He led her into the den, and as he downloaded the Jimi Brewster video file that Kim had sent to him, he explained what little he knew of it.

They settled into their chairs in front of the computer screen.

The video itself began with a segment that appeared to have been shot from the passenger seat of Kim’s car as it approached a roadside sign in a snowbank announcing entry into Turnwell, the virtually nonexistent northern Catskills village where Jimi Brewster picked up his mail.

His actual residence turned out to be far up into the hills, away from the bleak cluster of tumbledown homes and abandoned stores that made up the village itself. The only active establishments appeared to be a bar with a filthy front window, a gas station with one pump, and a post office in a cinder-block building the size of a one-car garage.

Kim’s car—and video—proceeded up a rutted road with snowbanks on either side, separating it from more tumbledown buildings and trees that seemed long dead rather than just seasonably leafless. Absorbing this, Gurney was struck that Turnwell represented a country environment that was as far removed from Williamstown, where Jimi’s father had lived, as the dark side of the moon. He wondered if the cultural and aesthetic distance constituted an intentional statement.

The question was increasingly on his mind as the video proceeded.

Also, the question of who was wielding the camera. Presumably Robby Meese, a fact that would place this visit to Jimi Brewster sometime prior to the breakup.

The car slowed as it approached a small house on the right. The house and the bleak property surrounding it showed an aggressive disregard for appearances. Nothing, from the posts supporting the sagging roof over the tilting porch to the door of the adjoining outhouse, was set at a right angle to anything else. In Gurney’s experience a blatant disregard for the ninety-degree concept was usually an indication of poverty, physical incapacity, depression, or a cognitive disorder.

The man who emerged from the shabby front door onto the porch was slim and nervous-looking, with darting eyes. He was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt of the same orangey color as his short hair and close-cropped beard.

His having been a freshman in college twenty years earlier would make him at least thirty-seven, but he looked a decade younger. The CHALLENGE EVERYTHING aphorism printed in bold letters on the front of his shirt lent support to the image of youthfulness.

“Come in,” he said, waving his guests impatiently toward the door. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

The camera followed him inside. The back of his shirt proclaimed, AUTHORITY SUCKS.