Shut Your Eyes Tight

Chapter 26

“After I ice the stupid fuck, I see he’s only wearing one shoe. I think, what the fuck? Closer look, I see there’s no sock on the foot that’s got the shoe on it. On the bottom of the shoe, I see this little slanted M, the Marconi logo, so this is like a two-thousand-dollar shoe. The other foot that’s got no shoe-that one’s got a sock on it. Cashmere. I think, who the fuck does that? Who the fuck puts on one cashmere sock and one two-thousand-dollar shoe-on different feet? I’ll tell you who does that-a fucking juicehead with bucks, a rich fucking drunk.”

That was the way Gurney opened his presentation that morning. Ultimate cut-to-the-chase approach. And it worked. He had the attention of every set of eyes in the bleak, concrete-walled police-academy lecture hall.

“The other day we talked about the eureka fallacy-the tendency of people to put a lot more faith in things they’ve discovered about someone than in things that person has told them. We’re wired to believe that the hidden truth is the real truth. Undercover, you can take advantage of that tendency by letting your target ‘discover’ the things about you that you most want him to believe. It’s not an easy technique, but it’s very powerful. Today we’ll look at another factor that creates credibility, another way of making your undercover line of bullshit sound true: layers of unusual, striking, incongruous detail.”

All the people in the room appeared to be in the same seats they were in two days earlier, with the exception of the attractive Hispanic cop with the lip gloss who had moved into the front row, displacing the dyspeptic Detective Falcone, who was now in the second row-a pleasant switch from Gurney’s point of view.

“The story I just started telling you about whacking the guy with the Marconi logo on the sole of his shoe, that’s a story I actually told in an undercover situation. The odd little facts are all there for specific reasons. Can anyone tell me what they might be?”

A hand went up in the middle of the room. “Make you sound cold and hard.”

Other opinions were offered without raised hands:

“Make you sound like you got a little problem with drunks.”

“Like maybe you’re a little crazy.”

“Like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.”

“Distraction,” said a thin, colorless female in the back row.

“Tell me about that,” said Gurney.

“You get somebody focused on a lot of weird shit, trying to figure out why the guy you shot is only wearing one shoe, they don’t focus so much on the main question, which is whether or not you shot anybody to begin with.”

“Bury ’em in bullshit!” another female voice chimed in.

“That’s the idea,” said Gurney. “Now, there’s one more thing-”

The pretty cop with the glistening lips broke in, “The little M on the sole of his shoe?”

Gurney couldn’t help grinning. “Right. The little M. What’s that all about?”

“It makes the hit more credible?”

Falcone, behind her, rolled his eyes. Gurney felt like tossing him out of the class but doubted he had the authority to make it stick and didn’t want to get tangled up in an academy pissing contest. He concentrated on his Hispanic star pupil, a much easier task.

“How does it do that?”

“By the way you picture it in your mind. The victim is down, shot, on the floor. That’s how the sole of his shoe would be visible. So when I’m picturing that, wondering about that little logo, I’m already believing the guy has been shot. You know what I mean? Once I’m seeing his feet in that position, I’m already past the question of whether you shot him. It’s kind of like the other little detail you tossed in-that the sock on the other foot was cashmere. The only way to know something is cashmere is to feel it. So I’m picturing this killer, curious about the sock, feeling the dead guy’s foot. Very icy. Scary guy. Believable.”

The restaurant where Gurney had agreed to meet Sonya Reynolds was in a hamlet outside Bainbridge, halfway between the police academy in Albany and her gallery in Ithaca. He’d finished his lecture at eleven and got to the Galloping Duck-her choice-at a quarter to one.

There was a curious disconnect between the country-cutesy name of the place with its cockeyed cutout of a giant duck on the front lawn and the plain, almost Shaker-like decor inside-like the crossed wires of a bad marriage.

He arrived first and was shown to a table for two next to a window overlooking a pond, the possible home of the eponymous fowl if ever it had existed. A chubby, cheerful teenage waitress with pink spiked hair and an indescribable mélange of neon clothes brought two menus and two glasses of ice water.

Gurney counted a total of nine tables in the small dining room, only two of which were occupied, both silently-one by a youngish couple staring intently at their BlackBerry screens, the other by a middle-aged man and woman from the pre-electronic era staring stolidly into their own thoughts.

Gurney’s gaze drifted out to the pond. He sipped his water and thought about Sonya. Looking back on their relationship-not a “relationship” in the romantic sense, just a business association with a fair amount of suppressed lust on his part-it struck him as one of the stranger interludes in his life. Inspired by an art-appreciation course Sonya was teaching, which he and Madeleine attended shortly after moving upstate, he’d begun creating art prints from the mug shots of murderers-illuminating their violent personalities through the subtle manipulation of the stark official photographs taken at the time of their arrests. Sonya’s great enthusiasm for the project and her sale of eight of the prints (at two thousand dollars apiece through her Ithaca gallery) kept Gurney involved for several months, despite Madeleine’s discomfort with the morbid subject matter and with his eagerness to please Sonya. The tension in that conflict came back to him now, along with an uneasy recollection of the near disaster that ended it.

In addition to almost getting him killed, the Mellery murder case had brought him face-to-face with his acute failures as a husband and father. In the humbling clarity of the experience, it had occurred to him that love is the only thing on earth that matters. Seeing the mug-shot art endeavor and his contact with Sonya as disrupters of his relationship with the only person he really loved, he turned away from them toward Madeleine.

Now, however, a scant year later, the white light of his realization had dimmed. He still knew there was truth in it-that love, in a sense, was the most important thing-but he no longer saw it as the only true light in the universe. The gradual fading of its priority happened quietly and did not announce itself as a loss. It felt more like the growth of a more realistic perspective, surely not a bad thing. After all, one could not function long in the state of emotional intensity created by the Mellery affair, lest one forget to mow the lawn and buy food-or make the money one needed to buy food and lawn mowers. Wasn’t it in the very nature of intense experiences to settle down, permitting the ordinary rhythms of life to resume? So Gurney wasn’t especially concerned that now, from time to time, the “love is all that matters” idea seemed to have the ring of a sentimental shibboleth, a country-music title.

Which is not to say that his guard was completely down. There was an electricity in Sonya Reynolds that only a very foolish man would consider harmless. And when the pink-haired girl ushered the shapely, elegant Sonya into the dining room, that electricity was radiating like the hum of a power plant.

“David, my love, you look… exactly the same!” she cried, gliding toward him as if to music, offering him her cheek to kiss. “But of course you do! How else would you look? You’re such a rock! Such stability!” This last word she pronounced with an exotic delight, as though it were the perfect Italian term for something the English language was inadequate to express.

She was wearing very tight designer jeans and a silky T-shirt under a linen jacket so casually unconstructed it couldn’t have cost less than a thousand dollars. There was neither jewelry nor makeup to distract from her perfect olive skin.

“What are you looking at?” Her voice was playful, her eyes sparkling.

“You. You look… great.”

“I should be mad at you, you know that?”

“Because I stopped producing pictures?”

“Of course because you stopped producing pictures. Wonderful pictures. Pictures I loved. Pictures my customers loved. Pictures I could sell for you. Pictures I did sell for you. But with no warning you call me and you tell me you can’t do it anymore. You have personal reasons. Can’t make any more pictures, can’t talk about it. End of story. Don’t you think I should be mad at you?”

She didn’t sound mad at all, so he didn’t answer, just watched her, amazed at how much bright energy she managed to channel into every word. It was the first thing that had seized his attention in her art-appreciation class. That and those wide-set green eyes.

“But I forgive you. Because you’re going to make pictures again. Don’t shake your head at me. Believe me, when I explain what’s happening, you won’t shake your head.” She stopped, looked around the little dining room for the first time. “I’m thirsty. Let’s have a drink.”

When the pink-haired girl reappeared, Sonya ordered a vodka with grapefruit juice. Against his better judgment, so did Gurney.

“So, Mr. Retired Policeman,” she said after their drinks had arrived and been sampled, “before I tell you how your life is going to change, tell me about the way it is now.”

“My life?”

“You do have a life, yes?”

He had the disconcerting feeling that she already knew all about his life, complete with its reservations, doubts, conflicts. But there was no way she could know. Even when he was involved with her gallery, he’d never talked about those things. “My life is good.”

“Ah, but you say this in a way that makes it not true, like it’s something you’re supposed to say.”

“Is that the way it sounds?”

She took another sip of her drink. “You don’t want to tell me the truth?”

“What do you think the truth is?”

She cocked her head a little to the side, studied his face, shrugged. “It’s none of my business, right?” She looked out at the pond.

He consumed half his drink in two swallows. “I suppose it’s like everyone’s life-some of this and some of that.”

“You make this-and-that sound like a pretty grim combination.”

He laughed, not happily, and for a while they were both silent. He was the first to speak.

“I find that I’m not so much of a nature lover as I hoped I might be.”

“But your wife is?”

He nodded. “It’s not that I don’t find it beautiful up here, the mountains and all, but…”

She gave him a shrewd look. “But it gets you tangled up in double negatives when you try to explain it?”

“What? Oh. I see what you mean. Are my problems that obvious?”

“Discontent is always obvious, no? What’s the matter? You don’t like that word?”

“Discontent? It’s more like… what I’m good at, the way my mind works, isn’t very useful up here. I mean… I analyze situations, unravel the elements of a problem, focus on discrepancies, solve puzzles. None of which…” His voice trailed off.

“And, of course, your wife thinks you should be loving the daisies, not analyzing them. You should be saying ‘How beautiful!’ and not ‘What are they doing here?’ Am I right?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“So,” she said, changing the subject with sudden enthusiasm, “there’s a man you must meet. As soon as possible.”

“Why is that?”

“He wants to make you rich and famous.”

Gurney made a face.

“I know, I know, you’re not very interested in getting rich, and famous you’re not interested in at all. I’m sure you have good theoretical objections. But suppose I were to tell you something very specific.” She glanced around the dining room. The older couple were standing slowly, as though getting up from the table were a project to be undertaken with care. The BlackBerry couple were still at whatever it was they were at, texting away rapidly with the edges of their thumbs. The antic idea that they might be texting each other across the table popped into Gurney’s mind. Sonya’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “Suppose I were to tell you he wants to buy one of your portrait prints for a hundred thousand dollars. What would you say to that?”

“I’d say he was crazy.”

“You think so?”

“How could he not be?”

“Last year at an auction in the city, Yves Saint-Laurent’s office chair sold for twenty-eight million dollars. That might be a little bit crazy. But a hundred thousand for one of your amazing serial-killer portraits? I don’t think that’s crazy at all. Wonderful, yes. Crazy, no. In fact, from what I know of this man and the way he operates, the price of your portraits is only going to go up.”

“You know him?”

“I just met him face-to-face for the first time. But I know of him. He’s a recluse, an eccentric who every so often emerges, shakes up the art world with some purchase or other, then disappears again. Dutch-sounding name, but no one knows where he lives. Switzerland? South America? Seems to like being a man of mystery. Very secretive, but more money than God. When Jykynstyl shows interest in an artist, the financial impact is huge. Huge.”

Cute little Pink Hair had added a chartreuse scarf to her eclectic ensemble and was clearing dessert plates and coffee cups from the vacated table across from them. Sonya caught her eye. “Darling, could I have another vodka grapefruit? And, I think, for my friend here, too?”

Chapter 27

Gurney didn’t know what to make of it. On the drive home that afternoon, he was having a hell of a time staying focused on anything.

The “art world” was not a place he knew anything about, other than suspecting that it was populated by people as different from policemen as parrots were from rottweilers. The brief dip of his toe into the water a year earlier with his mug-shot portraits had not exposed him to much of that world beyond the university-town gallery scene-not exactly the playground of eccentric billionaire collectors. Not the sort of place where a dress designer’s chair would sell for twenty-eight million dollars. Or where a mystery celebrity by the unlikely name of Jay Jykynstyl would offer to buy a computer-manipulated picture of a serial killer for a hundred thousand dollars.

On top of that-the rather fantastical business deal she was placing in his lap-the lubricious Sonya herself had never seemed more available. She’d even hinted that she might rent a room at the Galloping Duck, which was also an inn, if she ended up drinking too much at lunch to drive legally. Walking away from that not-especially-subtle invitation had demanded a level of integrity he wasn’t sure at first that he had. But maybe integrity was too big a word for it. The simple truth was that he’d never lied to Madeleine, and he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of starting now.

Then he wondered if he were honestly walking away from Sonya’s invitation or simply postponing his acceptance. He had agreed to meet the wealthy and weird Mr. Jykynstyl over dinner that coming Saturday in Manhattan and listen to the full details of his offer-which, if legitimate, would be hard to refuse-with Sonya acting as a broker between them for whatever sales might follow. So it wasn’t as though he were barring her from his life. Quite the opposite.

The whole thing was bouncing around in his head with an unpleasant sort of energy. He tried to focus his mind on the Perry case, instead, recognizing as he did so the irony of trying to calm himself by sorting through that monstrous can of worms.

His racing mind eventually reached the stage of natural collapse, and the result was that he came close to killing himself by falling asleep at the wheel and was saved only by a series of small potholes on the highway shoulder that jolted him back into full consciousness. A few miles farther along, he pulled off at a gas station, bought a container of muddy coffee whose bitter edge he attempted to soften with an excess of milk and sugar. The taste still made him grimace.

Back in his car, he took out a master list of names and phone numbers he’d compiled from the Perry case file and placed calls first to Scott Ashton and then to Withrow Perry, getting voice mail each time. His message to Ashton was a request for a return call to discuss a new line of inquiry. His message to Perry was a request for a meeting at the busy neurosurgeon’s earliest convenience, with a small hook at the end: “Remind me to ask about your Weatherby rifle.”

As soon as he broke the connection, the phone rang.

“Dave, it’s Val. I want you to go to a meeting.”

“What meeting?”

She explained that she’d called Sheridan Kline, the county DA, and told him everything Gurney had told her.

“Like what, for example?”

“Like the fact that the whole thing is a lot deeper than the cops think it is, that it’s got roots, maybe some kind of twisted revenge, that Hector Flores probably isn’t Hector Flores at all, and if they’re searching for some kind of illegal Mexican-which they are-they’re never going to find him. I told him they’re wasting everybody’s time, and they’re a pack of fucking idiots.”

“That’s the term you used? Fucking idiots?”

“In four months they haven’t caught on to half of what you saw in two days. So yeah, I called them fucking idiots. Which is what they are.”

“You sure do know how to toss a brick into a hornet’s nest.”

“If that’s what it takes, so be it.”

“What did Kline say?”

“Kline? Kline’s a politician. My husband-let me correct that, my husband’s money-has some influence in New York State politics. So DA Kline expressed interest in hearing about any alternative approaches to the case. He also seems to know you pretty well, asked how come you were involved. I said you were consulting. Stupid word, but it satisfied him.”

“You said something about a meeting.”

“His office tomorrow at three P.M. You, him, and someone from the state police-he didn’t say who. You’ll be there, right?”

“I’ll be there.”

He got out of the car to toss his coffee container into a trash barrel by the gas pumps. An ancient orange Farmall tractor was chugging past pulling an overflowing hay wagon. Smells of hay, manure, and diesel oil blended in the air. When he returned to the car, his phone was ringing again.

It was Ashton. “What new line of inquiry?” he asked, quoting Gurney’s message.

