“Whoever was casing that apartment on a Sunday—three days before Mary Spalter died—must have known she was going to be dead very soon. Meaning her accidental death was no accident.”

“Whoa, Sherlock, slow down! All of that depends on the dumbest leap of faith I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Faith in Estavio Bolocco’s story?”

“Right. Faith that some car-wash jockey, squatting in a half-gutted building, high on God knows what, can remember the exact day of the week he saw someone walk through an apartment door nine months ago.”

“I’ll grant you there’s a witness reliability issue. But I still think—”

“You call that a ‘witness reliability issue’? I call it fucking nuts!”

Gurney spoke softly. “I hear you. I don’t disagree with you. However, if—and I know it’s a big if—if Mr. Bolocco is right about the day of the week, then the nature of the crime was completely different from the narrative proposed by the prosecutor at Kay’s trial. Jesus, Jack, think about it. Why would Carl’s mother have been killed?”

“This is a waste of time.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Let’s just say, hypothetically, that her death wasn’t an accident. I can think of two ways to approach the question of why she was murdered. One, that she and Carl were both primary targets—equally in the way of the murderer’s goal, whatever that might have been. Or, two, that she was only a stepping-stone—a way to ensure that Carl, the primary target, would be standing out in the open, in that cemetery, at a predictable time.”

The tic was back in full force at the corner of Hardwick’s mouth. Twice he started to speak and stopped. On the third try he said, “This is what you wanted from the start, right? To toss the whole fucking thing up in the air and see what happened when it hit the ground? To take a straight-ahead examination of police misconduct—something as simple as Mick the Dick, CIO, screwing potential suspect Alyssa Spalter—and turn it into the reinvention of the fucking wheel? Already you want to turn one murder into two! Tomorrow it’ll be half a dozen! What the fuck are you trying to do?”

Gurney’s voice grew even softer. “I’m just following the string, Jack.”