“Yes it is. You always blame it on your memory. It’s got nothing to do with your memory. You never forgot a court appearance, did you? You never forgot a meeting with the DA. You don’t have a memory problem, David, you have a caring problem.”

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“Right. So when will you be home?”

“I’m on my way. Thirty-five, forty minutes?”

“So you’re saying you’ll be here by four?”

“Definitely by four. Maybe sooner.”

“Fine. Four o’clock. Just an hour late. See you then.”

The connection was broken.

At 3:52 P.M. he reached the quiet lane that wound its way up, streamside, through a rising declivity in the hills, to their farmhouse. A mile up the lane, he pulled onto a grassy area in front of a rarely used weekender’s cabin.

He’d spent the first ten minutes of the trip from Barkham Dell wondering why Madeleine had sounded so irritated—more irritated than usual by his forgetfulness, his carelessness, his failure to write down things that might slip his mind. The rest of the trip he’d devoted to pondering the Good Shepherd murders.

He wondered if any progress had been made on the case, once it came under the control of the FBI field office in Albany, that hadn’t been noted in the NYSP files available to Hardwick. He also wondered if there was a way of answering that question without going through Agent Trout. He couldn’t think of any.

However … if Trout was indeed as rigid as everyone seemed to think, then he would also be brittle. Gurney had learned time and again that a man tends to marshal his strongest defenses at his weakest point.

Thus a mania for control often betrays a terror of chaos.

And that suggested a path into the fortress.

He took out his phone and tapped in Holdenfield’s number. The call went into her voice mail.

“Hi, Rebecca. Sorry to bother you again on such a busy day. But there are some things about the Good Shepherd case that don’t quite fit together. In fact, there may be a fatal flaw in the FBI construct. When you have a moment, give me a call.”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and drove the rest of the way up the hill.

Chapter 20

Surprise

As he passed between the pond and the barn, and the house came into view at the top end of the pasture, he saw, just visible above the bent and broken tops of the brown pasture grass, the handlebars and gas tank of a motorcycle next to Madeleine’s car.

He reacted to the sight with a mixture of interest and suspicion. When he pulled in next to it, his interest grew. The motorcycle, in pristine condition, was a BSA Cyclone, an increasingly rare machine that hadn’t been manufactured since the 1960s.