Gurney sighed. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what we think someone may do. It only matters what people say they’re going to do.” He frowned. “But there’s something I’d like to find out. Just for my own peace of mind.” He got his cell phone from the sideboard and entered Hardwick’s number. The call went to voice mail.

“Jack, I want to increase my enormous indebtedness to you by asking for one more tiny favor. There’s an accountant down in Orange County by the name of Paul Mellani. Happens to be the son of Bruno Mellani, the first Good Shepherd victim. I’d like to know if he has any guns registered. I have a concern about him, and I’d like to know how much I should worry. Thanks.”

He sat back down at the table and absently put a third spoon of sugar in his coffee.

“The sweeter the better?” asked Madeleine with a small smile.

He shrugged, stirring the coffee slowly.

She cocked her head a little to one side and studied him in a way that had once made him uneasy but in recent years he’d come to welcome—not because he understood what she was thinking, or what conclusions her “study” produced, but because he saw it as an expression of affection. To ask her what was on her mind would be like demanding that she define their relationship. But the part of any relationship that made it precious was not something that could be defined on demand.

She raised her cup to her lips with two hands, sipped from it, and put it down gently. “So … do you want to tell me a bit more about what’s going on?”

For some reason the question took him by surprise. “You really want to know?”

“Of course.”

“There’s a lot.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. Remember, you asked for it.” He leaned back in his chair and spoke with hardly a pause for twenty-five minutes, recounting everything that came to mind—from Roberta Rotker’s firing range to the skeleton at Max Clinter’s gate—with no effort to organize, prioritize, or edit the data. As he went on, he himself was struck by the sheer number of intense people, weird tangents, and sinister complexities in the affair. “And finally,” he concluded, “there’s the matter of the barn.”

“Yes, the barn,” said Madeleine, her expression hardening. “You believe it’s connected with everything else?”

“I think it is.”

“So what’s the plan?”

It was an unwelcome question, because it forced him to face the fact that his intentions didn’t add up to anything remotely like a plan. “Poke around in the shadows with a cattle prod, see if anyone yells,” he said. “Maybe light a fire under the sacred cow.”

“Can any of that be expressed in English?”