The Viper

50

“ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?” GURNEY ASKED SOFTLY.

He was pretty sure that she was. He could tell by the way she was breathing, lying next to him in the moonlight from the bedroom window, but she didn’t answer. In fact, she’d hardly said a word in the many hours that had passed since the sight of the hideous thing in the jam basket sent her reeling against the kitchen wall.

When the state police came, it was he who answered all their questions. And when Gerry, Kyle, and Kim were leaving, it was he who assured them that he and Madeleine would be okay; no, there was nothing they could do; yes, he would definitely keep them abreast of developments.

Once he and Madeleine had the house to themselves, she’d begun cleaning with a tight-lipped obsessiveness, beginning with the kitchen sideboard where the “gift” carton had been opened and then proceeding to scrub the kitchen floor and the hallway floor between the kitchen and the mudroom with a sponge mop. Finally, with a pail of soapy water and a brush—down on her knees—she scoured the outside step where the delivery person had left the carton. She did all this with a fierceness that closed the door to any offer of assistance. He’d watched with apprehension, hoping that her exertion would diminish the lingering shock of what she’d seen.

When the cleaning fit passed—and there was nothing left to scrub—she’d gone to the sitting area at the far end of the room, wrapped herself in an afghan that had been lying unused for months on one of the armchairs, and settled down, staring into the fireplace. The afternoon’s blaze had long since died out and only cold ashes remained. He asked several times if there was anything he could do, but she showed no signs of having heard him. Eventually, she’d gotten up from the chair and gone to bed.

Now, as they lay there next to each other, Gurney was feeling the first stabs of panic.

“Are you awake?” he asked again.

She said nothing.

“You’re frightening me.”

Still nothing.

He felt a desperate need to do something. But what? Bring her to the nearest emergency room? Would that help? Or would the dislocation drive her deeper into whatever she was experiencing? Or would she just refuse to go?

All at once, coyotes in the high pasture began to howl in eerie unison. Then, as abruptly as they began, they stopped.

Madeleine’s head shifted slightly on her pillow.

“They know where my sister lives.”

Her voice, barely above a whisper, was so unexpected it gave Gurney a little start.

“The people who sent us that hideous thing.”

He had no answer.

“What will it take to make you stop? Will one of us have to end up dead?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to prevent.”

“Are you?” It was less a question than a weary comment.

The silence was broken only by the rustling of the breeze through the frozen lilac bush outside the bedroom window.

51

MADELEINE EVENTUALLY FELL ASLEEP. GURNEY DIDN’T.

At the first gray hint of dawn, he got up, showered, dressed, picked up his Glock and shoulder holster from the night table, went out to the kitchen, and switched on the coffee machine. While it warmed up, he strapped on the Glock, got his jacket from the mudroom, and stepped outside.

Overnight, the temperature had plummeted again. Frost covered the drooping asparagus ferns, and the briefest Indian summer in memory had come to an end. He took a series of long, slow breaths in the hope that the bracing air might restore some linear logic to his thoughts.

After a while, he began to shiver. The frigid air and deep breathing were only sharpening his headache. He retreated into the house, took off his jacket, and put a pod of dark roast into the coffee machine. When his mug was filled, he took it into the den, opened his laptop, and searched for Northeast Expedited Delivery—the name on the truck that had delivered the snake.

He wasn’t surprised to discover there was no such company—a fact further strengthening his conviction that the enemy was a careful planner with significant resources. He thought for a moment of passing along his discovery to BCI, then decided not to for two good reasons. They surely would make the same discovery on their own, and they wouldn’t appreciate his conducting a parallel investigation.

Instead, he turned his attention to the Lerman-Slade case files. Glancing from one folder to another, he stopped at the one containing the printout Kyra Barstow had sent that showed Lenny’s route from Calliope Springs to Slade’s lodge with GPS time notations. This was the raw material Stryker simplified in graphic form for the trial.

In the same folder he found the printout of the two credit card charges Lenny had incurred—the gas-station one for $14.57 and the one at the auto supply store for $16.19. He checked the time notation next to each and saw that the auto supply transaction occurred six minutes before the one at the gas station.

Recalling the Google Street View image of the station, $14.57 seemed like too much to have been spent on anything in the tiny, seedy-looking store behind the pumps. But it seemed on the low side for a gas purchase. Gurney went to a fuel price website and checked the average upstate gas prices for the previous November. Regular grade, which was what Lerman’s Corolla would have used, was $3.19 a gallon at the pump. At that price, he would have gotten only about four and a half gallons—an oddly small amount for a car, but just about right for a five-gallon gas can.

He went back to the time-coded printout of Lerman’s trip. It seemed entirely consistent with the map Stryker had shown the jury. Then something caught his eye—a stop Lerman made just a mile before he reached Slade’s private road. It was a very brief stop, just one minute, and Stryker hadn’t bothered to highlight it on her map. It was one more oddity in a case increasingly defined by its peculiarities.

He sat back in his chair, gazing out the den window at the high pasture. The dawn light seemed to impart an added chill to the frost on the beige grasses. There was a dead stillness about it all that was adding to his leaden mood. With sudden determination, he decided to do something. Anything would be better than trying to imagine the significance of minor events that had taken place a year ago and a hundred and fifty miles away. He couldn’t do anything about the time that had passed, but he could visit the places where these things occurred. And he had learned long ago that action was the surest path out of a mental cul-de-sac. He checked the Glock in his shoulder holster and put on his jacket.

He was leaving a note for Madeleine when he heard the bedroom door opening. A few seconds later, she came into the kitchen, holding her bathrobe tightly around her, hair uncombed. She frowned at his jacket.

“Where are you going?”

He crumpled up the half-written note and explained that a couple of things about Lenny Lerman’s trip to Slade’s lodge were bothering him and he wanted to check them out. He added, “I know you hate the idea of my pursuing anything connected with the case, but Jesus, Maddie, I don’t know what else to do. I don’t trust Cam Stryker or BCI or the Rexton PD to get to the bottom of this. I just don’t believe—”

She interrupted him, her voice rising. “So, you have to keep digging. And digging. And digging. Regardless of the consequences. Is that it?”

“I don’t see an alternative.”

“The alternative is to stop. Just stop!”

“Turning my back on the case now would be the most dangerous thing I could do.”

She nodded in slow motion, a gesture that conveyed more anger than agreement, then returned abruptly to the bedroom.

AT 9:55 THAT morning, Gurney pulled into the parking area in front of Cory’s Auto Supply.

Since the $16.19 store charge on Lerman’s Visa bill would have included an 8 percent sales tax, he did a quick calculation to determine what the tag price would be on whatever Lerman had purchased. The number he arrived at was $14.99.

He got out of the car, steadying himself against the door as a sudden pain ran from the base of his skull into his shoulder—an unsubtle reminder that he should be wearing a neck brace. Once the sharp edge of the pain dulled, he entered the store. Passing among the racks of motor oil, antifreeze, windshield wipers, floor mats, tool kits, gas additives, car waxes, and cleaning solutions, he arrived at the sales counter, behind which a large gray-haired man was eyeing him with the fixed smile of a minister greeting a new congregant.

“What can I help you with on this fine day?”

“Do you stock gasoline containers?”

The man pointed. “There, against the far wall.”

Gurney found two kinds on display—old-fashioned round metal ones and the currently more popular red plastic ones, both in five-gallon sizes. He picked up a plastic one, checked the sticker, and with the distinct little rush of an expectation satisfied, saw a price of $14.99.

He took it to the man at the counter and asked how long he’d been selling that particular item.

“Years.”

“At this same price?”

“Same price as the big auto supply chains. Don’t make any profit on it, but it’s the only way we can stay in business. Somewhere along the line, this country of ours made a wrong turn. We don’t even know who the hell is calling the shots. The Chinese? Who the hell knows?”

Gurney paid for the gas container, took it out to his car, and placed a call to Kyra Barstow.

“David?”

Knowing her as well as he did, he wasn’t surprised to find her at work the day after Thanksgiving. “Quick question. Do you have the digital files from which Stryker printed out the crime scene photos she used at the Slade trial?”

“Not in front of me, but I can access them. Why?”

“Among the photo printouts that Thorne sent me there were some of the quarry where Lerman’s Corolla was incinerated. A red plastic gas container was visible in the corner of one of them. I assume that you or one of your people brought it in for forensic examination?”

“Of course. But there were no prints on it, and Stryker lost interest in it.”

“Do you remember if you retained it, or passed it on to Rexton PD?”

“I’ll have to check. Where are we going with this?”

“I’m wondering, if you still have it, could you take a few quick photos from various angles and send them to my phone?”

She laughed. “I assume you mean now?”

“Now would be good.”

“You haven’t told me why.”

“I’m pretty sure the purchase Lerman made at the auto supply store was a five-gallon gas container. The price is consistent with the charge on his Visa statement, and his gas purchase a few minutes later is consistent with the size of the container. I know that neither of those facts prove anything, but if it turns out that the container you found in the quarry matches the one sold at that store—”

Barstow interrupted him, her tone incredulous. “You’re suggesting that Lerman bought the gas used to incinerate his own car? Why on earth would he do that?”

“I have no idea. This case just keeps getting stranger and stranger.”

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” she said and ended the call.

Gurney detected a sense of urgency, perhaps even excitement, in her voice.

There was one more thing he wanted to check on before leaving the area. He got out of the car and walked across the street to the dingy store behind the gas pumps. Entering it, he discovered that it wasn’t really a store in any normal sense of the word. It was just a dusty room with a row of vending machines lined up against three of the walls, offering candy bars, chips, and canned sodas. A tattooed teenage attendant with green hair sat in a corner of the room, holding a phone in both hands.

Gurney went back across the road to his car, feeling doubly sure now that Lerman’s Visa charge at the station was indeed for gas, there being nothing else in that place that he could have spent $14.57 on. Encouraged by a feeling that progress was being made, he decided to continue on to the site of Lerman’s peculiar one-minute roadside stop.

He checked the printout of Lerman’s route, noted the coordinates of that stop, entered them as a destination point in his GPS, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed north into the Adirondacks.

Over the next hour and quarter, as the elevation rose, the temperature fell. The readout on his dashboard was down to 18°F by the time his GPS told him he had arrived at his destination—a cleared area off the right side of the road, just large enough for a plow truck or salt spreader to turn around. He pulled over and got out of the car, zipping his jacket up to his chin.

He studied his surroundings—a typical Adirondack forest of giant evergreens. The ground beneath them covered with a thick blanket of brown needles. Patches of ice here and there. Piney smell in the air. Dead silence. His hope that the location might reveal Lerman’s reason for stopping there was rapidly fading. He was about to give it up when something caught his eye. He hadn’t noticed it at first because of the pine needles covering everything, but there appeared to be a narrow lane leading from the edge of the clearing into the woods. Moving closer, he saw that it was just wide enough for the passage of a car. He wasn’t about to take a chance on getting his rental vehicle stuck in the woods, but he was curious enough to proceed on foot.

He soon discovered a much larger clearing, consisting mainly of a granite quarry. A brief exploration revealed that it was the same one where Lerman’s Corolla had been reduced to a burnt-out hulk. He made his way to the point where the site photos showed the remains of the car. A blackened area on the gray stone confirmed the location. He spent another twenty minutes going over the site before returning to his car.

He started the engine, got the heater going, and tried to make sense of the situation. Surely it wasn’t just a coincidence that Lerman stopped by a lane that led to the place where his car would later be burned. But why?

As he struggled to come up with even one slightly plausible explanation, his phone announced the arrival of a text. It was from Kyra Barstow, and it was accompanied by four close-up photos of a red plastic gas container.

The container Gurney purchased was on the seat next to him. He turned it carefully to match each of the angles in Barstow’s photos. The comparisons convinced him that the item stocked by Cory’s Auto Supply was identical to the one found at the scene of the car fire. It produced that familiar little surge of satisfaction he felt whenever a pair of puzzle pieces snapped together.

But it didn’t last. The satisfaction was replaced by bafflement. Why would Lenny Lerman, on the verge of attempting to extort a small fortune from Ziko Slade, bring a container of gasoline with him? Had he intended to kill Slade and torch the lodge, once he’d gotten the money? And, then, when the plan went awry, was the gasoline conveniently used by Lenny’s killer to destroy the Corolla? That scenario was conceivable, but it seemed unlikely. Nothing Gurney had learned about Lenny supported the idea that his naive blackmail scheme would include premeditated murder and arson. Greedy and foolish he might well have been, but icy and ruthless didn’t seem to fit.

As the interior of his car began to warm up, Gurney unzipped his jacket, leaned back, and pondered what to do next. He considered driving on to the lodge—it was only a mile or so away. If Ian Valdez was there, he could have another talk with him. After giving it more thought, however, he opted to wait until he was better prepared for the interview. In the event that Ian’s role in what happened was deeper than it first appeared, gathering more information about the man was essential.

With a darkening sky promising snow, and nothing else to accomplish in the Adirondacks, he decided to head back to Walnut Crossing. He tossed the gas container into the back seat, put the car in drive, and his phone rang again. His first guess was Cam Stryker, and he was right. The fact that it was the day after Thanksgiving, when most elected officials would be enjoying the long weekend, would mean nothing to an obsessed workaholic like Stryker.

“David, where are you?”

Something in her tone told him that she knew he wasn’t at home. Might she have sent a trooper or one of her own investigators to follow him? The truth seemed the wisest response.

“At the quarry where Lerman’s car was burned.”

“You’re where?”

“It appears that Lerman himself bought the gas that was used in the fire—which Rexton PD could have discovered if they’d paid attention to his GPS route readout and Visa bills.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about an extremely complicated crime that was addressed by a half-assed investigation and cherry-picked evidence in pursuit of an easy conviction!”

The tone of Stryker’s response was artificially calm. It reminded Gurney of the way someone might speak while defusing a bomb. “It sounds like you may have made some substantive discoveries. We need to talk about them—in person. Based on your current location, you should be able to get to my office by two this afternoon. Can I depend on your being here by two o’clock?”

“Definitely,” he said with what he hoped sounded like determination.

He didn’t trust Stryker’s sudden pose of open-mindedness. He suspected that the proposed meeting might be a convenient way for her to take him into custody after discovering exactly how much he’d found out and how damaging it might be to her.

Ever since the Blackmore shooting, she’d made it clear that detaining him was an option. His fingerprints on the gun and the powder residue on his hands would give her enough probable cause, as well as a shield against a civil case for false arrest. He figured that her calculus was based on a simple risk analysis. As soon as his investigation posed a greater risk than arresting him, she’d have him arrested and later absorb whatever embarrassment might result from having to release him.

He suspected that his own comments moments earlier might have pushed her to that point. If so, he had no regrets. Their colliding objectives made it inevitable. Only the timing had been undecided.

If she was already seeking a warrant for his arrest, it would be prudent to take certain precautions immediately. He had no intention of being taken into custody, but leaving the upstate area wasn’t an option either. He had to be present to pursue his investigation—present, but not findable.

