On Harrow Hill

He swallowed, in obvious between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place discomfort. “Well, ma’am . . . I guess . . . I mean . . . it seems that Dan Peale’s been murdered. By someone who broke in, struggled with him, and killed him. They probably used a knife . . . or scalpel . . . considering the amount of blood. Then they dragged his body out of the house, took his car keys, took the essential stuff out of his wallet, got his Lexus out of the garage, loaded his body in the trunk, and drove off.”

Stryker nodded encouragingly. “Anything else?”

“Peale was waiting for his oatmeal to cook when the killer broke in.”

“How do you know he wasn’t eating it?”

“The spoon and plate pieces we found on the floor are clean.”

She nodded again. “Very good. Any ideas about who the killer might be?”

After casting a nervous glance at Gurney, he cleared his throat. “Just one, but there’s no proof, it’s just an idea.”

“Ideas are exactly what we need at this point.”

He took a deep breath. “Dr. Ronald Fallow.”

Stryker blinked in surprise, then urged him to go on.

“Peale was suing him. He was telling everyone that since the false death pronouncement had destroyed his funeral business, he wanted Fallow’s medical license taken away, and he was suing him for, like, a hundred million dollars. And he kept bad-mouthing Fallow around town—like, nonstop. I figure Fallow got to the point where he just snapped.”

Stryker turned to Gurney, a glint of triumph in her eyes. “So, what do you think of that?”

“I’d have to give it some thought.”

“Good plan.” Her phone rang. She looked at the screen and, before stepping away to take the call, added pointedly, “Before you leave, I want to speak to you.”

Slovak looked at Gurney with a kind of questioning hopefulness. “I hope what I said was all right. She asked what I thought, and that was what I was thinking.”

Gurney smiled. “Ideas solve cases. Better to share them than keep them to yourself.”

Slovak seemed satisfied with that and headed for the house.

Barstow went back to conferring with the photographer over the tire tracks in the grass.

While Stryker was involved in her phone call, Gurney decided to take a walk around the exterior of Peale’s house. It appeared to be meticulously maintained, no doubt by hired gardeners. Peale didn’t strike him as the sort of man who’d want to muddy his knees weeding a flower bed.

He made a complete circuit of the place and found himself back at the yellow-tape entry point. The gray-haired cop with the clipboard gestured toward the house.

“Not bad for a caretaker’s cottage, eh?”

“Caretaker’s cottage?”

“Not now, of course, but that’s what it used to be. For the big Peale estate. Most of that got sold off years ago, when the current Mr. Peale was just a kid. All that’s left of it now is this ‘cottage’ and a few acres around it. Tell you what—I wouldn’t mind coming down in the world, if this was what I got to come down to. Everything’s relative, right?”

“Gurney!” Stryker was calling to him from a spot on the back lawn, away from the others working the scene.

He headed over, in no great rush, prepared for what he guessed would be her first question.

He was right.

“I’m curious about something. You told Slovak to find Peale. Why?”

“I wanted to speak to him—face-to-face, not on the phone.”

“Why?”

“A computer forensics tech found an anomaly in the security video of Tate’s resurrection in the mortuary. I wanted to question him about it.”

“What sort of anomaly?”

“That’s not clear, but even a slight possibility of there being anything misleading in that video would definitely need to be pursued.”

“So you diverted Slovak from the assignment I’d given him, in order to pursue this anomaly?”

Gurney was tempted to point out that the anomaly could end up being of far greater import than any assignment Slovak might have been diverted from, but he thought it better to let that obvious fact simply hang in the air between them.

And so it did, until Stryker moved on in an equally aggressive tone to her next topic.

“I’ve read the terms of your agreement with the Larchfield Police Department. The arrangement is loosely defined, to say the least. As part of regularizing the reporting structure here, we need to deal with that. For the duration of your activity on this case, you’ll be reporting to my Detective Lieutenant Hapsburg. That will be effective starting—”

Gurney cut her off. “You’ve misunderstood the nature of my involvement.”

Stryker blinked. “Misunderstood?”

“At Mike Morgan’s request, I volunteered to take a look at the case and offer my suggestions to him, to Brad Slovak, and to Kyra Barstow. I don’t report to anyone.”

“That’s neither professional nor appropriate. This is a law-enforcement operation. Accountability is a requirement, not an option.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Then, as of tomorrow morning, you’ll be reporting—”