Peter Pan Must Die

Chapter 20. Disturbing Discrepancies

After the dinner guests departed—Bruce and Iona in their massive Range Rover, the others in their silent Priuses—Madeleine began cleaning up and straightening up, and Gurney went into the den with the Spalter case file. He extracted the autopsy report, then turned on the slick retina-display tablet that his son, Kyle, had given him for Father’s Day.

He spent the next half hour on a succession of neurological websites, trying to make sense of the disconnect between the nature of Carl Spalter’s head wound and the ten or twelve feet that Paulette claimed he staggered before collapsing.

Gurney had the unhappy advantage of having witnessed, more closely than he would have liked, two similar head shots during his years in NYPD Homicide; in both instances the victims had fallen like axed trees. Why hadn’t Carl?

Two explanations occurred to him.

One was that the ME was wrong about the extent of the brain tissue trauma, and that the motor center had not been completely destroyed by the fragmenting bullet. The second explanation was that Carl was shot not once but twice. The first bullet sent him staggering to the ground. The second bullet, to the temple, did the severe neural damage found during the autopsy. The obvious problem with that theory was that the ME found only one entry wound. Admittedly, a .220 Swift could make a very neat puncture, or a very narrow grazing line—but surely nothing subtle enough for a pathologist to miss, unless he was seriously rushed. Or distracted. Distracted by what?

As Gurney pondered this, another aspect of Paulette’s mini-reenactment was eating at him—that the ultimately fatal scenario was played out within arm’s reach of two individuals who could benefit enormously from Carl’s death. Jonah, who would achieve full control of Spalter Realty. And Alyssa, the spoiled druggy in line to inherit her father’s personal estate—assuming Kay could be gotten out of the way, as in fact she had been.

Jonah and Alyssa. He had a growing interest in meeting them both. And Mick Klemper, as well. He needed to get face-to-face with that man soon. And maybe Piskin, the prosecutor, as well—to get a sense of where he stood in this fog of contradictions, shaky evidence, and possible perjury.

There was a crash in the kitchen. He grimaced.

Funny thing about crashes in the kitchen. He once considered them an indicator of Madeleine’s state of mind, until he realized that his interpretation of them was really an indicator of his own state of mind. When he believed he’d given her a reason to be less than delighted with him, he heard the crash of dishes as a symptom of her annoyance. But if he felt that he’d been behaving thoughtfully, the same dropped dishes would seem a harmless accident.

That night he wasn’t comfortable with his having been nearly an hour late for dinner, or with his inability to remember the names of her friends, or with his leaving her in the kitchen and scurrying off to the den as soon as the last set of taillights receded down the hill.

He realized this last offense was still correctable. After making a few final notes from the most extensive of the neurological websites he’d come upon, he shut down the tablet, put the autopsy report away with the case file, and went out to the kitchen.

Madeleine was just closing the dishwasher door. He went to the coffeemaker on the sink island, set it up, and pushed the BREW button. Madeleine picked up a sponge and a towel and began wiping the countertops.

“Odd bunch of people,” he said lightly.

“ ‘Interesting’ people might be a nicer way to put it.”

He cleared his throat. “I hope they weren’t taken aback by what I said about the criminal justice system.”

The coffeemaker emitted the whooshing-spitting sound that ended its cycle.

“It’s not so much what you said. Your tone has a way of conveying a lot more than your words.”

“More? Like what?”

She didn’t answer right away. She was leaning over the counter, scrubbing a recalcitrant stain. He waited. She straightened up and brushed a few dangling hairs away from her face with the back of her hand. “Sometimes you sound annoyed at having to spend time with people, listen to them, talk to them.”

“It’s not exactly that I’m annoyed. It’s …” He sighed, his voice trailing off. He took his cup from under the dispensing spout of the coffeemaker, added sugar, and stirred the coffee a lot longer than it needed to be stirred before completing his explanation. “When I get involved in something intense, I find it difficult to switch back to ordinary life.”

“It is difficult,” she replied. “I know. I think sometimes you forget what kind of work I do at the clinic, what kind of problems I deal with.”

He was about to point out that those problems didn’t usually involve murder, but he caught himself in time. She had the look in her eyes that meant an unfinished thought, so he just stood silently, holding his coffee cup, waiting for her to go on—expecting her to describe some of the more appalling realities of a rural crisis center.

But she took a different tack. “Maybe I can disengage more easily than you can because I’m not as good at what I do.”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“When someone has a great talent for something, there’s a temptation to focus on it to the exclusion of virtually everything else. Don’t you find that to be true?”

“I suppose,” he replied, wondering where this was going.

“Well, I think you have a great talent for figuring things out, for unraveling deceptions, solving complicated crimes. And maybe you’re so good at it, so comfortable in that particular way of thinking, that the rest of life seems like an uncomfortable interruption.” She searched his face for a reaction.

He knew there was truth in what she was saying, but all he could manage was a noncommittal shrug.

She went on in a soft voice. “I don’t see myself as having a huge talent for my work. I’ve been told I’m good at it, but it’s not the sum and substance of my life. It’s not the only thing that matters. I try to treat everything in my life as though it matters. Because it does. You, most of all.” She looked into his eyes and smiled in that odd way of hers that seemed to have less to do with her mouth than with some internal source of radiance.

“Sometimes when we talk about your absorption in a case, it turns into an argument—maybe because you feel that I’m trying to transform you from a detective into a hiking, biking kayaker. That might have been a hope or fantasy of mine when we first moved up here to the mountains, but it’s not anymore. I understand who you are, and I’m content with that. More than content. I know sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. It seems like I’m pushing, pulling, trying to change you. But that’s not what it is.”

She paused, seeming to read his thoughts and feelings more clearly than he could. “I’m not trying to turn you into someone you’re not. I just feel that you’d be happier if you could let some brightness, some variety, into your life. It looks to me like you keep rolling the same boulder up the same hill again and again, without any lasting relief or reward at the end. It looks like all you want is to keep pushing, keep struggling, keep putting yourself in danger—the more danger, the better.”

He was about to object to her point about danger, but decided instead to hear her out.

She looked at him, sadness filling her eyes. “It looks like you get so deeply into it, into the darkness, that it blots out the sun. It blots out everything. So I go about my life the only way I know how. I do my work at the clinic. I walk in the woods. I go to my concerts. Art shows. I read. Play my cello. Ride my bike. I take care of the garden and the house and the chickens. In the winter I snowshoe. I visit my friends. But I keep thinking—wishing—that we could be doing more of these things together. That we could be out in the sun together.”

He didn’t know how to respond. At some level he recognized the truth in what she was saying, but no words were attaching themselves to the feeling it generated in him.

“That’s it,” she concluded simply. “That’s what’s on my mind.”

The sadness in her eyes was replaced by a smile—warm, open, hopeful.

It seemed to him that she was totally present—that all of her was right there in front of him, with no obstructions, no evasions, no artifice of any kind. He put down his cup, which he’d been holding without realizing it all the while she was talking, and stepped toward her. He put his arms around her, feeling all her body warm against his.

Still without words, he picked her up in the clichéd manner of new-bride-over-the-threshold—which made her laugh—and carried her into the bedroom, where they made love with an intensely wonderful combination of urgency and tenderness.

Madeleine was up first the next morning.

After Gurney had showered, shaved, and dressed, he found her at the breakfast table with her coffee, a slice of toast with peanut butter, and an open book. Peanut butter was one of her favorite things. He went over and kissed the top of her head.

“Good morning!” she said cheerily through a mouthful of toast. She was dressed for her work at the clinic.

“Full day today?” he asked. “Or half?”

“Dunno.” She swallowed, took a sip of coffee. “Depends on who else is there. What’s on your agenda?”

“Hardwick. Due here at eight-thirty.”

“Oh?”

“We’re getting a phone call from Kay Spalter at nine, or as close to that as she can manage.”

“Problem?”

“Nothing but problems. Every fact in this case has a contradiction attached to it.”

“Isn’t that the way you like your facts?”

“Hopelessly tangled up, you mean, so I can untangle them?”

She nodded, took a final bite of her toast, took her plate and cup to the sink, and let the water run on them. Then she came back and kissed him. “Running late. Got to go.”

He made himself some bacon and toast and settled down in a chair by the French doors. Softened by a thin morning fog, the view from his chair was of the old pasture, a tumbledown stone wall along its far side, one of his neighbors’ overgrown fields, and, barely visible beyond that, Barrow Hill.

Just as he popped the last bit of bacon in his mouth, the rumble of Hardwick’s GTO became audible from the road below the barn. Two minutes later, the angular red beast was parked by the asparagus patch and Hardwick was standing at the French doors, wearing a black T-shirt and dirty gray sweatpants. The doors were open wide, but the sliding screens were latched.

Gurney leaned over and unlatched one.

Hardwick stepped inside. “You know there’s a giant fucking pig strolling up your road?”

Gurney nodded. “It’s a fairly frequent occurrence.”

“A good three hundred pounds, I’d say.”

“Tried to lift it, did you?”

Hardwick ignored the question, just looked around the room appraisingly. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’ve got a shitload of country charm here.”

“Thank you, Jack. Care to sit down?”

Hardwick picked thoughtfully at his front teeth with his fingernail, then plopped down in the chair across the table from Gurney and eyed him suspiciously. “Before we speak to the bereaved Mrs. Spalter, ace, you have anything on your mind we need to discuss?”

“Not really—apart from the fact that nothing in the case makes a damn bit of sense.”

Hardwick’s eyes narrowed. “These things that don’t make sense … do they work for us or against us?”

“ ‘Us’?”

“You know what I mean. For or against our objective of securing a reversal.”

“Probably for the objective. But I’m not positive. Too many things are screwy.”

“Screwy? Like how?”

“Like the apartment ID’d as the source of the fatal shot.”

“What about it?”

“It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.”

“Why not?”

Gurney explained his use of Paulette to set up the informal reenactment, and his discovery of the light pole obstruction.

Hardwick looked confused but not worried. “Anything else?”

“A witness, who claims he saw the shooter.”

“Freddie? The guy who fingered Kay in the lineup?”

“No. Man by the name of Estavio Bolocco. No record of his having been interviewed, although he claims he was. He also claims he saw the shooter, but it was a man, not a woman.”

“Saw the shooter where?”

“That’s another problem. Says he saw him in the apartment—the apartment where the shot was supposed to have come from but couldn’t have.”

Hardwick made his acid-reflux face. “This is adding up to a mixed pile of good stuff and pure shit. I like the idea that your guy says the shooter was a man, not a woman. I especially like the idea that Klemper failed to keep a record of the interview. That speaks to police misconduct, possible tampering, or at least major sloppiness, all of which helps. But that crap about the apartment itself, that crap makes everything else useless. We can’t present a witness who claims the shooter used a location that we then turn around and say couldn’t have been used. I mean, where the fuck are we going with this?”

“Good question. And here’s another little oddity. Estavio Bolocco says he saw the shooter twice. Once on the day of the event itself, which was a Friday. But also five days earlier. On Sunday. He says he’s positive it was Sunday, because that was his only day off.”

“He saw the shooter where?”

“In the apartment.”

Hardwick’s indigestion appeared to be increasing. “Doing what? Casing it?”

“That would be my guess. But that raises another question. Let’s assume that the shooter had learned about Mary Spalter’s death, discovered the location of the Spalter family plot, and figured that Carl would be front and center at the burial service. Next step would be to scout out the vicinity, see if it offered a reasonably secure shooting position.”

“So what’s the question?”

“Timing. If the shooter was scouting the location on Sunday, presumably Mary Spalter’s death occurred Saturday or earlier, depending on whether the shooter was close enough to the family to have gotten the information directly, or had to wait for a published obit a day or two later. My question is, if the burial didn’t take place until, at the earliest, seven days after her death … what caused the delay?”

“Who knows? Maybe some relative couldn’t arrive for it any sooner? Why do you care?”

“It’s unusual to delay a funeral for a whole week. Unusual makes me curious, that’s all.”

“Right. Sure. Okay.” Hardwick waved his hand like he was shooing away a fly. “We can ask Kay when she calls. I just don’t think her mother-in-law’s funeral arrangements sound like Court of Appeals material.”

“Maybe not. But speaking of that conviction, did you know that Freddie—the guy who fingered Kay at the trial—has disappeared?”

Chapter 21. An Unsettling Frankness

It was closer to nine-thirty than nine when they got Kay Spalter’s call on Gurney’s landline. He put it on speakerphone in the den.

“Hey, Kay,” said Hardwick. “How are things in beautiful Bedford Hills?”

“Fabulous.” Her voice was rough, dry, impatient. “You there, Dave?”

“I’m here.”

“You said you were going to have more questions for me?”

He wondered if her abruptness was a way of feeling in control or just a symptom of prison tension. “I’ve got half a dozen of them.”

“Go ahead.”

“Last time we spoke, you mentioned a mob guy, Donny Angel, as someone we should look at for Carl’s murder. The problem is, the hit on Carl seems too complicated for that.”

“What do you mean?” She sounded curious rather than challenging.

“Angel knew him, knew a lot about him. He could have put together an easier hit than a sniper shot at a cemetery service five hundred yards away. So let’s assume for a minute that Angel wasn’t the bad guy. If you had to come up with a second choice, who would it be?”

“Jonah.” She said it without emotion and without hesitation.

“The motive being control of the family company?”

“Control would allow him to mortgage enough properties to expand the Cyberspace Cathedral into the biggest religious rip-off project in the world.”

“How much do you know about this goal of his?”

“Nothing. I’m guessing. My point is, Jonah’s a much bigger sleazeball than anyone realizes, and company control means big money for him. Big. I do know he asked Carl about mortgaging some buildings and Carl told him to go fuck himself.”

“Nice brotherly relationship. Any other candidates for killer?”

“Maybe a hundred other people whose toes Carl stomped on.”

“When I asked you the other day why you stayed with him, you gave me sort of a joke answer. At least, I think it was a joke. I need to know the real reason.”

“Truth is, I don’t know the real reason. I used to search for that mystery glue that attached me to him, but I could never identify it. So maybe I really am a cheap gold digger.”

“Are you sorry he’s dead?”

“Maybe a little.”

“What was your day-to-day relationship like?”

“Generous, patronizing, and controlling on his part.”

“And on yours?”

“Loving, admiring, and submissive. Except when he went too far.”

“And then?”

“Then all hell would break loose.”

“Did you ever threaten him?”

“Yes.”

“In front of witnesses?”

“Yes.”

“Give me an example.”

“There were quite a few.”

“Give me the worst.”

“On our tenth wedding anniversary, Carl invited a few other couples to have dinner with us. He drank too much and got on his favorite drunk theme: ‘You can take the girl out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn out of the girl.’ And that night it escalated into some grandiose bullshit about how he was going to run for president after he became governor of New York, and how I was going to be his link to the common man. He said he was going to be like Juan Peron in Argentina, and I would be his Evita. My job would be to make all the blue-collar workers love him. He added a few sexual suggestions as to how I might go about that. And then he said this really stupid thing. He said I could buy a thousand pairs of shoes, just like Evita.”

“And?”

“For some reason, that was too much. Why was it too much? No idea. But it was too much. Too stupid.”

“And?”

“And I screamed at him that the lady with the thousand pairs of shoes wasn’t Evita Peron, it was Imelda Marcos.”

“That’s it?”

“Not completely. I also said if he ever talked about me like that again, I’d cut off his dick and shove it up his ass.”

Hardwick, who hadn’t uttered a syllable since his question about beautiful Bedford Hills, broke out into a braying laugh, which she ignored.

Gurney switched direction. “How much do you know about silencers for guns?”

“I know that cops call them suppressors, not silencers.”

“What else?”

“They’re illegal in this state. They’re more effective with subsonic ammunition. Cheap ones are okay—expensive ones are a lot better.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I asked at the firing range where I took lessons.”

“Why?”

“Same reason I was there to begin with.”

“Because you thought you might have to shoot someone to protect Carl?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever buy or borrow a silencer?”

“No. They got Carl before I got around to it.”

“ ‘They’ being the mob?”

“Yes. I heard what you said about the sniper route being an odd way for them to go about it. But I still think it was them. More likely them than Jonah.”

He didn’t see any advantage in debating the point. He decided to go down another path. “Apart from Angel, were there any other mob figures he was close to?”

For the first time in their exchange, she hesitated.

After a few seconds Gurney thought they’d been disconnected. “Kay?”

“There was someone he used to talk about, someone who was part of a poker group he played with.”

Gurney noted an uneasiness in her voice. “Did he mention a name?”

“No. He just mentioned what the guy did for a living.”

“Which was?”

“He arranged murders. Sort of like a broker, a go-between. If you wanted someone killed, you’d go to him and he’d get someone to do it.”

“You sound upset talking about him.”

“It bothered me that Carl wanted to play in a high-stakes game with someone who did that for a living. I said to him one day, ‘You really want to play poker against a guy who sets up mob hits? A guy who doesn’t think twice about having someone murdered? Isn’t that a little nuts?’ He told me that I didn’t understand. He said gambling was all about the risk and the rush. And the risk and the rush were a lot bigger when you were sitting across the table from Death.” She paused. “Look, I don’t have much more time. Are we done?”

“Just one more thing. How come there was such a long delay between Mary Spalter’s death and her burial?”

“What delay?”

“She was buried on a Friday. But it appears that she must have died a week before that—or at least before the previous Sunday.”

“What are you talking about? She died on a Wednesday and was buried two days later.”

“Two days? Only two? You’re sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. Look up the obituary. What’s this all about?”

“I’ll let you know when I find out myself.” Gurney glanced over at Hardwick. “Jack, you have anything you need to cover with Kay while we have her on the phone?”

Hardwick shook his head, then spoke with exaggerated heartiness. “Kay, we’ll be in touch with you again soon, okay? And don’t worry. We’re on the right track for the outcome we all want. Everything we’re discovering here is a plus for our side.”

He sounded a hell of a lot surer than he looked.

Chapter 22. The Second Bouquet

After the Kay Spalter call ended, Hardwick maintained an uncharacteristically long silence. He stood staring out the den window, seemingly lost in a series of what-if calculations.

Gurney was sitting at his desk watching him. “Spit it out, Jack. It’ll make you feel better.”

“We need to talk to Lex Bincher. I mean soon. Like now. We’ve got some shit here we need to sort out. I’m thinking that’s Priority Fucking One.”

Gurney smiled. “And I’m thinking Priority One is a visit to the assisted living place where Mary Spalter died.”

Hardwick turned from the window to face Gurney directly. “See? That’s my point. We need to get together with Lex, sit down, have a meeting of the minds before we bust our humps chasing every wild goose that flies by.”

“This one may be more than a wild goose.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“Whoever was casing that apartment on a Sunday—three days before Mary Spalter died—must have known she was going to be dead very soon. Meaning her accidental death was no accident.”

“Whoa, Sherlock, slow down! All of that depends on the dumbest leap of faith I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Faith in Estavio Bolocco’s story?”

“Right. Faith that some car-wash jockey, squatting in a half-gutted building, high on God knows what, can remember the exact day of the week he saw someone walk through an apartment door nine months ago.”

“I’ll grant you there’s a witness reliability issue. But I still think—”

“You call that a ‘witness reliability issue’? I call it fucking nuts!”

Gurney spoke softly. “I hear you. I don’t disagree with you. However, if—and I know it’s a big if—if Mr. Bolocco is right about the day of the week, then the nature of the crime was completely different from the narrative proposed by the prosecutor at Kay’s trial. Jesus, Jack, think about it. Why would Carl’s mother have been killed?”

“This is a waste of time.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Let’s just say, hypothetically, that her death wasn’t an accident. I can think of two ways to approach the question of why she was murdered. One, that she and Carl were both primary targets—equally in the way of the murderer’s goal, whatever that might have been. Or, two, that she was only a stepping-stone—a way to ensure that Carl, the primary target, would be standing out in the open, in that cemetery, at a predictable time.”

The tic was back in full force at the corner of Hardwick’s mouth. Twice he started to speak and stopped. On the third try he said, “This is what you wanted from the start, right? To toss the whole fucking thing up in the air and see what happened when it hit the ground? To take a straight-ahead examination of police misconduct—something as simple as Mick the Dick, CIO, screwing potential suspect Alyssa Spalter—and turn it into the reinvention of the fucking wheel? Already you want to turn one murder into two! Tomorrow it’ll be half a dozen! What the fuck are you trying to do?”

Gurney’s voice grew even softer. “I’m just following the string, Jack.”

“Fuck the string! Jesus! Look, I’m sure that I speak for Lex as well as myself. The point is, we need to focus, focus, focus. Let me make this clear, once and for all. There are only a handful of questions that need to be answered about the investigation of Carl Spalter’s murder and the trial of Kay Spalter. One: What should Mick Klemper have done that he did not do? Two: What should Klemper not have done that he did do? Three: What did Klemper keep from the prosecutor? Four: What did the prosecutor keep from the defense attorney? Five: What should the defense attorney have done that he did not do? Five fucking questions. Get the right answers to those questions, and Kay Spalter’s conviction gets reversed. That’s it, pure and simple. So tell me, are we on the same page here?” Hardwick’s high-blood-pressure complexion was deepening.

“Calm down, my friend. I’m pretty sure we can end up on the same page. Just don’t make it impossible for me to get there.”

Hardwick stared hard and long at Gurney, then shook his head in frustration. “Lex Bincher is fronting the bucks for the investigatory out-of-pockets. If you’re going to spend money on anything beyond getting the answers to those five questions, he’s going to need to approve it in advance.”

“No problem.”

“No problem,” Hardwick echoed vaguely, looking back out the window. “Wish I could believe that, ace.”

Gurney said nothing.

After a while Hardwick sighed wearily. “I’ll fill Bincher in on everything you told me.”

“Good.”

“For Christ’s sake, just don’t … don’t let this …” He didn’t finish the sentence, just shook his head again.

Gurney could sense the strain inherent in Hardwick’s position: desperate to get to a desired destination, horrified by the uncertainties of the proposed route.

Among the various addenda to the case file was the address for the final residence of Mary Spalter—an assisted-living complex on Twin Lakes Road in Indian Valley, not far from Cooperstown, about halfway between Walnut Crossing and Long Falls. Gurney entered the address in his GPS, and an hour later it announced that he was arriving at his destination.

He turned on to a neat macadam driveway that led through a tall drystone wall, then separated at a fork with arrows indicating KEY HOLDERS one way and VISITORS AND DELIVERIES the other way.

The latter direction brought him to a parking area in front of a cedar-shake bungalow. An elegantly understated sign next to a small rose garden bore the inscription EMMERLING OAKS. SECURE SENIOR LIFE COMMUNITY. INQUIRE WITHIN.

He parked and knocked on the door.

A pleasant female voice responded immediately. “Come in.”

He entered a bright, uncluttered office. An attractive woman somewhere in her forties with a tanning-bed complexion was sitting at a polished desk with several comfortable-looking chairs arrayed around it. On the walls were pictures of bungalows in various color and size variations.

After giving him an assessing once-over, the woman smiled. “How can I help you?”

He returned the smile. “I’m not sure. I drove up here on an impulse. Probably just a wild goose chase.”

“Oh?” She looked interested. “What wild goose are you chasing?”

“I’m not even sure about that.”

“Well, then …” she said with an uncertain frown. “What do you want? And who are you?”

“Oh, sorry about that. My name is Dave Gurney.” He took out his wallet, a little awkwardly, and stepped forward to show her his gold shield. “I’m a detective.”

She studied the shield. “It says ‘Retired.’ ”

“I was retired. And now, because of this murder case, it seems that I’ve become un-retired.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you referring to the Spalter murder case?”

“You’re familiar with that?”

“Familiar?” She appeared surprised. “Of course.”

“Because of the news coverage?”

“That, and the personal element.”

“Because the victim’s mother lived here?”

“To some extent, but … Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“I’ve been brought in to take a look at some aspects of the case that were never resolved.”

She gave him a canny look. “Brought in by a family member?”

Gurney nodded and smiled, as if to acknowledge some acuteness on her part.

“Which one?” she asked.

“How many of them do you know?”

“All of them.”

“Kay? Jonah? Alyssa?”

“Kay and Jonah, of course. Carl and Mary when they were alive. Alyssa only by name.”

Gurney was about to ask her how she knew them all when the obvious answer came to mind. For some reason he hadn’t immediately put the name of the place, Emmerling Oaks, together with his recollection from Willow Rest that Emmerling was Carl’s grandfather’s name. Apparently the family company owned more than apartment houses and cemeteries. “How do you like working for Spalter Realty?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You need to answer my question first. Why are you here?”

Gurney had to make a decision fast, based on what his gut told him about this woman, as he weighed the potential risks and rewards of different levels of disclosure. He had little to go on. In fact, just one tiny glimpse of something that he might very well have misread. All he had was the fleeting sense that when she’d spoken the name “Carl” she’d done it with the same distaste as Paulette Purley had.

He made his decision. “Let me put it this way,” he said, lowering his voice to give it the tenor of confidentiality. “There are certain aspects of Kay Spalter’s conviction that are questionable.”

The woman’s reaction was sudden, excited, open-mouthed. “You mean she didn’t do it after all? God, I knew it!”

It encouraged him to open the door a bit wider.

“You didn’t think she was capable of killing Carl?”

“Oh, she was capable of it, all right. But she’d never have done it like that.”

“You mean with a rifle?”

“I mean from so far away.”

“Why not?”

She cocked her head, gave him a skeptical look. “How well do you know Kay?”

“Probably not as well as you do,… Miss?… Mrs.?”

“Carol. Carol Blissy.”

He extended his hand over the desk. “Nice to meet you, Carol. And I really appreciate your taking the time to speak to me.” She took his hand briefly but firmly. Her fingers and palm were warm. He went on, “I’m working with her legal team. I’ve had one face-to-face meeting with Kay and one long phone call. Our meeting gave me a good sense of her as a person, but I have the feeling you know her much better than I do.”

Carol Blissy looked pleased. She absently adjusted the neckline of the black silk blouse she was wearing. She had glittery rings on all five fingers. “When I said she’d never have done it like that, what I meant was that it wasn’t her style. If you know her at all, you know that she’s an in-your-face kind of person. There’s nothing sneaky or long-distance about Kay. If she was going to kill Carl, she wouldn’t have shot him from half a mile away. She’d have walked straight up to him and split his head with an ax.”

She paused, as though listening to her own words, and made a face. “Sorry, that was disgusting. But you do understand what I mean, right?”

“I understand exactly what you mean. I have the same feeling about her.” He paused, looked admiringly at her hand. “Carol, those rings are lovely.”

“Oh?” She looked down at them. “Thank you. I guess they are pretty nice. I think I have a good eye for jewelry.” She moistened the corners of her mouth with the tip of her tongue and looked back up at Gurney from her desk. “You know, you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

He had to make a choice—a choice he’d been postponing—regarding how much to reveal. There were significant risks and rewards attached to various levels of candor. In this instance, the inner picture he was developing of Carol Blissy persuaded him to go a bit further than he normally would. He had a feeling that openness would be rewarded with cooperation.

“It’s a sensitive issue. Not something I could just blurt out without knowing who I was talking to.” He took a deep breath. “We have some new evidence suggesting that Mary Spalter’s death may not have been an accident.”

“Not … an accident?”

“I shouldn’t be saying this, but I want your help, and I need to be honest with you. I think the Spalter case was a double murder. And I don’t think Kay had anything to do with it.”

It seemed to take her a few seconds to absorb this. “You’re going to get her out of prison?”

“That’s my hope.”

“Wonderful!”

“But I need your help.”

“What kind of help?”

“I assume you have security cameras here?”

“Of course.”

“How long do you retain the video files?”

“A lot longer than we need to. In the old days, we had those clunky video cassettes we had to keep recycling. But the capacity of the new system is huge, and we never physically touch it. It deletes the oldest files automatically when capacity becomes an issue, but I don’t think that happens for about a year—at least not with the files from the motion-activated cameras. It’s different with the files created by the cameras that run continuously in the gym and in the nursing care unit. Those deletions happen quicker.”

“Are you the person in charge of making sure it’s all working the way it should?”

She smiled. “I’m the person in charge of everything.” Her ringed fingers smoothed an imaginary wrinkle on the front of her silk blouse.

“I bet you do a very good job.”

“I try. What is it in our video files that interests you?”

“Visitors to Emmerling Oaks on the day Mary Spalter died.”

“Her visitors specifically?”

“No. All visitors: delivery people, repairmen, maintenance crews—anyone who came onto the property that day.”

“How soon do you want it?”

“How soon do you want Kay to get out of prison?”

Gurney knew he was implying an immediacy in results that was, charitably speaking, an exaggeration, even if the video files contained the sort of smoking gun he hoped to find.

Carol set him up at a computer in a room that occupied the rear third of the bungalow. She then went to another building and emailed several large video files to Gurney’s computer. When she came back she gave him some navigation instructions, leaning over his shoulder in a way that made it hard to concentrate.

As she was about to return to the front office, he asked again as offhandedly as he could, “How do you like working for Spalter Realty?”

“I probably shouldn’t say anything about that.” She gave Gurney the kind of playful look that suggested she probably could be talked into any number of things she shouldn’t do.

“It would help me a lot to know how you feel about the Spalter family.”

“I do want to help. But … this is just between us, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well … Kay was terrific. Hot tempered but terrific. But Carl was awful. Cold as ice. All he cared about was the bottom line. And Carl was the boss. Jonah stayed away, because Jonah wanted nothing to do with Carl.”