Stryker might be arranging for real-time surveillance of his position via the GPS locator on his phone. That function was easy enough to disable in the phone’s location settings, so he did so. It was also possible, if she suspected that he might skip the meeting and go straight home from the Adirondacks, that she’d have the approach road to his house watched. He brought up an area map on his phone screen and chose a route into Walnut Crossing that would bring him to an old farm lane a mile or so from the back end of his property, with only a forested stretch of state land intervening. He’d find an inconspicuous place to park and make his way to his home on foot. He entered the new route in the car’s GPS and set out with a reasonable sense of security.

About an hour into the trip, he passed an outdoor mall. A logo on the front of one of the stores caught his eye. The store’s name, Camper’s Paradise, set off a train of thought that prompted him, a few miles down the road, to turn around and go back.

He emerged from the store half an hour later—carrying a small tent, a propane tent heater, and a sleeping bag—and continued on his journey to Walnut Crossing.

THE BACK ROAD bordering the forest behind Gurney’s property provided access to several old logging trails. He chose the least overgrown one and drove in far enough that the car would no longer be visible from the road.

From there, he followed the trail on foot up a steep rise, lugging his purchases. Fallen trees repeatedly obstructed the way, forcing him to make detours over moss-covered rocks, slippery as if they’d been greased. It occurred to him that if Madeleine were with him, she’d be enthusing over the variety of the mosses and their palette of greens. His focus was on not getting another concussion.

Long after the trail had petered out, he reached the summit of a broad ridge-like hill. Through openings in the drooping branches of the hemlocks, he could see his house, most of the low pasture, and part of the barn. He checked his phone for the time. It was exactly 2:00 p.m. As he searched for a flat spot to erect his tent, he wondered how much longer Stryker would wait before calling him again.

The answer turned out to be nine minutes. He let her call go to voicemail.

“David, I need to speak to you. Urgently. You agreed to be in my office by two o’clock. Please call me the moment you get this message.”

He was in no rush to talk to her. He wanted to give his new status as someone outside the law, in spirit if not technically, some more thought.

He soon located a relatively level patch of ground, sheltered by dense evergreens on all sides, to set up his secret campsite. He didn’t know if he’d actually be spending time here, but given the volatility of the situation, having an emergency retreat seemed wise.

As he finished pitching the tent, he heard a vehicle approach from the direction of the town road. He moved to a spot that provided a better view. Soon a dark sedan appeared, driving quickly past the barn. Simultaneously, his phone produced its distinctive beeping notification that the security camera on the front of the barn had been activated.

The sedan continued up the pasture lane and came to a stop a short distance from the house. A murky midnight blue, it had the nondescript appearance of an unmarked police vehicle. Two occupants emerged—crew-cut men in dark windbreakers and dark pants. One remained by the car, phone to his ear, while the other approached the house. Because of Gurney’s angle of vision, he almost immediately lost sight of the man. A moment later, he heard loud knocking at the side door. Then silence. Then more knocking, accompanied by a raised voice, but he couldn’t make out the words.

After a quiet couple of minutes, during which Gurney pictured the man making his way around the house, he came back into sight, walked over to the car, and engaged in a short conversation with the phone holder—whose attention then returned to his phone, most likely to receive further instructions.

After the phone call ended, the pair got back in the car. They turned around and headed down through the pasture, but instead of continuing out onto the town road, they stopped at the side of the barn. Gurney noted the quick little taillight flash that occurs when a transmission passes through Reverse into Park—a sign they might be settling in for a while.

Since they appeared to be focused on his potential arrival by way of the road, he figured it would now be safe for him to return to the house via the back field and one of the bedroom windows. He put the propane heater and the sleeping bag inside the tent, zipped up the entry flap, and made his way down the hill.

52

STANDING AT THE SINK ISLAND, DEFROSTING HIS ACHING hands under a stream of lukewarm water, Gurney glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was just a few minutes past three, although the wintry gray light at the windows made it feel later. Snowflakes drifted down through still, cold air. An afternoon like this cried out for a fire, but the chance that the watchers by the barn might notice smoke coming from the chimney made that unwise. A similar concern stood in the way of turning on any lights. The big room was so depressingly dim he’d almost missed the terse note from Madeleine on the refrigerator door, reminding him that she was sharing a shift with Gerry at the Crisis Center.

As his hands began to feel normal, he became more aware of the dull headache that never completely disappeared. He dried his hands and turned his attention to preparing for his next encounter with Cam Stryker. His best defense, his only defense, depended on solid information. Maybe Hardwick had discovered something new since their last conversation. He took his phone into the den and made the call.

It was answered by Esti Moreno, her light Puerto Rican accent sounding less charming than usual. “Jack is busy. He’ll call you back, okay?”

“I won’t take much of his time, just a couple of quick—”

“He’s in the middle of weatherstripping.”

“Sorry?”

“On a day like this, we get a cold wind through the house. I’m telling him again and again, the bedroom is not a refrigerator. In the bed I should not be freezing my butt off. Old houses are terrible. Like being outside.”

“So, Jack is putting weatherstripping tape—”

“Everywhere. He has to insulate around the windows, the doors, everywhere. I don’t want to stop him. Not now.”

When Gurney was about to give up, he heard Hardwick’s voice in the background. It was followed by Esti’s, sounding as though she were muffling the phone. “It’s Gurney. You can finish what you’re doing and call him back later.”

Hardwick’s voice, coming closer: “I’ll talk to him now.”

Gurney heard the phone being laid down, none too gently, then Esti’s voice, petulant, receding into the distance. “Whatever I want, something you want comes first.”

Then Hardwick’s rough voice. “Yeah?”

“Bad time, Jack?”

“What do you want?”

“Were you able to get answers to my last batch of questions?”

“You still riding that horse?”

“No way to get off. Not with what happened yesterday.” Gurney went on to relate the snake episode, adding, “This is not something I can walk away from.”

“You’re hoping it’ll make Stryker think twice about Slade?”

“It ought to. Stands to reason he didn’t send me that thing from Attica.”

That generated a guttural laugh. “Stands to reason is a nice concept, Davey-boy, but it won’t mean shit to Stryker.”

“Thanks for your optimism. Did your guy at BCI answer any of my questions?”

“Seems like my guy is no longer my guy. Got a message from him, telling me to fuck off. Won’t return my calls.”

“So, we’re at a dead end, information-wise?”

Hardwick sighed. “God knows why the fuck I bothered, but I called an old contact at DMV headquarters in Albany. I did her a favor back in the day, so she owed me one.”

“And?”

“First, she ran Bruno Lanka’s and Charlene Vesco’s names through the state DMV files to see if either of them owned a Ford 150 or a Moto Guzzi. Nothing. But she did find a Cadillac Escalade registered to Lanka, with the plate number you took down in Garville.”

“Hardly a surprise.”

“She also ran a vehicle search for all Ford 150s and Moto Guzzis registered in Albany County. Shitload of 150s. Only a handful of Guzzis—but the name of one of the Guzzi owners caught her eye. Vesco. Dominick Vesco. It didn’t show up on her first search, because that was for vehicles owned by Charlene Vesco. So then she ran a targeted search on Dominick and discovered that he also owns a Ford 150.”

“Did you get his address? Or a scan of his driver’s license photo?”

“Yes to the address, no to the photo.” He spelled out the Garville address.

After making a note of it on the cover of one of the file folders on his desk, Gurney thanked him. “This is huge, Jack. The pieces are starting to connect.”

Hardwick made a sucking noise through his teeth that conveyed his normal skepticism and then some. “Huge? You mean, the fact that someone by the name of Vesco owns the tow truck and someone else by the name of Vesco owns a pickup and motorcycle like the ones that were on Blackmore Mountain that day?”

“That’s a pretty significant fact.”

“But what the hell does it mean? That the Vesco family had it in for Sonny Lerman? And they concocted a scheme to kill him and incriminate you? What the fuck for? And what’s it got to do with Bruno Lanka—who you keep saying is part of all this?”

“It’s an interesting coincidence that Lanka is a butcher, or used to be one, according to the photo over the meat counter in his store.”

“Coincidence? The fuck are you talking about?”

“Something in the medical examiner’s autopsy report. Describing Lenny Lerman’s decapitation, he said that it had been performed with great precision—by someone who knew what he was doing. I can think of two possibilities—a surgeon or a butcher.”

“Like if we find a guy with a nail through his head, a carpenter should be our prime suspect?”

The comment struck Gurney as a sign of Hardwick’s growing hostility toward the investigation. He wished him luck with his weatherstripping project and ended the call.

He sat for some time staring bleakly out the den window, slowly rotating his shoulders, trying to alleviate a pain that was spreading from the back of his head down his back. With his growing estrangement from local law enforcement, with Hardwick in retreat from the case, and with Madeleine pressuring him to drop it, he was feeling very much alone.

The snow was falling more heavily now from a low, slaty sky. The white expanse of the high pasture was broken only by the gray-brown stalks of dead goldenrod. It was then that he became aware of a small voice within him, faint but insistent.

Do something. Do anything. Do it now.

He picked up his phone and placed a call to Cam Stryker.

She answered immediately.

“David?”

“Yes.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m calling to give you some information.”

“We agreed to handle that face-to-face.”

“Just listen to what I have to say. It’s more important than—”

She cut him off. “This is not how this matter should be—”

Now he cut her off. “This is about Sonny Lerman’s murder. You need to hear it now. At our last meeting, I passed along Tess Larson’s account of the man who appeared at her campground the day of the shooting. I also gave you her sketches of him, his pickup truck, and his motorcycle, along with photos of both vehicles’ tire tread impressions. As I’m sure you’ve learned by now, those tread impressions and sketches ID the pickup as a Ford 150 and the off-road motorcycle as a Moto Guzzi.”

She remained silent, so he continued.

“What you may not have discovered yet is that there’s just one person in Albany County who owns both that model pickup and that model motorcycle. Dominick Vesco. Same last name as the woman who owns the tow truck that ran me off the road. Interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

Stryker again remained silent.

“I suggest that you get Vesco’s photo from the DMV and compare it to Tess Larson’s sketch of her campground visitor. You’ll see quite a resemblance. And a little further investigation on your part will reveal that Dominick Vesco is an employee of Bruno Lanka.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw a man in Lanka’s store who looked exactly like the sketch. And I saw him again driving Lanka’s Escalade.”

“I see. Once again, you’ve violated our agreement.”

He ignored the comment. “What really matters here is that the Vesco-Lanka connection ties the two Lerman murders together.”

“It doesn’t do any such thing. This supposed connection you’ve come up with is inferential, at best.”

“You think there’s no significance in the fact that a man who was present at Sonny Lerman’s murder happens to work for the man who discovered Lenny Lerman’s body?”

“What I think is that this father-and-son obsession of yours is pathological. And what I know for a fact is that your interference in the Blackmore investigation has reached the level of obstruction of justice.”

Although Stryker’s new legal charge was a big step down from road-rage homicide, it did nothing to allay Gurney’s concern. The fact that it was a less serious offense was offset by it being easier to prove. It was still a felony, and conviction could mean prison—not a healthy environment for a retired detective.

He decided to change direction. “I’d like to know what priority you’re giving to arresting and prosecuting the individual who sent that snake to my home.”

“I’d be happy to discuss that with you—in my office.”

53

FOR THE REMAINDER OF THEIR CONVERSATION, STRYKER single-mindedly hammered away at the possible legal consequence of Gurney’s interference in the Sonny Lerman case. After a few minutes of that, he ended the call.

In windless silence the snow continued to fall on the high pasture, as the afternoon’s gray light faded into a wintry dusk. As the den darkened, he was tempted to switch on his desk lamp. It seemed safe enough since the room’s windows were on the side of the house that faced away from the watchers in the car down by the barn, but caution prevailed.

The most obvious point of connection between the Lerman cases was the father-and-son relationship.

The next link was Bruno Lanka, who was both the finder of Lenny’s body and the employer of a man who, according to Tess’s sketch, was on Blackmore Mountain the day of Sonny’s murder.

There was also the phone call that set Gurney up for his encounter with the tow truck—a call that promised him the facts on Lenny’s murder and then resulted in Sonny’s.

And, of course, there was Adrienne Lerman, daughter of the first victim, sister of the second. She’d stated a willingness to find out as much as she could about her family’s vague connection with an underworld figure. It was time to check in with her.

She answered immediately, sounding weary and apologetic. “I’ve been meaning to call you, but I’ve had so much to deal with. They finally released Sonny’s body. I’ve been going around in circles with the arrangements. And one of my hospice patients just passed. But I’m glad you called. I spoke to some of my relatives, some I hadn’t spoken to for years. When I asked if they knew anything about a mobster at the edge of the family, most of them had no idea what I was talking about. I got the impression that a few knew something, but they said they didn’t. The only one who was willing to talk about it was my great-aunt Angelica, who’s ninety-one but sharp as a tack.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Crazy things. Crazy-scary. I’d rather not talk about this on the phone.”

“Would you like me to come to your apartment?”

“There’s a place I’d rather go. Do you know the Franciscan Sanctuary?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s a sanctuary for abandoned pets. Our dad used to take Sonny and me there when we were little. It’s just few miles north of my place here in Winston. I think that’s why I wanted to live here.”

A pet sanctuary struck Gurney as a peculiar place for their meeting, but given Adrienne’s emotional state, he didn’t object. “How soon can we do it?”

“Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning? I’m seeing one of my hospice patients at nine and helping another with her lunch at twelve thirty, but I’ll be free in between.”

“Eleven is fine.”

No sooner had he ended the call than his phone began emitting a series of beeps—signaling the activation of a security camera on the barn. He hurried from the den out to the kitchen window.

The high-beam headlights of the unmarked vehicle were illuminating a small yellow car which had come to a stop. He recognized Gerry Mirkle’s Volkswagen. As he watched, the plainclothes officers approached it. One went to the driver’s side window, while the other went to the passenger side. The one at the driver’s window appeared to go through the standard procedure of checking Gerry’s license and registration. He then went to the trunk, opened it, and looked inside. Meanwhile, the officer on the far side of the car appeared to be questioning the passenger, no doubt Madeleine. Eventually, both officers returned to their car, and the Volkswagen proceeded up through the snow-covered pasture to the house.

Realizing that Madeleine would start turning on the house lights as soon as she came in, he stepped back from the kitchen window. Once he heard the side door opening and closing, he called out gently to avoid startling her, “I’m in here, Maddie.”

She came into the kitchen and switched on the light over the sink island. She was frowning. “Those cops down by the barn are looking for you.”

“I know.”

“What’s going on?”

He explained how the Visa records of Lenny Lerman’s purchases led him to the conclusion that Lerman himself had bought the gas that was later used to incinerate his car. He also told her about his phone call with Stryker and his emergency campsite up in the woods.

Madeleine reacted with a deepening frown and an announcement that she intended to take a shower. As she was leaving the room, he asked her about the encounter by the barn.

