“And you really have bobcats?”
“One or two. Sometimes I’ll see one in my headlights as I’m coming up the hill.”
“Wow. That’s pretty wild. I’ve never seen a bobcat, not a real one.” He fell silent for a minute or so. Gurney was about to ask him what was on his mind when he continued. “You really think there’s more to the Shepherd case than people realize?”
“Could be.”
“You sounded pretty sure on the phone. I think that’s why Kim got so bothered.”
“Yeah, well…”
“So what do you think everybody’s missing?”
“How much do you know about the case?”
“Like I told you before dinner-everything. At least everything that was on TV.”
Gurney shook his head in the dark. “It’s funny-I don’t recall you as being that interested at the time.”
“Well, I was. But there’s no reason you’d remember that. I mean, you were never really there.”
“I was around when you came on weekends. Sundays anyway.”
“You were there physically, but you always seemed… I don’t know, like, mentally you were always tied up in something important.”
After a pause Gurney said, a little haltingly, “And… I guess… after you got involved with Stacey Marx… you weren’t coming every weekend.”
“No, I guess not.”
“After you broke up, did you stay in touch with her?”
“Didn’t I ever tell you about that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Stacey got all fucked up. In and out of rehabs. Kinda fried, actually. Saw her at Eddie Burke’s wedding. You remember Eddie Burke, right?”
“Sort of. Redheaded kid?”
“No, that was his brother Jimmy. Anyway, no matter. Basically, Stacey is fried.”
A long silence fell between them. Gurney’s mind felt empty, unfocused, uneasy.
“It’s kind of chilly down here,” said Kyle. “You want to come back up to the house?”
“Yeah. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Neither of them moved.
“So… you never finished saying what it is about the Good Shepherd case that’s getting to you. You seem to be the only person who has a problem with it.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
“That’s way too Zen for me.”
Gurney uttered a sharp, one-syllable laugh. “The problem is a gaping lack of critical thinking. The whole goddamn thing is too neatly packaged, too simple, and way too useful to too many people. It hasn’t been challenged, argued, tested, ripped, and kicked, because too many experts in too many positions of power and influence like it the way it is-a textbook crime spree by a textbook psycho.”
After a short silence, Kyle said, “You sound pissed off.”
“You ever see what someone looks like who’s taken a.50-caliber hollow-point round in the side of the head?”
“Pretty bad, I guess.”
“It’s the most dehumanizing thing imaginable. The so-called Good Shepherd did that to six people. He didn’t just kill them. He mangled them, turned them into something pathetic and horrible.” Gurney stared off into the darkness for a long minute before going on. “Those people deserve more than they’ve gotten. They deserve a more serious debate. They deserve
“So what’s the plan? Find loose ends and yank on them?”
“If I can.”
“Well, that’s what you’re good at, right?”
“I used to be. We’ll see.”
“You’ll succeed. You’ve never failed at anything.”
“Of course I have.”
Again there was a brief silence, broken by Kyle. “What kinds of questions?”
“Hmm?” Gurney’s mind had drifted into the depths of his shortcomings.
“Just wondering-what kinds of questions do you have in mind?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some big amorphous questions about the sort of personality that could be behind the language in the manifesto, the attack logistics, the choice of weapon. And lots of smaller questions, like why all the cars were the same make-”
“Or why they all came from Sindelfingen?”
“Why they all… what?”
“All six cars were built in the Mercedes plant in Sindelfingen, just outside Stuttgart. Probably doesn’t mean anything. Just an odd little factoid.”
“How on earth would you know a thing like that?”
“I told you I paid a lot of attention.”
“That Sindelfingen thing was in the news?”
“No. The years and models of the cars were in the news. I was… you know… trying to figure things out. I wondered what the cars might have in common beyond what was obvious. Mercedes has a lot of assembly plants, in a lot of countries. But those six cars all came from Sindelfingen. Just a coincidence, right?”
Even though it was too dark to make out his face, Gurney turned toward Kyle on the bench. “I still don’t get why you…”
“Why I bothered to look into that? I don’t know. I guess I… I mean, I looked into a lot of stuff like that… like crimes… murders… stuff like that.”
Gurney was stunned into silence. Ten years ago his son had been playing detective. And how long before that? Or after that? And why the hell hadn’t he known about it? How had it escaped his attention?
He felt tears coming, didn’t know what to do.
He coughed, cleared his throat. “What do they make at Sindelfingen?”
“Their top-of-the-line stuff. Which would explain it as a common factor, I guess. I mean, if the Shepherd was targeting only the most expensive Mercedes models, then that’s the plant they all would have been made in.”
“Still, it’s an interesting point. And you took the time to discover it.”
“So you want to come up to the house?” said Kyle after a pause. “Feels like it might rain.”
“In a minute. You go ahead.”
“You want me to leave the flashlight with you?” Kyle switched it on, shining it up the slope toward the asparagus patch.
“No need. I know the obstructions between here and there pretty well.”
“Okay.” Kyle stood up slowly, testing the evenness of the ground in front of the bench. There was a small splash at the edge of the pond.
“The hell was that?”
“Frog.”
“You sure? Are there any snakes?”
“Hardly any. All small, all harmless.”
Kyle seemed to think about this for a while. “Okay,” he said. “See you up at the house.”
Gurney watched him, or rather the beam of his flashlight, moving gradually up the pasture path. Then he leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes, inhaling the damp air, emotionally drained.
His eyes opened suddenly at the sound of a small branch breaking somewhere in the woods behind the barn. Perhaps ten seconds later, he heard the sound again. He got up from the bench and listened, straining his eyes into the depthless black masses and ill-defined spaces that represented the area around him.
Hearing nothing more for the next minute or two, stepping tentatively, he walked carefully from the bench to
