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chief investigator on the Mellery case, when the look in her eyes told him he didn’t need to ask. It was the look she got whenever a name came up that was associated with that terrible chain of murders.
    She stared at him, waiting, unblinking.
    “He wants my advice.”
    Still she waited.
    “He wants me to speak to the mother of a girl who was killed. She was killed on her wedding day.” He was about to say how she was killed, describe the peculiar details, but realized that would be a mistake.
    Madeleine nodded almost imperceptibly.
    “You all right?” he asked.
    “I’d been wondering how long it would take.”
    “How long …?”
    “For you to find another … situation that required your attention.”
    “All I’m going to do is talk to her.”
    “Right. And then, after a nice long talk, you’ll conclude that there’s nothing especially interesting about a woman being killed on her wedding day, and you’ll yawn and walk away. Is that the way you see it?”
    His voice tightened reflexively. “I don’t know enough yet to see it in any particular way.”
    She gave him her patented skeptical smile. “I have to go,” she said. Then, seeming to notice the question in his eyes, she added, “The clinic, remember? See you back here tonight.” And she was gone.
    At first he just stared at the empty doorway. Then he thought he should go after her, started to do so, got as far as the middle of the kitchen, stopped, and wondered what he would say, had no idea, thought he should go after her anyway, went out the side door by the garden. But by the time he got around to the front of the house, her car was halfway down the rough little farm lane that bisected the low pasture. He wondered if she saw him in her rearview mirror, wondered if it made a difference that he’d come out after her.
    In recent months he’d imagined that things were going pretty well. The raw emotion at the end of the Mellery nightmare had evolved into an imperfect peace. He and Madeleine had slipped smoothly, gradually, mostly unconsciously into affectionate or at least tolerant patterns of behavior that resembled separate elliptical orbits. While he gave his occasional lectures at the state police academy, she had accepted a part-time position in the local mental-health clinic, doing intakes and assessments. It was a function for which her LCSW credentials and experience clearly overqualified her, but it seemed to have provided a sense of balance in their marriage, a relief from the pressure of their unrealistic expectations of each other. Or was that just wishful thinking?
    Wishful thinking. The universal anodyne.
    He stood in the matted, drought-wilted grass and watched her car disappear behind the barn onto the narrow town road. His feetwere cold. He looked down and discovered he had come outside in his socks, which were now absorbing the morning dew. As he turned to go back into the house, a movement by the barn caught his eye.
    A lone coyote had emerged from the woods and was loping across the clearing between the barn and the pond. Partway across, the animal stopped, turning its head toward Gurney, and studied him for a long ten seconds. It was an intelligent look, thought Gurney. A look of pure, unemotional calculation.

Chapter 4
The art of deception
    “W hat goal is common to every undercover assignment?”
    Gurney’s question was greeted by various expressions of interest and confusion on the thirty-nine faces in the academy classroom. Most guest instructors started their lectures by introducing themselves and giving their résumé highlights, then presented an outline of the subjects to be covered, content and objectives, blah, blah, blah—a general overview to which no one paid much attention. Gurney preferred a cut-to-the-chase approach, particularly for a seminar group like this, made up of experienced officers. And they’d know who he was, anyway. He had a definite reputation in law-enforcement circles. Professionally, the