“And now?”

“Now, with Carl gone, Jonah’s in charge.” She looked at Gurney cautiously. “I don’t know him that well yet.”

“I don’t know him at all, Carol. But I’ll tell you the things I’ve heard. He’s a saint. He’s a fake. He’s a fantastic person. He’s a religious nut. Is there anything you can add to any of that?”

She met Gurney’s inquisitive gaze and smiled. “I don’t think so.” She licked the corners of her mouth again. “I’m really the wrong person to ask about guys like that. I’m not what you’d call religious.”

Over the next three hours Gurney reviewed the video files from the three security cameras he considered most likely to have captured something useful—the cameras positioned to provide coverage of the parking area, of the interior of Carol Blissy’s office, and of vehicles utilizing the automated entry gate for residents.

The videos from the parking area and office were the most interesting. There was a painting contractor who got Gurney’s attention by seeming to play the role of a cartoon painter, stopping just short of stepping in a bucket of paint and falling on his face. There was a pizza deliveryman with wild eyes who seemed to be auditioning for the role of a teen-movie psychopath. And then there was a floral delivery person.

Gurney replayed half a dozen times the two short video segments in which that individual appeared. The first showed a dark blue minivan pulling into the parking area—nondescript, except for a sign on the driver’s door: FLOWERS BY FLORENCE. The second, with audio, showed the driver entering Carol’s office, announcing a delivery of flowers—chrysanthemums—for a Mrs. Marjorie Stottlemeyer, and asking for and receiving directions to her condo unit.

The driver was small and frail-looking—just how small was hard to tell from the high, distorting angle of the camera—wearing tight jeans, a leather jacket, a scarf, a headband, and wraparound sunglasses. Despite repeated viewings, Gurney couldn’t say for sure whether the thin little person was a man or a woman. But something else did become clearer with each viewing: despite the mention of only one name, two bouquets of mums were being delivered.

He went and got Carol Blissy from the front office and replayed the segment for her.

Her mouth opened in surprise. “Oh, that one!” She pulled a chair over and sat quite close to Gurney. “Play it again.”

When he did so, she nodded. “I remember that one.”

“You remember … him?” asked Gurney. “Or was it a her?”

“Funny you should ask. That’s exactly what I remember, that question in my mind. The voice, the movements, they didn’t seem quite like a man’s or a woman’s.”

“What do you mean?”

“More like … a little … pixie. That’s it—a pixie. That’s the closest I can come to it.”

The echo of Bolo’s use of the word petite struck Gurney. “You directed this person to a particular condo, correct?”

“Yes, to Marjorie Stottlemeyer’s.”

“Do you know if the flowers were actually delivered to her?”

“Yes. Because she called me later about it. There was some problem about them, but I can’t remember now what it was.”

“Does she still live here?”

“Oh, yes. People come here to stay. The only turnover is when a resident passes away.”

Gurney wondered how many of those who passed away ended up in Willow Rest. But he had more urgent questions to resolve. “How well do you know this Stottlemeyer woman?”

“What do you want to know about her?”

“How good is her memory? And would she be willing to answer a few questions?”

Carol Blissy appeared intrigued. “Marjorie is ninety-three years old, clear as a bell, and very gossipy.”

“Perfect,” said Gurney, turning toward her. Her perfume was subtle, with the slightest hint of roses. “It would be a big help if you could call her, tell her that a detective has been asking questions about the person who delivered those flowers to her last November, and he’d appreciate a few minutes of her time.”

“I can do that.” She stood, her hand just grazing his back as she passed him on her way out to the front office.

Three minutes later she returned with the phone. “Marjorie says she’s just about to take a bath, and then she’s going to take her nap, and after that she’ll be getting ready for dinner, but she can speak to you on the phone right now.”

Gurney gave Carol a thumbs-up and took the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Stottlemeyer?”

“Call me Marjorie.” Her voice was high and sharp. “Carol tells me you’re after that peculiar little creature who brought me the mystery bouquet. What for?”

“It could be nothing, or it could be something quite serious. When you say he brought you a ‘mystery bouquet,’ what did—”

“Murder? Is that it?”

“Marjorie, I hope you understand, at this point I have to be careful about what I say.”

“Then it is murder. Oh, my Lord! I knew there was something wrong from the beginning.”

“From the beginning?”

“Those mums. I didn’t order anything. There was no gift card. And anyone who ever knew me well enough to send me flowers is already senile or dead.”

“Was there just one bouquet?”

“What do you mean, just one?”

“Just one bunch of flowers, not two?”

“Two? Why in heaven’s name would I get two? One was ridiculous enough. How many admirers do you think I have?”

“Thank you, Marjorie, this is very helpful. One more question. The ‘peculiar little creature,’ as you put it, who delivered your flowers—was it a man or a woman?”

“I’m ashamed to say, I don’t know. That’s the problem with getting old. In the world I grew up in, there was a real difference between men and women. Vive la différence! Did you ever hear that? That’s French.”

“Did the creature ask you any questions?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Any questions at all.”

“No questions. Didn’t say much of anything. ‘Flowers for you.’ Something like that. Squeaky little voice. Funny nose.”

“Funny how?”

“Sharp. Like a beak.”

“Anything else odd that you can remember?”

“No, that’s it. Hooked beak of a nose.”

“How tall?”

“My height, at the most. Maybe even an inch or two shorter.”

“And your height would be …?”

“Exactly sixty-two inches. Five foot two, eyes of blue. My eyes, not his. His were hidden behind sunglasses. Not a speck of sun that day, mind you. But sunglasses aren’t for the sun anymore, are they? They’re a fashion item. Did you know that? A fashion item.”

“Thank you for your time, Marjorie. You’ve been a great help. I’ll be in touch.”

Gurney broke the connection and handed the phone back to Carol.

She blinked. “Now I remember what the problem was.”

“What problem?”

“What Marjorie called me about that day. It was to ask if the delivery person had left a gift card by mistake at the desk. Because there wasn’t any with the flowers. But what was that question you were asking about the number of bouquets, whether there was one or two?”

“If you look closely at the video,” said Gurney, “you’ll see that those chrysanthemums were in two separate wrappings. Two bouquets were being delivered here, not one.”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It means that the ‘little creature’ made a second stop on the property after he saw Mrs. Stottlemeyer.”

“Or before seeing her, because she said he only had one bouquet with him.”

“I’d be willing to bet that the other bouquet was stashed temporarily outside her door.”

“Why?”

“Because I think our little creature came here to kill Mary Spalter, and he brought the second bouquet along to give him a cover story for knocking on her door—and to give her a reason to open it.”

“I don’t follow you. Why not just bring one bouquet—and tell me that he was delivering it to Mrs. Spalter? Why bring Marjorie Stottlemeyer into it at all? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I think it does. If there was a record in your visitors’ log of a delivery being made to Mary Spalter shortly before her death, the whole affair might have been looked into more carefully. It was evidently important to the killer that Mary’s death appear to be accidental. And it worked. I suspect there wasn’t even a thorough autopsy.”

Her mouth was open. “So … you’re saying … we really did have a murderer here … in my office … and in Marjorie’s house … and …”

Suddenly she looked vulnerable, frightened. And just as suddenly, Gurney was filled with a fear that he was doing what he’d warned himself against: He was moving much too fast. He was making assumptions on top of assumptions and mistaking them for rational conclusions. And another troubling question came to mind. Why was he spelling out his murder hypothesis to this woman? Was he trying to scare her? Observe her reaction? Or did he just want to have someone ratify the way he was connecting the dots—as if that would prove he was right?

But what if he was connecting the wrong dots, creating the wrong picture entirely? What if the so-called dots were just random isolated events? At times like this he always recalled, uneasily, that everyone on earth at a particular latitude sees the same stars in the sky. But no two cultures see the same constellations. He’d seen evidence of the phenomenon again and again: The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.

Chapter 23. Click

In an uncertain and uncomfortable frame of mind, Gurney pulled into the first convenience store parking lot he reached after leaving Emmerling Oaks.

He bought a large strong coffee, plus a couple of granola bars to compensate for the lunch he hadn’t had, and retreated to his car. He ate one of the granola bars—which turned out to be hard, tasteless, and sticky. He tossed the other one in his glove compartment for some moment of more desperate hunger and took a few swallows of lukewarm coffee.

Then he got down to business.

Before he left Carol Blissy’s office, he’d downloaded the floral delivery video files to his phone, and now he sent the office segment to Bolo’s cell number with a cover text message: “Does the little person with the flowers remind you of anyone?”

He sent the same video material to Hardwick with a message saying: “Individual carrying the flowers may be a person of interest in the Spalter case—a possible link between the deaths of Mary and Carl. More to come.”

He watched the parking area segment of the video again, confirming his impression of the sign on the minivan door: that it wasn’t painted directly on the vehicle but was the removable magnetic kind. Also, that there was only one sign and that it was on the driver’s-side door rather than the passenger’s-side door—an odd choice, since under most circumstances it is the passenger door that is more visible to the public. It was a choice that made sense, however, if the driver wanted to be able to remove it quickly, without having to stop.

There was no phone number on the sign. He did an Internet search for “Flowers by Florence” and found several businesses by that name, but none within a hundred miles of Emmerling Oaks. Neither fact surprised him.

He finished his coffee, now less than lukewarm, and headed for Walnut Crossing—feeling both energized and frustrated by what he viewed as the case’s two main oddities: the light pole obstruction that seemed to turn the shooter’s supposed location into an impossibility, and a relatively simple murder objective combined with an MO that seemed way too complicated.

Someone shot Carl the way Oswald shot Kennedy. Not the way wives shoot their husbands. Not the way mob guys settle their disputes. It seemed to Gurney that the objective could have been accomplished in a dozen easier ways—ways that would have involved a hell of a lot less planning, coordination, and precision than a five-hundred-yard sniper shot fired at a funeral ceremony across a river with a silenced rifle from inside a building full of squatters. Assuming, of course, that the shot came from somewhere in that building to begin with. From a window with a clean line of sight to Carl Spalter’s temple. And speaking of complications, why kill Carl’s mother first? The most obvious reason, given the outcome, would be to get Carl into the cemetery. But what if that murder was for another reason entirely?

Turning these tangled questions over in his mind on the way home made the hour-long trip disappear. Immersed in possible explanations and linkages, he was barely aware of where he was, until, at the top of the mountain road that dead-ended into his property, the text message ring of his phone brought his attention back to his surroundings. He continued up through the sloping pasture to the house before checking the screen. It was the reply from Bolo that he’d been hoping for: “yes yes. same shades. funny noze. the pisser man.”

As questionable as the witness might be—Hardwick would surely make that point again—this confirmation (of sorts) that the odd little character had been present at both events gave Gurney his first sense of solidity about the case. It was little more than the clicking together of the first two pieces of a five-hundred-piece puzzle, but it felt good.

A click was a click. And the first click had a special power.

Chapter 24. All the Trouble in the World

Entering the kitchen, Gurney saw a plastic shopping bag, bulging with angular objects, and a note from Madeleine on the sideboard.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day. I picked up some things from the hardware store so we could get started on the house for the chickens. Okay? My schedule got moved around today, so I came home for a couple of hours, now have to return to the clinic. Won’t be home tonight till around seven. You should go ahead and eat first. There’s stuff in the fridge. Love—M.

He looked into the bag, saw a retractable metal tape measure, a large ball of yellow nylon string, two canvas carpenter’s aprons, two carpenter’s pencils, a yellow legal pad, two pairs of work gloves, two bubble levels, and a handful of metal spikes for laying out corner positions.

Whenever Madeleine took a concrete step toward a project that would require his participation, his first reaction was always dismay. But due to their recent discussion of his relentless focus on blood and mayhem—or perhaps due to the intimacy they shared following that discussion—he tried to view the coop project more positively.

Perhaps a shower would put him in the right frame of mind.

Half an hour later he returned to the kitchen—refreshed, hungry, and feeling a bit better about Madeleine’s eagerness to get the chicken coop started. In fact, he felt revitalized enough to take the first step. He took the hardware store items from the sideboard, got a hammer from the mudroom, and went out onto the patio. He eyed the area where Madeleine had indicated she wanted the coop and fenced-in run to be located—an area between the asparagus and the big apple tree, where Horace and his little flock of hens would be visible from the breakfast table. Where Horace could crow happily and establish his territory.

Gurney went over to the asparagus patch—a raised planting bed enclosed by four-by-four timbers—and laid Madeleine’s purchases out on the grass next to it. He took the yellow pad and a pencil and roughed in the positions of the raised bed, the patio, and the apple tree. Then he paced off the approximate dimensions of the coop and run.

As he was getting the metal tape measure so he could be more precise about the distances, he heard the house phone ringing. He left his pad and pencil on the patio and went inside to the den. It was Hardwick.

“So who’s the fucking midget?”

“Good question. All I can tell you is that he—I’ve been told it’s a he—was in Mary Spalter’s retirement community the day she died, and in that Long Falls apartment house five days before Carl Spalter was shot and again on the day he was shot.”

“Is this something Klemper should have known?”

“Estavio Bolocco says he told Klemper that he saw him in the apartment on both occasions. That should have alerted Klemper to something—at least raised a question about the timing of the mother’s death.”

“But there’s no witness to that conversation between Klemper and Bolocco, right?”

“Not unless Freddie, the trial witness, was there. But, like I told you before, he disappeared.”

Hardwick sighed loudly. “Without corroboration, this supposed conversation between Klemper and Bolocco is useless.”

“Bolocco’s recognition of the person in the Emmerling Oaks security video connects the deaths of the mother and the son. That sure as hell isn’t useless.”

“By itself it doesn’t prove police misconduct—which makes it useless for the purpose of the appeal, which is our only purpose, which is something I keep telling you, which you seem to be fucking deaf to.”

“And what you’re deaf to is—”

“I know—I’m deaf to justice, deaf to guilt and innocence. Is that your point?”

“Okay, Jack, I have to go now. I’ll keep passing along whatever useless stuff I turn up.” There was a silence. “By the way, you might want to check on the status of the other people who testified against Kay. Be interesting to see how many of them are locatable.”

Hardwick said nothing.

Gurney ended the call.

Glancing at the clock and seeing that it was nearly six reminded him that he was hungry. He went into the kitchen and made himself a cheese omelet.

Eating calmed him. It took away most of the tension arising from the ongoing collisions between his approach to the case and Hardwick’s. Gurney had made it clear from the beginning that if the man wanted his help, it was going to be provided on Gurney’s terms. That aspect of the arrangement was not going to change. Neither, it seemed, was Hardwick’s unhappiness with it.

As he stood at the sink washing his omelet pan, his eyes grew heavy and the idea of a quick nap became very attractive. He’d just lie down for one of those restorative twelve-minute dips into semi-sleep that he’d relied on to get through double shifts in his NYPD days. He dried his hands, went into the bedroom, put his phone on the night table, took off his shoes, stretched out on top of the bedspread, and closed his eyes.

His phone awakened him.

He sensed immediately that his nap had far exceeded its intended twelve minutes. In fact, the clock by the bed said it was 7:32 p.m. He’d been asleep for more than an hour.

The ID said it was Kyle Gurney.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad! You sound sleepy. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No problem. Where are you? What’s up?”

“I’m here in my apartment watching this special legal-issues interview show? Criminal Conflict? There’s this lawyer being interviewed who keeps mentioning your name.”

“What? What lawyer?”

“Some guy by the name of Bincher. Rex, Lex, something like that?”

“On television?”

“On your favorite channel. RAM-TV. Simultaneous webcast on their website.”

Gurney grimaced. Even if he hadn’t had such horrendous trouble with RAM-TV during the Good Shepherd investigation, the idea that anyone was talking about him on the trashiest, most slanted cable news channel in the history of broadcasting would have been repellent. And what the hell was Bincher up to, anyway?

“This thing with the lawyer is on right now?”

“As we speak. A friend of mine happened to be watching it and heard them mention the name Gurney. So he called me, and I turned it on. Just go to their website and click on the ‘Live Stream’ button.”

Gurney got up from the bed, hurried into the den, and followed Kyle’s instructions on his laptop—alternately speculating on Bincher’s likely game and reliving the experience he’d had with RAM-TV’s creepy programming chief just a few months earlier.

On his third try he got to the program. The screen showed two men sitting in angular chairs on opposite sides of a low table that held a pitcher of water and two glasses. At the base of the screen, white letters on a bold red stripe spelled out CRIMINAL CONFLICT. Below that, moving letters on a blue stripe appeared to be scrolling an endless series of panicky news flashes about every form of turmoil, disaster, and disagreement in the world—a terrorist nuclear threat, a toxic tilapia scare, a celebrity altercation involving colliding Porsches.

Holding a few sheets of paper in his hand, looking seriously concerned in the vacuous style of TV interviewers everywhere, the man on the left was leaning toward the man on the right. Gurney had tuned in as the interviewer was in midsentence:

“… quite an indictment of the system, Lex, if I may use that legal term.”

The man across the table, already leaning forward himself, leaned farther forward. He was smiling, but the expression appeared to be nothing more than a perfunctory baring of unfriendly teeth. His voice was sharp, nasal, and loud. “Brian, in all my years of criminal defense experience, I’ve never encountered a more egregious example of rotten police work. An absolute subversion of justice.”

Brian looked appalled. “You’d started itemizing some of the problems just before the break, Lex. Crime scene contradictions, perjury, missing records of witness interviews—”

“And now you can add to that at least one missing witness. I just got a text message on that subject from a member of my investigatory team. Plus sexual misconduct with a possible suspect. Plus a gross failure to examine obvious alternate scenarios for the murder—such as a fatal falling-out with organized crime, other members of the same family with bigger and better motives for murder than Kay Spalter, or even a politically motivated assassination. In fact, Brian, I’m on the verge of requesting a special prosecutor to look into what may be a massive criminal cover-up of a tainted prosecution. It’s incredible to me that the whole organized crime possibility was never pursued.”

The interviewer, his face a picture of empty-headed consternation, gestured with the papers in his hand. “So what you’re saying here, Lex, is that this troubling situation could be a lot bigger than anyone thought?”

“That’s an understatement, Brian! I can see some major law enforcement careers going up in flames! Everyone from the state police to the DA could be heading for a legal ripsaw! And I’m not afraid to turn it on!”

“It seems like you managed to uncover a lot of damaging facts in a very short time. You mentioned earlier that you’d recruited a star detective from the NYPD, Dave Gurney, to work with you—the same detective who recently tore the official version of the Good Shepherd case to shreds. Is Dave Gurney the one responsible for your new information?”

“Let me put it this way, Brian. I’m running a powerful team. I’m calling the shots, and I’ve got great people executing the plays. Gurney has the best homicide clearance record in the history of the NYPD. And I have him working with the ideal partner, Jack Hardwick—a detective who was forced out of the state police for helping Gurney discover the truth about the Good Shepherd. The stuff we’re coming up with is pure dynamite—one bombshell after another. Let me tell you—with their help, I plan to blow the Spalter case sky high.”

“Lex, you just delivered the perfect closing line. And now we’re about out of time. Thanks so much for joining us this evening. This is Brian Bork for Criminal Conflict, your nightly ringside seat at today’s most explosive legal battles!”

A voice from behind Gurney startled him.

“What are you watching?”

It was Madeleine. She was standing in the den doorway.

“You look wet,” he said.

“It just started raining. Didn’t you notice?”

“I got sucked into this, in more ways than one.” He gestured toward the computer.

She came into the room, frowning at the screen. “What was he just saying about you?”

“Nothing good.”

“He sounded complimentary.”

“Compliments are not always good things to get. Everything depends on the source.”

“Who was talking?”

“The loose-cannon lawyer Hardwick got for Kay Spalter.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t like hearing my name advertised on TV, especially not by an egomaniac and not in that tone.”

Madeleine looked concerned. “Do you think he’s putting you in danger?”

What he was thinking, but didn’t say for fear of alarming her, was that the playing field had a precarious tilt when a murderer had your ID before you had his. He shrugged. “I don’t like publicity. I don’t like case scenarios being blabbed to the media. I don’t like wild exaggerations. And I especially don’t like loudmouthed, self-promoting lawyers.”

There was another aspect of his reaction that he didn’t mention: an underlying sense of excitement. Although his negative comments were all true, he had to admit, if only to himself, that a loose cannon like Bincher had a way of shaking things up, of provoking revealing responses from interested parties.

“You’re sure that’s all that’s bothering you?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

She gave him a long, worried, You didn’t really answer my question look.

Gurney had decided to wait until morning to call Hardwick about Bincher’s over-the-top media performance.

Now, at 8:30 a.m., he decided to wait a little longer—at least until he had his coffee. Madeleine was already at the breakfast table. He brought his cup over and sat across from her. As soon as he did, the landline phone rang. He bounced back up and went into the den to answer it.

“Gurney here.” It was his old NYPD way of identifying himself—which he thought he’d gotten over.

The hoarse, low, almost sleepy voice on the other end wasn’t familiar.

“Hello, Mr. Gurney. My name is Adonis Angelidis.” The speaker paused, as if expecting some word of recognition. When Gurney offered none, he went on. “I understand you’re working with a man named Bincher. Is that true?”

Now he had Gurney’s full attention, electrically charged by his recollection of what Kay Spalter told him about the man known as “Donny Angel.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Why do I ask? Because of that TV program he was on. Bincher mentioned your name with great prominence. You’re aware of this, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You’re an investigator, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a famous guy, right?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“That’s pretty funny. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ I like that. Very modest man.”

“What do you want, Mr. Angelidis?”

“I don’t want nothing. I believe I can help you with things you need to know.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things that should be discussed face-to-face. I could save you a lot of trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“All the trouble in the world. And time. I could save you time. A lot of time. Time is very valuable. We only got so much of it. You know what I mean?”

“Okay, Mr. Angelidis. I need to know what this is about.”

“About? It’s about your big case. When I listened to Bincher on the TV, I said to myself, ‘This is bullshit, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.’ Some of the shit he said, it’s gonna waste your time, make you crazy. So I want to do you a favor, set you straight.”

“Set me straight about what?”

“About who killed Carl Spalter. You want to know that, right?”

Chapter 25. Fat Gus

Gurney made his planned call to Hardwick, leaving out any assault on Bincher’s personal style. After all, he was going to have a meeting with Donny Angel at two o’clock that afternoon in a Long Falls restaurant—a meeting that could change everything—and it had obviously been motivated by Bincher’s performance.

After listening to Gurney’s summary of the phone call from Angel, Hardwick asked without much enthusiasm if he wanted some backup or if he wanted to be wired—just in case things in the restaurant started going south.

Gurney turned down both offers. “He’ll assume the possibility of backup, and the assumption is as good as the reality. As for the wire, he’ll assume that too and take whatever precautions he needs to.”

“You get any sense of what his game is?”

“Only that he’s upset by the direction he thinks we’re taking and he wants to head it off.”

Hardwick cleared his throat. “An obvious concern would be Lex’s suggestion that Carl might have been whacked because of a falling-out with someone in the mob.”

“Speaking of which, his shotgun approach to the case seems a hell of a lot broader than your ‘focus, focus, focus’ advice to me.”

“Fuck you, Sherlock. You’re purposely not getting the point. The point is, he’s bringing up scenarios that Klemper should have explored but failed to. Everything Lex said goes to the point of a dishonest, incompetent, prejudiced investigation. That’s it. That’s the point of the appeal. He’s not saying that you should start digging into all the crap he’s mentioning—only that Klemper didn’t.”

“Okay, Jack. New subject. Your friend in BCI—Esti Moreno? Can she get a look at the autopsy report on Mary Spalter?”

Hardwick hesitated. “What do you expect it to say?”

“It’ll say the cause of death was consistent with an accidental fall, but I’ll bet that the description of bone and tissue damage is also consistent with the blunt force trauma you’d expect if someone grabbed her by the hair and bashed her head against the edge of the bathtub.”

“Which won’t prove that it wasn’t just a hard fall. So what then?”

“Then I’ll just keep following the string.”

After ending the call to Hardwick, Gurney checked the time and saw that he had a couple of free hours before he’d have to leave for Long Falls. Feeling he should take some action on the chicken coop project, he put on a pair of rubber gardening boots and went out the side door to the area that he’d started measuring the previous day.

He was surprised to find Madeleine already there, holding the metal tape measure. She had one end of it hooked over the low retaining wall of the asparagus bed and was slowly backing up toward the apple tree. When she was nearly there, the end came loose and the tape went skittering along the ground, rewinding itself into the case in her hand.

“Damn!” she said. “Third time that’s happened.”

Gurney walked over, picked up the end, and pulled it back to the bed wall. “Is this where you want it?” he asked.

She nodded, looking relieved. “Thank you.”

For the next hour and a half he assisted with measurements for the coop and the run, helped hammer in corner stakes, squared the diagonals, and only once in the course of this work did he question one of Madeleine’s decisions. It was when she laid out the position of the run in a way that would result in a large forsythia bush being inside the fence instead of outside. He thought it was a mistake to let a bush take up so much of the fenced space. But she said that the chickens would like having a bush in their run because although they loved being outside, they were also fond of shade and shelter. It made them feel secure.

As she was explaining this, he could sense how much she cared about it. He felt a little envious of this remarkable ability of hers to focus on and care deeply about whatever was in front of her. So many different things seemed to matter to her. He had the rather silly-sounding thought that perhaps what mattered in life was that things mattered—a lot of things. There was something almost surreal in this thought, which he attributed partly to the odd weather. It was distinctly cool for August, with an autumnal haze in the air and an earthy fragrance rising from the wet grass. It made what was happening for that brief moment seem more like a soft-edged dream than the prickly reality of daily life.

Aegean Odyssey, the restaurant where he was meeting Adonis “Donny Angel” Angelidis, was on Axton Avenue, less than three blocks from the apartment building on which the investigation had centered. The two-hour drive from Walnut Crossing had been uneventful. Parking, as on his previous visit, was no problem. He found a spot within fifty feet of the restaurant door. He was exactly on time: two p.m.

It was quiet inside, and almost empty. Only one of the twenty or so tables was occupied, and that by a solitary old man reading a Greek newspaper. The interior decor featured the typical Greek blues and whites. The walls were accented with colorful ceramic tiles. There was a mixed aroma of oregano, marjoram, roast lamb, strong coffee.

A young waiter with dark eyes approached him. “Can I help you?”

“My name is Gurney. I’m meeting Mr. Angelidis.”

“Of course. Please.” He led the way to a partitioned area at the back of the room. Then he stepped aside and gestured toward a booth that could have accommodated six people but had only one occupant—a heavyset man with a large head and coarse gray hair.

The man had the flat, crooked nose of a boxer. His thick shoulders suggested he had once been quite powerful, perhaps still was. The expression on his face was dominated by deeply etched lines of sourness and distrust. He held a fat stack of dollar bills and was counting them out onto a neat pile on the table. There was a gold Rolex on his wrist. He looked up. His mouth smiled without losing any of its sourness.

“Thank you for coming. I’m Adonis Angelidis.” His voice was low and hoarse, as if there were calluses on his vocal chords from a lifetime of shouting. “Forgive me for not rising to greet you, Mr. Gurney. My back is … not so good. Please sit.” Despite his hoarseness, his articulation was oddly precise, as if he was choosing each syllable with care.

Gurney sat directly across from him. There were several plates of food on the table.

“The kitchen is closed, but I asked them to make special a few things, so you could choose. All very good. You know Greek food?”

“Moussaka, souvlaki, baklava. That’s about it.”

“Ah. Well. Let me explain.” He laid his stack of bills on the table and began pointing at and describing in detail the contents of each dish—spanakopita, salata melitzanes, kalamaria tiganita, arni yahni, garithes me feta. There was also a small bowl of cured olives, a basket of crusty sliced bread, and a large bowl of fresh purple figs.

“I invite you to pick whatever appeals to you, or take a bit from each. All very good.”

“Thank you. I’ll try a fig.” Gurney took one and bit into it.

Angelidis watched him with interest.

Gurney nodded his approval. “You’re right. It’s very good.”

“Of course. You take your time. Relax. We talk when you are ready.”

“We can talk now.”

“Okay. I must ask you something. Somebody told me about you. You are an expert at murders. This is true? I mean, of course, solving murders, not doing them.” The mouth smiled again. The heavily lidded eyes remained watchful. “This is what you care about?”

“Yes.”

“Good. No Organized Crime Task Force bullshit, right?”

“My focus is homicide. I try not to let other issues get in the way.”

“Good. Very good. We have common ground maybe. Maybe ground for cooperation. You think so, Mr. Gurney?”

“I hope so.”

“So. You want to know about Carl?”

“Yes.”

“You know Greek tragedy?”

“Excuse me?”

“Sophocles. You know Sophocles?”

“To some extent. Only what I remember from college.”

Angelidis leaned forward, resting his heavy forearms on the table. “Greek tragedy had a simple idea. A great truth: A man’s strength is also his weakness. This is most brilliant. Do you agree?”

“I can see how it could be true.”

“Good. Because this truth is what killed Carl.” He paused, gazing hard into Gurney’s eyes. “You wonder what the hell am I talking about, right?”

Gurney said nothing, took another bite of the fig, held Angelidis’s gaze, and waited.

“A simple thing. A tragic thing. Carl’s great strength was the speed of his mind reaching a conclusion and his willingness to act. You understand what I say? Very fast, no fear. A great strength. A man like that achieves many things, great things. But this strength was also his weakness. Why? Because this great strength has no patience. This strength must eliminate obstruction immediately. You understand?”