“I need some names from you: classmates of Jillian, going back to when she first came to Mapleshade; also, her counselors, therapists, anyone who dealt with her on a regular basis. It would also be helpful to have a list of possible enemies-anyone who might have wanted to harm you or Jillian.”

“I’m afraid you’re marching into a blind alley. I can’t give you any of the things you’re asking for.”

“Not even a list of classmates? Names of staff members she may have spoken to?”

“Perhaps I haven’t adequately explained Mapleshade’s policy of absolute privacy. We maintain only the minimum academic records the state requires, and we maintain them for not one day longer than the regulations stipulate. We are not legally mandated, for example, to retain the names and addresses of former staff beyond the periods specified for tax purposes, and therefore we do not. We maintain no records of ‘diagnoses’ or ‘treatments,’ because officially we provide neither. Our policy is to disclose nothing to anyone, and we will allow Mapleshade to be shut down by the state before we will violate that policy. Our students and their families trust us in a way few other facilities are trusted, and we hold that unique trust to be inviolable.”

“Eloquent speech,” said Gurney.

“One I’ve made before,” admitted Ashton, “and will probably make again.”

“So even if a list of students Jillian knew or staff members in whom she may have confided could help us find her killer, that would make no difference to you?”

“If you wish to put it that way.”

“Suppose giving us those lists could save your own life. Would that make a difference?”

“None.”

“Doesn’t the teacup incident bother you?”

“Not nearly so much as dealing a fatal blow to Mapleshade. If that covers all your questions…?”

“How about enemies outside the school?”

“For Jillian, I imagine there might be quite a few, but I have no names.”

“And for you?”

“Academic competitors, professional enviers, ego-bruised patients, fools not gladly suffered-perhaps a few score souls in all.”

“Any names you’d be willing to share?”

“Afraid not. Now I must move on to my next meeting.”

“You have a lot of meetings.”

“Good-bye, Detective.”

Gurney’s phone didn’t ring again until he was passing through Dillweed, pulling over in front of Abelard’s, thinking he might get a decent cup of coffee to wash the taste of the awful one out of his mouth.

The name of the caller made him smile.

“Detective Gurney, this is Agatha Smart, Dr. Perry’s assistant. You’re requesting an appointment, as well as information about Dr. Perry’s hunting rifle. Is that correct?”

“Yes. I was wondering how soon I could-”

She interrupted. “You may submit your questions in writing. The doctor will decide if an appointment is warranted.”

“I’m not sure if I made this clear in the message I left, but this is part of the inquiry into the murder of his stepdaughter.”

“We realize that, Detective. As I said, you may submit your questions in writing. Would you like the address?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Gurney, struggling to suppress his irritation. “It all comes down to one very simple question. Can he say for sure where his rifle was on the afternoon of May seventeenth?”

“As I said before, Detective-”

“Just pass the question along, Ms. Smart. Thank you.”

Chapter 28

He almost missed seeing her.

As he approached the point where the narrow dirt-and-gravel road reached his property and faded into the grassy farm track that rose through the pasture to the house, a red-tailed hawk took wing from the top of a tall hemlock on his left and flew over the road and over the pond. As he watched the rising bird disappear above the far treetops, he glimpsed Madeleine sitting on a weathered bench at the pond’s edge, half hidden by a clump of cattails. He stopped the car by the old red barn, got out, and waved.

She responded with what seemed to be a small smile. He couldn’t be sure at that distance. He wanted to talk to her, felt he needed to talk to her. As he followed the curving path around the grassy margin of the pond to the bench, he began to feel the stillness of the place. “Okay if I sit with you for a bit?”

She nodded gently, as if a larger response would disturb the peace.

He sat and gazed out over the quiet surface of the pond, seeing in it the upside-down reflection of the sugar maples on the opposite side, some of their leaves turning toward muted versions of their autumn colors. He looked at her and was overcome by the strange notion that the tranquillity in her at that moment was not the product of her surroundings but that, in some fantastical reversal, her surroundings were absorbing that very quality from a reservoir within her. He’d had that idea about her before, but that part of his mind that scorned the sentimental had always brushed it aside.

“I need your help,” he heard himself saying, “to sort out some things.” When she didn’t answer, he went on, “I’ve had a confusing day. More than confusing.”

She gave him one of those looks of hers that either communicated a great deal-in this instance that a confusing day would be a predictable result of getting involved in the Perry case-or that simply presented him with a blank slate on which his uneasy mind might write that message.

In any event he kept talking. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so overloaded. You found the note I left for you this morning?”

“About meeting your friend from Ithaca?”

“She’s not what I would call a friend.”

“Your ‘adviser’?”

He resisted an urge to debate the terminology, to defend his innocence. “The Reynolds Gallery has been approached by a wealthy art collector who’s interested in the mug-shot art portraits I was doing last year.”

Madeleine raised a mocking eyebrow at his substituting the name of the business for the name of the person.

He went on, dropping his bombshell calmly. “He’ll give me a hundred thousand dollars each for unique one-off prints.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Sonya insists the guy is serious.”

“What mental hospital did he escape from?”

There was a loud splash on the far side of the cattail clump. She smiled. “Big one.”

“You’re talking about a frog?”

“Sorry.”

Gurney closed his eyes, more annoyed than he’d be willing to admit at Madeleine’s apparent disinterest in his windfall. “From what I know of the art world, it’s pretty much one giant mental hospital, but some of the patients have an awful lot of money. Apparently this guy is one of them.”

“What is it he wants for his hundred thousand dollars?”

“A print that only he would own. I’d have to take the prints I did last year, enhance them somehow, introduce a variation into each one that would make it different from anything the gallery sold to anyone else.”

“He’s for real?”

“So I’m told. I’m also told he may want more than one. Sonya’s imagining the possibility of a seven-figure sale.” He turned to see Madeleine’s reaction.

“Seven-figure sale? You mean some amount over a million dollars?”

“Yup.”

“Oh, my, that’s… certainly something.”

He stared at her. “Are you purposely trying to show as little reaction to this as possible?”

“What reaction should I have?”

“More curiosity? Happiness? Some thoughts about what we could do with a chunk of money that size?”

She frowned thoughtfully, then grinned. “We could spend a month in Tuscany.”

“That’s what you’d do with a million dollars?”

“What million dollars?”

“Seven figures, remember?”

“I heard that part. What I’m missing is the part where it becomes real.”

“According to Sonya, it’s real right now. I have a dinner meeting Saturday in the city with the collector, Jay Jykynstyl.”

“In the city?”

“You make it sound like I’m meeting him in a sewer.”

“What does he ‘collect’?”

“No idea. Apparently stuff he pays a lot for.”

“You find it credible that he wants to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars for fancied-up mug shots of low-life scum? Do you even know who he is?”

“I’ll find out Saturday.”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

To the extent that he was capable of perceiving his own emotional tone and rhythm, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but he wasn’t ready to admit it. “What’s your point?”

“You’re good at poking holes in things. Nobody better at it than you.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you? You can rip anything to shreds-‘an eye for discrepancy,’ you once called it. Well, if anything ever cried out for a little poking and ripping, this sounds like it. How come you’re not doing it?”

“Maybe I’m waiting to find out more, find out how real it is, get a sense of who this Jykynstyl character is.”

“Sounds reasonable.” She said this in such a reasonable way that he knew she meant the opposite. “By the way, what kind of name is that?”

“Jykynstyl? Sounds Dutch to me.”

She smiled. “Sounds to me like a monster in a fairy tale.”

Chapter 29

While Madeleine was creating a shrimp-and-pasta combination for dinner, Gurney was in the basement going through old copies of the Sunday Times that were being saved for a gardening project. (One of Madeleine’s friends had gotten her interested in a type of garden bed in which newspapers were used to create layers of mulch.) He was searching the magazine sections of the paper for the advertising spread he remembered seeing that featured the provocative photograph of Jillian. What he was ultimately looking for was the company name and photo credit. He was about to give up and call Ashton for the information when he found the most recent insertion of the ad-which he noted had appeared, by macabre coincidence, on the day of the murder.

Instead of just making a note of the credit line, “Karnala Fashion, Photo by Alessandro,” he decided to bring the magazine section upstairs. He laid it open on the table where Madeleine was setting their dinner plates. Apart from the credit line, there was only one sentence on the page, in very small, fashionably understated type: “Custom-designed wardrobes, starting at $100,000.”

She scowled at it. “What’s that?”

“An ad for expensive clothes. Insanely expensive. It’s also a picture of the victim.”

“The vic-You don’t mean…?”

“Jillian Perry.”

“The bride?”

“The bride.”

Madeleine looked closely at the ad.

“The two images in the photo are both of her,” Gurney explained.

Madeleine nodded quickly, meaning that this had already occurred to her. “That’s what she did for a living?”

“I don’t know yet whether it was a job or an occasional thing. When I first saw the photo hanging in Scott Ashton’s house, I was too amazed to ask.”

“He has that hanging in his home? He’s a widower, and that’s the picture he…” She shook her head, her voice fading.

“He talks about her the same way her mother talks about her-like she was some kind of uniquely brilliant, sick, seductive maniac. The thing of it is, the whole damn case is like that. Everyone connected with it is either a genius or a lunatic or… a pathological liar or… I don’t know what. Christ, Ashton’s next-door neighbor, whose wife presumably ran off with the murderer, is playing with a Lionel train set under a Christmas tree in his basement. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so goddamn adrift. It’s like the trail-the scent trail the K-9 team was able to follow that led to the murder weapon in the woods, but it didn’t go any farther, which suggests that the killer went back to the cottage and hid there-except there’s no place in the cottage to hide. One minute I think I know what’s going on, the next minute I realize I have no evidence at all for what I think. We have lots of interesting scenarios, but when you look under them, there’s nothing there.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we need to come up with hard data, firsthand observations by credible witnesses. So far none of the narratives has any verifiable facts to support it. It’s too damn easy to get carried away by a good story. You can get so emotionally invested in a certain view of the case that you don’t notice it’s all wishful thinking. Let’s eat. Maybe food will help my brain.”

Madeleine put a large bowl of shrimp and pappardelle with a tomato-and-garlic sauce in the middle of the table, along with small bowls of shredded asiago and chopped basil, and they began eating.

After a few mouthfuls, Madeleine started toying with a shrimp. “The little apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Hmm?”

“Mother and daughter have a lot in common.”

“Both a bit erratic, you mean?”

“That’s a way of putting it.”

There was another silence as Madeleine lightly tapped her shrimp with the tines of her fork. “You’re sure there was no place to hide?”

“Hide?”

“In the cottage.”

“Why do you ask?”

“There was a terrifying movie I saw a long time ago-about a landlord who had secret spaces between the walls of the apartments, and he’d watch his tenants through tiny pinholes.”

Their landline phone rang. “The cottage is pretty small, only three rooms,” he said as he stood to go and answer it.

She shrugged. “Just a thought. It still gives me the shivers.”

The phone was on his desk in the den. He got to it on the fourth ring. “Gurney here.”

“Detective Gurney?” The female voice was young, tentative.

“That’s right. Who am I speaking to?” He could hear the caller breathing, apparently in some distress. “You still there?”

“Yes, I… I shouldn’t be calling, but… I wanted to talk to you.”

“Who is this?”

The caller answered after another hesitation. “Savannah Liston.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Should I?”

“I thought he might have mentioned my name.”

“Who might have mentioned it?”

“Dr. Ashton. I’m one of his assistants.”

“I see.”

“That’s why I’m calling. I mean, maybe that’s why I shouldn’t be calling, but… Is it true you’re a private detective?”

“Savannah, you need to tell me why you’re calling me.”

“I know. But you won’t tell anyone, will you? I’d lose my job.”

“Unless you’re planning to hurt someone, I can’t think of any legal reason I’d have to divulge anything.” That answer, which he’d used a few hundred times in his career, was about as meaningless as it could be, but it seemed to satisfy her.

“Okay. I should just tell you. I overheard Dr. Ashton on the phone with you earlier today. It sounded like you wanted the names of girls in Jillian’s class that she hung out with, but he couldn’t give them to you?”

“Something like that.”

“Why do you want them?”

“I’m sorry, Savannah, but I’m not allowed to discuss that. But I would like to know more about the reason you’re calling me.”

“I could give you two names.”

“Of girls Jillian hung out with?”

“Yes. I know them because when I was a student here, once in a while we hung out together, which is kind of why I’m calling you. There’s this weird thing going on.” Her voice was getting shaky, like she was about to cry.

“What weird thing, Savannah?”

“The two girls Jillian hung out with-they’ve both disappeared since they graduated.”

“How do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”

“They both left home during the summer, their families haven’t seen them, nobody knows where they are. And there’s another horrible thing about it.” Her breathing now was so uneven it was more like quiet sobbing.

“What’s the horrible thing, Savannah?”

“They both talked about wanting to hook up with Hector Flores.”

Chapter 30

By the time he got off the phone with Savannah Liston, he’d asked her a dozen questions and ended up with half a dozen useful answers, the names of the two girls, and one anxious request: that he not tell Dr. Ashton about the call.

Did she have some reason to be afraid of the doctor? No, of course not, Dr. Ashton was a saint, but it made her feel bad to be going behind his back, and she wouldn’t want him to think that she didn’t trust his judgment completely.

And did she trust his judgment completely? Of course she did-except maybe she was worried that he wasn’t worried about the missing girls.

So she’d told Ashton about the “disappearances”? Yes, of course she had, but he’d explained that Mapleshade graduates often made clean breaks for good reasons, and it wouldn’t be unusual for a family not to have contact with an adult daughter who wanted some breathing room.

How did the missing girls happen to know Hector? Because Dr. Ashton had brought him to Mapleshade sometimes to work on the flower beds. Hector was really hot, and some of the girls got very interested in him.

When Jillian was a student, was there anyone in particular on staff in whom she might have confided? There was a Dr. Kale who was in charge of a lot of things-Dr. Simon Kale-but he’d retired to Cooperstown. She’d found Gurney’s home phone number through the Internet, and he could probably find Kale’s number the same way. Kale was a cranky old man. But he might know stuff about Jillian.

Why was she telling Gurney all this? Because he was a detective, and sometimes she lay awake at night and scared herself with questions about the missing girls. In the daylight she could see that Dr. Ashton was probably right, that a lot of the students had come from sick families-like her own-and it would make sense to get away from them. Get away and not leave any forwarding address. Maybe even change your name. But in the dark… other possibilities came to her mind. Possibilities that made it hard to sleep.

And oh, by the way, the missing girls had another thing in common besides both of them having shown a major interest in Hector with his shirt off working on the flower beds.

What was that?

After they’d graduated from Mapleshade, they’d both been hired to pose, just like Jillian, “for those really hot fashion ads.”

When Gurney returned to the kitchen, to the table where they’d been eating when the phone rang, Madeleine was standing there with the Times Magazine open on the table. As he joined her, staring down at that unsettling depiction of rapacity and self-absorption, he could feel the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

She glanced at him curiously, which he interpreted as her way of asking if he wanted to tell her about the phone call.

Grateful for her interest, he recounted it in detail.

Her curiosity sharpened into concern. “Someone needs to find out why those girls are unreachable.”

“I agree.”

“Shouldn’t their local police departments be notified?”

“It’s not that simple. The girls Savannah is talking about were in Jillian’s class, presumably her age, so they’d be at least nineteen by now-all legal adults. If their relatives or other people who saw them regularly haven’t officially reported them as missing, there’s not much the police can do. However…” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and entered Scott Ashton’s number.

