“What’s that?” she cried in a rising panic, staring wide-eyed down the pasture slope, her hands coming up to her face. “God, oh, my God, what is that?”

Chapter 22

The Morning After

It had rained intermittently from midnight till dawn. Now a thin fog hung in the midmorning air.

“Are you planning to go out that way?” asked Madeleine with a sharp glance at Gurney. She looked chilled, sitting at the breakfast table with a light sweater over her nightgown and her hands wrapped around her coffee mug.

“No. Just looking.”

“Every time you stand there, the smell of smoke comes in.”

Gurney shut the French doors, which he had opened a minute earlier—for the dozenth time that morning—for a clearer view of the barn, or what was left of the barn.

Most of the wood siding and all of the roof sheathing had been lost in the terrific blaze the night before. A skeletal structure of posts and rafters remained standing, but in too weakened a condition to be of any future use. Everything still erect would have to be torn down.

The wispy, slowly drifting fog gave the scene a disorienting weirdness. Or maybe, thought Gurney, the disorientation was in himself—the natural effect of not having slept. The dead-fish personality of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation arson specialist wasn’t helping either. The man had arrived at 8:00 A.M. to take over from the local fire department and the uniformed troopers. He’d been poking through the ashes and debris for nearly two hours now.

“Is that guy still down there?” asked Kyle. He was sitting at the far end of the room in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Kim was sitting in the other one.

“He’s taking his time,” said Gurney.

“Think he’ll discover anything useful?”

“Depends on how good he is and how careless the arsonist was.”

In the gray haze, the BCI investigator was walking once again with painstaking slowness around the perimeter of the ruined structure. He was accompanied by a large dog on a long lead. It looked like it might be either a black or a brown Lab—no doubt as thoroughly trained in accelerant detection as its master was in evidence collection.

“I still smell smoke,” said Madeleine. “It’s probably on your clothes. Maybe you should take a shower.”

“In a while,” said Gurney. “Too much to think about at the moment.”

“At least you could change your shirt.”

“I will. Just not this second, okay?”

“So,” said Kyle after an awkward silence, “do you have any suspicions about who might have done it?”

“I have suspicions, like I have suspicions about all kinds of things. But that’s a hell of a lot different from accusing anyone.”

Kyle shifted forward to the edge of his chair. “I was thinking about it most of the night. Even after the fire trucks left, I couldn’t sleep.”