries, operations, and weeks-long coma. He hung his jacket on the booth partition and sat down facing Gurney, with his helmet and glasses on the seat beside him.

“The fuck are you doing in this bullshit village anyway? You fall in love with the fake verdigris on the fake lampposts?”

It was a typical Hardwick greeting, more cordial than some Gurney could recall.

“I was invited by Stuart Wilmot to attend his town hall debate with Don Ranzak. It turned into a near riot. Then things got worse. Vandalism, gunshots, kidnappings, murders, a “suicide” that I’m pretty sure was staged—plus political polarization, a cynical publisher whipping up hatred, and a corrupt police force.”

“So, an idyllic little town in the middle of a shitstorm. Fucking irresistible.”

Gurney said nothing.

Hardwick gave him a canny look. “Either somebody’s paying you a lot to wade around in this crap, or there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Someone wants me out of here. I received a death threat, which I ignored. Then whoever sent it did something awful.” Gurney’s voice became strained. “They cut the throat of a young alpaca Madeleine was particularly attached to.”

Something shifted in Hardwick. His cynical jokiness was replaced by something darker.

“What can I get for you gentlemen?”

A middle-aged waitress was standing by their table with all the weariness of a difficult life on her soft round face.

“Medium cheeseburger and coffee,” said Hardwick, his dour expression prompting a look of concern on the waitress’s face.

“Club sandwich,” said Gurney. “And iced tea.”

She nodded, cast another worried glance at Hardwick, and retreated.

“So,” said Gurney after a quiet moment, “I have a personal reason for being here.”

“You want to kill them.” Hardwick’s matter-of-fact tone conveyed in a simple, convincing way his support for that approach. “You have a target in mind?”

“Not yet. I’m thinking the bastard who killed Madeleine’s alpaca is the same bastard responsible for at least four Gladstone murders—probably five, assuming Ranzak’s ‘suicide’ was staged.”

Hardwick nodded slowly—a gesture that seemed both cheerless and determined.

“So, you’ve got a dead alpaca, a devastated wife, five corpses, a useless police department, a target on your back, and no fucking idea what’s going on.”

“Sounds about right.”

“You have a secret plan you’re not telling me about?”

“I’m not seeing the situation clearly enough to have a plan. In fact, the way I’m seeing it may be making a plan impossible.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Just before I left the NYPD, a young guy came in and confessed to a small, coerced role in an old murder case. Because he stuck to his story and because there were no witnesses to refute his version of events, precinct brass deemed his story sufficient to close the case.”

“But?”

“But I was never comfortable with it. He came across as a liar—even looked like a rat. I was sure he was more involved in the murder than he claimed to be.”

“And . . . ?”

“I was right about the liar part, but I got it backward. He wasn’t more involved than he claimed to be. He was less involved.”

“That relates to the shitstorm in Gladstone . . . how?”

“My gut is telling me I’m getting something backward, that I’m making an assumption I don’t even know I’m making.”

“Sounds like the Sherlocky part of your brain has gone fucking haywire.”

“The thing is, it’s what I’m sure of that has the power to mislead me. About a year ago, we had a big windstorm in Walnut Crossing. It knocked out our electrical power. When that happens, our smoke alarms let out a single sharp beep. But on that occasion, every ten seconds, we’d hear beeps coming from every room in the house. The beeps went on for hours. I didn’t know how to stop the alarms. I tried everything. I finally called an electrician and described the problem. He came to the house, went from room to room, ceiling to ceiling, disconnecting all the alarms. But the beeps didn’t stop. I thought there must be backup devices in the ceilings—which made no sense, but neither did the endless beeping. It was baffling. But it turned out to have a simple explanation. The beeps weren’t coming from the smoke alarms in the ceilings. They were coming from CO₂ sensors down on the baseboards. When the house current is cut off, the sensors switch to battery power, and when the batteries are low, they emit warning beeps.”

Hardwick shrugged. “So, you made a mistake. You confused one beep for another. What’s your point?”

“My point is why I made the mistake. When I heard those CO₂ beeps, they sounded exactly like smoke alarm beeps, so I concluded that’s what they were.”

“So what?”

“So, that’s when the interesting thing happened. Because I was sure the beeps were coming from the alarms in the ceiling, that’s the direction I actually heard them coming from. I heard them coming from above my head, not from the baseboard at my feet.”

“This means what to you?”

“It means that what I believe is happening can override factual input.”

“And fuck up your view of what’s happening in Gladstone?”

“It’s a possibility.”

Hardwick flashed his cold, glittery grin. “Well, since I don’t know shit about the case, my sensory input should be just fine.”

The weary-looking waitress arrived with Gurney’s club sandwich and Hardwick’s cheeseburger and promised to return with their drinks.

Hardwick took a large bite out of his cheeseburger, chewed thoughtfully, then lowered it to his plate. “Putting all that profound beep shit aside, what the hell do you think is going on here? You must have a theory. You’re addicted to the fucking things.”

“I have several, with no faith in any of them.”

“What’s your favorite one?”

“‘Favorite’ is too positive a word.”

Gurney recounted the hypothesis he’d shared with Hoskins—that someone had killed the three women, using the dust storm of Gladstone’s conflicts and violence as camouflage, then staged Ranzak’s “suicide” to frame him for the murders.

“Christ,” muttered Hardwick. “If that’s your best theory, the others must be off the fucking wall.”

“I don’t disagree. And the least likely one of all is the official one—that Ranzak killed the women for reasons unknown, then killed himself to avoid arrest.”

“Are the local cops corrupt or just stupid?”

“My guess would be both. They closed the murder cases and the supposed suicide case in record time—I suspect to avoid a deeper investigation that could reveal the department’s ties to Ranzak.”

The waitress delivered Hardwick’s coffee and Gurney’s iced tea. Hardwick made a sour face when he sipped his coffee. Gurney’s iced tea was weak and tasteless.

When they finished eating, Gurney filled Hardwick in on his gruesome Agatha Stolz discovery and its link to the acquisition of the coffin. They agreed that the Stolz murder seemed to be of a practical nature, unconnected to the motive for the crimes that followed—although there was something attention-getting about the use of that hatchet.

Gurney wonder if it was the calling card of Tyson Grock, devotee of shiny hatchets, or possibly a crude effort to incriminate him.

“Fucking hall of mirrors,” grumbled Hardwick. “Everything is exactly what it seems, unless it’s the exact opposite.”

“A reasonable diagnosis.”

“You have a next step in mind?”

Gurney took a sip of his watery tea. “I’m thinking of trying an old tactical trick that might get the bastard to show his face. I discovered a surveillance device in my car—a GPS tracker with audio transmission. I left it in place.”

“To feed bullshit to the fucker who put it there?”

“Bullshit designed to get him to appear at a certain place at a certain time. So, I need to figure out the message I want him to overhear. Where I want the encounter to take place. How threatened or confident I want him to feel. And all that assumes the bug planter is the spider at the center of the web.”

“Who the fuck else would it be?”

“No idea. The local police?”

“That makes coming up with the right message pretty damn tricky.”

“I’ll give it some more thought.”

“Of course you will. That’s what you do.”

Hardwick took a napkin from the holder on the table, wrote a phone number on it with a felt-tip marker he had in his pocket for God knows what reason, and slid it across to Gurney.

“Call me when it’s time to shoot somebody.”

He put on his jacket, picked up his helmet and mirrored glasses, and walked out.

A minute later he was astride the rumbling Harley, backing it away from the curb.

The man and his machine had disappeared down the road before Gurney realized he hadn’t asked him whether he was staying in a motel in Gladstone or in his house down in Dillweed. There was something about Hardwick that kept domestic details from coming to mind. It was easier to picture a Glock in his hand than a toothbrush.

The image of a toothbrush led Gurney to thoughts of waking up in his own bed, making his own coffee in his own kitchen, gazing down at the pond and the budding maples on the far hillside—and absorbing, if only for a day or two, the peace of those surroundings. The idea had an irresistible magnetism.

On his way to Walnut Crossing, he stopped at a gas station to fill his tank, stretch his legs, and buy a bottle of strong-looking chilled tea to make up for the one at Ella’s.

It was a few minutes past four when he arrived at the house and was surprised to find Madeleine’s car parked by the asparagus bed. He wondered if some conflict with her sister in New Jersey had shortened her planned stay there or if some other problem had brought her home.

He was about to see if she was in the house when he spotted her in one of her bright pink tee shirts, moving along the mowed path that separated the high pasture from the forest. Rather than waiting in the house for her to complete her circuit of the pasture, he headed up an intersecting path that would take him to the pair of Adirondack chairs at the top of the hill at about the same time she’d be arriving there.

His timing was right. They met at the chairs and, after exchanging a long hug, she answered his question before he asked it.

“I just wanted to come home. Maybe it’s not quite as safe as it might be down in New Jersey, but I have the shotgun, and I know how to use it. Being with my sister was fine, but I really just wanted to be here. I belong here.”

He felt a surge of mixed feelings—a combination of worry and sympathy that left him with nothing to say. She had come there, after all, for the same reason he had.

“Don’t worry,” she added. “I can take care of myself.”

He pulled the big Adirondack chairs closer together, and they settled into them, facing an expanse of rolling hills whose black-cherry copses alternated with wildflower meadows. The pasture that sloped down toward their house from where they were sitting was filled with bluets, the tiny four-petaled flowers that bloomed in profusion there every spring.

“Come,” said Madeleine after a little while. “Walk with me.”

They hadn’t gone far when she came to a halt, transfixed by an expanse of moss-covered stone at the edge of the path. “My God, what an amazing shade of green!”

He nodded. The natural world was full of colors, some more intense than others, but few generated strong emotions in him. He naturally preferred a blue sky to a gray one, and he disliked the color red—perhaps because of its association with blood, which he’d seen too much of. And he’d never bought a tan shirt or brown sport jacket. But that was as far as his feelings went. He wondered if there might be something missing in him that would account for the gap between Madeleine’s reactions and his own.

“The thing is,” she said with uncanny relevance as they stood gazing at the emerald moss, “we see what matters to us. Everything else strikes us a distraction.” There was a softness, an intimacy, in her voice that kept her comment from sounding like criticism. She took his hand, and they ambled on.

As they were heading down the gentle slope toward the house, she suggested that they take an offshoot trail to another field—the one west of the house that provided views of so many spectacular sunsets.

It was also the field where they’d buried the alpaca. When they came to the grave, marked by the slab of bluestone they’d chosen together, they stood there quietly for a long while, still holding hands.

There were tears in her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was a shaky breath. To Gurney, it expressed more grief than words could.

Her grip on his hand, as they walked to the house, was almost painfully tight.

During the evening, her continuing silence made it clear that the attack on the alpaca—on that helpless, harmless animal—had created a dreadful echo of a deeper tragedy—the hit-and-run death of their four-year-old son twenty years earlier. The crime that was never solved. The homicide case he had never been able to close.

That night he experienced, for perhaps the twentieth time, what he’d come to regard as “the Danny dream.” It consisted of a weird, concentrated replay of the actual event.

On their way to the playground on a sunny day.

Danny walking in front of him.

Following a pigeon on the sidewalk.

He himself only partly present.