“Carl wanted something. Somebody got in his way. What happened then?”

“He decided, of course, to eliminate the obstruction. This was his way.”

“What did he do?”

“I heard that he wanted to put out a contract through a certain individual to have the obstruction eliminated. I tell him he should wait, take smaller steps. I ask if there is anything I can do. I ask this like a father to a son. He tells me no, the problem is outside my … my area of business … and I shouldn’t be involved.”

“You’re telling me he wanted to have someone killed, but not by you?”

“According to the rumor, he went to a man who arranges things like that.”

“Did the man have a name?”

“Gus Gurikos.”

“A professional?”

“A manager. A talent agent. You understand? You tell Fat Gus what you want, you agree on the price, you give him information he needs, he takes it from there. No more problem for you. He manages everything, hires the best talent—you don’t need to know nothing. Better that way. Lot of funny stories about Fat Gus. Someday I tell you.”

Gurney had heard enough funny stories about mob guys to last a lifetime. “So Carl Spalter paid Fat Gus to hire the appropriate talent to remove someone who got in his way?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Very interesting, Mr. Angelidis. How does the story end?”

“Carl was too fast. And Fat Gus wasn’t fast enough.”

“Meaning what?”

“Only one thing could have happened. The guy Carl was in such a rush to have removed must have found out about the contract before Gus passed it on to the hitter. And he took action first. Preemptive strike, right? Gets rid of Carl before Carl gets rid of him.”

“What does your friend Gus say about this?”

“Gus don’t say shit. Gus can’t say shit. Gus got hit too—that Friday, same day as Carl.”

This was a big piece of news. “You’re saying the target found out that Carl hired Gus to set up a hit, but before Gus could make it happen, the target turns around and hits them both?”

“You got it. Preemptive strike.”

Gurney nodded slowly. It was certainly a possibility. He took another bite out of the fig.

Angelidis continued with some enthusiasm. “So this makes your job real simple. Just find out who Carl wanted hit, and you got the guy who turned around and hit Carl.”

“Would you have any idea who that might be?”

“No. This is important for you to know. So you listen to me now. What happened to Carl got nothing to do with me. Got nothing to do with my business interests.”

“How do you know that?”

“I knew Carl pretty good. If it was something I could take care of, he would have come to me. Point is, he went to Fat Gus. So it was a personal thing for him, nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with my business.”

“Fat Gus didn’t work for you?”

“Didn’t work for nobody. Fat Gus was independent. Provided services to various customers. Better that way.”

“So you have absolutely no idea who—”

“No idea.” Angelidis gave Gurney a long, straight look. “If knew, I would tell you.”

“Why would you tell me?”

“Whoever hit Carl fucked things up for me. I don’t like when people fuck things up for me. Makes me want to fuck things up for them. You understand?”

Gurney smiled. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, right?”

Angelidis’s expression sharpened. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

The question and its intensity surprised him. “It’s a verse from the Bible, a way to achieve justice by matching—”

“I know the fucking saying. But why did you say it?”

“You asked me if I understood your desire to get even with whoever killed Carl and Gus.”

He seemed to be thinking about this. “You don’t know nothing about the hit on Gus?”

“No. Why?”

He was silent for several seconds, watching Gurney intently. “Very sick shit. You didn’t hear nothing about that?”

“Zero. Didn’t know the man existed, didn’t know he died.”

Angelidis nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll tell you this, because maybe it helps. There was a Friday-night poker game Gus always held at his house. The Friday Carl got hit, the guys show up, nobody answers the door. They ring, knock. Nobody comes. This never happens. They think maybe Gus is taking a crap. They wait. Ring, knock—no Gus. They try the door. Door’s unlocked. Go in. Find Gus.” He paused, looked like he was tasting something unpleasant. “I don’t like talking about this. It’s sick shit, you know? I believe that all business should be reasonable. Not like this crazy shit.” He shook his head and adjusted the position of some of the dishes on the table. “Gus is sitting in his underwear in front of his TV. Got a nice bottle of retsina on the coffee table, half-full wineglass, a little bread, taramasalata in a bowl. Nice lunch. But …”

“But he was dead?” Gurney prompted.

“Dead? He was real dead. Dead with a fucking four-inch nail hammered into each eye, into each ear, right into his fucking brain, and a fifth one through his fucking throat. Five fucking nails.” He paused, studying Gurney’s face. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering why none of this made it into the news.”

“Organized Crime Task Force.” Angelidis looked like the words were making him want to spit. “OCTF dropped down on it like a pile of shit. No obituary, no funeral notice, no nothing. Kept all the details to themselves. Can you believe that? You know why they keep this stuff secret?”

Gurney wasn’t really being asked a question, so he didn’t answer.

Angelidis sucked loudly at his teeth before continuing. “They keep it secret because it makes them feel like they know something. Like they know secret shit nobody else knows. Makes them feel like they got power. Got classified information. You know what they got? They got shit for brains and toothpicks for dicks.” He glanced at his big gold Rolex and smiled. “Okay? It’s getting late. I hope this helps you.”

“It’s all very interesting. I have one last question.”

“Sure.” Angelidis looked again at his watch.

“How well did you get along with Carl?”

“Beautiful. Like a son to me.”

“No problems?”

“No problems.”

“You weren’t bothered by all those ‘scum of the earth’ speeches he made?”

“Bothered? What do you mean?”

“In press interviews he called people in your line of business the scum of the earth. And a lot of other unpleasant things. How’d you feel about that?”

“Felt it was pretty smart. Good way to get elected.” He pointed at the bowl of olives. “They’re very good. My cousin in Mykonos sends them to me special. Take some home to your wife.”

Chapter 26. Not a Fucking Chess Match

When Gurney arrived at the end of the mountain road that led to his property, he was surprised to discover a large black SUV parked by the barn. He lowered his window at the mailbox and found that Madeleine had already emptied it. Then he drove slowly over to the shiny Escalade and stopped in front of it.

Its door opened. The man who emerged had the bulky physique of a football lineman. He also had a shaved head, unfriendly bloodshot eyes, and a rictus-like grin. “Mr. Gurney?”

Gurney returned the empty smile. “What can I do for you?”

“My name is Mick Klemper. That mean anything to you?”

“CIO on the Spalter case?”

“Right.” He took out his wallet, flipped it open to his Bureau of Criminal Investigation ID. In the younger photo displayed on the laminated card, he looked like mindless muscle for the Irish mob.

“What are you doing here?”

Klemper blinked, the grin wavered. “We need to talk—before this thing you’re involved in gets out of hand.”

“This thing I’m involved in?”

“This bullshit with Bincher. Do you know about him?”

“Do I know what about him?”

“What a scumbag he is?”

Gurney thought about this for a moment. “Did someone send you here, or is this your idea?”

“I’m trying to do you a favor. Can we talk?”

“Sure. Talk.”

“I mean, friendly. Like we’re on the same side of the street.”

The man’s eyes radiated danger. But Gurney’s curiosity outweighed his caution. He turned off the engine and got out of his car. “What do you want to tell me?”

“This Jew lawyer you’re working for, he’s made a career out of smearing cops—you aware of that?” Klemper reeked of mints overlaying a sour miasma of alcohol.

“I’m not working for anybody.”

“That’s not what Bincher said on TV.”

“I’m not responsible for what he said.”

“So the Jew scumbag is lying?”

Gurney smiled, even as he shifted his feet to get into a better position to defend himself physically, if the need arose. “How about we get back to the same side of the street?”

“What?”

“You said you wanted a friendly talk.”

“My friendly point is that Lex Bincher makes money by digging up phony little glitches he can use to keep his slimebag clients on the streets. You ever see his fucking house in Cooperstown? Biggest house on the lake, every cent from drug dealers he kept out of prison with one fucking technicality after another. You know about this shit?”

“I don’t care about Bincher. I care about the Spalter murder case.”

“Okay, good, let’s talk about that. Kay Spalter killed her husband. Shot him in the fucking head. She was tried, convicted, and sentenced. Kay Spalter is a lying, murdering cunt, doing the time she deserves. Except now your slimy little Jew friend Bincher is trying to spring her on procedural—”

Gurney interrupted him. “Klemper? Do me a favor. I’m not interested in your Jew problems. You want to talk about the Spalter case, talk.”

There was a flash of hatred on the man’s face, and for a moment Gurney thought their confrontation was about to become brutally simple. He closed his right hand into a fist out of Klemper’s line of sight and adjusted his balance. But Klemper just produced an empty smile and shook his head. “Okay. What I’m telling you is this. There’s no way she should walk on a fucking technicality. With your background, you should know better. Why the hell are you trying to spring a piece of garbage?”

Gurney shrugged, asked matter-of-factly, “Did you notice the problem with the light pole?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The light pole that made a clear shot from the apartment impossible.”

If Klemper had intended to pretend ignorance, his thoughtful delay now made that position untenable. “It wasn’t impossible. It happened.”

“How?”

“Easy—if the victim wasn’t in the exact spot where some witnesses said he was, and if the weapon wasn’t fired from the exact spot where it was found.”

“You mean if Carl was at least ten feet away from where everyone saw him get hit, and if the shooter was standing on a ladder?”

“It’s possible.”

“What happened to the ladder?”

“Maybe she stood on a chair.”

“To make a five-hundred-yard head shot? With a five-pound tripod dangling from the gun?”

“Who the hell knows? Fact is, Kay Spalter was seen in the building—in that apartment. We have an eyewitness. We have dust impressions in her small shoe size in that apartment. We have gunpowder residue in that apartment.” He paused, gave Gurney a shrewd look. “Who the hell told you there was a five-pound tripod?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is you’ve got contradictions in your shooting scenario. Is that why you got rid of the electronics store video?”

Again Klemper’s hesitation was a second too long. “What video?”

Gurney ignored the question. “Finding a piece of evidence that doesn’t fit your concept means your concept is wrong. Getting rid of the evidence tends to create a bigger problem down the road—like the one you have now. What was on the video?”

Klemper didn’t answer. His jaw muscles were tightening visibly.

Gurney went on. “Let me take a wild guess. The video showed Carl getting hit standing in a spot that couldn’t possibly work with the line of sight from the apartment. Am I right?”

Klemper said nothing.

“And there’s another little snag. The shooter was seen casing that apartment building three days before Mary Spalter died.”

Klemper blinked but said nothing.

Gurney continued. “The person your trial witness identified as Kay Spalter was actually a man, according to a second witness. And that same man was also captured on video in Mary Spalter’s community a couple of hours before she turned up dead.”

“Where’s all this crap coming from?”

Gurney ignored the question. “Looks like the shooter was a hired pro with a double contract. On the mother and son. Any thoughts about that, Mick?”

That set off a twitch in Klemper’s cheek. He turned away and paced slowly across the open space in front of the barn. When he reached the mailbox at the side of the road he stared for a while in the direction of the pond, then turned around and paced back.

He stopped in front of Gurney. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think none of this means a fucking thing. One witness says it was a woman, another says it was a man. Happens all the time. Eyewitnesses make mistakes, contradict one another. So what? Big deal. Freddie ID’d the bitch wife in a lineup. Some other little coke-head skell didn’t. So what? There’s probably somebody else in that slum dump who thinks the bitch was a space alien. So fucking what? Somebody thinks they saw the same person somewhere else. Maybe they’re full of shit. But let’s say they’re right. Did you happen to turn up the fact that Kay, the bitch wife, hated her mother-in-law even more than she hated the husband she topped? Didn’t know that, did you? So maybe what we should’ve done was send the fucking bitch up for two murders instead of one.” Pasty saliva was accumulating at the corners of Klemper’s mouth.

Gurney spoke calmly. “I have the Emmerling Oaks security video of the individual who probably killed Mary Spalter. The individual on that video is definitely not Kay Spalter. And someone else who saw the video insists the same person was in the Axton Avenue building at the time the shot was fired at Carl.”

“So fucking what? Even if it was a pro, even if it was a double contract, that doesn’t get the bitch off the hook. All it means is she bought the hit instead of doing it herself. So it wasn’t her own sweaty little finger on the trigger. So she hired the triggerman—just like she tried to do before with Jimmy Flats.” Klemper suddenly looked excited. “You know what? I love your new theory, Gurney. It ties in with the bitch’s attempt to hire Flats to hit her husband, plus her attempt to talk her boyfriend into doing it. Ties the knot tighter around her fucking neck.” He stared at Gurney with a triumphant grin. “What do you got to say now?”

“It matters who pulled the trigger. It matters whether the eyewitness IDs are right or wrong. It matters whether the trial testimony is honest or perjured. It matters whether the video you buried supports or destroys the shooting scenario.”

“That’s the kind of shit that matters to you?” Klemper sucked a wad of mucus out of his nose and spat it out on the ground. “I expected more from you.”

“More of what?”

“I came here today because I found out you worked homicide for twenty-five years in the NYPD. Twenty-five years in Sewer City. I figured anyone who spent twenty-five years dealing with every piece of shit that crawled out of a hole would understand reality.”

“What reality would that be?”

“The reality that when push comes to shove, right matters more than rules. The reality that we’re in a war, not a fucking chess match. White hats versus scumbags. When the enemy is coming at you, you stop the fucker however you can. You don’t stop a bullet by waving a fucking rule book at it.”

“Suppose you have it wrong.”

“Suppose I have what wrong?”

“Suppose Carl Spalter’s death had nothing to do with his wife. Suppose his brother had him shot to get control of Spalter Realty. Or the mob had him shot because they decided they didn’t want him to be governor after all. Or his daughter had him shot because she wanted to inherit his money. Or his wife’s lover had him shot because—”

Klemper broke in, red-faced. “That’s all total horseshit. Kay Spalter is an evil, conniving, murdering whore. And if there’s any justice in this fucking world, she’ll die in prison with her brains bashed out on the floor. End of story!” Tiny bits of the spittle around his mouth were flying into the air.

Gurney nodded thoughtfully. “You may be right.” It was his favorite all-purpose response—to the friendly and the furious, the sane and the insane. He went on calmly, “Tell me something. Did you ever run the shooter’s MO through the ViCAP database?”

Klemper stared at him, blinking repeatedly, as though it would help him understand the question better. “What the hell do you want to know that for?”

Gurney shrugged. “Just wondering. There are some distinctive elements in the shooter’s approach. Be interesting to see if they’ve popped up anywhere else.”

“You’re out of your mind.” Klemper started backing away.

“You may be right. But if you decide to check out that MO, there’s one more situation you should look into. You ever hear of an upstate Greek gangster by the name of Fat Gus Gurikos?”

“Gurikos?” Now Klemper looked honestly confused. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“Carl asked Gus to take care of something for him. And then Gus just coincidentally got hit the same day Carl did—two days after Carl’s mother. So maybe we’re really talking about a triple hit.”

Klemper frowned, said nothing.

“I’d look into it if I were you. I’ve been told the Organized Crime Task Force kept the Gurikos thing pretty much to themselves, but if there’s a tie-in to the Spalter case you have a right to know the details.”

Shaking his head, Klemper looked like he’d rather be anywhere other than where he was. He turned away abruptly and was getting into his huge SUV when he noticed that Gurney’s Outback was blocking him.

“You want to get that thing out of my way?” It was a snarled order, not a question.

Gurney moved his car, and Klemper drove off without looking at him, nearly hitting the mailbox as he turned down the mountain road.

It was then that Gurney noticed Madeleine at the corner of the barn with the rooster and the three hens standing quietly in the grass behind her. The birds were strangely motionless, their heads cocked, as if aware of the approach of something they could not yet identify.

Chapter 27. A Desperate Man

After a less-than-relaxed dinner during which neither she nor Gurney said much, Madeleine began doing the dishes—a task she always insisted was hers.

Gurney went over and sat quietly on a stool at the sink island. He knew if he waited long enough, she’d get around to saying what was on her mind.

When the washed dishes had all been placed in the drainer, she picked up a towel to dry them. “I assume that was the Spalter murder investigator?”

“Yes. Mick Klemper.”

“A very angry man.”

Whenever Madeleine stated the obvious, he knew that something less obvious was being implied. In this instance it wasn’t clear to him what that something was, but he did feel the need to offer some sort of explanation for what she’d apparently overheard.

“It must have been a difficult day for him.”

“Difficult?”

He elaborated. “Once the Bincher accusations started shooting around the Internet, a lot of people would have been calling Klemper for clarification. BCI brass, State Police Legal Department, DA’s office, Internal Affairs, attorney general’s office—not to mention the media vultures.”

She was holding a plate in her hand, frowning. “I find it hard to understand.”

“It’s simple enough. After talking to Kay Spalter, Klemper decided she was guilty. The question is, how sick was that decision?”

“How sick?”

“I mean, how much of it was based on Kay reminding him of his ex-wife? Also, how many laws did he break to make sure she got convicted?”

She was still holding the plate. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the level of rage I saw down at the barn, how close to the edge he was, how—”

“I’m pretty sure that was all coming out of fear. Fear that the evil Kay will go free, fear that his view of the case is about to be smashed, fear of losing his job, fear of going to jail. The fear of disintegrating, falling apart, losing his grasp of who he is. The fear of becoming nobody.”

“So you’re saying he’s desperate.”

“Absolutely desperate.”

“Desperate. Disintegrating.”

“Yes.”

“Were you carrying your gun?”

For a moment the question baffled him. “No. Of course not.”

“You were face-to-face with a furious lunatic—a desperate, disintegrating individual. But of course you weren’t carrying your gun?” She had a look of pain in her eyes. Pain and fear. “Now do you understand why I want you to see Malcolm Claret?”

He was about to say something about not knowing that Klemper would be waiting for him, that he’d never liked carrying a gun, and that he generally didn’t do so unless he was facing some known threat—but he realized that she was talking about something deeper and broader than this one incident, and for that larger subject at that moment he had no appetite.

After drying the same plate absently for another minute, she left the room and headed up the hall stairs. A minute later, he heard the initial bars of an unpleasantly jagged cello piece.

He’d avoided discussing the issue implicit in her question about Malcolm Claret, but now he couldn’t help picturing the man himself—the cerebral gaze, the thinning hair over a high, pale forehead, the gestures as economical as his speech, the colorless slacks and loose cardigan, the stillness, the unassuming manner.

Gurney realized he was picturing the man as he appeared many years ago. He altered the image in his mind as a computer aging program might—deepening wrinkles, subtracting hair, adding the wearying effects of time and gravity on facial flesh. Uncomfortable with the result, he put it out of his mind.

He thought instead about Klemper—about his obsessive negative focus on Kay Spalter, his certainty regarding her guilt, his willingness to subvert the investigation to produce the desired conclusion as quickly as possible.

The approach was disconcerting—not because it was completely divorced from normal procedure, but because it wasn’t. Klemper’s offense seemed to Gurney not a matter of kind but of degree. The notion that a good detective always proceeds via pure logic and an open mind to objective conclusions concerning the nature of the crime and the identity of the perpetrator is at best a pleasant fantasy. In the real world of crime and punishment—as in all human endeavors—objectivity is an illusion. Survival itself demands that we leap to conclusions. Crucial action is always based on partial evidence. The hunter who demands a zoologist’s affidavit that the deer in his sights is truly a deer will soon starve. The jungle dweller who counts all the tiger’s stripes before deciding to retreat will be killed and eaten. The genes that urge certainty tend not to be passed into the next generation.

In the real world, we must connect the few dots we have and guess at a pattern that makes workable sense. It’s an imperfect system. So is life itself. The danger arises not so much from the scarcity of dots as from the unconscious personal agenda that prioritizes certain dots over others, an agenda that wants the pattern to look a certain way. Our perceptions of events are warped more by the power of our emotions than by the weakness of our data.

In this light, the situation was simple. Klemper wanted Kay to be guilty and therefore came to believe that she was. Dots that didn’t fit the pattern were devalued or ignored. Rules that impeded a “righteous” ending were similarly devalued or ignored.

But there was another way of looking at it.

Since the process of moving to a conclusion on the basis of incomplete data was natural and necessary, the common warning against doing so really amounted to no more than a warning not to leap to the wrong conclusion. The truth was that any conclusion might be premature. The final verdict on the validity of the leap would be rendered by the validity of the result.

That thought raised a disquieting possibility.

Suppose Klemper’s conclusion was correct.

Suppose the hate-filled Klemper had arrived at the truth. Suppose his sloppy procedures and possible felonies constituted a rotten route to the right end. Suppose Kay Spalter was, in fact, guilty of murdering her husband. Gurney had no great appetite for helping to free a stone-cold killer, no matter how deeply flawed her trial may have been.

And there was yet another possibility. Suppose Klemper’s hell-bent determination to have Kay put away had nothing to do with limited perceptions or faulty conclusions. Suppose it was a cynical and corrupt effort, bought and paid for by a third party who wanted the case closed as quickly as possible.

Suppose, suppose, suppose. Gurney was finding the echo irritating and unproductive—and the need for more facts compelling.

The dissonant chords of Madeleine’s cello piece were growing louder.

Chapter 28. Like the Crack of a Whip

After listening to Gurney on the phone recounting the content of his meeting with Adonis Angelidis, including the grotesque aspects of the Gus Gurikos murder, Jack Hardwick was uncharacteristically silent. Then, instead of criticizing him once again for departing from the narrow issues that would drive the appeal process, he asked Gurney to come to his house for a more thorough discussion of the case status.

“Now?” Gurney glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven-thirty, and the sun had already slipped down behind the western ridge.

“Now would be good. This thing is getting way too weird.”

As big a surprise as the invitation was, it wasn’t one Gurney was going to argue with. A thorough, all-issues-on-the-table discussion was definitely needed.

Another surprise greeted him when he arrived thirty-five minutes later at Hardwick’s rented farmhouse—at the lonely end of a dirt road, high in the darkening hills outside the tiny village of Dillweed. In his headlights he could see a second car parked next to the red GTO—a bright blue Mini Cooper. Evidently the man had a visitor.

Gurney was aware that Hardwick had been involved in quite a few relationships in the past, but he hadn’t imagined any of those women looking quite as dramatic as the one who opened the door.

If it wasn’t for her intelligent, aggressive eyes that seemed to be assessing him from the first instant, Gurney would have been easily distracted by the rest of her—a figure somewhere between athletic and voluptuous, boldly displayed in cutoff jeans and a loose scoop-neck T-shirt. She was barefoot with red toenails, caramel-tan skin, and ebony hair cut short in a way that emphasized her full lips and prominent cheekbones. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had a definite presence—not unlike Hardwick himself.

A moment later the man appeared beside her with a proprietary grin.

“Come in. Thanks for making the trip.”

Gurney stepped through the doorway into the front room. What he remembered from previous visits as a Spartan box of a room had acquired some warmer touches: a colorful carpet, a framed print of orange poppies bending in a breeze, a vase of pussy willow branches, a lush plant in a massive earthenware pot, two new armchairs, a nice pine sideboard, and a round breakfast table with three ladder-back chairs in the corner of the room nearest the kitchen. This woman had evidently inspired some changes.

Gurney surveyed the scene approvingly. “Very nice, Jack. Definite improvement.”

Hardwick nodded. “Yeah, I agree.” Then he laid his hand on the woman’s half-bare shoulder and said, “Dave, I’d like you to meet BCI investigator Esti Moreno.”

The introduction caught Gurney off-balance, and it showed, which prompted a bark of a laugh from Hardwick.

He recovered quickly, putting out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Esti.”

“A pleasure, Dave.” Her grip was strong, the skin on her palm surprisingly callused. He remembered Hardwick mentioning her name as a source of information on the original murder investigation, as well as on the shortcomings of Mick Klemper. He wondered how engaged she was in the Hardwick-Bincher project, and how she viewed it.

As if demonstrating a sense for what he was thinking, she got to the point with a remarkable lack of preamble. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’ve been trying to convince this man here to look past Kay Spalter’s legal appeal issues and pay some attention to the murder itself. Now murders, yes? At least three? Maybe more?” Her voice was throaty, with a hint of a Spanish accent.

Gurney smiled. “Are you making any progress with him?”

“I’m persistent.” She glanced at Hardwick, then back at Gurney. “I think your phone call earlier this evening about the nails in the eyes finally got to him, yes?”

Hardwick’s lips tightened in an expression of distaste.

“Yes, definitely the nails in the eyes,” she repeated with a conspiratorial wink at Gurney. “Everybody’s got some special sensitivity, something that gets their attention, yes? So now maybe we can let Lex-the-Lawyer deal with the Court of Appeals, and we can deal with the crime—the true thing, not the Klemper bullshit.” She articulated the man’s name with evident disgust. “The issue is digging up what really happened. Putting it all together. That’s what you think needs to be done, right?”

“You seem to know my thoughts pretty well.” He wondered if she knew what kind of thoughts were being generated by that revealing T-shirt.

“Jack told me things about you. And I’m a good listener.”

Hardwick was starting to look restless. “Maybe we ought to make some coffee, sit down, and get to it.”

An hour later, at the table in the corner, their coffee cups refilled, yellow pads scribbled with notes in front of them, they were circling back through the key points.

“So we agree that the three murders must be related to one another?” said Esti, tapping the tip of her pen on her pad.

“Assuming the autopsy on the mother is consistent with murder,” said Hardwick.

Esti looked at Gurney. “Just before you arrived, I reached out to someone in the ME’s office. She’s supposed to get back to me tomorrow. But the fact that the shooter cased the cemetery scene in Long Falls before her ‘accident’ is pretty suggestive. So let’s agree for now we’re talking about three related murders.”

Hardwick was staring into his coffee cup as though it contained some unidentifiable substance. “I’ve got a problem with this. According to Gurney’s Greek mob buddy, Carl went to Fat Gus to set up a hit on somebody—nobody knows who. The target finds out about this and, to keep it from happening, hits Carl first. Then he hits Gus, for good measure. I have this right?”

Gurney nodded. “Except for the ‘buddy’ part.”

Hardwick ignored the objection. “Okay, so what this says to me is that Carl and his target were in, like, the ultimate high-stakes race to whack each other. I mean, the guy who makes the first hit wins, right?”

Gurney nodded again.

Hardwick went on. “So why would a guy in that situation pick such a time-consuming, pain-in-the-ass way to set Carl up? I mean, knowing there’s a contract on your life creates some urgency. Wouldn’t it make more sense under the circumstances to just put on a ski mask, walk into the Spalter Realty office, and pop the son of a bitch? Deal with the issue in half a day instead of a week? And the whole idea of hitting the mother first? Just to get Carl into the cemetery? That feels fucking weird to me.”

It didn’t feel right to Gurney either.

“Unless,” said Esti, “the hit on the mother wasn’t just a setup to put Carl in a predictable place at a predictable time. Maybe the mother was a target for another reason. In fact, maybe she was the main target, and Carl was secondary. You ever think of it that way?”

They paused to think about it.

“I have another problem,” said Hardwick. “I get that there’s a connection between the Mary and Carl murders. Got to be. And I get that there’s some other kind of connection between the Carl and Gus murders—maybe what Donny Angel said, maybe not. So I’m okay with a connection between one and two, and between two and three, but somehow the one-two-three sequence all together doesn’t feel so good.”

Gurney felt a similar discomfort. “By the way, do we know for sure that Carl was number two and Gus was number three?”

Esti frowned. “What do you mean?”

“From the way Angelidis talked about it, I’ve been assuming that was the sequence, but there’s no reason it had to be that way. All I really know is that Carl and Gus were hit the same day. I’d like to get the timing confirmed.”

“How?”

“We have a precise time for Carl in the case file. But based on what Angelidis told me, I’m not so sure about Gus. There are two sources I can think of, but it’ll depend on what kind of contacts we have—either with the county ME’s office where the Gurikos autopsy was done, or with whoever in OCTF has access to that file.”

“Let me deal with that,” said Esti. “I think I know somebody.”

“Great.” Gurney gave her an appreciative nod. “In addition to an estimated time of death, see if you can get copies of the initial photos in the autopsy sequence.”

“The shots taken before he was opened up?”

“Right—the body on the table, plus any detail shots of the head and neck.”

“You want to see exactly how he was nailed?” A quirky grin revealed more relish for this kind of thing than most women would have. Or men, for that matter.

The normally impervious Hardwick grimaced in disgust. Then he turned to Gurney. “You figure that horrible shit was some kind of message?”

“Ritualistic stuff usually is, unless it’s an intentional distraction.”

“Which do you think this was?” asked Esti.

Gurney shrugged. “I’m not sure. But the message seems clear enough.”

Hardwick looked like he was biting down on a bad tooth. “You mean like … ‘I hate you so fucking much I want to hammer spikes into your brain.’ Something like that?”

“Don’t forget the neck,” said Esti.

“Larynx,” said Gurney.

They both looked at him.

She spoke first. “What do you mean?”

“I’d be willing to bet the target of the fifth nail was Gus’s larynx.”

“Why?”

“It’s the voice organ.”

“So?”

“Eyes, ears, larynx. Sight, hearing, voice. All destroyed.”

“And this means what to you?” said Hardwick.

“I may be wrong, but what comes to mind is ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’ ”

Esti nodded. “That makes sense! But who’s the message for? The victim? Or someone else?”

“That depends on how crazy the killer is.”

“How so?”

“A psychopath who kills for an emotional release usually leaves a symbolic message that reflects the nature of his own pathology—often by mutilating some part of the victim. The message contributes to the feeling of release. It’s primarily a communication between him and his victim. Probably also a communication between him and someone in his childhood, someone involved in the root of the pathology—usually one of his parents.”

