“How long have you lived here?” asked Kim.

Instead of answering the question, he turned to Gurney. “I definitely know who you are, and I suspect you know who I am, but I still think it would be appropriate to be introduced.”

“Oh, stupid me!” said Kim. “I’m so sorry. Dave Gurney, Eric Stone.”

“Delighted,” said Stone, extending his hand with an ingratiating smile. His large, even teeth were nearly as white as his apron. “Your very impressive reputation precedes you.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Gurney. Stone’s hand was warm, soft, and unpleasantly moist.

“I told Eric about the article my mother wrote about you,” said Kim.

After an awkward silence, Stone pointed to a fashionably distressed pine table at the end of the kitchen farthest from the grand stove. “Shall we?”

When Gurney and Kim had taken their seats, Stone asked if either one wanted anything to drink. “I have various coffees in various strengths, as well as teas in countless herbal varieties. I also have some peculiar pomegranate soda. Any takers?”

They both declined, and Stone, making an exaggerated show of disappointment, sat down in the third chair at the table. Kim took three small cameras and two mini-tripods out of her shoulder bag. She set up two of the cameras on the tripods, one facing Stone, one facing herself.

She then explained the production philosophy at length—how “the folks at RAM” were intent on ensuring that the look and feeling of the interview was as simple and low-tech as possible, keeping it within the same visual and audio framework that was familiar to all those viewers who were accustomed to recording family moments on their iPhones. The goal was to keep it real. Keep it simple. An unpredictable conversation, not a scripted scene. With room lighting, not stage lighting. Nonprofessional. Human beings being human. Et cetera.

Whether Stone had any reaction to this declaration of authenticity was unclear. His mind seemed to wander somewhere else, refocusing only when Kim wrapped up her comments by asking, “Do you have any questions?”

“Only one,” he said, turning to Gurney. “Do you think they’ll ever get him?”

“The Good Shepherd? I’d like to think so.”

Stone rolled his eyes. “In your profession I bet you give a lot of answers like that—answers that aren’t really answers at all.” His tone was more depressed than challenging.

Gurney shrugged. “I don’t know enough yet to tell you anything more.”

Kim made some final framing adjustments in the viewfinders of her tripod cameras and put them both in HD-movie mode. She did the same with the third camera, which she kept in her hand. Then she ran her fingers back through her hair, sat up straighter in her chair, smoothed a few wrinkles out of her blazer, smiled, and began speaking.