Think of a Number: A Novel by John Verdon

Think of a Number: A Novel by John Verdon

Author:John Verdon [Verdon, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, General
ISBN: 9780307588920
Google: MYeQObzEF5cC
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Published: 2010-07-15T20:56:30+00:00


Chapter 29

Backwards

November was his least favorite month, a month of waning light, an uncertain month shambling between autumn and winter.

This sense of the season seemed to exacerbate the feeling that he was stumbling around in a fog on the Mellery case, blind to something right in front of him.

When he arrived home from Peony that day, he decided, uncharacteristically, to share his confusion with Madeleine, who was sitting at the pine table over the remains of tea and cranberry cake.

“I’d love to get your input on something,” he said, immediately regretting his word choice. Madeleine was not fond of terms like input.

She tilted her head curiously, which he took as an invitation.

“The Mellery Institute sits on a hundred acres between Filchers Brook Road and Thornbush Lane in the hills above the village. There are about ninety acres of woods, maybe ten acres of lawns, flower beds, a parking area, and three buildings—the main lecture center, which also includes the offices and guest rooms, the private Mellery residence, and a barn for maintenance equipment.”

Madeleine raised her eyes to the clock on the kitchen wall, and he hurried on. “The responding officers found a set of footprints that entered the property from Filchers Brook Road and led to a chair behind the barn. From the chair they led to the spot where Mellery was killed and from there to a location half a mile away in the woods, where they stopped. No more footprints. No hint of how the individual who left the prints up to that point could have gotten away without leaving any further prints.”

“Is this a joke?”

“I’m describing the actual evidence at the scene.”

“What about the other road you mentioned?”

“Thornbush Lane is over a hundred feet from the last footprint.”

“The bear came back,” said Madeleine after a short silence.

“What?” Gurney stared at her, uncomprehending.

“The bear.” She nodded toward the side window.

Between the window and their dormant, rime-encrusted garden beds, a steel shepherd’s-crook support for a finch feeder had been bent to the ground, and the feeder itself had been broken in half.

“I’ll take care of it later,” said Gurney, annoyed at the irrelevant comment. “Do you have any reaction to the footprint problem?”

Madeleine yawned. “I think it’s silly, and the person who did it is crazy.”

“But how did he do it?”

“It’s like the number trick.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what difference does it make how he did it?”

“Tell me more,” said Gurney, his curiosity slightly greater than his irritation.

“How doesn’t matter. The question is why, and the answer is obvious.”

“And the obvious answer is …?”

“He wants to prove that you’re a pack of idiots.”

Her answer put Gurney in two emotional places at once—pleased that she agreed with him that the police were targets in the case, but not so pleased with how much emphasis she put on idiots.

“Maybe he walked backwards,” she suggested with a shrug. “Maybe where you think the footprints went is where they came from, and where you think they came from is where they went.”

It was among the possibilities that Gurney had considered and dismissed.



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