It rang four times and was switching to voice mail when Ashton picked up and responded, apparently, to the caller-ID display. “Good evening, Detective Gurney.”

“Dr. Ashton, sorry to bother you, but something’s come up.”

“Progress?”

“I don’t know what to call it, but it’s important. I understand Mapleshade’s privacy policy, as you’ve explained, but we’ve got a situation that requires an exception-access to past enrollment records.”

“I thought I’d been clear about that. A policy to which exceptions are made is no policy at all. At Mapleshade privacy is everything. There are no exceptions. None.”

Gurney felt his adrenaline rising. “Do you have any interest in knowing what the problem is?”

“Tell me.”

“Suppose we had reason to believe that Jillian wasn’t the only victim.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Suppose we had reason to believe that Jillian was one of a number of Mapleshade graduates targeted by Hector Flores.”

“I fail to see…”

“There’s anecdotal evidence suggesting that some Mapleshade graduates who were friendly with Hector Flores are not locatable. Under the circumstances we should find out how many of Jillian’s classmates can be accounted for at this time and how many can’t.”

“God, do you realize what you’re saying? Where is this so-called anecdotal evidence coming from?”

“The source is not the issue.”

“Of course it’s an issue. It’s a matter of credibility.”

“It may also be a matter of saving lives. Think about it.”

“I’ll do that.”

“I’d suggest you think about it right now.”

“I don’t care for your tone, Detective.”

“You think my tone is the problem? Think about this instead: Think about the possibility that some of your graduates might die because of your precious privacy policy. Think about explaining that to the police. And to the media. And to the parents. After you’ve thought about it, get back to me. I have other calls to make.” He broke the connection and took a deep breath.

Madeleine studied his face, smiled crookedly, and said, “Well, that’s one approach.”

“You have others?”

“Actually, I kind of liked yours. Shall I reheat the dinner?”

“Sure.” He took another deep breath, as though adrenaline could be exhaled away. “Savannah gave me the names and phone numbers of the families of the girls-the women, I should say-who she claims are missing. You think I should call them now?”

“Is that your job?” She picked up their pasta plates and carried them over to the microwave.

“Good point,” he conceded, sitting at the table. Something in Ashton’s attitude had gotten to him, was pushing him to respond impulsively. But how to pursue the issue of the “missing” Mapleshade graduates, as he forced himself to think about it calmly, was a question for the police. There were procedural requirements for the “missing person” designation and for the subsequent entry of the descriptive and last-sighting information into state and national databases. More important, it was a manpower issue. If, in fact, it turned out that the case involved multiple mis-pers with a suspicion of felony abduction or worse, a lone investigator was not the answer. The following day’s meeting with the district attorney and the promised BCI representative would provide an ideal forum for discussing Savannah’s call and for passing the matter on.

In the meantime, however, it might be interesting to speak to Alessandro.

Gurney got his laptop from the den and set it up where his plate had been.

A search of the Internet white pages for New York City turned up twelve individuals with that surname. Of course, “Alessandro” was far more likely to be a first name, or a professional name invented to convey a certain image. However, there were no business listings involving the name Alessandro in any of the categories that might relate to the Times ad: photography, advertising, marketing, graphics, design, fashion.

It seemed odd that a commercial photographer would be so elusive-unless he were so successful that the people who mattered knew already how to contact him and his invisibility to the masses was part of his appeal, like an “in” nightclub with no signage.

It occurred to Gurney that if Ashton had acquired his photo of Jillian directly from Alessandro, he’d have the man’s phone number, but this was not the best moment to ask for it. Conceivably, Val Perry would know something about it, might even know Alessandro’s full name. Either way the following day would be the appropriate time to pursue it. And, very important, he needed to keep an open mind. The fact that two former Mapleshade students whom Ashton’s assistant was having trouble contacting had posed for the same fashion photographer as Jillian might be a meaningless coincidence, even if they did have an eye for Hector. Gurney closed his laptop and laid it on the floor beside his chair.

Madeleine returned to the table with their plates, the shrimp and pasta steaming again, and sat across from him.

He picked up his fork, then put it down. He turned to look out through the French doors, but the dusk had deepened and the glass panes, instead of providing a view of the patio and garden, offered only a reflection of the two of them at the table. His eye was drawn to the stern lines on his face, the serious set of his mouth, a reminder of his father.

It set him off on a tangent of loosely linked bits of memories-images from long ago.

Madeleine was watching him. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. About my father, I guess.”

“What about him?”

He blinked, looked at her. “Did I ever tell you the rabbit story?”

“I don’t think so.”

He cleared his throat. “When I was a little kid-five, six, seven years old-I’d ask my father to tell me stories about the things he did when he was a little kid. I knew he grew up in Ireland, and I had an idea of what Ireland looked like from a calendar we got from a neighbor who went there on vacation-all very green, rocky, kind of wild. To me it was a strange, wonderful place-wonderful, I guess, because it was nothing like where we lived in the Bronx.” Gurney’s distaste for his childhood neighborhood, or maybe for his childhood itself, showed in his face. “My father didn’t talk much, at least not to me or my mother, and getting him to tell me anything about how he grew up was almost impossible. Then finally, one day, maybe to stop me from pestering him, he told me this story. He said there was a field behind his father’s house-that’s what he called it, his father’s house, an odd way to put it, since he lived there, too-a big grassy field with a low stone wall separating it from an even bigger field with a stream running through it, and a distant hillside beyond that. The house was a beige cottage with a dark thatched roof. There were white ducks and daffodils. I’d lie in bed every night picturing it-the ducks, the daffodils, the field, the hill-wishing I were there, determined that someday I would be there.” His expression was a mixture of sourness and wistfulness.

“What was the story?”

“Hmm?”

“You said he told you a story.”

“He said that he and his friend Liam used to go hunting for rabbits. They had slingshots, and they’d go off into the fields behind his father’s house at dawn while the grass was still covered with dew, and they’d hunt for rabbits. The rabbits had narrow pathways through the tall grass, and he and Liam would follow the pathways. Sometimes the pathways ended in bramble patches, and sometimes they went under the stone wall. He described the size of the openings of the burrows the rabbits dug and how he and Liam would set snares for the rabbits along their pathways, or at their burrows, or at the holes they dug under the stone wall.”

“Did he tell you if they ever caught any?”

“He said if they did, they’d let them go.”

“And the slingshots?”

“A lot of near misses, he said.” Gurney fell silent.

“That’s the story?”

“Yes. The thing is, the images it painted in my mind became so real, and I thought so much about them, spent so much time imagining myself there, following those little narrow pathways in the grass, that those images became in some peculiar way the most vivid memories of my childhood.”

Madeleine frowned a little. “We all do that, don’t we? I have vivid memories of things I never actually saw-memories of scenes someone else described. I remember what I’ve pictured.”

He nodded. “There’s a piece of this I haven’t told you yet. Years later, decades later, when I was in my thirties and my father was sixty-something, I happened to bring it up on the phone with him. I said, ‘Remember the story you told me about you and Liam going out in the field at dawn with your slingshots?’ He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. So I added all the other details: the wall, the brambles, the stream, the hillside, the rabbit paths. ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘That was all bullshit. None of that ever happened.’ And he said it in that tone of his that seemed to imply I was a fool to ever have believed it.” There was a rare, barely perceptible tremor in Gurney’s voice. He coughed loudly as if trying to clear whatever obstruction had caused it.

“He made it all up?”

“He made it all up. Every speck of it. And the damnable part of it is, it’s the only thing he ever told me about his childhood.”

Chapter 31

Gurney was leaning back in his chair, studying his hands. They were more creased and worn than he would have pictured them had he not been looking at them. His father’s hands.

As Madeleine cleared the table, she appeared deep in thought. When the dishes and pans were all in the sink and she’d covered them with hot, soapy water, she turned off the tap and spoke in a very matter-of-fact way. “So I guess he had a pretty awful childhood.”

Gurney looked up at her. “I would imagine so.”

“Do you realize that during the twelve years of our marriage that he was alive, I only saw him three times?”

“That’s the way we are.”

“You mean you and your father?”

He nodded vaguely, focusing on a memory. “The apartment where I grew up in the Bronx had four rooms-a small eat-in kitchen, a small living room, and two small bedrooms. There were four people-mother, father, grandmother, myself. And you know what? There was almost always just one person in each room, except for the times when my mother and grandmother would watch television together in the living room. Even then my father would stay in the kitchen and I’d be in one of the bedrooms.” He laughed, then stopped with an empty feeling, having heard in that sardonic sound an echo of his father.

“You remember those little toy magnets in the shape of Scottie dogs? If you aligned them one way, they attracted each other; the other way, they repelled each other. That’s what our family was like, four little Scottie dogs aligned so we repelled one another into the four corners of our apartment. As far from one another as possible.”

Madeleine said nothing, just turned the water back on and busied herself washing the dinner things, rinsing them, stacking them in the drying rack next to the sink. When she was finished, she turned off the hanging light over the sink island and went to the opposite end of the long room. She sat in an armchair by the fireplace, switched on the lamp next to it, and withdrew her current knitting project, a woolly red hat, from a tote bag on the floor. She glanced every so often in Gurney’s direction but remained silent.

Two hours later she went to bed.

Gurney, in the meantime, had gotten the Perry case folders from the den, where they’d been piled since they were cleared from the main table when the Meekers came to dinner. He’d been reading the summaries of the interviews conducted in the field, as well as verbatims of those that had been conducted and recorded at BCI headquarters. It struck him as a lot of material that failed to paint a coherent picture.

Some of it made virtually no sense at all. There was, for example, the Naked in the Pavilion incident recounted by five Tambury residents. They said that Flores had been seen one month prior to the murder standing on one foot, eyes closed, hands clasped prayerfully in front of him in what was taken to be some sort of yoga pose, stark naked in the center of Ashton’s lawn pavilion. In each interview summary, the interviewing officer had noted that the individual describing the incident had not actually witnessed it but was presenting it as “common knowledge.” Each one reported hearing about it from other people. Some could remember who mentioned it to them, some couldn’t. None could remember when. Another widely reported incident concerned an argument between Ashton and Flores one summer afternoon on the main street of the village, but again none of the individuals reporting it, including two who described it in detail, had been present at the event.

Anecdotes were abundant, eyewitnesses in short supply.

Almost everyone interviewed saw the murder itself through the lens of one of a handful of paradigms: the Frankenstein Monster, the Revenge of a Jilted Lover, Inherent Mexican Criminality, Homosexual Instability, the Poisoning of America by Media Violence.

No one had suggested a connection to Mapleshade’s sexual-abuser clientele or the possibility of a revenge motive arising out of Jillian’s past behavior-areas where Gurney believed that the key to the killing would eventually be found.

Mapleshade and Jillian’s past: two general headings under which he had many more question marks than facts. Maybe that retired therapist whom Savannah had mentioned could help with both. Simon Kale, easy name to remember. Simon Legree. Simon Says. Simon Kale of Cooperstown. Went to jail and wore a gown. Christ! He was slipping fast into the giddiness of total exhaustion.

He went to the sink and splashed cold water on his face. Coffee seemed like a good idea, then a bad idea. He went back to the table, set up his laptop again, and found Kale’s phone number and address in less than a minute through an Internet directory. Problem was, he’d been absorbed by the interview reports longer than he’d realized, and it was now 11:02 P.M. To call or not to call? Now or in the morning? He was itchy to talk to the man, to follow a concrete lead, a route to some piece of the truth. If Kale was already in bed, the call would not be a welcome event. On the other hand, its very lateness and inconvenience could serve to emphasize the urgency of the issue. He made the call.

After three or four rings, an androgynous voice answered. “Yes?”

“Simon Kale, please.”

“Who is this?” The voice, still of uncertain gender though tending toward male, sounded anxious and irritated.

“David Gurney.”

“May I tell Dr. Kale the reason for your call?”

“Who am I speaking to?”

“You’re speaking to the person who answered the phone. And it is rather late. Now, would you please tell me why-” There was another voice in the background, a pause, the sound of the phone being handed over.

A prissy, authoritative voice announced, “This is Dr. Kale. Who is this?”

“David Gurney, Dr. Kale. Sorry to bother you so late in the evening, but there’s some urgency involved. I’m working as a consultant on the Jillian Perry murder case, and I’m trying to get some perspective on Mapleshade. You were suggested to me as a person who could be helpful.” There was no response. “Dr. Kale?”

“Consultant? What does that mean?”

“I’ve been retained by the Perry family to provide them with an independent view of the investigation.”

“Is that so?”

“I was hoping you might be able to enlighten me regarding Mapleshade’s clientele and general philosophy.”

“I would have thought Scott Ashton would be the perfect source for that sort of enlightenment.” There was acid in this comment, which he softened by adding in a more casual tone, “I’m no longer part of the Mapleshade staff.”

Gurney tried for a foothold in what sounded like a rift between the two men. “I thought your position might give you more objectivity than someone still involved with the school.”

“That’s not a subject I’d care to discuss on the phone.”

“I can understand that. The fact is, I live over in Walnut Crossing, and I’d be happy to come to Cooperstown, if you could spare me even half an hour.”

“I see. Unfortunately, I’ll be away on a one-month vacation starting the day after tomorrow.” The way he said it made it sound more like a legitimate impediment than a brush-off. Gurney got the feeling that Kale was not only intrigued but might have something interesting to say.

“It would be enormously helpful, Doctor, if I could see you before then. It just so happens that I have a meeting with the district attorney tomorrow afternoon. If I could spend some time with you, perhaps I could make a detour on my way?”

“You have a meeting with Sheridan Kline?”

“Yes, and it would be really helpful to get your input prior to that.”

“Well… I suppose… Still, I would need to know more about you before… before it would be appropriate to discuss anything. Your credentials and so forth.”

Gurney responded with his résumé highlights and the name of a deputy commissioner Kale could talk to at the NYPD. He even mentioned, half apologetically, the existence of the five-year-old New York magazine article that glorified his contributions to the solution of two infamous serial-murder cases. The article had made him sound like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Dirty Harry, which he found embarrassing. But it had its uses.

Kale agreed to meet with him at 12:45 P.M. the next day, Friday.

When Gurney tried to organize his thoughts for that meeting, to make a mental list of the topics he wanted to cover, he discovered for the hundredth time that excitement and weariness formed a lousy foundation on which to organize anything. He concluded that sleep would be the most efficient use of his time. But no sooner had he taken off his clothes and slipped into bed next to Madeleine than the ring of his cell phone summoned him back to the kitchen counter where he’d absentmindedly left it.

The voice on the other end was born and bred in a Connecticut country club. “This is Dr. Withrow Perry. You called. I can give you precisely three minutes.”

It took Gurney a moment to focus. “Thank you for calling back. I’m investigating the murder of-”

Perry cut in sharply. “I know what you’re doing. I know who you are. What do you want?”

“I have some questions that might help me to-”

“Go ahead, ask them.”

Gurney suppressed an impulse to comment on the man’s attitude. “Do you have any idea why Hector Flores killed your daughter?”

“No, I don’t. And for the record, Jillian was my wife’s daughter, not mine.”

“Do you know of anyone besides Flores who might have had a grudge against her-a reason to hurt or kill her?”

“No.”

“No one at all?”

“No one and, I suppose, everyone.”

“Meaning?”

Perry laughed-a harsh, unpleasant sound. “Jillian was a lying, manipulative bitch. I doubt I’m the first to tell you that.”

“What’s the worst thing she ever did to you?”

“That’s not a subject I’m willing to discuss.”