She uttered an impatient sigh, as if to say that it was one more invasive disturbance caused by his refusal to drop the case. “They wanted to know where you were. One of them even checked Gerry’s trunk.”

As she turned again to leave, he asked, “Did they say anything else?”

“That you should get in touch with Stryker ASAP.”

“You weren’t going to mention that to me?”

Anger flared up in her eyes. “Are you claiming you didn’t already know that she wants to see you, to persuade you to drop this damn Lerman business?”

“I was just wondering why you didn’t tell me the one thing they asked you to tell me.”

“Because you already know it! For Christ sake, David, didn’t you just finish telling me how you came over the hill from the farm road and pitched a tent up in that freezing forest to avoid facing her? You know damn well she wants to talk to you! What planet are you living on? What planet do you think I’m living on?”

54

GURNEY AWOKE THE FOLLOWING DAY WITH A DULL HEADACHE. However, the sky was blue and the sun was sparkling on the ice-encased branches of the trees, so he didn’t feel as bad as he would have on a grayer morning. He was looking forward to his meeting with Adrienne.

The clock on his nightstand read 8:10 a.m. He needed to get moving if he was going to get to the Franciscan Sanctuary by eleven, considering that it might take him an extra half hour to scramble over that snow-covered hill to get to his car. He noted that the shotgun, which Madeleine had been keeping propped up each night by her side of the bed, was gone.

He showered, shaved, dressed, and strapped on his shoulder-holstered Glock. He found Madeleine at the breakfast table with a bowl of oatmeal and one of her books. She didn’t look up. The shotgun rested on a spare chair between her and the French doors. He went to the kitchen window to see if the unmarked car was still by the barn. It wasn’t, but that didn’t mean much. It might be on the other side of the barn or down on the town road. He made himself a cup of coffee, two fried eggs, and a slice of whole-wheat toast. When he brought these things to the table, Madeleine closed her book and carried her bowl to the sink island.

“I have a meeting this morning over near Winston,” he said. “I should be back in the early afternoon.”

Drying her hands on a dish towel, she responded only with a raised eyebrow.

“Are you working today?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“With Gerry?”

“Yes.”

“All day?”

“Yes.”

She folded the dish towel neatly and left the room.

GURNEY’S HIKE OVER the slippery hill to his car took all of the half hour he allotted. Along the way he checked on the condition of his tent. It was secure and weathertight. He hated the idea of being on the run, but maintaining his freedom was an absolute necessity.

He managed to back the car out of its hiding place with only a few traction-losing moments on the icy ground. The remainder of the trip was uneventful. Frequent checking of his rearview mirror didn’t reveal any followers.

When the car’s GPS made its “destination on right” announcement, he found himself next to an open gate in a fieldstone wall. A bronze plaque on the wall bore the words FRANCISCAN SANCTUARY. A sign beneath it said VISITORS WELCOME 6:00 A.M. TO 6:00 P.M. The gateway led to a driveway in far better condition than the rural road outside it.

He followed the driveway through a woodland of beeches that were still clinging to their autumn-gold leaves. The driveway brought him to a brick manor house in the middle of a parklike clearing, part of which was devoted to a modest parking lot. He spotted Adrienne standing next to an aging Subaru Forester. He pulled into a spot next to her.

She was wearing shapeless jeans, a down jacket, and a woolly stretch hat pulled down over her ears. There were splotches of red on her face and her ungloved hands.

“I apologize,” she said as he got out of his car, “I forgot how far this is from Walnut Crossing.”

“No problem, Adrienne.”

“You must be wondering why I chose this place.”

“You said you came here as a child.”

She nodded. “With my father and Sonny, when things were . . . less complicated. Do you mind walking while we talk?”

She led the way out of the parking area to one of several paths into the beech forest. The foliage above them was thin, and the path was bathed in late-morning sunlight.“We came here once a month. Lenny only had us the first Sunday of every month—that was the divorce arrangement. He brought us here to see the animals.”

“The animals?”

“Abandoned pets. That’s what this place is all about. A thousand acres with huge enclosures, not like a typical animal shelter with little cages. The big house by the parking lot—that’s where some of the dogs and cats live, the ones that don’t like being outside. And there are lots of volunteers to take care of them—feed them, walk them, talk to them.”

Her voice was wistful. “When we came here, it was like we were a happy family.”

“You lived the rest of the time with your mother?”

“And her endless series of abusive boyfriends. I hated them all.”

She fell silent, lost in the past.

“What was Lenny like back then?” asked Gurney.

“As I think about it now, just a younger version of what he turned out to be in later years. There was always a gap, an emotional separation, between him and Sonny. Dad was always trying to impress Sonny. A grown man, trying to get the approval of an eight-year-old. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

It was a statement, not a question. Gurney waited for her to go on.

“But Dad was always just a kid himself, an insecure kid trying to be accepted, trying to find a place in the world. Or maybe not so much a place in the world as a place in other people’s hearts.” She sighed. “He just never figured out how to make it happen.”

“You think the blackmail money he hoped to end up with was part of that?”

“It’s the only way it makes sense. And I’m pretty sure that’s what all his gangster talk was all about. Lenny confused impressing people with making them like him. He had it in his head that if he sounded important, if he had the cars, the money . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Are you suggesting he made up that talk about having a mob connection?”

“Apparently that was true enough, according to Great-Aunt Angelica. She was close to Lenny’s father, my grandfather. One night after he drank too much he told her about a distant cousin of theirs, someone she’d never heard of before, who killed people for money. Money he then ‘invested’ in high-ranking cops and politicians, so he was never arrested for anything, or even investigated.”

“Did your grandfather tell your great-aunt his name?”

“Only that he used so many false names, no one knew the real one. My grandfather called him the Viper.”

“Can you get in touch with your grandfather?”

She shook her head. “He passed away years ago.”

“And you never heard Lenny or Sonny refer to him by any actual name?”

“No.”

“So,” said Gurney, summing up the situation. “An anonymous professional killer with corrupt enablers in high places. Known as the Viper.”

Adrienne nodded nervously. “That’s the part that gives me gooseflesh.”

“That nickname?”

“The reason for it. It’s the creepiest thing Great-Aunt Angelica remembers my grandfather telling her. The man collected dangerous snakes. And used them to kill people.”

55

AFTER ADRIENNE DEPARTED IN HER FORESTER, GURNEY settled down on a bench on the sunny side of the big house to review what she’d told him.

Great-Aunt Angelica’s report of a Lerman connection to a hit man with a snake fetish felt substantive. It struck Gurney as far more than a coincidence that he’d received two warnings involving snakes—the decapitated rabbit on which Barstow found snake DNA and the fanged surprise in the jam basket. If Angelica’s story was to be believed, the individual who was trying to stop the reexamination of Lenny Lerman’s murder was a professional killer with a blood link to the victim.

What still remained in darkness was what actually happened at Slade’s lodge—specifically, who killed Lenny and what it had to do with Ziko Slade. Was it possible that the shadowy Lerman relative had enlisted Lenny as a cat’s-paw in a blackmail scheme that went off the tracks?

The only thing Gurney knew for sure was that he needed to know more. More about Lenny, more about the hit man with the snake fetish, more about Ziko Slade, and more about what connected them all—and whether that connection led to the shooting death of Lenny’s son on Blackmore Mountain.

He relaxed as best he could on the hard bench, closing his eyes and raising his face to the sun, on the off chance that emptying his mind would make room for a touch of inspiration.

“Nice spot, isn’t it?”

Gurney opened his eyes and saw a tall, colorfully dressed woman standing on the lawn in front of the bench. She was holding a leash in each hand with a tall, shaggy dog at the end of each one, their curious eyes fixed on him.

“Very nice,” he answered.

“First time? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Yes. First time.”

She gave him an appraising look. “Are you a dog person or a cat person?”

“I’m not sure I’m either.” Then he added, he wasn’t sure why, “My wife has an interest in alpacas.”

“But you don’t?”

“I’m usually too busy to take care of animals, or even think about them.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“It was a convenient place to meet someone,” he said, not entirely honestly, and changed the subject. “The big house here, with all the surrounding property—how did it come to be an animal shelter?”

“Sanctuary,” she said pointedly. “Shelters are prisons. This place is about freedom. A miracle, really.”

“Oh?”

“A deathbed conversion. Well, close to that. Do you know about Halliman Brook?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“He was a horrible lumber baron. Responsible for deforestation, erosion, pollution. Treated his workers like dirt. Paid them starvation wages and fired them the minute they got injured. His personal life was just as ugly. He nearly beat his first wife to death.”

“This is the man who had the conversion?”

“At the end of his life. He knew he was dying. He suddenly saw that he had to get rid of everything he’d accumulated in his mean, ruthless life. He was afraid that the weight of it would drag him down into hell. So he gave it all away, including this estate and a huge endowment to transform it into a sanctuary for homeless animals.”

The story reminded Gurney of Ziko Slade—how seeing death could change one’s life.

“We’re looking for dog walkers,” she said, suddenly cheerful. “And the paths are lovely. You should consider volunteering.”

GURNEY STOPPED AT Leapin’ Lizards Latte Lounge in Winston for a much-needed coffee. The shop embraced the local style of mercantile cuteness. He ordered a large coffee and a toasted bagel with cream cheese.

Back in the car, he took out his phone and entered “The Viper” as a search term. He found hundreds of entries but nothing that led in a promising direction. Despite the vividness of that underworld moniker, the man seemed to be as elusive as Great-Aunt Angelica’s report suggested.

Finding out more about Lenny Lerman, however, might not be so difficult. His GPS location data and Visa records had provided interesting facts that Stryker had overlooked or chosen to ignore. Perhaps there was more information to be mined from those sources. Kyra Barstow was still, as far as he knew, a reliable ally. He called her number and left a message.

“Kyra, it’s Dave, with yet another request. The Lerman data you sent me led to some weird discoveries, and I’d like to take another look at that resource—especially any GPS data you might have for the two or three months prior to Lerman’s murder.” He paused before adding, “FYI, my situation with Stryker has deteriorated, and she’s more eager than ever to stop my inquiries. For your own protection, discretion is important.”

As he was ending the call, another was coming in—from Adrienne Lerman.

“David here.”

She spoke rapidly, her voice high with anxiety. “I just got a call from some woman—I think it was a woman—named Sam Smollett, a producer at RAM News. She said there’s been a frightening new development in my father’s murder case, and they want to do a remote interview with me tonight on that Controversial Perspectives show.”

The frightening development, thought Gurney, would probably be the Thanksgiving delivery of the snake. “What did you tell her?”

“About the interview? That I didn’t want to do it. When I asked her what development she was talking about, she just kept using the word ‘frightening.’ What on earth was she talking about?”

He knew he had to tread carefully to find a path that involved neither a flat-out lie nor the appalling truth. He chose deflection rather than deception.

“I haven’t heard anything from her. In fact, I’m not in touch with anyone at RAM, and I hope it stays that way. I have no trust in anything they do or say. As for there being new developments in your father’s case, anything significant would be under the control of the Rexton Police Department or the District Attorney. They’re the ones who get to decide how much to reveal.”

“Well, according to this Smollett woman, RAM will be revealing everything they know tonight on that awful program.”

“More likely, they’ll be revealing whatever they believe will boost their ratings, regardless of its accuracy.”

Adrienne let out a shaky sigh. “This is so awful.”

“I agree.”

To Gurney’s relief, the call ended without his having to directly deny any knowledge of what Smollett might be referring to. He wanted to maintain Adrienne’s trust as long as possible, and a direct lie could destroy that trust.

What interested him now was how much the slimy “journalists” at RAM actually knew, how they came to know it, and what slant they planned to put on it. At RAM there was always a slant.

Knowing the RAM penchant for promotion, he figured this instance would be no exception. He used his phone to go to their website. And there it was, in pulsating red letters:

After wasting the next couple of minutes speculating on how Tarla Hackett and Jordan Lake would handle the snake event—and from whom they’d gotten their information—his phone rang. It was Sam Smollett.

His first instinct was to let it go to voicemail, especially after what he’d just told Adrienne about his unwillingness to engage with RAM. But the temptation to make his position perfectly clear was too strong to resist.

“Dave Gurney here.”

“This is Sam Smollett, executive producer of Controversial Perspectives.”

“Yes?”

“As you may know, our program recently devoted a special segment to the Blackmore Mountain murder. We’ll be revisiting that tonight from the perspective of the original Lerman murder, because there’s no doubt now that the two are connected—and you’re part of the connection.”

“Is that so?”

“Considering the delivery you received on Thanksgiving Day, I’d say it’s absolutely so.”

Gurney said nothing. Smollett went on, a chilly smile in her voice.

“Because of your unique perspective, we’d like you to be part of tonight’s discussion. You can do it from wherever you are—totally convenient. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to say to our audience.”

“What questions would I be asked?”

“That would be up to Tarla and Jordan. But I’m sure they’ll want your reaction to the item that was delivered to your home. It was clearly a warning to stop stirring up doubts about Ziko Slade’s conviction. So, an obvious question is, are you going to drop your investigation?”

Gurney paused. Sure that Smollett was recording the call with an eye to airing it, he carefully considered his response.

“Everything I’ve learned about Lenny Lerman’s death points to the innocence of Ziko Slade. And everything that’s been done to discourage my investigation has strengthened my resolve to see Slade exonerated, and the actual murderer exposed.”

“Wow! Okay! Now, to prepare for your participation in our program this evening—”

Gurney cut her off. “There’ll be no participation. I’ve stated my position. I have nothing further to say.”

He ended the call and went to get a second coffee for the drive home.

56

THE CLOSER HE GOT TO WALNUT CROSSING, THE WHITER were the hills and the grayer the sky. It felt like he was passing from autumn into winter—an impression underscored by the icy approach to the hill behind his property.

After parking the car out of sight, he made his way up the slippery incline to his campsite. He gave the tent a once-over, then went to the spot where an opening in the hemlock branches provided a view of his house, the low pasture, and the barn.

The area had a cold, forlorn, forbidding look about it. He saw no intruders, official or otherwise, but that was no guarantee of safety. Shivering, he began his descent toward the rear of the house under cover of the hillside evergreens. When he reached the base of the slope, he broke into a run across the exposed field and climbed through the unlocked bedroom window.

Once the stress of making it to the house without incident passed, he became aware of a cold-induced ache in his gloveless hands and a throbbing in his head from the sprint across the field. He swallowed a couple of acetaminophens and held his hands over a burner on the stove until his fingers tingled with renewed circulation.

He turned off the gas and peered cautiously out each kitchen window, then went to the den and looked out those windows as well. The only sign of life was a doe making her way along the edge of the clearing. He settled down at his desk, rubbed the last bit of stiffness out of his fingers, and opened his laptop.

There was a new email from Kyra Barstow—with no introductory note, just a long row of attached documents. He counted thirteen, covering the thirteen weeks leading up to the day of Lenny Lerman’s murder. He opened one at random and saw that it contained a phone-location record of Lerman’s movements during that particular week.

