“Jesus.”

“So what about this auto crash?”

“Do we have to stand here with the goat?”

She looked around, then gestured in the direction of a weathered picnic table in a grassy area behind the house. “Over there?”

“Fine.”

She gave the goat a few more little strokes on the head, then left the pen, secured the gate, and led the way to the table.

They sat across from each other, and he told her the story of the explosive crash—the initial mistaken impression of what had happened and the subsequent discoveries—just as he had related it all to Esti.

When he’d come to the end, Madeleine gave him a quizzical look. “So?”

“It just keeps coming to mind, and I don’t know why. Any ideas?”

“Ideas?”

“Does anything about the case strike you as especially significant?”

“No, not really. Nothing beyond the obvious.”

“The obvious being …?”

“The sequence.”

“What about it?”

“The assumption that the heart attack came before the crash and the crash came before the explosion, instead of the explosion coming first and causing everything else. It was a reasonable assumption, though. Middle-aged man has heart attack, loses control, drives off the road, car crashes and the gas tank explodes. Makes total sense.”

“Total sense, yes, except that it was all wrong. That was the point I’d make when I talked about the case in one of my academy seminars—that something can make perfect sense and be perfectly wrong. Our brains are so fond of coherence that they confuse ‘making sense’ with the truth.”

She cocked her head curiously. “If you know all this, why are you asking me about it?”

“Just in case you saw something that I was missing.”

“You drove all the way over here to ask me about that story?”

“Not just that.” He hesitated, then forced out the words. “I discovered something about the rooster.”

She blinked. “Horace?”

“I discovered what killed him.”

She sat motionless, waiting.

“It wasn’t another animal.” He hesitated again. “Someone shot him.”

Her eyes widened. “Someone …?”

“I don’t know for sure who it was.”

“David, don’t …” There was an edge of warning in her voice.

“I don’t know for sure who it was, but it’s possible that it was Panikos.”

The rhythm of her breathing changed and her face filled slowly with a barely contained fury. “The crazy assassin you’re after? He … killed Horace?”

“I don’t know that for sure. I said it’s possible.”

“Possible.” She repeated the word as though it were a sound without a meaning. Her eyes were fixed intently on his. “Why did you come here and tell me this?”

“I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“What else?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t what you’re getting at. I just thought I should tell you.”

“How did you find out?”

“That he was shot? By examining the body.”