“Why do you think Dr. Ashton wanted to marry her?”

“Ask him.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Next question.”

“Did she ever talk about Flores?”

“Not to me, certainly. We had no relationship at all. Let me be clear, Detective. I’m speaking to you solely because my wife has decided to pursue this unofficial inquiry and asked that I return your call. I really don’t have anything to contribute, and to be honest with you, I personally consider her endeavor a waste of time and money.”

“How do you feel about Dr. Ashton?”

“Feel? What do you mean?”

“Do you like him? Admire him? Pity him? Despise him?”

“None of the above.”

“What then?”

There was a pause, a sigh. “I have no interest in him. I consider his life none of my business.”

“But there’s something about him that… what?”

“Just the obvious question. The question you already asked, in a way.”

“Which one?”

“Why would such a competent professional marry a train wreck like Jillian?”

“Did you hate her that much?”

“I didn’t hate her, Mr. Gurney, no more than I would hate a cobra.”

“Would you kill a cobra?”

“That’s a childish question.”

“Humor me.”

“I’d kill a cobra that threatened my life, just as you would.”

“Did you ever want to kill Jillian?”

He laughed humorlessly. “Is this some sort of sophomoric game?”

“Just a question.”

“You’re wasting my time.”

“Do you still own a Weatherby.257 rifle?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you aware that someone with a rifle like that took a shot at Scott Ashton a week after Jillian’s murder?”

“With a.257 Weatherby? For Godsake, you’re not suggesting… you’re not daring to suggest that somehow… What the hell are you suggesting?”

“I’m just asking you a question.”

“A question with offensive implications.”

“Shall I assume you still have the rifle in your possession?”

“Assume whatever you like. Next question.”

“Can you say for sure where that rifle was on May seventeenth?”

“Next question.”

“Did Jillian ever bring friends home?”

“No-thank God for small favors. I’m afraid your time is up, Mr. Gurney.”

“Final question. Do you happen to know the name or address of Jillian’s biological father?”

For the first time in the conversation, Perry hesitated. “Some Spanish-sounding name.” There was a kind of revulsion in his voice. “My wife mentioned it once. I told her I never wanted to hear it again. Cruz, perhaps? Angel Cruz? I don’t know his address. He may not have one. Considering the life expectancy of the average methamphetamine addict, he’s probably been dead for quite a few years.”

He broke the connection without another word.

Getting to sleep proved difficult. If Gurney’s mind was engaged after midnight, turning it off wasn’t easy. It could take hours to loosen its obsessive grip on the problems of the day.

He’d been in bed, he guessed, for at least forty-five minutes without any respite from the kaleidoscope of images and questions embedded in the Perry case when he noted that the rhythm of Madeleine’s breathing had changed. He was convinced she’d been asleep when he came to bed, but now he had the distinct feeling that she was awake.

He wanted to talk to her. Well, actually, he wasn’t sure about that. And he wasn’t sure, if he did talk to her, what it was that he wanted to talk to her about. Then he realized that he wanted her advice, wanted her guidance out of the swamp in which he was getting mired-a swamp composed of too many shaky stories. He wanted her advice, but he wasn’t sure how to ask for it.

She cleared her throat softly. “So what are you going to do with all your money?” she asked matter-of-factly, as though they’d been discussing some related matter for the past hour. This was not an unusual way for her to bring something up.

“The hundred thousand dollars, you mean?”

She didn’t reply, which meant she considered the question unnecessary.

“It’s not my money,” he said. “It’s our money. Even if it’s still theoretical.”

“No, it’s definitely your money.”

He turned his head toward her on the pillow, but it was a moonless night, too dark to make out her expression. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. It’s your hobby, now your very lucrative hobby. And it’s your gallery contact, or your representative, or agent, or whatever she is. And now you’re going to meet your new fan, the art collector, whoever he is. So it’s your money.”

“I don’t understand why you’re saying this.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true.”

“No it’s not. Whatever I own, we own.”

She uttered a rueful little laugh. “You don’t see it, do you?”

“See what?”

She yawned, suddenly sounded very tired. “The art project is yours. All I ever did was complain about how much time you spent on it, how many beautiful days you spent cooped up in your den staring at your screen, staring at the faces of serial killers.”

“That’s got nothing to do with how we think about the money.”

“It’s got everything to do with it. You earned it. It’s yours.” She yawned again. “I’m going back to sleep.”

Chapter 32

Gurney left at 11:30 A.M. the next day for his meeting with Simon Kale, allowing himself a little over an hour for the drive to Cooperstown. Along the way he drank a sixteen-ounce container of Abelard’s house blend, and by the time Lake Otsego was in sight, he was feeling awake enough to take note of the classic September weather, the blue sky, the hint of chill in the air.

His GPS brought him along the hemlock-shaded west shore of the lake to a small white Colonial on its own half-acre peninsula. The open garage doors revealed a shiny green Miata roadster and a black Volvo. Parked at the edge of the driveway, away from the garage, was a red Volkswagen Beetle. Gurney parked behind the Beetle and was getting out of his car just as an elegant gray-haired man emerged from the garage with a pair of canvas tote bags.

“Detective Gurney, I presume?”

“Dr. Kale?”

“Correct.” He smiled perfunctorily and led the way along a flagstone path from the garage to the side door of the house. The door was open. Inside, the place looked very old but meticulously cared for, with the heat-conserving low ceilings and hand-hewn beams typical of the eighteenth century. They were standing in the middle of a kitchen that featured an enormous open hearth as well as a chrome-and-enamel gas stove from the 1930s. From another room came the unmistakable strains of “Amazing Grace” being played on a flute.

Kale laid his tote bags on the table. They were imprinted with the logo of the Adirondack Symphony Orchestra. Leafy vegetables and loaves of French bread were visible in one, bottles of wine in the other. “The elements of dinner. I was sent out to hunt and gather,” he said rather archly. “I do not myself cook. My partner, Adrian, is both chef and flautist.”

“Is that…?” Gurney began, tilting his head in the direction of the faint melody.

“No, no, Adrian is far better than that. That would be his twelve-o’clock student, the Beetle person.”

“The…?”

“The car outside, the one in front of yours, the cutesy red thing.”

“Ah,” said Gurney. “Of course. Which would leave the Volvo for you and the Miata for your partner?”

“You’re sure it’s not the other way around?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Interesting. What exactly is it about me that screams Volvo to you?”

“When you came out of the garage, you came out of the Volvo side of it.”

Kale emitted a sharp cackle. “You’re not clairvoyant, then?”

“I doubt it.”

“Would you care for tea? No? Then come, follow me to the parlor.”

The parlor turned out to be a tiny room next to the kitchen. Two floral-printed armchairs, two tufted fussy-floral hassocks, a tea table, a bookcase, and a small red-enameled woodstove just about filled the space. Kale gestured to one of the chairs for Gurney, and he sat in the other.

“Now, Detective, the purpose of your visit?”

Gurney noticed for the first time that Simon Kale’s eyes, in contrast with his giddy manner, were sober and assessing. This man would not be easily fooled or flattered-although his dislike of Ashton, revealed on the phone, might be helpful if handled carefully.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure what the purpose is.” Gurney shrugged. “Maybe I’m just on a fishing expedition.”

Kale studied him. “Don’t overdo the humility.”

Gurney was surprised by the jab but responded blandly. “Frankly, it’s more ignorance than humility. There’s so damn much about this case that I don’t know-that no one knows.”

“Except for the bad guy?” Kale looked at his watch. “You do have questions you want to ask me?”

“I’d like to know whatever you’re willing to tell me about Mapleshade-who goes there, who works there, what it’s all about, what you did there, why you left.”

“Mapleshade before or Mapleshade after the arrival of Scott Ashton?”

“Both, but mainly the period when Jillian Perry was a student.”

Kale licked his lips thoughtfully, seemed to be savoring the question. “I’d sum it up this way: For eighteen of the twenty years I taught at Mapleshade, it was an effective therapeutic environment for the amelioration of a wide range of mild to moderate emotional and behavioral problems. Scott Ashton arrived on the scene five years ago with great fanfare, a celebrity psychiatrist, a cutting-edge theoretician, just the thing to nudge the school into the premier position in the field. Once he had a foothold, however, he began shifting the focus of Mapleshade to sicker and sicker adolescents-violent sexual predators, manipulative abusers of other children, highly sexualized young women with long histories of incest as both victims and perpetrators. Scott Ashton turned our school, with its broad history of success with troubled kids, into a disheartening repository for sex addicts and sociopaths.”

Gurney thought it had the ring of a carefully constructed speech polished by repetition, yet the emotion in it seemed real enough. Kale’s arch tone and mannerisms had been replaced, at least temporarily, by a stiff and righteous anger.

Then, into the open silence that followed the diatribe, from the flute in the other room flowed the haunting melody of “Danny Boy.”

It assaulted Gurney slowly, debilitatingly, like the opening of a grave. He thought he would have to excuse himself, find a pretext for abandoning the interview, flee the premises. Fifteen years, and still the song was unbearable. But then the flute stopped. He sat, hardly breathing, like a shell-shocked soldier awaiting the resumption of distant artillery.

“Is something wrong?” Kale was eyeing him curiously.

Gurney’s first impulse was to lie, hide the wound. But then he thought, why? The truth was the truth. It was what it was. He said, “I had a son by that name.”

Kale looked baffled. “What name?”

“Danny.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The flute… It… it doesn’t matter. An old memory. Sorry for the interruption. You were describing the… the transition from one type of clientele to another.”

Kale frowned. “Transition-such a benign term for so massive a dislocation.”

“But the school continues to be successful?”

Kale’s smile sparkled like glare ice. “There’s money to be made in housing the demented offspring of guilty parents. The more terrifying they are, the more their parents will pay to get rid of them.”

“Regardless of whether they get any better?”

Kale’s laugh was as cold as his smile. “Let me be perfectly clear about this, Detective, so that I leave no doubt in your mind what we’re talking about. If you were to discover that your twelve-year-old has been raping five-year-olds, you might be willing to pay anything for that lunatic child of yours to disappear for a few years.”

“That’s who’s sent to Mapleshade?”

“Precisely.”

“Like Jillian Perry?”

Kale’s expression moved through a small series of tics and frowns. “Mentioning individual student names in a context like this puts us on the edge of a legal minefield. I don’t feel that I can give you a specific answer.”

“I already have reliable descriptions of Jillian’s behavior. I only mention her because the timing raises a question. Wasn’t she sent to Mapleshade before Dr. Ashton altered the school’s focus?”

“That’s true. However, without saying anything one way or the other about the Perry girl, I can tell you that Mapleshade traditionally accepted students with a wide range of problems, and there were always a few who were far sicker than the others. What Ashton did was focus Mapleshade’s enrollment policy entirely on the sickest. Give any one of them a gram of coke and they’d seduce a horse. Does that answer your question?”

Gurney’s gaze rested thoughtfully on the little red woodstove. “I understand your reluctance to violate confidentiality commitments. However, Jillian Perry can no longer be harmed, and finding her murderer may depend on finding out more about her own past contacts. If Jillian ever confided anything to you about-”

“Stop right there. Whatever was confided to me remains confidential.”

“There’s a great deal at stake, Doctor.”

“Yes, there is. Integrity is at stake. I will not reveal anything that was told to me with the understanding that I would not reveal it. Is that clear?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“If you want to know about Mapleshade and its transmogrification from a school to a zoo, we can discuss that in general terms. But the details of individual lives will not be discussed. It’s a slippery world we live in, Detective, in case you hadn’t noticed. We have no secure footing beyond our principles.”

“What principle dictated your departure from Mapleshade?”

“Mapleshade became a home for female sexual psychopaths. Most of them don’t need therapists, they need exorcists.”

“When you left, did Dr. Ashton hire someone to replace you?”

“He hired someone for the same position.” There was acid in the neat distinction and something like real hatred in Kale’s eyes.

“What sort of person?”

“His name is Lazarus. That says it all.”

“How so?”

“Dr. Lazarus has all the warmth and animation of a cadaver.” There was a bitter finality in Kale’s voice that told Gurney the interview was over.

As if on cue, the flute began again, and the plaintive strains of “Danny Boy” propelled him from the house.

Chapter 33

The living fable, the pivotal dream, the vision that had changed everything, was as vivid to him now as when it first came to him.

It was like watching a movie and being in the movie at the same time, then forgetting that it was a movie, and living it, feeling it-an experience more real than so-called real life had ever been.

It was always the same.

John the Baptist was barefoot and naked except for a homespun brown loincloth that barely covered his genitals. It was secured by a rough leather belt from which hung a primitive hunting knife. He stood beside a rumpled bed in a space that seemed to be both a bedroom and a dungeon cell. There were no visible restraints upon him, yet he could move neither his arms nor his legs. The feeling was claustrophobic, and he feared that if he lost his balance and fell onto the bed, he would suffocate.

Into the dungeon, descending on dark stone steps, came Salome. She came toward him in a swirling air of perfume and translucent silk, stood before him, swaying, dancing. Moving more like a snake than a human being. The silk slipped away, dissolving, revealing creamy skin, breasts surprisingly ample for the lithe body, full round buttocks, breathtakingly perfect, breathtakingly deadly. The body writhing in the anticipation of pleasure.

The archetype of degradation.

Eve the succubus.

Avatar of the serpent.

Essence of evil.

Incarnation of lust.

Writhing, dancing like a snake.

Dancing around him, against him. Slime of sweat forming on her swaying breasts, pinpricks of sweat around her mouth. Electric shock of her legs brushing against his legs, her legs parting, the rasp of pubic hair against his thigh, a scream of horror building in his chest, horror racing through his blood. The scream in his heart struggling to burst out. At first a tiny constricted whine, building, straining through his clenched teeth. Her eyes burning, her groin pressed against his, burning, his scream rising, bursting out, a roar now, a torrent of sound, the roar of a cyclone leveling the world, freeing his arms and legs of their paralysis, his hunting knife transformed now into a sword, a blessed scimitar. With all the strength of heaven and earth, he swings the great scimitar-swings it in a sweet, perfect arc-hardly feeling it pass through her sweating neck, the head falling, falling free. As it falls, disappearing through the stone floor, the damp body dries into gray dust and is gone, blown away by a wind that warms his soul, filling him with light and peace, filling him with the knowledge of his true identity, filling him with his Mission and Method.

They say that God comes to some men slowly and to others in a flash of light that illuminates everything. And so it was with him.

The power and clarity of it had stunned him the first time, as it did each time he recalled it, each time he reexperienced the Great Truth that had been revealed to him in the “dream.”

Like all great ideas, it was astonishingly simple: Salome cannot have John the Baptist beheaded by Herod if John the Baptist strikes first. John the Baptist, alive in him. John the Baptist, destroyer of the evil Eve. John the Baptist, vessel of the baptism of blood. John the Baptist, scourge of the slimy snakes of the earth. Severer of the head of Salome the serpent.

It was a wonderful insight. A source of purpose, serenity, and solace. He felt uniquely blessed. So many people in the modern world had no idea who they really were.

He knew who he was. And what he had to do.

Chapter 34

As Gurney was pulling in to the parking lot of the county building that housed the office of the district attorney, his phone rang. He was surprised to hear the voice of Scott Ashton, and more surprised at its new insecurity and informality.

“David, after your call last evening… your comments about people who couldn’t be found… I know what I said about the privacy issue, but… I thought perhaps I could make a few discreet phone calls myself. That way there wouldn’t be any question of my having given out names or phone numbers to a third party.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I made some calls, and… the fact is… I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but… it’s possible that something strange is going on.”

