stability?”
She returned the stare. “I’ve never felt this kind of hostility from you before.”
“Let me ask you something. Why did you want to meet me here?”
She blinked, looked down at the table, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Our phone conversation the other day? It was very disturbing. Frankly, I’m concerned about you.” She picked up her Bloody Mary and drank down more than half of it.
When their eyes met again, she spoke in a softened voice. “Being shot is a shock. Our minds keep reliving that moment, the threat, the impact. Our natural reactions are fear and anger. Most men would rather be angry than afraid. They find it easier to express anger. I think the discovery of your own vulnerability, the fact that you’re not perfect, not superman… has made you absolutely furious. And the slowness of your recovery is stoking that fury.”
Was this earnest psychologist as authentic as she sounded at that moment? Was she offering him her honest and caring opinion? Did she actually give a damn? Or was this another step in an increasingly ugly effort to make him question himself rather than the case theory?
Searching for the answer, he looked into her eyes.
Her intelligent gaze was steady, unblinking.
He started to feel the fury she had mentioned. It was time to get the hell out of there before he said something he’d regret.
Part Three. At Any Cost
Prologue
It had taken time to get the wording right, more time than he’d expected. There had been so much going on, so much to manage. But he was finally satisfied. The message finally said everything it needed to say:
He printed two copies to be sent by overnight mail. One to Corazon, one to Gurney. Then he carried the printer out in back of the house and smashed it with a brick. He gathered the pieces, even shards of plastic as small as fingernail clippings, and put them in a garbage bag, along with the remaining printer paper, to be buried in the woods.
An investment in caution was always wise.
Chapter 29
As he drove out of Branville into the rolling hills and scrubby pastures of northeastern Delaware County, Gurney’s mind was swirling. His natural facility for organizing data into meaningful patterns was stymied by the volume of it all.
It was like trying to make sense out of a heap of tiny puzzle pieces without knowing whether every piece was present-or even how many puzzles the pieces were part of. One minute he would be certain that all the debris was the result of a single central storm; the next minute he would be certain of nothing. Maybe he was too damn eager to come up with one explanation, one elegant equation.
Passing a roadside sign welcoming him to Dillweed suggested a modest next step. He pulled over and called the one Dillweed resident he knew personally. An undiluted face-to-face dose of Jack Hardwick could be a good antidote to fanciful thinking.
Ten minutes later, four miles up a succession of twisty dirt roads, he arrived at the unimposing rented farmhouse, much in need of paint, that Hardwick called home. The man answered the door dressed as usual in a T-shirt and cutoff sweatpants.
“You want one?” he asked, holding up an empty Grolsch beer bottle.
First Gurney said no, then he said yes. He knew he’d have alcohol on his breath when he got home, and he’d be more comfortable attributing it to a beer with Jack than to a Bloody Mary with Rebecca.
After getting Gurney a Grolsch and himself another, Hardwick sank down into one of two overstuffed leather chairs, motioning Gurney toward the other. “So, my son,” he said in a harsh whisper that pretended a level of inebriation that was belied by his sharp gaze, “how long has it been since your last confession?”
“Thirty-five years, more or less,” said Gurney, humoring the man from whom he wanted help. He sampled the beer. It wasn’t bad. He looked around the little living room. Like Jack’s attire, the painfully bare space was the same as it had been on Gurney’s last visit. Not even the dust had moved.
Hardwick scratched his nose. “You must be in a great deal of trouble to be seeking the solace of Mother Church after such a long time. Speak freely, my son, of all your blasphemies, lies, thievings, and adulteries. I’d be most interested in the details of the adulteries.” He produced an absurdly salacious wink.
Gurney leaned back in the wide soft chair and took another swallow of beer. “The Good Shepherd case is getting complicated.”
“Always was.”
“The problem is, I’m not sure how many cases I’m dealing with.”
“Too much shit for one latrine?”
“Like I said, I’m not sure.” He recounted, in as much detail as he could, the long litany of facts, events, oddities, suspicions, and questions on his mind.
Hardwick took a rumpled tissue out of his sweatpants pocket and blew his nose in it. “So what are you asking me?”
“Just for your gut sense of how much of that stuff fits into one big picture and how much is likely to be something else entirely.”
Hardwick made a clucking sound with his tongue. “I don’t know about the arrow. Maybe if someone shot an arrow up your ass, but… stuck in the ground out there with the turnips? That doesn’t mean much to me.”