“You think that’s what the Gurikos nails-in-the-head thing was?”

Gurney shook his head. “If the Gurikos murder was connected to the two Spalter murders, mother and son, I’d say it was driven more by a practical goal than a compulsion.”

Esti looked baffled. “A practical goal?”

“It seems to me like the killer was advising someone to mind their own business, to keep quiet about something, and letting them know at the same time what would happen to them if they didn’t. The big questions are, who was the someone and what was the something.”

“You have some ideas about that?”

“Just guesses. The something may have been some fact about the first two murders.”

Hardwick joined in. “Like the identity of the shooter?”

“Or the motive,” said Gurney. “Or some incriminating detail.”

Esti leaned forward. “Who do you think was the someone who was being warned?”

“I don’t know enough about Gus’s connections to say. According to Angelidis, Gus hosted a regular Friday-night poker game. After the murder that day, the killer left Gus’s door unlocked. That could have been an oversight, or it could have been on purpose—so that someone in the poker group would find the body when they arrived for the game that evening. Maybe the ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ message was intended for someone in the group or even for Angelidis himself. OCTF might know more about the individuals involved. They may even have had Gus’s house under surveillance.”

Esti frowned. “I’ll find out what I can from my friend, but … she might not have access to everything. I don’t want to put her in an awkward position.”

Hardwick’s jaw muscles tightened. “Be careful dealing with those task force fuckers. You think the FBI is bad, they’re nothing compared to the elite organized crime boys.” He emphasized the adjective with a comical level of contempt. But there was no humor in his eyes.

“I know what they’re like, and I know what I’m doing.” She stared challengingly at Hardwick for a moment. “Let’s go back to the beginning. How do we feel about the ‘preemptive strike’ explanation—that Carl was hit by his own intended victim?”

Hardwick shook his head. “Could be the truth, more likely it’s crap. Nice story, but consider the source. Why should we believe anything from Donny Angel?”

She looked at Gurney. “Dave?”

“I don’t think belief enters into it. What Angelidis said happened could have happened. It’s a reasonable enough scenario. In fact, we heard another story that’s consistent with it. Kay Spalter mentioned that Carl used to play poker with a guy who arranged murders for the mob.”

Hardwick waved his hand dismissively. “Doesn’t prove a damn thing. Sure as hell doesn’t prove that Carl hired Gus to have someone killed.”

Esti looked back at Gurney.

Gurney just shrugged. “Right. No proof. But still a possibility. A credible link.”

“Well,” said Esti, “if we think the Angelidis story is possible—that Carl’s target ended up being the murderer—shouldn’t we make a list of people Carl might have wanted dead?”

Hardwick uttered an incredulous little grunt.

She turned on him. “You have a better idea?”

He shrugged. “Go ahead, make a list.”

“Okay, I will.” She picked up her pen, held it over her pad. “Dave—any suggestions?”

“Jonah.”

“Carl’s brother? Why?”

“Because if Jonah were out of the way, Carl would have sole control of Spalter Realty and all its assets, which he could convert into cash to finance his political plans in a big way. Interestingly, Jonah would have the same motive to get rid of Carl—get control of Spalter Realty assets, which he could use to finance the expansion of his Cyberspace Cathedral.”

Esti raised an eyebrow. “Cyber …?”

“Long story. Bottom line, Jonah’s got a lot of ambition and could use a lot of money.”

“Okay, I’ll put his name down. Who else?”

“Alyssa.”

She blinked, seemed to have some unpleasant thoughts before making another note.

Hardwick’s lip curled. “His own daughter?”

Esti responded first. “I overheard enough of Klemper on the phone with Alyssa to get the impression that her relationship with her father … wasn’t what you’d call a normal father-daughter relationship. It sounded like Carl had forced her to have sex with him.”

“You told me that before,” said Hardwick. “I don’t like thinking about shit like that.”

The silence that followed was broken by Gurney. “Just look at it from a practical perspective. Alyssa was a longtime drug addict with no interest in recovery. Carl wanted to be governor of New York. He had a lot to lose—in the present and the future. If he did have an incestuous relationship with Alyssa, presumably going back into her childhood, that would create a major blackmail opportunity—a hard thing for a drug addict with an expensive habit to resist. Suppose that Alyssa’s demands became exorbitant. Suppose that Carl came to view her as an unbearable threat to everything he wanted. We’ve heard from a few people that he was an obsessively ambitious man and capable of anything.”

Hardwick had his acid-reflux expression. “You’re saying that Alyssa might have discovered that he was arranging for her removal, and that she hired someone to hit him first?”

“Something like that. At least that would be consistent with the Angelidis theory. A simpler version would be that it was entirely her initiative—that Carl never made a move against her—that she was after his money, pure and simple, and had him killed.”

“But according to his will, Kay was his sole beneficiary. Alyssa wasn’t going to get anything. So what good would—”

Gurney broke in. “Alyssa wouldn’t get anything unless Kay went down for the murder. Once Kay was convicted, New York law would block her inheritance and Carl’s whole estate would be passed down to Alyssa.”

Hardwick grinned with the dawning light of possibilities. “That could explain everything. That could explain why she was fucking Klemper, to get him to bend the case. She could even have been fucking her mother’s boyfriend, to get him to perjure himself at trial. She’s a stone-cold addict—she’d fuck a monkey for dope.”

Esti looked troubled. “Maybe her father wasn’t having sex with her after all. Maybe that was just a story she told Klemper. To get his sympathy.”

“Sympathy, my ass! She probably figured it would turn him on.”

Esti’s expression moved slowly from revulsion to agreement. “Shit. Everything I think about that man keeps getting worse.” She paused, made a note on her pad. “So Alyssa’s a possible suspect. And so is Jonah. What about Kay’s boyfriend?”

Hardwick shook his head. “Not in the preemptive strike structure we’re talking about. I don’t see Carl taking out a contract on him. I don’t think he’d waste the money. There’d be easier ways to get rid of him. And I sure as hell can’t see young Darryl in the position of discovering that he’s the target of a potential hit and reacting by organizing a faster hit.”

“Okay, but forget about the preemptive thing for a minute,” said Esti. “Couldn’t Darryl have killed Carl in the hope that his relationship with Kay might grow into something better for him once Kay had all the money? What do you think, Dave?”

“In the video of the trial he doesn’t look like he’d have the smarts or the guts for it. A little perjury—maybe. But a well-planned triple murder? I doubt it. The guy was a minimum-wage lifeguard and pool boy at the Spalters’ country club—not exactly Day of the Jackal assassin material. Also, I’m having a hard time picturing him smashing an old lady’s head or hammering nails into somebody’s eyes.”

Hardwick was shaking his head. “This is fucked up. None of it feels right to me. The three murders have three completely different methods and styles. I don’t see a straight line running through them. Something’s missing. Anybody here share that feeling?”

Gurney offered a small affirmative nod. “There’s a lot missing. Speaking of the MO issue, there’s no record in the case file that it was ever explored through ViCAP. Am I right?”

“In Klemper’s view,” said Esti, “Kay shot Carl. Period. Why would he fill out the ViCAP form or look into any other databases? It’s not like the bastard had an open mind.”

“I get that. But it would be helpful if we could run the key data now—at least through ViCAP. And it would be nice to know if NCIC has anything on any of the key individuals, dead or alive. And Interpol, too, at least for Gus Gurikos.” Gurney glanced from Esti to Hardwick and back. “Can either of you do any of that without creating a problematic trail?”

“Maybe I could get the ViCAP and NCIC parts done,” said Esti after a moment. The way she said “maybe” meant she could get it done, but by a route she was not about to reveal. “For ViCAP, what data bits are you most interested in?”

“To avoid being swamped with results, concentrate on the oddities—the most peculiar elements at each of the murder sites—and use those as the search terms.”

“Like ‘.220 Swift’—the Long Falls gun caliber?”

“Right. And ‘suppressor’ or ‘silencer’ combined with ‘rifle.’ ”

She made some quick notes. “Okay, what else?”

“ ‘Firecrackers.’ ”

“What?”

“Witnesses at the cemetery heard firecrackers going off around the time that Carl was hit. If that was an attempt to conceal the residual sound of the suppressed muzzle blast, it may have been a technique the shooter used before, and a witness may have mentioned it to an investigator, and the investigator may have entered it on his ViCAP form.”

“Jesus,” said Hardwick. “That’s one goddamn way-out long shot.”

“It’s worth a try.”

Esti was tapping her pen again on her pad. “You’re assuming the shooter was a pro?”

“Feels that way to me.”

“Okay. Any other search terms?”

“ ‘Cemetery’ and ‘funeral.’ If the shooter went to the trouble of killing someone just to set his main victim up at the grave, maybe the same thing’s worked for him before.”

As she was writing, Gurney added, “All the surnames connected with the case should be searched as well—Spalter, Angelidis, Gurikos. Also, we need to run Darryl’s surname, the surnames of the other prosecution witnesses, and Kay’s maiden name. You can find them all in the trial transcript.”

Hardwick spoke with loathing in his voice. “Don’t forget to include ‘nails,’ ‘nails in eyes,’ ‘nails in ears,’ ‘nails in throat.’ ”

Esti nodded, then asked Gurney, “Anything from the mother’s location?”

“That one’s not so easy. You could look for homicides set up as bathtub falls, homicides involving floral deliveries, even the fake florist name—Flowers by Florence—but that feels like an even longer shot than the firecrackers.”

“I think this is enough to keep me busy for a while.”

“Jack, I recall from the Jillian Perry case that you might know somebody at Interpol. That still true?”

“Far as I know.”

“Maybe you could see what they have on Gurikos?”

“I can try. No promises.”

“You think you could also take a stab at tracking down the main prosecution witnesses?”

He nodded slowly. “Freddie, who testified that Kay was in the apartment building at the time of the shooting … Jimmy Flats, the con who said Kay tried to hire him to whack Carl … and Darryl, the boyfriend who said she tried the same line on him?”

“Those three at least.”

“I’ll see what I can do. You thinking we might squeeze a perjury admission out of one of them?”

“That would be nice. But mainly, I’d like to know that they’re alive and reachable.”

“Alive?” Hardwick looked like he was thinking what Gurney was thinking. If at the heart of the mystery was an individual capable of doing what was done to Gus Gurikos, then anything was possible. The possibilities were horrendous.

The notion of horrendous possibilities brought Klemper to mind. “I almost forgot to mention this,” said Gurney, “but your favorite BCI investigator was waiting for me when I got home this afternoon from my meeting with Angelidis.”

Hardwick’s eyes narrowed. “The fuck did he want?”

“He wanted me to understand that Kay is an evil, lying, murdering bitch; that Bincher is an evil, lying Jew bastard; and that he, Mick Klemper, is a crusader in the epic struggle of Good against Evil. He admitted that he might have made an error or two, but nothing that changes the fact that Kay is guilty as sin and deserves to die in prison—preferably soon.”

Esti looked excited. “He must have been in a panic to show up at your house, raving like that.”

Hardwick looked suspicious. “You sure that’s all he wanted? To tell you that Kay was guilty?”

“He seemed desperate to convince me that everything he’d done was legitimate in some larger context. He may also have been trying, in his bull-in-the-china-shop way, to get me to reveal how much I knew. As I see it, the unresolved question about Klemper is how sick is he—versus how corrupt.”

Esti added, “Or how dangerous.”

Hardwick changed the subject. “So I’m going to take the locate-the-three-witnesses assignment, which may turn into three mis-per traces, which may turn into God knows what. And I’m going to beg my buddy at Interpol for another favor. Esti’s going to call in some favors at OCTF and get someone to run NCIC and ViCAP searches. What’s on your plate, Sherlock?”

“First I’m going to talk to Alyssa Spalter. Then to Jonah Spalter.”

“Great. But how’re you going to get them to talk to you?”

“Charm. Threats. Promises. Whatever works.”

Esti let out a cynical little one-syllable laugh. “Offer Alyssa an ounce of good shit, she’ll follow you to the moon. Jonah you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”

“You know where I can get ahold of Alyssa?”

“Last time I heard, the family mansion on Venus Lake. With Carl and Kay out of the way, she has it all to herself. But watch out for Klemper. My impression is that he still sees her. He’s still got a soft spot for his little monster.”

Hardwick smirked. “Don’t you mean a hard spot?”

“You’re disgusting!” She turned back to Gurney. “I’ll text you the address. Or, actually, I can give it to you right now. I have it in my notebook.” She stood up from the table and left the room.

Gurney sat back in his chair and gave Hardwick a speculative look. “Maybe it’s my imagination, but you seem to be getting an inch or two closer to my way of thinking about this case.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Your interest in it seems to be expanding a bit beyond the technical appeal issues.”

At first Hardwick looked like he wanted to argue the point. Then he just shook his head slowly. “Those fucking nails …” He stared down at the floor. “I don’t know … makes you wonder just how God-awful a human being can be. How. Downright. Completely. Evil.” He paused, still shaking his head, like someone with a kind of slow-motion palsy. “You ever come upon something that just … just made you wonder … what the fuck … I mean … if there are any limits on what a human being can do?”

Gurney didn’t have to think very long about it. Images of severed heads, torn throats, bodies chopped apart. Children burned alive by their parents. The “Satanic Santa” case that involved a serial killer gift-wrapping pieces of his victims’ bodies and mailing them to the local cops’ homes at Christmas.

“Lots of images come to mind, Jack, but the new one that keeps disturbing my sleep is Carl Spalter’s face—the photo taken of him while he was still barely alive at Kay’s trial. There’s something terrible about it. Maybe the look of despair in Carl’s eyes affects me the way those nails in Gus’s eyes affect you.”

Neither of them said anything more until Esti came back with a small sheet of notepaper and handed it to Gurney. “You probably don’t even need this address,” she said. “I could’ve just told you to look for the biggest house on Lakeshore Drive.”

“It’ll be easier with this. Thanks.”

She sat in her chair, looked back and forth curiously at the two men. “What’s up? You’re both looking very … down.”

Hardwick uttered a sharp, humorless bark of a laugh.

Gurney shrugged. “Every once in a while, we get a glimpse of the reality we’re dealing with. You know what I’m talking about?”

Her voice changed. “Yes, of course I do.”

There was a silence.

Gurney said, “We need to focus on the fact that we’re making progress. We’re taking the appropriate actions. Accurate data and solid logic will—”

His comment was cut short by the sound of a sudden, sharp impact against the clapboard siding of the house.

Esti tensed, looked alarmed.

Hardwick blinked. “The fuck was that?”

The sound was repeated—like the crack of the hard tip of a whip against the house—and all the lights went out.

Chapter 29. Game Changers

Reflexively, Gurney dropped from his chair to the floor. Hardwick and Esti followed immediately, in a flurry of expletives.

“I’m not carrying,” said Gurney quickly. “What do you have in the house?”

“Glock nine in the bedroom closet,” said Hardwick. “SIG .38 in the night table.”

“Kel-Tec .38 in my shoulder bag,” said Esti. “Bag’s behind you, Jack, on the floor. Can you push it over to me?”

Gurney heard Hardwick moving on the other side of the table, then something sliding toward Esti on the floor.

“Got it,” she said.

“Back in a sec,” said Hardwick.

Gurney heard him scuttling out of the room, cursing, then the sound of an interior door squeaking open, then a drawer opening and closing. A flashlight went on, went off. He could also hear Esti’s breathing, very close to him.

“There’s no moon tonight, is there?” She was half whispering.

For an insane moment, in the grip of a primitive fear and the rush of adrenaline, he found her lowered voice and closeness so intensely erotic, he forgot to answer the question.

“Dave?”

“Right. Yes. No moon.”

She leaned closer, her arm touching his. “What do you think is happening?”

“I’m not sure. Nothing good.”

“You think we’re overreacting?”

“I hope so.”

“I can’t see a damn thing. Can you?”

He strained his eyes in the general direction of the window by the table. “No. Nothing.”

“Shit.” The magnetism of her anxious, whispering voice in the darkness was becoming surreal. “You think those sounds were bullets hitting the house?”

“Could be.” In fact, he was sure of it. He’d been under fire more than once in his career.

“I didn’t hear any gunshots.”

“Could be using a suppressor.”

“Oh, shit. You really think it’s sniper-boy out there?”

Gurney was pretty sure that it was, but before he could answer, Hardwick returned.

“Got the Glock and SIG. I like the Glock. How about you, ace? You okay with the SIG?”

“No problem.”

Hardwick touched Gurney’s elbow, found his hand, put the pistol in it. “Full clip, one in the chamber, safety on.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“Maybe it’s time to call in the cavalry,” said Esti.

“Fuck that!” said Hardwick.

“So what do we do? Sit here all night?”

“We figure out how to get the son of a bitch.”

“Get him? That’s what SWAT does. We make the call. They come. They get him.”

“Fuck them. I’ll get him myself. Nobody shoots at my fucking house. Fuck!”

“Jack, for Godsake, the man put a bullet through a power line. In the dark. This is a super marksman. With a night-vision scope. Hiding in the woods. How the hell are you going to get him? For Godsake, Jack, make sense!”

“Fuck him! He’s not that fucking super—took him two shots to hit the line. I’ll put my Glock up his super ass.”

“Maybe it didn’t take him two shots,” said Gurney.

“The hell are you talking about? Lights went out on the second shot, not the first.”

“Check your landline.”

“What?”

“It sounded to me like the impacts were at different places on the upstairs wall. Do your power and phone lines come in together or separately?”

Hardwick didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

Gurney heard him crawling from the table into the kitchen … then the sound of a handset being picked up, and after a moment being replaced … then crawling back to the table.

“It’s dead. He hit the fucking phone line.”

“I don’t get it,” said Esti. “What’s the point of cutting a landline when everybody’s got cell phones? He must know who Jack is, probably knows who we all are, has to assume we all have phones. You ever see a cop without a cell phone? Why cut the landline?”

“Maybe he likes to show off,” said Hardwick. “Well, this fucker is fucking with the wrong guy.”

“You’re not the only one here, Jack. Maybe he’s fucking with Dave. Maybe he’s fucking with all of us.”

“I don’t give a fuck who he thinks he’s fucking with. But it’s my fucking house that he’s shooting fucking bullets into.”

“This is crazy. I say we get a SWAT team here, like now.”

“We’re not in fucking Albany. It’s not like they’re parked down in Dillweed, waiting for the call. Be an hour before they get here.”

“Dave?” Her expression was begging for support.

Gurney couldn’t provide it. “It might be better to handle this ourselves.”

“Better? How the hell is it better?”

“You make this official, it’s a big can of worms.”

“Can of … what are you talking about?”

“Your career.”

“Career?”

“You’re a BCI investigator, and Jack’s in the process of launching an all-out attack on BCI. How are they going to interpret your being here? You think they’re not going to figure out in about two seconds how he’s getting his inside information? Information he can use to ruin their lives? You think you’re going to survive that—legally or otherwise? I think I’d rather deal with a sniper in the woods than be considered a traitor by people I have to work with.”

Esti’s voice was a bit shaky. “I don’t see what they can prove. There’s no reason—” She stopped abruptly. “What was that?”

“What was what?” asked Gurney.

“Out that window … on the hill facing the house … in the woods … a flash of light …”

Hardwick scrambled around the back of the table toward the window.

Peering into the darkness, Esti whispered, “I’m positive I saw some—” Again she stopped midsentence.

This time Gurney and Hardwick both saw it. “There!” cried Gurney.

“It’s one of my trail cams,” said Hardwick. “Motion-activated. I’ve got half a dozen in the woods—mainly for hunting season.” Another flash occurred, seemingly higher on the hill. “Fucker’s moving up the main trail. Getting away. Fuck that!”

Gurney heard Hardwick scrambling to his feet, hurrying out of the room into the kitchen, then returning with two lit flashlights in one hand, Glock in the other. He stood one flashlight in the middle of the table, beam pointing at the ceiling. “I got an idea where the son of a bitch is heading. After I leave, get in your cars, get out of here, forget you were here.”

Esti’s voice rose in alarm. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to where that trail goes—to Scutt Hollow on the other side of the mountain. If I can get there before he does …”

“We’ll come with you!”

“Bullshit! You both need to get out of here—in the opposite direction—now! You get caught up in this, get questioned by the local cops—worse, by BCI—it’ll be an endless mess. Take care. Got to go!”

“Jack!”

Hardwick ran out the front door. A few seconds later they heard the roar of the big GTO V8, wheels spinning, bits of gravel sprayed against the side of the house. Gurney grabbed the remaining flashlight from the table, hurried out onto the porch, saw the car’s taillights speeding away around a curve in the narrow dirt road that wound down the long wooded hillside to Route 10.

“He shouldn’t go alone.” Esti’s voice next to him was strained and ragged. “We should follow him, call it in.”

She was right. But so was Hardwick.

“Jack’s no fool. I’ve seen him in tougher situations than this. He’ll be all right.” Gurney’s assurance sounded hollow.

“He shouldn’t be chasing that maniac by himself!”

“He can make the backup call. It’s up to him. As long as we’re not there, he can shape the story any way he wants. If we’re there, it’s out of his hands. And your career is over.”

“Jesus. Jesus! I hate this!” She walked in a tight, frustrated circle. “So now what? We just leave? Just drive away? Go home?”

“Yes. You first. Right now.”

She stared at Gurney in the flashlight’s shifting illumination. “Okay. Okay. But this is fucked up. Completely fucked up.”

“I agree. But we need to preserve Jack’s options. Is there anything of yours in the house?”

She blinked several times, seemingly trying to focus on the question. “My tote bag, my shoulder bag … I think that’s it.”

“Okay. Whatever you have in there—get it, and get out of here.”

He handed her the flashlight and waited outside while she went into the house.

Two minutes later she was depositing her bags in the passenger seat of the Mini Cooper.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“Oneonta.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Be careful.”

“Sure. You too.” She got in her car, backed out, turned down the dirt road, and was gone.

He switched off the flashlight and stood in the darkness, listening. He could detect no sound, no breeze, no hint of movement anywhere. He stood there for a long minute, waiting to hear something, waiting to see something. Everything seemed unnaturally still.

Flashlight in one hand and SIG in the other, safety off, he made a 360-degree sweep of the land around him. He saw nothing alarming, nothing out of place. He pointed the beam up at the side of the house, swept it back and forth until he found a severed wire emerging from an electrical fitting by a second-floor window and, about ten feet away, a second wire emerging from a different kind of fitting by another window. He swept the light away from the house toward the road until he located the utility pole and the two loose wires he’d expected to find there, dangling down onto the ground.

He walked closer to the house, below the two severed wire ends. On the clapboards behind each, he could see a small dark hole a few inches from each fitting. He couldn’t judge the diameters with any accuracy from where he stood, but he was fairly sure they couldn’t have been made with a bullet any smaller than a .30 caliber or larger than a .35 caliber.

If it was the same shooter who hit Carl at Willow Rest, it would appear that he was flexible in his choice of weapons—a man who chose the tool most appropriate to the circumstances. A practical man. Or woman.

Esti’s question came back to him. What’s the point of cutting a landline when everybody’s got a cell phone? From a practical perspective, cutting power and communication lines would be the preamble to an attack. But no attack had occurred. So what was the point?

A warning?

Like the nails in Gus’s head?

But why the landline?

Holy Christ!

Could it be?

Power and phone. Power meant lights, which meant seeing. And the phone? What did you do with a phone—especially an old landline phone? You listened and you talked.

No power and no phone.

No seeing, no listening, no talking.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Or was he getting way too imaginative, way to enamored with his “message” theory? He knew damn well that falling in love with one’s own hypothesis could be fatal. Still, if these weren’t messages, what the hell were they?

Having switched off the flashlight, he stood again in the dark, holding the SIG Sauer pistol at his side, straining his eyes and ears. The utter silence gave him a chill. He told himself it was simply because the temperature was dropping and the air was growing damper. But that didn’t make him feel any more comfortable. It was time to get the hell out of there.

Halfway to Walnut Crossing he stopped at an all-night convenience store for a container of coffee. Sitting in the parking lot, sipping the coffee, going back over what had happened at Hardwick’s—what he could have done or should have done—endeavoring to organize some reasonable sequence of next steps, the thought came to him to call Kyle.

Prepared to leave a message, he was surprised to hear a live voice.

“Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

“Actually, too damn much.”

“Yeah? But, hell, you like it that way, don’t you?”

“You think so?”

“I know so. If you’re not being overwhelmed, you feel underoccupied.”

Gurney smiled. “I hope I’m not calling you too late.”

“Too late? It’s like nine forty-five. This is New York City. Most of my friends are just going out now.”

“Not you?”

“We decided to stay in tonight.”

“We?”

“Long story. What’s up?”

“A question, based on your Wall Street experience. Not even sure how to ask it. I spent my whole career buried in homicides, not white-collar stuff. What I’m wondering is, if an outfit was looking for major financing—let’s say for expansion—is that something that would get around on the grapevine?”

“That would depend.”

“On what?”

“On how ‘major’ a deal you’re talking about. And what kind of financing. And who’s involved. Lot of different factors. To get into the rumor mill, it would need to be big. Nobody on the Street talks about small stuff. What outfit are we talking about?”

“Something called the Cyberspace Cathedral—brainchild of a guy named Jonah Spalter.”

“Kind of rings a bell.”

“Any facts attached to that bell?”

“CyberCath …”

“CyberCath?”

“People in finance are big on abbreviations, stock-exchange names, fast talk—like they’re too busy to use whole words.”

“The Cyberspace Cathedral is listed on the stock exchange?”

“I don’t think so. That’s just the way the boys talk. What do you want to know about it?”

“Anything people say about it that I wouldn’t find on Google.”

“No problem. You working on a new case?”

“A murder conviction appeal. I’m trying to dig up some facts the original investigation may have ignored.”

“Cool. How’s it going?”

“Interestingly.”

“Knowing how you talk about these things, I’d say that means that you were shot at but not hit.”

“Well … sort of.”

“Whaaat? You mean I’m right? Are you okay? Somebody tried to shoot you?”

“He was just shooting at a house I happened to be in.”

“Jeez! That’s part of this case you’re on?”

“I think so.”

“How can you be so calm? I’d be going nuts if somebody shot at a house I was in.”

“I’d be more upset if he were aiming at me personally.”

“Wow. If you were a comic-book hero, they’d have to call you Doctor Cool.”

Gurney smiled, didn’t know what to say. He didn’t talk to Kyle that often, although they’d been in contact more frequently since the Good Shepherd case. “Is there any chance you might be coming up our way one of these days?”

“Sure. Why not. That’d be great.”

“You still have the motorcycle?”

“Absolutely. And the helmet you gave me. Your old one. I wear it instead of my own.”

“Ah … well … I’m glad it fits.”

“I think we must have exactly the same size heads.”

Gurney laughed. He wasn’t sure why. “Well, anytime you can get away, we’d love to see you.” He paused. “How’s Columbia Law?”

“Busy as hell, tons of reading, but basically good.”

“So you don’t regret getting out of Wall Street?”

“Not for a minute. Well, maybe for an occasional minute. But then I remember all the bullshit that went with it—Wall Street is paved with bullshit—and I’m really happy not to be part of that anymore.”

“Good.”

There was a silence, finally broken by Kyle. “So … I’ll make some calls, see if anyone knows anything about CyberCath, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Great, son. Thank you.”

“Love you, Dad.

“Love you, too.”

After ending the call, Gurney sat with his phone still in his hand, pondering the curious pattern of his communications with his son. The young man was … what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? He could never immediately remember which. And for many of those years, especially the past ten, he and Kyle had been … what? Not quite estranged, that was too loaded a term for it. Distant? Separated by periods of noncommunication, certainly. But when the instances of communication did occur, they were invariably warm, particularly on Kyle’s part.

Perhaps the explanation was as simple as the summation offered by Gurney’s college girlfriend decades ago on the occasion of her breaking up with him: “You’re just not a people person, David.” Her name was Geraldine. They were standing outside the greenhouse in the New York Botanical Garden. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom. It was starting to rain. She turned and walked away, kept walking even as the rain grew heavier. They never spoke again.

He looked down at the cell phone in his hand. It occurred to him that he should call Madeleine, let her know he was on his way.

When she picked up she sounded sleepy. “Where are you?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. I was reading. Dozing a little, maybe.”

He was tempted to ask if the book was War and Peace. She’d been reading it forever, and it was a powerful soporific. “Just wanted to let you know that I’m halfway between Dillweed and Walnut Crossing. Should be home in less than twenty minutes.”

“Good. How come so late?”

“I ran into some difficulty at Hardwick’s.”

“Difficulty? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Tell you all about it when I get home.”

“When you get home I’ll be sleeping.”

“In the morning, then.”

“Drive safely.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

He slipped the phone into his pocket, took a couple of swallows of cold coffee, dumped the rest of it in a trash bin, and drove back out onto the main road.

Hardwick was on his mind now. Along with the uncomfortable feeling that he should have ignored the man’s instructions and followed him after all. Sure, there was a risk of one thing leading to another, a firefight with the shooter, official law enforcement agencies getting involved, BCI sniffing out Esti’s involvement, having to fudge the facts of their meeting in order to protect her, half-true affidavits, knots and tangles and snarls. But, on the other hand, there was the possibility that Hardwick might be coming face-to-face—or muzzle-to-muzzle—with more than he could handle.

Gurney had a powerful urge to turn around and go back over the roads where Hardwick’s chase was likely to have led him. But there were too many possibilities. Too many intersections. Each one would multiply the odds against duplicating the actual route the man had taken. And even if by some remarkable coincidence he made a series of accurate guesses and ended up in the right place, his unexpected arrival could create as many problems as it solved.

