She was still holding the plate. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the level of rage I saw down at the barn, how close to the edge he was, how—”

“I’m pretty sure that was all coming out of fear. Fear that the evil Kay will go free, fear that his view of the case is about to be smashed, fear of losing his job, fear of going to jail. The fear of disintegrating, falling apart, losing his grasp of who he is. The fear of becoming nobody.”

“So you’re saying he’s desperate.”

“Absolutely desperate.”

“Desperate. Disintegrating.”

“Yes.”

“Were you carrying your gun?”

For a moment the question baffled him. “No. Of course not.”

“You were face-to-face with a furious lunatic—a desperate, disintegrating individual. But of course you weren’t carrying your gun?” She had a look of pain in her eyes. Pain and fear. “Now do you understand why I want you to see Malcolm Claret?”

He was about to say something about not knowing that Klemper would be waiting for him, that he’d never liked carrying a gun, and that he generally didn’t do so unless he was facing some known threat—but he realized that she was talking about something deeper and broader than this one incident, and for that larger subject at that moment he had no appetite.

After drying the same plate absently for another minute, she left the room and headed up the hall stairs. A minute later, he heard the initial bars of an unpleasantly jagged cello piece.

He’d avoided discussing the issue implicit in her question about Malcolm Claret, but now he couldn’t help picturing the man himself—the cerebral gaze, the thinning hair over a high, pale forehead, the gestures as economical as his speech, the colorless slacks and loose cardigan, the stillness, the unassuming manner.

Gurney realized he was picturing the man as he appeared many years ago. He altered the image in his mind as a computer aging program might—deepening wrinkles, subtracting hair, adding the wearying effects of time and gravity on facial flesh. Uncomfortable with the result, he put it out of his mind.

He thought instead about Klemper—about his obsessive negative focus on Kay Spalter, his certainty regarding her guilt, his willingness to subvert the investigation to produce the desired conclusion as quickly as possible.