Although the original warrant seeking Lerman’s location records had evidently covered those thirteen weeks, Stryker had chosen to focus the jury’s attention solely on the day of Lerman’s fatal trip to Slade’s lodge. Gurney hoped that the data for the preceding weeks might offer a clue to what happened on that final day.

He put the documents in chronological order and conducted an initial review to get an overall sense of Lerman’s movements—the basic geography of his life. The impression this yielded was of a man who led a limited and repetitive existence. Hardly ever in that quarter of a year had he ventured more than a few miles from his apartment. He was at home or at the Beer Monster, with occasional trips to a gas station and a supermarket.

A close examination of the mapped data revealed only a few departures from this pattern. The last and longest was the trip to the lodge, with its peculiar stop for a gas can and the gas to fill it. Prior to that, there was a trip to and from a location in Gorse, a village adjacent to Calliope Springs; a series of three trips to and from a location in Ploverton, a suburb of Albany; and a trip to the Franciscan Sanctuary.

There was one anomaly. Three days after Lerman’s visit to the sanctuary, there was a four-hour period during which the location-tracking function of his phone had been turned off. Anomalies sometimes provided clues, but this one only raised questions. Where did he go that day? And why did he want there to be no record of it?

Lerman’s trips to Gorse and Ploverton could be further explored, however. Gurney began with the forty-eight-minute stop in Gorse. He took its coordinates from the document and entered them into Google Street View on his laptop. He saw a single-story brick building on a tree-lined street. A sign on the lawn identified the building as Clearview Office Suites and listed its tenants: two dental offices, an urgent care facility, a financial adviser, a land surveyor, and a law firm.

Next, he entered the coordinates for the location in Ploverton. A street-side sign identified the place as Capital District Office Park, a label that seemed extravagant for a pair of modest two-story buildings, separated by a parking area. The list of tenants included a criminal defense attorney, a radiological imaging center, a hematology-oncology practice, a sleep-disorder clinic, an architect, an engineering firm, a real estate management outfit, a corporate security company, and a stock broker.

Gurney spent the next two hours going back over the entire thirteen-week GPS record Barstow had provided. When he came to the end of the final week, it was dark outside and the only light in the den was emanating from his computer. His eyes burned from staring too long at the screen, but he was too keyed up to rest.

Wondering what to do next, two things occurred to him—to see if there was any relationship between the dates of Lerman’s trips and his reported mood changes, and to make whatever preparations might be required for an emergency retreat to his campsite.

He decided to deal with the second task first because it was mainly physical, and mentally he was nearing exhaustion. He needed to focus on some simple activity, such as detaching the propane tank from the outdoor grill and bringing it up to the campsite for the tent heater. And it would also make sense to bring up an extra jacket, gloves, boots, and a woolen hat, in case he had to leave the house in only the clothes he was wearing. He looked out the den window and concluded that the moonlight would provide enough visibility for the job.

As it turned out, he was right about the visibility, but he’d underestimated the weight of the full propane tank and the awkwardness of trying to carry everything at once. In the end, the project took two trips and produced a shooting pain in the arm that lugged the propane.

He was making his way across the field to the house at the end of the second trip, when a security alert sounded on his phone. Rather than reversing course and heading for cover, he proceeded to the corner of the house, peered around it, and was relieved to see Gerry Mirkle’s Volkswagen proceeding up the pasture lane.

57

MADELEINE SHOWED LITTLE INTEREST IN DISCUSSING her day or her dinner with Gerry Mirkle, and even less interest in Gurney’s activities.

While he consumed a dinner hastily concocted from leftovers, she sat silently by the fireplace at the opposite end of the room, a book in her lap, her gaze fixed on the ashes in the firebox, her shotgun leaning against the fieldstone facing. When he finished eating, he asked if she’d like him to clean out the ashes and build a new fire. She shook her head. He went over to the wall by the French doors and switched on the outside lights. It was snowing again, lightly but steadily.

As he was watching the flakes drift down over the floodlit patio, a sharp little “click” attracted his attention to the Regulator clock over the sideboard—a sound it made on the hour. It was 8:00 p.m., time for Controversial Perspectives. He considered telling Madeleine about the call from Sam Smollett, then thought better of it and went into the den alone.

By the time he got connected to the livestream, Tarla Hackett and Jordan Lake were sitting at their desks, expressions charged with grim excitement.

Hackett was speaking. “Just when we were thinking the Lerman murder cases couldn’t get any wilder, guess what? That wildness just went into overdrive! Forgive my blunt language, Jordan, but I’ve got to ask the obvious question: What the hell is going on?!”

“That’s what we’re all wondering, Tarla.” Lake turned to the camera, adding a note of confidentiality to his grim tone. “Folks, we’re in a tough spot here in the RAM News organization. Here’s the situation. There’s been a monstrous attack on the man in the middle of the two Lerman murders—the man who’s been investigating the first and may be implicated in the second—retired NYPD detective David Gurney. According to our inside information, a package was delivered to his home on Thanksgiving Day—a package containing something so hair-raising, so terrifying, we can only conclude that it was meant to stop him in his tracks.”

Hackett nodded her agreement. “You said a moment ago that this story put us in a tough spot, Jordan. Maybe you could explain that.”

“Absolutely! As I just suggested, the dreadful object delivered to Gurney’s home was obviously a life-threatening warning. That’s a serious crime, and the DA has asked that we delay disclosure of the details while her investigation is ongoing. We’re cooperating with her request—although we do intend to give you, our viewers, the whole story as soon as possible.”

Hackett nodded solemnly. “Apart from the awful specifics of what was delivered to the Gurney home, I understand there’s plenty we can share with our audience right now.”

“Absolutely! The object delivered to the Gurney household was clearly intended as a huge stop sign in the path of his investigation. So, the question is, did it work? RAM’s own Sam Smollett put that question to Dave Gurney this afternoon.” Hackett pointed to someone off-camera. “Run the audio!”

Smollett’s recorded voice came through loud and clear.

“The package you received was surely a warning to stop stirring up doubts about Ziko Slade’s conviction. Do you plan to drop your investigation?”

“Everything I’ve learned so far about Lenny Lerman’s death points to the innocence of Ziko Slade. And everything that’s been done to discourage my investigation has strengthened my resolve to see Ziko Slade exonerated, and the actual murderer exposed.”

“So there you have it, folks!” said Lake. “Despite being warned off, Dave Gurney is determined as ever to turn Slade’s conviction upside down.”

Hackett narrowed her already small eyes. “I wonder, am I hearing the voice of determination or the voice of obsession?”

Lake pursed his lips. “Or worse—is it the voice of a man in a compromised position trying to sound like a hero?”

“Great question, Jordan. In my own effort to get to the truth of who Dave Gurney really is, this afternoon I interviewed an individual who knows him personally. In order to protect that person’s identity, we’ve electronically altered their voice.”

Hackett pointed to someone off-screen. “Run the audio.”

The first voice on the recording was Hackett’s. “These days a lot of people are wondering, who is the real Dave Gurney? I asked someone who’s known him for several years to share their insights with us. So, let’s get right to it. When I say ‘Dave Gurney,’ what’s the first characteristic that comes to mind?”

“Icy calmness.” The altered voice sounded vaguely female. “You never know what’s really going on inside him.”

“You’re saying the man is a bit of a mystery?”

“Exactly. You always have the sense that whatever he knows, he’s probably keeping most of it to himself.”

“You mean his own feelings? His own past actions?”

“Especially those things. He can sound like he’s speaking with real conviction, but you get the impression he’s never really telling the whole truth.”

“Very interesting,” said Hackett. “Especially in relation to the big issue in the news at the moment—his alleged involvement in the Blackmore Mountain shooting of Sonny Lerman. Does he have anything to say about that?”

“Absolutely! He claims that Sonny Lerman’s and Lenny Lerman’s murders are connected—that it was a toxic element in their relationship that led to both of them being killed.”

Gurney’s jaw tightened at the realization that those were almost the exact words he’d used in response to one of Kim Corazon’s questions on Thanksgiving—making her identity as RAM’s informant painfully clear.

The altered voice continued. “Dave Gurney insists that the district attorney’s misunderstanding of Lenny’s murder has made it impossible for her to understand Sonny’s.”

“Fascinating! One final question. And this is the big one. Would you say that Dave Gurney is capable of murder?”

“I can’t say that he’s not.”

The recording ended and Hackett turned to Jordan Lake. “I have to admit, that last answer gave me a chill.”

Lake nodded his head in an approximation of troubled thoughtfulness. “Coming from someone who knows him personally, it’s pretty damning—and the perfect way to conclude tonight’s coverage of the Gurney mystery.” Lake turned to the camera. “More shocking news coming up, folks. After these important announcements, we’ll take a hard look at some of the craziest ideas educators are forcing on America’s kids. Stay with us!”

“Bitch!”

Gurney was startled by the closeness and intensity of Madeleine’s voice. He turned in his chair and saw her standing a few feet away, her face tight with anger. She’d obviously come to the same conclusion he had about the owner of the altered voice.

She went on. “That young woman is laser-focused on herself and her career, period. That’s where she begins and ends. She’s just a nasty little appendage of the nasty media. When she was here, all she wanted was information. Information she could turn around and sell to her friends at RAM. What a rotten little manipulator!”

The palpable fury of Madeleine’s attack left him momentarily speechless.

She added, “I can’t imagine why your son is involved with her.”

There was a brief silence, broken by Gurney. “Actually, he was pretty open about that when we spoke on the phone.”

“Oh?”

“He’s infatuated with her energy, ambition, drive.”

“And blind to her selfishness?”

“Not entirely. But in his mind the energy part outweighs everything else.”

“He’s got a lot to learn.”

“I know. I certainly did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When he was telling me what he found attractive about her, I realized it was the same thing that had attracted me to his mother when I was twenty-one.”

“Did you describe to him how badly that ended?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t figure out how to bring that up without it sounding like a direct criticism of his mother, which would create an emotional distraction. Besides, you can’t argue someone out of a romantic attachment. He’ll have to find out for himself. But it’s painful to see him repeating my mistake.”

“Maybe he’ll wake up before the mistake turns into a marriage. I hope so. He’s a nice young man.” She paused, her voice hardening. “But that woman is never to set foot in this house again. Never.”

58

AFTER A RESTLESS, INCREASINGLY PAINFUL NIGHT IN BED, Gurney struggled in the morning to get to his feet and maintain his balance. He felt as though all the emotional impacts of recent days had joined forces with the after-effects of his concussion to batter him into submission.

What he found most unnerving was the disjointed swirling of his thoughts—the hideous green snake rising out of the carton; Madeleine reeling back against the wall; Kim’s weirdly altered voice on RAM, suggesting to millions of listeners that he was capable of murder; Stryker’s threats; Lenny’s gas can in the quarry. All in a jumble. He headed for the shower, eager for the mental and physical balm it often provided.

Standing for ten minutes in the warm spray did take the sharp edge off the shooting pains that ran from his left temple down into his shoulder, but it did little to calm his racing mind.

Later that morning, as he was sitting at the breakfast table, gazing cautiously down toward the watchers’ car by the barn, Madeleine announced that she and Gerry would be joining the string group in the afternoon for a concert at the Oneonta nursing home.

“I thought you only did concerts there on Sundays,” he said, as though he found her departure from custom problematical.

She raised an eyebrow. “Today is Sunday.”

He responded only with a blink and a small grunt of recognition, but he was bothered by this evidence of his scattered state of mind more than he was willing to admit. Mental acuity, after all, wasn’t just his claim to fame, it was his identity.

Hours later, after Madeleine left for the concert, Gurney felt his anxious exhaustion finally morphing into a gentle doziness. He was wary, however, of falling into a deep sleep alone in the house, lest the security system alert on his phone fail to wake him in the face of an approaching police raid. After weighing the options, he strapped on his Glock, slipped into his jacket, and headed for his campsite.

HE AWOKE IN the cold darkness of his tent to the yipping of coyotes. His phone told him it was 9:35 p.m. The pain in his head and shoulder came back to life as he crawled out of his sleeping bag and got to his feet. The pain faded to a dull aching as he made his way by moonlight down the hill and across the back field to the house.

All the lights were out, which told him that Madeleine was either in bed or hadn’t come home yet. He knocked softly on the bedroom window, waited, and tried again. He heard movement inside. A flashlight was switched on. Coming closer, the beam was directed out at him, briefly blinding him. Then the flashlight was extinguished, the window sash was raised, and he climbed through the opening. By the time he was standing inside and had closed the window behind him, Madeleine was already back in bed.

She said nothing.

Neither did he.

He felt a new wave of exhaustion overtaking him. He removed his clothes, put his Glock and phone on the nightstand, got into bed, and fell immediately into a deep, restorative sleep.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Gurney awoke feeling a lot more like his normal self. Part of that normality was the presence of a plan.

The plan was to compare the dates of Lerman’s non-routine trips not only to the dates of his mood changes, but to the dates of the events in his diary and the dates of the calls from the anonymous phone.

As soon as he got dressed, he went straight to his desk in the den. He recalled that Thomas Cazo claimed Lerman appeared depressed for a period of about a month, then regained his bragging personality a week or so before quitting his job. That time frame corresponded with Adrienne’s recollection of the same period. Apparently Lerman descended into his bleak mood toward the end of September but was reenergized at the end of October.

Gurney created a list of the trips Lerman had made to places other than his habitual destinations. He also included on the list the four-hour blackout of Lerman’s GPS locator, the calls Lerman received from the anonymous phone, and his diary entries.

As he was arranging everything in chronological order, he thought of an additional date that might be meaningful. He took out his phone and called Howard Manx of NorthGuard Insurance.

The man answered immediately and brusquely. “Manx.”

“This is Dave Gurney, still working on the Lerman-Slade murder—”

Manx interrupted. “You found anything useful to me?”

“Nothing that you can use to claw back the insurance payout, if that’s what you mean. But I’m convinced that the official version is wrong.”

“Good. What do you want?”

“I’m trying to put some key events in order. Can you give me the date Lenny Lerman applied for his million-dollar policy?”

“Hold on.”

Sound of keys tapping. Manx sniffling, coughing, clearing his throat. More keys tapping.

“October 20 application date. Effective date October 30. That tell you anything?”

“If it turns out to be significant, you’ll be the first to know.”

Gurney added the two dates to his list and printed out a hard copy.

Gurney made his way slowly through the list, weighing the possible meanings of the time relationships. He was well aware of the mind’s tendency to leap from temporal association to causality in order to create coherence. It would be easy to assume that Lerman’s visits to the Capital District Office Park had caused his depression, and that his plan to blackmail Slade had ended it. That might be true, but the devil was in the details, and the details were unknown.

Just as intriguing were those calls Lerman received from an anonymous phone and their proximity to certain events described in his diary. One explanation would be that Lerman was receiving instructions from a collaborator.

