That same collision of emotions filled him now, as he held the open card in his hand, as the lovely baroque melody faded. His vision blurred, and he realized with some alarm that once again tears were about to flow.

What the hell is the matter with me? Christ, Gurney, get a grip!

He went to the kitchen sink and wiped his eyes roughly with a paper towel. He’d come close to crying more often in the past couple of months, he thought, than in all the years of his adult life put together.

I need to do something—anything. Movement. Accomplishment.

The first action that came to mind was to take inventory of the main items lost in the fire. The insurance company was sure to ask for that.

He didn’t feel like doing it, but he pushed himself. He got a yellow pad and a pen from the desk in the den, got into his car, and drove down to the charred ruins of the barn.

As he got out of the car, he grimaced at the acrid odor of wet ashes. From somewhere far down the road came the intermittent whine of a chain saw.

Reluctantly, he stepped closer to the heaps of burned boards that lay within the warped but still-standing framework of the barn. In the area where their bright yellow kayaks had once rested atop a pair of sawhorses, there was now an unidentifiable brownish, bubbled, hardened mass of whatever the kayaks had been made of. He’d never been especially fond of them, but he knew that Madeleine was and that being out on the river, paddling along under a summer sky, was one of her special delights. Seeing the little boats destroyed—reduced to a solidified petrochemical glop—saddened and angered him. The sight of her bicycle was worse. The tires, seat, and cables had melted. The wheel rims were warped.

He forced himself to move slowly through the ugly scene with his pad and pen, making notes of the major tool and equipment casualties. When he finished, he turned away in disgust and got back into his car.

His mind was full of questions. Most of them were reducible to one word: Why?

None of the obvious hypotheses was persuasive.

Especially not the enraged-hunter theory. The local countryside was full of No Hunting signs, but it wasn’t full of burned barns.

So what else could it be?

A mistake by an arsonist who’d gotten his target address wrong? A pyromaniac, hot to convert something big into flames? Mindless teenage vandals? An enemy from Gurney’s law-enforcement past, acting out a revenge fantasy?

Or did it have something to do with Kim and Robby Meese and The Orphans of Murder? Was the arsonist the basement whisperer?