So he drove on, conflicted, coming eventually to the turn-off for his hilltop property. He drove slowly because deer had a way of leaping out of nowhere. He’d hit a fawn in the not-too-distant past, and the sickening feeling was still with him.

At the top of the road he stopped to let a porcupine move out of the way. He watched as it waddled off into the high grass on the rise above the barn. Porcupines had a bad reputation, earned by chewing up just about everything, from the siding on homes to the brake lines on cars. The farmer down the road had advised shooting them on sight. “They’re a world of trouble and good for nothing.” But Gurney had no heart for that, and Madeleine would never tolerate it.

He put the car back in gear and was about to head up the grassy lane to the farmhouse when something bright caught his eye. It was in one of the barn windows—a gleaming point of light. It occurred to him that perhaps a light in the barn had been left on—maybe by Madeleine when she last fed the chickens. But that bulb was relatively dim, with a yellowish cast, and this light in the window was sharp and white. As Gurney peered at it, it grew more intense.

He switched off his headlights. After sitting there mystified for a few more seconds, he picked up Hardwick’s heavy metal flashlight from the passenger seat without turning it on, got out of the car, and walked toward the barn—guided through the darkness by that strange point of light, which seemed to move as he moved.

Then he realized with a touch of gooseflesh that the light wasn’t in the barn at all. It was a reflection—a reflection on the window of a light somewhere behind him. He turned quickly, and there it was—a powerful light gleaming through the line of trees along the top of the ridge behind the pond. The first thought that came to mind was that it was a halogen searchlight mounted on an ATV.

In the barn behind him, perhaps in response to this illumination, the rooster crowed.

Gurney looked again at the ridge—at the swelling, brightening light behind the trees. And then, of course, it was obvious. As it should have been from the first instant. No mystery at all. No strange vehicle probing the high forest. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a full moon rising on a clear night.

He felt like a fool.

His phone rang.

It was Madeleine. “Is that you down by the barn?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Someone just called for you. Are you on your way up?” Her voice was distinctly cool.

“Yes, I was just checking something. Who was it?”

“Alyssa.”

“What?”

“A woman, by the name of Alyssa.”

“Did she give you a last name?”

“I asked her for that. She said you’d probably know her last name, and if you didn’t, there wasn’t much point in talking to you anyway. She sounded either stoned or crazy.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“Yes, it’s here.”

“I’ll be right up.”

Two minutes later, at 10:12 p.m., he was standing in the kitchen with his phone, entering the number.

Madeleine was at the sink island in her pink and yellow summer pajamas, putting away a few pieces of silverware left in the dish drainer.

His call was answered on the third ring—by a voice that was both husky and delicate. “Could this be Detective Gurney calling me back?”

“Alyssa?”

“The one and only.”

“Alyssa Spalter?”

“Alyssa Spalter, who was left at the altar, just wearing a halter.” She sounded like a twelve-year-old who’d been at her parents’ liquor cabinet.

“What can I do for you?”

“You want to do something for me?”

“You called here a little while ago. What do you want?”

“I want to be helpful. That’s all I want.”

“How do you want to help?”

“You want to know who killed Cock Robin?”

“What?”

“How many murders are you involved in?”

“Are you talking about your father?”

“Who do you think?”

“Do you know who killed your father?”

“King Carl? Course I do.”

“Tell me.”

“Not on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“Come see me, then I’ll tell you.”

“Give me a name.”

“I’ll give you a name. When I get to know you better. I give all my boyfriends special names. So when am I going to meet you?”

Gurney said nothing.

“You still there?” Her tone was wandering fluidly back and forth between clarity and intoxication.

“I’m here.”

“Ah. That’s the problem. You need to come here.”

“Alyssa … you either know something useful, or you don’t. You’re either going to tell me what it is, or you’re not. Up to you. Decide now.”

“I know everything.”

“Okay. Tell me about it.”

“No way. Phone might be tapped. Such a scary world we live in. They tap everything. Tippety, tippety, tap. But you’re a detective, so you know all that. Bet you even know where I live.”

Gurney said nothing.

“Bet you know where I live, right?”

Again, he said nothing.

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

“Alyssa? Listen to me. If you want to tell—”

She interrupted with an exaggerated, slurry seductiveness that might have been comical in other circumstances. “So … I’ll be here all night. And all day tomorrow. Come as soon as you can. Please. I’ll be waiting for you. Waiting just for you.”

The connection was broken.

Gurney laid his phone down and looked at Madeleine. She was studying a fork she was about to put in the silverware drawer. She frowned, turned on the water in the sink, and began scrubbing it. Then she rinsed it, dried it, examined it again, seemed satisfied, and placed it in the drawer.

“I think you were right,” said Gurney.

The frown came back, but now it was directed at him. “About what?”

“About the young woman being stoned or crazy.”

She smiled humorlessly. “What does she want?”

“Good question.”

“What does she say she wants?”

“To see me. To tell me who killed her father.”

“Carl Spalter?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to see her?”

“Maybe.” He paused, thinking about it. “Probably.”

“Where?”

“Where she’s living. The family house on Venus Lake. Out by Long Falls.”

“Venus as in the goddess of love?”

“I guess.”

“And venereal disease?”

“I suppose.”

“Nice name for a lake.” She paused. “You said ‘the family house.’ Her father’s dead and her stepmother’s in prison. Who else is in the family?”

“As far as I know, no one. Alyssa’s the only child.”

“Quite a child. You’re going there alone?”

“Yes and no.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Maybe with some simple electronic backup.”

“You mean you’re going to be wired?”

“Not like on television, with a van full of electronics geeks and satellite equipment sitting around the corner. I’m thinking a low-tech substitute. Are you going to be home tomorrow or at the clinic?”

“I’m working in the afternoon. I should be here most of the morning. Why?”

“What I’m thinking is this. When I get to Venus Lake, before I go into the house itself, I could call our landline from my cell phone. When you pick up and confirm that it’s me, you just switch on the recorder. I’ll leave my phone on, in my shirt pocket. It may not transmit everything with ideal clarity, but it’ll provide some record of what’s said in my meeting with her, which might turn out to be useful.”

Madeleine looked doubtful. “That’s fine for later, to prove whatever you want to prove, but … it’s not exactly protection while you’re there. In the two minutes Alyssa was on the phone with me, I did get a strong impression that she might be nuts. Dangerously nuts.”

“Yeah, I know. But—”

She cut him off. “Don’t tell me how many dangerously nutty people you had to deal with in the city. That was then, this is now.” She paused, as if questioning the reality of the then/now distinction. “How much do you know about this person?”

He thought about it. Kay had said plenty about Alyssa. But how much of it was true was another question.

“How much do I know about her for sure? Almost nothing. Her stepmother claims she’s a drug addict and a liar. She may have had sex with her father. She may have had sex with Mick Klemper to influence the outcome of the investigation. She may have framed her stepmother for murder. She may have been stoned out of her mind on the phone with me just now. Or she may have been putting on a bizarre act—for God only knows what reason.”

“Do you know anything positive about her?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Well … it’s your decision.” She closed the silverware drawer a little more firmly than necessary. “But I think that meeting with her in her house by yourself is a terrible idea.”

“I wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t set up the phone thing for protection.”

Madeleine nodded ever so slightly, somehow managing to convey with that restrained gesture a clear message: It’s far too risky, but I know I can’t stop you.

Then she added something, aloud. “Have you made that appointment yet?”

He realized that she’d switched subjects, and that the segue itself was fraught with meaning, which he pretended not to grasp. “What appointment?”

She stood there by the sink, her hands resting on the rim of it, fixing him with a patient, disbelieving stare.

“Are you talking about Malcolm Claret?” he asked.

“Yes. Who did you think?”

He shook his head in a kind of helpless gesture. “There’s a limit to the number of things I can keep in my mind at once.”

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

He sensed another change of direction. “For Venus Lake? Maybe nine or so. I doubt that Miss Alyssa gets up very early. Why?”

“I want to work on the chicken house. I thought maybe if you had a few free minutes you could explain the next steps so I could make a little progress before I go to the clinic. It’s supposed to be a nice morning.”

Gurney sighed. He tried to focus on the chicken project—the basic geometry, how far they’d gotten with their measurements, the materials that needed to be purchased, what had to happen next—but he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. It was as if the Spalter issues and the chicken issues required two different brains. And then there was the Hardwick situation. Each time his mind went back to it, he regretted his decision to do as the man had asked.

He promised Madeleine he’d deal later with the chicken house issue, went into the den, and called Hardwick’s cell number.

Unsurprisingly—and frustratingly—it went directly to voice mail.

“Hardwick—leave a message.”

“Hey, Jack, what’s happening out there? Where are you? Let me know. Please.”

Finally realizing that his brain had reached a useless point of exhaustion, Gurney joined Madeleine in bed. But sleep, when it eventually came, was hardly sleep at all. His mind was stuck in one of those feverish, shallow, circular ruts—in which the ID and the directive, “Hardwick—leave a message,” kept recurring in all sorts of twisted permutations.

Chapter 30. Beautiful Poison

Gurney waited until the following morning to tell Madeleine about the power-line drama at Hardwick’s house. When he completed his much abridged rendition of the incident, she sat quietly watching him, as if waiting for the other shoe to fall.

The other shoe was the one he was afraid to drop, but felt he had to. “I think, as a precaution—” he began, but she finished his thought for him.

“I should move out of the house for a while. Is that what you were going to say?”

“It’s just to be on the safe side. Just for a few days. My feeling is that this guy made his point and isn’t likely to repeat the performance, but still … I want you to be away from any possible danger until the issue is resolved.”

Anticipating the same angry reaction she’d had to a similar suggestion he’d made a year earlier during the unnerving Jillian Perry case, he was caught off-balance by her evident lack of objection. Her first question was surprisingly practical: “How many days are we talking about?”

“I’d only be guessing. But … maybe three, four? Depends on how soon we can eliminate the problem.”

“Three or four days starting when?”

“Hopefully by tomorrow night? I was thinking maybe you could invite yourself to your sister’s place down in—”

“I’ll be at the Winklers’.”

“You’ll be where?”

“I knew you wouldn’t remember. The Winklers. At their farm. In Buck Ridge.”

It rang a distant bell in his memory.

“The people with the odd animals?”

“Alpacas. And you also remember that I offered to go there to help them take care of things during the fair?”

A second distant bell. “Ah. Yes. Right.”

“And that the fair starts this weekend?”

A third distant bell. “Right.”

“So that’s where I’ll be. At the fair with them and at their farm. I was going to go the day after tomorrow, but I’m sure they won’t mind me coming a day early. In fact, they had invited me to stay the whole week. I was going to take a few days off from the clinic. You know, we did discuss this when they first brought it up.”

“I have a vague recollection. I guess it just seemed so far away at the time. But that’s fine—a lot more convenient than going down to your sister’s or something like that.”

Her easy manner stiffened. “But what about you? If it makes sense for me not to be here …”

“I’ll be fine. Like I said, the shooter was delivering a message. He seems to know that Hardwick is responsible for stirring up the Spalter case, so it makes sense that he addressed his nasty little message to him. Besides, in the highly unlikely event that he wants to make his presence known a second time, I may be able to take advantage of that.”

Her face was full of anxious confusion, as if she were wrestling with a major contradiction.

He noted her expression and regretted having added an unnecessary twist, which he now tried to dance away from. “My point is that the likelihood of any real problem here is minuscule, but even if it’s less than one percent, I’d like you to be as far away from it as possible.”

“But again, what about you? Even if it is less than one percent, which I don’t really believe …”

“Me? No need to worry. According to New York magazine, I’m the most successful homicide dick in the history of the Big Apple.”

His tongue-in-cheek boast was supposed to relax her.

If anything, it appeared to do the opposite.

Gurney’s GPS took him into the enclave of Venus Lake via a series of agrarian river valleys, bypassing the blight of Long Falls.

Lakeshore Drive formed a two-mile loop around a body of water that he estimated to be about a mile long and a quarter-mile wide. The loop began and ended in a postcard village at the foot of the lake. The Spalter home—an inflated imitation of a colonial farmhouse—stood on a formally landscaped multiacre property at the head of the lake.

He made a complete circuit of the road before stopping in front of Killington’s Mercantile Emporium, which—with the meticulous rusticity of its facade and window display of fly-fishing equipment, English teas, and country tweeds—appeared to Gurney to be about as authentic a representation of rural life as a scented-candle catalog.

He took out his phone and called Hardwick for the third time that morning, and for the third time was shunted into voice mail. Then he called Esti’s cell, also for the third time, but this time she picked up. “Dave?”

“Any news from Jack?”

“Yes and no. He called me at eleven forty-five last night. Didn’t sound very happy. Apparently the shooter either had a trail bike or an ATV. Jack said he could hear him in the woods near the road at one point, but that was the closest he got. So, no progress there. I think he was going to spend time today trying to track down the guys who testified against Kay.”

“What about the photos?”

“The Gurikos autopsy photos?”

“Well, those, too—but I meant the trail-cam photos. Remember the flashes we saw up in the woods after the shots hit the house?”

“According to Jack, the cameras were shattered. Apparently the shooter put a couple of bullets in each one. As for the Gurikos and the Mary Spalter autopsy stuff, I’ve got phone queries out. May have replies soon, fingers crossed.”

The next call he made was to his own home landline number.

At first there was no answer, and the call went into voice mail. He was starting to leave a panicky Where the hell are you? message when Madeleine picked up. “Hi. I was outside, trying to figure out the electric thing.”

“What electric thing?”

“Didn’t we agree there’d have to be an electric line running out to the chicken house?”

He suppressed a sigh of exasperation. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s not … not something we need to deal with right now.”

“Okay … but shouldn’t we know where it’s going to be, so we don’t have a problem later?”

“Look, I can’t focus on this now. I’m at Venus Lake, about to interview the victim’s daughter. I need you to set up our phone to make a recording.”

“I know. You told me. I just leave the line open and turn on the recorder.”

“Right, that’s pretty much it. Except, I thought of a better way to handle it.”

She said nothing.

“You still there?”

“I’m still here.”

“Okay. Here’s what I need you to do. Call me exactly ten minutes from now. I’ll say something to you—ignore whatever it is that I say—then I’ll disconnect you. Call me back immediately. I’ll say something else and disconnect you again. Call me a third time and, no matter what I say, leave the line open at that point and turn on the recorder. Okay?”

“Why the extra complication?” There was a rising note of anxiety in her voice.

“Alyssa may assume that I’m recording the interview on my phone or that I’m transmitting it to another recorder. I want to kill that idea in her head by creating a situation that will convince her I’ve turned it off completely.”

“Okay. I’ll call you in ten minutes. Ten minutes from right now?”

“Yes.”

He slipped the phone into his shirt pocket and took a small digital recorder out of the car’s console box and clipped it to a very visible position on his belt. Then he drove from Killington’s Mercantile Emporium to the opposite end of Venus Lake—to the open wrought-iron gate and driveway that led up to the Spalter house. He passed slowly through the gate and parked where the driveway broadened in front of wide granite steps.

The front door appeared to be an antique salvaged from an older but equally prosperous home. On the wall beside it there was an intercom. He pressed the button.

A disembodied female voice said, “Come in, the door’s unlocked.”

He checked his watch. Just six minutes to Madeleine’s call. He opened the door and stepped into a large entry hall illuminated by a series of antique sconces on each wall. An arched doorway on the left opened into a formal dining room; a similar one on the right opened into a well-furnished living room with a weathered-brick fireplace a man could stand in. At the rear of the hall a polished-mahogany staircase with elaborate banisters rose to a second-floor landing.

A half-naked young woman came out onto the landing, paused, smiled, and began to descend the stairs. She was wearing only two skimpy bits of clothing—clearly designed to emphasize what they nominally concealed—a pink cutoff T-shirt that barely covered her breasts, and white shorts that covered almost nothing. An unexplained acronym, FMAD, was printed in bold black letters across the stretched fabric of her shirt.

Her face looked fresher than Gurney had expected the face of a drug addict to look. Her shoulder-length ash-blond hair was disarrayed and damp-looking, as though she’d recently come from the shower. She was barefoot. As she descended farther, he noticed that her toenails were painted a pale pink, matching the hint of pink on her lips, which were small and delicately shaped, like a doll’s.

When she reached the foot of the stairs, she paused, giving him the same sort of visual inspection he’d been giving her.

“Hi, Dave.” Her voice, like her appearance, was both vain and absurdly seductive. Her eyes, he noted with interest, were not the dull, self-pitying eyes of the average junkie. They were sky blue, clear, bright. But the chilly substance sparkling in those eyes wasn’t the innocence of youth. Far from it.

There is an interesting thing about eyes, thought Gurney. They contain and reflect, even in the effort of concealment, the emotional sum of everything they’ve seen.

He cleared his throat and asked a perfunctory but necessary question. “Are you Alyssa Spalter?”

Her pink lips parted slightly, showing a row of perfect teeth. “That’s the question cops on TV ask before they arrest somebody. Do you want to arrest me?” Her tone was playful, but her eyes weren’t.

“That’s not my plan.”

“What is your plan?”

“No plan. I’m here because you called me.”

“And because you’re curious?”

“I’m curious about who killed your father. You told me you knew who it was. Do you?”

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Come in and sit down.” She turned at the foot of the stairs and walked through the archway into the living room, moving on her bare feet with a kind of silkiness, like a dancer. She didn’t look back.

He followed her—thinking that he’d never before encountered such a remarkable combination of over-the-top sexuality and pure cyanide.

The room itself—with its enormous fireplace, leather-upholstered chairs, and English landscape paintings—provided a bizarre contrast to the Lolita-like figure who might soon inherit it. Or maybe not such a contrast after all, considering that the house was probably no older than Alyssa, and its outward appearance no more than a clever contrivance.

“Kinda like a museum,” she said, “but the sofa is nice and soft. I love the way it feels on my legs. Try it.”

Before he could choose a place to sit—anywhere but the sofa—his phone rang. He checked the ID. It was Madeleine, right on time. He stared at the screen with an expression of consternation, as though the caller were the last person he wanted to hear from, before pressing TALK.

“Yes?” He paused. “No.” He paused again before repeating, angrily now, “I said no!” He pressed END CALL, put the phone back in his shirt pocket, looked at Alyssa and erased his frown. “Sorry for the interruption. Where were we?”

“We were about to get comfortable.” She sat at one end of the sofa and gestured invitingly toward the cushion nearest her.

Instead he sat in a wing chair, separated from her by a coffee table.

She let a pouty little look come and go. “You want something to drink?”

He shook his head.

“Beer?”

“No.”

“Champagne?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Martini? Negroni? Tequini? Margarita?”

“Nothing.”

The pouty look again. “You don’t drink?”

“Sometimes. Not now.”

“You sound so tense. You need to—”

His phone rang again. He checked the ID, confirmed that it was Madeleine. He let it ring three more times, as though intending to let it go to his voice mail; then, in an apparent burst of impatience, he pressed TALK. “What is it?” He paused. “This is not the time … For Christ’s sake …” He paused, looking increasingly annoyed. “Look. Please. I’m in the middle of something. Yes … No … NOT NOW!” He pressed END CALL and replaced the phone in his pocket.

Alyssa gave him a sly smile. “Girlfriend problems?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at the coffee table.

“You need to relax. All that tension, I can feel it over here. Is there anything I can do?”

“It might help if you got dressed.”

“Got dressed? I am dressed.”

“Not noticeably.”

Her lips parted in a slow, deliberate grin. “You’re funny.”

“Okay, Alyssa. Enough. Let’s get to the point. Why did you want to see me?”

The grin was replaced by the pouty look. “No need to sound so unfriendly. I just want to help.”

“How?”

“I want to help you understand the reality of the situation,” she said earnestly, as though that answer clarified everything. When Gurney just stared at her and waited, she switched back to the grin. “You positive you don’t want a drink? How about a tequila sunrise? I make a fantastic tequila sunrise.”

He reached with obvious casualness to his hip, scratched a nonexistent itch, and switched on the digital recorder affixed to his belt, awkwardly hiding the soft click under a loud cough.

Her grin broadened. “If you want to shut me up, sweetie, that’s the way to do it.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Beg pardon?” There was a glint of cold amusement in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He projected as best he could the expression of a guilty man trying to appear innocent.

“What’s that cute little thing on your belt?”

He glanced down at his side. “Oh, that’s …” He cleared his throat. “That’s actually a recorder.”

“A recorder. No shit. Can I see it?”

He blinked. “Uh, sure.” He unclipped it and held it out across the coffee table.

She took it, studied it, switched it off, and laid it on the sofa cushion next to her.

He put on an anxious frown. “May I have that back, please?”

“Come and get it.”

He looked at her, at the recorder, back at her, cleared his throat again. “It’s a routine thing. I make a point of recording all my meetings. It can be very helpful in avoiding disputes later about what was said or what was agreed to.”

“That so? Wow. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to record this meeting, too.”

“Yeah? Well, like Santa said to the greedy little boy, fuck you.”

He looked disconcerted. “Why is it such a big deal?”

“It’s not a big deal. I just don’t like being recorded.”

“I think it would be better for both of us.”

“I disagree.”

Gurney shrugged. “Okay. Fine.”

“What were you going to do with it?”

“Like I said, in case there was some dispute later …”

His phone rang for the third time. Madeleine on the ID. He pressed TALK.

“Jesus, what now?” he said into the phone, sounding thoroughly ticked off. Over the next ten seconds he imitated a man about to lose it completely. “I know … Right … Right … Jesus, can we talk about this LATER?… Right … Yes … I said YES.” He took the phone from his ear, glared at it as though it were the source of nothing but problems, poked at a spot close to the END CALL button without breaking the connection, and put the still-transmitting phone back in his shirt pocket. He shook his head and shot Alyssa an embarrassed glance. “Jesus.”

She yawned, as though there were nothing more boring on earth than a man thinking about something other than her. Then she arched her back. The movement raised what little there was of her shirt, exposing the bottom of her breasts. “Maybe we ought to start over,” she said, nestling back into her corner of the sofa.

“Okay. But I’d like my recorder back.”

“I’ll hold on to it while you’re here. You can have it when you leave.”

“Fine. Okay.” He gave a sigh of resignation. “Back to the beginning. You were saying that you wanted me to understand the reality of the situation. What reality?”

“The reality is that you’re wasting your time, trying to turn everything upside down.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“You’re trying to turn the bitch loose, right?”

“I’m trying to find out who killed your father.”

“Who killed him? His whore cunt bitch wife killed him. End of story.”

“Kay Spalter, the supersniper?”

“She took lessons. It’s true. It’s documented.” She articulated the word reverently, as though it had magical powers of persuasion.

Gurney shrugged. “A lot of people take shooting lessons without killing anyone.”

Alyssa shook her head—a quick, bitter movement. “You don’t know what she’s like.”

“Tell me.”

“She’s a lying, greedy piece of shit.”

“Anything else?”

“She married my father for his money. Period. Kay is a money-fucker. And a general slut. When this finally dawned on my father, he told her he wanted a divorce. Bitch figured that’d be the end of the good life for her, so she ended his life instead. BANG! Simple.”

“So you think it was all about money?”

“It was all about that skeeve getting whatever she wanted. Did you know she was buying Darryl, the pool boy, presents with my father’s money? She bought him a diamond earring for his birthday. You know how much she paid for that? Guess.”

Gurney waited.

“No. Really. Guess how much.”

“A thousand?”

“A thousand? I wish! Fucking ten thousand! Ten fucking thousand dollars of my fucking father’s fucking money! For the fucking pool boy! You know why?”

Again Gurney waited.

“I’ll tell you why. The disgusting bitch was paying him to fuck her. On my father’s credit card. How disgusting is that? And speaking of disgusting, you should see her putting on her makeup … give you the fucking shakes watching it—like an undertaker putting a smiley face on a corpse.”

This fury, this well of bile and hatred, struck Gurney as the most authentic part of Alyssa he’d seen so far. But even about that he wasn’t absolutely sure. He wondered how extensive her acting talent might be.

She sat silently now, chewing at her thumb.

“Did she kill your grandmother, too?” he asked mildly.

She blinked in apparent confusion. “My … who?”

“Your father’s mother.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“There’s reason to believe Mary Spalter’s death was no accident.”

“What reason?”

“The day she was found dead, an individual was videotaped entering the Emmerling Oaks complex under false pretenses. The day your father was shot, that same individual was seen entering the apartment where the rifle was found.”

“Is this some kind of bullshit invented by your scumbag lawyer?”

“Did you know, the same day your father was shot, a local mobster he was dealing with was killed? You think Kay did that, too?”

Gurney got the impression that Alyssa was rattled and trying not to show it.

“She could have. Why not? If she could kill her husband …” Her voice trailed off.

“She’s a regular homicide factory, huh? Those lifers over in Bedford Hills better watch out.” Even as he tossed in this sarcastic crack, he recalled the nickname Kay had acquired from her prison-mates, the Black Widow, and wondered if they saw something in her that he’d missed.

Alyssa made no reply, just sank a little deeper into the corner of the sofa and crossed her arms in front of her. Apart from her very adult figure, she looked for a passing instant like a troubled middle-schooler. Even when she finally spoke, it was with more angry bravado than confidence. “What a pile of bullshit! Anything to free that bitch, right?”

Gurney was weighing his options. He could leave things as they were, letting what he’d revealed fester in her mind, and see what developed. Or he could press on, use all his ammunition right now, try to provoke an explosion. There were sizable risks either way. He opted to press on. He hoped to Christ his phone was still transmitting.

He leaned toward her, elbows on his knees. “Listen carefully, Alyssa. Some of this you already know. In fact, most of it. But you better listen to all of it. I’ll only say it once. Kay Spalter didn’t kill anybody. She was convicted because Mick Klemper screwed up the investigation. On purpose. The only open question in my mind is whether that was his idea or yours. I’m thinking it was yours.”

“You’re funny.”

“I’m thinking the idea was yours, because you’re the one with the motive that makes the most sense. Get Kay put away for Carl’s murder, and all the money goes to you. So you fucked Klemper—literally—into doing a frame job on Kay. Problem is, Klemper did a lousy job. So now the house of cards is collapsing. The prosecution’s case is full of gaping holes, evidence problems, police misconduct. Kay’s conviction is sure to be reversed on appeal. She’ll be out in another month, maybe sooner. As soon as that happens, Carl’s estate goes immediately to her. So you fucked that idiot Klemper for nothing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in court—which one of you ends up doing the most time.”

“Doing time? For what?”

“Obstruction. Perjury. Suborning perjury. Conspiracy. And half a dozen other nasty legal offenses, with long prison sentences attached to them. Klemper will blame you, you’ll blame Klemper. The jury probably won’t care much for either one of you.”

As he was speaking, she drew her knees up in front of her and wrapped her arms tightly around them. Her eyes appeared to be focused on some invisible road map.

After a long minute, she spoke in a small, even voice. “Suppose I told you he blackmailed me.”

He worried whether her comment was loud enough for his phone to pick up. “Blackmailed you? How? Why?”

“He knew something about me.”

“What did he know?”

She gave him a shrewd look. “You don’t need to know that.”

“Okay. He blackmailed you into doing what?”

“Having sex with him.”

“And lying in court about things you heard Kay say on the phone?”

She hesitated. “No. I actually heard those things.”

“So you admit having sex with Klemper but deny committing perjury?”

“That’s right. Me fucking him was not a crime. But him making me fuck him was. So if anybody’s got a problem, it’s him, not me.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

“No.” She lowered her feet gracefully to the floor. “And you should really forget everything I just told you.”

“Why is that?”

“It might not be true.”

“Why bother telling me, then?”

“To help you understand. That stuff you were saying about me doing time? That’s never going to happen.” She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

“Okay. Then I guess we’re finished here.”

“Unless you want to change your mind about my tequila sunrise. Believe me, it’s worth changing your mind for.”

Gurney stood up, pointed to his mini-recorder on the sofa cushion. “May I have that, please?”

She picked it up and jammed it into the pocket of her shorts, which were already about to burst a seam. She smiled. “I’ll mail it to you. Or … you could try to take it now.”

“Keep it.”

“Aren’t you even going to try? I bet you could take it if you really tried.”

Gurney smiled. “Klemper didn’t have a chance, did he?”

She smiled back. “I told you, he blackmailed me. Made me do things I never would have done willingly. Never. You can just imagine what kind of things.”

Gurney walked around the far side of the coffee table and out of the living room, opened the front door, and stepped out onto the broad stone steps. Alyssa followed him to the doorway and put on her pouty look.

“Most men ask me what FMAD means.”

He glanced at the big letters on the front of her tee. “I bet they do.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Okay, I’m curious. What does FMAD mean?”

She leaned toward him and whispered, “Fuck Me And Die.”

Chapter 31. Another Black Widow

The red GTO was parked at his side door, as Gurney expected it would be. He’d called Hardwick on his way home from Venus Lake and left a message suggesting they get together ASAP, including Esti if possible. He felt the need for other perspectives on his Alyssa interview.

Hardwick had called Gurney back as he was nearing Walnut Crossing and offered to come right over. When Gurney entered the house, he found the man lounging in a chair at the breakfast table with the French doors open.

“Your lovely wife let me in as she was leaving. Said she was off to therapize the local nutcases at the clinic,” he said in response to Gurney’s unvoiced question.

“I doubt she put it that way.”