Pondering a twist in a murder case he was working on.

Distracted by a bright idea, a possible solution.

The pigeon stepping off the curb into the street.

Danny following the pigeon.

The sickening, heart-stopping thump.

Danny’s body tossed through the air, hitting the

pavement, rolling.

Rolling.

The red BMW racing away.

Screeching around a corner.

Gone.

Gurney awoke in the same agony of grief the dream always produced. He’d been assaulted by it at unpredictable intervals for two decades. The events, moment by moment, were always the same, always consistent with his memory. And the dreadful feeling in his heart was, as always, undiminished. His life reduced to memory and regret, to his failures as a father, as a husband, as a detective.

He got up at the first hint of dawn, dressed in the semidarkness, and went quietly out of the house. The damp chill in the air sent a shiver through him. He thought perhaps he should do something useful—refill the bird feeders, get a fire going in the woodstove—but he did nothing.

“David?”

He turned and saw Madeleine standing at the open side door, looking worried.

“It’s cold,” she said. “Are you alright?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Just getting some air.”

“Do you want a sweater?”

“No. I . . . I should come in.”

He followed her into the mudroom and into the big farmhouse kitchen. The doors on the woodstove were open as though she’d been about to load some wood into it when she went looking for him instead. She pointed to it.

“A fire would be nice on a morning like this.”

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at the table by the French doors, working their way silently through the bowls of oatmeal that she’d prepared while he was tending to the woodstove.

While her bowl was still half full, she laid down her spoon and gave him a long, curious look. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He blinked, hesitated. “Talk about . . . Apparently Stone was hidin?Apparently Stone was hidingg”

She waited.

“I had the dream again.”

She showed no surprise.

“Just before dawn,” he said. “Same as always. I’m walking with him. Walking and—”

His phone rang. As jarring as the sound was, he felt relief at the interruption. When he saw Barstow’s name on the screen, he stood up and moved away from the table, as if to distance himself from the dream.

“Kyra?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be awake this early, but I’m going to be tied up the rest of the day and I wanted to give you the answers to your questions. Is this a good time?”

“Yes.”

“We were able to find matches for the tire-tread impressions, but they’re probably too extensive to be useful. Those tires were original equipment on half a dozen model years of the Ford F-150 pickup truck, and there are millions of them on the road. The forensic linguistic analysis of the so-called suicide text seems to be heading for a less-than-definitive conclusion. It may be a fake, but the level of certitude is low. Among the small alarm bells, the text contains a semicolon—a form of punctuation that appears nowhere in the text of any speech, business proposal, or letter to the editor written by Ranzak. But I wouldn’t suggest hanging your hat on an uncharacteristic semicolon.”

She paused for a moment before going on. “Now, for something more definitive—the sticky substance on that slice of bark is a pressure-activated viscoelastic polymer.”

“In the language of someone whose education involved more classics than chemistry, what on earth is that?”

“It’s the adhesive used on duct tape.”

“Meaning something was taped to the tree?”

“A reasonable conclusion.”

Gurney thanked her, ended the call, and began picturing the possibilities. The emotional aftermath of the dream had been displaced, at least for the moment.

“A discovery?” said Madeleine.

“Yes. Something that might explain an oddity that’s bothered me from the beginning.”

61

THE RESIDUE OF the Danny dream cast an intermittent shadow over Gurney’s drive back to Gladstone. It wasn’t until he arrived at the Fallen Angel and made his way to the thicket where the gunshots originated that the implications of the duct tape discovery fully displaced his darker thoughts.

To the question of what had been taped to the tree, the first answer that occurred to him, as he stood at its base and peered up at the spot, was some sort of device to steady the gun—or guns, since the ballistics analysis indicated that the two rounds fired into the bookstore came from different weapons. But two guns didn’t require two shooters. So, why would one shooter need two guns to fire two shots?

The duct tape suggested an answer. The two guns had probably been taped either directly to the tree or to some holding device that was taped to the tree. That would mean that each gun had been zeroed in on a particular location in the bookstore, taped firmly in place, and then fired when the intended target appeared in that location.

As Gurney recalled vividly, the two targets that were hit that night were the lectern Gordon Phelps was standing behind when he endorsed Stuart Wilmot and then Wilmot himself, standing several feet from Phelps.

Imagining how something was done often raised the question of why it was done that particular way. In this case, why had such an elaborate method been employed to fire those shots? And there was another question, more difficult to answer. Had the perp’s plan worked as intended? Was one of the targets actually the lectern, or was it Phelps himself? And was the goal of the second shot merely to wound Wilmot? Or to kill him?

Another peculiar element of the affair was its combination of precise planning and lucky timing. Unless . . . the timing didn’t depend on luck.

Suppose the shooter had been inside the bookstore, waiting for the right moments to squeeze the triggers of those guns remotely—with radio-controlled servos, similar to those used to turn the steering wheels of model race cars. A compact controller could fit easily into a jacket pocket, and Gurney recalled that the evening of the shooting was a cool one, with virtually all the attendees wearing jackets.

If the shooter had been present, he or she would have been able to time the lectern shot to the moment Phelps endorsed Wilmot, as well as the moment when Wilmot was exposed to the other prearranged trajectory.

Of course, this was no more than conjecture, and the big questions remained unanswered—the perp’s identity and motive, the relationship between the bookstore shooting and the mirror shooting, and the connection between them and the subsequent murders.

There were also incidents such as Evie Hubble pepper spraying Lucas Potts at the town hall, Deke Loomis driving his backhoe through the plate glass window of Wilmot’s campaign office, the feces-smearing attack, the threatening graffiti on Wilmot’s house, the bombing of Arbor Lockwood’s truck, and the rocket and hatchet attacks at the Calico Cat.

While not all the ugly events in Gladstone were of equal weight, Gurney suspected they were all pieces of the same puzzle, all traceable back to the same wellspring of hatred. But that was a theory for which he had no concrete evidence. He needed to focus on what was in front of him—the possibility that the Fallen Angel shooter had controlled the guns from inside the store.

As he stood in the thicket, gazing across the field at the target window, reconstructing the event from his patchwork of recollections, he tried to picture the people present that evening.

Everyone he remembered was either an avowed Wilmot supporter or the sort of artistic, literary, eco-friendly type likely to support him—with the notable exception of Tyson Grock. A member of the Brotherhood, he stuck out like a slab of bacon in a vegan restaurant. But Grock had stepped outside the building before the shots came through the window. So, either he wasn’t the remote shooter, or he’d given up the precision timing of an inside view for a faster escape if something went wrong.

If Grock wasn’t the shooter, then someone else at that book presentation wasn’t what they seemed to be. Assuming that the shots had, in fact, been controlled remotely. Assuming, too, that the controller was being operated from inside the store. Assuming that the polymer specks on the tree were, in fact, from duct tape. Assuming. Assuming. Assuming. Gurney hoped his construct of assumptions wasn’t as fragile as it was starting to feel.

More importantly, he realized that his excitement over the polymer residue may have sidetracked his attention. As intriguing as it was, the bookstore incident could hardly be considered the heart of a case that involved five violent deaths.

Besides, having thrown Gladstone back into a volatile state by his Livestream claim that the official resolution had resolved nothing, he felt it was now his responsibility to provide some legitimate closure. That brought him back to the approach he’d discussed with Hardwick.

If he were an everything-happens-in-God’s-world-for-a-reason sort of person, he might regard the bug he’d discovered under his dashboard as the divinely appointed key to uncovering the truth. But he wasn’t that sort of person. He saw it simply as a way to provoke a very risky confrontation with the villain behind Gladstone’s horrors—a villain who wouldn’t hesitate to make him the sixth victim.

He was willing to accept the risk—not because he saw it as fate opening a door for him but because he saw it as the only available door in a dark hallway. Which brought him to the challenge of crafting a message that the perp would find credible, threatening, and actionable.

He stepped out of the thicket into the sunny field. He reached into his pocket and took out the napkin Hardwick had scribbled his number on at Ella’s restaurant.

He made the call.

Gurney chose a meeting place he remembered from the time he and Madeleine had been considering properties in the Gladstone area.

Mallard Wetlands Conservancy was officially a public park. In reality, it was just a few weathered picnic tables next to a shallow pond.

The tilting sign on the main road indicating its existence was uninviting; there were no other cars in the parking area and no picnickers at the tables. When Hardwick came rumbling in on his Harley, a flock of redwing blackbirds rose up in complaint from the reeds around the pond, then settled back down, once he and Gurney were seated at one of the tables.

Hardwick looked around appraisingly. “Nice spot to bury a body. That why we’re here?”

“We’re here to talk about poking the bear. I’ve come up with a few messages for the audio bug that might generate a response. But everything depends on picking the right one.”

“One that makes the bear come out of his den to tear your head off?”

Gurney ignored Hardwick’s tone. “It has to have three elements. The killer has to believe what I’m saying. He has to regard it as a clear existential threat. And he has to see only one window of opportunity to eliminate that threat.”

“You told me at Ella’s that the bug planter might not be the killer. Could be the police. How does your game play out if it’s them?”

Gurney shrugged. “Could turn into an embarrassing mess. But I can live with that. What I can’t live with is sitting on my hands and letting this piece of human garbage get away with . . . everything he’s done.”

Hardwick eyed Gurney curiously before speaking. “What’s my role in this potential disaster?”

“Right now, I just want your reactions to four potential messages.”

“You want me to react like a homicidal bear?”

Gurney ignored the question. “Each of these messages is in the form of a phone call I make from my car to your number. You let the call go to your voicemail, and I leave the message. First possibility: I say that I know who murdered Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, and Marian Lake, I have the evidence to prove it, and I want to show it to you it before taking it to the state police. Second possibility, I claim to know who staged Ranzak’s suicide. Third: I claim to know who killed Agatha Stolz and why. In each case, I end the messages with a time and place for you to meet me—somewhere secluded, to create an image of vulnerability.”

“Image, my ass! That vulnerability would be fucking real. This guy has apparently pulled off five perfect hits that we know about. What makes you think we wouldn’t end up being the sixth and seventh?”

“I agree there’s an element of risk. But the risk of letting this psycho go free is worse. Suppose the murders haven’t ended?”

Hardwick moved his fingertips slowly along the weathered ridges of the picnic table. In the woods on the far side of the pond, a crow was repeating a series of three raspy caws.

Hardwick coughed disgustingly and spat on the ground beside the bench he was sitting on. “I’m not too fucking crazy about any of your messages.”

“Which one do you dislike the least?”

“The one about the murdered women. If I were the perp, that might motivate me to show up—to blow your head off. You got a next step in mind?”

“I want to give the wording of the message and the place we’ll be meeting more thought.”

“What if he tries to eliminate you before we meet?”

“Always a possibility. But I’ll make the meeting place sound a lot more attractive for a hit job than the Calico Cat. In fact, a spot like this might be ideal.”

Hardwick looked around doubtfully.

The crow’s final three caws sounded like harsh laughter.

62

LONG AFTER HARDWICK had rumbled away on his Harley, Gurney remained at the picnic table, lost in uncomfortable thoughts. The late-afternoon sun had moved down behind the tall treetops on the west side of the pond, and the temperature was beginning to drop.

