He hated conversations like this. “You know what I really think about our wretched criminal justice system? I think the terrible truth is that it’s as good as it’s going to get.”

That created the longest silence of the evening. Gurney focused on his lasagna.

The pale Iona, a frown contending with her Mona Lisa smile, was the first to speak. “I have a question. One that bothers me. It’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I haven’t been able to decide on an answer.” She was gazing down at her nearly empty plate, slowly guiding a single pea across the center of it with the tip of her knife.

“This may sound silly, but it’s serious. Because I think a totally honest answer would reveal a lot about a person. So it bothers me that I can’t decide. What does that kind of indecision say about me?”

Bruce tapped his fingertips impatiently on the table. “For Godsake, Iona, get to the point.”

“Okay. Sorry. Here it is. Suppose you had to choose. Would you rather be a murderer … or his victim?”

Bruce’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you asking me?”

“No, dear, of course not. I already know what your answer would be.”

Part Two: Peter Pan

Chapter 20

Disturbing Discrepancies

After the dinner guests departed—Bruce and Iona in their massive Range Rover, the others in their silent Priuses—Madeleine began cleaning up and straightening up, and Gurney went into the den with the Spalter case file. He extracted the autopsy report, then turned on the slick retina-display tablet that his son, Kyle, had given him for Father’s Day.

He spent the next half hour on a succession of neurological websites, trying to make sense of the disconnect between the nature of Carl Spalter’s head wound and the ten or twelve feet that Paulette claimed he staggered before collapsing.

Gurney had the unhappy advantage of having witnessed, more closely than he would have liked, two similar head shots during his years in NYPD Homicide; in both instances the victims had fallen like axed trees. Why hadn’t Carl?

Two explanations occurred to him.

One was that the ME was wrong about the extent of the brain tissue trauma, and that the motor center had not been completely destroyed by the fragmenting bullet. The second explanation was that Carl was shot not once but twice. The first bullet sent him staggering to the ground. The second bullet, to the temple, did the severe neural damage found during the autopsy. The obvious problem with that theory was that the ME found only one entry wound. Admittedly, a .220 Swift could make a very neat puncture, or a very narrow grazing line—but surely nothing subtle enough for a pathologist to miss, unless he was seriously rushed. Or distracted. Distracted by what?