“She might have put it in cuddlier words. Women love the fantasy that crazy fuckers can be de-crazed. As if the only thing Charlie Manson needed was a touch of TLC.”

“Speaking of nice women getting involved with lunatics, what’s the deal with you and Esti?”

“Hard to say.”

“You serious about her?”

“Serious? Yeah, I guess, whatever ‘serious’ means. I’ll tell you one thing. The sex is seriously good.”

“Is she the reason you finally bought some furniture?”

“Women like furniture. Turns them on. Feathered nests trigger good feelings. The biological imperatives start kicking in. Beds, couches, comfy chairs, cozy rugs—shit like that makes a difference.” He paused. “She’s on her way. Did you know that?”

“On her way here?”

“I passed your invitation along to her. I thought she might’ve called you.”

“No, but I’m glad she’s coming. The more heads on this subject the better.”

Hardwick made a skeptical face—his usual face—stood up from the table and stepped over to the French doors. He gazed out curiously for a while before asking, “Fuck are you up to out there?”

“What do you mean?”

“That pile of lumber.”

Gurney came to the door. There was indeed a pile of lumber that he’d missed on his way into the house. His view had been blocked by the asparagus ferns. For a moment he was at a loss. There were stacks of what appeared to be two-by-fours, four-by-fours, and two-by-sixes.

He took out his phone and entered Madeleine’s number.

Surprisingly, she picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”

“What’s this stuff out back?” Even as he was asking, he realized the answer was obvious and calling her had probably been a mistake.

“Lumber. For the chicken house. I had it delivered this morning. The things you said we’d be using first.”

He started raising his shields. “I didn’t say we’d be using them today.”

“Well, tomorrow, then? Don’t worry about it. If you’re too busy, just point me in the right direction and I’ll get started myself.”

He felt cornered, but he remembered a wise man once saying that feelings aren’t facts. He decided it would be prudent to keep his irritation out of his voice. “Right.”

“That’s it? That’s the reason you called?”

“Right.”

“Okay, see you tonight. I’m on my way into a session.”

He slipped the phone back in his pocket.

Hardwick was watching him with a sadistic grin. “Trouble in paradise?”

“No trouble.”

“Really? You looked like you were going to bite that phone.”

“Madeleine is better at switching focus than I am.”

“You mean she wants you to get involved in something you don’t give a shit about?”

It was a comment, not a question, and like many of Hardwick’s comments, it was rudely true.

“I hear a car,” said Gurney.

“Got to be Esti.”

“You recognize the sound of her Mini?”

“No. But who the hell else would be driving up that crappy little road of yours?”

A minute later, she was at the side door and Gurney was letting her in. She was dressed a lot more conservatively than at Hardwick’s house—in dark slacks, white blouse, and dark blazer, looking like she’d come directly from the job. Her hair had lost some of the sheen it’d had the previous night. She had a manila envelope in her hand.

“You just coming off a shift?” Gurney asked.

“Yep. Midnight to noon. Pretty tiring after all that craziness last night. But I had to fill in for someone who filled in for me two weeks ago. Then I had to get my car inspected. Anyway, here I am.” She followed Gurney into the kitchen, saw Hardwick standing at the table, and gave him a big smile. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hey, peaches, how’s things?”

“Good—now that I see you in one piece.” She went to him, kissed him on the cheek, and ran her fingers down his arm, as if to confirm her observation. “You’re really okay, right? There’s nothing you’re not telling me?”

“Babe, I am one hundred percent okay.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” She gave him a cute little wink. “So,” she continued, suddenly all business, “I got some answers. You boys interested?”

Gurney gestured toward the dining table. “We can sit there.”

Esti chose the end chair. The two men sat across from each other. She took her notepad out of the envelope. “Simple things first. Yes, according to the autopsy—pretty basic one—Mary Spalter’s injuries could have been intentionally inflicted, but that option was never seriously considered. Falls, even fatal falls, happen enough in geriatric situations that the simplest explanation is usually accepted.”

Hardwick grunted. “So there was no investigation at all?”

“Zero.”

“Time of death?” asked Gurney.

“Estimated between three and five in the afternoon. How does that square with the floral delivery guy on the security video?”

“I’ll double-check,” said Gurney, “but I think he walked into Carol Blissy’s office around three-fifteen. Any ViCAP hits on the MO elements?”

“Nothing yet.”

“No witness reports of floral delivery vans at homicide scenes?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any such reports. It just means they didn’t make it onto ViCAP forms.”

“Right,” said Gurney. “Anything on Fat Gus?”

“Time-of-death window between ten in the morning and one in the afternoon. And, yes, as you said it might, the word ‘larynx’ appears in the autopsy wound descriptions. Death, however, was not caused by the nails that were hammered into his head and neck. He was shot first—a .22 hollow point through the right eye into the brain.”

“Interesting,” said Gurney. “That would suggest that the nails weren’t a form of torture.”

“So what?” said Hardwick. “What’s your point?”

“It supports the idea that the nails were a warning to someone, rather than a way of punishing the victim. The time of death is interesting, too. In the original incident report on Carl’s shooting it gives the time of death as ten-twenty. The location of the Gurikos murder in his home near Utica would make it impossible for the shooter to have killed him at ten, gone through the nailing mess, cleaned himself up, driven to Long Falls, and gotten set up in time to hit Carl at ten-twenty. So it must have happened the other way around—Carl first, then Gus.”

“Assuming only one shooter,” said Hardwick.

“Right. But that’s an assumption we ought to make, at least until there’s evidence of more than one.” He turned to Esti. “Anything yet on Gurikos?”

“My contact at OCTF is looking into it. She wasn’t directly involved, so she has to tiptoe. She doesn’t want to set off alarms that could prompt follow-up queries to the original investigator. Kind of a tricky situation.”

“How about the Spalter MO?”

“That’s different. Klemper never initiated any ViCAP or NCIC searches, because he’d already made his decision about Kay. So I can pursue that more safely.”

“That’s great. And, Jack, you’re chasing after the prosecution witnesses—and whatever you can get from your Interpol friend?”

“Yeah. Nothing yet from Interpol. And none of the witnesses are still at the addresses listed in the case file—which may not be particularly significant, given their basic nature.”

Esti stared at him. “Their basic nature?”

Hardwick’s eyes lit up with the arch look that always got under Gurney’s skin. “Their basic nature is that they lack upstanding qualities. They’re fundamentally scumbags. It’s a known fact that scumbags who lack upstanding qualities often lack permanent addresses. All I’m saying is that having difficulty in locating them does not signify much. But I will persevere. Even scumbags have to be somewhere.” He turned to Gurney. “So how about telling us about your interview with the heiress.”

“The would-be heiress—if Kay stays in prison.”

“Which is becoming less likely each passing day. This turn of events must be having an interesting effect on Miss Alyssa, yes? You care to share your insights?”

Gurney smiled. “I’ll do better than that. I have a recording. Might not be the greatest quality, but you’ll get the gist.”

“ ‘Fuck me and die’? Did she really say ‘Fuck me and die’?” Esti was leaning toward the recorder as they finished listening for the second time to the conversation at Venus Lake. “What was that all about?”

“Probably the name of her favorite rock band,” suggested Hardwick.

“It could be a threat,” said Esti.

“Or an invitation,” said Hardwick. “You were there, Davey boy. What’d it sound like to you?”

“Like everything else she said and did—a combination of cartoon seduction and calculated bullshit.”

Hardwick raised an eyebrow. “Sounds to me like a nasty little kid trying to shock the grown-ups. That FMAD T-shirt you described makes her seem kind of pathetic. Like inside she’s about twelve.”

“The T-shirt may have been harmless,” replied Gurney, “but her eyes weren’t.”

Esti jumped in. “Maybe the shirt wasn’t so harmless either. Suppose it was a literal statement of fact.”

Hardwick ratcheted up his skeptical look. “What fact?”

“Maybe there’s more than one ‘black widow’ in this case.”

“You mean ‘Fuck me and die’ really means ‘Fuck me and I’ll kill you’? That’s clever, but I don’t get it. How does it—”

“She told Klemper her father coerced her into having sex with him. We have no proof of it, but it could be true.”

“So you’re saying that Alyssa killed her father as payback?”

“It’s not impossible. And if she could rope a horny jerk like Klemper into bending the investigation to put Kay in the frame, the ‘payback’ would also include her ending up with her father’s estate. That’s two major motives—revenge and money.”

Hardwick looked at Gurney. “What do you think, ace?”

“I’m sure Alyssa is guilty of something. She may have ‘persuaded’ or blackmailed Klemper into tailoring the evidence to make sure Kay was convicted. Or she may have masterminded the whole damn thing—the murder as well as the frame.”

“Premeditated murder? You think she’s capable of that?”

“There’s something scary in those glittery blue eyes. But I have a hard time seeing her handling the executional details. Someone else smashed Mary’s head on the side of that bathtub and hammered the nails into Fat Gus.”

“You’re saying she hired a pro?”

“I’m saying if she was the prime mover behind the three murders, she would’ve needed help—but none of that answers the basic question that’s been eating at me from the beginning: Why Carl’s mother? It really doesn’t make sense.”

Hardwick was drumming his fingertips on the table. “Neither does the Gus hit. Not unless you buy Donny Angel’s story about Gus and Carl being hit by a guy they targeted. But if you buy that, and you also buy Alyssa as the prime mover, then you’re stuck with the conclusion that she must have been Carl’s original target—which never felt right to me, and it still doesn’t.”

“But it would give her a third motive,” said Esti.

As Gurney considered the Angelidis scenario one more time, with Alyssa in the unnamed target position, it touched a nerve.

“What is it?” asked Esti, eyeing him curiously.

“Nothing very logical. In fact, nothing logical at all. Just a feeling and an image.” He got up and went into the den to get that troubling photo of Carl Spalter from the case file. When he returned, he laid it on the table between Hardwick and Esti.

Hardwick stared at it, his expression tightening.

“I saw that once before,” said Esti. “It’s hard to look at for very long.”

Hardwick glanced up at Gurney, who was still standing. “You have some point you want to make with this?”

“Like I said, nothing logical. Just an off-the-wall question.”

“Christ, Davey boy, the suspense is killing me. Speak.”

“Might that be the look of a man who’s waiting to die—who knows he’s about to die—as the final, twisted result of taking out a murder contract on his own child?”

They all stared at the photograph.

No one said anything for a while.

Hardwick finally leaned back in his chair and let out one of his barking laughs. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, wouldn’t that be the ultimate fucking karma!”

Chapter 32. Another Missing Player

Hardwick suggested they listen to the Venus Lake recording one more time, which they did. He seemed especially interested in the section in which Alyssa claimed that Klemper had blackmailed her into having sex with him. “Beautiful! I love it! That fuckhead is done, cooked, finished!”

Now Gurney looked skeptical. “The recording of Alyssa won’t be enough by itself. You heard her—she was all over the place, not exactly sounding like a solid citizen. You’ll need a sworn statement from her—listing dates, places, details—which she’s unlikely to supply. Because she’s almost certainly lying. If anyone blackmailed anyone, I’m pretty sure it was the other way around. So she won’t want—”

Esti broke in. “What do you mean, the other way around?”

“Suppose Alyssa seduced Klemper while he was still conducting an objective investigation of the original shooting. Suppose she video-recorded their … encounter. And suppose the price she demanded for keeping the recording out of the hands of the state police was Klemper’s help in making the case turn out the way she wanted.”

“It doesn’t matter how they ended up in bed,” said Hardwick. “Blackmail, seduction, whatever. Who gives a shit who was blackmailing who? Fucking a potential suspect is fucking a potential suspect. Klemper’s career is going down the toilet.”

Gurney sat back. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“And the other way is … what?”

“It’s a question of priorities. One way, we can pressure Alyssa to sink Klemper. The other way, we can pressure Klemper to sink Alyssa.”

Esti looked interested. “You like number two better, right?”

Before Gurney could answer, Hardwick interjected, “You think Alyssa’s the chief manipulator, but a minute ago you said she was all over the place, sounded less than solid—and I agree. She called you, she set up the meeting with you, but in that recording she comes across as pretty erratic—like she had no idea where the conversation might go, like she had no plan. This is a master manipulator?”

Esti spoke up with a knowing smile. “Maybe an overconfident manipulator. But she definitely had a plan.”

“What plan?”

“Probably the same as she had for Klemper. Her plan today was to get Dave into bed, get it all on a hidden camera, and get him to change his approach to the case.”

“Dave’s retired. Pension guaranteed. Doesn’t have a career to lose,” said Hardwick. “Where’s the leverage?”

“He has a wife.” She looked at Gurney. “A video of you in bed with a nineteen-year-old could create a problem, right?”

That didn’t require an answer.

Esti went on. “That was Alyssa’s Plan A. When that little sweetheart makes it clear that she’s available, I doubt many men turn her down. Dave not wanting to play her game probably came as a big surprise. She had no Plan B.”

Hardwick shot a nasty grin in Gurney’s direction. “Saint David here is full of surprises. But tell me something, ace. Why did she admit to you that she had sex with Klemper at all? Why not just deny the whole thing?”

Gurney shrugged. “Maybe someone else knows about it. Or she thinks someone knows about it. So she admits the fact, but lies about the reason. Common enough deception technique. Admit the external action but invent an exculpatory motive.”

“My ex was big on exculpatory motives,” said Esti to no one in particular. She checked her watch. “So what’s the next step?”

“Maybe a little blackmail of our own,” suggested Gurney. “Give Klemper a few shakes and see what comes loose.”

That put a smile on her face. “Sounds good. Anything that rattles that son of a bitch …”

“You want backup?” asked Hardwick.

“Not necessary. Klemper may be an asshole, but he’s not likely to pull a gun on me. Not in a public place, anyway. I just want to explain his situation to him, offer him an option or two.”

Hardwick stared down at the table intently, as if the possible results of such a conversation were listed there. “I need to give Bincher a heads-up on this, see what he thinks.”

“Go ahead,” said Gurney. “Just don’t make it sound like I’m asking for his permission.”

Hardwick took out his phone and entered a number. Apparently it went to voice mail. He made a disgusted face. “Fuck! Where the hell are you, Lex? This is my third attempt. Get back to me for Christ’s sake!”

He ended the call and made another.

“Abby, baby, where the hell is he? I left a message last night, another one first thing this morning, and another one thirty seconds ago.” He listened for a few moments, his frown shifting from frustration to puzzlement. “Well, as soon as he gets back, we need to talk. Things are happening.”

He listened again, longer this time, worry beginning to replace puzzlement. “You know anything more about that?… That was it, no explanation?… Nothing since?… I have no idea … The voice wasn’t familiar to you?… You think it was intentional?… Yeah, kinda strange … Right … Please, the minute he checks in … No, no, I’m sure he’s okay … Right … Yes … Good.”

He ended the call, laid his phone on the table, and looked at Gurney. “Lex got a call yesterday afternoon. Somebody who claimed to have major information on the Carl Spalter murder case. After the call, Lex left the office in a hurry. Abby hasn’t been able to reach him since. No answer on his cell, no answer at home. Fuck!”

“Abby is his assistant?”

“Yeah. Well, actually, his ex-wife. Don’t know how that works, but it does.”

“The caller was a man or woman?”

“That’s the thing—Abby said she couldn’t tell. At first she thought it was a kid, then a man, then a woman, some kind of foreign accent—didn’t know who the hell she was talking to. Then Lex took the call. Couple of minutes later he left the office. All he said was that it was about the Long Falls murder case, could be a breakthrough, he’d be back in a couple of hours. But he never did come back—at least not to the office.”

“Shit,” said Esti. “She can’t reach him anywhere?”

“She keeps getting his voice mail.”

She stared at Hardwick. “You getting the feeling too many people are going missing?”

Chapter 33. Major Appointments

Action being the best antidote for anxiety, and information the only remedy for uncertainty, when they parted that afternoon, each had an assignment—along with a sense of urgency arising from the growing hazards and peculiarities of the case.

Esti would press her various contacts for OCTF data on Gurikos, NCIC data on the key players in the case, and MO data from ViCAP that might match elements of the murder scenes.

Gurney would have a frank discussion with Mick Klemper about his diminishing options, then try to set up a meeting with Jonah Spalter.

Hardwick would pay a visit to Lex Bincher’s home in Cooperstown, track down the trial witnesses, and prod his pal at Interpol for anything on Gurikos and/or the Gurikos murder MO.

Like many cops, Mick Klemper had two cell phones, one personal and one job-related. Esti had both numbers from the time she’d worked closely, and miserably, with him. Before the meeting broke up, she gave both to Gurney.

Now, half an hour later, sitting at the desk in his den, he called the personal one.

Klemper picked up on the third ring, but evidently not before seeing Gurney’s ID.

“How the hell did you get this private number?”

Gurney smiled, pleased at getting the reaction he’d expected. “Hello, Mick.”

“I said, how the hell did you get this number?”

“It’s all over the billboards on the Thruway.”

“What?”

“There’s just no privacy anymore, Mick. You ought to know that. Numbers get around.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“There’s so much information floating around. Information overload. That’s what they call it, right?”

“What? What the fuck is this?”

“I’m just thinking out loud. Thinking what a treacherous world we live in. A man might think he’s engaging in a private activity, and next day on the Internet there’s a video of him taking a crap.”

“Yeah? You know what? That’s disgusting. Disgusting! What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

“So talk.”

“Face-to-face would be better. No intervening technology. Technology can be a problem. A violator of privacy.”

Klemper hesitated—long enough to indicate a significant level of concern. “I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Gurney figured this was a cover-your-ass statement in the event the call was being taped, rather than pure thickheadedness. “What I’m talking about is that we should talk about some issues of mutual concern.”

“Fine. Whatever the fuck that means. Let’s get this bullshit over with. Where do you want to talk?”

“Up to you.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

“How about Riverside Mall?”

Klemper hesitated again, longer this time. “Riverside? When?”

“Sooner the better. Things are happening.”

“Where in the mall?”

“Main concourse? Lots of benches there. Usually empty.”

Another hesitation. “When?”

Gurney knew from Esti that Klemper got off his shift at five. He checked the time on his cell screen—4:01 p.m. “How about five-thirty?”

“Today?”

“Definitely today. Tomorrow might be too late.”

A final pause. “All right. Riverside. Five-thirty, sharp. You better make more sense there than you’re making here. Because right now? Right now, this sounds like a pile of shit.” He disconnected the call.

Gurney found the man’s bravado encouraging. It sounded like fear.

Riverside Mall was a forty-minute drive from Walnut Crossing, giving Gurney about fifty minutes before he had to set out. It didn’t allow him much time to prepare for a meeting that had the potential to give the investigation a dramatic shove in the right direction, if it was handled right. He got a yellow lined pad out of his desk drawer to help organize his thoughts.

He found it surprisingly difficult. His mind was unsettled, moving from one unresolved issue to another. The unreachability of Lex Bincher. The similar unreachability of the three key witnesses. The shots in the night eliminating Hardwick’s lights and phone. The grotesque mutilation of Fat Gus—a warning that the killer’s secret must be kept. But what secret? Was it his or her identity? Or something else?

And, of course, there was the central conundrum of the case from the beginning, the puzzle piece that Gurney felt would eventually make sense of all the others—the contradictory site of the shooting. On the one hand, there was the apartment with the silenced, tripod-fitted rifle and the fresh gunpowder residue with a chemical profile that linked it to a .220 Swift cartridge and the bullet fragments extracted from Carl Spalter’s brain. On the other hand, there was the light pole that made the shot impossible.

It was possible that the killer used a different apartment in that building to make the shot and then transferred the weapon to the apartment where it was found, firing a second shot from that location to produce the powder residue. But that scenario was simpler in the saying than it would have been in the doing. It also involved a much-elevated risk of detection, requiring the shooter to carry the cumbersome combination of rifle, tripod, and suppressor through the public spaces of the building. And why bother? There were, after all, several unoccupied apartments from which the shot could have been fired successfully. So why move the weapon at all? Surely not to create an intellectual puzzle. Murderers are rarely that playful. And professional hitters never are.

That thought brought him full circle to the more immediate matter of Klemper. Was Mick the Dick the thuggish, horny clown that his nickname and general manner seemed to suggest? Or might the man be a darker, colder operator altogether?

Gurney hoped their meeting in the mall would provide some answers.

He needed to focus now on the broadest range of possibilities, think them through—angles, objectives. He straightened the yellow pad on his desk and picked up his pen. He tried to force his thoughts into a logical structure by drawing a branching diagram, beginning with four possibilities.

One posited Alyssa as the prime mover behind Carl’s murder and Kay’s conviction.

The second substituted Jonah Spalter for Alyssa.

The third posited an Unknown as Carl’s murderer, with Alyssa and Klemper as opportunistic conspirators in Kay’s conviction.

The fourth posited Kay as guilty.

He added a second level of branching possibilities under each of these.

“Hello?”

Gurney blinked.

“Hello?” It was Madeleine’s voice calling from the opposite side of the house. From the mudroom, it sounded like.

Bringing his pad and pen with him, he went out to the kitchen. “I’m here.”

She was just coming in from the side-door hallway, carrying two plastic supermarket bags. “I left the trunk open. Maybe you could bring in the cracked corn?”

“The what?”

“I read that chickens love cracked corn.”

He sighed, then tried to regard this in the positive light of a momentary diversion from his darker duties. “Bring it in and put it where?”

“The mudroom would be fine.”

He went out to Madeleine’s car, hefted the fifty-pound bag out of the trunk, struggled for a few seconds with the side door of the house, came in, and dropped the bag in the nearest corner of the mudroom—the positive light fading quickly to a weak flicker.

“You bought a lifetime supply?” he asked when he returned to the kitchen.

“It’s the only size they had. Sorry about that. Are you okay?”

“Fine. I guess I’m a little preoccupied—getting ready to go and meet with someone.”

“Oh—that reminds me—before I forget …” Her tone was pleasantly even. “You have an appointment tomorrow morning with Malcolm.”

“Malcolm Claret?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I called him before I left the clinic. He said he’d just gotten a cancellation and had an opening tomorrow at eleven.”

“No … What I don’t understand is why.”

“Because I’m afraid for you. We’ve discussed that.”

“No, I mean why you made the appointment for me.”

“Because you hadn’t made it yet, and it’s important.”

“So … you just … decided it was up to you?”

“It had to be up to somebody.”

He turned his palms up in a pose of bewilderment. “I don’t quite get that.”

“What is there to get?”

“I wouldn’t make an appointment for you—not unless you asked me to.”

“Even if you thought it might save my life?”

He hesitated. “Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

She met his gaze and answered softly. “No, I don’t.”

His voice was suddenly filled with exasperation. “You honestly believe an appointment with Malcolm Claret is going to save my life?”

Just as suddenly, her voice was filled with a weary sadness. “If you really don’t want to see him, just cancel the appointment.”

If she’d said that in any other tone, he could imagine himself launching into a grand debate over whose responsibility it was to cancel an appointment she had made, and then he might even segue to the lumber pile she’d ordered for the chicken-house project and how she had a way of starting things that he had to finish and how things always had to happen on her schedule.

But the emotion in her eyes short-circuited all of that.

Besides, it was beginning to dawn on him, strangely, that there might not be any harm in seeing Claret after all.

He was saved from going on with the discussion, however, by the ringing of the phone in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the ID. “Kyle Gurney” was displayed for a second before the signal was lost. He was tempted to call him back, but figured his son was likely on the move somewhere, passing through a dead spot, and it would make more sense to wait a while.

He checked the clock. It was later than he’d guessed—4:44 p.m.

It was time to leave for the mall. For the crucial meeting for which he hadn’t yet managed to prepare.

Chapter 34. A Gentlemen’s Agreement

The parking lot at Riverside was, as usual, half empty.

In the mostly deserted expanse beside the T.J. Maxx that anchored one end of the mall, an incongruous flock of seagulls stood silently on the tarmac.

Entering the lot, Gurney slowed for a better look. He estimated the number of birds at fifty or sixty. From his perspective in the car, they appeared motionless, all standing in the same orientation, their backs to the setting sun.

As he drove past them to a parking spot closer to the main concourse, he couldn’t help wondering about this increasingly commonplace migration of seagulls to inland malls—drawn, no doubt, by the droppings of fast-food gobblers. Were these transposed birds developing clogged arteries like their benefactors, making them sedentary, infrequent fliers? Food for thought. But not now. The urgency of his mission returned him to reality. He locked his car and walked through the entrance arch, an oddly festive structure with the words RIVERSIDE CENTER curving over the top in colored lights.

The mall was not a large one. There was one main concourse, with minor offshoots. The bright promise of the entry gave way to a rather bleak interior, which appeared to have been designed decades earlier with little refreshment since. Halfway along one side of the concourse, he sat on a bench in front of an Alpine Sports shop with a window display devoted to shiny, body-clinging cycling attire. A salesperson was lounging in the doorway, frowning at the screen of her cell phone.

He checked his watch. It was 5:33.

He waited.

Klemper appeared at 5:45.

The world of law enforcement, like prison, changes the people who spend time in it. It does this by nourishing certain traits: skepticism, calculation, insularity, toughness. Those traits may develop along lines that are benign or malignant, depending on the character of the individual—on the fundamental orientation of his soul. One cop might end up street-smart, loyal to his fellows, and courageous—determined to do a good job in difficult circumstances. Another might end up poisonously cynical, judgmental, and cruel—determined to screw the world that was screwing him. Gurney figured that the look in Mick Klemper’s eyes as he approached the bench put him squarely in the second category.

He sat at the far end of the bench, several feet from Gurney. He said nothing, just opened a small attaché case on his lap, angling the top to obstruct any view of the contents, and began fiddling with something.

Gurney assumed it was a scanner, probably the multi-function type that could indicate the presence of any transmitting or recording device.

After a minute or so, Klemper closed the case. He did a quick three-sixty visual check of the concourse, then spoke in a rough voice, half through his teeth, his gaze fixed on the floor. “So what the hell kind of game is this?” The man’s truculence seemed a shield for raw nerves, and his massive physique nothing more than excess baggage, a burden responsible for the sheen of sweat on his face. But it would be a mistake to go the extra yard and consider him harmless.

“You can do something for me, and I can do something for you,” said Gurney.

Klemper looked up from the floor with a little snort of a laugh, as if recognizing an interrogation trick.

The young woman in the doorway of Alpine Sports was still frowning at her phone.

“How’s Alyssa?” asked Gurney casually—knowing he was taking a chance playing that card so quickly.

Klemper shot him a sideways glance. “What?”

“The suspect you got tangled up with in a way you shouldn’t have.” He paused. “You still friends?”

“What kind of bullshit is this?” The man’s raw tone told him he’d hit a nerve.

“For you, very expensive bullshit.”

Klemper shook his head, as if trying to convey incomprehension.

Gurney went on. “It’s amazing what ends up getting recorded these days. Can be very embarrassing. But sometimes you get lucky and there’s a way to control the damage. That’s what I want to talk to you about—damage control.”

“I don’t get any of this.” His denial was loud and clear, seemingly for the benefit of a recording device his briefcase scanner might have missed.

“I just wanted to bring you up-to-date on the Kay Spalter appeal.” Gurney was speaking in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. “First, we have enough evidence of … let’s call them flaws … in the original investigation to guarantee a reversal of her conviction. Second, we’re now at a fork in the road, meaning we have a choice in how those flaws are presented to the appellate court. For example, the trial witness who ID’d Kay as a person present at the shooting site could have been coerced into perjury … or he could have been innocently mistaken, as eyewitnesses often are. The con who claimed at the trial that Kay tried to hire him as a hit man could have been coerced … or he could have made up that story on his own, as men in his position often do. Kay’s lover could have been told that the only way to avoid being the prime suspect was to make sure Kay ended up in that position … or he could have arrived at that conclusion on his own. The CIO on the case could have concealed key video evidence and ignored other avenues of inquiry because of an improper relationship with the victim’s daughter … or he could simply have zeroed in on the wrong suspect too soon, as detectives often do.”

Klemper was again staring grimly at the floor. “This is all hypothetical nonsense.”

“The thing of it is, Mick, every flaw in the investigation could be described in either criminal or innocent terms—so long as no definitive proof of that improper relationship falls into the wrong hands.”

“Hypothetical bullshit.”

“Okay. Hypothetically, let’s say I have the definitive proof of that improper relationship—in a very persuasive digital form. And let’s say I wanted something in return for keeping it to myself?”

“Why ask me?”

“Because it’s your career, your pension, your freedom that are on the line.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“I want the security video from the electronics store on Axton Avenue.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“If I were to receive that missing video from some anonymous sender, I would be willing to exclude a certain career-ending piece of evidence from the appeal process. I would also be willing to delay indefinitely my plan to provide that same item to the NYSP inspector general. That’s the hypothetical deal. A simple gentlemen’s agreement, based on mutual trust.”

Klemper laughed, or maybe he just grunted and shuddered involuntarily. “This is crazy crap. You sound like some fucking psycho.” He looked over in Gurney’s direction but made no eye contact. “Fantasy bullshit. All fantasy bullshit.” He stood up abruptly, unsteadily, and headed for the nearest exit.

He left in his wake an acrid odor of alcohol and sweat.

Chapter 35. A Mysterious Way

Gurney’s drive home was a journey into anxiety. He attributed it to the emotional free fall that often followed an intense encounter.

