“That’s a distinction without a difference. The answer is, all of the above. Make yourself comfortable.” She pointed to a hard-cushioned couch that reminded Gurney of the one in the waiting room at the clinic where Madeleine worked three days a week. When he and Kim were seated, Rotker continued. “It’s a personal preference because it makes me feel better. And it’s also a requirement—required by the state of the world we live in. I believe it’s the job of a responsible citizen to respond to reality. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Some of it.”

She stared at him. “We’re at war, Detective. At war with creatures who lack our sense of right and wrong. If we don’t get them, they get us. That’s reality.”

Gurney reflected, for maybe the hundredth time in his life, on how emotion created its own logic, how anger was invariably the mother of certainty. It was surely one of the great ironies of human nature that when our passions most severely disorient us, we are most positive that we see things clearly.

“You were a cop,” Rotker went on. “So you know what I’m talking about. We live in a world where glitter is expensive and life is cheap.”

This bleak summation led to a silence, broken by Kim with what sounded like diversionary cheeriness. “Oh, by the way, I meant to tell Dave about your private shooting range. Maybe you could show it to him? I bet he’d love to see it.”

“Why not?” said Rotker with neither hesitation nor enthusiasm. “Come.”

She brought them out through the hallway, through the back door, next to which a fenced kennel ran half the length of the house. Four heavily muscled Rottweilers erupted in a furious din that ceased the instant their master issued a command in German.

Past the kennel, in a field behind the house, a narrow, windowless building extended out toward the rear fence. Rotker unlocked its metal door and switched on the lights. Inside was a basic pistol range with a single firing position and a motorized target placer.

She walked to the waist-high table at the near end and held her finger against the wall switch beside it. A fresh paper target with a stylized man-size image on it, already suspended from the wire carrier, began moving down the range. It stopped at the twenty-five-foot mark. “Any interest, Detective?”

“I’d rather watch you,” he said with a smile. “I have a feeling that you’re good.”

She returned the smile, coldly. “Good enough for most situations.”