before beginning in a barely audible voice. “I believe that murder changes everything forever. It steals something that can never be replaced. It has consequences that go way beyond what happens to the victim. The victim loses his life, which is a terrible thing, an unfair thing, but for him it’s over, the end. He’s lost everything that might have been, but he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t go on feeling the loss, imagining what might have been.” She raised her hands and placed her palms against the glass panes in front of her, a gesture that conveyed both great feeling and great effort at control.
She went on, a little louder. “It’s not the victim who wakes up to a half-empty bed, a half-empty house. He isn’t the one who dreams that he’s still alive, only to wake up to the pain of realizing that he’s not. He doesn’t feel the sickening rage, the heartache his death causes. He doesn’t keep seeing the empty chair at the table, hearing sounds that sound like his voice. He doesn’t keep seeing the closet full of his clothes …” Her voice was growing hoarse. She cleared her throat. “He doesn’t feel the agony—the agony of having the heart of your life torn out.”
She leaned against the glass for several long seconds, then pushed herself slowly away from it. When she turned around toward the table, her face was streaked with tears. “You know about phantom pain? The amputation phenomenon? Feeling pain in the place where your arm or your leg used to be? That’s how murder is for the family left behind. Like the aching in a phantom limb—an unbearable pain in an empty place.”
She stood perfectly still for a little while, staring at some inner landscape. Then she wiped her face roughly with her hands, emerging from behind them with a matter-of-fact determination in her eyes and voice. “To understand what murder really is, you have to talk to the families. That’s my theory, that’s my project, that’s my plan. And that’s what Rudy Getz is excited about.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “If it’s not too much trouble, could I have another cup of coffee?”
“I think we can manage that.” Madeleine smiled pleasantly, went to the sink island, and refilled the coffeemaker.
Gurney was leaning back in his chair, his hands steepled reflectively under his chin. No one said anything for a minute or two. The coffeemaker made its initial sputtering sounds.
Kim looked around the big farmhouse kitchen. “This is very nice,” she said. “Very homey, warm. Perfect, really. It looks like everyone’s dream of a house in the country.”
After Madeleine brought Kim’s coffee to the table, Gurney was the first to speak. “It’s clear that you have a lot of passion about this subject, that it means a great deal to you. I wish I were as clear about how I can help you.”
“What did Connie ask you to do?”
“ ‘Look over your shoulder’—I think that’s one of the phrases she used.”
“No mention of … any other problems?” It sounded to Gurney like she was making a childishly transparent effort to have the question sound casual.
“Does your ex-boyfriend qualify as a ‘problem’?”
“She brought up Robby?”
“She mentioned a Robert Meese … or Montague?”
“Meese. The Montague thing is …” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Connie thinks I need protection. I don’t. Robby is pathetic and extremely annoying, nothing I can’t handle.”
“Is he connected to your TV project?”
“Not anymore. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
Just curious about what? What the hell am I getting involved in? Why am I bothering to sit here listening to some overwrought graduate student with nutty-boyfriend problems expound on her sentimental ideas about murder and her big chance at glory on America’s trashiest cable network? Time to start backing away from the quicksand.
Kim was staring at him as though she had Madeleine’s gift for reading his mind. “It’s not all that complicated. And since you’ve been generous enough to offer to help me, I should be more forthright.”
“We keep coming back to that part about my helping you, but I don’t see—”
Madeleine, who was squeezing out a sponge at the sink after washing off their omelet plates, interjected gently, “Why don’t we just listen to what Kim has to say?”
Gurney nodded. “Good idea.”
“I met Robby in the drama club a little less than a year ago. He was easily the handsomest guy on campus. Like a young Johnny Depp. About six months ago, we moved in