he ripped down half a dozen of our signs and set fire to them in front of our barn door—wouldn’t that make it more than ‘a possibility’?”
Gurney glanced back down the hill. “Let’s wait and see what the man with the dog has to say.”
Kyle looked intrigued. “When he ripped down the signs to burn them, he probably left footprints in the dirt, maybe even fingerprints on the fence posts. Maybe he dropped something. Should we mention that to the arson guy?”
Gurney smiled. “If he knows his job, we don’t need to tell him. And if he doesn’t, telling him won’t help.”
Kim made an odd little shivering sound and sank farther down into her armchair. “It gives me the chills—knowing he was out there the same time I was, creeping around in the dark like that.”
“The same time you were all out there,” said Madeleine.
“That’s right,” said Kyle. “Down on the bench. Jeez. He could have been within a few yards of us. Damn!”
Or within a few feet, thought Gurney. Or even inches, recalling with an unpleasant twinge his blind circumnavigation of the barn.
“Something just occurred to me,” said Kyle. “In the couple of years you’ve been here, have any guys approached you, wanting to hunt on your property?”
“Quite a few, when we first moved here,” Madeleine answered. “We always said no.”
“Well, maybe this guy is one of the ones who got refused. Did any of them seem particularly pissed off? Or claim that he had a right to hunt here?”
“Some were friendlier than others. I don’t recall anyone claiming special rights.”
“Any threats?” asked Kyle.
“No.”
“Or vandalism?”
“No.” She watched as Gurney’s eyes went to the red-feathered arrow on the sideboard. “I think your father is trying to decide whether that counts as vandalism.”
“Whether what counts?” asked Kyle, his eyes widening.
Madeleine just kept watching Gurney.
“A razor-tipped arrow,” said Gurney, pointing at it. “Found it sticking in one of the garden beds the other day.”
Kyle went over and picked it up, frowning. “That’s weird. Any other weird shit been happening?”
Gurney shrugged. “Not unless you count an oddly jammed tractor brake that wasn’t jammed the last time I used it, or a porcupine in the garage …”
“Or a dead raccoon in the chimney, or a snake in the mailbox,” added Madeleine.
“A snake? In your mailbox?” Kim looked horrified.
“A tiny one, over a year ago,” said Gurney.
“It scared me to death,” said Madeleine.
Kyle looked back and forth between them. “If all that happened after you put up your No Hunting signs, doesn’t that start to tell you something?”
“As I’m sure they point out in your law classes,” said Gurney, more stiffly than he intended, “sequence doesn’t prove causality.”
“But if he tore down your No Hunting signs … I mean … If the arsonist wasn’t some batshit hunter who thought you were taking away his God-given right to blow holes in deer, then who was it? Who else would do such a thing?”
While they were standing and talking by the French doors, Kim had quietly come over from the fireplace and joined them. She spoke in a small, uncertain voice. “Do you think it could have been the same person who sawed through the step in my basement?”
Gurney and his son both seemed about to respond to this when a metallic clang from somewhere outside the house diverted everyone’s attention.
Gurney looked through the glass door down toward the remains of the barn. There was another clang. He could just make out the kneeling form of the investigator, wielding what appeared to be a small sledgehammer against the barn’s concrete floor.
Kyle came over to his father’s side. “The hell is he doing?”
“Probably widening a crack in the floor with a hammer and chisel to get a sample of the earth underneath it.”
“What for?”
“When a liquid accelerant gets on the floor, it tends to seep into any available cracks, then down into the soil. If you can get an unburned sample, it makes precise identification easier.”
Madeleine’s eyes grew angry at this new aspect of the violation. “Our barn was doused with gasoline before it was set on fire?”
“Gasoline or something similar.”
“How do you know that?” asked Kim.
When Gurney didn’t answer immediately, Kyle explained, “Because of how fast it went up. A normal fire couldn’t spread through a building that quickly.” He glanced at his father. “Right?”
“Right,” muttered Gurney vaguely. His attention had moved back to Kim’s suggestion that the staircase saboteur and the barn burner might be the same individual. He turned to her. “Why did you say