“Did you get them back in the barn?” he asked with more irritation than interest.

“Of course.”

He realized he’d lost track of the hour and glanced over at the clock on the far wall. It was six-thirty. He turned his head to look out the glass door and saw the sun glaring back at him from just above the western ridge. Far from any romantic notions of a pastoral sunset, it reminded him of a movie-cliché interrogation lamp.

That association carried him back to the questions he’d posed at Bedford Hills just a few hours earlier, and to those uncannily steady green eyes that seemed more suited to a cat in a painting than a woman in prison.

“You want to tell me about it?” Madeleine was watching him with that knowing look that sometimes made him wonder if he’d been unconsciously whispering his thoughts.

“About …?”

“Your day. The woman you went to see. What Jack wants. Your plan. Whether you believe she’s innocent.”

It hadn’t occurred to him that he wanted to talk about that. But perhaps he did. He laid his fork down. “Bottom line, I don’t know what I believe. If she’s a liar, she’s a good one. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen.”

“But you don’t think she’s a liar?”

“I’m not sure. She seems to want me to believe she’s innocent, but she’s not going out of her way to persuade me. It’s as though she wants to make it difficult.”

“Clever.”

“Clever or … honest.”

“Maybe both.”

“Right.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“What else did you see in her?”

He thought for a moment. “Pride. Strength. Willfulness.”

“Is she attractive?”

“I don’t think ‘attractive’ is the word I’d choose.”

“What, then?”

“Impressive. Intense. Determined.”

“Ruthless?”

“Ah. That’s a tough one. If you mean ruthless enough to kill her husband for money, I can’t say yet one way or the other.”

Madeleine echoed the word “yet” so softly, he hardly heard her.

“I intend to take at least one more step,” he said, but even as he was saying it he recognized its subtle dishonesty.

If the skeptical glint in Madeleine’s eye was any indication, so did she. “And that step would be …?”

“I want to look at the crime scene.”

“Weren’t there pictures in the file Jack gave you?”

“Crime scene photos and drawings capture maybe ten percent of the reality. You have to stand there, walk around, look around, listen, smell, get a feel for the place, a feel for the possibilities and limitations—the neighborhood, the traffic, a feel for what the victim might have seen, what the killer might have seen, how he might have arrived, where he might have gone, who might have seen him.”

“Or her.”

“Or her.”

“So when are you going to do all this looking, listening, smelling, and feeling?”

“Tomorrow.”