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for her subjects. He’d driven past the Gardener Farm countless times, a property described by some magazines as the most valuable undeveloped land in Westchester, 150 acres on the southern shore of Lake Atticus.
    With Abbie in a nursing home, the old house would now be occupied by her son, “Crazy George.” Tommy’s house was on a direct line from High Ridge Manor to the Gardener Farm. Had Abbie been trying to get home?
    Bull’s Rock Hill was on the line too.
    Was she a suspect? Nobody would guess a woman her age was capable of such a crime, but then, no one would expect her to have the superhuman strength he’d experienced when she’d attacked him. Almost as if she’d been possessed.
    By what?
    It was something he intended to look into.

6 .
     
    The DA’s office was the only one in the suite with windows, albeit bulletproof ones, with a view of the hospital across the street and what was surely the biggest elm tree in the state of New York.
    “Dani Harris,” Irene said, “this is Detective Phillip Casey. He’ll be my lead investigator on the case. Detective Casey, Dani Harris.”
    Phillip Casey gave her a smile so weak it would have been taken for a frown in any country outside of Scandinavia, accompanied by a grunt that may have been the detective clearing his throat but seemed more like an expression of disgust.
    “The detective was just telling us that in his years of experience with Providence law enforcement, forensic psychiatrists did nothing but let bad guys off the hook by saying they were crazy,” Stuart said. “We told him you and Sam and John have been invaluable to us.”
    Dani appreciated Stuart trying to break the ice on her behalf.
    “How old are you?” the detective asked her.
    Dani tried not to bristle outright. She’d had an instructor in medical school, a man who was ex-military by-the-book and a bit of a bully, but he’d liked Dani because she stood up to him. Dani guessed Casey might be of a similar ilk.
    “Twenty-nine,” she said. “What do you weigh?”
    Stuart smiled, then wiped the smile from his face before Casey noticed. The senior detective was of medium height but had clearly spent more time at the pasta bowl than the salad bar. He had a gray brush cut that reminded Dani of pictures she’d seen of mystery writer Mickey Spillane. He was clean-shaven, pushing sixty, and wore a plaid sport coat that made him look like a sportscaster at a local affiliate in rural Canada.
    “I can’t resist my wife’s risotto,” he told her flatly. “You look twenty.”
    “Thanks,” Dani said, though she wasn’t sure he’d meant it as a compliment. She decided she liked him, and she suspected he liked her too, though it would probably take both of them awhile to admit it. “Can somebody tell me what happened last night?”
    Stuart dimmed the lights. There was a 50-inch flat-screen monitor mounted on the wall to the right of the district attorney’s desk. Detective Casey stared a few moments at the screen, then at the computer used to generate the PowerPoint presentation. Dani watched the cursor move tentatively from field to field as he manipulated the mouse, unsure how to operate the program.
    “Allow me,” Stuart offered, taking a seat at the laptop.
    Casey turned his attention to the picture on the screen, an image of a wooded uphill path. “This is Bull’s Rock Hill,” he said. His delivery was dry and matter-of-fact. “I gather you people know where this is.”
    “It’s about four miles from my house,” Dani said.
    “Is it?” Casey said. “I actually wasn’t wondering where you live. The body was found this morning by a yoga instructor, a little before sunrise, which was . . .”
    “7:01,” Stuart said, adding, “AM.”
    “Thank you,” Casey said. “AM? You’re sure? So she gets about forty feet away when she sees this . . .”
    Dani had seen plenty of crime scene photographs before, twenty-megapixel images that could be enlarged to show the smallest