Perhaps the collaborator was the “Jingo” that Lerman named in his diary as the source of his information about Slade. But why was there no further mention of him? And why no mention at all of the anonymous phone calls?

Gurney wondered if Lerman’s failure to mention those calls was related to another omission—the four-hour disconnection of his phone’s GPS locator.

“Are you watching the time?”

Madeleine was standing in the den doorway, dressed for work, her voice more critical than curious.

“The time?”

“For your neurology appointment.”

LANSON-CLAVIN NEUROLOGY ASSOCIATES was on the top floor of a colorless four-story building in Albany. The mostly glass structure was set on pillars above a parking lot.

Dr. Lyn Clavin was a pale, thin-boned woman with straight brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. A white lab coat added to her chilly image. She walked into the small examining room with a blue file folder in her hand and, without acknowledging Gurney, sat at a small metal desk with her back to him, opened the folder, and began scanning through it.

Finally, she swiveled around and faced him, flashing a perfunctory smile that left so little trace he wondered if he’d imagined it. She looked down at the folder in her lap.

“David Gurney?”

“Yes.”

“Date of birth?”

He gave it to her, adopting her clipped tone.

“The purpose of your visit today?”

“A follow-up assessment related to a recent concussion. It was scheduled at the time of my discharge from Parker Hospital in Harbane.”

She took a black pen from the pocket of her white coat and held it poised over the top page in the folder. “I will ask a series of questions. You can answer yes, no, or sometimes. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Since the injury, do you have headaches?”

“Sometimes.”

“Their average intensity, on a scale of one to ten?”

“Six.”

“Dizziness?”

“If I stand up too quickly.”

“Ringing in your ears?”

“Yes, but at a volume low enough that I can generally ignore it.”

“Fatigue?”

“I feel tired more frequently than I used to. A minor inconvenience.”

“Double vision?”

“No.”

“Blurred vision?”

“No.”

“Depression?”

“No.”

“Anxiety?”

“No more than usual.”

She’d been making check marks on a sheet in her folder after his answers, but now she hesitated. “Anxiety is a frequent emotional state for you?”

“I’m in an anxiety-producing line of work.”

“Namely?”

“Criminal investigation.”

She frowned and made a short note on the sheet before going on.

“Any changes in your sense of taste or smell?’

“No.”

“Anger?”

“Sorry?”

“Have you found yourself becoming angry, impatient, irritated more frequently since your injury?”

That was the first question he had to think about.

“More frustration than usual, but with considerable justification.”

That seemed to produce a hint of amusement, or maybe it was just a tic at the corner of her mouth. She made another note on the sheet.

“Any increased sensitivity to light?”

“No.”

“Increased sensitivity to loud noises?”

“No.”

“Any injury-related pains, other than the headaches?”

“Yes, in my neck and upper back.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Between four and six.”

“Any change in your sense of balance?”

He hesitated. She looked up from the sheet, pen poised.

“It’s possible,” he said. “But very slight.”

She pursed her lips, conveying that a slight loss of balance might be serious. “Stand up.”

He got to his feet.

“Stand on one leg.”

He stood on his right leg.

“Now the left leg.”

He tried it, staggered a bit to the side, caught his balance, staggered a bit to the other side, caught his balance, tottered, then remained upright but unsteady.

“Sit down.”

He did. She made another note.

“Medications?”

“Acetaminophen, sometimes ibuprofen.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing else.”

She rose from her chair, laid the folder on the desk, stepped over in front of him, and held her pen up vertically. “Follow it with your eyes without moving your head.”

He did so, as she moved the pen slowly to the right and left, then up and down.

She laid the pen aside and held up two fingers off toward the edge of his peripheral vision. “Look straight ahead and tell me how many fingers you see.”

She did this several times, holding up one, two, or three fingers in various positions to his right, left, up, and down. He told her what he saw. She showed no reaction to his answers. She turned her back to him.

“Cat mat bat sat hat,” she said and asked him to repeat what he’d heard.

He did so.

She went to the desk, made a longish entry on one of the pages, and closed the folder with a note of finality.

“So,” he said with a polite smile, “what’s the verdict?”

She made a little sucking sound through her teeth. “You’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury. You have ongoing symptoms that indicate a need for rest and additional monitoring. I recommend an MRI in thirty days if the symptoms are not resolved, sooner if they become more pronounced. Any questions?”

“Is there anything you suggest I do or not do?”

“Rest. Avoid exertion. Avoid stressful situations.”

As if to punctuate the end of their meeting, she produced a split-second smile.

If he’d blinked, he would have missed it.

59

DOWN IN THE PARKING LOT, HE SAT FOR A WHILE IN THE car, feeling disoriented. He knew where he was, he just wasn’t sure who he was.

Seeing himself as a patient, limited by a condition that might not improve and for which the only palliative was to stop doing the things he needed to do—seeing himself as Dr. Lyn Clavin saw him—filled him with a jarring sense of vulnerability. The hardy detective had been transformed into the impaired middle-aged patient of a cold-eyed neurologist.

The ringing of his phone kept him from sinking any deeper into self-pity. The name on the screen was Emma Martin.

“Gurney here.”

“David, something has happened. I need to speak to you as soon as possible.”

“I’m listening.”

“Not on the phone. In person. Are you at home?”

“I’m in a parking lot in Albany. Where are you?”

“About fifty miles west of Albany. We could meet in Roseland, which is halfway between us. There’s a small Catholic church there that’s always open and empty. Saint Peter’s, on the edge of town. Would that be alright?”

“I can be there in half an hour.”

“Thank you.”

The half hour drive was uneventful but far from relaxed, as Gurney was continually checking his mirrors for any signs of followers. Dark, anonymous sedans drew his particular attention, but none stayed with him long enough to prompt evasive action.

ON A LIST of all the misnamed towns in the world, Roseland would surely be in the top ten. Its central feature was a huge stone quarrying operation, complete with the mammoth machines that grind boulders into gravel. The cliffs surrounding the excavation bore the vertical scars of holes drilled for the dynamite charges used to blow the mountainside apart. Machinery, dump trucks, prefabricated office structures, vehicles, everything in sight was covered with gray stone dust. The air seemed to vibrate with the grinding roar of the rock-crushers.

The town that radiated out from this hellhole grew quieter as the distance from the machinery increased. St. Peter’s was on one of the last residential streets before the modest homes gave way to farmland. The neighborhood was almost free of dust and almost quiet. The church was a white wooden structure with a modest bell tower. It had a lawn on one side, dominated by an ancient apple tree, and a parking area on the other side.

Gurney tried the front door of the church, found it unlocked, and went inside. The image of the quarry evaporated in an oasis of stillness and soft light. The sense of smell had an evocative power that he found nowhere more powerful than in a traditional Catholic church. The unique mixture of incense, flowers, burnt candle wax, leather-bound prayer books, and dry wood never failed to transport him to the church of his childhood.

He sat in the last pew and slipped into recollections of his altar-boy days—of lilies on a linen-draped altar, shining gold chalices, satin vestments, unsmiling priests, dark confessional booths full of whispered transgressions.

His reveries were interrupted by a movement at the edge of his vision. He looked up and saw Emma standing next to the pew. She was wearing the same loose, cape-like coat she’d worn the day she came to his house with the request that began his investigation. But now there was a deep sadness in her eyes.

“May I join you?”

He slid sideways in the pew to make room for her.

“This morning, Ziko was found dead in his cell.”

Gurney stared at her. “Dead? Jesus! How?”

“They’re calling it suicide. But I’m sure he was killed.”

“In his cell?”

She nodded. “With a hanging rope made of torn bedsheets. Or at least that was the way it was made to look.”

Gurney let out a despondent sigh. He was picturing the body of one of the incarcerated men whose bedsheet “suicides” he’d investigated over the years.

“You’re sure it wasn’t actually a suicide?”

Emma shook her head adamantly. “I spoke to him yesterday afternoon. The man I spoke to was not about to kill himself.”

Neither, thought Gurney, was the man I visited hardly more than a week ago. That man was as calm and positive as a man could be in a place like that. “Do you have any idea who might have been responsible?”

“I assume another prisoner or a guard—acting on the orders of the person who framed him to begin with.”

“I may be getting closer to discovering who that person is.”

Emma shook her head. “A dangerous pursuit. Not worth it.”

Gurney blinked in surprise. “Not worth it?”

“Not at this point.”

“You don’t think justice is worth pursuing? I thought you came to me because you wanted justice for Ziko.”

“I wanted the truth. Because it would lead to his release. That possibility no longer exists.”

“You’re saying his death has made justice irrelevant?” Gurney’s voice had risen noticeably in the silence of the little church.

“Justice for the dead is a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a pompous name for revenge. It’s an absurd goal to risk your life for.”

“So, principles like justice mean nothing?”

“Most ‘principles’ are shiny wrapping for selfish motives. Love is the only true guidepost, and love is always for the living.”

He made an effort to lower his voice. “You sound like you’ve joined the chorus telling me to walk away from the case.”

For a long while they sat in silence.

Then Gurney’s curiosity took over.

“Did Slade have a will?”

“Yes.”

“And a substantial estate?”

“Approximately eighteen to twenty million dollars, depending on the valuation of assets.”

“Do you know who the beneficiaries are?”

“Ian Valdez and my recovery center.”

“Half to each of you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve known about this for some time?”

“Ever since Ziko had an attorney draft the will. I am the executor. I also have power of attorney for Ziko’s affairs and have been named next of kin. When his body is released, I’ll arrange for its cremation in accordance with his wishes.” She related all this with no visible hesitations, her voice reflecting only the sadness in her eyes.

Gurney had more questions he wanted to ask, mainly about Valdez—who remained an enigma, now a very wealthy one—but something in Emma’s grief made it impossible.

60

DURING MOST OF HIS HOMEWARD DRIVE FROM ROSELAND, Gurney’s mind was filled with alternating visions of Slade hanging from a bedsheet rope in his cell and of Slade calmly sitting across from him in the visiting room.

As he crested the last forested hill and began the descent toward the reservoir side of Walnut Crossing, those thoughts were displaced by a glimpse of a state police cruiser in a roadside turnaround about five hundred yards ahead. That distance dropped to no more than three hundred yards by the time Gurney reached a point where the road shoulder was wide enough to permit a quick U-turn.

As he sped back up the hill, in his rearview mirror he saw the cruiser swinging out of the turnaround, lights flashing, starting up the hill after him. As soon as he passed the crest and was momentarily out of his pursuer’s line of sight, he floored the accelerator to get past a sight-obstructing curve in the road. He knew the heavily wooded area was criss-crossed with old logging trails and began searching for one. He passed one that looked impassable, then, glancing in his mirror, took a chance on a second, which rose steeply up from the right side of the road.

He hoped that the teeth-rattling blows to the rental car’s undercarriage wouldn’t turn out to be fatal, as the front and rear end alternately became airborne over the rocky ground. As soon as he could no longer see the road behind him, he jammed on the brakes and switched off the ignition—just in time to hear the cruiser racing past, siren blaring. A moment later, it was followed by a second cruiser with a matching siren.

Immediately, he backed down the trail, swerved out onto the road, and sped down toward the reservoir. At the first intersection, instead of taking the county road toward Walnut Crossing, he took it in the opposite direction, paralleling the river that carried the reservoir’s outflow. A few miles later, he made a sharp right onto a back road and proceeded via a long, circuitous route to the rear side of the hill behind his property.

After easing the car into its hidden spot in the woods, he sat back and took several deep breaths to calm down. As the adrenaline rush dissipated, anger took its place—first at the fugitive position Stryker had put him in, and then a deeper anger at the death of Slade. He took out his phone and called Hardwick.

He was surprised and relieved when the man answered. “Yeah?”

“Ziko Slade is dead.”

Hardwick sounded unsurprised. “Inmate confrontation?”

“I’ve been told it was murder, set up to look like suicide in his cell.”

“Which your paranoid brain is telling you is another warning, aimed at you personally?”

“I think it means I’m getting close to some facts that would have set him free—and someone would rather have him dead than free.”

“So, what do you want from me?”

“The case against Slade began with Bruno Lanka just happening to find Lenny Lerman’s body. But Lanka is a dodgy enough character that Stryker couldn’t put him on the stand. Lanka’s driver was Dominick Vesco—who owns a Ford 150 pickup and a Moto Guzzi trail bike, both of which were present on Blackmore Mountain. It’s obvious those two are into this mess up to their necks. It’s also obvious that they’re not the brains behind it. They’re taking orders from somebody—the same somebody who ordered the hit on Slade.”

Hardwick uttered a snorting little laugh.

“What the hell is funny?”

“You sound so goddamn pissed off. It’s not your usual state of mind.”

“Not a goddamn thing is usual these days. I’m running into threats and dead ends like never before in my life.” He paused. “Look, I know I’m ranting. But I’m sure Lanka and his accomplice were on Blackmore Mountain that day, and one of them smashed me on the side of the head, shot Sonny, got gunpowder residue on my hand, and turned me into a fugitive with a headache that won’t go away.”

“What makes you so sure they were both there?”

“Because the plan was to kill Sonny and frame me. And that would be a hell of a lot easier for two guys to manage than just one. I’m thinking Lanka came with Sonny in the tow truck. And I know Vesco came up from the campground on his Moto Guzzi.”

“Jesus, Gurney, you make it all sound reasonable. But that doesn’t make it true.”

“I’m positive these bastards were involved in Sonny’s murder. I’d bet my pension they were involved in Lenny’s. And I’m equally sure they’re not the organizing brains behind it all. Most important of all, I know where to find them.”

Hardwick let out an exasperated sigh. “So, what’s your plan? Tie them up and threaten to cut their balls off if they don’t ID the boss?”

“Something like that.”

“And you want me to bring a sharp knife?”

“Something like that.”

Hardwick let out an ugly little laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I keep thinking about a cartoon I saw. Guy in his yard with a shovel. There’s a little pointy thing sticking out of the ground. He’s trying to dig it out. But the cartoon shows this deep underground view, below the guy’s lawn, and we see that the little pointy thing is the top inch of a spike on the back of a live brontosaurus that’s twice the size of the guy’s house.”

“Cute,” said Gurney.

“But you’re hell-bent on digging that fucker up, right?”

“Right.”

“Even if Lanka and Vesco are just two spikes on the back of a monster?”

“Right.”

“You have a specific time in mind for this lunatic excursion?”

“Where are you right now?”

“Right now I’m in Home Depot buying putty for the loose window panes I promised Esti I’d fix today. So, right now is not good.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Possible.”

“Good. Let’s meet a little before noon in the parking lot next to Lanka’s store. Last time I was on that street, I saw Vesco arriving in Lanka’s Escalade around that time, and I’m thinking Lanka was probably with him. Opening time at the store is noon, so one or both of them is likely to be there.”

Hardwick grunted. “And sometime between now and then you’ll figure out what the fuck our approach is?”

“We can nail that down in the parking lot.”

“Fine. But this is it, Sherlock. It’s the last fucking time I want to go near this case. It gives me the fucking creeps.”