The cliché of being between a rock and hard place struck him as an apt description of his position—trapped between the urgency to put his plan into action and the fear of rushing ahead with a phone script that might miss the mark. There would be no second chance. He realized what he needed was an objective, trustworthy view of the situation.

Those adjectives brought Molly Parr to mind.

He made the call.

“David?”

“I need to bother you one more time.”

“How can I help?”

He explained the situation—trying at first to be brief, then realizing it made little sense without the details. He ended with a plea for her insight and advice.

She didn’t respond right away. He imagined she was looking for a nice way to step back from the dangerous mess he’d described.

“So,” she said finally, “if you’re free, come to our pulled-pork dinner.”

“Sorry?”

“Remember, I told you I’m a nondenominational minister? My modest congregation holds a monthly Pray for Peace dinner at the Gladstone firehouse. We’re having one at six thirty this evening. Come. I’m sure we’ll find time to talk.”

He noted on his phone that it was already past five. He’d have just enough time to stop at the Calico Cat, shower, change his clothes, and find the firehouse.

It was 6:40 when Gurney arrived at the address he’d found on the Gladstone Village website. The big redbrick building was home to two fire engines, a fire department SUV, an EMT ambulance, and a community meeting hall. There were about two dozen cars and pickups in the parking lot. He found a spot and headed into the meeting-hall side of the building.

After passing through an anteroom with empty coatracks along the walls, he entered the main room—brightly lit by fluorescent fixtures that created the atmosphere of a high school cafeteria. The vinyl-tile floor was identical to the one in the police station. The windows looked out on the parking lot. There was a sweet-and-sour aroma of barbecue sauce in the air.

Four long folding tables were set up in the middle of the room, with a dozen folding chairs at each one. A few people were already seated, focused on their plates of pulled pork and mashed potatoes, but most were still lined up at the serving station—a wide opening in the wall, connecting the room to an adjacent kitchen. A heavyset man and an aproned woman on the kitchen side were sliding plates of food across a counter to the people in line. The man looked familiar, but Gurney couldn’t place him. The woman was Molly Parr.

Gurney joined the line. When he reached the serving station, Molly gave him a welcoming smile with his pork and potatoes. The heavyset man handed him a packet of plastic utensils and a paper napkin.

“Dessert table’s by the coffee,” the man said, pointing to the far side of the room. “Save some appetite for the strawberry shortcake. Best part of the dinner.”

Gurney carried his plate over to what appeared to be the most talkative table and took the last vacant seat. He avoided making eye contact with anyone to minimize the chance of having to introduce himself and becoming either the target of questions or a reason for others at the table to fall silent. He focused on his pork and potatoes and listened.

The first conversation he overheard occurred between a man two seats to his right and a man diagonally across from him. Both had the sort of lined, leathery faces that resulted from strenuous outdoor lives. The tone of their exchange was mildly contentious.

“It’s not what he would do.”

“But the proof of it is the fact that he did it. Facts are facts.”

“There’s no proof at all. How could there be proof of him doing what he was constitutionally unable to do?”

“I have a better question. How could he be constitutionally unable to do what he did?”

A woman’s voice broke in. “Carter, for pity’s sake!”

Another woman’s voice farther down the table asked, “Anyone seen Georgette?”

A man’s voice responded. “Wasn’t that her mashing the potatoes?”

“I thought it was Ralph did the potatoes.”

Another woman piped up, “Ralph has a double hernia. The old fool was trying to haul rocks to that wall by his barn after the first hernia.”

The man two seats to Gurney’s right said grimly, “Some things need to get done.”

The woman shot back, “That damn wall wasn’t going anywhere.”

The anger in their voices led to a silence, broken by a voice from the far end of the table. “Anybody seen Tyson?”

Someone in the middle of the table answered, “Wouldn’t be the first time he dropped out of sight. Might even be a guest of the village jail, like after that craziness at the Calico Cat.”

The man two seats away said, “Gladstone’s a changed place.”

Nods, grunts, and comments of agreement from around the table.

“Nine eleven—that’s what did it.”

“The invasion from the city.”

“Big money. Big houses. Like them monstrosities up Harper Hill way.”

“Different kind of people.”

“Fancy cars. Fancy ideas.”

“More money than brains.”

“It’s the attitude. Don Ranzak had money. But he was Gladstone born and bred.”

The mention of Ranzak led to some sounds of approval, some less approving.

The ensuing silence was broken by a man at the other end of the table. “So, what are we thinking? That it was suicide? Something else?”

“They tell you one thing, then they tell you something else.”

“I can’t see it. Not a man like that.”

“Everybody’s got a part of them nobody knows. You all recall Kylie Jennings?”

“Jesus, Carter, let’s not talk about that. Not at the dinner table.”

“All I’m saying is, if a woman you’ve known all your life announces on her sixtieth birthday that she’s actually a man, what on God’s blessed earth do you know about anyone?”

That created another silence, broken by the man two seats from Gurney.

“Crime’s a different thing today from when we were boys. Occasional broken window back then. A few practical jokes.”

A woman farther down the table spoke up for the first time. “There was clarity then. If something was going on, we knew about it.”

The woman across from her nodded enthusiastically. “Francine’s put her finger on it. We’ve got mass murder here in our town and no clarity at all. One day it’s this, another day it’s that.”

Another voice chimed in. “Who can you trust? Damn near nobody. You know who I miss? Floyd Parr.”

More voices from around the table:

“A good man.”

“Now we’ve got the Wilmot boy in that job.”

“But he resigned, didn’t he?”

“Effective as soon as the board figures out how to replace him.”

“See, there’s an example. What’s the board gonna do? No clarity.”

“Well, I voted for Don Ranzak, regardless of the suicide business, and the murders, which I don’t believe Don had any part in.”

“Folks, let’s not break the rules here. No politics. Am I right?”

“Just sayin’ who I voted for.”

In a transparent attempt to change the subject, someone out of Gurney’s sight at the table broke in. “Dixon there was asking about Tyson, which made me wonder what’s happening with Harlan Stone. I heard Olivia’s got new security people out at the lake. Anybody know what Harlan’s situation is?”

A woman at the next table turned in her chair. Her tone was a parody of suggestiveness. “There’s a rumor that Harlan’s been promoted.”

“Promoted to what?”

“Well, now, that’s something for Olivia to know and the rest of us to imagine.”

“Olivia and Harlan? Wow!”

“Just a rumor,” the woman added in a tone that conveyed the opposite.

Gurney saw Molly Parr go to a lectern in the front of the room. A blue-and-gold banner on the wall displayed the words “Pray for Peace” in cursive script.

She’d taken off her apron. In her flannel shirt and jeans she looked more like a farm worker than a minister or therapist. Her warm gaze traveled from table to table.

“So good to see you all,” she said. “We’re here to enjoy good food, to be with good friends, and to pray for peace. Peace in the world, in our community, in our families, in our hearts. We pray in silence, in our own words, to our own God. Some may believe that God hears our prayers, some may not. But we all hear our own prayers. We can each live in the light of our own prayer for peace. We can live in the vision of the peace we pray for.”

She paused with her head bowed, before asking, “What do you think is the best way to bring about the peace we pray for?”

It struck Gurney that her audience was familiar with this sort of questioning because several attendees responded immediately.

“By obeying the commandments.”

“Following the golden rule.”

“Kindness.”

Parr nodded, smiling. “Kindness. That appeals to my simple mind. I can picture myself being kind. Now here’s a deeper question. What quality in a person would make them want to be kind to someone?”

Again, answers came without prodding.

“Interest in the lives of other people.”

“Generosity.”

“The belief that we’re all connected to each other.”

Parr nodded and smiled. “All good answers. And they all have something in common. Compassion. Now, one more question. What is the opposite of compassion?”

The answers to this came more slowly.

“Coldness.”

“Greed.”

“Evil.”

Parr’s eyes lit up. “Yes. Evil. The enemy of connection. Evil’s drug is power. Evil seeks to dominate. Evil hungers for revenge. Evil devours the soul.”

She spoke with such a calm intensity that no one moved or made a sound.

“Pray for peace. Pray for compassion.”

Her speech had a quieting effect on the room. Gurney heard no further comments on Gladstone’s hostilities. Once the strawberry shortcake had been devoured, the attendees began drifting out to the parking lot, exchanging chastened smiles and muted goodnights. Molly motioned Gurney to one of the now-empty tables, and they took seats facing each other.

She said, “I’ve been thinking about the situation you described on the phone and the options you’re considering.”

Although her expression was unreadable and her tone unemotional, he couldn’t help but read a hint of disapproval in its apparent objectivity.

“I know my plan doesn’t sound like a quest for peace,” he said. “But often the only way to get rid of a land mine is to detonate it.”

“Are you asking for my advice on the best ruse to trick a killer into trying to kill you?”

“To trick him into exposing himself in a way that allows me to neutralize him.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“I assume he’d like to get away with what he’s done.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

Before Gurney could start enumerating the crimes, she added, “I mean, what do you think he’s been trying to accomplish?”

“I don’t know enough to answer that question. I don’t even know if the perp is a he or a she or a they. I don’t know if all the victims were equally targeted or if some were intended as distractions. I don’t know if the three women were the primary victims and Ranzak a scapegoat, or if Ranzak was primary and the women had to be eliminated first for reasons unknown. I’m thinking that Agatha Stolz’s murder was committed to conceal the identity of the coffin buyer, but I’m not even positive about that. It’s conceivable she had another connection to Ranzak, or to the three women, or to the killer.”

“I don’t know if it’s a meaningful a connection,” said Molly, “but Agatha did work at the camp.”

“Doing what?”

“I believe she was a cook.”

“Interesting.”

“I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. Half the people in Gladstone were connected with the camp one way or another.”

“Still . . . ”

“There may be a lot you don’t know about the murders, but you can be sure of one thing. The hatred involved was extraordinary. Terrifying, really.” Molly folded her arms as though the subject had given her a sudden chill.

“Can you suggest how I could use that fact in the message I allow the killer to overhear?”

“No.” The abruptness of her refusal gave it the tone of a rebuke. “But I know something about hatred. I saw a lot of it, in the years I spent as a chaplain at a correctional facility. By the way, that term for a prison is like calling the electric chair a form of shock therapy.”

Gurney was painfully aware that very little was “corrected” in prisons, and a great deal was made worse. People who went in as delinquents came out as hardened criminals. The mentally ill comprised a shockingly large segment of the incarcerated population. Virtually none received any treatment. And the real power in prisons was often exercised not by wardens or guards but by the brutal gangs supposedly in their charge.

Molly continued, “I’ll tell you what I know about hatred. It arises from the destruction of one’s place in the world, or one’s place in the minds of others. This destruction can occur through rejection, exclusion, disrespect. That last offense may not sound like much, until you count the number of murders it causes, the number of monsters it creates. Monsters who want, more than anything else, to get even with their tormenters. Monsters hungry for the exhilaration they imagine revenge will provide.”

“Exhilaration,” said Gurney. “That word brings to mind the James Cagney character standing on top of the giant gas tank, shouting, ‘Made it, Ma! Top of the world!’”

Molly’s lips formed a brief, rueful smile. “As I recall, the tank explodes, the psychopath is blown to pieces, and the forces of good are triumphant. Unfortunately, real confrontations with psychopaths rarely end so neatly.”

