“We’re getting a phone call from Kay Spalter at nine, or as close to that as she can manage.”

“Problem?”

“Nothing but problems. Every fact in this case has a contradiction attached to it.”

“Isn’t that the way you like your facts?”

“Hopelessly tangled up, you mean, so I can untangle them?”

She nodded, took a final bite of her toast, took her plate and cup to the sink, and let the water run on them. Then she came back and kissed him. “Running late. Got to go.”

He made himself some bacon and toast and settled down in a chair by the French doors. Softened by a thin morning fog, the view from his chair was of the old pasture, a tumbledown stone wall along its far side, one of his neighbors’ overgrown fields, and, barely visible beyond that, Barrow Hill.

Just as he popped the last bit of bacon in his mouth, the rumble of Hardwick’s GTO became audible from the road below the barn. Two minutes later, the angular red beast was parked by the asparagus patch and Hardwick was standing at the French doors, wearing a black T-shirt and dirty gray sweatpants. The doors were open wide, but the sliding screens were latched.

Gurney leaned over and unlatched one.

Hardwick stepped inside. “You know there’s a giant fucking pig strolling up your road?”

Gurney nodded. “It’s a fairly frequent occurrence.”

“A good three hundred pounds, I’d say.”

“Tried to lift it, did you?”

Hardwick ignored the question, just looked around the room appraisingly. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’ve got a shitload of country charm here.”

“Thank you, Jack. Care to sit down?”

Hardwick picked thoughtfully at his front teeth with his fingernail, then plopped down in the chair across the table from Gurney and eyed him suspiciously. “Before we speak to the bereaved Mrs. Spalter, ace, you have anything on your mind we need to discuss?”

“Not really—apart from the fact that nothing in the case makes a damn bit of sense.”

Hardwick’s eyes narrowed. “These things that don’t make sense … do they work for us or against us?”

“ ‘Us’?”

“You know what I mean. For or against our objective of securing a reversal.”

“Probably for the objective. But I’m not positive. Too many things are screwy.”

“Screwy? Like how?”

“Like the apartment ID’d as the source of the fatal shot.”

“What about it?”

“It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.”

“Why not?”

Gurney explained his use of Paulette to set up the informal reenactment, and his discovery of the light pole obstruction.

Hardwick looked confused but not worried. “Anything else?”

“A witness, who claims he saw the shooter.”

“Freddie? The guy who fingered Kay in the lineup?”