The apartment was small but relatively bright compared to the dreary hallway. The front door opened into a cramped foyer with water-stained wood flooring. On the right was a galley-style kitchen, on the left an empty closet and a bathroom. Straight ahead was a medium-sized room with two windows.

Gurney opened both windows to let in some fresh air. He looked out across Axton Avenue, across the narrow river that ran beside it, and over the low brick wall of Willow Rest. There, on a gentle rise bordered by trees, rhododendrons, lilacs, and rosebushes, was the place where Carl Spalter had been shot and later buried. Wrapped by foliage on three sides, it reminded Gurney of a stage. There was even a kind of proscenium arch, an illusion created by the horizontal member of a light pole that stood on the river side of the avenue and seemed from Gurney’s line of sight to curve over the top of the scene.

The stage image underscored the other theatrical aspects of the case. There was something operatic about a man’s life ending at his mother’s grave, a man falling wounded on the very ground where he himself would soon be buried. And something soap-operatic in the accompanying tale of adultery and greed.

Gurney was transfixed by the setting, feeling that odd tingle of excitement he always felt when he believed he was standing where a murderer had stood, seeing much of what the murderer had seen. There had been, however, a light coating of snow on the ground that fateful day, and, according to the case-file photos, two rows of folding chairs, sixteen in all, had been set up for the mourners on the far side of Mary Spalter’s open grave. To be sure that he was picturing the setting accurately, he’d need to know the position of those chairs. And the position of the portable podium. And Carl’s position. Paulette had been very precise about the position of Carl’s body when it struck the ground, but Gurney needed to envision everything together, everything where it was at the moment the shot was fired. He decided to go down and get the crime scene photos from his car.

As he was about to leave the apartment, his phone stopped him.

It was Paulette again, more agitated than before. “Look, Detective Gurney, maybe I’m misunderstanding this, but it’s really bothering me. I have to ask you … Were you suggesting that somehow Jonah …? I mean, what were you really saying?”

“I’m saying that the case may not be as closed as everyone thinks. Maybe Kay did shoot Carl. But if she didn’t—”

“But how could you believe that Jonah, of all people—” Paulette’s voice was rising.

“Hold on. All I know now is that I need to know more. In the meantime, I want you to be careful. I want you to be safe. That’s all I’m saying.”