63

REAL CONFRONTATIONS WITH psychopaths rarely end so neatly.

Lying awake in his bed at the Calico Cat in the wee hours of the next morning, Gurney couldn’t deny the truth of Molly’s observation.

The individual he was pursuing had engineered three flawless kidnappings and, assuming Ranzak’s suicide was staged, five murders without leaving a single trace of his identity. And even if Molly were right about the motivating role of hatred, her theory of its genesis was too broad to point to anyone in particular.

He felt he had good reason to doubt the rushed conclusion of local law enforcement that Ranzak was responsible for the murders and that his death was by his own hand, but he had to admit there was zero evidence identifying anyone else. If the killer wasn’t Ranzak, he must be a genius or a ghost.

Challenging a smart, meticulous, ruthless murderer to a duel seemed insane. And what he’d heard at the firehouse dinner about Agatha Stolz’s connection to the camp—and Harlan Stone’s connection to Olivia Ranzak—only added more confusion to the situation.

Sometime before dawn, he drifted into a troubled sleep, visited by the rat-faced Frankie Dalasio and a phrase repeated rhythmically over and over in the way that happens in nightmares and fevers: Upside down and backward, upside down and backward, upside down and backward . . .

In the dream the refrain seemed profound, the answer to everything. But when he was awake—with sunlight at the window, the smell of fresh coffee in the air, and his mind back in logical mode—he found it more puzzling than revealing.

Still . . .

It might be an interesting exercise to assume for a moment that everything that had happened in Gladstone was the opposite of what it appeared to be. A fanciful notion at first glance, but there were some probable examples of it. Ranzak’s “suicide” was almost certainly murder, and if so, the DNA and fingerprints linking him to the coffin murders at the campground must have been planted.

Suppose, thought Gurney, the apparent attempts to frighten him off the case, including the attack on the alpaca, weren’t that at all. Suppose someone knew they’d only strengthen his resolve? But that seemed to make no sense at all. Surely it was the murderer who slaughtered the alpaca, but why on earth would the murderer want him to become even more determined?

Suppose that Olivia’s insistence that her husband had been murdered and her attempt to hire Gurney to prove it were nothing but daring bluffs to divert suspicion from the fact that she’d killed him herself—or persuaded Harlan Stone to kill him?

Suppose the bizarre aspects of the coffin murders, which conjured up the image of a pathological sadist, were diversions from a more pragmatic motive?

And suppose, in a reversal of all prior assumptions, the three woman weren’t innocent victims at all, but the guilty targets of a righteous avenger?

Imagining all the aspects of the case about which he might be wrong—including the basic assumption that it was a unified group of events and not a concurrence of unrelated crimes—he realized he was still wedged between that rock and a hard place. But doing nothing was not an acceptable option, since it would constitute an endorsement of the official verdict—a verdict that would become more cemented in the public mind with each passing day.

So, something had to be done. Sooner rather than later.

He had a simple breakfast of oatmeal with raisins, along with a large mug of Claiborne’s strongest coffee, in the hope that a dose of caffeine might give his brain a much-needed jolt.

A jolt did arrive, but not from the coffee. As he was finishing his oatmeal, he heard a muted conversation out in the foyer. The voices had a conspiratorial tone. Moments later, Claiborne came into the dining area, followed by a portly middle-aged man and woman.

Claiborne looked uncomfortable and stood noticeably apart from the other two.

“Dave, I’d like you to meet Ella Troutman, who owns the restaurant in the village, and Dell Stockman, who owns the Happy Hours Motor Inn and the Seven Dwarfs Miniature Golf Course. Ella, Dell, and I are members of the Gladstone Business Owners Association.”

Gurney smiled blandly.

“Well, Dave, the thing is, the association asked us to . . . to meet with you and discuss the situation . . . the situation with the Ranzak affair.”

“The situation?”

“Your comments—the way people are interpreting what you said.”

“What I said?”

“In your interview with George Strum.”

Ella Troutman, whose impatience was making her fleshy face twitch, broke in. “You made a very damaging claim—that the lawful verdict regarding the crimes and suicide of Don Ranzak was baseless. And, by implication, corrupt.”

She glared at him, as if daring him to respond.

He replied mildly, “The evidence for that verdict was inadequate.”

She slapped the table. “Who the hell appointed you to judge the evidence?”

Claiborne sidled a few inches farther away.

Gurney shrugged. “It’s my retirement hobby. But tell me, apart from being the police chief’s wife, what’s your interest in defending the verdict?”

Her face reddened. “My interest is in the welfare of Gladstone, something you obviously don’t give a damn about!”

Dell Stockman raised a hand in a vaguely calming gesture.

“Here’s the thing, Mr. Gurney. Folks were starting to get back to normal. Murder and mayhem were finally disappearing from the news reports. Things were moving in the direction of closure, away from all the chaos and uncertainty. Then you go and drop your bomb and announce there’s no evidence of Ranzak’s guilt.”

“Not enough evidence.”

“My point here, Dave, is that not everyone heard that in the precise way you meant it. What most folks gathered from your comments is that Don Ranzak got railroaded, that everybody’s getting lied to, and that a psycho killer is still on the loose in our little town. Folks who live here are afraid to go out, and folks who don’t live here are afraid to visit. I can tell you from my own experience they’re not playing any miniature golf, despite the fine weather, and they not out enjoying Ella’s fine pot roast either. You’ve created a lot of fear.”

“Fear may be an appropriate reaction to the situation.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not. But there’s no maybe about the negativity in the air. You’ve got folks suspicious of everything and everybody. Things were cooling down. Now you’ve got that fear boiling up again. God knows where it’s heading. Nowhere good, and that’s a fact.”

Ella Troutman leaned angrily over the table toward Gurney. “You got Gladstone flying apart in all directions. You have any plan for putting things back together?”

“I hope to resolve the situation within the next day or two.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, mixed with suspicion.

Stockman stepped back from the table, wearing the smile of a man taking credit for a positive outcome. “Glad to hear it, Dave. Sooner, the better.”

Gurney said nothing.

“Well, then, we’ll let you get to it. Pleasure to have made your acquaintance.”

Stockman, Troutman, and Claiborne left the dining area and walked out of the inn together. Claiborne returned a minute later, looking pained.

“Sorry about that.”

Gurney shrugged. “I understand their concern. Unsolved murders are bad for business.”

He finished his coffee, which had lost its warmth, and went up to his room. He needed to finalize his ruse for drawing the killer into the open, and he needed to do it now.

64

AFTER AN HOUR of composing, revising, and reading aloud potential phone messages for the killer to intercept, Gurney failed to arrive at a credible version. The messages just didn’t sound believable. They were designed to imply that he knew more than he actually did, but they ended up being too vague. He was about to abandon the scheme, when he remembered Molly Parr’s comment that the crimes had been driven by a dreadful hatred—terrifying, she’d called it.

If a consuming hatred had been the driving force behind the murders, it followed that the killer’s goal had been to inflict as much damage as possible. Which raised an interesting question. Of the five people who ended up dead, which one seemed to have been the target of the greatest damage?

In a sense, it was an absurd question. The loss of one’s life was an absolute. There weren’t various degrees of death. Or were there?

Agatha Stolz, Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, Marian Lake, and Don Ranzak had all lost their lives. But in addition to his life, something else had been taken from Ranzak. Something intangible but monumental.

With the verdict of suicide, accompanied by the official endorsement of his likely guilt in four murders—with all their repellant sadism and brutality—his place in the minds of others had been destroyed as well. Instead of being idolized as a brilliant businessman, a visionary real estate developer, a model of ambition and success, he would be known forever as the sick creep responsible for the dreadful coffin murders. The golden boy had been converted into a despicable villain.

Assuming that the annihilation of Don Ranzak in body, soul, and reputation was intentional, then it was almost certainly an act of revenge. No plan that monstrous could emerge from anything other than a deeply festering wound.

If all that were true, the killer would now be enjoying the satisfaction of having brought about the retribution he’d dreamed of and planned for.

But what if that retribution were about to be upended?

What if all the planning and maneuvering—from the acquisition of the coffin to the elaborate framing of Ranzak—was about to be exposed? What if it appeared that Ranzak was about to be exonerated and elevated to the status of an unjustly victimized Gladstone hero? And what if the murderer believed that he himself was about to be exposed and diminished to nothing but a contemptible criminal?

Wouldn’t he feel compelled to act? To do whatever he could to preserve his victory over Ranzak? To be defeated at this point—to lose what he had killed five people to achieve—would be, literally, a fate worse than death.

The ideal message to bring the killer out of hiding came to Gurney’s mind, fully formed.

He placed a call to Jack Hardwick.

The man answered on the first ring.

Gurney explained that he’d decided on a message he was comfortable with and that he’d be calling in a little while from his car, while driving to the village, and that Hardwick should let the call go to voicemail, as they’d discussed.

Hardwick grunted—a sound that managed to convey his innate skepticism.

Gurney went downstairs and out to his car. When he was about halfway to the village, he placed the promised call to Hardwick’s number. It went to voicemail.

“Jack, it’s Dave Gurney. I found the physical evidence I was looking for. It totally exonerates Ranzak. In fact, it puts him back on his pedestal. I’ve hidden the evidence in the ghost barn, for reasons I’ll explain when I see you. Let’s meet there tonight at ten thirty. I’ll go over the evidence with you, and we can discuss next steps. It’s bombshell time. And the perp’s ID is the biggest shock of all. See you later.”

He ended the call, satisfied with its content and tone.

When he arrived in the village, he found a parking space in front of Latte-Latte. He went inside, got a double espresso at the counter, and carried it to an isolated table in the rear of the shop. After a few sips, he placed a second call to Hardwick.

“Jesus, Gurney, what the fuck?!”

“Problem?”

“Letting a psychopath know we’ll be in that weird-ass barn in the middle of the night? Yeah, that might qualify as a problem.”

“I didn’t think he’d be willing to make his move at noon on Main Street.”

“I’m sure he’d rather blow our heads off in some godforsaken forest, and you’re making it pretty goddamn easy for him.”

“Not our heads, my head. You’ll be in a safe place, out on the road. Waiting. Just in case.”

“In case of what? What the hell’s the plan?”

“If the perp comes, it’ll be because he heard the call I made to your voicemail, and it hit the right nerve. He’ll have three goals: Find out what I know about the murders. Get hold of the evidence I claimed to have. And—”

Hardwick broke in, “Bury your body in the woods.”

“That would be objective number three. But he’s going to want to talk to me first. And that gives me an opportunity.”

“To do what?”

“To persuade him that the game is over and that shooting himself would be a better idea than shooting me.”

“Fabulous fucking idea. How many murderers have you talked into shooting themselves?”

“There’s always a first. Besides, a conversation like that may get him off-balance enough to incriminate himself and careless enough for me to . . . take appropriate action.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind. You’ve forgotten that this guy pulled off three kidnappings and five murders without getting his dick caught in his zipper. You think you might be underestimating him just a fucking tad?”

“We’ll see.”

“Seeing is great, as long as the view isn’t straight up from a shallow grave. Speaking of which, is that why you picked the ghost barn for your little get-together? Because that’s where the women were buried?”

