On Harrow Hill

As he passed through Bastenburg’s main street, it seemed that even the sunlight was duller here; he suspected this had less to do with the quality of the light than with the town’s aura of depression, its vacant storefronts and vacant-eyed loiterers.

For the rest of his hour-long drive home he tried to focus on the beauties of the countryside rather than the perplexing questions surrounding the Harrow Hill murder. But it was only at the end of the trip—when he rounded the barn and headed up through the low pasture and saw Madeleine tossing handfuls of feed corn to the chickens—that he was able to relax in the present moment and see what was right there in front of him.

For better or worse, Gurney was hard-wired for rational endeavors, but happiness, he’d learned repeatedly, was not the fruit of a logical pursuit, not something to be captured. It was a gift. It arrived suddenly, surprisingly—as it did now in his glimpse of Madeleine, smiling in her pink windbreaker, with the hens scurrying around her, pecking at the tossed corn. He parked the Outback by the asparagus patch and got out, inhaling the scent of the moist grass.

After shaking the last few grains out of her feed can, she came over and gave him a welcome-home kiss. “The little door between the chicken run and the coop is stuck. Maybe you can get it open while I get dinner started.”

It turned out that problem was not easily solved. It involved considerable thumping and yanking, as well as the use of a silicone lubricant and a pry bar, both of which he had to fetch from the barn. But there were upsides to the endeavor. In the half hour it consumed, his mind didn’t sink even once into the Morgan-­Larchfield morass; and by the time he entered the house, Madeleine had prepared one of his favorite dinners: baked salmon, steamed asparagus, and basmati rice with a sweet pepper sauce.

He changed his shirt and washed his hands, and they sat down to eat at the little round table that looked out over the patio.

“Thank you,” she said. “I tried to do it myself, but I wasn’t able to budge that door.”

Madeleine put more sauce on her salmon. “How is the situation in Larchfield?”

“Everything there is odd. And the longer I was there, the odder it got.”

She ate a forkful of rice and waited for him to go on.

“It appears that someone stole the body of a local idiot from a mortuary and used it to plant evidence suggesting that the idiot committed a murder the day after he died. The CIO on the case is a young guy with virtually no relevant experience who spent half his time ingratiating himself with me and the other half antagonizing the crime-scene tech. At the end of the day, Morgan told me his wife is dying and offered me a blank check to take over the investigation.”

Madeleine put down her fork. “His wife is dying?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes. I mean, he’d have to be completely warped to lie about something like that. Don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “You know him better than I do.”

“Well . . . I have to assume he’s telling the truth.”

She picked up her fork again. “You’ve accepted the blank check?”

“I told him I’d do what I could. No guarantees.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why—”

“Because I’d be less happy if I turned him down.”

She gave him one of those looks that made him feel like she was seeing his motives more clearly than he was.

His gaze settled on the alpaca shed design, which was still on the table, although now partly covered by the salt and pepper shakers. He wondered when Madeleine would bring the subject up again. Surely it would be a topic at the upcoming dinner with the Winklers, a thought that contributed to his lack of enthusiasm for their visit.

“Look,” said Madeleine, pointing to the sunset’s wash of amber light on the hillside.

“Very nice,” he said, looking out through the glass door.

Madeleine reheated the pepper sauce, and they consumed their remaining salmon, rice, and asparagus without much further conversation. She insisted, as usual, on clearing the table and washing the dishes by herself. He stayed in his chair. His eyes were on the softly glowing hillside, but his mind was in Larchfield.

When Madeleine finished the dishes, she wiped off the sink island, folded the dishtowel, and went upstairs to practice her cello. Gurney’s thoughts, meanwhile, were proceeding by a winding route through the odd aspects of Billy Tate’s absurd death, the theft of his body, and its seemingly senseless implication in the murder of Angus Russell.

These peculiarities alone would make the case a serious challenge for any homicide department—even without the elements of rumored incest, witchcraft, and a mayor with an apparent financial motive for murder. And then there was the matter of the police chief’s refusal to refer the case to the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

That thought reminded Gurney that Larchfield was within the NYSP zone where Jack Hardwick had been stationed when he was a BCI investigator.