The Viper

By the time he parked in his usual spot by the asparagus bed, it was a little after four. The sky was already darkening and an icy breeze was blowing. On evenings like this, Madeleine enjoyed having a fire blazing on the big fieldstone hearth.

He zipped up his jacket, went to the woodpile behind the chicken coop, and brought an armload of split cherry logs into the house. The aroma of baking bread greeted him. As he carried the logs to the fireplace, he could hear the strains of a baroque cello piece coming from Madeleine’s music room upstairs. He took off his jacket and set about arranging the wood in the firebox. It was a task he enjoyed—getting the geometry and spacing of the logs just right to ensure that the fire would start easily and burn steadily without further attention.

The stove timer chimed, the cello music stopped, and a minute later Madeleine entered the kitchen. She removed the bread from the oven and placed it on a cooling rack.

“Oh, good,” she said, seeing him at the fireplace. “I was about to do that myself. I can’t seem to get warm. Did you see your package?” She pointed to a flat box on the table by the French doors. “It arrived by FedEx, right after I got home.”

He made a final adjustment to the top log before going over to the package.

He recognized Marcus Thorne’s return address. He ripped open the package and slid a pile of documents onto the table. The sheet on top was headlined, “Evidence and Witness Files Provided by the Prosecution to the Defense.”

Gurney scanned through the list of enclosures—transcripts of interviews, the ME’s on-site notes, the autopsy report, crime scene photos, and some phone call records. Thorne hadn’t labeled any of the documents as contradictory or exculpatory, which suggested they were consistent with what Stryker presented at the trial.

“Have you run into any new oddities in the case?” Madeleine was peeling a carrot at the sink island, her tone of voice determinedly nonchalant.

“Maybe one or two. Hard to say.” The rabbit “oddity” was surely more significant than his reply suggested, but he didn’t want to mention it to her, at least not now.

She paused to regard him skeptically, then continued peeling the carrot. He gathered up the pile of documents from the table, carried them into the den, and spread them out on his desk.

It was getting dark. Looking out the north window, he could barely see the outline of the pine ridge above the high pasture. He switched on the desk lamp and read through the list of documents again, starting with a transcript of the interview with Bruno Lanka, the hunter who found Lerman’s body. The document included the interviewer’s name—Detective Lieutenant Scott Derlick.