On Harrow Hill

“Not the thing itself, but how often I used it. Leveling areas around the edges of the field. Smoothing and re-smoothing the driveway. Grooming the trails. She saw the tractor as the part of me that stood between us.”

Gurney wanted to keep him talking. “You have trails on your property?”

“Just one, in the woods on the south side of our clearing. But it connects with all the trails on Harrow Hill—miles and miles of them, on the Russell side and the Aspern side. I keep them cleared and mowed.”

“Sounds like a lot of work. Why bother?”

“Because neat is better than sloppy. Order trumps disorder.” Tears were welling in his eyes. “Silly, isn’t it—that a marriage could fall apart over something like that?”

The tears started making wet lines down his cheeks. He gazed despairingly at the house. “I should have been with her. She was alone. With a maniac who hated her.”

21

By six that evening, Gurney was ready to leave the property. He took a final walk around the edges of the spacious lawn, lingering at the trail entrance that led, according to Mason, to an intricate web of trails on Harrow Hill.

The sky’s cloud cover had darkened, the path into the pine woods was uninviting, and the restless breezes had grown cooler. The broad rise of Harrow Hill itself loomed over the area—a dark presence that seemed for a moment to be the source of the chill in the air. Gurney moved on, completing his circuit of the lawn.

Barstow and her team had finished their examination of the house and barn without turning up anything that appeared inconsistent with Gurney’s hypothesis of the murder. Whether that conclusion held up would depend on the analysis of the contents of their evidence vacs.

For now, it seemed a safe bet that Linda Mason’s killer—presumably Billy Tate, based on the scratched symbol, method of execution, and bloody message on the wall—had gained entry to her home, knocked her unconscious in her kitchen, and dragged her to the barn, where he employed the tractor’s front loader to lift her body and tilt it at a head-down angle to facilitate the draining of her blood after cutting her throat. The trace of blue paint dust on the neck wound would have come from the scalpel having been used on the front door. The fact that she’d received the blow that presumably rendered her unconscious on the top of her head struck Gurney as odd, since it suggested she was in a seated position at the time—not a common situation with assault victims. But there could be a simple explanation for that.

Fallow and his assistant were long gone. Morgan was likely in the midst of an angst-filled process of preparing for his press conference back at headquarters. Greg Mason had finally been persuaded to go home to his condo on the lake. The two patrol officers had been replaced by one from the night shift with instructions to maintain the site security until further notice.

Gurney decided to call it a day and set out for Walnut Crossing. He got in the Outback and followed the dirt road down through the pine-shadowed ravine. The stream next to the road reminded him that he was still thirsty. And hungry.

Realizing that his route would be taking him through the center of Larchfield, he thought he might pick up a snack for the drive home after touching base with Morgan.

When he reached the village square, he saw that Morgan’s press conference was likely to be a bigger deal than he’d anticipated. Media vans, complete with rooftop satellite dishes, had made Cotswold Lane nearly impassable.

Inching his vehicle around them, he looked up the headquarters driveway and saw more vans in the parking area. Next he came to Peale’s Funeral Home. A glance up that driveway revealed an emptier parking area, so he decided to use it.

Once there, however, it occurred to him that Morgan would be too much of a nervous wreck to talk to, and he didn’t feel like bobbing and weaving to deflect media attention from himself. As unappetizing as it might be, he decided to head directly for the gas station mini-mart in Bastenburg. There wasn’t much harm they could do to a bottle of orange juice and a granola bar.

He was about to turn his car around when another thought occurred to him. As long as he was back where it all began—the site of Tate’s startling revival—why not make another visit to the embalming room, on the chance that he might see something he’d missed the first time around?

As he got out of the car, he noticed a bell at the rear door. He pressed the button and heard a faint chiming. He waited. He pressed it again, and the door opened. The perturbed expression on Danforth Peale’s face faded to bland curiosity.

“Detective Gurney? What can I do for you?”

“I’d like another look at the room where Tate regained consciousness.”

“Any particular reason?”

“A feeling I get sometimes—that I may have missed something. The only way I’m able to get rid of it is to take a second look around.”

Peale hesitated, glancing at his watch. “Fine. But I can’t imagine what you could have missed.”