Gurney pulled in to the first parking space he could find. “Strange in what way?”

“I made a total of fourteen phone calls. I had the number for the former student herself in four cases, in the other ten the number of a parent or a guardian. One of the students I was able to reach and speak to. For one other I was able to leave a voice-mail message. Phone service to the other two had been discontinued. Of the ten calls I made to the families, I got through to two and left messages for the other eight, two of whom called me back. So I ended up having four conversations with family members.”

Gurney wondered where all this arithmetic was going.

“In one case there was no problem. However, in the other three-”

“Sorry to cut you off, but what do you mean by ‘no problem’?”

“I mean they were aware of their daughter’s location, said she was away at college, said they had spoken to her that very day. The problem is with the other three. The parents have no idea where they are-which in itself has no great significance. In fact, I strongly recommend to some of our graduates that they separate themselves from their parents when those relationships have a toxic history. Reintegration with one’s family of origin is sometimes not advisable. I’m sure you can understand why.”

Gurney almost slipped and said that Savannah had told him as much, but he caught himself. Ashton went on. “The problem is what the parents told me had happened, how the girls actually left home.”

“How?”

“The first parent I spoke to said her daughter was unusually calm, had behaved well for about four weeks after coming home from Mapleshade. Then, one evening at the dinner table, she demanded money to buy a new car, specifically a twenty-seven-thousand-dollar Miata convertible. The parents of course refused. She then accused them of not caring about her, aggressively resurrected all the traumas of her early childhood, and gave them the absurd ultimatum that they must give her the money for the car or she would never speak to them again. When they refused, she literally packed her bags, called a car service, and left. After that, she called once to say that she was sharing an apartment with a friend, that she needed time to sort out her ‘issues,’ and that any effort they made to find her or communicate with her would be an intolerable assault on her privacy. And that was the last word they ever heard from her.”

“You obviously know more about your ex-students than I do, but on the surface of it that story doesn’t sound that incredible to me. It sounds like something an emotionally unstable spoiled brat might do.” When the words were out, Gurney wondered if Ashton might object to that characterization of Mapleshade’s alumnae.

“It sounds exactly that way,” he replied instead. “A ‘spoiled brat’ stamping her feet, storming out, punishing her parents by rejecting them. Not particularly shocking, not even unusual.”

“Then I don’t get the point of the story. Why are you disturbed by it?”

“Because it’s the same story told by all three families.”

“The same?”

“The same story, except for the brand and price of the car. Instead of a twenty-seven-thousand-dollar Miata, the second girl demanded a thirty-nine-thousand-dollar BMW, and the third wanted a seventy-thousand-dollar Corvette.”

“Jesus.”

“So you see why I’m concerned?”

“What I see is a mystery about the nature of the connection. Did your conversations with the parents give you any ideas about that?”

“Well, it can’t be a coincidence. Which makes it a conspiracy of some kind.”

Gurney could see two broad possibilities. “Either the girls devised this among themselves as a way of leaving home-although why they would need to do it that way is unclear-or each of them was following the directions of an outside party without necessarily being aware that other girls were following the same directions. But, again, why is the real question.”

“You don’t think it was just a crazy scheme to see if they could force their parents to buy them their dream cars?”

“I doubt it.”

“If it was a story they devised among themselves, or under the direction of some mysterious third party-for reasons yet unknown-why would each girl come up with a different brand of car?”

A possible answer occurred to Gurney, but he wanted more time to think about it. “How did you pick the names of the girls you tried to reach?”

“Nothing systematic. They were just girls from Jillian’s graduating class.”

“So they were all approximately the same age? All around nineteen or twenty?”

“I believe so.”

“You do realize now that you’ll have to turn over Mapleshade’s enrollment records to the police?”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite see it that way-at least not yet. All I know at the moment is that three girls, legally adults, left their homes after having similar arguments with their parents. I’ll grant you there’s something about it that seems peculiar-which is why I’m telling you about it-but so far there’s no evidence of criminality, no evidence of any wrongdoing at all.”

“There are more than three.”

“How do you know that?”

“As I explained before, I was told-”

Ashton cut in. “Yes, yes, I know, some unnamed person told you that they couldn’t reach some of our former students, also unnamed. That in itself means nothing. Let’s not mix apples and oranges, leap to some awful conclusion, and use it as a pretext for destroying the school’s guarantees of privacy.”

“Doctor, you just called me. You sounded concerned. Now you’re telling me there’s nothing to be concerned about. You’re not making a lot of sense.”

He could hear Ashton breathing a bit shakily. After a long five seconds, the man spoke in a more subdued voice.

“I just don’t want to pull the whole structure of the school down on our heads. Look, here’s what I propose: I’ll continue making calls. I’ll try to call every contact number I have for recent graduates. That way we can find out if there’s a serious pattern here before we cause irreversible damage to Mapleshade. Believe me, I’m not trying to be pointlessly obstructive. If we discover any additional examples…”

“All right, Doctor, make the calls. But be aware that I intend to pass along what I already know to BCI.”

“Do what you have to do. But please remember how little you actually know. Don’t destroy a legacy of trust on the basis of a guess.”

“I get your point. Eloquently expressed.” Ashton’s easy eloquence was, in fact, starting to get on Gurney’s nerves. “But speaking of the institution’s legacy, or mission, or reputation, or whatever you want to call it, I understand you made some dramatic changes in that area yourself a few years ago-some might say risky changes.”

Ashton answered simply, “Yes, I did. Tell me how the changes were described to you, and I’ll tell you the reason for them.”

“I’ll paraphrase: ‘Scott Ashton upended the institution’s mission, turned it from a facility that treated the treatable into a holding pen for incurable monsters.’ I think that captures the gist of it.”

Ashton uttered a small sigh. “I suppose that’s the way someone might see it, especially if his career didn’t benefit from the change.”

Gurney ignored the apparent swipe at Simon Kale. “How do you see it?”

“This country has an overabundance of therapeutic boarding schools for neurotics. What it lacks are residential environments where the problems of sexual abuse and destructive sexual obsessions can be addressed creatively and effectively. I’m trying to correct that imbalance.”

“And you’re happy with the way it’s working?”

There was the sound of a longer sigh. “The treatment of certain mental disorders is medieval. With the bar set so low, making improvements is not as difficult as you might think. When you have a free hour or two, we can go into it in more detail. Right now I’d rather proceed with those phone calls.”

Gurney checked the time on his car dashboard. “And I have a meeting I’m already five minutes late for. Please let me know what you can, as soon as you can. Oh-one last thing, Doctor. I assume you have phone numbers and addresses for Alessandro and for Karnala Fashion?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Gurney said nothing.

“You’re talking about the ad? Why would I have their numbers?”

“I assumed you’d gotten that photo on your wall from either the photographer or the company that commissioned it.”

“No. As a matter of fact, Jillian was the one who got it. She gave it to me as a wedding present. She gave it to me that morning. The morning of the wedding.”

Chapter 35

The County Office Building had an unusual history. Prior to 1935 it was known as the Bumblebee Lunatic Asylum-named after the eccentric British transplant Sir George Bumblebee, who endowed it with his entire estate in 1899 and who, his disinherited relatives argued, was as insane as any prospective resident. It was a history that provided endless fodder for local wags commenting on the workings of the government agencies that had been located there ever since the county took the place over during the Great Depression.

The dark brick edifice sat like an oppressive paperweight holding down the north side of the town square. The much-needed sandblasting to remove a century of grime was put off each year to the following year, the victim of a perennial budget crisis. In the mid-sixties, the inside had been gutted and redone. Fluorescent lights and plasterboard were installed in place of cracked globes and warped wainscoting. The elaborate lobby security apparatus that Gurney remembered from his visits to the building during the Mellery case was still in place and still frustratingly slow. Once one was past that barrier, however, the rectangular layout of the building was simple, and a minute later he was opening a frosted-glass door on which DISTRICT ATTORNEY appeared in elegant black letters.

He recognized the woman in the cashmere sweater behind the reception desk: Ellen Rackoff, the DA’s intensely sexy, though far from young, personal assistant. The look in her eyes was arrestingly cool and experienced.

“You’re late,” she said in her cashmere voice. The fact that she didn’t ask his name was the only acknowledgment that she remembered him from the Mellery case. “Come with me.” She led him back out through the glass door and down a corridor to a door with a black plastic sign on it that read CONFERENCE ROOM.

“Good luck.”

He opened the door and thought for a moment he’d been brought to the wrong meeting. There were several people in the room, but the one person he’d expected to be there, Sheridan Kline, wasn’t among them. He realized he was probably in the right place after all when he saw Captain Rodriguez of the state police glowering at him from the opposite side of the big round table that filled half the windowless room.

Rodriguez was a short, fleshy man with a closed face and a carefully coiffed mass of thick black hair, obviously dyed. His blue suit was immaculate, his shirt whiter than white, his tie bloodred. Glasses with thin steel frames emphasized dark, resentful eyes. Sitting on his left was Arlo Blatt, who was looking at Gurney with small, unfriendly eyes. The colorless man on Rodriguez’s right showed no emotion beyond a faintly depressed quality that Gurney guessed was more constitutional than situational. He gave Gurney the appraising once-over that cops automatically give strangers, looked at his watch, and yawned. Across from this trio, his chair pushed back a good three feet from the table, Jack Hardwick sat with his eyes closed and his arms folded on his chest, as if being in the same room with these people had put him to sleep.

“Hello, Dave.” The voice was strong, clear, female, and familiar. The source was a tall, auburn-haired woman standing by a separate table in the far corner of the room-a woman with a striking resemblance to the young Sigourney Weaver.

“Rebecca! I didn’t know that… that you…”

“Neither did I. Sheridan called this morning, asked if I could find the time. It worked out, so here I am. Like some coffee?”

“Thank you.”

“Black?”

“Sure.” He preferred it with milk and sugar but for some reason didn’t want to tell her she’d guessed wrong.

Rebecca Holdenfield was a well-known profiler Gurney had met and come to respect, despite his doubts about profilers in general, when they were both working on the Mellery case. He wondered what her presence might signify about the DA’s view of the case.

Just then the door opened, and the DA himself strode into the room. Sheridan Kline was, as usual, radiating a sparky sort of energy. His rapidly moving gaze, like a burglar’s flashlight, took in the room in a couple of seconds. “Becca! Thank you! Appreciate your making the time to be here. Dave! Detective Dave, the man who’s been stirring the pot! Reason we’re all here. And Rod!” He grinned brightly at Rodriguez’s sour face. “Good of you to make it on such short notice. Glad you were able to bring your people along.” He glanced without interest at the bodies flanking the captain, his gladness a transparent lie. Kline liked an audience, Gurney reflected, but he liked it to be composed of people who mattered.

Holdenfield came to the table with two black coffees, gave Gurney one of them, and sat down next to him.

“Senior Investigator Hardwick here is not currently assigned to the case,” Kline went on to no one in particular, “but he was involved at the beginning, and I thought it would be helpful to have all our relevant resources in the room at the same time.”

Another transparent lie, Gurney thought. What Kline found “helpful” was to throw cats and dogs in together and watch what happened. He was a rabid fan of the adversarial process for getting at the truth and motivating people-the angrier the adversaries, the better. The vibe in the room was hostile, which Gurney figured accounted for the energy level in Kline, which was now approaching the hum of a high-voltage transformer.

“Rod, while I get some coffee here, why don’t you summarize BCI’s approach to the case so far. We’re here to listen and learn.”

Gurney thought he heard Hardwick, slouching in his chair on the far side of Rebecca Holdenfield, groan.

“I’ll keep this brief,” said the captain. “In the matter of the Jillian Perry murder, we know what was done, when it was done, and how it was done. We know who did it, and our efforts have been concentrated on finding that individual and taking him into custody. In pursuit of this objective, we’ve mobilized one of the largest manhunts in the history of the bureau. It is massive, painstaking, and ongoing.”

Another muted sound emanated from Hardwick’s direction.

The captain’s elbows were planted on the table, his left fist buried in his right hand. He shot Hardwick a warning glance. “So far we’ve conducted over three hundred interviews, and we’re continuing to expand the radius of our inquiries. Bill-Lieutenant Anderson-and Arlo here are responsible for guiding and monitoring the day-to-day progress.”

Kline came to the table with his coffee but remained standing. “Maybe Bill could give us a feeling for the current status. What do we know today that we didn’t know, say, a week after the beheading?”

Lieutenant Anderson blinked and cleared his throat. “What we didn’t know…? Well, I’d say we’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities.” When it became apparent from the stares fixed on him that this was not an adequate response, he cleared his throat again. “There were a lot of things that might have happened that we know now didn’t happen. We’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities, and we’ve developed a sharper picture of the suspect. A real nutcase.”

“What possibilities have you eliminated?” asked Kline.

“Well, we know that no one observed Flores leaving the Tambury area. There’s no record of his calling any cab company, no car-rental record, and none of the bus drivers who make local pickups recall anyone like him. In fact, we couldn’t find anyone who saw him at any time after the murder.”

Kline blinked in confusion. “Okay, but I don’t quite understand…”

Anderson continued blandly. “Sometimes what we don’t find is as important as what we do. Lab analyses showed that Flores had scoured the cottage to the point where there was zero trace evidence of himself or anyone other than the victim. He took incredible care in erasing everything that might carry analyzable DNA. Even the traps under the bathroom and kitchen sinks had been scrubbed. We’ve also interviewed every available Latino laborer within a fifty-mile radius of Tambury, and not a single one was able or willing to tell us anything about Flores. Without prints or DNA or a date of entry into the country, Immigration can’t help us. Ditto the authorities in Mexico. The identikit composite is too generic to be of much use. Everyone we interviewed thought it looked like somebody they knew, but no two people identified the same person. As for Kiki Muller, the next-door neighbor who disappeared with Flores, no one has seen her since the murder.”

Kline look exasperated. “Sounds like you’re telling me the investigation has gotten nowhere.”

Anderson glanced at Rodriguez. Rodriguez studied his fist.

Blatt made his first comment of the meeting. “It’s a matter of time.”

Everyone looked at him.

“We have people in that community keeping their eyes and ears open. Eventually Flores will surface, shoot his mouth off to the wrong person. Then we scoop him up.”

Hardwick was peering at his fingernails as though they were suspicious growths. “What ‘community’ would that be, Arlo?”

“Illegal aliens, who else?”

“Suppose he’s not Mexican.”

“So he’s Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, whatever. We’ve got people poking around in all those communities. Eventually…” He shrugged.

Kline’s antenna tuned in to the conflict. “What are you getting at, Jack?”

Rodriguez stepped in stiffly. “Hardwick has been out of the loop for some time. Bill and Arlo are your best sources for current information.”

Kline acted like he didn’t hear him. “Jack?”

Hardwick smiled. “Tell you what. Why don’t you listen to what Ace Detective Gurney here has uncovered in less than four days, which is a shitload more than we’ve come up with in four months.”

Kline’s voltage was rising. “Dave? What have you got?”

“What I’ve uncovered,” began Gurney slowly, “are mostly questions-questions that suggest new directions for the investigation.” He placed his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “One key element that deserves more attention is the victim’s background. Jillian was sexually abused as a child and became an abuser of other children. She was aggressive, manipulative, and reportedly had sociopathic traits. The possibility of a revenge motive arising out of that kind of behavior is significant.”

