“She’s got the journalism part down pat. And she’s as smart as anyone I know. But she’s still a kid.”

“Then what do I bring to the table? Old age?”

“Reality. Knowledge. Experience. Perspective. The incredible wisdom that comes from … how many homicide cases?”

He didn’t think that was a real question, so he didn’t try to answer it.

Connie continued with even more intensity. “She’s super capable, but ability isn’t the same as life experience. She’s in the process of interviewing people who’ve lost a parent or some other loved one to a murderer. She needs to be in a realistic frame of mind for that. She needs a broad view of the territory, you know what I mean? I guess what I’m saying is that so much is at stake, she needs to know as much as she possibly can.”

Gurney sighed. “God knows there’s a ton of stuff out there on grief, death, loss of a loved—”

She cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know—the pop-psych stages of grief, five stages of horseshit, whatever. That’s not what she needs. She needs to talk to someone who knows about murder, who’s seen the victims, talked to the families, looked in their eyes, the horror—someone who knows, not someone who wrote a frigging book.” There was a long silence between them. “So will you do it? Just meet with her once, just look at what she’s got and where she plans to go with it. See if it makes sense to you?”

As he stared out the den window at the back pasture, the idea of meeting with Connie’s daughter to review her entry ticket into the world of trash television was one of the least appealing prospects on earth. “You said there were a couple of things, Connie. What’s the second one?”

“Well …” Her voice weakened. “There may be an ex-boyfriend problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“That’s the question. Kim likes to sound invulnerable, you know? Like she’s not afraid of anything or anybody?”

“But …?”

“But at the very least, this asshole has been playing nasty little tricks on her.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting into her apartment and moving things around. There was something she started to tell me about a knife disappearing and later reappearing, but when I tried to get her to tell me more about it, she wouldn’t.”

“Then why do you think she brought it up?”

“Maybe she wants help, and at the same time she doesn’t want it, and she can’t make up her mind which it is.”

“Does the asshole have a name?”

“Robert Meese is his real name. He calls himself Robert Montague.”

“Is this somehow connected with her TV project?”