“You dug him up?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because … because something came up in our discussion yesterday that gave me the idea that it could have been a gunshot that killed him.”

“Yesterday?”

“In my meeting with Hardwick and Esti.”

“So you thought I needed to know today? But I didn’t need to know yesterday?”

“I told you as soon as it was clear to me that I should tell you. Maybe I should have told you yesterday. What’s your point?”

“It’s your point I’m wondering about.”

“I don’t get it.”

Her mouth formed a small ironic smile. “What’s next on your agenda?”

“My agenda?” It began to dawn on him what she was getting at—and that, as usual, with relatively little evidence, she had moved quickly to the finish line. “We need to capture Panikos before he slips back into whatever dark hole he inhabits between jobs.”

She nodded, communicating nothing.

“As long as he believes we can damage him, he’ll hang around and … try to stop us. His attempt to do that will make him vulnerable to capture.”

“Vulnerable to capture.” She articulated the phrase slowly, musingly—as though it summed up all the misleading jargon in the world. “And you want me to stay here, so you can risk your life without worrying about me?”

She didn’t really seem to be asking a question, so he offered no response.

“You’ll be the bait in the game once again. Right?”

That wasn’t really a question either.

A long silence fell between them. The overcast sky was heavy now, slatey and dusklike. A phone began ringing inside the house, but Madeleine made no move to answer it. It rang seven times.

“I asked Dennis about that bird,” she said.

“What bird?”

“The strange one we sometimes hear at dusk. Dennis and Deirdre have heard it too. He checked it out with the Mountain Wildlife Council. They told him it’s a rare type of mourning dove that’s found only in upstate New York and parts of New England, and only above certain elevations in the mountains. The local Native Americans considered it sacred. They called it ‘Spirit Who Speaks for the Dead.’ The shaman would interpret its cries. Sometimes they were accusations, sometimes they were messages of forgiveness.”

Gurney wondered about the chain of associations that led Madeleine to her mourning dove story. Sometimes when it would seem to him that she’d changed the subject, he’d discover that she hadn’t changed it at all.

Chapter 55

Ring Around the Rosies

On his drive home from the Winkler farm Gurney felt alternately free and trapped.