Blatt’s expression was screwed up in a knot. “You’re trying to tell us that Jillian Perry sexually abused Hector Flores when he was a little kid and that’s why he killed her? That sounds nuts.”

“I agree. Especially since Flores was probably at least ten years older than Jillian. But suppose he was taking revenge for something done to someone else. Or suppose he himself had been so severely abused, so traumatically, that it affected the balance of his mind, and he decided to take out his rage on all abusers. Suppose Flores found out about Mapleshade, about the nature of its clientele, about Dr. Ashton’s work. Is it possible that he might show up at Ashton’s house, try to get odd jobs, ingratiate himself, wait for an opportunity to make a dramatic gesture?”

Kline spoke up excitedly. “What do you think, Becca? Is that possible?”

Her eyes widened. “It’s possible, yes. Jillian could have been chosen as a specific revenge target based on her actions against some individual Flores knew, or as a proxy target representing abusers in general. Do you have any evidence pointing in one direction or the other?”

Kline looked to Gurney.

“The dramatic details of the murder-the beheading, the placement of the head, the choice of the wedding day-have a ritual feeling. That would be consistent with a revenge motive. But we sure as hell don’t know enough yet to say whether she was an individual target or a proxy target.”

Kline finished his coffee and headed for a refill, speaking to the room in general as he went. “If we take this revenge angle seriously, what investigatory actions would that require? Dave?”

What Gurney believed it would require-to start with-was a much more detailed disclosure of Jillian’s past problems and childhood contacts than her mother or Simon Kale had so far been willing to provide, and he needed to figure out how to make that happen. “I can give you a written recommendation on that within the next couple of days.”

Kline seemed satisfied with that and moved on. “So what else? Senior Investigator Hardwick gave you credit for what he called a ‘shitload’ of discoveries.”

“We may be a couple short of a shitload, but there’s one thing I’d put at the top of the list. A number of girls from Mapleshade seem to be missing.”

The three BCI detectives came to attention, more or less in unison, like men awakened by a loud noise.

Gurney continued. “Both Scott Ashton and another person connected with the school have tried to contact certain recent graduates and haven’t been able to.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean-” began Lieutenant Anderson.

But Gurney cut him off. “By itself it wouldn’t mean much, but there’s an odd similarity among the individual instances. All the girls in question started the same argument with their parents-demanding an expensive new car, then using their parents’ refusal as a pretext for leaving home.”

“How many girls are we talking about?” asked Blatt.

“A former student who was trying to reach some of her fellow graduates told me about two instances in which the parents had no idea where their daughter was. Then Scott Ashton told me about three more girls he was trying to reach, who he discovered had left home after an argument with their parents-the same kind of car argument in all three instances.”

Kline shook his head. “I don’t get it. What’s it all about? And what’s it got to do with finding Jillian Perry’s killer?”

“The missing girls had at least one thing in common, besides the argument they started with their parents. They all knew Flores.”

Anderson was looking more dyspeptic by the minute. “How?”

“Flores volunteered to do some work for Ashton at Mapleshade. Good-looking man, apparently. Attracted the attention of some Mapleshade girls. Turns out that the ones who showed interest, the ones who were seen speaking to him, are the ones who’ve gone missing.”

“Have they been put on the NCIC missing-persons list?” asked Anderson, in the hopeful tone of a man trying to shift a problem onto another lap.

“None of them,” said Gurney. “Problem is, they’re all over eighteen, free to come and go as they wish. Each one announced her plan to leave home, her intention to keep her whereabouts a secret, her desire to be left alone. All of which is contrary to the entry criteria for mis-pers databases.”

Kline was pacing back and forth. “This gives the case a new slant. What do you think, Rod?”

The captain looked grim. “I’d like to know what the hell Gurney is really telling us.”

Kline answered. “I think he’s telling us that there might be more to the Jillian Perry case than Jillian Perry.”

“And that Hector Flores might be more than a Mexican gardener,” added Hardwick, staring pointedly at Rodriguez. “A possibility I recall mentioning some time ago.”

This had the effect of raising Kline’s eyebrows. “When?”

“When I was still assigned to the case. The original Flores narrative felt wrong to me.”

If Rodriguez’s jaws were clenched any tighter, Gurney mused, his teeth would start disintegrating.

“Wrong how?” asked Kline.

“Wrong in the sense that it was all too fucking right.”

Gurney knew that Rodriguez would be feeling Hardwick’s delight like an ice pick in the ribs-never mind the touchy issue of airing an internal disagreement in front of the district attorney.

“Meaning?” asked Kline.

“I mean too fucking smooth. The illiterate laborer, too rapidly educated by the arrogant doctor, too much advancement too soon, affair with the rich neighbor’s wife, maybe an affair with Jillian Perry, feelings he couldn’t handle, cracking under the strain. It plays like a soap opera, like complete fucking bullshit.” He delivered this judgment with such a steady focus on Rodriguez that there could be no doubt about the source of the scenario he was attacking.

From what Gurney knew of Kline from the Mellery case, he was sure the man was loving the confrontation while he was hiding the feeling under a thoughtful frown.

“What was your own theory of the Flores business?” prompted Kline.

Hardwick settled back in his chair like a wind dying down. “It’s easier to say what isn’t logical here than what is. When you combine all the known facts, it’s hard to make any sense at all out of Flores’s behavior.”

Kline turned to Gurney. “That the way you see it, too?”

Gurney took a deep breath. “Some facts seem contradictory. But facts don’t contradict each other-which means there’s a big piece of the puzzle missing, the piece that’ll eventually make the others make sense. I don’t expect it to be a simple narrative. As Jack once said, there are definitely hidden layers in this case.” He was concerned for a moment that this comment might reveal Hardwick’s role in Val’s decision to hire him, but no one seemed to pick it up. Blatt looked like a rat trying to identify something by sniffing it, but Blatt always looked like that.

Kline sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Which facts are bothering you, Dave?”

“To start with, the rapid Flores transition from leaf raker to household manager.”

“You think Ashton is lying about that?”

“Lying to himself, maybe. He explains it as a kind of wishful thinking, something that supported the concept of a book he was writing.”

“Becca, that make sense to you?”

She smiled noncommittally, more of a facial shrug than a real smile. “Never underestimate the power of self-deception, especially in a man trying to prove a point.”

Kline nodded sagely, turned back to Gurney. “So your basic idea is that Flores was working a con?”

“That he was playing a role for some reason, yes.”

“What else bothers you?”

“Motivation. If Flores came to Tambury for the purpose of killing Jillian, why did he wait so long to do it? But if he came for another purpose, what was it?”

“Interesting questions. Keep going.”

“The beheading itself seems to have been methodical and well planned, but also spontaneous and opportunistic.”

“I don’t follow that.”

“The arrangement-of the body-was precise. The cottage had very recently, perhaps that same morning, been scoured to eliminate any traces of the man who’d lived there. The escape route had been planned, and some way had been devised to create the scent-trail problem for the K-9 team. However it was that Flores managed to disappear, it had been carefully thought through. It has the feeling of a Mission: Impossible scheme that relies on split-second timing. But the actual circumstances would appear to defy any attempt at planning at all, much less perfect timing.”

Kline cocked his head curiously. “How so?”

“The video indicates that Jillian made her visit to the cottage on a kind of whim. A little bit before the scheduled wedding toast, she told Ashton she wanted to persuade Hector to join them. As I recall, Ashton told the Luntz couple-the police chief and his wife-about Jillian’s intentions. No one else seemed to be crazy about the idea, but I got the impression that Jillian pretty much did whatever she felt like doing. So on the one hand we have a meticulously premeditated murder that depended on perfect timing, and on the other hand, we have a set of circumstances completely beyond the murderer’s control. There’s something wrong with that picture.”

“Not necessarily,” said Blatt, his rat nose twitching. “Flores could have set up everything ahead of time, had everything ready, then waited for his opportunity like a snake in a hole. Waited for the victim to come by, and… bam!”

Gurney looked doubtful. “Problem is, Arlo, that would require Flores to get the cottage perfectly clean, almost sterile, prepare himself and his escape route, wear the clothes he intended to wear, have whatever he was taking with him at hand, have Kiki Muller equally prepared, and then… and then what? Sit in the cottage with a machete in his hand hoping that Jillian would pop in to invite him to the reception?”

“You’re making it sound stupid, like it couldn’t happen,” said Blatt with hatred in his eyes. “But I think that’s exactly what happened.”

Anderson pursed his lips. Rodriguez narrowed his eyes. Neither seemed willing to endorse their colleague’s view.

Kline broke the awkward silence. “Anything else?”

“Well,” said Gurney, “there’s the matter of the new elephant in the room-the missing graduates.”

“Which,” said Blatt, “may not even be true. Maybe they just don’t want to be found. These girls are not what you’d call stable. And even if they’re, like, really missing, there’s no proof of any connection to the Perry case.”

There was another silence, this time broken by Hardwick. “Arlo might be right. But if they are missing and there is a connection, there’s a good chance they’re all dead by now.”

No one said anything. It was well known that, when young females went missing under suspicious circumstances with no further contact, the odds of their safe return were not high. And the fact that the girls in question had all started the same peculiar argument before disappearing definitely qualified as suspicious.

Rodriguez looked pained and angry, looked like he was about to offer an objection, but before any words came out, Gurney’s cell phone rang. Gurney glanced at the ID on the screen and decided to answer it.

It was Scott Ashton. “Since we last spoke, I made six more calls and got through to two more families. I’m continuing the calls, but… I wanted to let you know that both girls in the families I got through to left home after the same outrageous argument. One demanded a twenty-thousand-dollar Suzuki, the other a thirty-five-thousand-dollar Mustang. The parents said no. Both girls refused to say where they were going and insisted that nobody should try to contact them. I have no idea what it means, but obviously something strange is going on. And another distressing coincidence: They’d both posed for those Karnala Fashion ads.”

“How long have they been missing?”

“One for six months, one for nine months.”

“Tell me something, Doctor. Are you ready to provide us with names, or do we get an immediate court order for your records?”

All eyes in the room were on Gurney. Kline’s coffee was inches from his lips, but he seemed to have forgotten he was holding it.

“What names do you want?” said Ashton in a beaten voice.

“Let’s start with the names of the missing girls, plus the names of all the girls who were in the same classes.”

“Fine.”

“One other question: How did Jillian get her modeling job?”

“I don’t know.”

“She never told you? Even though she gave you the photograph as a wedding present?”

“She never told me.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“I did, but… Jillian wasn’t fond of questions.”

Gurney felt an urge to shout, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? IS EVERYONE CONNECTED WITH THIS CASE OUT OF HIS GODDAMN MIND?

Instead he said simply, “Thank you, Doctor. That’s it for now. You’ll be contacted by BCI for the relevant names and addresses.”

As Gurney slipped the phone back into his pocket, Kline barked, “What on earth was that?”

“Two more girls are missing. After having the same argument: One girl demanded that her parents buy her a Suzuki, the other a Mustang.” He turned toward Anderson. “Ashton is ready to provide BCI with the names of the missing girls, plus the names of their classmates. Just let him know what format you want the list in and how to send it to you.”

“Fine, but we’re ignoring the point that nobody is legally missing, which means we can’t devote police resources to finding them. These are eighteen-year-old women, adults, who made apparently free decisions to leave home. The fact that they haven’t told their families how to reach them does not give us a legal basis for tracking them down.”

Gurney got the impression that Lieutenant Anderson was coasting toward a Florida retirement and had a coaster’s fondness for inaction. It was a state of mind for which Gurney, a driven man in his police career, had little patience. “Then find a basis. Declare them all material witnesses to the Perry murder. Invent a basis. Do what you have to do. That’s the least of your problems.”

Anderson looked riled enough to escalate the argument into something unpleasant. But before he could launch his reply, Kline interrupted. “This may seem a small point, Dave, but if you’re implying that these girls were following the directions of some third party-presumably Flores-who rehearsed them in the argument they were supposed to start with their parents, why is the make of car different from case to case?”

“The simplest answer is that different cars might be necessary in order to achieve the same effect on families in different economic circumstances. Assuming that the purpose of the argument was to provide a credible excuse for the girl to storm out-to disappear without the disappearance becoming a police matter-the car demand would need to have two results. One, it would have to involve enough money to guarantee that it would be refused. Two, the parents would have to believe that their daughter was serious. The different makes may not have any significance per se; the key point may be the difference in the prices. Different prices would be necessary in order to achieve the same impact in families of different financial means. In other words, a demand for a twenty-thousand-dollar car in one family might have the same impact as a demand for a forty-thousand-dollar car in another family.”

“Clever,” said Kline, smiling appreciatively. “If you’re right, Flores is a thinker. A maniac, maybe, but definitely a thinker.”

“But he’s also done things that make no sense.” Gurney stood to get himself some more coffee. “That damn bullet in the teacup-what the hell was the point of that? He stole Ashton’s hunting rifle so he could shatter his teacup? Why take a risk like that? By the way,” said Gurney in an aside to Blatt, “were you aware that Withrow Perry had a gun of the same caliber?”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“The bullet that was fired at the teacup came from a.257 Weatherby. Ashton owns one, which he reported stolen, but Perry also owns one. You might want to look into that.”

There was an uncomfortable silence as Rodriguez and Blatt both made hurried notes.

Kline looked accusingly at both of them, then turned his attention to Gurney. “Okay, what else do you know that we don’t?”

“Hard to say,” said Gurney. “How much do you know about Crazy Carl?”

“Who?”

“Husband of Kiki Muller.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“Maybe nothing, except for having a credible motive for killing Flores.”

“Flores wasn’t killed.”

“How do we know? He disappeared without a trace. He could be buried in somebody’s backyard.”

“Whoa, whoa, what’s all this?” Anderson was appalled, Gurney guessed, at the prospect of more work. Digging up backyards. “What are we doing here, inventing imaginary murders?”

Kline looked confused. “Where are you going with this?”

“The assumption seems to be that Flores fled the area in the company of Kiki Muller, maybe even hid out at the Muller house for a few days before leaving the area. Suppose Flores was still around when Carl came home from his stint on that ship he worked on? I assume the interview team noticed that Carl is bonkers?”

Kline took a step backward from the table, as if the panorama of the case were too broad to see from where he’d been standing. “Wait a second. If Flores is dead, he can’t be connected to the disappearances of these other girls. Or the gunshot on Ashton’s patio. Or the text message Ashton received from Flores’s cell phone.”

Gurney shrugged.

Kline shook his head in frustration. “It sounds to me like you just took everything that was starting to fit together and kicked it off the table.”

“I’m not kicking anything off the table. Personally, I don’t believe Carl is involved. I’m not even sure his wife was involved. I’m just trying to loosen things up a bit. We don’t have as many solid facts as you might think. My point is, we need to keep our minds open.” He weighed the risk of ill will inherent in what he was about to add and decided to add it, anyway. “Getting committed to the wrong hypothesis early on may be the reason the investigation hasn’t gotten anywhere.”

Kline looked at Rodriguez, who was staring at the table surface as if it were a painting of hell. “What do you think, Rod? You think we need to take a new look at it? You think maybe we’ve been trying to solve the puzzle ass backwards?”

Rodriguez just shook his head slowly. “No, that’s not what I think,” he said, his voice hoarse, tense with suppressed emotion.

Judging from the expressions around the table, Gurney wasn’t the only one taken aback when the captain, a man obsessed with projecting an aura of control, rose awkwardly from his chair and left the room as though he couldn’t bear to be in it for another minute.