“Partly, but mainly because of its long history. I have a feeling that the Gladstone murders have their roots in that barn.”

“And you want to walk into that fucking place by yourself?”

“He wants me alive. He’d have no reason not to shoot you on sight.”

Hardwick said nothing.

“Besides, I’d rather keep you on tap. Just in case.”

Hardwick sighed his disapproval. “If you’re hell-bent on walking into this alone, we’ll have to deploy some technology. Security cams, audio bugs, maybe a drone.”

“What I have in mind doesn’t require any of that. I don’t want any electronics in the area—except my phone—and I won’t be armed.”

“You’re turning this into a fucking suicide mission.”

“The more security, the more technology, the more firepower we bring into the area, the more likely the perp will detect it. He may be unbalanced, but he’s no fool. He’s clever, observant, and careful. I’m sure he’s researched my background, my career. He probably thinks he knows me, inside and out. That’s what makes him vulnerable.”

“You’re going to waltz in there without a shred of protection, and you think he’s the vulnerable one?”

“I think he’s considering two possibilities. One, that the phone message he listened to is exactly what it sounded like—that you and I will be meeting at the ghost barn and we’ll be easy prey. Or, that it might be a trap, that the place will be wired and I’ll be armed to the teeth. What he won’t be expecting is me, alone—with no gun, no electronics, nothing but a desire to discuss his situation.”

“Then what?”

“He’ll be off-balance. I’ll play it by ear. Battle of wits. Which I’ll win. Simple as that.”

There was, of course, nothing simple about it. Although he considered himself a supremely logical man, Gurney suspected in this instance he was putting a rational gloss on an approach dictated by something deeper and more dangerous.

If he had to describe publicly what he was doing, he would say that he was trying to bring the murderer of five people to justice.

He would have found it difficult to admit that it wasn’t so much those five heinous crimes that were troubling his sleep and driving him on. It was the cutting of the young alpaca’s throat.

There was something uniquely terrible about the killing of an innocent, trusting creature—in effect, a child—that made it unforgivable.

65

BEFORE THEY ENDED their conversation, Gurney arranged to meet Hardwick at eight thirty that night at a derelict farmhouse near the weedy trail that led to the ghost barn from the town road. He wanted to go over final details with him, then get to the barn well ahead of the 10:30 p.m. time he specified in his deceptive phone call, to prepare for the killer’s arrival.

But now, back at the Calico Cat, he realized that the tracking device on his car created a glitch in the plan. He didn’t want his adversary knowing what time he was actually arriving. His first thought was to disable the tracker before setting out. But the abrupt termination of location information could raise a suspicion that he’d discovered the device, and all bets would be off.

He considered options involving other people and other cars, but they created more problems than they solved. He finally settled on a solution that would prevent the tracker from conveying the time and place of his early arrival but hopefully do it without creating any serious suspicion. Throughout the early evening, he would repeatedly interrupt its transmissions—mimicking the effect of a rapidly draining battery.

Like many high-end trackers, this one had no easily accessible on-off switch, but there was a simple way to block its satellite and cell-tower signals. All he needed was a copper pot with a lid, and he knew exactly where to find one in the Calico Cat kitchen.

He removed the magnetically attached device from under the Outback’s dashboard, and between 6:00 p.m. and 8:10 p.m. placed it inside the pot over a dozen times, with each immersion lasting slightly longer than the previous one—to create the illusion of a dying battery. The final time, he left the device in the closed pot, wrapped the pot in utility tape to keep it from opening accidentally, and left for his 8:30 p.m. meeting with Hardwick.

They arrived at the deserted farmhouse within minutes of each other. The warm colors of the sunset were fading into shades of purple, and a pale moon was rising in the east. A dead tree stood in the middle of a shallow beaver pond a stone’s throw from the abandoned house. Its gnarled branches were black against the sky.

As he was leaning his big machine onto its kickstand, Hardwick gave the tree a truculent look. “Fucking scene in a horror movie,” he muttered. “So, what now?”

“Simple,” said Gurney, standing next to the open door of the Outback. “You stay here. I go to the campground and find a place in the woods with a view of the ghost barn. If our man arrives, it means my message was close enough to the bone to worry him. If he arrives with reinforcements, I’ll come back here, and we’ll discuss how to proceed. If he’s alone, I’ll confront him. Unnerve him. See where it goes from there.”

Hardwick gave Gurney a hard stare. “I told you how batshit crazy this is, so I won’t say it again. What am I supposed to do while you’re chitchatting with Hannibal Lecter?”

“Stand by.”

“Until what happens?”

“If you hear a gunshot, and I don’t call you within a minute, you might want to look into the situation.”

“If I don’t hear a shot, I just sit here and suck my thumb? You call this lunacy a plan?”

“I never called it a plan. It’s a framework for a fluid situation.”

Hardwick burst out in a harsh laugh. “‘Framework for a fluid situation.’ I gotta remember that one!”

As Gurney got back in his car, he looked at the time on his phone—8:38 p.m.

He drove to the campground’s entrance, five minutes away. The chain-link gate was closed but unlocked. A remnant of crime-scene tape was tangled in its hinges. The greens of the surrounding forest were growing dull in the deepening dusk. He opened the gate and drove onto a gravel road that passed through a pine thicket. It led to a large clearing, bordered by log cabins he assumed had served as the camp’s bunkhouses. Farther on, there was a larger cabin, separate from the others. The words “Camp Office” were carved into a rustic pine board over the doorway. A length of crime-scene tape was hanging from the doorknob.

Still farther along, at the far edge of the clearing, almost hidden by the drooping branches of giant hemlocks, Gurney came upon the large shed where he’d discovered the coffin. The toxic waste warnings were still on it. Several yards away, a narrow weedy trail led into the forest. His sense of the campground layout told him it would lead him to the ghost barn. He drove the Outback slowly around to the rear of the coffin shed, locked it, and started walking.

The trail brought him several minutes later to a second clearing. The moon had crept above the bordering pines. The stark gray ghost barn loomed up in the center of the clearing, every bit as spectral in the cold moonlight as he remembered it. There was no movement in the clearing, and the silence was so absolute it felt unnatural.

He took a quick look inside the barn, using his phone’s flashlight beam to illuminate the large empty space. Everything was as he remembered it from his earlier visit. But there was a different odor in the air—composed of recently disturbed soil and something faintly chemical.

The dirt floor, he realized, would have been thoroughly excavated by Russell Forensics. The chemical odor remained unexplained, and his limited ability to examine the area with his phone’s flashlight revealed nothing new.

He returned to the clearing and proceeded to a point on its perimeter where the moonlight was blocked by the dense evergreens and from which he had a line of sight to the barn as well as to the clearing’s two entry points—the trail he’d just used from the main campground area and the one that he’d used the night he’d discovered the exposed hand.

He called Hardwick to let him know he’d arrived, then settled down under a pine to wait. He realized he’d never been so close to a major encounter with so little ability to predict who he’d be facing.

With adrenaline propelling his thoughts, the first possibility that came to mind was Lawrence Sloane. Was it conceivable that under that snobby old aristocratic surface there lurked a truly dangerous creature? It was difficult to imagine him in a hands-on role—driving a hatchet, for example, into Agatha Stolz’s skull. But that sort of unpleasantness could have been delegated to his cold-eyed gateman.

There was certainly more to Sloane’s contempt for Ranzak than an old-money dislike of anything flashy. In fact, when Sloane was talking about Ranzak’s likely responsibility for his four-year-old brother’s death in the overturned camp canoe, there was something very dark in his eyes, something vengeful. As for the murders of the three women, any motive Sloane might have had remained obscure.

Putting Sloane aside for the moment, he began to consider alternatives—people with a conspicuous animus toward Ranzak. The list quickly grew to include everyone at the Blue Moth Collective and the loudest friends of Wilmot at the town hall debate. The main problem with the animus list was that it didn’t include anyone who might be secretly hostile to Ranzak while publicly supporting him. Gurney could recall at least a dozen instances in which the ostensibly grieving spouse of a victim turned out to be their killer.

He decided to focus instead on potential Ranzak-camp connections between the victims and their murderer, but his attention was soon drawn to the sound of a distant vehicle.

The sound grew louder and closer, then quieter, as though the vehicle had slowed down, then come to a stop. Moments later he heard a vehicle door closing—in what he guessed to be the same general location where he’d left the Outback concealed in the woods behind the shed.

Soon he heard faint sounds of someone coming through the woods, along the same path he’d taken from the main campground area. He checked the time on his phone—9:15 p.m.

A minute later, a dark-clad figure emerged into the moonlit clearing, approached the ghost barn, and called out a name.

The name was almost certainly Harlan.

The fact that someone was meeting Harlan Stone at the ghost barn set Gurney’s mind racing toward the likelihood that it was Stone who had bugged his and Wilmot’s vehicles, and that he was the murderer. But the situation raised immediate questions.

Had Stone arrived early and been in the barn all along? And who was the visitor who called out his name? An accomplice summoned to ensure the success of whatever plan Stone had in mind? Or was it possible that the visitor was the primary actor and Stone the accomplice?

The man—for surely it was a man—moved toward the barn’s open door. A beam of light appeared, probably from his phone, and was directed into the interior of the barn. After a brief hesitation, he stepped inside.

A moment later, the silence of the night was shattered by a gunshot.

The light disappeared.

The silence returned.

Gurney was baffled. What he’d seen and heard made no sense.

Was Stone hiding in the ghost barn, waiting for his visitor to arrive, in order to kill him?

But why there? And why now?

Gurney hunkered down under the pine branches and called Hardwick.

“A gun was just fired, but not at me. I think Harlan Stone shot someone who came here to meet him.”

“What? Stone? What the hell . . . ?”

“Apparently Stone was hiding in the barn. I only checked part of it when I arrived. I think his visitor drove into the campground through the main gate, like I did, then followed the trail to the barn.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“No idea, Jack. At this point, all I can do is keep watching and listening.”

Which he did, until his vigil was interrupted a quarter of an hour later by the sound of another car approaching and coming to a stop in the same part of the campground as the first.

Gurney moved from under the pine to get a clearer view of the trailhead.

A few minutes later a figure emerged from the trail and moved toward the barn.

He called out in a voice with a rough Bronx accent, “Harlan! Where the fuck are you? Long fucking drive, Harlan, you better fucking be here!”

Like the first visitor, he used his phone as a flashlight to peer into the barn.

“Hey, Harlan! You taking a fucking nap?”

He stepped inside the building.

A shot was fired.

The light disappeared.

The silence seemed to deepen, as if the forest had stopped breathing.

Gurney stepped back under the pine and called Hardwick.

“Another visitor arrived for Stone. And there was another gunshot.”

“What the hell’s going on? A suicide convention?”

“I have no idea.”

Gurney ended the call.

It felt like every idea he had about the Gladstone murders was being demolished. Forming a new hypothesis—with Stone as the spider at the center of the web—would depend on knowing who the men were who had just been executed and why.

His speculations were interrupted twenty minutes later by the sound of a third vehicle, first in the distance, then closer, then ending roughly where the other two had.