THE SUN HAD set by the time Gurney made his way from the car’s hiding place up the slippery trail to his hilltop campsite, leaving a blood-red glow in the western sky. Darkness was closing in, the temperature was dropping, and his face was numb from the cold.

As he was starting down toward the house, he heard the distant sound of tires crunching the gravel on the town road. He reversed course, climbing back up to the place in the hemlocks that gave him the best view of the property. As the security camera alert sounded on his phone, a pair of headlights appeared at the corner of the barn, accompanied a moment later by a second pair. The barn reflected enough light for him to recognize the two vehicles as state police cruisers, then dimly make out an individual approaching the side of one of the cruisers and leaning down toward the driver’s window.

Gurney assumed this was one of the watchers, and that their car was now on the opposite side of the barn, where it couldn’t be seen from the house. Whatever he might have told the troopers about there being no sightings of Gurney returning to the property didn’t deter them. The two cruisers proceeded past the barn and up the pasture lane to the house.

A trooper emerged from each cruiser, flashlight in hand. They made their way in opposite directions around the house, rapping on doors, aiming their lights through the windows, setting off another phone alert when they passed the cameras on the far side of the house. They even looked into the chicken coop and the attached shed before conferring briefly and departing the way they came.

After listening to the sound of the cruisers receding on the town road, Gurney made his way down the hill, across the back field, and into the house through the unlocked bedroom window.

The lights in the house were off, and he left them that way. In the near-darkness, he assembled a makeshift dinner of bread, cheese, and leftover vegetable soup. When he brought these things into the den to eat in the minimal illumination provided by his laptop screen, he noticed the landline phone blinking.

He pushed the Play button and was surprised to hear Madeleine’s voice.

“I won’t be home tonight. I’m having dinner again with Gerry, then we’re going to the Harbane theater for the Coriander Chamber Group. Since we’re both on the early shift tomorrow, I’ll be staying at her house. I’ll be home after work tomorrow.”

Gurney was troubled by the fact that she’d called the landline rather than his cellphone. She’d called the house phone at a time when she knew he’d be out of the house, which meant that she didn’t want to talk to him. The move felt like more than a petty bit of evasiveness; it felt like a symptom of a deeper estrangement, and that was something he didn’t want to think about.

Sitting there at his desk, eating his dinner in the dim light of his laptop, he forced his attention onto the task of coming up with a plan for the following day’s confrontation at Lanka’s Specialty Foods. So much would depend on the circumstances and chemistry of the moment he soon realized that devising a detailed plan was impractical. In fact, he began to wonder if the whole idea of pursuing information via confrontation made any sense at all.

Still, Lanka and Vesco were the only links he had between the Lerman murders and whoever orchestrated them. And he was acutely aware that his time was limited. Powerful forces on both sides of the legal line were eager to stop him; their efforts, already disconcerting, were bound to become more intense. His only hope was to uncover the truth before Stryker’s cops caught up with him or he became the third victim. So, confrontation it would have to be. Realizing that any further thought on this subject would be a waste of time, he headed for bed.

He was awakened shortly after dawn by an urgent series of beeps on the security app on his phone. He stumbled out of bed and half ran to the kitchen. Peering out the window, he saw one of the watchers’ unmarked sedans. After it came to a stop, he could see the exhaust still billowing up into the frigid air. They were settling in for another long stakeout and letting the engine run to keep the heater working.

He took a fast shower, got dressed, strapped on his Glock, and returned to the kitchen. Keeping an eye on the watchers’ car, he made himself a generous breakfast—half a dozen slices of bacon, three eggs, two slices of toast, and a coffee.

After finishing it all, he went into the den, now brightened by the morning sunlight, opened his laptop, and found his list of the key events in the last thirteen weeks of Lenny’s life. Then he placed a call to Adrienne.

As usual, she answered quickly, sounding anxious and curious.

He gave her the date of Lenny’s visit to the Clearview Office Suites in Gorse and the dates his three subsequent visits to the Capital District Office Park in Ploverton. “Do you know of any reason why your father would have made these trips on these dates?”

“None of those dates mean anything to me,” she said, her anxiety and curiosity rising. “Do you know who he went to see?”

“I don’t. The tenants are a pretty varied lot. The thing is, his depression began around the time of those visits, so they may be significant.”

“What kind of tenants do those places have?”

Gurney checked his laptop. “Lawyers, doctors, engineers, a sleep-disorder clinic, financial adviser, stock broker, and some real estate people.”

“A sleep-disorder clinic?”

“Yes.”

“That might be it. He used to complain about waking up from nightmares. For most people sleep is a natural escape, among other good things. But not for him.”

She made a little sound like a stifled sob.

“Are you alright, Adrienne?”

“It’s just . . . sometimes I see the sadness of my father’s life so vividly it makes me cry.”

There was a long silence, broken by Gurney.

“Another trip your father made got my attention. One day in the middle of October he spent two hours at the Franciscan Sanctuary. Was that something he did from time to time?”

“If it was, I wasn’t aware of it.”

“Do you have any idea why he would have gone there?”

“Maybe for the same reason I go back there. To put myself in a happier place.”

61

THE FACTUAL TAKEAWAY FROM HIS CONVERSATION WITH Adrienne hadn’t amounted to much, but its emotional impact on him was another matter.

Throughout his career, he’d tried to stay focused on the mechanics of a case. The objective facts. Rarely did he succeed entirely. He was unaffected by hysterical displays of grief, but his defenses were often pierced by the welling of a tear, the catch in a voice, the sharing of a memory.

Rather than dwelling on Adrienne’s pain, he searched his mind for the next right thing he could do, and the needs of the chickens occurred to him. He stood up quickly from his desk, winced at the sharp twinge in his back, and went to the mudroom for his jacket and gloves. Getting from the house to the coop without being seen by the watchers involved exiting through a bedroom window. Once he was outside, the coop and shed blocked the line of sight from the barn. He got a shovel from the shed and scraped the snow out of the fenced run. After replacing the shovel, he hauled a sack of feed into the coop and refilled the feeders. Then he used a broad-bladed spackling knife to scrape the week’s accumulation of chicken droppings off the roosting rods. Finally, he opened the low door between the coop and the run, and the hens proceeded cautiously down the connecting ramp—the Rhode Island Red in the lead, squawking.

He had a moment of concern that Stryker’s men might hear the sound and come up to investigate, then realized that with their windows closed, engine running, and heater whirring, they weren’t likely to hear anything short of a gunshot. He returned the makeshift scraper to the shed and secured the big yellow door with its wrought-iron latch.

Back in the house, he was thinking about the experience of assembling and painting the shed door with Madeleine. Working on it together had created a feeling of closeness that was miles away from the way he felt now. He asked himself which feeling best represented the reality of their marriage. He had no answer.

THE FASTEST ROUTE to Garville was composed mainly of the interstate with a few miles of country roads at either end of the trip. The downside of the interstate was its need of repaving. The patched seams in the concrete produced a constant drumbeat. It was a road that Gurney normally avoided, but ensuring a timely arrival for his meeting with Hardwick felt important enough to put up with the irritation.

Now, forty minutes into the drive, with the road surface getting progressively worse, he was tempted to take the next exit and make his way along town and village roads, but a ten-wheeler came up on his right as the exit approached, cutting off the opportunity. He sighed and drove on, determined never to take the interstate again—a decision that was soon underscored, as the traffic began to slow, then creep, then come to a dead stop.

Nothing in the stretch ahead was moving. He checked the time. Eleven thirty. If it weren’t for this jam-up, he’d be arriving in Lanka’s parking lot at eleven forty. If Hardwick was coming from his home in Dillweed, he’d be taking back roads all the way and arriving in Garville on time. Being punctual was a Hardwick trait, an anomaly in such a rule-despising man.

Ten minutes later, there was still no movement ahead. Taking out his phone to let Hardwick know he’d be late, he discovered he was in a dead cell zone. The side of highway he was on was separated from the opposite side by a drainage gully. There were no exits as far ahead as he could see, nothing but embankments and woods. He was trapped.

At noon, the traffic began to move, inching forward for about a mile, before stopping again. Gurney rechecked his phone and found that he now had cell service. He placed a call to Hardwick, but it went to voicemail. He left a message, describing the problem and saying that if he wasn’t there by twelve thirty, Hardwick should abandon the mission and they’d reschedule it, perhaps for the following day. During the next hour and a half of immobility, he tried Hardwick’s number three more times and left two more messages.

When the cause of the stoppage had finally been cleared—an overturned tanker truck—Gurney got off at the next exit and made his way back to Walnut Crossing via the country roads he should have used that morning.

After leaving the car in the woods, he climbed to the top of the campsite hill and surveyed the property. There was no sign of the watchers, but there was a small red car next to the house—in fact, in the spot by the asparagus bed where he’d always parked the Outback.

He was more curious than concerned. The chance of law-enforcement personnel arriving in a small red car was zero. He made his way down the hill and across the back field to the rear of the house. He could hear voices coming from inside. He edged around to a spot where he could see into the long ground-floor room. Catching a glimpse of Madeleine at the sink island, he realized the voices were coming from the radio.

He continued around the house to the side door, taking a close look at the red car on the way—a Subaru Crosstrek. Before going into the house, he knocked loudly at the door, then opened it and called in, “It’s me,” to avoid any reaction that might involve the shotgun.

When he reached the kitchen, Madeleine was still at the sink island, rinsing some sort of leafy vegetable in a colander. She glanced at him but said nothing.

“You rented that car?” he asked.

“I don’t like feeling trapped. And with you hiding the other one in the woods somewhere, I didn’t want to keep imposing on Gerry.”

After an awkward pause, he asked, “Did you get a call from Jack Hardwick?”

“Why would he call me?”

“I meant, did he call the house?”

“Is there a problem?”

“I was trying to get in touch with him and haven’t heard back, that’s all.”

It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Hardwick hadn’t made it to Garville either—that he might have gotten into a snarl with Esti, decided to stay home, and was in no rush to explain the situation.

Gurney’s phone rang. He took it out, hoping to see J. Hardwick on the screen. Instead, he saw K. Barstow.

“Kyra?”

“Hi, David. I’m glad you picked up! I was just listening to the news on an Albany station, and I heard the name Bruno Lanka mentioned. Isn’t that the name of the hunter who discovered Lenny Lerman’s body?”

“Mentioned in what context?”

“According to the news report, there was a wild shoot-out in Garville today. Lanka was one of the victims.”

“One of the victims?”

“There were two others, but I didn’t recognize the names.”

“Do you recall what they were?”

“Vasco, maybe Vesco. And Horwick, maybe Hartack, something like that.”

Gurney felt the blood draining from his face.

“When you say ‘victims’ . . . ?”

“The report said that Lanka was killed, I’m not sure about the other two.”

Gurney thanked her, ended the call, and went to his laptop. The lead item in the station’s local news section read:

Gunfire broke out at noon today on a quiet side street in Garville. Police Chief Lloyd Clugger issued the following statement:

“We are currently investigating a violent incident that occurred earlier today next to Lanka’s Specialty Foods on Fourth Street. Gunshots were exchanged between a man identified as Jack Hardwick and Bruno Lanka, the store owner, and Dominick Vesco, the store manager. Mr. Lanka was pronounced dead at the scene. Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Vesco were transported to Albany General Hospital. Both suffered life-threatening wounds, and both remain in critical condition. The cause of the confrontation is yet to be determined.”

Jack Hardwick was formerly an investigator in the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Official sources have not speculated on whether his background might have a bearing on today’s explosive encounter.

Sources within the hospital have confirmed that Hardwick underwent a two-hour operation by a trauma surgeon and remains in critical condition in the intensive care unit.

No additional information was available on Dominick Vesco. This developing story will be updated as more facts becomes available.

Gurney felt a nauseating chill pass through his body. He sat staring at the computer screen—willing it to tell him that Hardwick had turned the corner, that his condition had stabilized, that he was out of danger. He clicked on the page’s Refresh icon once, twice, three times, but no new details appeared.

On his fourth try, the page was dominated by a flashing BREAKING NEWS banner above an article that Gurney was almost afraid to read.

Peter Flake and Yoko Klein, film majors at Marlon College, were in the right place at the right time to record the violent confrontation that took place in a Garville parking lot earlier today.

“We were driving around town, getting local footage for our term project, a video documentary on upstate towns in decline,” Klein explained, “when we spotted this amazing red GTO from the 1960s. Right after we slowed down to film it from another angle, a huge black SUV came along and pulled in behind it. The driver of the SUV and the driver of the GTO got into this super-bad thing, total insanity, everybody getting shot, and we got the whole thing on camera.”

The article went on to report that Flake and Klein had given WSKZ access to their recorded audio and video footage of the confrontation—which could be viewed via a link at the end of the article. A warning was appended below it.

Gurney’s hand was shaking as he clicked on the link icon.

The high-resolution video opened with a shot of a gleaming red 1967 Pontiac GTO parked just inside the parking area for Lanka’s Specialty Foods. Slouched in the driver’s seat was Jack Hardwick. A few seconds later, a black Escalade pulled in and stopped behind the GTO. Gurney recognized the driver—Dominick Vesco.

He stepped out of the Escalade, approached the GTO, and rapped on the side window. The audio was faint but sufficiently clear.

Hardwick lowered the window. “Yeah?”

“You’re on private property.”

“I thought this lot was for store customers.”

“You already been to the store. I don’t forget a face. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“Suppose I want to buy some of Lanka’s specialty foods.”

“Suppose I blow your fucking head off.”

Hardwick sighed. “You’re creating a problem.”

“That so?”

As Vesco reached into the pocket of his gray windbreaker, Hardwick suddenly thrust the heavy front door of the GTO open, smashing it into Vesco and sending him staggering toward the Escalade. He leapt out after him, delivering a flurry of punches to his head. As the man slumped against the vehicle’s passenger door, the window slid down, a pistol emerged, and a shot was fired, thrusting Hardwick backward. A second shot propelled his body in a half rotation, and he half fell, half dove to the ground, pulling himself toward the front of the vehicle, out of the shooter’s line of fire.

As Vesco struggled to his feet, Bruno Lanka emerged from the Escalade. With weapons extended they moved toward Hardwick’s prone form. There was a rapid exchange of gunfire, seemingly from all three combatants at once, then silence.

The silence was broken by a shaky voice—surely one of the student videographers.

“Holy shit!”

The video ended with a slow zoom in on three motionless bodies on the ground beside the Escalade, a pistol in the right hand of each one, blood seeping through their clothes onto the tarmac.

Gurney’s fists were clenched, the knuckles white. He was rigid with fury—a fury mingled with a terrible feeling of guilt.

AS SOON AS a modicum of rationality returned, Gurney went to the Albany General Hospital’s website, got the patient-information phone number, and called it. He asked about Hardwick’s condition, was told only that he was in ICU, that HIPAA regulations prohibited the sharing of other information, and that no visitors beyond immediate family could be admitted.

