Soon his thoughts began to coalesce around the bits and pieces of the Spalter case, especially its incongruous elements. That made him think of a maxim one of his academy instructors had emphasized in an advanced course on the interpretation of crime scene evidence: The pieces that don’t seem to fit are the ones that end up revealing the most.

He took a yellow legal pad out of his desk drawer and started writing. Twenty minutes later he reviewed the results, which he’d organized into a list of eight issues:

1. Eyewitnesses placed the victim at the moment he was shot in a position that would have made it impossible for a bullet to reach him from the apartment where the murder weapon and gunpowder residue were found.

2. Killing the victim’s mother to ensure the presence of the victim at the cemetery plot seems needlessly elaborate. Might the mother have been killed for another reason?

3. The pro who executed the hit was known to accept only the most difficult assignments. What might have put the Carl Spalter hit in that category?

4. If Kay Spalter herself was not the shooter, could she have hired the shooter?

5. Could Jonah have hired the shooter to gain control of Spalter Realty assets?

6. Could Alyssa have hired the shooter—in addition to conspiring with Klemper after the shooting to frame Kay—in order to inherit her father’s estate?

7. What secret was Gurikos killed and maimed to protect?

8. Was Carl killed in retaliation for trying to have someone else killed?

Going through the eight items, pondering each in turn, Gurney was disgusted with his lack of progress.

One positive aspect, however, of a case with multiple peculiarities was that once you had a theory that was consistent with all the peculiarities you could be sure that the theory was right. A single oddity in an investigation could often be explained in a variety of ways. But it was unlikely that there could be more than one theory that could explain the line-of-sight problem with the apartment and the grotesque mutilation of Gus Gurikos and Mary Spalter’s oddly timed death.

When he looked out through the north window of the den some minutes later, the high forest appeared devoid of any green at all. The trees and the ridge they covered were now a uniformly dark mass against the gray slate of the sky. The night descending on the hillside brought to mind the attack on Hardwick’s house and the escape of the motorized shooter through the forest paths.