Minutes later, as Gurney watched, a dark figure stepped from the trailhead into the moonlit clearing, holding a flashlight, sweeping its beam back and forth, then directing it toward the barn’s open doorway.

The new visitor called out a name, but not Sloane’s. It sounded like Tommy. But then he said, more distinctly, “You here, Johnny?”

That raised voice produced an even more jarring discovery. It belonged, without a doubt, to Harlan Stone.

But if Stone was arriving now, who was the shooter waiting in the barn? And why did the other visitors expect it to be Stone?

Stone, however, was apparently invited there by someone called Johnny.

Possibly Johnny Lemino?

Which suggested that one of the first two arrivals might have been Tyson Grock.

That would complete the trio of Ranzak’s campground buddies—Grock, Stone, and Lemino. But if that were that case, the numbers didn’t add up. There were three visitors, plus a shooter. So who was that fourth—

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Harlan Stone, the only visitor whose identity he was now sure of, entering the barn doorway.

The shot that pierced the silence seconds later didn’t produce the shock of the first two, but it was no less baffling.

Gurney called Hardwick and told him what he saw.

Hardwick responded with a predictable summation. “So, bottom line, the shooter is inviting some associates to that barn to blow their fucking heads off. And we don’t know fuck all about it.”

“We can safely assume that the shooter is here because he listened in on my message to you. But I don’t know why that message led to these shootings.”

Gurney moved farther back under the pine’s branches, sat down against the trunk on a layer of pine needles, and began searching for a single explanation that could account for everything that had happened. A single explanation with a single perpetrator.

A perpetrator with a devious mind, ice water for blood, and a poisonous hatred in every cell of his body.

The perpetrator who ordered the coffin from Amazon in Agatha Stolz’s name.

Drove a hatchet into Stolz’s head to cover his tracks.

Subjected Evie, Kay, and Marian to terrifying deaths.

Buried all three in the ghost barn.

Blew up Arbor Lockwood’s truck.

Painted a death threat on Stuart Wilmot’s house.

Blasted the lectern out of Gordon Phelps’s hand.

Wounded Wilmot.

Cut the throat of Madeleine’s beloved alpaca.

Put a bullet in Gurney’s image in Marian Lake’s mirror.

Blew off half of Don Ranzak’s skull.

And in the last half hour shot three men—probably Tyson Grock, Johnny Lemino, and Harlan Stone.

But why?

Gurney’s mind was racing.

Why them? Why here? Why now? Did the shooter originally want their help in disposing of him and Hardwick? And then, for reasons unknown, come to view them as a liability? Or had he summoned them here for the express purpose of killing them? Had he executed each one face-to-face? Or had he done it remotely, with a gun taped to a barn joist, with a servomotor on the trigger, so he could watch from a safe place in the woods and fire each shot when the intended victim was in the right spot?

Gurney was thinking that rarely, if ever, had he encountered such a remarkable combination of cool—

He stopped, his thoughts suddenly jumping back to the mirror-shooting incident.

He was picturing where he was standing in the room—at the end of Marian Lake’s dining table. He was examining her phone. Looking at the wall mirror from that position, what he saw was the reflection of one of the room’s large windows, the one the bullet passed through a moment later.

From that window, the reciprocal view in the mirror would have been of him standing by the end table. The reasonable conclusion at the time was that his image had been the shooter’s target, and the goal had been to intimidate him. He’d reached a similar conclusion regarding the shooting at the Fallen Angel—that it was designed to frighten Wilmot out of the race.

The Fallen Angel shooting seemed more significant at the time, but Gurney now realized the mirror shooting was more revealing. In fact, it could be the clue to the murders, the threats, and, most importantly, the killer’s identity.

The more he thought about it, the surer he became.

The truth was almost unbelievable. Yet it was the only explanation that connected everything, from the bizarre use of the coffin as a murder weapon to the present shootings in the ghost barn. It was suddenly and finally clear who was behind it all, how it was all accomplished, and why. It struck him as ironic that the least destructive attack, that bullet in the mirror, should prove to be the clearest window into such a dark and bloody case.

He also realized that his newfound certitude was not supported by a single speck of evidence. Never in his career had there been so wide a gap between certainty and proof.

Never so clever a murderer.

Never such a deep and abiding hatred.

It was like the touch of dry ice. So cold it burned.

There would never be adequate proof. Yet the monster could not be allowed to walk free, proud of what he’d done. He’d come to the ghost barn that night to put an end not only to Grock, Stone, and Lemino but to Gurney himself.

And Gurney in his silent heart had come to put an end to him.

He scrambled to his feet under the pine, took out his phone, and called Hardwick.

66

“STILL THERE, JACK?”

“What the fuck’s happening?”

“Nothing at the moment. But I know what did happen and who made it happen.”

“You telling me you’ve ID’d the perp?”

Gurney hesitated—not out of doubt, exactly, but the realization that his certainty was based more on logic than tangible proof. “I just need to verify it.”

“How?”

“By talking him into admitting what he did.”

“You high on something?”

“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m keeping this call between us active, but I’ll be carrying my phone in my jacket pocket. Put your phone on Record as soon as you hear a second voice. With any luck, you’ll be recording his confession.”

“How the fuck . . . ?” Hardwick let his voice trail off.

“I have an idea how to make it happen.”

“Of course you do. You’re a fucking idea factory. Any chance of it working?”

“At least fifty-fifty.”

“Sounds fucking irresistible. You sure you don’t want to tell me who you think the perp is?”

“You’ll know when you hear the details of his confession. One last thing. If my meeting with him starts to deteriorate—”

“I’m supposed to pull your sorry ass out of the fire?”

“If I think some intervention might be helpful, I’ll bring that to your attention.”

“How?”

“In a way he won’t notice. I’ll use a word that will alert you but not him. I’ll say either that he’s making a mistake or that I made a mistake.”

“‘Mistake.’ Perfect. It’s what this whole fucking thing is.”

Gurney slipped his still-connected phone into the pocket of his windbreaker and stepped out from under the pine. It was 10:29. The moon had risen well above the jagged black line of hemlocks on the east side of the clearing. There was a damp chill in the night air.

He walked slowly toward the barn and came to a stop halfway there. Looking around with interest at the encircling forest, he spoke in a clear, strong voice.

“I said I’d be here at ten thirty, and here I am. I’m glad you got my message. I know what you did to Agatha Stolz, Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, Marian Lake, Don Ranzak—and what you just did to Tyson Grock, Harlan Stone, and Johnny Lemino. I know what you did at the Fallen Angel and at Marian’s apartment. I know about the taped guns and your remote controller. But I’m not here to arrest you.”

He opened his jacket, held it out from his body, and slowly turned all the way around. “I’m not armed. I’m not wired. And I must confess that my call today to Jack Hardwick—the one you listened to—was all lies. I have no evidence of Ranzak’s innocence. No evidence of your guilt. And Hardwick won’t be meeting me here. That call was designed for only one purpose—to bring you here tonight. I think we should talk, don’t you?”

A long moment passed in eerie silence, broken finally by the rustling of dry grass at the edge of the woods, not far from the trail used by Gurney and the three gunshot victims.

A black-clad figure in a black ski mask stepped into the clearing and walked slowly toward Gurney, holding a pistol as casually as one might carry a tool at a job site. There was something smaller and rectangular in the other hand—some sort of remote control device was Gurney’s guess.

The dark figure stopped about twenty feet away. “Why are you here?”

Gurney recognized the weirdly artificial timbre of the question as the product of an electronic voice-alteration device. In this case, the processed voice was high-pitched with the exotic accent of a cartoon villain. It would have been comical under other circumstances. Coming from a psychopath, its silliness was grotesque.

Gurney answered with one word. “Curiosity.”

“The thing that killed the cat. Not a wise motive. Nor a believable one. Try again.”

“It’s the best I can do. You find it hard to believe that I have no interest in your arrest. You committed five premeditated murders before tonight. And now, three more. That should put you on every law-enforcement agency’s most wanted list. But you’re not on mine.”

“What do you want?”

“Just the truth. I see no point in your arrest. We put people in prison to protect society, to deter future crime, and to punish bad behavior. But I don’t see you as a danger to society. And no one in your position would ever be deterred by your imprisonment. As for punishment, I suspect your whole life has been your punishment.”

After a long silence, the weird voice asked again, “What do you want?”

“I want to know what was done to you. By Don Ranzak. Here, in this camp.”

“Why should I tell you anything? You made the monster look like a victim. You put a halo on Satan!”

“If I’m wrong, tell me the truth about him. That’s all I want. That’s why I’m here.”

There was no response from the dark figure.

A minute passed. Then another.

“It happened right here, didn’t it?” said Gurney. “In the ghost barn.”

No reply.

“What did he do to you?”

Gurney thought he saw a new rigidity in the figure’s stance.

“Did it involve a coffin?”

The hand that was holding what Gurney suspected was a remote control device slipped it into the pocket of what appeared to be a black sweatshirt, then reached under the sweatshirt as if adjusting something. It was evidently the voice changer, since the next spoken words were lower in pitch, unaccented, a bit gravelly. The effect was more normal, the timbre altered just enough to disguise the speaker’s identity.

“A shipping crate,” said the voice.

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“Ranzak put you in the crate?”

“He told them to tie my hands behind me and put me in it.”

“Grock, Stone, and Lemino?”

“His gravediggers. If he didn’t like you, he’d say that his gravediggers would come for you in the night and bury you in the ghost barn.”

“Grock, Stone, and Lemino put you in the crate?”

“He told them to do it. They’d already dug a hole. They said it was my grave. They said that’s where they buried useless kids. They said that’s why they called it the ghost barn. It was full of the ghosts of dead kids. Ranzak told them to close the crate and nail it shut. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.”

“What happened then?”

“They lowered the crate into the hole. Shoveled dirt on it. I hear it in my dreams—the dirt hitting the top of the crate. There were cracks between the boards, dirt sifting down into my eyes, nose, mouth. Screaming. Choking. Suffocating. Please stop. Please let me out. Please. Please. Shaking. Choking. Couldn’t close my eyes. Couldn’t open them. Oh, God, the pain in my eyes. Screaming. Choking.”

“How long did they leave you like that?”

“No sense of time.”

“Then they dug up the crate and released you?”

“They were laughing. I’d pissed all over myself. I couldn’t stand. I crawled out of the crate. They said if I told anyone, they’d bury me again. Bury me and leave me to rot. Ranzak said I’d be eaten by worms.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“I told Evie, Kay, and Marian. They were junior counselors. I thought they’d know what to do. I trusted them. But they laughed at me. They told me it was a crazy story, that Donny Ranzak would never do such a thing. I trusted them, and they laughed at me. They told me I’d better not tell my crazy story to anyone else, because everyone would know I was lying. I was terrified, AND THEY LAUGHED AT ME!”

“And now they’re all dead.”

“All because of Ranzak. The most evil thing that ever lived. And you want to tell the world how innocent he is.”

“He didn’t kill Agatha Stolz. Or Evie. Or Kay. Or Marian.”

The dark figure screamed. “He killed ME! He killed ME a hundred times. A hundred times in dreams I couldn’t wake up from. I DIED IN THAT GRAVE A HUNDRED TIMES! GAGGING! SCREAMING! You want to tell the world that Don Ranzak didn’t kill anyone? No, no, no, Mr. Gurney! You’ll never tell the world that Ranzak was innocent!”