As he headed up the final stretch of road toward his barn, however, it struck him that there might be another cause: the ricketiness of his assumptions, not only about Klemper but also about the case as a whole. If Klemper’s failing had been wishful thinking about Kay’s guilt, might not his own failing be wishful thinking about her innocence? Might he and Klemper be equally blind to some more complex scenario that involved Kay in way that hadn’t occurred to either of them?

And what was the significance of Klemper’s drinking? Had he been drinking earlier in the day on the job? Or had he picked up a bottle for a few quick belts in the car on his way to Riverside? Either possibility suggested terrible judgment, great strain, or a serious drinking problem. Any of those issues had the potential to make the man an unpredictable, even explosive piece of the puzzle.

The first thing he noticed after rounding the barn was that Madeleine’s car was gone from its normal spot by the house, which jogged a half-formed memory that this was the evening for one of her board meetings, although he wasn’t sure which one.

Entering the kitchen, he found her absence momentarily comforting—relieving him of the need to immediately decide how much or how little to reveal about his Klemper meeting. It also meant he’d have some undisturbed time to himself to sort the jumbled pieces of a long day into some kind of order.

He was heading into the den for the organizing assistance of a pad and pen when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the ID. It was Kyle.

“Hey, Dad. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Nothing that can’t wait. What’s up?”

“I made some calls, asking around about Jonah Spalter and/or the Cyberspace Cathedral. None of my own contacts knew anything, one thought maybe the name was familiar, thought something might be happening with it, but didn’t know anything specific. I was going to send you an e-mail saying, ‘Sorry, no grapes on the vine.’ But then one of the guys called me back. Told me he’d checked around and discovered a friend of his had handled a venture capital search for Jonah Spalter, the venture being a huge expansion of Spalter’s Cathedral.”

“What kind of expansion?”

“He didn’t get into that beyond the fact that it was going to cost plenty.”

“Interesting.”

“The really interesting part is that Spalter ended the capital search the day after his brother died. Called up the guy who’d been working on it, took him to lunch, cut off the whole process—”

Gurney broke in. “That doesn’t surprise me. I mean, the way that corporation was set up by their father, Carl’s share of Spalter Realty would go directly to Jonah—entirely separate from the rest of his assets, which were covered by his will. So Jonah would have come into some big real estate holdings that he’d be free to sell or mortgage. So he wouldn’t need to raise venture capital to finance whatever expansion he had in mind.”

“You didn’t let me get to the really interesting part.”

“Oh? Sorry. Tell me.”

“Jonah Spalter showed up for lunch half drunk, then got really drunk. And he quoted that saying ‘God works in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.’ And according to this guy, Spalter kept saying it and laughing, like he found it really funny. Kind of weirded the guy out.”

Gurney was silent for a while, imagining the scene. “You said the Cathedral expansion was going to cost plenty. Any idea how much?”

“The capital search had to be for at least fifty million. The guy Jonah was dealing with wouldn’t touch any deal for an amount less than that.”

“Meaning,” said Gurney, mostly to himself, “that the assets of Spalter Realty must be worth at least that much, if Jonah was willing to cancel the search.”

“So what are you thinking, Dad?” said Kyle conspiratorially. “That fifty million could be a pretty compelling motive for murder?”

“More compelling than most. Did your contact have anything else to say about Spalter?”

“Just that he was super smart, super ambitious—but that’s nothing special, just the nature of the beast.”

“Okay, thanks. That was very helpful.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. More I know, the better my brain works. And there’s no other way I could have come upon that revealing little anecdote. So thank you again.”

“Glad I could help. By the way, you planning to go to the Summer Mountain Fair?”

“Me? No. But Madeleine will be there. She’s helping some friends of hers who have a farm over in Buck Ridge. They bring their alpacas to the fair every year and enter them in … I don’t know … alpaca events, I guess.”

“You don’t sound too revved up about it.”

“You could say that.”

“You mean to say you’re not impressed by the biggest agricultural fair in the Northeast? Tractor pulls, demolition derbies, butter sculptures, cotton candy, hog judging, sheep shearing, cheese making, country music, carnival rides, blue ribbons for biggest zucchini—how could you not be impressed by all that?”

“It’s tough, but somehow I manage to control my enthusiasm.”

After ending the call with Kyle, Gurney stayed at his desk for some time, letting the economic facts of the Spalter case sink in, and pondering the significance of those famous lines God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform.

He took the thick case file out of his desk drawer and riffled through it until he came to an index of key names and addresses. There were two email addresses for “J. Spalter”—one a Google gmail account, the other connected to the Cyberspace Cathedral website domain. There was also a physical address in Florida, with a notation indicating that it existed to serve legal and tax purposes, that it was the location where Jonah’s motor home was registered and where CyberCath was incorporated, but that the man did not actually live there. A further marginal note read, “Postal forwarding instructions redirect mail to changing series of P.O. boxes.” Apparently Jonah was on the road most of the time, maybe all the time.

Gurney sent a message to both email addresses—a message saying that Kay’s conviction was likely to be overturned and that he urgently needed Jonah’s help in evaluating some new evidence.

Chapter 36. An Unusual Killer

Getting to sleep that night was more difficult than usual.

It was a persistent source of frustration—this business of trying to pursue an investigation without the investigatory apparatus that had been available to him in the NYPD. And the problem had been compounded by Hardwick’s loss of access to NYSP files, information systems, and channels of inquiry. Being outsiders created a heavy reliance on insiders who might be willing to take a risk. Hardwick’s recent experience was proof that the risk was substantial.

In the current situation, much depended not only on Esti, whose commitment seemed positive and unequivocal, but also on the willingness of her contacts to be both helpful and discreet. Similarly, much depended on Hardwick’s contacts and how they might be feeling about the man and his motives. It would be impolitic to put pressure on any of these helpers since none of them had to provide any help at all.

It was a position Gurney hated being in—relying on the unpredictable generosity of others, hoping for some breakthrough piece of information to arrive from sources beyond his control.

The call came just before five a.m.—barely two hours after his churning thoughts had loosened their grip and let him drift into an exhausted half-sleep. Fumbling in the dark, knocking over an empty water glass, provoking a murmur of protest from Madeleine, he finally located his phone on the night table. When he saw Hardwick’s name on the screen, he took the phone into the den.

“Yes?”

“You might be thinking it’s a little on the early side for a call, but it’s seven hours later in Turkey. Noon over there, as a matter of fact. Must be hot as a steaming turd.”

“Great news, Jack. Thanks for letting me know.”

“My contact in Ankara woke me up. So I figured I’d wake you up. Time for Farmer Dave to scatter some cracked corn for the chickens. In fact, you probably should’ve been out there an hour ago, you lazy son of a bitch.”

Gurney was accustomed to Hardwick’s unusual approach to business conversations, and generally ignored the ritual abuse. “Your Ankara guy is with Interpol?”

“So he says.”

“What did he have for you?”

“A few tidbits. We get what we get. Goodness of his heart.”

“What did his good heart have for you?”

“You got time for this? You sure you don’t need to go do something for those chickens?”

“Chickens are a lovely addition to the rural life, Jack. You ought to get yourself a few.”

Embracing Hardwick’s tangent had the odd effect of getting him back on point.

“Tidbit number one. About ten years ago, the forces of good had one of the top bad guys in Corsica by the short hairs—had him looking at a hard twenty in a shithole prison—and they managed to turn him. Deal was, if he put the finger on some business colleagues the forces of good would put him in witness protection instead of the shithole prison. This plan did not work out well. About a week into the deal, the head of the witness protection operation received a box in the mail. What to take a stab at what was in the box?”

“Depends on how big a box we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, let’s say it was a lot bigger than would be needed if they were mailing his dick. So what do you think it was?”

“Just a wild guess, Jack, but I’d say if the box was big enough to hold a head, then it was probably his head in there. Am I right?”

The silence on the other end was answer enough.

Gurney went on. “And this is just another wild guess, but I’d say there were some nails hammered into his—”

“Yeah, yeah, all right, Sherlock. One for you. Let’s go on to story number two. You ready? You don’t need to piss or anything?”

“Ready.”

“Eight years ago, a member of the Russian Duma, a very connected multimillionaire, former KGB, made a trip to Paris. For his mother’s funeral. The mother lived in Paris because her third husband was French, she loved it there, she wanted to be buried there. And guess what happened?”

“The Duma guy got popped in the cemetery?”

“On his way out the door of the Russian Orthodox church next to the cemetery. Dead-on head shot—eye shot to be precise.”

“Hmm.”

“And there were a couple of other interesting details. Wanna guess?”

“Tell me.”

“Cartridge was a .220 Swift.”

“And?”

“And no one heard what direction the shot came from.”

“A suppressor?”

“Probably.”

Gurney smiled. “And firecrackers?”

“You got it, ace.”

“But … how did Interpol put these two cases together? What link did they see?”

“They didn’t see any link, and they never did put them together.”

“Then what—?”

“Your questions—your search terms from the Gurikos and Spalter cases—those terms brought up the Corsican mob case and the Paris—”

“But the nails-in-the-head detail would’ve only brought up the file on the Corsican murder, and the cemetery/firecrackers details would’ve only brought up the Duma guy. So what are we talking about? Just based on those two facts, it could’ve been two different hit men, no?”

“It might’ve looked that way—except for one little thing. Both Interpol files contained lists of possibilities—likely professional hitters the local cops or the national agencies thought would be worth looking at. Four names for the Corsican case, five for the Russian-in-Paris case. Far as I can see, the Corsican and French police never got to any of those guys, not even to talk to them. But that’s not the point. The point is, there’s one name that pops up on both lists.”

Gurney didn’t say anything. A link that loose might be meaningless.

As if responding to this doubt, Hardwick added, “I know it doesn’t prove anything. But it’s sure as hell worth a closer look.”

“I agree. So who is this guy who likes firecrackers and hammering nails into people’s eyes?”

“The one name that appears on both lists is Petros Panikos.”

“So we may be looking for a Greek hit man?”

“Hit man for sure. With a Greek name for sure. But a name is only a name. Interpol says there’s no passport issued by any member country to anyone by that name. So it looks like he has other names. But they do have an interesting file on him under the name Panikos, for what it’s worth.”

“What is it worth? How much do they really know about him?”

“Good question. My contact told me there’s a lot in the file, but that it’s a mix—some facts, some secondhand stuff, some wild underworld stories that might be true or might be pure horseshit.”

“You have this fascinating mix in your hands right now?”

“What I have is bare bones—what my man could remember without pulling up the full document, which he said he would do as soon as he could. By the way, you may not have to take a piss, Sherlock, but I sure as hell do. Hold on.”

Judging from the sound effects, Hardwick had not only taken his phone into the bathroom with him but also managed to amplify the transmission volume. Sometimes Gurney was amazed that the man had survived as long as he had in the stiff culture of the NYSP. He presented such a prickly amalgam of characteristics. A sharp mind and sound investigative instincts were concealed behind a relentless eagerness to offend. His troubled NYSP career had foundered, like many a marriage, on irreconcilable differences and a mutual lack of respect. He had been a feisty iconoclast in an organization that revered conformity and respect for rank. Now this formidable but abrasive character was hell-bent on embarrassing the organization that had divorced him.

Wandering through these thoughts, Gurney found himself staring out the east window of the den as the first gray wash of dawn outlined the crest of the far ridge. The latest sound effects coming from the phone suggested that Hardwick had left the bathroom and was shuffling through a pile of papers.

Gurney pressed the speakerphone button on his own phone, laid it on his desk, and leaned back in his chair. His eyelids were heavy from lack of sleep, and he let them drift pleasantly shut. His brain went into free fall and for a few moments he felt blessedly relaxed, almost anesthetized. The brief intermission was ended by Hardwick’s voice, made harsher by the phone’s cheap speaker. “I’m back! Nothing like a good leak to clear the mind and free the soul. Hey, ace, you still among the living?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, here’s what he gave me. Petros Panikos. Also known as Peter Pan. Also known as the Magician. Also known by other names we don’t know about. He must have at least one passport in a name other than Panikos. He gets around. Never arrested, never detained—at least not under the Panikos name. Bottom line, he’s a free agent, and an odd one. Has gun, will travel, for a price—upwards of a hundred grand per pop, plus expenses. Reachable only through a small handful of people who know how to reach him.”

“Hundred grand minimum definitely puts him at the high end of the hit world.”

“Well, the little man is kind of a celebrity in his world. He also—”

Gurney interrupted. “The little man? How little?”

“He’s supposedly like four-foot-ten. Maybe five-two at the most.”

“Like the Flowers by Florence delivery guy in the Emmerling Oaks video?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“Favors .22 caliber rounds in all cartridge shapes and sizes. But he’ll use anything that’s right for the job, anything from a knife to a bomb. Actually, he’s very fond of bombs. Might have connections with Russian arms and explosives dealers. Might have connections with the Russian mob down in Brooklyn. Might have been involved in a series of car explosions that wiped out a prosecutor and his staff in Serbia. Lot of mights. By the way, those slugs in the side of my house? They were .35 caliber—a much better choice for wire cutting than a .22—so I guess he really is flexible, assuming we’re dealing with one guy. Problem with flexibility is that there’s no consistent MO across all his hits. Interpol thinks Panikos, or whatever his name is, could have been involved in over fifty murders in the past ten or fifteen years. But that’s based on underworld rumors, prison talk, shit like that.”

“Anything else?”

“I’m waiting on that. There seems to be some weird stuff in his background, might originally have come from some kind of traveling freak show circus family, then some ugly Eastern European orphanage stuff, all hearsay, but … we’ll see. My guy had to get off the phone, had some urgent shit on his plate. Supposed to be getting back to me as soon as he can. Meantime, I’m heading for Bincher’s house in Cooperstown. Probably a complete waste of time, but the fucker isn’t answering my calls or Abby’s calls, and he’s got to be somewhere. I’ll get back to you when the Ankara data arrives—if it ever does.”

“One last question, Jack. ‘The Magician’—what’s that all about?”

“Simple. The little fucker likes to show off—prove that he can do the impossible. Probably made up the name himself. Just the kind of psycho opponent you live for, right, Sherlock?” Hardwick didn’t say goodbye—no surprise in that—just broke the connection.

More information, in Gurney’s opinion, was always a good thing—objectively. But it was also possible to lose one’s bearings in it. Right then he had the feeling that the more he was discovering, the deeper the puzzle was becoming.

Carl Spalter apparently had been the victim not only of a professional gun-for-hire but also of an unusual one—and an unusual investment had been made to secure the outcome. However, considering what was at stake for the three people closest to him—his wife, his daughter, his brother—the high hit fee would have been a reasonable investment for any of them. At first glance, Jonah would seem to be the one with easiest access to that kind of cash, but Kay and Alyssa could have their own hidden sources, or allies willing to invest in a major payday. Then another possibility occurred to him—the possibility that more than one of them was involved. Why not all three? Or all three, plus Mick Klemper?

The sound of Madeleine’s slippered feet padding toward the den door brought Gurney back from his speculations to his immediate surroundings.

“Good morning,” she said sleepily. “How long have you been up?”

“Since five.”

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “You want some coffee?”

“Sure. How come you’re up?”

“Early clinic shift. Seems unnecessary, really. Early mornings are dead there.”

“Jesus, it’s barely dawn. How early do they open?”

“Not until eight. I’m not going there right away. I want time to let the chickens out for a while before I leave. I love watching them. Have you noticed they do everything together?”

“Like what?”

“Everything. If one goes a few feet away to peck at something in the grass, as soon as the others notice, they all scurry over and join her. And Horace keeps an eye on them. If one walks a little too far away, he starts crowing. Or he’ll run over and try to bring her back. Horace is the guard. Always on the alert. While the hens all have their heads down pecking, he keeps looking around. That’s his job.”

Gurney thought about this for a minute.

“Interesting how evolution arrives at a variety of survival strategies. Apparently the gene that supports high vigilance in the rooster produces behavior that results in a higher rate of hen survival, which in turn results in the rooster with that gene mating with more hens, which in turn propagates the vigilance gene more broadly into successive generations.”

“I suppose,” said Madeleine, yawning again and heading for the kitchen.

Chapter 37. Death Wish

Half believing that he would eventually get around to canceling with Malcolm Claret, Gurney kept deferring the call, until the time came—8:15 a.m.—when he was forced to make a decision: either set out on the long drive to his eleven o’clock appointment or pick up the phone and let the man know he wasn’t coming.

For reasons not entirely clear to him, he decided at the final moment to keep the appointment after all.

The day was starting to warm up, with a promise of typical August heat and humidity to come. He took off the long-sleeved work shirt he’d been wearing around the house in the coolness of the mountain morning, put on a light polo shirt and a pair of chinos, shaved, combed his hair, picked up his car keys and wallet, and, barely ten minutes after making his decision, he was on his way.

Claret’s office was in his home on City Island, a small appendage of the Bronx in Long Island Sound. The drive from Walnut Crossing to the Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City, took about two and a half hours. Once there, getting to City Island meant traversing the width of the borough, west to east—a journey Gurney had never been able to complete without feeling the negative emotional residues of his childhood there.

The Bronx was fixed in his mind as a place where the essential grunginess had little redeeming charm or character. The faded urban topography was universally uninspiring. In his old neighborhood, the most constricted paycheck-to-paycheck lives and the most prosperous ones were not far apart. The spectrum of achievement was narrow.

The neighborhood of his childhood was by no means a slum, but that absence of a negative was as positive as it got. Whatever civic pride existed arose from successfully keeping undesirable minorities at bay. The shabby but safe status quo was tenaciously maintained.

In the mix of small apartment buildings, two-family houses, and modest private homes—crowded together with little sense of order or provision for open spaces—there were only two homes he remembered as standing out among the drab multitude, only two that seemed pleasant or inviting. The owner of one was a Catholic doctor. The owner of the other was a Catholic funeral director. Both were successful. It was a predominantly Catholic neighborhood, a place where religion still mattered—as an emblem of respectability, a structure of allegiance, and a criterion for choosing providers of professional services.

That constricted way of thinking, of feeling, of making decisions, seemed to grow out of the tense, cramped, colorless environment itself—and it had created in him a powerful urge to escape. It was an urge he’d felt as soon as he was old enough to realize that the Bronx and the world were not synonymous.

Escape. The word brought back an image, a sensation, an emotion from his early teens. The rare joy he would feel, pedaling as fast as he could on his ten-speed English racer, the wind in his face, the soft hiss of the tires on the asphalt—the subtle sense of freedom.

And now he was driving back across the Bronx to see Malcolm Claret.

He’d allowed himself to be talked into it. Curiously, his two previous experiences with Claret had been brought about in a similar way.

When he was twenty-four and his first marriage was dissolving, when Kyle was barely more than an infant, his wife had suggested they see a therapist. It wasn’t to save the marriage. She’d already given up on that, seeing that he was determined to stick with the lowly police career that she considered a terrible waste of his intelligence and—perhaps more to the point, Gurney suspected—a waste of his potential for making more money in another field. No, the purpose of therapy from Karen’s point of view was to smooth out the separation, to make the process more manageable. And, in a way, it had done just that. Claret had proved to be a rational, insightful, calming influence on the dissolution of a marriage that had been fatally flawed from the start.

Gurney’s second exposure to the man came six years later, after the death of Danny, his and Madeleine’s four-year-old son. Gurney’s reaction to that terrible event in the months following it—sometimes quietly agonized, sometimes numb, never verbal—prompted Madeleine, whose dreadful grief had been more openly expressed, to coax him into therapy.

With neither hope nor resistance, he’d agreed to see Claret, and he met with him three times. He didn’t feel that their meetings were resolving anything, and after those three he stopped going. But some of the observations Claret had made stayed with him over the years. One of the things about the man that Gurney appreciated was that he actually answered questions, spoke his mind openly, didn’t play therapy games. He didn’t belong to that maddening tribe of clinicians whose favorite response to a client’s problem is “How do you feel about that?”

Now, as he crossed the little bridge that led out to the separate world of City Island, with its marinas and dry docks and seafood restaurants, as he was thinking of Claret and imagining how the passing years might have changed his appearance, a long-buried memory came vividly to mind.

The memory was of walking across this same bridge with his father on a summer Saturday long ago—in fact, more than forty years ago. There were men standing at the bridge railing at intervals along the pedestrian walkway, casting lines out into the tidal current—shirtless men, tanned and sweating in the August sun. He could hear their reels whining as the lines flew out, big baited hooks and sinkers drawing them out in long arcs over the water. The sun was glinting here and there—on the water, on the stainless-steel reels, on the chrome bumpers of passing cars. The men were serious, intent on their activity, adjusting their rods, taking the slack out of their lines, watching the currents. They had seemed to Gurney like creatures from another world, utterly mysterious and out of reach. His father wasn’t ever shirtless or tanned, never stood in a row with other men, never engaged in any group activity. His father wasn’t an outdoorsman in that sense, certainly not a fisherman.

Although Gurney could not have articulated it at the age of six or seven when they took those three-mile Saturday walks from their Bronx apartment out over the City Island Bridge, the problem was that he didn’t feel that his father was anything. His father, even on those walks together, was an enigma—a quiet, secretive man with no overt interests—a man who never spoke of the past or revealed any interest in the future.

Parking in the narrow, shaded side street in front of Malcolm Claret’s weathered clapboard house, Gurney felt the way he always felt when he’d been thinking about his father—empty and alone. He tried to shake the feeling as he approached the front door.

He naturally expected Claret to look older, perhaps a bit grayer or balder, than the image, nearly two decades out of date, that he carried in his memory. But he wasn’t prepared for the shrunken physique of the man who greeted him in the unfurnished foyer. Only the eyes at first seemed the same—soft blue eyes with an even, unblinking gaze. And the gentle smile—that was the same too. In fact, if anything, those two defining elements of Claret’s wise and peaceful presence seemed to have become more pronounced, more concentrated, with the passing of time.

“Come in, David.” The frail man gestured toward the same office Gurney had visited years earlier—a space that gave the impression of having once been, along with the foyer, an enclosed sun porch.

Gurney went in and looked around, struck by the instant familiarity of the little room. Claret’s brown leather chair, showing fewer signs of aging than the man himself, was in the same position Gurney remembered, facing two other small armchairs, both of which appeared to have been reupholstered in the intervening years. A short-legged table sat at the center of the rough triangle formed by the chairs.

They took the same seats they’d occupied for their conversations following Danny’s death, Claret easing himself down with evident difficulty.

“Let’s get to the point,” he said in his direct but soft voice, bypassing any preamble or small talk. “I’ll tell you what Madeleine told me. Then you can tell me whether you think it’s true. Is that all right with you?”

“Sure.”

“She told me that on three occasions in the past two years you walked into situations where you could easily have been killed. You did this knowingly. In all three, you ended up with a gun pointed at you. In one, you were shot multiple times and put in a coma. She thinks you’ve probably taken these extraordinary risks many times before, without telling her. She knows that police work is dangerous, but she thinks that for reasons of your own you welcome that danger.” He paused, perhaps to observe Gurney’s reaction, perhaps to await some response.

Gurney stared down at the low table between them, noting numerous scuff marks, which suggested clients often used it as a hassock. “Anything else?”

“She didn’t say it, but she sounded confused and terrified.”

“Terrified?”

“She thinks you want to be killed.”

Gurney shook his head. “In each situation she’s talking about, I’ve done everything possible to stay alive. I am alive. Isn’t that prima facie evidence of a desire to survive?”

Claret’s blue eyes seemed to be looking through him.

Gurney went on. “In every dangerous situation, I make every effort—”

Claret interrupted, almost in a whisper, “Once you’re in it.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Once you’re in the situation, once you’re fully exposed to the danger, then you try to stay alive.”

“What are you saying?”

Claret said nothing for a long while. His tone when he finally spoke was mild and even. “Do you still feel responsible for Danny’s death?”

“What? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Guilt has tremendous power.”

“But I’m not … I’m not guilty of his death. Danny stepped into the street. He was following a goddamn pigeon, and he followed it off the curb into the street. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver, a drunk in a red sports car. A drunk who just came out of a bar. I’m not guilty of his death.”

“Not of his death. But of something. Can you say what it is?”

Gurney took a deep breath, staring at the scuff marks on the table. He closed his eyes, then opened them and forced himself to look at Claret. “I should have been paying more attention. With a four-year-old … I should have paid more attention. I didn’t notice where he was walking. When I looked …” His voice trailed off, and his gaze descended again to the tabletop.

After a while, he looked up. “Madeleine insisted I see you, so I’m here. But I don’t really understand why.”

“Do you know what guilt is?”

Something in Gurney’s psychological makeup welcomed the question, or at least welcomed the opportunity to escape into abstraction. “Guilt as a fact would be personal responsibility for wrongdoing. Guilt as a feeling would be the uncomfortable sense of having done something you shouldn’t have done.”

“That uncomfortable sense—what exactly do you think that is?”

“A troubled conscience.”

“That’s a term for it, but it doesn’t explain what it really is.”

“All right, Malcolm, you tell me.”

“Guilt is a painful hunger for harmony—a need to compensate for one’s violation, to restore balance, consistency.”

“What consistency?”

“Between beliefs and behavior. When my actions are inconsistent with my values, I create a gap, a source of tension. Consciously or unconsciously, we seek to close the gap. We seek the peace of mind that closing the gap—making up for the violation—will provide.”

Gurney shifted in his chair, feeling a surge of impatience. “Look, Malcolm, if your point is that I’m trying to get myself killed to make up for the death of my son, then why haven’t I let it happen? It’s pretty damn easy for a cop to get himself killed. But, like I said before, here I am. Very much alive. How could someone with a serious death wish manage to be in such good health? I mean, that’s just plain nonsense!”

“I agree.”

“You agree?”

“You didn’t kill Danny. So getting yourself killed wouldn’t be a rational goal.” A subtle, almost playful smile appeared. “And you’re a very rational man, aren’t you, David?”

“You’re losing me.”

“You told me that your offense was lack of attention, that you let him wander into the street, where he was hit by a passing car. Listen to what I am about to say, and tell me if it describes the situation accurately.” Claret paused before going on in a slow, deliberate way. “With no one protecting him, Danny was at the mercy of a blind, uncaring universe. Fate flipped the coin, a drunk driver appeared, and Danny lost.”

Gurney heard the words the man was speaking, sensed the truth in them, yet felt nothing. It was like a beam of light passing through shatterproof glass.

The rest of what Claret said flowed with a similar directness. “The way you see it, your distraction—your focus on your own thoughts—put your son at the mercy of the moment, at the mercy of fate. That, you believe, was your offense. And every once in a while, a situation arises in which you see an opportunity to place yourself in the same peril in which you placed him. You feel that it’s only fair that you should do so—only fair that you should expose yourself to the same flip of the coin—only fair that you should treat yourself as uncaringly as you treated him. This is your way of pursuing balance, justice, peace of mind. This is your search for harmony.”

They sat for a while in silence—Gurney’s mind blank, his feelings numb. Then Claret jarred him with a final twist: “Of course, your approach is a self-centered, tunnel-vision delusion.”

Gurney blinked. “What delusion?”

“You’re ignoring everything that matters.”

“Such as?”

Claret began to answer, then stopped, closed his eyes, and began taking long, slow breaths. When he placed his hands carefully on his knees, their shocking frailty became obvious.

“Malcolm?”

Claret’s right hand rose a few inches from his knee in a gesture that appeared designed to allay alarm. A minute or so later, his eyes opened. His voice was just above a whisper. “Sorry about that. My medication is less than perfect.”

“What is it? What …?”

“A nasty cancer.”

“Treatable?”

Claret laughed quietly. “In theory, yes. In reality, no.”

Gurney was silent.

“And reality is where we live. Until we die.”

“You’re in pain?”

“I would call it periodic discomfort.” He looked amused. “You’re wondering how long I have to live. The answer is a month, maybe two. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Gurney tried to say something appropriate. “God, Malcolm. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Now, since our time is limited—yours as well as mine—let’s talk about where we live. Or should be living.”

“Meaning?”

“Reality. The place we need to live, in order to be alive. Tell me something. About Danny. Did you ever have a special name for him?”

Gurney was momentarily thrown by the question. “What do you mean, a special name?”

“Something other than his actual name. Maybe something you called him when you were putting him to bed, or holding him on your lap, or in your arms?”

He was about to say no when something came back to him, something he hadn’t thought of in years. The memory blindsided him with sadness. He cleared his throat. “My little bear.”

“Why did you call him that?”

“There was a look about him … especially if he was unhappy about something … that for some reason reminded me of a little bear. I’m not sure why.”

“And you would hug him?”

“Yes.”

“Because you loved him.”

“Yes.”

“And he loved you.”

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“Did you want him to die?”

“Of course not.”

“Would he want you to die?”

“No.”

“Does Madeleine want you to die?”

“No.”

“Does Kyle want you to die?”

“No.”

Claret looked into Gurney’s eyes, as if assessing his understanding, before going on. “Everyone who loves you wants you to live.”

“I suppose so.”

“So this obsessive need of yours to atone for Danny’s death, to deal with your guilt by exposing yourself to the risk of being killed … it’s terribly selfish, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Gurney’s own voice sounded lifeless to him, somehow disconnected, as though coming from someone else.

“You’re the only one for whom it seems to make any sense.”

“Danny’s death was my fault.”

“And the fault of the drunk driver who hit him. And his own fault for stepping off the sidewalk into the street, which you’d probably warned him a hundred times not to do. And the fault of the pigeon he was following. And the fault of whatever God made the pigeon and the street and the drunk and the car and every past event that brought them all together at that unfortunate moment. Who are you to imagine you made all that happen?”