Chapter 36

After the captain left, the meeting lost focus. Not that it had much focus to begin with, but the strangeness of his departure seemed to underline the incoherence of the investigation, and the discussion disintegrated. Star profiler Rebecca Holdenfield, expressing confusion about her role there, was the next to flee. Anderson and Blatt were restless, caught between the gravitational fields of their boss who was gone and the DA who was still present.

Gurney asked if any progress had been made identifying the significance of the Edward Vallory name, but none had. Anderson looked blank at the question, and Blatt dismissed it with a wave of his hand that conveyed what a useless avenue of inquiry he considered it to be.

The DA mouthed a few meaningless sentences about how profitable the meeting had been in getting everyone on the same page. Gurney didn’t think it had done that. But at least it might have gotten everyone wondering what kind of story they were reading. And it got the question of the disappearing graduates on the table.

Gurney’s final contribution to the meeting was a strong suggestion that BCI dig up some background and contact information on Alessandro and Karnala Fashion, since they constituted a common factor in the lives of the missing girls and a link between them and Jillian. Just as Kline was endorsing this pursuit, Ellen Rackoff came to the door and pointed at her watch. He checked his, looked startled, and announced with stern self-importance that he was late for a conference call with the governor. As he departed, he expressed his confidence that they all could find their own way out. Anderson and Blatt left together, followed by Gurney and Hardwick.

Hardwick had one of the NYSP’s ubiquitous black Ford sedans. In the parking lot, he leaned against the trunk, lit a cigarette, and, without being asked, offered Gurney his take on the captain. “Little fucker is coming apart. You know what they say about control freaks-that they have to control everything outside them because everything inside’s a fucking mess. That’s Captain Rod, except the little fucker can’t keep the craziness hidden anymore.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, grimaced as he blew the smoke out. “His daughter’s a fucking cokehead. You knew that, right?”

Gurney nodded. “You told me that during the Mellery case.”

“I told you she was in Greystone? The nuthouse down in Jersey?”

“Right.” Gurney remembered a damp, bitter day the previous November when Hardwick had told him about the Rodriguez girl’s addiction problem and how it skewed her father’s judgment in cases where drugs might be involved.

“Well, she got booted out of Greystone for smuggling in roxies and for fucking her fellow patients. Latest news is that she was arrested for dealing crack at an NA meeting.”

Gurney wondered where this was going. It didn’t have the tone of a compassionate explanation of the captain’s behavior.

Hardwick took the kind of drag he’d take if he were trying to set a new record for how much smoke he could get into his lungs in three seconds. “I see you looking at me like, so what, what does this have to do with anything? Am I right?”

“The question crossed my mind.”

“The answer is, nothing. It doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with anything. Except that Rodriguez’s decisions aren’t worth shit these days. He’s a liability to the case.” He flung the half-finished cigarette down, put his foot on it, ground it into the asphalt.

Gurney took a shot at changing the subject. “Do me a favor. Follow up on Alessandro and Karnala. I don’t get the impression anyone else in there is particularly interested.”

Hardwick didn’t respond. He stood there for another minute, staring down at the crushed butt next to his foot. “Time to go,” he finally said. He opened his car door and wrinkled his face as though assailed by a sour smell.

“Just watch out, Davey boy. The little fucker’s a time bomb, and he’s gonna go off. They always do.”

Chapter 37

The drive home was miserable in a way Gurney couldn’t at first identify. He was both distracted and seeking distraction, seeking distraction and unable to find it. Every radio station was more intolerable than the one before it. Music that failed to reflect his mood struck him as idiotic, while music that did only made him feel worse. Every human voice carried within it an irritant, a revelation of stupidity or cupidity or both. Every commercial made him want to scream, Lying bastards!

Turning off the radio refocused him on the road-refocused him on the shabby villages, the dead and dying farms, and the poisonous economic carrots being dangled in front of poor upstate towns by the gas-drilling industry.

Jesus, he was in a hell of a mood.

Why?

He let his mind drift back over the meeting, see what it would fasten on.

Ellen Rackoff, of course, in cashmere. Zero pretense of innocence. Warm and cozy as a snake. The danger itself a perverse part of the attraction.

The original evidence team’s report on the crime scene, reprised by Lieutenant Anderson, that made the murder sound like a professional assassination: Even the traps under the bathroom and kitchen sinks had been scrubbed.

The facts uniting the missing graduates: their common arguments with their parents, their extravagant demands that were sure to be refused, their prior contacts with Hector and Karnala Fashion and the elusive photographer, Alessandro.

Jack Hardwick’s cold prognosis: There’s a good a chance they’re all dead by now.

Rodriguez’s personal agony, as the father of a troubled daughter, echoed and magnified by the potential horrors of the case in front of him.

Gurney could hear the hoarseness in the man’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to him in the car. It was the sound of a man being stretched out of shape, stretched like a rubber band too small to encompass everything it was given to hold-a man whose constitution lacks the flexibility to absorb the accidental elements of his own life.

Which set Gurney to wondering: Are there really any accidental elements? Don’t we, in some undeniable way, place ourselves in the positions in which we find ourselves? Don’t our choices, our priorities, make all the difference? He felt sick to his stomach, and suddenly he knew the reason. He was identifying with Rodriguez: the career-obsessed cop, the father without a clue.

And then-as though the turmoil of this realization were not enough, as though some malignant god were seeking to contrive the perfect external disaster to match the collision of emotions within him-he hit the deer.

He had just passed the sign that read ENTERING BROWNVILLE. There was no village, just the overgrown remnants of a long-abandoned river-valley farm on the left and a forested upslope on the right. A medium-size doe had emerged from the woods, hesitated, then dashed across the road far enough ahead of him that there was hardly any need to brake. But then her fawn followed her, it was too late to brake, and although he swerved as far to the left as he could, he heard and felt the terrible thump.

He pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. He looked into his rearview mirror, hoping to see nothing, hoping that it was one of those fortunate collisions from which the remarkably resilient deer ran off into the woods with only superficial damage. But that was not the case. A hundred feet behind him, a small brown body lay sprawled at the edge of the roadside drainage ditch.

He got out of the car and walked back along the shoulder, holding on to a faint hope that the fawn was only stunned and would at any moment stagger to its feet. As he got closer, the twisted position of the head and the empty stare of the open eyes took that hope away. He stopped and looked around helplessly. He saw the doe standing in the ruined farm field, watching, waiting, motionless.

There was nothing he could do.

He was sitting in his car with no recollection of having walked back to it, his breathing interrupted by small sobs. He was halfway to Walnut Crossing before he thought of checking the damage to the front end, but even then he continued on, pierced by regret, wanting only to get home.

Chapter 38

The house had that peculiarly empty feeling it had when Madeleine was out. On Fridays she had dinner with three of her friends, to talk about knitting and sewing, things they were making and things they were doing, and everyone’s health, and the books they were reading.

He had the idea, formed at the emotional nadir of the drive from Brownville to Walnut Crossing, that he would follow Madeleine’s prodding and call Kyle-have an actual conversation with his son instead of another exchange of those carefully drafted, antiseptic e-mails that provided them both with the illusion of communication. Reading the edited descriptions of life’s events on the screen of a laptop bore little resemblance to hearing them related in a living voice without the smoothing process of rewrites and deletions.

He went into the den with good intentions but decided to check his voice mail and e-mail before making the call. There was one message in each format. They were both from Peggy Meeker, social-worker wife of the spider man.

On voice mail she sounded excited, almost bouncy. “Dave, Peggy Meeker. After you mentioned Edward Vallory the other night, the name kept gnawing at me. I knew that I knew it from somewhere. Well, I found it! I remembered it from a college English course. Elizabethan drama. Vallory was a dramatist, but none of his dramas survive, which is why almost no one has ever heard of him. All that exists is the prologue to one play. But get this-his stuff was all supposedly misogynistic. He absolutely hated women! In fact, the play that this prologue was part of was reputedly about a man who killed his ownmother! I e-mailed you the existing prologue. Does this have something to do with the Perry case? I was wondering, because you were talking about that earlier in the evening. I thought about that when I read Vallory’s prologue, and it gave me the chills. Look at the e-mail. Let me know if it helps. And let me know if there’s anything more I can do for you. This is soooo exciting. Talk to you soon. Bye. Oh, and hello to Madeleine.”

Gurney opened her e-mail and scanned down quickly to get to the Vallory quote:

There is on earth no woman chaste. There is

no purity in her. Her aspect, speech,

and heart sing never three as one. She seems

but this, and seems but that, and seeming’s all.

With slipp’ry oils and powders bright

she colours o’er her dark designs, and paints

upon herself a portrait we might love.

But where’s the honest heart that with

a single note doth ring its true content?

Fie! Ask her not for pure, direct,

and honest music. Purity’s no part of her.

She drew from Eden’s serpent all its wiles

into her serpent heart that she might spew

o’er every man a slime of lies and trickery.

Gurney read it several times, trying to absorb the intended meaning and purpose of it.

It was the prologue to a play about a man who killed his own mother. A prologue written centuries ago by a playwright famous for his hatred of women. The playwright whose name was appended to the text message sent from Hector’s cell phone to Jillian’s the morning she was killed-and sent again, just two days ago, to Ashton. A text message that read simply, FOR ALL THE REASONS I HAVE WRITTEN.

And the reasons given in his only extant writing seemed to add up to this: Women are impure, seductive, deceptive, satanic creatures-spewing, like monsters, a slime of lies and trickery. The more closely he read Vallory’s words, the more he sensed in them a twisted sexual nightmare.

Gurney prided himself on his caution, his balance, but it was difficult not to conclude that the quotation constituted a demented justification for Jillian Perry’s murder. And possibly for other murders as well.

Of course there was nothing certain about it. No way of proving that Edward Vallory, the purported seventeenth-century women hater, was the Edward Vallory whose name was appropriated for the text messages. No proof that Edward Vallory was a pseudonym for Hector Flores-although the fact that the messages came from Flores’s cell phone made it a fair assumption.

It did all seem to fit together, did seem to make a kind of awful sense. The Vallory prologue offered the first motive hypothesis that wasn’t based entirely on speculation. For Gurney it was a motive that held the additional attraction of being compatible with his own growing sense that Jillian’s murder was driven by revenge for past sexual offenses-either hers or those of Mapleshade students in general. Moreover, the receipt of the Vallory message by Scott Ashton supported a view of the murder as part of a complex enterprise-an enterprise that seemed to be ongoing.

Maybe Gurney was reading too much into it, but it suddenly occurred to him that the fact that the surviving snippet of Vallory’s play was its prologue might have more than accidental significance. Might it, in addition to being the prologue to a lost drama, also be intended as a prologue to future events-a hint of murders yet to come? Exactly how much was Hector Flores telling them?

He clicked “reply” on Peggy Meeker’s e-mail and asked, “What else is known about the play? Plot line? Characters? Any surviving comments from Vallory’s contemporaries?”

For the first time in the case, Gurney felt an undeniable excitement-and an irresistible urge to call Sheridan Kline, hoping he’d still be in the office.

He placed the call.

“He’s in conference.” Ellen Rackoff spoke with the confidence of a powerful gatekeeper.

“There’s been a development in the Perry matter he’d want to know about.”

“Be more specific.”

“It may be turning into a serial-murder case.”

Thirty seconds later Kline was on the phone-edgy, pressured, and intrigued. “Serial murder? What the hell are you talking about?”

Gurney described the Vallory discovery, pointing out the sexual anger in the words of the prologue, explaining how it might relate not only to Jillian but to the missing girls.

“Isn’t all that pretty iffy? I don’t get how anything has really changed. I mean, this afternoon you were saying that Hector Flores might be at the center of everything, or then again he might not be, we didn’t really have any solid facts, we needed to keep an open mind. So what happened to the open mind? How did this suddenly turn into serial murder? And by the way, why are you calling me with this, not the police?”

“Maybe it’s just that the focus got clearer once I read that Vallory thing and felt the hatred in it. Or maybe it’s just that word: prologue. A promise of something to come. The fact that Flores sent that text message to Jillian before she was killed and sent it again to Ashton this week. It makes the murder four months ago look like part of something bigger.”

“You honestly think that Flores was persuading girls to leave home under the smoke screen of an argument so he could kill them without anyone bothering to look for them?” Kline’s voice conveyed a mixture of worry and incredulity.

“Until we find them alive, I think it’s a possibility we have to take seriously.”

The defensive reflex in Kline spit back, “I wouldn’t take it any other way.” Then he added earnestly, as though he were being taped for broadcast, “I can’t think of anything more serious than the possibility of a kidnapping-and-murder conspiracy-if, God forbid, that’s what we’re dealing with here.” He paused, his tone turning suspicious. “Returning to the protocol issue, how come I’m getting this call instead of BCI?”

“Because you’re the only decision maker who’s making any sense to me.”

“Why do you say that?” Kline’s fondness for flattery was obvious in his voice.

“The emotional undercurrent in that conference room today was nuts. I know that Rodriguez and Hardwick never cared much for each other, which was obvious on the Mellery case, but whatever the hell’s going on now, it’s becoming dysfunctional. There’s zero objectivity. It’s like a war, and I have the impression that every new development is going to be evaluated by those guys on the basis of which side it helps. You don’t seem to be entangled in that mess, so I’d rather talk to you.”

Kline paused. “You don’t know what happened with your buddy?”

“Buddy?”

“Rodriguez nailed him for an over-the-limit BAC on duty.”

“What!?”

“Suspended him for drinking on the job, hung a possible DWI over his head, threatened his pension, forced him to go to rehab as a condition for ending the suspension. I’m surprised you don’t know about this.”

“When did it happen?”

“Month and a half ago? Twenty-eight-day rehab. Jack’s back on the job maybe ten days.”

“Jesus.” Gurney had figured that part of Hardwick’s reason for setting him up with Val Perry was the hope that some new discovery would put Rodriguez in a bad light, but this news went a long way toward explaining the negative energy bouncing around that conference room.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know about it,” Kline repeated, enough disbelief in his tone to make it an accusation.

“If I’d known, I’d never have gotten involved,” said Gurney. “But it’s all the more reason to keep my exposure limited to my client and to you-assuming that a direct line of contact with me isn’t going to poison your relationship with BCI.”

Kline took so long to mull this over that Gurney imagined the man’s risk-reward calculator starting to smolder from an overload of permutations.

“Okay-with one major caution. It has to be perfectly clear that you’re working for the Perry family, independently of this office. Which means that under no circumstances can you imply that you’re covered by our investigatory authority or by any form of immunity. You proceed as Dave Gurney, private citizen, period. With that understanding, I’d be happy to listen to whatever you have to say. Believe me, I have nothing but respect for you. Based on your NYPD homicide record and your role in solving the Mellery case, how could I not? We just need to be clear about your unofficial position. Any questions?”

Gurney smiled at Kline’s predictability. The man never strayed from the one guiding principle of his life: Get everything you possibly can from other people, while covering your own ass absolutely.

“One question, Sheridan: How do I get in touch with Rebecca Holdenfield?”

Kline’s voice tightened with an attorney’s skepticism. “What do you want from her?”

“I’m starting to get a sense of our killer. Very hypothetical, nothing that firm yet, but it might help me to have someone with her background as a sounding board.”

“There some reason you don’t want to call the killer by his name?”

