“Hey, Dad! Been trying to get you for the past two hours. You okay?”

“Fine, just exhausted.”

“Yeah, I forgot, it’s been like days since you got any sleep.”

“You discover anything interesting?”

“More like weird. Where do you want me to start?”

“In the basement.”

“Okay. In the basement. You know the long boards on each side of the staircase that the steps are set into? Well, I found a narrow slot cut into the bottom of one of them about two feet above the step that’s missing, and there’s this thing in the slot about half the size of one of those USB thumb drives for your computer.”

“You removed it?”

“You said to leave it. I just kind of edged it out with the tip of a knife to see how big it was. But here’s the weird part. When I pushed it back into the slot, I must have reset something, because about ten seconds later this really spooky whisper came out of it. Like some maniac in a horror movie hissing the words through his teeth. ‘Let the devil sleep.’ I swear I almost pissed in my pants. I think I actually did piss in my pants.”

“How obvious was this slot in the board?”

“Not obvious at all. It was like the guy had taken a plane and made a tiny wood shaving to cover the hole.”

“So how did you—”

“You said it would be within a few feet of where you fell. Not a big area. I just kept looking till I found it.”

“Did you ask Kim who else knows about the bedtime story?”

“She insists the only person she ever told was her crazy ex. Of course, the crazy ex could have told other people.”

There was a silence, during which Gurney tried once again to draw together the disparate pieces of the case, which kept flying off in as many directions as there were pieces. And what case was he talking about anyway? The cold case of the six roadway murders, tied together by the manifesto of the Good Shepherd? The case of Kim Corazon’s alleged harassment by Robby Meese, escalating into vandalism and reckless endangerment? The arson case? Or some hypothetical master case in which all these events were intertwined—perhaps even connected to the falling arrow in the garden?

“Dad, you still there?”

“Sure.”

“There’s more. I haven’t told you the nastiest news,” said Kyle.

“Jesus. What is it?”

“Every room in Kim’s apartment is bugged, even the bathroom.”

Gurney felt a small frisson rise up the back of his neck. “What did you find?”