“Or a dead raccoon in the chimney, or a snake in the mailbox,” added Madeleine.

“A snake? In your mailbox?” Kim looked horrified.

“A tiny one, over a year ago,” said Gurney.

“It scared me to death,” said Madeleine.

Kyle looked back and forth between them. “If all that happened after you put up your No Hunting signs, doesn’t that start to tell you something?”

“As I’m sure they point out in your law classes,” said Gurney, more stiffly than he intended, “sequence doesn’t prove causality.”

“But if he tore down your No Hunting signs … I mean … If the arsonist wasn’t some batshit hunter who thought you were taking away his God-given right to blow holes in deer, then who was it? Who else would do such a thing?”

While they were standing and talking by the French doors, Kim had quietly come over from the fireplace and joined them. She spoke in a small, uncertain voice. “Do you think it could have been the same person who sawed through the step in my basement?”

Gurney and his son both seemed about to respond to this when a metallic clang from somewhere outside the house diverted everyone’s attention.

Gurney looked through the glass door down toward the remains of the barn. There was another clang. He could just make out the kneeling form of the investigator, wielding what appeared to be a small sledgehammer against the barn’s concrete floor.

Kyle came over to his father’s side. “The hell is he doing?”

“Probably widening a crack in the floor with a hammer and chisel to get a sample of the earth underneath it.”

“What for?”

“When a liquid accelerant gets on the floor, it tends to seep into any available cracks, then down into the soil. If you can get an unburned sample, it makes precise identification easier.”

Madeleine’s eyes grew angry at this new aspect of the violation. “Our barn was doused with gasoline before it was set on fire?”

“Gasoline or something similar.”

“How do you know that?” asked Kim.

When Gurney didn’t answer immediately, Kyle explained, “Because of how fast it went up. A normal fire couldn’t spread through a building that quickly.” He glanced at his father. “Right?”

“Right,” muttered Gurney vaguely. His attention had moved back to Kim’s suggestion that the staircase saboteur and the barn burner might be the same individual. He turned to her. “Why did you say that?”

“Say what?”

“That it might be the same intruder—here and in your basement.”

“It just popped into my head.”

He thought about it. It brought to mind a question he hadn’t wanted to ask her the night before. “Tell me something,” he said softly. “Does the phrase ‘Let the devil sleep’ mean anything to you?”

Her response was immediate and startling.

Her eyes widened with fear, and she took a small step backward. “Oh, my God! How did you know about that?”