“You want to make me your ninth victim? To protect your lies about the other eight?”

“I’m protecting the truth—that Ranzak was a devil, not a saint.”

Gurney noticed that the hand holding the gun was moving restlessly.

“Another murder would be a big mistake,” he said. Then added, to make sure Hardwick got the message, “A very big mistake.”

“I don’t think so. Your body will be found in the barn with those three pieces of human garbage. The gun that killed them will be found in your hand. This gun”—he nodded toward the one now pointing at Gurney—“will be found in the hand of Harlan Stone. The Tri-County Star will love it! ‘Hero Detective Dies in Final Shoot-Out with Confederates of the Criminal Psychopath Donald Ranzak.’ A perfect ending. Now, walk slowly into the barn.”

Gurney didn’t move. “Don’t you want to know what gave you away?”

There was no reply.

“I already knew how you managed the shots at the Fallen Angel. There was adhesive residue where you taped the guns to the tree, which suggested the remote triggering of the shots. But I made the wrong assumption about your reason for firing the rounds in that particular way. Attack devices are almost always controlled remotely, to allow the attacker to operate from a distance. But that wasn’t the case at the Fallen Angel, was it? Your mistake was using the same technique to fire the shot into the mirror in Marian’s apartment. I should have seen the truth immediately. But better late than never.”

“Why did you really come here tonight?”

“To be absolutely sure of who you are.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Nothing. I have no proof. Who would ever believe that you killed eight people? That you drove a hatchet into Agatha Stolz’s head? That you subjected three Gladstone women to terrifying deaths? That you blew half of Don Ranzak’s head off with a hollow-point slug? That you cut the throat of a harmless, innocent creature for no better reason than to make me hate Don Ranzak? That you shot Grock, Stone, and Lemino the same way you wounded yourself at the Fallen Angel? No, if I announced that Stuart Wilmot did all that, no one would ever believe me. Stuart Wilmot, the computer nerd at the library? Defender of the environment? Champion of the snowy owl and the blue moth? No, not a soul would believe me.”

Wilmot removed his ski mask and tossed it on the ground. His face in the moonlight was a ghastly shade of gray. He reached under his sweatshirt and switched off the voice-alteration device. His natural voice was chillingly relaxed. “That’s not a chance I can take.”

As Wilmot was speaking, there was a shadowy movement several yards behind him in the barn doorway.

“Hiring me was a clever move, Stuart. Brilliant, really. What criminal would ever hire a detective to solve the crimes he himself was committing? It was an ideal way to insulate yourself from any possible suspicion.”

Someone was moving unsteadily from the barn doorway toward Wilmot. As the man emerged from the barn’s shadow into the moonlight, Gurney recognized the grimacing, bloody face of Tyson Grock. Something in his hand reflected a glint of moonlight.

Wilmot pointed his gun at Gurney’s chest. “I can shoot you where you’re standing, or you can live a little longer by walking to the barn.”

Grock came to a wavering stop about ten feet behind Wilmot.

Gurney said, “You know, Stuart, I considered killing you.”

“You had your chance.”

“Do you want to know why I didn’t take it?”

Wilmot didn’t reply.

“Because everything I do becomes part of me. I become what I’ve done. I decided not to kill you, because I didn’t want that to be part of me. Murder makes a man a murderer.”

Grock took another step closer.

Wilmot steadied the gun, aiming it directly at Gurney’s heart.

Tyson Grock suddenly raised his hand and brought it forward in a sharp hurling motion. A stainless steel hatchet flashed in the moonlight.

Gurney heard a thud.

Wilmot stiffened.

The gun fell from his hand.

He toppled forward and hit the ground face-first.

There was a flash.

A deafening blast.

Then nothing.

67

GURNEY FOUND HIMSELF lying on his back, staring up at a blurry image of the moon.

Ears ringing.

The whooshing sound of a fire.

Wavering orange light on the surrounding hemlocks.

His own gasps of pain as he tried getting to his feet.

Struggling, getting on his hands and knees.

Rising unsteadily to his feet.

Looking around in confusion at tangled piles of burning rubble.

Rubble that had been the barn.

The barn walls lying in jagged heaps.

And then the body.

Wilmot, facedown with a smoking barn post across his back.

His sweatshirt smoldering.

His hair burned off, scalp oozing blood.

A bright steel hatchet embedded in the back of his neck.

The second body, facedown, a few yards away.

Arms and legs in grotesque positions.

Tyson Grock. His legs on fire.

The sound of an engine.

Roaring closer.

The Harley bursting from the trailhead.

Zigzagging through the burning debris.

The look of wild determination on Jack Hardwick’s face.

Shouting over the roar of the fire.

“What the fuck?!”

Hardwick drove Gurney in the Outback to a hospital emergency room outside the Gladstone police department’s jurisdiction.

The law-enforcement agency that Gurney contacted on their way to the ER was the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation—Hardwick’s employer until his aggressive personality led to a parting of the ways. It was an organization about which they both had mixed feelings, but it seemed a better choice than Troutman and Hoskins. Gurney told the trooper who answered his call enough to guarantee a visit from a BCI investigator.

Gurney’s linear grasp of everything that occurred that evening had been compromised by the explosion of the barn, but by the time they arrived at the hospital his clarity was improving, as was his understanding of what had happened the moment before the blast threw him to the ground—which he related to Hardwick as they were entering the ER waiting area.

He shared his belief that Wilmot had planted explosives in the barn—perhaps in the hope that demolishing it would obliterate the past—and that a remote detonation device in his sweatshirt pocket had been triggered when he fell on it.

He was separated from Hardwick in the ER’s triage process and installed in one of the cubicles. A nurse with a computer tablet asked a long list of questions about the event that had caused his injuries; about his symptoms; and about his medical history, medications, and allergies. She attached him to an array of beeping machines and screens that monitored his pulse, blood-oxygen level, and blood pressure.

She said a doctor would soon be with him, smiled, and departed.

He took the opportunity to call Madeleine, even though it was midnight.

She answered in a hoarse, anxious voice on the fourth ring.

“David? Are you alright?”

He told her where he was and gave her a short account of the evening’s events, without any mention of how the situation might have turned out differently.

“Bottom line,” he concluded, “the Gladstone insanity is finally over.”

“You’re sure it was Wilmot who . . . was behind everything?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s . . . dead?”

“At last sight, he was facedown, his clothes on fire, a barn timber on his broken back, and a hatchet in his spine. So . . . yes. It’s safe to say he’s dead.”

A long moment passed before she spoke. “Such a horrible chain of events. Such a horrible ending. The good guys won. You won. We won. But somehow it doesn’t feel as good as I imagined it would.” After a fraught pause, she added, “And I think you came a lot closer to being killed than you’re telling me.”

Before he could respond, she continued, “I’m going to leave for the hospital right now. Is there anything I can bring you?”

He insisted that it wasn’t necessary, or even feasible—since he’d probably be discharged within the hour and was going to drive Hardwick back to his motorcycle, then drive himself to Walnut Crossing. She objected, strenuously at first, but he eventually convinced her that he was quite capable of managing the trip. It would be no problem at all.

His second call was to the breaking-news hotline at the Tri-County Star.

He gave the sleepy-sounding attendant manning the line enough information to ensure a callback from George Strum. Never before had he given a media outlet, much less one with the abysmal standards of the Star, a journalistic scoop, but in this case, he wanted some initial control over the public narrative.

As he ended the call, an attendant arrived to guide his rolling ER bed to the imaging department, where X-rays were taken of his shoulders, ribs, spine, and hips, as well as an MRI of his brain.

Shortly after he was wheeled back into his ER cubicle, a small Indian doctor arrived with a large blond nurse. The doctor looked annoyed. The nurse’s expression was more pleasant, but there was a tinge of apprehension in her smile.

The doctor spoke first. “Your brain MRI is normal. X-rays show two fractured ribs and a dislocated shoulder. The ribs will take time. The shoulder we can correct now. There will be some discomfort.”

“That’s what you call it?” said Gurney. “I had a dislocated shoulder wrenched back into its socket twenty years ago. ‘Discomfort’ doesn’t come close.”

The doctor pursed his lips. “If you insist, the procedure can be done under a general anesthetic—requiring hospital admission, an anesthesiologist, nursing staff, operating room, and recovery room. Be advised that your insurance company may not agree with the medical necessity of that approach.”

“Let’s get it over with.”

The doctor flashed a satisfied smile.

The procedure was quick, successful, and as god-awful as Gurney remembered it.

When the doctor and nurse left the cubicle, Hardwick came in. He explained that he’d already been patched up and discharged. His injuries had been limited to a nasty burn on the back of his right hand and lacerations where shattered pieces of barn wood scraped against his ankles, as the Harley sped through the wreckage.

“I checked the recording on my phone. It picked up everything you said, most of what Wilmot said, the explosion, the sound of everything collapsing. I sent a copy to your phone.”

Moments after Hardwick left, a young BCI investigator arrived. He had the lean physique of a runner, a pink face recently shaved, and the universal law-enforcement haircut designed to minimize the existence of hair.

He had a professional smile that communicated nothing and a tablet computer with which he recorded Gurney’s personal information and his narration of the evening’s events. The only breaks in the young man’s unreadable expression occurred with Gurney’s mention of Wilmot’s charred and bleeding scalp, the hatchet embedded in the back of his neck, and the existence of a recording of Wilmot’s incriminating comments.

He told Gurney that he’d be contacted shortly for a follow-up interview with a senior investigator and that the recording should be handed over at that time.

68

GURNEY ARRIVED HOME at dawn—exhausted, aching, sweating.

At exactly 6:00 a.m., as the sun was rising over the eastern ridge on the far side of the pond, George Strum returned the call he’d made to the Star hotline.

Strum’s reaction to a detailed narrative of the previous night’s drama exceeded Gurney’s expectations. Within an hour of their conversation, the Star website featured a rotating series of screamingly bold headlines.

HERO DETECTIVE CONFRONTS RUTHLESS KILLER

CAMPGROUND HORRORS LEAD TO GRUESOME DEATHS

STUART WILMOT’S SHOCKING LAST WORDS

EXPLOSIVE SOLUTION TO MYSTERY MURDERS

FATAL HATCHET STRIKES DOWN GLADSTONE MONSTER

Gurney was sitting at the little antique café table on the patio outside the French doors, his laptop open to the Star website. After reading the details accompanying the headlines, he was satisfied that enough of the truth had now been exposed that major deceptions by the Gladstone police or other interested parties would be unlikely if not impossible.

Madeleine came out on the patio, carrying a mug of coffee for him and a glass of orange juice for herself. She laid them on the table and sat in the chair across from him. She didn’t speak, but her eyes were full of questions that his phone call from the hospital hadn’t answered.

He took a sip of his coffee. “The legal process will run its course. There will be more interviews, more questions about the . . . conversation . . . I had with Wilmot. They’ll want to know why I was there, what my intentions were, what I knew and when I knew it, et cetera. There’s sure to be a hearing or two or three or more. It’s a complicated case—eight cases, really. Eight murders. Actually nine, counting Wilmot’s death by hatchet. It will be quite a while before the whole business is officially wrapped up. But the thing itself is over. The killing is over. The killer is dead.”

