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S
he had to be stopped.
Hints had not worked. Subtle nudges had been ignored.
Firmer action was called for. Something dramatic and unmis-
takable, accompanied by a clear explanation.
The clarity of the explanation was crucial. It could leave no room
for doubt, no room for questions. The police, the media, and the naïve
little meddler herself must be made to understand his message, to
agree on its significance.
He stared down thoughtfully at the yellow pad in front of him and
began to write:
Stop what you are doing. Stop now and walk away. Or there
will be blood again, and more blood. Be warned. Do not disturb
my peace.
Spring
T
he French doors were open.
From where Dave Gurney was standing by the breakfast
table, he could see that the last patches of winter snow, like
reluctant glaciers, had receded from the open pasture and survived
now only in the more recessed and shadowed places in the surrounding
woods.
The mixed fragrances of the newly exposed earth and the previous
summer’s unmowed hay drifted into the big farmhouse kitchen. These
were smells that once had the power to enthrall him. Now they barely
touched him.
“You should step outside,” said Madeleine from where she stood at
the sink, washing out her cereal bowl. “Step out into the sun. It’s quite
glorious.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, not moving.
“Sit and have your coffee in one of the Adirondack chairs,” she
said, setting the bowl down in the drying rack on the countertop. “You
could use some sun.”
“Hmm.” He nodded meaninglessly and took another sip from the
mug he was holding. “Is this the same coffee we’ve been using?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I didn’t say anything was wrong with it.”
“Yes, it’s the same coffee.”
He sighed. “I think I’m getting a cold. Last couple of days, things
haven’t had much taste.”
She rested her hands on the edge of the sink island and looked at
him. “You need to get out more. You need to do something.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. You can’t just sit in the house and stare at the wall all
day. It will make you sick. It is making you sick. Have you called Con-
nie Clarke back?”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I feel like it.”
He didn’t think it was a feeling he was likely to have in the fore-
seeable future. That’s just the way he was these days—the way he’d
been for the past six months. It was as though, after the injuries he’d
suffered at the end of the bizarre Jillian Perry murder case, he had
withdrawn from everything connected with normal life—daily tasks,
planning, people, phone calls, commitments of any kind. He’d gotten
to the point where he liked nothing better than a blank calendar page
for the coming month—no appointments, no promises. He’d come to
equate withdrawal with freedom.
At the same time, he had the objectivity to know that what was
happening to him wasn’t good, that there was no peace in his freedom.
He felt hostile, not serene.
To some extent he understood the strange entropy that was
unwinding the fabric of his life and isolating him. Or at least he could
list what he believed to be its causes. Near the top of the list he’d place
the tinnitus he’d been experiencing since he emerged from his coma.
In all likelihood it had actually begun two weeks before that, when
three shots were fired at him in a small room at nearly point-blank
range.
The persistent sound in his ears (which the ear, nose, and throat
specialist had explained wasn’t a “sound” at all but rather a neural
anomaly that the brain misinterpreted as sound) was hard to describe.
The pitch was high, the volume low, the timbre like a softly hissed
musical note. The phenomenon was fairly common among rock musi-
cians and combat veterans, was anatomically mysterious, and, apart
from occasional cases of spontaneous remission, was generally incur-
able. “Frankly, Detective Gurney,” the doctor had concluded, “consid-
ering what you’ve been through, considering the trauma and the coma,
ending up with a mild ringing in your ears is a damn lucky outcome.”
as his train of thought shifted to the peculiar tractor problem he’d dis-
covered a month ago and had largely put out of his mind—except for
those paranoid moments when it drove him crazy.
Madeleine appeared to be studying him. She smiled, put down her
spade, and walked around to the side door, evidently so she could take
off her boots in the mudroom before coming into the kitchen.
He took a deep breath and stared at the tractor, wondering for the
twentieth time about the mysteriously jammed brake. As if acting in
malignant harmony, a dark cloud slowly obliterated the sun. Spring, it
seemed, had come and gone.