Angelidis interrupted his train of thought. “Hey, I almost forgot, one more thing—the thing everyone who was there still talks about. The thing that really got to them. You ready for this?” It wasn’t really a question. “While little Peter was going around the town, wiping that whole fucking family off the face of the earth—guess what he was doing.” He paused, real excitement in his eyes. “Guess.”

Gurney shook his head. “I don’t guess.”

“Don’t matter. You couldn’t guess it anyway.” He leaned forward another inch. “He was singing.”

Before Gurney left the restaurant garden, he looked out again through the open doors in the back wall. He could see the Spalter plot clearly—all of it, with no light pole obstructing any part of it.

He heard Angelidis’s fingers tapping restlessly on the tabletop.

Gurney turned toward him and asked, “Do you ever think about Carl when you look over at Willow Rest?”

“Sure. I think about him.”

Watching Angelidis’s fingers drumming on the metal surface, Gurney asked, “Does knowing that Panikos was the paid hitter tell you anything about the buyer?”

“Sure.” The drumming stopped. “It tells me that he knew his way around. You don’t go to your phone book, look up ‘Panikos,’ and say, ‘Hey, I got a job for you.’ It don’t work that way.”

Gurney nodded. “Very few people would know how to get in touch with him,” he said, sounding like he was talking to himself.

“Peter accepts contracts through maybe half a dozen guys in the world. You have to be well placed to know who those guys are.”

Gurney let a silence build between them before asking, “Would you say that Kay Spalter was well placed?”

Angelidis stared at him. He appeared to find the suggestion surprising, but his only answer was a shrug.

Turning to leave, Gurney had a final question.

“What was he singing?”

Angelidis looked confused.

“Panikos, while he was shooting everybody.”

“Oh, yeah. Some little kid song. Whaddya call ’em—nursery rhymes?”

“Do you know which one?”

“How would I know that? Something about roses, flowers, some shit like that.”

“He was singing a nursery rhyme about flowers? While he was walking around shooting people in the head?”

“You got it. Smiling like an angel and singing his little song in a little-girl voice. The people who heard that—they never forgot it.” Angelidis paused. “The thing you got to know about him—most important thing—I’ll tell you what it is. He’s two people. One—precise, exact, everything a certain way. The other—very fucking crazy.”

Chapter 42

The Missing Head

Gurney stopped at the first gas station he came to on the route from Long Falls to Walnut Crossing—for gas, for coffee (having barely touched the cup at the Aegean Odyssey), and to send another email to Jonah Spalter. He decided to take care of the last item first.