“Oh, it was purposely loosened all right. Twice. The first time, the police took one look and dismissed it as a practical joke someone played on me. The second time, they didn’t even bother to send someone out. Cop on the phone seemed to think it was funny.”

“Doesn’t sound funny to me.”

“Thank you.”

“I know I already asked you this, but …”

“The answer is yes, I’m sure it’s Robby. And no, I don’t have any proof. But who else could it be?”

As she finished speaking, the doorbell rang—a complex musical chime.

“Oh, God. My mother’s idea. She gave me that when I moved in here. There used to be a buzzer, which she hated. Just a second.” She headed out of the room for the front door.

She returned a minute later with a large pizza box and two cans of Diet Coke.

“Pretty good timing. I ordered this stuff on my cell on the way up here. I figured we’d need some lunch. Pizza okay with you?”

“Pizza’s fine.”

She laid the box on the coffee table, opened it, and dragged one of the light armchairs over to the table. Gurney sat on the couch.

After they’d each eaten a slice and washed it down with some soda, she said, “Okay. Where do you want to start?”

“You had this idea about talking to the families of murder victims. So I assume the first thing you had to do was figure out which murders to pick?”

“Right.” She was watching him intently.

“There’s no shortage of homicide cases. Even if you limited yourself to New York State, even to a single year, you’d have hundreds to choose from.”

“Right.”

He leaned forward. “So tell me how you made your choices. What were the criteria?”

“The criteria changed along the way. At first I wanted to include all kinds of victims, all kinds of homicides, all kinds of families, different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different lengths of time between the crime and now. Total variety! But Dr. Wilson kept telling me, ‘Simplify, simplify.’ Minimize the variables, he said. Look for a hook, make it easy for the viewer to understand. ‘The narrower the focus, the sharper the point.’ Like maybe the dozenth time he said that, I got it. Everything started connecting, falling into place. And after that I was like, ‘Yes! This is it! I know exactly what I’m going to do!’ ”

As Gurney listened to her, he felt strangely touched by her enthusiasm. “So what did the final criteria turn out to be?”

“Pretty much everything Dr. Wilson said: Minimize the variables. Narrow the focus. Find a hook. Once I started thinking that way, the answer just sort of materialized. I saw that I could zero the whole project in on the victims of the Good Shepherd.”

“The guy who shot a bunch of Mercedes drivers eight or nine years ago?”