She was wide-eyed, uttered a small gasp. “What happened to the deer?”
“Dead. Instantly. I checked. No sign of life at all.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? What could I…?” His mind was suddenly swamped by the image of the fawn on the shoulder of the road, head twisted, unseeing eyes open-an image infused with emotions from long ago, from another accident, emotions that seized his heart with such frozen fingers it almost stopped.
Madeleine watched him, seemed to know what he was thinking, reached out and touched his hand lightly. As he slowly recovered himself, he looked into her eyes and saw a sadness that was simply part of all the things she felt, even of joy. He knew that she had dealt long ago with the death of their son in a way he had not, in a way that he’d never been willing or able to. He knew that one day he would have to. But not yet, not now.
Perhaps that was part of what stood between him and Kyle, his grown son from his first marriage. But theories like that had the feel of therapist-think, and for that he had no use at all.
He turned to the French doors and stared out at the dusky evening, dark enough now that even the red barn was drained of its color.
Madeleine turned to the sink and began drying the stacked pots. When she finally spoke, her question came from an unexpected direction. “So you plan to have it all wrapped up in another week-bad guy safely delivered to the good guys in a box with a bow?” He could hear it in her voice before he looked at her and saw it: the querying, humorless smile.
“If that’s what I said, then that’s the plan.”
She nodded, her skepticism unconcealed.
There was a long silence as she continued to wipe the pots with more than her usual attention, moving the dried items to the pine sideboard, lining them up with a neatness that began to get on his nerves.
“By the way,” he said, the question popping back into his mind, coming out more aggressively than he intended, “why are you home?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Isn’t this knitting night?”
She nodded. “We decided to end a bit early.”
He thought he heard something odd in her voice.
“How come?”
“There was a little problem.”
“Oh?”
“Well… actually… Marjorie Ann puked.”
Gurney blinked. “What?”
“She puked.”
“Marjorie Ann Highsmith?”
“That’s right.”
He blinked again. “What do you mean, puked?”
“What the hell do you think I mean?”
“I mean, where? Right there at the table?”
“No, not at the
“And?”
“And she didn’t quite make it.”
Gurney noted that a certain almost imperceptible light had come back into Madeleine’s eyes, a flicker of the subtle humor with which she viewed almost everything, a humor that balanced her sadness-a light that had lately been missing. He wanted so much, right then, at that moment, to fan the flame of that light but knew that if he tried too hard, he’d only succeed in blowing it out.
“I guess there was a bit of a mess?”
“Oh, yes. A bit of a mess. And it… uh… it didn’t stay in one place.”
“Didn’t… what?”
“Well, she didn’t just throw up on the floor. Actually, she threw up on the cats.”
“Cats?”
“We met tonight at Bonnie’s house. You remember Bonnie has two cats?”
“Yes, sort of.”
“The cats were lying down together in a cat bed that Bonnie keeps in the hall outside the bathroom.”
Gurney started to laugh-a sudden giddiness taking hold of him.
“Yes, well, Marjorie Ann made it as far as the cats.”
“Oh, Jesus…” He was doubled over now.
“And she threw up quite a bit. I mean, it was… substantial. Well, the cats sort of exploded out of the cat bed and came flying out into the living room.”
“Covered…”
“Oh, yes, covered with it. Racing around the room, over couches, chairs. It was… really something.”
“Good God…” Gurney couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so hard.
“And of course,” Madeleine concluded, “after that no one could eat. And we couldn’t stay in the living room. Naturally, we wanted to help Bonnie clean up, but she wouldn’t let us.”
After a short silence he asked, “Would you like to eat something now?”
“No!” She shuddered. “Don’t mention food.”
The image of the cats got him laughing again.
His food suggestion, however, had seemed to trigger in Madeleine’s mind a delayed association that extinguished the sparkle in her eyes.
When his laughter finally subsided, she asked, “So is it just you, Sonya, and the mad collector at dinner tomorrow night?”
“No,” he said, glad for the first time that Sonya wasn’t going to be present. “Just the mad collector and me.”
Madeleine raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I would’ve thought she’d kill to be at that dinner.”
“Actually, dinner’s been switched to lunch.”
“
Gurney showed no reaction, but, absurdly, the comment stung.
Chapter 40
Once Madeleine had finished with the pots and pans and dishes, she made herself a cup of herbal tea and settled with her knitting bag into one of the overstuffed armchairs at the far end of the room. Gurney, with one of the Perry case folders in hand, soon followed to the armchair’s twin on the opposite side of the fireplace. They sat in companionable isolation, each in a separate pool of lamplight.
He opened the folder and extracted the ViCAP crime report. Curious thing about that acronym. At the FBI it stood for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. At New York’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, it stood for the Violent Crime Analysis Program. But it was the same form, processed by the same computers and distributed to the same recipients. Gurney liked New York’s version better. It said what it was, made no promises.
The thirty-six-page form itself was comprehensive, to say the least, but useful only to the extent that the officer filling it out had been accurate and thorough. One of its purposes was to uncover MO similarities to other crimes on file, but in this case there was no notation of any subsequent hits by the comparative-analysis program. Gurney was poring over the thirty-six pages to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything significant the first time around.
He was having a hard time focusing, kept thinking he should call Kyle, kept looking for excuses to put it off. The