Claret paused, as if to catch his breath, to gather his strength, then spoke in a rising voice. “Your arrogance is outrageous. Your disregard for the people who love you is outrageous. David, listen to me. You must not cause pain to those who love you. If your great sin was a failure to pay attention, then pay attention now. You have a wife. What right do you have to risk her husband’s life? You have a son. What right do you have to risk his father’s life?”

The emotional energy expended in this short speech seemed to exhaust him.

Gurney sat motionless, speechless, empty, waiting. The room seemed very small. He could hear a faint ringing in his ears.

Claret smiled, his voice softer now, the softness somehow conveying a greater conviction, the conviction of the dying. “Listen to me, David. There is nothing in life that matters but love. Nothing but love.”

Chapter 38. A Fondness for Fire

Gurney had no clear recollection of leaving City Island, of making his way through the Bronx, or of crossing the George Washington Bridge. It wasn’t until he was driving north on Palisades Parkway that he regained a sense of normalcy. Along with that normalcy came the discovery that he was too low on gas to make it back to Walnut Crossing.

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in the parking lot of a large gas station with a food court where he was able to refuel both the car and himself. After a large coffee and a couple of bagels made him feel like he was reestablishing contact with his daily life, he took out his phone—which he’d switched off for his meeting with Claret—and checked his messages.

There were four. The voice on the first, originating from an unknown number, was Klemper’s—rougher and more slurred than the day before. “Following up on Rivermall … Riverside. Our conversation. Check your mailbox. Remember what you said. Don’t fuck with me. People who fuck with me … is not a good idea. Don’t fuck with me. A deal is a deal is a deal. Remember that. Don’t fucking forget that. Check your mailbox.”

Gurney wondered if the man was really as drunk as he sounded. More important, he wondered if the item in the mailbox was in fact the missing security video he’d asked for. He couldn’t help remembering that someone had once put a snake in his mailbox. It was also a natural spot for a bomb. But that seemed a step too far.

The message also reminded him that he needed to fill in Hardwick and Esti on the Riverside meeting and “deal” Klemper was referring to.

He went on to the second message, which was from Hardwick. “Hey, Sherlock. Just got off the phone with Ankara. Seems the little man who shot out our lights is quite a piece of work. Call me back.”

The third message was also from Hardwick, more agitated. “Where the fuck you hiding, Sherlock? I’m outside Cooperstown, heading for Bincher’s place. Still no word from him. Getting a bad feeling about this. And we need to talk about our crazy shooter. And I mean crazy. Call me, for Christ’s sake.”

The fourth and final message was from a grimmer, angrier Hardwick. “Gurney, wherever you are, answer your fucking phone. I’m at Lex Bincher’s house. Or what used to be his house. It burned down last night. Along with his neighbors’ houses. Three fucking houses in a row. Down to the fucking ground. Big, fast, super-hot fires … started in Lex’s house … apparently some kind of incendiary devices … more than one. Call me! Now!”

Gurney decided to call Madeleine first. He got bounced into voice mail, and left a message: “Do me a favor and don’t open our mailbox today. I’m pretty sure there’s no problem, but I got kind of an agitated call from Klemper, and I’d rather open it myself. Just a precaution. I’ll explain later. I’m at the Sloatsburg rest stop. Love you. See you in a couple of hours.”

Thinking about what he’d said, he wished he’d said it differently. It was too ominous, too obscure. It needed context, explanation. He was tempted to call back and leave a longer message, but he was afraid he’d end up making the situation worse.

He called Hardwick’s number and got voice mail. He left a message saying that he was currently en route to Walnut Crossing. He asked if there’d been any casualties in the Cooperstown fires, or any sign of Bincher. And, regarding the crazy shooter, what had he found out? He ended the call, making sure his phone was still on, and went back into the food court for another coffee.

It wasn’t until he was up into the rural hills above Barleyville that Hardwick finally got back to him. “We’ve got some seriously insane shit going on here, ace. Three big houses, three big piles of ashes. Lex’s house, plus one on each side of it. Six people dead—none of them Bincher. Two bodies in the house on his left, four in the house on his right, including two kids. All trapped in the fires. Guys on the scene are saying it happened sometime after midnight, went up real quick. The arson unit guy is saying probable SIDs—small incendiary devices—four of them, one at each corner of Bincher’s house. No effort by the arsonist to make it seem like anything but arson.”

“And the other two houses were just collateral damage? You sure?”

“I’m not sure about anything. I’m outside the yellow tape, blending in with the asshole gawkers—just picking up what the local cops are telling their buddies. But the word is that the gas chromatograph tests were positive for incendiary chemicals at Bincher’s, not at the others.”

“But Bincher’s house was empty? I mean, there were no bodies in that one?”

“None so far. But I can see the techs still crawling around down there in the wet ashes. Quite the fucking mob scene. Fire department, BCI, arson unit, sheriff’s department, troopers, local uniforms.” He paused. “Christ, Davey, if this is supposed to be … to be a way of warning Lex off the case …” His voice trailed off.

Gurney said nothing.

Hardwick coughed, cleared his throat. “You still there?”

“Still here. Just thinking about your ‘warning’ comment.” He paused. “I’d say that cutting your power lines was probably a warning. The mutilation of Gurikos’s head was probably a warning. But this … this Bincher thing … this feels like something more. Like war. With zero concern for who gets killed.”

“I agree. The little fucker has an appetite for serious destruction. And arson seems to be a recurrent theme.”

“Recurrent theme?” Gurney slowed down, pulled onto a grassy bluff overlooking the reservoir, turned off the engine, and opened his windows. “What do you mean, recurrent theme? What did you get from Interpol?”

“Maybe a lot, or maybe a lot of nothing. Hard to say. The thing of it is, the information they’ve pieced together in their database may or may not refer to a single individual. The current stuff, from the past ten years or so, is probably accurate—most of it anyway. But before that—earlier than ten years ago—it gets shakier. Also more bizarre.”

Gurney wondered how much more bizarre it could get than hammering nails into someone’s head.

Hardwick explained. “The guy in Ankara decided to talk to me on the phone rather than create an e-mail trail, so I took notes. What he gave me amounts to two little stories. Depending on how you look at them, they can seem very connected, or maybe not connected at all. The stories go backwards in time, starting with the material assembled in the last decade or so on the assassin who goes by the name Petros Panikos. You ready for this?”

“All ears, Jack.”

“The Panikos name, used as a primary search link, led back to an event that occurred twenty-five years ago in the village of Lykonos in southern Greece. There was a Panikos family there that owned a gift shop. There were four sons in the family, the youngest of whom was believed to have been adopted. The gift shop, along with the family home, was destroyed by a fire that killed both parents and three of the sons. The fourth son, the adopted one, disappeared. Arson was suspected but never proved. No formal birth certificate or adoption papers were ever found for the missing son. The family was very private, had no close relatives, and there was even some disagreement in the village about the missing son’s name. But—get this—the two possible names mentioned were Pero and Petros.”

“How old was he?”

“No one could say for sure. According to the old arson investigation file, his age at the time was estimated to be anywhere from twelve to sixteen.”

“No information on his birth name or where he came from originally?”

“Nothing official. However, in the arson investigation file there’s a statement from a priest in the village who thought the boy came from a Bulgarian orphanage.”

“What made him think that?”

“There’s no indication in the file that anyone bothered to ask. But the priest did give the name of the orphanage.”

Gurney let out a short laugh. It had nothing to do with humor. If he had to explain it, he probably would have called it an overflow of energy. There was something about the tracking process, the movement from one bit of information to another, the steps across the stream, that charged the circuits of his brain. “And I’m guessing that the trail to the orphanage takes us to another relevant event?”

“Well, actually, it takes us to a bleak communist-era orphanage for which there are no extant records. Wanna guess why?”

“Another arson?”

“Yep. So all we know about its residents at the time of the fire—in which most of them died—comes from a skimpy old police file, actually from one interview in that file, with a staff nurse who survived the blaze. By the way, there was no problem establishing arson as the cause. Apart from the orphanage’s four buildings going up in flames at the same time—and apart from gas cans being found in all four—the outer doors were jammed shut with wooden wedges.”

“Meaning the goal was mass murder. But it sounds like the fire was the end of the story. What was the beginning?”

“According to the nurse’s statement, a couple of years before the fire, a strange little kid was discovered one winter morning, literally on the front steps. The kid appeared to be mute and illiterate. But then they discovered that he was fluent not only in Bulgarian but also in Russian, German, and English. This nurse got the idea that the kid was some sort of idiot savant with languages—he was that good. So she got him some basic grammar books, and sure enough, during the two years he was there he learned French, Turkish, and God knows what else.”

“Did he ever tell them where he came from?”

“He claimed total amnesia—no memory of anything prior to arriving there. His only link to the past was a chronic nightmare. Something involving a carnival and a clown. They ended up putting him in a separate room at night, away from the other kids, because of how often he’d wake up screaming. For some reason—maybe because of there being a clown in the dream—the nurse got the idea that his original mother had been in some kind of creepy little traveling circus.”

“Sounds like quite the unusual child. Any big red flags pop up before the fire?”

“Oh, yeah. Big one.” Hardwick paused dramatically.

It was one of his habits that Gurney had learned to live with. “You want to tell me about it?”

“A couple of kids made fun of him, something about the nightmares.” Another pause.

“Jack, for Christ’s sake—”

“They disappeared.”

“The kids who made fun of him?”

“Right. Off the face of the earth. Same thing with an aide who didn’t believe his amnesia story, kept taunting him about it. Gone. Zero trace.”

“Anything else?”

“More weird shit. Nobody could tell how old he was, because in the two years he was there he never changed, never grew, never seemed to look any older than the day he arrived.”

“Like Peter Pan.”

“Right.”

“Was he ever called by that nickname at the orphanage?”

“There’s nothing about that in the Bulgarian file.”

Gurney ran the story back through his mind quickly. “I’m missing something. How do we know this orphanage kid is the same kid the Panikos family adopted?”

“We don’t know for sure. The nurse said he was adopted by a Greek family, but she didn’t know the name. That was handled by a different department. But it was the day he left with his new parents that the place burned down and just about everyone else was trapped and killed.”

Gurney was silent.

“What are you thinking, Sherlock?”

“I’m thinking that someone paid a hundred grand to turn this little monster loose on Carl Spalter.”

“And on Mary Spalter and Gus Gurikos and Lex Bincher,” added Hardwick.

“Peter Pan,” mused Gurney. “The kid who never grew up.”

“Very fanciful, ace, but where does this leave us?”

“I’d say it leaves us in the middle of nowhere, drifting into total confusion. We’ve got some colorful stories, but we know almost nothing. We’re looking for a pro hitter whose name might be Petros Panikos or Peter Pan or something else. Birth name unknown. Passport name unknown. Date of birth unknown. Nationality unknown. Birth parents unknown. Current address unknown. Arrests and convictions unknown. In fact, just about everything that could lead us to him is unknown.”

“I don’t disagree. What now?”

“You need to go back to your Interpol guy and beg for whatever crumbs might still be lurking in the corners of their Panikos file—especially anything more about the Panikos family, their neighbors, anyone in that village who might have known anything about little Petros, or whatever the hell they named him—anything that might give us a better handle than we have now. The name of anyone we could talk to …”

“Fuck, man, that was twenty-five years ago. Nobody’s going to remember anything, even if we could find them. Get real.”

“You’re probably right. But get in touch with your Interpol guy anyway. Who knows what he might come up with?”

After ending the call, Gurney sat with his notebook open on his lap, gazing out over the reservoir. The low water level was exposing the rocky slopes that extended from the water’s edge up to the tree line. Driftwood littered the stones. Across a small inlet, in the deep afternoon shadows, a pair of gnarled branches reached up from the water onto the slope in a way that stirred a chilling memory of one of his first murder scenes as a rookie—the body of a naked child washed up against a stony outcropping on the shore of the Hudson River.

It wasn’t a memory he wanted to dwell on. He picked up his notebook, where he’d jotted down most of what Hardwick had told him, and went over it one more time.

He was frustrated with himself. Frustrated with having gotten involved in the case to begin with. Frustrated with not having made more tangible progress. Frustrated with the lack of official standing. Frustrated with all the question marks.

He decided he needed another cup of coffee. He started the car and was about to head into Barleyville when Hardwick called again, sounding more shaken than before. “We’ve got a new situation. If what I just overheard is true, Lex Bincher may no longer be missing.”

“Oh, Jesus. What now?”

“One of the troopers with the BCI boys found a body in the water under Lex’s private dock. Just a body. A body with no head.”

“Are they sure it’s Bincher?”

“I didn’t hang around to find out. I got a bad feeling about the missing head. I backed out of the crowd and came back to my car. I gotta get outta here before I puke, or before some BCI guy recognizes me and puts two and two together—with me and Bincher and the Spalter case—and I end up in an interview room for the next two weeks. I can’t afford that. Not with this kind of shit going down. I got to be able to move, got to be able to do whatever the fuck we have to do. Gotta go. Call you later.”

Gurney sat there by the reservoir for another few minutes, letting the new situation sink in. His gaze drifted back out over the water to the piece of driftwood that had reminded him of the body snagged on the rocks at the edge of the Hudson. As he stared now at the bare, twisted wood, the configuration reminded him not just of a body, but of a headless body.

He shivered, restarted the car, and headed for Walnut Crossing.

Chapter 39. Terrible Creatures

Thinking about Hardwick’s anxious departure from the crime scene—in fear of being recognized and having the reason for his presence questioned—pushed to the front of Gurney’s mind an issue he’d been avoiding: Where did the right to conduct a private investigation in the interest of a client end … and obstruction of justice begin?

At what point did he have an obligation to share with law enforcement what he’d learned about the hit man who called himself Petros Panikos and his probable involvement in the lengthening string of homicides associated with the Spalter case? Did the fact that Panikos’s involvement was only “probable” rather than certain make a difference? Surely, Gurney concluded with a feeling an inch shy of comfort, he had no obligation to share speculative scenarios with the police, who no doubt had plenty of their own. But how honest was that argument, really?

This debate occupied him uneasily as he drove through bleak little Barleyville—finding the little café where he’d hoped to get coffee closed. He continued on over the forested hills that separated it from the village of Walnut Crossing, and on past that to his mountain road. His thoughts culminated in a chilling question: What if the Cooperstown deaths were a sign of things to come? How long could one keep confidential the fruits of a private investigation, if the war that apparently had been declared by Panikos continued to claim casualties?

The sight of his mailbox at the end of the road shifted his focus from Panikos to Klemper. Had the man delivered the requested security video, as his phone message had implied? Or did the mailbox contain a less pleasant surprise?

He drove past the mailbox, parked the car by the barn, and walked back.

He’d have bet a thousand dollars against the possibility of a bomb, but he wasn’t ready to bet his life. He eyed the mailbox and decided on a relatively low-risk way of opening it. He first needed to find a fallen branch long enough to reach the drop-lid from a spot shielded by the trunk of a hemlock several feet from the box.

After a five-minute search and a number of awkward thrusts with a less-than-ideal branch, he managed to jar the drop-lid loose. It swung open with a clank. He waited a few seconds, then circled around to the front of the box and peered inside. All it contained was a single white envelope. He removed it, brushing off a tiny ant.

The envelope was addressed to him in rough block printing. It had no stamp or postmark. He could feel a small rectangular object through the paper, which he thought might be a USB drive. He opened the envelope cautiously and saw that he was right. He put the drive in his pocket, walked back to the car, and drove up to the house.

The clock on the dashboard read 4:18 p.m. Madeleine’s car was in its regular spot, which reminded him that she’d been on her early shift that day and had likely gotten home around two. He expected she’d be inside reading—perhaps engaged in her Sisyphean assault on War and Peace. He went in through the side door and called out, “I’m home.”

There was no answer.

Passing through the kitchen on his way to the den, he called out again, and again there was no answer. His next thought was that she was out on one of her walks.

In the den he tapped a key on his open laptop to bring it to life. He took the USB drive out of his pocket and stuck it in the appropriate slot. The icon that appeared was titled “02 DEC 2011 08:00AM–11:59AM”—the time window within which the Spalter shooting had occurred. He went to the GET INFO menu and discovered that the little thumb drive had a 64GB capacity, far more than enough to cover the specified hours, even at a high resolution.

He clicked on the drive icon, and a window opened immediately with four video file icons—titled “CAM A (INT),” “CAM B (EAST),” “CAM C (WEST),” and “CAM D (SOUTH).”

Interesting. A four-camera array was an unusual level of video security for a small electronics store in a small city. Gurney figured the array was either an active display for the purpose of selling security cameras—like having a wall of televisions, all on—or, a possibility that had crossed his mind earlier, Hairy Harry and his girlfriend were in a riskier business than consumer electronics.

Since the south-facing camera would have been the one facing the Willow Rest cemetery, that was the file Gurney chose first. When he clicked on the icon, a video window appeared with controls for PLAY, PAUSE, REVERSE, and CLOSE, plus a sliding bar linked to the file time code, for getting to specific points in the video. He clicked on PLAY.

What he saw then was what he’d hoped for. It was almost too good to be true. Not only was the file resolution superb, but the camera that had produced the file evidently included the latest motion-tracking and zoom-to-action technology. And, of course, like most security cameras, it was motion-activated—recording video only when something was happening—and had a real-time indicator at the bottom of the frame.

The motion-activation feature meant that the nominal four-hour period of coverage would occupy far less recorded time in the file, since intervals of inactivity in the camera’s field of view would not be represented. So it was that the first hour of the period had produced less than ten minutes of digital footage—triggered mainly by hardy dog walkers and winter-suited joggers performing their morning rituals on a path that paralleled the low cemetery wall. The scene was brightened by pale winter sunlight and a light, patchy coating of snow.

It wasn’t until a little after nine that the camera responded to activity inside Willow Rest. A panel truck was moving slowly across the frame. It came to a stop in front of what Gurney recognized as the Spalter family plot (or, to use Paulette Purley’s term, “property”). Two men in bulky overalls emerged from the truck, opened its rear doors, and began unloading a number of dark, flat, rectangular objects. These were soon revealed to be folding chairs, which the men set up with evident care in two rows facing an elongated area of dark earth—the open grave intended for Mary Spalter. After making some adjustments in the position of the chairs, one of the men erected a portable podium at the end of the grave, while the other retrieved a large broom from the truck and began sweeping some of the snow away from the grassy space between the chairs and the grave.

As this work was progressing, a small white car pulled into view and stopped behind the truck. Although he couldn’t be sure of the face, impossibly tiny in the video frame, Gurney had a feeling that the woman who got out of the car, bundled in a fur jacket and fur hat, gesturing as though she was giving instructions to the workmen, was Paulette Purley. After some more straightening of the chairs, the men got back in the truck and drove out of the frame.

The woman stood by herself, looking around the plot as if giving everything a final once-over, then got back in her car, drove it past the open grassy area, and parked next to some cold-withered rhododendrons. The video continued for another minute or so before stopping. It restarted at a point twenty-eight minutes later in real time—at 9:54 a.m.—with the arrival of a hearse and a number of other cars.

A man in a black overcoat came from the passenger side of the hearse, and the woman Gurney figured was Paulette Purley reemerged from her car. They met, shook hands, spoke briefly. The man walked back toward the hearse, gesturing as he went. Half a dozen dark-suited men got out of a limo, opened the rear door of the hearse, and slowly removed a casket, which they then carried with practiced smoothness to the open grave and placed on a supporting structure that held it at ground level.

At some signal Gurney did not detect, the mourners began coming out of the other cars parked in a row along the lane behind the hearse. Wrapped in winter coats and hats, they made their way to the two rows of chairs alongside the grave, gradually filling all but two of the sixteen seats. The two left vacant were those on either side of Mary Spalter’s triplet cousins.

The tallish man in the black overcoat, presumably the funeral director, moved to a position behind the seated mourners. The six pallbearers, having made some adjustments to the position of the casket, stood shoulder to shoulder beside him. Paulette Purley stood a few feet off to the side of the last pallbearer.

Gurney’s attention was fixed on the man in the end seat of the first row. The unsuspecting victim-to-be. The clock at the bottom of the video window indicated that the time in Willow Rest was 10:19 a.m. Meaning that at that moment Carl Spalter had just one minute left. One more minute of life as he’d known it.

Gurney’s gaze went back and forth between Carl and the clock, feeling the erosion of time and life with a painful acuteness.

There was just half a minute left, before a .220 Swift bullet—the fastest, most accurate bullet in the world—would pierce the man’s left temple, fragment in his brain, and put an end to whatever future he might have imagined.

In his long NYPD career, Gurney had witnessed countless crimes on security videos—including muggings, beatings, burglaries, homicides—at gas stations, liquor stores, convenience stores, Laundromats, ATMs.

But this one was different.

The human context, with its complex and strained family relationships, was deeper. The emotional context was more vivid. The sedate physical appearance of the scene—the seated participants, the suggestion of a formal group portrait—bore no resemblance to the content of typical security camera footage. And Gurney knew more about the man about to be shot—in just a few more seconds—than he’d known up front about any other on-tape victim.

Then the moment came.

Gurney leaned in toward his computer screen, literally on the edge of his chair.

Carl Spalter rose and turned toward the podium that had been set up at the far end of the open grave. He took a step in that direction, passing in front of Alyssa. Then, just as he began to take another step, he lurched forward in a kind of stumbling collapse that carried him the length of the front row. He hit the ground face-first and lay motionless on the snow-whitened grass between his mother’s casket and his brother’s chair.

Jonah and Alyssa were the first on their feet, followed by two Elder Force ladies from the the second row. The pallbearers came around from behind the chairs. Paulette rushed toward Carl, dropped to her knees, and bent over him. After that it was difficult to sort out what was happening, as more people crowded around the fallen man. During the ensuing minutes, at least three people appeared to have their phones out, making calls.

Gurney noted that Carl was hit, as the incident report indicated, at exactly 10:20. The first responder arrived at 10:28—a local uniform in a Long Falls police cruiser. Within the next couple of minutes, two more arrived, followed shortly by a trooper cruiser. At 10:42, an EMT unit arrived in a large ambulance. Parking directly in front of the main activity at the scene, blocking the security camera’s field of view, it rendered the remainder of the video useless to Gurney. Even the first unmarked car—presumably bringing Klemper—was obscured when it stopped on the far side of the ambulance.

After skimming through the rest of the video, sampling bits here and there and finding no important additional data, Gurney sat back in his desk chair to consider what he’d seen.

In addition to the unfortunate position of the ambulance, there was another problem with the material. Despite the high resolution of the camera, its formidable zoom lens, and its auto-framing capabilities, the sheer camera-to-subject distance resulted in a visual product with definite limitations. Although he’d understood what he saw happening, he knew that some of that understanding had been supplied by what he’d been told. He’d long ago accepted a major counterintuitive cognitive principle: We don’t think what we think because we see what we see. We see what we see because we think what we think. Preconceptions can easily override optical data—even make us see things that aren’t there.

What he wanted was stronger optical data—to make sure his preconceptions weren’t leading him in the wrong direction. Ideally, he’d submit the digital file to a sophisticated computer lab for maximum enhancement, but part of the price of retirement was lack of free access to that kind of resource. It occurred to him that Esti might have a back door into the NYSP lab that would enable her to get the job done without an ID or tracking number that could come back to bite her, but he wasn’t comfortable with nudging her into that position. At least, not until less risky options had been exhausted.

He picked up his phone and called Kyle—an avid storehouse of information on all things related to computers, the more complex the better. He was invited to leave a message, and he did. “Hi, son. I have a digital technology problem. Official support channels aren’t available to deal with it. Here’s the thing. I have a hi-def video file that might be more revealing if we could apply a digital zoom effect without diluting its sharpness. That’s kind of a contradiction, but I think there’s enhancement software with certain algorithms that have a way of addressing that issue … so maybe you could point me in the right direction? Thanks, son. I’m sure whatever you can tell me will be a lot more than I already know.”

After ending the call, he decided to go back to the beginning of the video and view it again. But then he happened to notice the current time, displayed in the upper corner of his laptop screen. It was 5:48 p.m. Even if Madeleine had taken the longest of her usual trails through the woods—the one over the top of Carlson’s Ridge—she should have returned by now.

It was dinnertime, and she never … Oh, Christ! Of course!

He felt like an idiot. This was the day she was supposed to leave for her stay at the Winklers’. Too much was happening too damn fast. It was as though his brain couldn’t contain another speck of information, and every time something new got jammed in, it shoved something out the other side. It was kind of scary to think about. What else might he have forgotten?

That’s when he remembered that on his way in he’d seen her car parked by the house.

If she’s at the Winklers’, why the hell is her car still here?

Baffled, with a fast-growing feeling of unease, he called her cell number.

He was surprised a few seconds later to hear her phone ringing in the kitchen. Had she not gone to the Winklers’ after all? Was she somewhere around the house? He called out to her, but there was no answer. He went out from the den to the kitchen. Following the sound of the ring, he found her phone on the sideboard next to the stove. That was truly odd. As far as he knew, she never left the house without it. Perplexed, he gazed out the window, hoping that he might see her heading up through the pasture toward the house.

There was no sign or her. Just her car. Which meant she had to be somewhere in the general vicinity—unless she’d gone somewhere with a friend who’d picked her up. Or unless, God forbid, she’d had an accident and was taken away in an ambulance.

He strained to recall anything she might have said that would …

Just then a breeze caught the asparagus ferns, stirring them briefly apart, and something bright flashed at the corner of his eye.

Something pink, he thought.

Then the ferns settled back together, and he wondered whether he’d seen anything at all.

Curiosity drove him outside to check.

As soon as he reached the far side of the asparagus bed his question was answered—with a larger one. Madeleine was sitting on the grass in one of her pink T-shirts. Next to her on the ground were a few pieces of bluestone placed over what appeared to be freshly loosened earth. On the far side of the stones, a shovel, recently used, lay on the grass. With her right hand, Madeleine was gently patting down the dark earth around the edges of the stones.

At first she said nothing.

“Maddie?”

She looked up at him with her mouth in a tight, sad little line.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Horace.”

“Horace?”

“One of those terrible creatures killed him.”

“Our rooster?”

She nodded.

“What sort of terrible creature?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I guess what Bruce said the other night when he was here. A weasel? A possum? I don’t know. He warned us. I should have listened.” She bit her lower lip.

“When did it happen?”

“This afternoon. When I got home, I let them out of the barn for some air. It was such a nice day. I had some cracked corn, which they love, so they followed me up to the house. They were right out here. Running around. Pecking in the grass. I went into the house for … something, I don’t even know what. I just …” She stopped for a moment, shaking her head. “He was only four months old. He was just learning to crow. He looked so proud. Poor little Horace. Bruce warned us … he warned us … about what could happen.”

“You buried him?”

“Yes.” She reached over and smoothed the soil by the stones. “I couldn’t let his little body just lie there.” She sniffled, cleared her throat. “He was probably trying to protect the hens from the weasel. Don’t you think?”

Gurney had no idea what to think. “I guess so.”

After patting down the soil a few more times, she got up from the grass and they went into the house. The sun had already started to slide down behind the western ridge. The slope of the opposite hill was bathed in that ruddy-gold light that only ever lasted a minute or two.

It was a strange evening. After they had a brief, quiet dinner of leftovers, Madeleine settled into one of the armchairs by the big empty fireplace at the far end of the long room, abstractedly holding one of her perennial knitting projects in her lap.

Gurney asked if she’d like him to turn on the floor lamp behind her chair. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. As he was about to ask if she had a revised timetable for going to the Winklers’ farm, she asked about his meeting that morning with Malcolm Claret.

That morning?

So much had intervened, his trip to the Bronx felt like something that had happened a week ago. He was having a hard time focusing on it, fitting it into his grasp of the day. He began with the first aspect of it that came to mind.

“When you made my appointment, did Malcolm tell you he was dying?”

“Dying?”

“Yes. He’s in the end stages of a fatal cancer.”

“And he’s still … Oh, God.”

“What?”

“He didn’t tell me, not directly, but … I remember he did say that your appointment needed to be very soon. I’d just assumed he had some major commitment coming up, and … Oh, God. How is he?”

“Mostly the same. I mean, he looks very old, very thin. But he’s … very … very clear.”

A silence passed between them.

Madeleine was the first to speak. “Is that what you spoke about? His sickness?”

“Oh, no, not at all. In fact, he didn’t even refer to it until the end. We spoke mainly about … me … and you.”

“Was it useful?”

“I think so.”

“Are you still mad about my making the appointment for you?”

“No. It turned out to be a good thing.” At least, he thought it was a good thing. He was still having trouble wrapping words around its effect on him.

After a brief silence she smiled softly and said, “Good.”

After a longer silence, he wondered if he should circle back to the Winkler situation and get it resolved. He was still determined to get Madeleine away from the house. But he figured there’d be time enough to take care of that in the morning.

At eight o’clock, she went to bed.

A little while later, he followed her.

It wasn’t that he felt particularly sleepy. In fact, he was having a hard time putting any label at all on what he was feeling. The day had left him confused and overloaded. To begin with, there was the visceral impact of Claret’s message. And beyond that, the jarring immersion in the Bronx of his childhood, followed by the escalating horrors reported by Jack Hardwick from Cooperstown, and finally Madeleine’s pain at the rooster’s death—which he suspected had resonated unconsciously with another loss.

He went into the bedroom, took off his clothes, and slipped into bed beside her. He let his arm rest gently against hers, finding himself unable to conceive of any more articulate or appropriate communication.