Restlessness finally forced him to get up and get dressed. He went out and sat in one of the armchairs near the woodstove. The woodstove at least felt pleasantly warm. A scattering of red embers gleamed on the grate. Sitting up seemed to offer a more stable geometry for his thoughts, a firmer position from which he could approach the case.

What did he know for sure?

He knew that the Good Shepherd was intelligent, unflappable under pressure, and risk-averse. Thorough in his planning, meticulous in his execution. He was absolutely indifferent to human life. He was hell-bent on keeping The Orphans of Murder from proceeding. He was equally adept with a cannon-size handgun and an intimate ice pick.

Risk aversion was the characteristic that Gurney kept coming back to. Could that be the key? It seemed to underlie so many aspects of the case. For example, the patient scouting of ideal locations for his attacks, the exclusive choice of left-hand curves to minimize the chance of post-shot collisions, the costly disposal of each weapon after a single use, the preference for inconspicuousness over convenience in the choice of the parking spot for the Blum murder, and the recurrent investment of time and thought in the creation of elaborate smoke screens—from the manifesto itself to the forged posting on Ruth’s Facebook page.

This was a man determined to shield himself at any cost.

At any cost in time, money, and other people’s lives.

That raised an interesting question. What other safety-ensuring, risk-minimizing tactics might he have employed in addition to those that had already come to light? Or, put another way, what other risks might he have faced in his homicidal endeavors, and how might he have decided to cope with them?

Gurney needed to put himself in the Good Shepherd’s shoes.

He asked himself what possibilities he’d be most concerned about if he were planning to shoot someone in a car at night on a lonely road. One concern came immediately to mind: What if he missed? And what if the intended victim caught a glimpse of his license plate? It probably wouldn’t happen, but it was a realistic enough possibility to worry a serious risk avoider.

Professional criminals often used stolen cars on their jobs, but the danger of keeping and driving a stolen car for three weeks, long after it would have been reported and entered in law-enforcement databases, seemed an unlikely strategy for minimizing risk. Alternatively, stealing a fresh car for each attack would create another kind of exposure. Not a scenario that the Good Shepherd would be comfortable with.

So what would he do?

Perhaps partially obscure the plate number with the application of a bit of mud? True, an obscured plate was a ticketable infraction, but so what? That risk was inconsequential in comparison to the risk that would be eliminated.

What else might the Good Shepherd worry about?