He sat back down at the table and absently put a third spoon of sugar in his coffee.
“The sweeter the better?” asked Madeleine with a small smile.
He shrugged, stirring the coffee slowly.
She cocked her head a little to one side and studied him in a way that had once made him uneasy but in recent years he’d come to welcome-not because he understood what she was thinking, or what conclusions her “study” produced, but because he saw it as an expression of affection. To ask her what was on her mind would be like demanding that she define their relationship. But the part of any relationship that made it precious was not something that could be defined on demand.
She raised her cup to her lips with two hands, sipped from it, and put it down gently. “So… do you want to tell me a bit more about what’s going on?”
For some reason the question took him by surprise. “You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a lot.”
“I’m listening.”
“Okay. Remember, you asked for it.” He leaned back in his chair and spoke with hardly a pause for twenty-five minutes, recounting everything that came to mind-from Roberta Rotker’s firing range to the skeleton at Max Clinter’s gate-with no effort to organize, prioritize, or edit the data. As he went on, he himself was struck by the sheer number of intense people, weird tangents, and sinister complexities in the affair. “And finally,” he concluded, “there’s the matter of the barn.”
“Yes, the barn,” said Madeleine, her expression hardening. “You believe it’s connected with everything else?”
“I think it is.”
“So what’s the plan?”
It was an unwelcome question, because it forced him to face the fact that his intentions didn’t add up to anything remotely like a
“Can any of that be expressed in English?”
“I want to find out if anyone in official law enforcement actually has any solid facts, or if the sanctified theory of the Good Shepherd case is as fragile as I think it is.”
“That’s what you’re doing tomorrow with the fish guy?”
“Yes. Agent Trout. At his cabin in the Adirondacks. On Lake Sorrow.”
Just then Kyle and Kim came in the side door, accompanied by a rush of chilly air.
Chapter 28
At dawn the next morning, Gurney was back at the table with his first coffee of the day. Sitting by the French doors, he was watching a daddy longlegs dragging a captured earwig along the edge of the stone patio. The earwig was still putting up a fight.
For a moment Gurney was tempted to intervene-until he realized that his impulse was neither kind nor empathetic. It was nothing more than a desire to brush the struggle out of sight.
“What’s the matter?” It was Madeleine’s voice.
He looked up with a start to find her in a pink T-shirt and green madras shorts, fresh from her shower, standing next to him.
“Just observing the horrors of nature,” he said.
She looked out through the glass doors at the eastern sky. “It’s going to be a nice day.”
He nodded without really hearing her. Another thought had absorbed his attention. “Before I went to bed last night, Kyle said something about going back to Manhattan this morning. Do you recall if he mentioned what time he was planning to leave?”
“They left an hour ago.”
“What?”
“They left an hour ago. You were sound asleep. They didn’t want to wake you.”
“They?”
Madeleine gave him a look that seemed to convey her surprise at his surprise. “Kim has to be in the city this afternoon to record something for
“Maybe I did, but not so fast.”
Madeleine went to the coffeemaker on the sink island and poured herself a cup. “Does it worry you?”
“Unknowns worry me. Surprises worry me.”
She took a sip and returned to the table. “Unfortunately, life is full of them.”
“So I’ve discovered.”
She stood by the table, gazing through the far window toward the widening swath of light above the ridge. “Does Kim worry you?”
“To some extent. I wonder about the Robby Meese thing. I mean, that guy is pretty warped, and she let him move in with her. There’s something wrong with that picture.”
“I agree, but maybe not the way you mean it. A lot of people, mostly women, are attracted to damaged individuals. The more damage, the better. They get involved with criminals, drug addicts. They want to
With his detailed route directions in hand, Gurney left shortly after sunrise for Lake Sorrow. The drive through the Catskill foothills and rolling Schoharie farmlands up into the Adirondacks was a journey into discomfiting memories. Memories of preteen vacations at Brant Lake with his mother at the height of her emotional estrangement from his father. An estrangement that left her needy, anxious, and physically clingy. Even now, close to forty years later, the memories cast an unsettling pall.
As he drove farther north, the pitch of the mountain slopes increased, the valleys narrowed, and the shadows deepened. According to the instructions he’d been given by Trout’s assistant, the last road he’d be taking with any posted identification would be Shutter Spur. From that point on, he’d have to rely on precise odometer readings to make the proper turns in a maze of old logging roads. The forest was part of a vast private landholding in which there were only a few seasonal cabins, no stores, no gas stations, no people, and major gaps in cell service.
The AWD system on Gurney’s Outback was barely adequate to negotiate the terrain. After the fifth turn, which his instructions indicated would take him directly to Trout’s cabin, he found himself instead in a small clearing.
He got out of the car and walked around the perimeter. There were four rough trails leading from the clearing into the forest in various directions, but no way of telling which one he was supposed to take. It was 8:58 A.M.-just two minutes shy of his projected arrival time.
He was sure he’d followed all the instructions accurately and reasonably sure that the punctilious-sounding man on the phone was not likely to have made a mistake. That left a couple of possible explanations, but only one he considered probable.
He returned to his car, got in, opened the side window for a bit of fresh air, reclined the seat as far as it would go, lay back, and closed his eyes. Every so often he checked the time. At nine-fifteen he heard the engine of an approaching vehicle. It stopped not far away.
When the expected knock came, he opened his eyes, yawned, raised his seat, and lowered the window. The man standing there had a lean, hard appearance, with sharp brown eyes and close-cropped black hair.
“You David Gurney?”