He wondered if word had gotten to Esti. He knew there was no landline, and he had no cell number for her. Should he drive to Dillweed, in the event that she didn’t already know? Or was it more likely that someone who knew her cell number had already called her? Surely, one or more of her state police contacts would do so. Chances were she was already at the hospital.

He called the hospital again, and this time asked for the ICU.

When someone at the nursing station picked up, he said, “I need to reach Esti Moreno, who I believe is visiting Jack Hardwick.”

A harried female voice replied, “She stepped out for a moment. Try later.”

Now he knew that she knew, and he knew where she was, but he wasn’t sure what to do next. Wait a few minutes and call again? Call back now and leave his number, so she could reach him? Or forget about calling and just drive to the hospital?

It was the last option that seemed right. The point wasn’t just to get information or express his concern. He should go there. Be there.

He slipped his phone back in his pocket and went to the kitchen.

Madeleine was stirring a pot of something on the stove.

“I have to go out,” he said. “Albany. The hospital. Jack’s been injured.”

She looked at him. “How?”

“He was shot.”

“Shot?”

“In a parking lot. Near Albany. I need to go. I’ll call you.”

HE ARRIVED IN the main parking lot of the hospital at 6:28 p.m. in a nervous daze. On the radio, the local Albany station was reporting on the fatal Garville clash.

“Today’s violent confrontation has now claimed a second life,” the reporter said. “Dominick Vesco suffered cardiac arrest following a surgical procedure and was declared dead at five forty-five this evening. We’ve been informed that Jack Hardwick, the other participant in the confrontation, has emerged from surgery and is being maintained in an induced coma to increase his chance of survival.”

Gurney turned off the radio. He tried to organize his thoughts but found that his brain wasn’t operating in linear fashion. The simple dictum that so often put him back on track—just do the next right thing—wasn’t working. He had no idea what the next right thing might be.

With Hardwick in a coma, there was no point in trying to visit the ICU. Besides, either Garville PD or the NYSP would have personnel on site, since it now appeared that Hardwick was involved in two homicides. And it was possible that Cam Stryker, aware of Gurney’s relationship with the man, had sent her own people to the hospital to be on the lookout for him. He sank down a little lower in his seat and gave the parking lot a careful once-over. As his gaze returned to the front of the hospital, a woman was coming out through the main revolving door. Despite the freezing temperature, she was wearing just jeans and a sweater. She had a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other. When she turned halfway toward the door to shield the flame from the wind, he recognized her profile.

It was no surprise that Esti Moreno would be there, but the actual sight of her gave his nerves a jab. He felt some resistance to the idea of approaching her, but he knew it had to be done. Figuring any cops assigned to the situation would be in the building, he got out of the car, turned up the collar of his jacket against the wind, and walked quickly across the parking lot.

She was in the middle of a long drag on her cigarette.

“Esti?”

She stared at him, slowly blowing out the smoke, her expression hardening.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was hoarse, angry.

He blinked, taken aback by her tone. “I heard . . . on the radio . . . about the shooting.”

“Go away! Just leave! Now!”

Gurney took a small step backward. “I don’t understand.”

“He may not make it. He may die. You hear what I’m saying?”

“My God, Esti, I—”

She cut him off. “You dragged him into this fucking case! You did this, you fucking son of a bitch! Get away from me! Now!”

62

GURNEY RETREATED TO HIS CAR. WHERE HE JUST SAT, battered by the growing impact of Esti’s outburst.

A man he’d naively come to believe was indestructible was just as destructible as any other human being. And it was his own cajoling, his importuning, that had put him in the literal line of fire. If Hardwick should die . . .

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, his head bowed, when he looked up and for the second time that evening saw a familiar-looking woman emerging from the hospital’s revolving door. As she made her way through the parking lot to a car a few spaces from his own, he recognized the grim face of the tow truck owner, Charlene Vesco. In the light from her open car door, he could see the tight set of her jaw, her lips pressed together in a thin, straight line. The emotion behind that expression wasn’t clear, but it looked like there was more fear in it than grief. She pulled abruptly out of her space and headed for the exit. He decided to follow her. He had no objective in mind, other than a feeling that any action was better than none.

The evening traffic made it possible to keep another car or two between them as she made her way through the outskirts of Albany in the direction of Garville. When it became clear that she was heading for her auto salvage yard, Gurney dropped farther back. He switched off his headlights, parked at the far end of the block, and watched.

Charlene opened the tall steel gate and walked toward the trailer-office. The pit bull chained to a corner of the office barked, then stopped. A minute later she led the dog, on a short leash, to the car and let him into the back seat. Then she locked the gate and got back in her car.

He tailed her with his headlights off until they reached a busy avenue, where he switched them on and resumed a position two cars behind her. He followed her to the other side of Garville, to a tree-lined suburban-looking street. Halfway along it, she pulled into a driveway next to a modest ranch-style house. As he drove past, he caught a glimpse of her entering it through a side door, the dog following her.

Continuing along the street, he noticed one parked vehicle that seemed out of place. It was hard to imagine anyone in that blue-collar neighborhood driving that hundred-thousand-dollar Range Rover, its pearl-gray finish glistening in the dim glow of a distant streetlamp. Tinted glass kept him from seeing any more than a hint of someone behind the wheel.

Until he was well out of Garville, Gurney kept checking his rearview mirror, but never saw any evidence of being followed. The unsettled feeling produced by that looming gray vehicle, however, remained with him an hour and a half later when he pulled into the quarry trail on the back side of the campsite hill.

Why had Charlene Vesco gone out of her way to bring the pit bull home with her instead of leaving it to what he presumed was its normal job of guarding the salvage yard? Was it because she didn’t intend to be at the yard the next day to feed it? Or because she thought she might need protection at home?

Protection from whom? And why?

THE SHOCKS OF the day left him without any appetite for dinner—nor, as the night wore on, any ability to fall asleep. At 2:00 a.m., he got up, slipped on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, and retreated to the den.

He got the list of Lenny Lerman’s activities in the weeks preceding his death. He focused on the visits Lerman made to the two office complexes—one to Clearview Offices Suites, followed by three to Capital District Office Park. Examining the directories of tenants in those complexes, he put together some plausible through-lines for Lerman’s four trips.

His first scenario was based on the hypothesis that the trips were related to a medical problem. In that version, Lerman’s trip to Clearview Office Suites would have been to the urgent care facility. His next trip—to the Capital District Office Park five days later—could have been for an appointment with the hematology-oncology practice. His next trip might have been to the radiological imaging group, perhaps for an MRI. And his final trip could have been back to the hematology-oncology practice to discuss the imaging results.

Gurney’s second scenario hypothesized a legal problem. In that version, Lerman’s trip to Clearview Office Suites would have been to the law firm. And that could have been followed by three consecutive visits to the criminal defense attorneys in the Capital District Office Park.

In the third scenario, Lerman’s issue concerned money. In that case, his trip to the Clearview Office Suites would have been to the financial adviser; his subsequent trips to the Capital District Office Park would have been to the stock brokerage located there.

Pondering the three scenarios, he felt that the legal version was more likely than the financial, and the medical more likely than the legal. Of course, it was possible that Lerman made his four trips for four different reasons, and that his mood changes had nothing to do with any of them. Arranging a handful of facts to form a coherent picture could satisfy one’s hunger for order at the price of losing contact with reality.

Still, the medical hypothesis was appealing. Gurney could imagine Lerman noticing some symptom of trouble . . . going to his nearby urgent care facility . . . follow-up appointments with a specialist. Suppose Lerman faced a serious medical issue. How might that news have changed him, changed his priorities? Might it have given him the reckless, nothing-to-lose attitude that the blackmail scheme seemed to require? Might it explain—

His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a lamp being switched on in the bedroom across the hall, then the sound of Madeleine’s approaching footsteps.

“Do you realize what time it is?” she said, standing in the doorway. There was something accusatory in her tone, as though his being up had disturbed her sleep.

There was no light on in the den, and he could barely see her in the moonlight coming through the window.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

She made a sound that he took for a sarcastic laugh.

He ignored it. “Suppose Lerman was facing some medical issue, perhaps even dying. Suppose he saw the opportunity to blackmail Ziko Slade as a no-lose proposition. Suppose he imagined that getting his hands on a million dollars and passing it along to his son and daughter would make up for his failings as a father. Suppose—”

“Back up a minute! There must have been an autopsy. Wouldn’t it have revealed some medical calamity if one existed?”

“It was a forensic autopsy, not a clinical one.”

“Meaning what?”

“The purpose of a forensic autopsy is to determine if a death occurred naturally or unnaturally—and if unnaturally, by what means. If the ME determines that a victim has died as a direct result of his head being chopped off, there’s no forensic reason to search for other morbidities. Full clinical autopsies are performed when the cause of death is less clear.”

“Can’t they dig up his body and search for traces—”

“An exhumation order would have to be issued, and there’s no chance that Stryker or Rexton PD would have any interest in that.”

63

WHEN HE AROSE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, MADELEINE had already left for the clinic, and his medical theory was being attacked, in the absence of Hardwick, by his own skepticism.

Although the timing of Lerman’s last trip to the Capital District Office Park coincided with the beginning of his reported depression, and the formation of his blackmail scheme coincided with his reported emergence from that depression, certain contradictions were casting a shadow of doubt over everything.

While Lerman had recorded three phone conversations with Slade in his diary—specifying the damaging information he had, how much money he wanted, and when he wanted it—Slade insisted he’d received no such calls.

That disconnect demanded that one take sides. Gurney came down, at least tentatively, on the side of Ziko Slade. But if Slade was telling the truth, then Lerman was lying about the phone calls. But why? And what would a medical diagnosis have to do with any of it?

Whenever you’re confused, just look at what’s in front of you, and take the simplest step forward.

That was the advice of his first NYPD mentor, and it had never failed him. What it brought to mind now was the fear he’d glimpsed the night before on the face of Charlene Vesco. Perhaps he should pay her a visit.

WHEN GURNEY ARRIVED in Garville, gray clouds were enveloping the town in an oppressive gloom. There were no signs of life on Charlene Vesco’s street. The vehicles were gone, including the Range Rover. The whole block, with its leafless trees and drab lawns, had a dead look about it.

He parked in front of Vesco’s house, walked up the damp brick pathway to the front door, and rang the bell. He could hear the drone of what sounded like a television, but no one came to the door. He rang the bell again, waited, knocked, knocked harder.

The fact that the woman wasn’t coming to the door was odd, but not as odd as the silence of the pit bull she’d brought home the previous evening. He walked around to the driveway side of the house. Her car was still there, by the side door. The top half of the door had glass panes. He looked in and saw a short hall leading to a kitchen. The kitchen light was on. He knocked on the door. No response.

He walked to the back of the house, where a series of windows were obscured by lowered blinds. He continued around to the side. The blinds there were raised, revealing a dining room, a small office, and a living room. It was the scene in the living room that got his attention.

It took him a moment to recognize the woman slumped in an easy chair in front of the television as Charlene Vesco. Rivulets of blood extended from her wide-open eyes down her cheeks . . . and from her ears down her neck . . . and from the lower corner of her mouth onto her chest, soaking the front of a pale blue sweater. In the light from a lamp next to the chair, her skin was a sickly white. Her eyes had the dullness that sets in a few hours after death. He started taking out his phone but was stopped by the sight of a second body. A dark gray body on the floor at Charlene’s feet. Her pit bull, in a pool of blood.

He went to his car, blocked his phone ID, and placed a call to 911. He gave the dispatcher the address, the location of the body in the house, and its visual condition. He added that it was an apparent homicide and ended the call.

He went back to the window for another look at the room, in case he might have missed something. He noted on a coffee table not far from the bodies a bottle of what appeared to be whiskey and two glasses. That should get the attention of the homicide team.

He returned to his car. In the event that Stryker might be pinging his phone, he drove for several minutes in the direction of Albany before turning the phone off, reversing course, and heading back by a roundabout route to Walnut Crossing.

AS HE BROUGHT the car to a stop in its hiding place in the woods, he was wondering what had been done to Charlene Vesco to produce those unsettling symptoms, and whether the whiskey bottle and the two glasses had anything to do with it.

The blood he’d observed suggested the possibility of a massive dose of an anticoagulant. He considered the idea that it might have been secretly administered in a shot of whiskey but realized that the taste of an amount sufficient to produce such severe effects would have been noticed instantly. It seemed more likely that the chemical had been administered by injection, probably after the woman had been rendered unconscious or at least unresisting—perhaps by a few drops in her whiskey of something less likely to be noticed. That sequence of events, along with the two glasses and her position in the easy chair, suggested that she knew her killer—possibly the occupant of that out-of-place Range Rover.

But why had she been killed? And why in such a bizarre way?

Gurney shivered. The gloom of Garville’s weather had followed him home, and his car was getting cold. There was a hint of snow in the air, and before it became more than a hint there were things he wanted to get from the house and bring up to his campsite.

The trek up and down the hill and back across the field to a bedroom window was becoming routine, a routine he found both absurd and necessary. The first thing he did in the house was go to the kitchen sink and let warm water run over his hands to get the chill out of them. While the coffee machine heated up, he got two tote bags from the mudroom and began filling them. In one bag he loaded a loaf of bread, a package of cheddar cheese, a bag of almonds, two bananas, a jar of olives, a large thermos of water, and a container of orange juice. In the other he placed an extra sweater, woolen socks, a scarf, ski mittens, a flashlight, and his laptop with a charging adaptor for the car’s USB port. When he finally sat down by the French doors with his coffee, the time on the Regulator clock was exactly 4:00 p.m.

Madeleine had the early shift at the clinic that day and should already be home. As he was frowning at that thought, the security app on his phone produced the distinctive series of beeps that indicated the activation of the camera down on the barn. He moved away from the French doors, went to the kitchen window, and saw with some relief Madeleine’s rented red Crosstrek coming up through the low pasture.

She didn’t come inside right away. He watched her walking from the car over to the coop. She was carrying the shotgun—rather casually, he thought, as though it had become a natural part of her life. She walked around the coop, stopping to gaze down at the pasture below it, before coming into the house.

“What was that all about?” he asked when she appeared in the kitchen.

She laid the shotgun on the sideboard. “I was getting a sense of where the fence will go.”

“Fence?”

“For the alpacas. I asked Jim Smithers to come up and see if it’s something he can handle.”

“Who the hell is Jim Smithers?”

“The farmer on the road to the village. Did the concussion erase your memory?”

“You mean the old guy with the tilting silo and the ancient tractor?”

Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

“What do you mean—if it’s something he can handle?”

“The Winklers want to bring the twin alpacas here within the next week or so. The fence will have to be up by then. Obviously, you’re not going to do it. I’m hoping he can.”

“All this has to happen right now? With everything that’s going on?”

“Yes. Right now. I’m not going to postpone my life, just because you refuse to let go of this wretched case.”

