On Harrow Hill

A perimeter of yellow police tape demarcated the site itself—approximately an acre that extended from a small cottage on one side of the road to a grassy, shrubbery-­bordered swale on the opposite side.

Morgan parked between the evidence van and the body-transport van, just outside the tape. He got out and called to Barstow, who was conferring with her two techs next to a search grid that ran from the cottage across the road to the far side of the swale.

“You want us in coveralls?” Morgan asked.

“Just shoe covers and gloves, as long as you don’t kneel or sit anywhere inside the tape.”

“You go ahead,” said Morgan to Gurney. “The gloves and booties are in the back of her van. I’ll wait here for Fallow. When he finishes with the body, I’ll fill him in on the Tate situation.”

Gurney went to the van, put on the protective items, and ducked under the tape. It didn’t surprise him that Morgan had come up with a reason to remain where he was. Back in the NYPD, the man always managed to minimize his exposure to the ugly starting point of every homicide investigation, the body of the victim. Never having become used to it, it was one more reason his career was an endless source of stress—all in the fruitless pursuit of his father’s approval—an emotional trap with no way out.

Barstow’s voice interrupted Gurney’s train of thought. “Would now be a good time for me to give you a tour of the highlights?”

“Now would be ideal.”

“We start over here,” she said, leading him toward the cottage.

It was a small, cream-colored clapboard house with a brass knocker in the center of a green door. There were red geraniums in boxes under the two front windows. The bright colors gave the place a playful appearance. An open porch faced the road. There was a lavender ladder-back chair on the porch and next to it a small wooden table. On the table was a cup with a desiccated residue of coffee in the bottom of it, a blank index card, a pen, and a flashlight. It appeared that everything had been dusted for prints. What held Gurney’s attention longest was the line of dried blood droplets that began on the table and extended eight or ten feet across the porch.

“Appears that the victim’s throat was cut while she was sitting in that chair,” said Barstow. “Bloodstains look like a typical throw-off pattern from a blade slashed through a large artery.”

Like the pattern on Angus’s bedroom wall, thought Gurney.

“There was also a phone on that table,” she added. “Battery was dead. It’s being recharged now, so we can check for any calls or text records around the time of the attack.” She turned and pointed at a rough line of brownish smears on the macadam surface of the road. “Attacker dragged the bleeding body across the road, through the shrubbery on the other side, and left it in the drainage ditch.”

Gurney nodded. “I know one of Slovak’s people was doing door-to-doors on this road this morning. But there are no houses on that side. How did he happen to find the body down behind the bushes?”

She thought about it for a moment. “The stink would be hard to miss if the breeze was right. Want to see the body?”

“After I take a look through the house. Your people finished in there?”

Barstow nodded. “It’s all yours.”

The front door opened into a small living room. She followed him in. At the back of the room a doorway led to a small kitchen with a table with two wooden chairs. Off the side of the living room there was a hallway with three doors—a bathroom and two small bedrooms.

“We didn’t find any evidence of disturbance in the house,” said Barstow.

“Was the front door open?” he asked.

“Closed but unlocked.”

“Did you find her house keys?”

“Yes. In the back of a kitchen drawer. Doesn’t appear that she bothered much with them. With virtually no crime, lot of folks around here leave their doors unlocked.”

“Is there a basement or accessible attic?”

“Both, but there’s nothing in them but dust.”

“Any security cameras on the property?”

“None that we found.”

He took another slow walk through the house, noting that Mary Kane had a fondness for birds, evident in the many amateur watercolors hanging on the walls. It touched him in a way that was obvious to Barstow.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Ready to take a look at the body?”

Gurney followed her across the road and through a break in the barrier of bushes a few yards from the Harrow Hill turnoff.

Stepping down into the broad drainage swale, his gaze went immediately to the body on the ground—a thin, gray-haired woman. Her white slacks and tan sweater were stained with dirt and blood. The skin on her hands and face showed early signs of putrefaction. A gentle breeze was carrying the odors away from where Gurney was standing, allowing him to move closer without the nausea they would have induced.

The contour of the ground under the body had tilted the head back, so that the neck wound was open and had become a magnet for flies. Even so, it was clear that the fatal damage had been a single deep cut inflicted by a very sharp blade.