That little mystery had been in the back of Gurney’s own mind. The timing had been too perfect, relative to the nasty turn of events inside the cabin. The explanation now seemed obvious. “He bugged his own house?”

“Of course.”

“And he had the receiver in the Humvee?”

“Yes.”

“So he was listening in on my conversation with Larry Sterne?”

“Naturally.”

“And his receiver recorded everything that was said in the cabin, including my phone call to him. And somewhere along the line, you guys got the recording—which is how you know that I told him to stay away. But the Humvee went up in flames, so how did you get—”

“We got it directly from the man himself. He e-mailed BCI the audio file just before he cranked up that flame-thrower of his. Seems he knew how the dance might end. It also seems that he wanted us to have something concrete that vindicated your view of the case.”

Gurney felt a burst of gratitude to Clinter. Larry Sterne’s comments and admissions would bury the “manifesto” fiction once and for all. “That’s going to make a lot of people very unhappy.”

Hardwick grinned. “Fuck ’em.”

There was a long silence, during which Gurney realized that his involvement in the Good Shepherd case had essentially come to an end. The crime was solved. The danger was over.

A lot of people in law enforcement and forensic psychology would soon be engaged in an orgy of frantic finger-pointing, insisting that OPM—other people’s mistakes—had led them astray. Gurney himself might, at some point after the dust had settled, receive some small recognition for his contribution. But recognition was a mixed blessing. It often had too high a price.

“By the way,” said Hardwick, “Paul Mellani shot himself.”

Gurney blinked. “What?”

“Shot himself with his Desert Eagle. Apparently a few days ago. Woman in the adjoining storefront yesterday afternoon reported getting a bad smell through the ventilation system.”

“No doubt about its being a suicide?”

“None.”

“Jesus.”

Madeleine looked stricken. “Is that the poor man you talked to last week?”

“Yes.” He turned to Hardwick. “Were you able to find out how long he’d owned the gun?”

“Less than a year.”

“Jesus,” said Gurney again, talking more to himself than to Hardwick. “Of all the possible weapons he could have used, why a Desert Eagle?”

Hardwick shrugged. “A Desert Eagle killed his father. Maybe he wanted to go the same way.”

“He hated his father.”

“Maybe that was the sin he had to atone for.”

Gurney stared at Hardwick. Sometimes the man said the damnedest things.

“Speaking of fathers,” said Gurney, “any trace at all of Emilio Corazon?”

“More than a trace.”

“Huh?”

“When you have some time, you might want to think about how to handle this.”

“Handle what?”