Outside, out past the beaver pond, a pulsing siren was turned on for five seconds, then off. The previous bullhorn announcement was then repeated at full volume.

Gurney turned in his chair and peered out the front window. Powerful spotlights were illuminating the property from the far side of the causeway. He realized that the sound of the siren was what he must have heard earlier. In the intensity of his emotional confusion, with the pistol blast still ringing in his ears, it was the sound he’d taken for music. And then he’d heard what was no doubt the sound he’d imagined to be a great drumbeat—which he now recognized as the thumping rotor of a circling helicopter. A helicopter that was sweeping its airborne searchlight back and forth over the cabin, over the tangled swamp grass, over the stark tree trunks sticking up out of the black water.

Gurney turned to Sterne. He had two questions vying with each other at the top of his list of forty or fifty. The first was the most urgent.

“What are you going to do now, Larry?”

“Proceed as reasonably as possible.”

The answer, in all its rational tranquillity, couldn’t have sounded crazier.

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Surrender. Play the game. Prevail.”

Gurney’s fear was that he was witnessing the calm before the storm—that the sweet light of reason and surrender was about to explode in a lunatic bloodbath.

“Prevail?”

“I always have. I always will.”

“But you do … intend to surrender?”

“Of course.” Sterne smiled, as though he were trying to soothe a kindergartner’s fear of getting on the bus. “What were you thinking? That I’d take you hostage, use you as a human shield to make my escape?”

“It’s been done.”

“Not by me, not with you.” He appeared genuinely amused. “Be realistic, Detective. What kind of shield would you make? From what I hear, your professional colleagues would be delighted to have an opportunity to shoot you. I’d be better off shielding myself with a sack of potatoes.”

Gurney was speechless at the man’s composure. Was he totally insane? “You’re pretty cheery for a guy whose case could end the state moratorium on executions. I hear that lethal injections aren’t very pleasant.” Even as he was saying this, frustrated by Sterne’s attitude, he realized how dangerous and inadvisable a comment it was.