It was ridiculous, he thought, an hour later. It was absurd. Self-indulgent, over-the-top, hyperemotional nonsense. When he had time, he’d look at it more carefully, figure out what actually triggered his childish little breakdown. Obviously he’d been feeling vulnerable. The political dynamics of the case had isolated him, his imperfect recovery from his gunshot wounds had left him frustrated and touchy. And no doubt there were deeper issues, echoes of childhood insecurities, fears, and so forth. He would definitely have to take a closer look. But right now …

Right now he needed to make the best use of the time that was available to him. He needed to prepare himself for whatever confrontation might emerge from the process he and Kim had set in motion.

He began shuffling through the papers on the table, reading everything from summaries of the original incident reports to Kim’s status notes on her initial contacts with the families, from the Offender Profile generated by the FBI to the full text of the Good Shepherd’s Memorandum of Intent.

He read through all of it. Carefully, as though he were reading it for the first time. With frequent glances out the window at the causeway path and occasional trips around the room to check the other windows, the task consumed over two hours. And then he went through it all over again.

By the time he finished his second pass, the sun had gone down. He was fatigued from reading and stiff from sitting. He got up from the table, stretched, withdrew the Beretta from his ankle holster, and stepped out through the front door. The cloudless sky was in that stage of dusk in which the blue is fading to gray. Somewhere out in the beaver pond, there was a loud splash. And then another. And another. And then compete silence.

The quiet brought with it a feeling of tension. Gurney slowly circled the cabin. It all appeared unchanged from what he remembered from his earlier visit—except that the Humvee that had been parked out in back of the picnic table was gone. When he came around to the front, he went back inside, closing the door behind him but leaving it unlatched.

In just the three or four minutes he’d been outside, the light level had fallen noticeably. He returned to the table, laid the Beretta down within easy reach, and selected from the piles of papers his own list of questions about the case. The one that caught his attention was the same one Bullard had alluded to in Sasparilla and Hardwick had mentioned on the phone in connection with a hypothetical pair of motives Jimi Brewster might have had for killing not only his father but the other five victims.