He was about to object to her point about danger, but decided instead to hear her out.
She looked at him, sadness filling her eyes. “It looks like you get so deeply into it, into the darkness, that it blots out the sun. It blots out everything. So I go about my life the only way I know how. I do my work at the clinic. I walk in the woods. I go to my concerts. Art shows. I read. Play my cello. Ride my bike. I take care of the garden and the house and the chickens. In the winter I snowshoe. I visit my friends. But I keep thinking—wishing—that we could be doing more of these things together. That we could be out in the sun together.”
He didn’t know how to respond. At some level he recognized the truth in what she was saying, but no words were attaching themselves to the feeling it generated in him.
“That’s it,” she concluded simply. “That’s what’s on my mind.”
The sadness in her eyes was replaced by a smile—warm, open, hopeful.
It seemed to him that she was totally present—that all of her was right there in front of him, with no obstructions, no evasions, no artifice of any kind. He put down his cup, which he’d been holding without realizing it all the while she was talking, and stepped toward her. He put his arms around her, feeling all her body warm against his.
Still without words, he picked her up in the clichéd manner of new-bride-over-the-threshold—which made her laugh—and carried her into the bedroom, where they made love with an intensely wonderful combination of urgency and tenderness.
Madeleine was up first the next morning.
After Gurney had showered, shaved, and dressed, he found her at the breakfast table with her coffee, a slice of toast with peanut butter, and an open book. Peanut butter was one of her favorite things. He went over and kissed the top of her head.
“Good morning!” she said cheerily through a mouthful of toast. She was dressed for her work at the clinic.
“Full day today?” he asked. “Or half?”
“Dunno.” She swallowed, took a sip of coffee. “Depends on who else is there. What’s on your agenda?”
“Hardwick. Due here at eight-thirty.”
“Oh?”
“We’re getting a phone call from Kay Spalter at nine, or as close to that as she can manage.”
“Problem?”
“Nothing but problems. Every fact in this case has a contradiction attached to it.”
“Isn’t that the way you like your facts?”
“Hopelessly tangled up, you mean, so I can untangle them?”
She nodded, took a final bite of her toast, took her plate and cup to the sink, and let the water run on them. Then she came back and kissed him. “Running late. Got to go.”
He made himself some bacon and toast and settled down in a chair by the French doors. Softened by a thin morning fog, the view from his chair was of the old pasture, a tumbledown stone wall along its far side, one of his neighbors’ overgrown fields, and, barely visible beyond that, Barrow Hill.
Just as he popped the last bit of bacon in his mouth, the rumble of Hardwick’s GTO became audible from the road below the barn. Two minutes later, the angular red beast was parked by the asparagus patch and Hardwick was standing at the French doors, wearing a black T-shirt and dirty gray sweatpants. The doors were open wide, but the sliding screens were latched.
Gurney leaned over and unlatched one.
Hardwick stepped inside. “You know there’s a giant fucking pig strolling up your road?”
Gurney nodded. “It’s a fairly frequent occurrence.”
“A good three hundred pounds, I’d say.”
“Tried to lift it, did you?”
Hardwick ignored the question, just looked around the room appraisingly. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’ve got a shitload of country charm here.”
“Thank you, Jack. Care to sit down?”
Hardwick picked thoughtfully at his front teeth with his fingernail, then plopped down in the chair across the table from Gurney and eyed him suspiciously. “Before we speak to the bereaved Mrs. Spalter, ace, you have anything on your mind we need to discuss?”
“Not really—apart from the fact that nothing in the case makes a damn bit of sense.”
Hardwick’s eyes narrowed. “These things that don’t make sense … do they work for us or against us?”
“ ‘Us’?”
“You know what I mean. For or against our objective of securing a reversal.”
“Probably for the objective. But I’m not positive. Too many things are screwy.”
“Screwy? Like how?”
“Like the apartment ID’d as the source of the fatal shot.”
“What about it?”
“It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.”
“Why not?”
Gurney explained his use of Paulette to set up the informal reenactment, and his discovery of the light pole obstruction.
Hardwick looked confused but not worried. “Anything else?”
“A witness, who claims he saw the shooter.”
“Freddie? The guy who fingered Kay in the lineup?”
“No. Man by the name of Estavio Bolocco. No record of his having been interviewed, although he claims he was. He also claims he saw the shooter, but it was a man, not a woman.”
“Saw the shooter where?”
“That’s another problem. Says he saw him in the apartment—the apartment where the shot was supposed to have come from but couldn’t have.”
Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “This is adding up to a mixed pile of good stuff and pure shit. I like the idea that your guy says the shooter was a man, not a woman. I especially like the idea that Klemper failed to keep a record of the interview. That speaks to police misconduct, possible tampering, or at least major sloppiness, all of which helps. But that crap about the apartment itself, that crap makes everything else useless. We can’t present a witness who claims the shooter used a location that we then turn around and say couldn’t have been used. I mean, where the fuck are we going with this?”
“Good question. And here’s another little oddity. Estavio Bolocco says he saw the shooter twice. Once on the day of the event itself, which was a Friday. But also five days earlier. On Sunday. He says he’s positive it was Sunday, because that was his only day off.”
“He saw the shooter where?”
“In the apartment.”
Hardwick’s indigestion appeared to be increasing. “Doing what? Casing it?”
“That would be my guess. But that raises another question. Let’s assume that the shooter had learned about Mary Spalter’s death, discovered the location of the Spalter family plot, and figured that Carl would be front and center at the burial service. Next step would be to scout out the vicinity, see if it offered a reasonably secure shooting position.”
“So what’s the question?”
“Timing. If the shooter was scouting the location on Sunday, presumably Mary Spalter’s death occurred Saturday or earlier, depending on whether the shooter was close enough to the family to have gotten the information directly, or had to wait for a published obit a day or two later. My question is, if the burial didn’t take place until, at the earliest, seven days after her death … what caused the delay?”
“Who knows? Maybe some relative couldn’t arrive for it any sooner? Why do you care?”
“It’s unusual to delay a funeral for a whole week. Unusual makes me curious, that’s all.”
“Right. Sure. Okay.” Hardwick waved his hand like he was shooing away a fly. “We can ask Kay when she calls. I just don’t think her mother-in-law’s funeral arrangements sound like Court of Appeals material.”