Gurney gazed at it wonderingly. Had Madeleine put it there? If so, where had she gotten it? Was she using it as some sort of marker? It looked new, unweathered, so it couldn’t have been under the snow the whole winter. If Madeleine hadn’t put it there, who could have? Was it possible it wasn’t “put” there at all but shot there by someone with a bow? To have ended up embedded like this at a nearly vertical angle, though, it would have to have been shot nearly vertically into the air. When? Why? By whom? Standing where?

He stepped up onto the low bed, grasped the shaft close to the ground, and slowly extracted it. It was tipped with a four-pronged razor broadhead—making it the kind of arrow that a hunter with a serious bow can propel clear through a deer. As he studied the deadly projectile, he was struck by the improbable coincidence of coming upon two sharp weapons surrounded by troubling questions on the same day.

Of course, Madeleine might have a simple explanation for the arrow. He took it into the house, to the kitchen sink, and rinsed it clean under the running water. The broadhead appeared to be carbon steel, keen enough to shave with. Which brought his mind back to the knife in Kim’s basement, which reminded him that her folder was still in the car. He laid the arrow gently on the pine sideboard and headed out through the little hallway past the mudroom.

As he opened the side door, he came face-to-face with Madeleine, dressed in one of her startling color combinations—rose sweatpants, a lavender fleece jacket, and an orange baseball cap. She had that pleasantly exercised, slightly-out-of-breath look she always had when she returned from a hill walk. He stepped back to let her in.

She smiled. “It’s soooo beautiful! Did you see that amazing light on the hillside? With that blush in the buds—did you notice that?”

“What buds?”

“You didn’t see it? Oh, come here, come.” She led him outside by the arm, pointing happily to the trees beyond the upper pasture. “You only see it in the early spring—that hint of pink in the maples.”

Gurney saw what she was talking about but failed to share her blissful reaction. Instead the faint wash of color over the brownish gray background of the landscape jogged loose an old memory—one that sickened him: brownish gray water in a ditch next to an abandoned service road behind La Guardia Airport, a faint reddish tint in the fetid water. The tint was oozing from a machine-gunned body just below the surface.

She looked at him with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Tired, that’s all.”

“You want some coffee?”

“No.” He said it sharply, didn’t know why.