Madeleine took a deep, shaky breath. “Stuart Wilmot really killed eight people?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The easy answer would be revenge.”

“For what?”

“His victims were all connected to the camp. They were all there the summer Wilmot’s life was changed forever, the summer something in his mind . . . broke. I didn’t go into the details of that when I called you from the ER. But it seems that Don Ranzak—along with three helpers—buried Wilmot alive in the ghost barn. He was ten years old. He nearly died. They thought it was funny.”

Madeleine’s mouth was open, but a long moment passed before she spoke.

“I can see why he might have wanted to kill those four, but why the women?”

“I think he was obsessed with revealing the truth.”

“What truth?”

“The truth he saw that terrible night in the ghost barn. Buried in an old crate, screaming, choking, he saw the absolute evil of Don Ranzak. That’s the truth that shaped his life. That’s the truth he wanted everyone to see.”

Madeleine blinked in confusion. “So he killed those women. Why?”

“The reason he gave me was that they hadn’t believed him, when he told them what Ranzak had done. They called him a liar. And they laughed at him. But I’m sure there was another reason—a reason at the heart of his plan. He killed Evie Hubble, Kay Eliot, and Marian Lake—his own key supporters—in a horrible way, then planted evidence that would incriminate Ranzak. Then he killed Ranzak, staging it as a suicide that would be interpreted as the final desperate act of a guilty man. He wanted the world to see Ranzak as he saw him—heartless, ruthless, evil.”

“What about Agatha Stolz?”

“He was able to rationalize it as collateral damage. Unfortunate but necessary. The hatchet in her head was probably an afterthought, to incriminate Tyson Grock. As for Wilmot’s shooting of Grock, Stone, and Lemino, that was undoubtedly revenge for their part in what was done to him.”

Gurney decided not to mention Wilmot’s plan to shoot him and make it look like he’d died in a shoot-out with the other three.

Madeleine’s wide-eyed expression fell somewhere between horror and disbelief.

“Why our alpaca, who never did anything to anyone?”

“The goal was to involve me emotionally in the case. Wilmot knew I was suspicious of Ranzak. He wanted me to see Ranzak the way he saw him. He wanted me to hate him.”

“What a terrible combination of fire and ice.”

They fell silent and remained that way for some time.

Chickadees were busy at the feeder, each of them picking out one seed at a time and carrying it back to a branch in the old apple tree.

Madeleine asked, “When did you realize that Wilmot was behind everything?”

“Earlier that same day. I was thinking about the mirror-shooting incident in Marian Lake’s apartment. Picturing what happened just before the bullet struck. I was there with Wilmot, at his request. I remember he pointed to Marian Lake’s phone on her dining table and suggested I take a look at it, ostensibly to see who she’d been in contact with. To pick up the phone, I had to walk over to the end of the table—which placed my reflection in the mirror in a way that lined up with a gun that had been zeroed in on the center of that mirror. Wilmot essentially put me there by directing me to the phone, and as soon as I was there, the shot was fired. It finally dawned on me how it had been arranged.”

“But what on earth was the point of it?”

“It was another attempt to get me emotionally involved, by making me suspect that Ranzak was trying to either kill me or scare me off the case.

“But it’s over now, really over, right? Tell me that again.”

“It’s really over.”

“No one’s going to come in and turn all this upside down?”

“Enough of the truth has been exposed to prevent any interested party from twisting the facts.”

Madeleine nodded, picked up his coffee cup and her orange juice glass, and went into the house.

Gurney stayed at the little table, watching the chickadees, his mind wandering.

Enough of the truth.

But probably not all of it.

The investigative work of a homicide detective was like a surgeon’s discovery and excavation of rotten tissue. It was important work. A valuable contribution to society. An honorable way to spend one’s time. But there came a moment when it began to feel like too much of one thing.

Too much darkness.

One could sink into that darkness and come to believe there was no light in the world.

But there was always light, if you could manage to see it.

There was light in Madeleine’s approach to life, in her love of the natural world. She exulted in the wild beauty of it, the uniqueness of everything, the glory of common things. It wasn’t just wildflowers and sunsets and the swooping of barn swallows that captivated her. It was the lichens on rocks, the ladybugs, the garter snakes. Everything. It was life itself that she loved.

He heard the French doors opening behind him. He turned and saw her stepping out onto the patio, smiling now in the morning sun.

It might be a good time, he thought, to take a break from the darkness.

To move closer to life, after so much death.

EPILOGUE

AMONG THE ASPECTS of the case that Gurney pondered in the days following the ghost barn explosion were the ways Wilmot had managed to deceive him for as long as he did. Apart from the risky ploys of hiring him in the first place and then wounding himself at the Fallen Angel to solidify his position as a victim, there was the subtle way he concealed his homicidal fixation on Ranzak under the guise of principled anger.

Gurney had reported the ghost barn events to the state police, but since the explosion was heard locally and reported immediately to the Gladstone police, they were the first to arrive and take charge of the crime scene. From Gurney’s point of view, the involvement of both agencies was ideal. He had greater trust in BCI for integrity and objectivity, while Gladstone’s reliance on Russell Forensics for evidence processing would give him easier access to the results.

A week after the campground finale, Barstow met Gurney for lunch. She confirmed his assumption that Wilmot had undermined the barn with explosives—a homemade but highly effective concoction of nitrogen fertilizer, motor oil, and a remotely controlled detonator, which his fall had triggered.

Then she added, with uncharacteristic hesitancy, “When we went through Wilmot’s house, we found this.”

She took something from a tote bag and handed it to him. It was the size and shape of a teddy bear, but the fur had been worn away. The fabric holding the stuffing in place had a smooth shine, perhaps from being handled, hugged, thousands of times.

“It was discovered in Wilmot’s bedroom, leaning against one of the pillows on his bed, with a doll-sized blanket pulled up to its chin.”

Gurney found himself fighting off maudlin thoughts about a wounded child whose feeling of helplessness and terror had curdled into a murderous hatred. A child, a teenager, a grown man who’d held on to the only object of love in his life.

“Do you want it?” asked Barstow.

He shook his head.

She put it back in her tote bag, and they ate their lunch in silence.

As he thought back over the cases he’d been involved in since leaving the NYPD and moving to Walnut Crossing, the Gladstone affair seemed an especially fitting conclusion—echoing as it did the pathology of his first upstate case, the “think-of-a-number” murders. They, too, had involved the horrendous actions of a damaged child.

Stony Burke called at the end of June to let Gurney know that the Pam Espinoza case had not only been officially reopened but that a drug dealer had fingered an associate for the murders of both Espinoza and Frankie Dalasio. The associate had been arrested, and his eventual conviction appeared to be a slam dunk. Despite all the recognition Gurney had received in his NYPD career, Frankie Dalasio’s phony confession had put an unsatisfying punctuation at the end of it. Having that question mark replaced by a period made a remarkable difference.

In mid-July, Madeleine acquired three more alpacas. Now that there were four altogether, she began referring to them as “the herd” and gave them names. Poppy. Daisy. Dandelion. Aster. She and Dave built an addition to the existing shed. He realized that their marriage had begun to change. It was no longer just a series of compromises in the interest of peace but joint experiences in the interest of closeness. When he commented at length on what he considered to be a profound development, she burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Your addiction to explanations.”

In early August, he and Madeleine left Poppy, Dandelion, Aster, and Daisy in the care of Jim Smithers and took an extended road trip—their first ever—across the northern states and up into the spectacular mountains of British Columbia. He wasn’t sure whether he was more amazed by the beauty of the place or by his own awestruck reaction to it.

Although it was months since he’d had the Danny dream, a thought occurred to him one day about the grief he still experienced from time to time. The grief wasn’t so much for something in the past that he’d lost. It was for something he’d never had—an imagined future, a fantasy of shared experiences yet to come.

But in the real world, the present world, there was Kyle, the offspring of his first marriage, with whom he had little contact. He remembered with a sudden stabbing feeling that Kyle had called him during his Gladstone entanglement, offering to pay him a visit, and he’d forgotten all about it. He realized he’d been mistaking the cordiality of their occasional communications for closeness. But how close could they be, if that phone call could slip so easily out of his mind? It was time to do something about that.

When a year had passed since the ghost barn finale, Madeleine asked him if he was ever tempted to go back to his crime-solving life.

“I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.”

“I don’t see you sitting on a bench, watching the sun set.”

As if probing for possibilities he might be considering, she added, “I suppose someday you could go back to lecturing at the police academy.”

“I don’t want to go back to anything.” After a pause, he smiled. “Except maybe British Columbia. I was thinking we might do some hiking, camping, maybe even kayaking.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It’s been said that writers are only as good as their editors, and so I feel especially fortunate to have been guided by superb ones throughout the sixteen-year, nine-volume Dave Gurney saga—most recently by Dan Smetanka and Dan López, whose sharp eyes and good taste have made my books better in every way.

My agents Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson have been with me and Dave Gurney from the beginning. I can’t imagine having smarter, more supportive advocates. Thank you, Molly! Thank you, Lucy! You made it happen. And you made it all a pleasure.

My wife, Naomi, has a special place in the creation of these stories. Years ago, when I was telling her how much I enjoyed reading detective novels, she strongly encouraged me to write one. That started me thinking, and those thoughts coalesced into the idea of an NYPD homicide detective and his wife retiring to upstate New York and getting drawn into a series of dangerous, high-stakes challenges. I’m endlessly grateful for that initial push and for her encouragement and wise comments along the way.

Finally, my heartfelt thanks to my readers. Your enjoyment of these stories has been a particular delight for me. I hope you consider Ghost Barn a satisfying conclusion to everything that came before.

© Naomi Fisch

JOHN VERDON is the author of the Dave Gurney series of thrillers, international bestsellers published in more than two dozen languages: Think of a Number, Shut Your Eyes Tight, Let the Devil Sleep, Peter Pan Must Die, Wolf Lake, White River Burning, On Harrow Hill, and The Viper. Before becoming a crime fiction writer, Verdon had two previous careers: as an advertising creative director and a custom furniture maker. He currently lives with his wife, Naomi, in the rural mountains of upstate New York—raising chickens, tending the garden, mowing the fields, and devising the intricate plots of the Gurney novels.

GHOST BARN

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2026 by John Verdon

All rights reserved under domestic and international copyright. Outside of fair use (such as quoting within a book review), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Additionally, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. For permissions, please contact the publisher.

First Counterpoint edition: 2026

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Verdon, John author

Title: Ghost barn : a Dave Gurney novel / John Verdon.

Description: First Counterpoint edition. | California : Counterpoint, 2026.

Identifiers: LCCN 2026016416 | ISBN 9781640097254 hardcover | ISBN 9781640097261 ebook

Subjects: LCGFT: Fiction | Novels | Detective and mystery fiction

Classification: LCC PS3622.E736 G46 2026

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2026016416

Jacket design by Victoria Maxfield

Jacket images: barn © Alamy / jvphoto,

crescent moon © iStock / Klaas Jan Schraa

Book design by Laura Berry

COUNTERPOINT

Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA

www.counterpointpress.com