Hardwick broke the connection, which was fine with Gurney, whose mind had been taken over by the flaming auto wreck case. He recalled that the previous event triggering the same memory had been Esti’s story about the shooting in the alley. Was there some similarity between the incidents? Was it possible that they both related in some way to the Spalter case? He couldn’t see any connection at all. But maybe Esti could.

He called her cell number, got her voice mail, and left a brief message.

Three minutes later, she called him back. “Hi. Something wrong?” Her voice still carried some of the anxiety she’d expressed at their morning meeting.

“Nothing wrong. I may be just wasting your time. But my mind seems to be making some kind of connection between two cases—your alley case and an old NYPD case—and maybe between them and the Spalter case.”

“What kind of connection?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I told you the NYPD story you’d see something I’m missing.”

“Sure. Why not? I don’t know if I can help, but go ahead.”

Half apologetically, he told her the story.

“The accident scene at first seemed easy enough to explain. A middle-aged man on his way home from work one night was driving down a hill. At the bottom of the hill, the road made a turn. His car, however, proceeded straight ahead through the guardrail, coming to rest nose-down in a ravine. The gas tank exploded. There was an intense fire, but enough remained of the driver to perform an autopsy and conclude that he had suffered a massive coronary. This was listed as the precipitating cause of his loss of control and the subsequent fatal accident. That would have been the end of the story, if it weren’t for the fact that the investigating officer had an uncomfortable feeling about it that wouldn’t go away. He went to the location where the vehicle had been towed, and went over it one more time. That’s when he noticed that the areas of the most severe impact and fire damage inside the car didn’t quite coincide with those outside. At that point, he ordered a complete forensic workup on the vehicle.”

“Wait a second,” said Esti. “The inside and outside didn’t coincide?”

“He noticed that there was heat and concussive damage inside the passenger compartment that didn’t seem to line up directly with similar points of damage to the exterior. The explanation, discovered by the forensic lab, was that there’d been two explosions. Before the gas tank blew up, there was a smaller explosion inside the vehicle—under the driver’s seat. It was that first explosion that resulted in the driver’s loss of control, as well as his coronary. Further chemical tests revealed that both the initial blast and the gas tank blast had been remotely detonated.”

“From where?”