“End up at the university? Simple. Right in the center of that screwed-up mind there lurks a sky-high IQ. And a sky-high IQ, combined with a troubled background, combined with zero financial resources, is the magic formula for a full college scholarship. Since entering the university, Robert has excelled in drama and has earned fair to lousy marks in everything else. He is said to be a natural-born actor. Movie-star handsome, fantastic onstage, able to turn on the charm, but basically secretive. He recently changed his name back from Meese to Montague. For a few months, he cohabited, as you may know, with little Kimmy. Apparently that ended badly. Currently lives alone in a three-room rental in a subdivided Victorian house on a nice street in Syracuse. Sources of income for rent, car, and other nonuniversity expenses are unknown.”

“Any employment?”

“Nothing obvious. That’s the story for now. If more shit turns up, I’ll drop it on you.”

“I owe you.”

“You got that right.”

Gurney’s mind was swimming with so many free-floating facts that when Madeleine commented that evening over coffee on the spectacular sunset that had occurred an hour earlier, he had no recollection of having seen it. In its place was a mass of disquieting images, personalities, details.

The Humpty-Dumpty cookie baker, not wanting to think of his all-powerful mother as a “victim.” The mother who “ruffled feathers, stepped on toes.” Gurney wondered if the man was ever told about her earlobe on the sumac bush, the earlobe with the diamond stud in it.

Paul Mellani, a man whose rich father gave all his money, therefore all his love, to someone else. A man whose career had lost its meaning, whose life had turned gray, whose thoughts were grim and sour—and whose language, demeanor, and lifeless office were the equivalent of a suicide note.

Jesus … suppose …

Madeleine was watching him across the table. “What’s the matter?”

“I was just thinking about one of the people Kim and I visited today.”

“Go on.”

“I’m trying to go back over what he said. He sounded … pretty depressed.”

Madeleine’s gaze grew more intense. “What did he say?”

“That’s what I’m trying to remember. The thing that comes to mind was a comment he made. He’d just told us his sister was dead. Then he said, ‘Dead isn’t so bad.’ Something like that.”

“Nothing more direct? No expression of any intention to do anything?”

“No. Just … a heaviness, a … lack of … I don’t know.”

Madeleine looked anguished.

“The guy at your clinic, the patient who killed himself? Was he specific about …?”

“No, of course not, or he would have been taken to a psych ward. But he definitely had that … heaviness. A darkness, a hopelessness.”