HALF AN HOUR later, Gurney was arranging things in his campsite tent. He hooked the portable heater up to the propane tank, made room for the contents of the two tote bags by pushing his sleeping bag to one side, and opened a small folding chair that he had brought along. He was planning to stay there for an hour or so, at least until his annoyance subsided. He turned on the heater and adjusted its thermostat to fifty degrees. He settled down into the folding chair and tried to think about something other than his growing conflict with Madeleine.

The subject that finally held his attention was the hematology-oncology group in the Capital District Office Park. Although HIPAA regulations would prevent them from telling him whether Lerman had been a patient, he could at least learn more about the focus of their practice. Since he was out of range of the house wifi, he decided to use his phone as a hotspot to access the internet on his laptop.

He went first to the Capital District Office Park website and checked the list of their tenants for the exact name of the medical group—Stihl and Chopra Hematology-Oncology Associates. He then went to their website, where he found extensive bios of Dr. Jonathan Stihl and Dr. Eliza Chopra. Of particular interest to Gurney were their specialties: malignant meningiomas, glioblastomas, and leptomeningeal metastases.

All three, he discovered, were deadly forms of brain cancer. For one of them, survival from the time of diagnosis could be as little as six weeks—a discovery that fit neatly into his illness-based theory of Lerman’s trips, depression, and willingness to embark on a venture as reckless as extortion.

Aware of the warping influence of his desire to be right, he decided to test the validity of his theory. He composed an email outlining his educated guesses regarding Lerman’s trips, his probable diagnosis, and his motivation. He urged that a full clinical autopsy be performed as soon as possible on the man’s remains—with special attention to the spinal cord, where metastatic traces of brain cancer would most likely be found—emphasizing that this could establish a scientific underpinning for the man’s out-of-character moods and willingness to engage in high-risk behavior.

He addressed the email to Dr. Kermit Loeffler, Medical Examiner, whose contact information he retrieved from the county website. His hope was that the ME might be interested enough to push for an exhumation order and influential enough to prevail over Stryker’s likely reluctance. He reread the draft of the email, corrected a couple of typos, and sent it.

PUTTING THE EXHUMATION ball in Loeffler’s court temporarily cleared Gurney’s mind—freeing up space that was soon filled with questions concerning the demise of Charlene Vesco.

Homicide by anticoagulant was not unheard of, but the few cases he was aware of involved an extended process of internal bleeding. In one instance, the beneficiary of an octogenarian’s will had hastened his benefactor’s death by increasing his doses of a therapeutic blood thinner, a process that took a period of weeks. The Vesco case was nothing like that. So, what was it?

The howling of a coyote pack broke his train of thought. He put his laptop aside, pushed himself up out of the chair, and closed the tent flap. The howling stopped as abruptly as it had begun. It was dark now, past five o’clock. The only sources of illumination in the tent were the orange glow of the heater and his laptop screen. He eased himself back into the chair, wincing at the stab of pain in the back of his neck, and started an internet search for information about anticoagulants.

The howling began again, followed by the sharp yips of a hunting pack on the move. The sounds seemed to be getting closer, although in those hills it was hard to tell. Then, once more, all was suddenly silent.

Gurney forced his attention back to his search. Most of the articles he found focused on the effects of various types of anticoagulants. Others examined their therapeutic and rodenticidal applications. The final article he came upon listed the naturally occurring sources of these chemicals. At that point his eyes were stinging from the dryness of the heated air in the tent. He was about to stop reading when, at the bottom of the list of anticoagulant sources, he saw two words that produced an instant frisson.

Snake venom.

64

HE CALLED ALBANY GENERAL HOSPITAL TO GET AN UPDATE on Hardwick’s condition and was transferred to the ICU nursing station, where a female voice asked him to wait a moment.

A male voice came on the line. “Mr. Hardwick’s condition is unchanged. Are you a member of the family?”

He recognized the tone of a suspicious cop who was trying without much success to sound friendly. Gurney ended the call and turned off his phone.

After considering the possibility of spending the night in the tent, he decided not to. His annoyance at Madeleine had subsided to the point where he wasn’t likely to say anything he’d regret, and another state trooper visitation at that point seemed equally unlikely. He switched off the heater, picked up his laptop, made sure the tent flap was weathertight, and headed down the hill, aided by the faint moonlight coming through the clouds. He took the precaution of taking the long way around the open field, where the overgrowth of weeds would obscure any footprints left in the snow.

When he entered the house, he noted a hint of woodsmoke in the air. He found Madeleine sitting by the fire, book in hand, shotgun propped against the stone corner of the fireplace. She glanced up, then turned her attention back to her book.

He walked over to the hearth and extended his palms toward the fire. The heat made his cold fingers tingle. “Have you eaten yet?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said without looking up. “There’s some beef stew left in that pot on the stove.”

He was starting to head for it when she added, “Gerry Mirkle called a little while ago. She said to tell you that Controversial Perspectives is doing a segment tonight on the shooting in Garville.”

He grimaced. “How does she know?”

Madeleine lowered her book to her lap. “I explained this to you before. She has an app that notifies her whenever a news report mentions certain names. The Controversial Perspectives promotion mentioned yours.”

He’d been wondering how long it would take the ferrets at RAM to connect his name to Hardwick’s and start spewing out a new set of sensational speculations. Apparently, not very long at all.

The news killed his appetite. Instead of the beef stew, he made himself a cup of coffee. Controversial Perspectives would be on at eight. Until then, he’d search for a unifying thread through everything that had happened. He took his laptop and coffee into the den.

The problem with the unifying-thread approach was that it didn’t seem that any single narrative could account for all the reported facts, since some of those facts directly contradicted others. The most perplexing conflict concerned the three phone conversations Lerman claimed to have had with Slade—calls whose existence the phone company verified—but which Slade denied having received. What possible unifying thread could reconcile Lerman’s detailed recounting of the conversations and Slade’s insistence that they never occurred?

Gurney realized how much he missed Hardwick’s combative skepticism. Although the man could be crude and pugnacious in his opinions, they never failed to contain an element of truth. He had a way of poking at theories that exposed their weaknesses, but rarely, if ever, had the man totally rejected any hypothesis that later turned out to be valid.

In Hardwick’s absence, Gurney had the unmoored feeling that he’d been separated from half his ability to get at the truth. But his sense of isolation didn’t stop there. As the gap between him and Madeleine grew wider, the more he missed the role she’d played in shaping his understanding of . . . everything.

These ruminations absorbed him so thoroughly that he missed the opening of Controversial Perspectives. He connected to the livestream at 8:04 p.m., with Tarla Hackett in mid-sentence.

“. . . covering the increasingly contentious and violent aftermath of the murder conviction of Ziko Slade, former drug dealer to the stars.”

Jordan Lake nodded. “And the increasingly suspicious involvement of former NYPD homicide detective, Dave Gurney.”

“That’s right, Jordan. Gurney’s involvement has been getting deeper and darker by the day. We’ve been witnessing a series of bombshells in the case, beginning with the recent suicide of Ziko Slade.”

“And followed, just yesterday,” added Lake, “by the fatal shooting of two Garville residents by former New York State Police detective Jack Hardwick. The same Jack Hardwick known to be a close associate of Dave Gurney!”

Tarla Hackett leaned forward, projecting a look of angry amazement. “And that’s on top of Gurney’s direct involvement in the fatal shooting on Blackmore Mountain.”

“Exactly,” said Lake. “Gurney’s connection to one mysterious homicide after another raises serious questions.”

Hackett brightened up her expression. “We’re hoping to get answers to some of those questions right now—from District Attorney Cam Stryker.”

The video switched to a split screen, Tarla Hackett on the left, Stryker on the right. Stryker’s black blazer and plain white blouse went well with a smile that didn’t come within a mile of warmth.

“We appreciate your taking the time to speak with us this evening,” said Hackett.

“Glad to do it.”

“Okay, let’s get right to it.”

Gurney heard Madeleine entering the room. She said nothing, just half sat on the arm of the den couch, giving her an angled view of the laptop screen.

Hackett was saying, “Ziko Slade, convicted murderer of Lenny Lerman, hanged himself in his prison cell. Were you shocked? Surprised? None of the above?”

“Certainly not shocked.”

“You saw it coming?”

“Sometimes the pain of guilt drives a person to extreme measures.”

“Do you see his suicide as a confirmation of the jury’s verdict?”

“Absolutely.”

“You personally have no doubt about Slade’s guilt?”

“None.”

“As you know, Dave Gurney has the opposite opinion.”

Stryker’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Gurney has a lot of opinions. More importantly, he has a lot to account for. He’s a person of interest in a number of recent homicides.”

Hackett nodded. “Jordan and I were just discussing Gurney’s links to people who’ve ended up dead. Any comment on that?”

“Those links are growing. We have reason to believe that he was present last night and again this morning in the vicinity of the particularly vicious murder of Charlene Vesco, a cousin of Dominick Vesco who died yesterday as the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by Gurney’s associate, Jack Hardwick.”

“Do you have reason to believe that Gurney is now on the run?”

“Yes. Once a decorated detective, now a wanted man.”

Hackett flashed a smile of satisfaction. “A final question. If any of our viewers know of Gurney’s whereabouts, what should they do?”

Stryker gazed directly into the camera. “Anyone with information regarding the location of David Gurney should call my office at this number as soon as possible.”

The split screen was replaced by a close-up photo of Gurney’s face and the words, IF YOU KNOW THE WHEREABOUTS OF THIS MAN, CALL THIS NUMBER. After several seconds, this was replaced by live video of Hackett and Lake at their desks.

“Great interview, Tarla.”

“Thanks, Jordan. Any closing observations?”

“No observations. Just unanswered questions.” He turned to the camera. “What is Dave Gurney? Is he a hero . . . a fool . . . or a murderer? Now, this important message from our sponsor.”

Gurney shut down the computer.

“What was Stryker talking about?” asked Madeleine.

“What do you mean?”

“You being in the vicinity of a particularly vicious murder.”

“Charlene Vesco.”

“I heard her name. That’s not what I’m asking.”

He forced himself to meet her gaze. “She’s the woman who owns . . . owned . . . the tow truck that hit me. She’s related to Dominick Vesco, who was on Blackmore Mountain that day and who was almost certainly involved in the murder of Sonny Lerman. I saw her at the hospital last night. I followed her to find out where she lived. This morning I went back to talk to her. When she didn’t come to the door, I looked in the window and saw her body. I called 911 and reported it.”

“You’re leaving something out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stryker called it a particularly vicious murder. Meaning what?”

“There was a lot of blood. Some sort of blood thinner may have been involved.”

Madeleine’s expression hardened. “And now you’re a person of interest in a number of homicides. I believe those were the words she used.”

He said nothing.

“But you won’t give it up!”

“How the hell can I give it up? I’m being bashed from all sides.”

“If you walked away, the bashing would stop.”

“It would be an acknowledgment of defeat. And I have not been defeated! Not by the police, not by Stryker, not by the scum at RAM, not by a dead rabbit, not by a snake in a goddamn gift basket, and not by some piece of shit who attacked me on Blackmore Mountain!”

She gave him that look that went right through him. “It’s all about winning? Proving you’re right, and everyone else is wrong? That’s what matters?”

“My integrity matters.”

“Really? Nothing else?”

“Without integrity, there is nothing else.”

“You mean, integrity as you define it.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Your integrity as a detective. Period.”

“That’s what I am. It’s what I am, and it’s what you never wanted me to be.”

She opened her mouth as if to reply, then closed it, the set of her jaw tightening.

He let his anger carry him on. “Our marriage was always based on your expectation that I’d suddenly become something else. I wish I’d known about that business with Emma ten years ago. You were ready to leave me because of who I was, because I took my job seriously, and somehow she talked you into staying. Staying, but always with a reservation. Waiting for the magic transformation. Waiting for me to become God-knows-what, anything but a detective. Well, I am who I am, and if that’s not what you want, then there’s no damn reason for me to be here, is there?”

Madeleine regarded him with a deadly calm. “It’s your life. It’s your decision.”

GURNEY STAYED IN the den through a mostly sleepless night. The moon had disappeared behind the scudding clouds of a fast-moving cold front. The wind was rising, and he could hear it moaning in the chimney at the other end of the house.

Angry and depressed, he felt that he was seeing the reality of his marriage for the first time, seeing that it had always been on the edge of an abyss. No, not an abyss—that was too romantic, too dramatic a notion, a fall from too great a height. On the edge of what, then?

On the edge of dissolving. That was more like it. Dissolving into the cold air of reality. Its solidity and permanence, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, was an illusion, had always been an illusion. Not even a shared illusion. His own illusion. He could see now that for Madeleine there had always been a condition. It was tolerable for him to be a detective, as long as he wasn’t too much of a detective, as long as there were limits, as long as she could believe that someday he’d walk away from his natural profession and turn into something else.

He saw with a sickening shock that what had been holding them together for over twenty-five years were their interlocked fantasies—hers, that he would someday change into the person she wanted him to be; his, that there was something unbreakable at the core of their relationship, something more powerful than their differences, something sweet and good—and permanent. But now he saw that this imagined core had been composed of wishful thinking.

These bleak thoughts looped repetitively through his mind as the night wore on, nurtured by the moaning of the wind and by a headache that grew worse as the hours passed.

Sometime between dawn and sunrise, in an exhausted, semiconscious state, he began to dream. He was on Blackmore Mountain in his Outback. Snow swirling past the windshield. The red tow truck looming up beside him. Forcing him sideways off the road. The crash. The truck coming to a stop on the road. Sonny Lerman opening the passenger door, stepping halfway out, laughing at him. Now Gurney was standing apart from himself, watching himself raise a pistol. The pistol firing once, twice. Lerman is thrown back into the truck. Gurney watches himself get out of the car, watches himself approach the truck and look inside. Blood is trickling from the corner of Lerman’s mouth, from his eyes, from his ears. But it’s not Lerman. Gurney leans closer. It’s Jack Hardwick.

Gurney came to with a start. He looked around the den, trying to anchor himself in the reality of the place, the reality of the moment. He pushed himself painfully up off the couch, got his phone from the desk, and called the hospital.

There was no change in Hardwick’s condition.

Gurney paced back and forth, flexing his arms, stretching his legs, working the stiffness out of his back, rubbing his cold fingers on his face, trying to put distance between himself and his dream. A shower might help.

To avoid contact with Madeleine, he used the shower in the small upstairs bathroom. As he was drying himself, he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the basin—a haggard face with anxious eyes, the face of a stranger. He hung up the towel and returned to the den.

Later that morning, Madeleine left for the clinic without a word, as though he didn’t exist.

As the hours passed, his decision to leave took shape.

Staying with Madeleine at this point made no emotional sense. Besides, Stryker’s RAM escalation of his “wanted” status was bound to result in more aggressive police scrutiny of the house and surrounding property, perhaps extending to discovery of his campsite.

He would need a place to go.

He thought of an ideal location.

He called Emma Martin and asked if he could stay for a while at Ziko Slade’s lodge.

After the briefest hesitation, she said yes.