Gurney nodded. “Exactly—especially if they got a letter the same day from someone claiming that religious people were the scum of the earth and he was planning to kill them all.”

“But … wait a minute.” Madeleine looked incredulous. “Are you suggesting that the Good Shepherd killed all those people because he couldn’t tell who his real target was? And that he just kept shooting people in a certain kind of car, until he was sure he got the person he was after?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to figure it out.”

Madeleine shook her head. “I just don’t see how—” She was interrupted by the ring of the landline phone on the countertop next to the refrigerator. “You’d better get that. It’s probably you-know-who.”

He did. And it was.

“You out of that fucking shower yet?”

“Good morning, Jack.”

“Got your e-mail—your investigatory premise, along with your list of questions.”

“And?”

“You’re making the point that there’s a style conflict between the manifesto’s words and the shooter’s deeds?”

“You could put it that way.”

“You’re saying that the shooter’s MO proves he’s way too practical, way too cool, calm, and collected to think the thoughts presented in the manifesto. My little brain got that right?”

“What I’m saying is, there’s a disconnect.”

“Okay. That’s interesting. But it creates a bigger problem than it solves.”

“How?”

“You’re saying the motive for the murders is something other than what’s spelled out in the manifesto.”

“Right.”

“Therefore the victims were chosen for another reason—not because they were conspicuous displayers of luxury goods, greedy bastards who deserved to die?”

“Right.”

“So this super-practical, super-cool genius had an undisclosed pragmatic reason for killing those people?”

“Right.”

“You see the problem?”

“Tell me.”

“If the shooter’s real motive for choosing each victim was something other than the fact that he—or she—was driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes, then we have to believe that driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes was irrelevant. A fucking coincidence. You ever run into anything like that, Davey boy? It would be like discovering that every victim of Bernie Madoff just happened to have a leprechaun tattooed on his ass. You get my point here?”

“I get it, Jack. Anything else in my e-mail bothering you?”

“Matter of fact, yes—another one of your questions. Actually, three questions that all kind of circle around the same issue: Were all the murders equally important? Was the sequence important? Were any of them necessitated by any of the others? You want to tell me, what is it about the case that brings up that issue?”