“Hector Flores?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Couple of problems. Number one, we don’t know that he was alone in the cottage when Jillian went in, so we don’t know that he’s the killer. Come right down to it, we don’t know that he was in the cottage at all. Suppose someone else was in there instead, waiting for her? I realize it’s unlikely-all I’m saying is, we don’t know. It’s all circumstantial, assumptions, probabilities. Second problem is the name itself. If the Cinderella gardener is really a cool, think-ahead murderer, then ‘Hector Flores’ is almost certainly an alias.”

“Why am I getting the feeling I’m on a merry-go-round-that every damn thing I think is settled comes flying around at me again?”

“Merry-go-round doesn’t sound so bad. To me it feels more like being sucked down a drain.”

“And you want to suck Becca down with you?”

Gurney chose not to react to whatever nasty suggestion Kline was making. “I want her to help me stay realistic-provide boundaries for the image I’m forming of the man I’m after.”

Perhaps jarred by the commitment in those last four words, perhaps reminded of Gurney’s unparalleled record of homicide arrests, Kline’s tone changed.

“I’ll have her call you.”

An hour later Gurney was sitting in front of his computer screen at the desk in his den, staring into the emotionless black eyes of Peter Piggert-a man who might have something in common with the murderer of Jillian Perry and quite a lot in common with the villain in Edward Vallory’s lost play. Gurney wasn’t sure whether he’d been drawn back to the computer-art portrait he’d done of the man a year earlier because of its possible relevance to the psychology of his current quarry or because of its new financial potential.

A hundred thousand dollars? For this? The moneyed art world must be a strange place indeed. A hundred thousand dollars for Peter Piggert’s picture. The price was as absurd as the alliteration. He needed to talk to Sonya. He’d get in touch with her first thing in the morning. Right now he wanted to concentrate not so much on the portrait’s possible value but on the man it depicted.

Piggert at the age of fifteen had murdered his father in order to pursue without obstruction a profoundly sick relationship with his mother. He got her pregnant twice and had two daughters with her. Fifteen years later, at the age of thirty, he murdered his mother in order to pursue without obstruction an equally sick relationship with their daughters, then thirteen and fourteen.

To the average observer, Piggert appeared to be the most ordinary of men. But to Gurney there had seemed from the beginning to be something not quite right about the eyes. Their dark placidity seemed eerily bottomless. Peter Piggert seemed to view the world in a way that justified and encouraged any action that might please him, regardless of its effect on anyone else. Gurney wondered if it was a man like Piggert whom Scott Ashton had in mind when he floated his provocative theory that a sociopath is a creature with “perfect boundaries.”

As he stared into the disconcerting stillness of those eyes, Gurney was more certain than ever that the man’s principal drive was an overwhelming need to control his environment. His vision of the proper order of things was inviolable, his whims absolute. That was what Gurney had endeavored to highlight in his manipulation of the original mug-shot photo. The rigid tyrant behind the bland features. Satan in the skin of Everyman.

Was that what Jay Jykynstyl was fascinated by? The veiled evil? Was that what he prized, what he was offering to pay a small fortune for?

Of course, there was a crucial difference between the reality of the killer and the portrait of the killer. The object on the screen derived its appeal in part from its evocation of the monster and in part, ironically, from its own essential harmlessness. The serpent defanged. The devil paralyzed and laminated.

Gurney leaned back from his desk, away from the computer screen, folded his arms across his chest, and gazed out the west window. His focus initially was inward. When he began to notice the crimson sunset, it seemed at first a smear of blood across the aqua sky. Then he realized he was remembering a bedroom wall in the South Bronx, a turquoise wall against which a shooting victim had leaned, sliding slowly to the floor. Twenty-four years ago, his first murder case.

Flies. It was August, and the body had been there for a week.

Chapter 39

For twenty-four years he’d been up to his armpits in murder and mayhem. Half his life. Even now, in retirement… What was it Madeleine had said to him during the Mellery carnage? That death seemed to call to him more strongly than life?

He’d denied it. And argued the point semantically: It wasn’t death that drew his attention and energy; it was the challenge of unraveling the mystery of murder. It was about justice.

And of course she had given him her wry look. Madeleine was unimpressed by principled motives, or at least by the invocation of principles to win arguments.

Once he had disengaged from the debate, the truth would sneak up on him. The truth was that he was drawn, almost physically, to criminal mysteries and the process of exposing the people behind them. It was a far more primal and powerful force than whatever it was that pushed him toward weeding the asparagus patch. Murder investigations captured the fullness of his attention as nothing else in his life ever had.

That was the good news. It was also the bad news. Good because it was real, and some men went through life with nothing to excite them but their fantasies. Bad because it was a tidal force that drew him away from everything else in his life that mattered, including Madeleine.

He tried to remember where she was at that very moment and found that it had slipped his mind-displaced by God-knows-what. By Jay Jykynstyl and his hundred-thousand-dollar carrot? By the toxic rancor at BCI and its warping effect on the investigation? By the teasing significance of Edward Vallory’s lost play? By the eagerness of Peggy, the spider man’s wife, to join the hunt? By the echo of Savannah Liston’s fearful voice, reporting the disappearance of her former classmates? The truth is, any of a score of items could easily have edged Madeleine’s whereabouts off his radar screen.

Then he heard a car driving up the pasture lane, and it came back to him: her Friday-evening meeting with her knitting friends. But if that was her car, she was coming home a lot earlier than usual. As he headed for the kitchen window to check, the phone rang on the den desk behind him, and he went back to answer it.

“Dave, so glad I caught you live on the phone, not your machine. I’ve got a couple of curveballs for you, but not to worry!” It was Sonya Reynolds, a dash of anxiety coloring her characteristic excitement.

“I was going to call you-” Gurney began. He’d planned to ask more questions in order to get a more grounded feeling about the following evening’s dinner with Jykynstyl.

Sonya cut him off. “Dinner is now lunch. Jay has to catch a plane for Rome. Hope that’s not a problem for you. If it is, you’ll have to make it not be. And curveball number two is that I won’t be there.” That was the part that obviously bothered her. “Did you hear what I said?” she asked after Gurney failed to react.

“Lunch is not a problem for me. You can’t be there?”

“I certainly could be there, would certainly like to be there, but… well, instead of trying to explain, why don’t I just tell you what he said. Let me preface this by reminding you how incredibly impressed he is with your work. He referred to it as potentially seminal. He’s very excited. But here’s what he said: ‘I want to see for myself who this David Gurney is, this incredible artist who happens to be a detective. I want to understand who I’m investing in. I want to be exposed to the mind and imagination of this man without the obstruction of a third party.’ I told him that was the first time in my life I’d ever been referred to as an obstruction. I told him I don’t think I like that very much, being told not to come. But for him I make an exception. I stay home. You’re very quiet, David. What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering if this man is a lunatic.”

“This man is Jay Jykynstyl. Lunatic is not the word I would use. I would say that he is quite unusual.”

Gurney heard the side door opening and shutting, followed by sounds from the mudroom off the kitchen.

“David-why so quiet? More thinking?”

“No, I just… I don’t know, what does he mean by ‘investing’ in me?”

“Ah, that’s the really good news. That’s the biggest part of the reason I would have wanted to be there at dinner, or lunch, or whatever. Listen to this. This is life-changing information. He wants to own all of your work. Not one or two things. All of it. And he expects it to increase in value.”

“Why would it?”

“Everything Jykynstyl buys increases in value.”

Gurney caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, turned, and saw Madeleine at the den door. She was frowning at him-a worried frown.

“You still there, David?” Sonya’s voice was both bubbly and incredulous. “Are you always so quiet when someone offers you a million dollars to start with and sky’s the limit after that?”

“I find it bizarre.”

A little twist of annoyance was added to Madeleine’s worried frown, and she went back out to the kitchen.

“Of course it’s bizarre!” cried Sonya. “Success in the art world is always bizarre. Bizarre is normal. You know what Mark Rothko’s colored squares sell for? Why should bizarre be a problem?”

“Let me absorb this, okay? Can I call you later?”

“You better call me later, David, my million-dollar baby. Tomorrow’s a big day. I need to get you ready for it. I can feel that you are thinking again. My God, David, what are you thinking now?”

“I’m just having a hard time believing that any of this is real.”

“David, David, David, you know what they tell you when you’re learning to swim? Stop fighting the water. Relax and float. Relax and breathe and let the water hold you up. Same thing here. Stop struggling with real, unreal, crazy, not crazy-all these words. Accept the magic. The magic Mr. Jykynstyl. And his magic millions. Ciao!”

Magic? There was no concept on earth quite so alien to Gurney as magic. No concept quite so meaningless, so aggravatingly empty-headed.

He stood by his desk gazing out through the west window. The sky above the ridge, so recently a bloody red, had faded to a murky pall of mauve and granite, and the grass of the high field behind the house had only the memory of green in it.

There was a crash and a clatter in the kitchen, the sound of pot covers sliding from the overloaded dish drainer into the sink, then the sound of Madeleine restacking them.

Gurney emerged from the darkened den into the lighted kitchen. Madeleine was wiping her hands on one of the dish towels.

“What happened to the car?” she asked.

“What? Oh. A deer collision.” The recollection was clear, sickening.

She looked at him with alarm, pain.

He went on. “Ran out of the woods. Right in front of me. No way to… to get out of the way.”

She was wide-eyed, uttered a small gasp. “What happened to the deer?”

“Dead. Instantly. I checked. No sign of life at all.”

“What did you do?”

“Do? What could I…?” His mind was suddenly swamped by the image of the fawn on the shoulder of the road, head twisted, unseeing eyes open-an image infused with emotions from long ago, from another accident, emotions that seized his heart with such frozen fingers it almost stopped.

Madeleine watched him, seemed to know what he was thinking, reached out and touched his hand lightly. As he slowly recovered himself, he looked into her eyes and saw a sadness that was simply part of all the things she felt, even of joy. He knew that she had dealt long ago with the death of their son in a way he had not, in a way that he’d never been willing or able to. He knew that one day he would have to. But not yet, not now.

Perhaps that was part of what stood between him and Kyle, his grown son from his first marriage. But theories like that had the feel of therapist-think, and for that he had no use at all.

He turned to the French doors and stared out at the dusky evening, dark enough now that even the red barn was drained of its color.

Madeleine turned to the sink and began drying the stacked pots. When she finally spoke, her question came from an unexpected direction. “So you plan to have it all wrapped up in another week-bad guy safely delivered to the good guys in a box with a bow?” He could hear it in her voice before he looked at her and saw it: the querying, humorless smile.

“If that’s what I said, then that’s the plan.”

She nodded, her skepticism unconcealed.

There was a long silence as she continued to wipe the pots with more than her usual attention, moving the dried items to the pine sideboard, lining them up with a neatness that began to get on his nerves.

“By the way,” he said, the question popping back into his mind, coming out more aggressively than he intended, “why are you home?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Isn’t this knitting night?”

She nodded. “We decided to end a bit early.”

He thought he heard something odd in her voice.

“How come?”

“There was a little problem.”

“Oh?”

“Well… actually… Marjorie Ann puked.”

Gurney blinked. “What?”

“She puked.”

“Marjorie Ann Highsmith?”

“That’s right.”

He blinked again. “What do you mean, puked?”

“What the hell do you think I mean?”

“I mean, where? Right there at the table?”

“No, not at the table. She got up from the table and ran for the bathroom and…”

“And?”

“And she didn’t quite make it.”

Gurney noted that a certain almost imperceptible light had come back into Madeleine’s eyes, a flicker of the subtle humor with which she viewed almost everything, a humor that balanced her sadness-a light that had lately been missing. He wanted so much, right then, at that moment, to fan the flame of that light but knew that if he tried too hard, he’d only succeed in blowing it out.

“I guess there was a bit of a mess?”

“Oh, yes. A bit of a mess. And it… uh… it didn’t stay in one place.”

“Didn’t… what?”

“Well, she didn’t just throw up on the floor. Actually, she threw up on the cats.”

“Cats?”

“We met tonight at Bonnie’s house. You remember Bonnie has two cats?”

“Yes, sort of.”

“The cats were lying down together in a cat bed that Bonnie keeps in the hall outside the bathroom.”

Gurney started to laugh-a sudden giddiness taking hold of him.

“Yes, well, Marjorie Ann made it as far as the cats.”

“Oh, Jesus…” He was doubled over now.

“And she threw up quite a bit. I mean, it was… substantial. Well, the cats sort of exploded out of the cat bed and came flying out into the living room.”

“Covered…”

“Oh, yes, covered with it. Racing around the room, over couches, chairs. It was… really something.”

“Good God…” Gurney couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so hard.

“And of course,” Madeleine concluded, “after that no one could eat. And we couldn’t stay in the living room. Naturally, we wanted to help Bonnie clean up, but she wouldn’t let us.”

After a short silence he asked, “Would you like to eat something now?”

“No!” She shuddered. “Don’t mention food.”

The image of the cats got him laughing again.

His food suggestion, however, had seemed to trigger in Madeleine’s mind a delayed association that extinguished the sparkle in her eyes.

When his laughter finally subsided, she asked, “So is it just you, Sonya, and the mad collector at dinner tomorrow night?”

“No,” he said, glad for the first time that Sonya wasn’t going to be present. “Just the mad collector and me.”

Madeleine raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I would’ve thought she’d kill to be at that dinner.”

“Actually, dinner’s been switched to lunch.”

“Lunch? Are you being downgraded already?”

Gurney showed no reaction, but, absurdly, the comment stung.

Chapter 40

Once Madeleine had finished with the pots and pans and dishes, she made herself a cup of herbal tea and settled with her knitting bag into one of the overstuffed armchairs at the far end of the room. Gurney, with one of the Perry case folders in hand, soon followed to the armchair’s twin on the opposite side of the fireplace. They sat in companionable isolation, each in a separate pool of lamplight.

He opened the folder and extracted the ViCAP crime report. Curious thing about that acronym. At the FBI it stood for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. At New York’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, it stood for the Violent Crime Analysis Program. But it was the same form, processed by the same computers and distributed to the same recipients. Gurney liked New York’s version better. It said what it was, made no promises.

The thirty-six-page form itself was comprehensive, to say the least, but useful only to the extent that the officer filling it out had been accurate and thorough. One of its purposes was to uncover MO similarities to other crimes on file, but in this case there was no notation of any subsequent hits by the comparative-analysis program. Gurney was poring over the thirty-six pages to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything significant the first time around.

He was having a hard time focusing, kept thinking he should call Kyle, kept looking for excuses to put it off. The time difference between New York and Seattle had provided a convenient obstruction for the past three years, but now Kyle was back in Manhattan, enrolled at Columbia Law School, and Gurney’s procrastination had lost its enabler. Which is not to say that the procrastination had ceased, or even that its true causes had become transparent to him.

Sometimes he dismissed it as the natural product of his cold Celtic genes. That was the most comfortable way of looking at it. Hardly any personal responsibility at all. Other times he was convinced it was related to one of his downward spirals of guilt: the guilt that was created by not calling, creating in turn an increasing resistance to calling, and more guilt. For as long as he could remember, he’d had an abundance of that gnawing rat of an emotion-an only child’s feeling of responsibility for his parents’ strained and staggering marriage. At still other times, he suspected that the problem was that he saw too much of his first wife in Kyle-too many reminders of too many ugly disagreements.

And then there was the disappointment factor. In the midst of the stock-market meltdown, when Kyle announced he was leaving investment banking for law school, Gurney had entertained for a delusional moment the belief that the young man might have an interest in following him into law enforcement. But it soon became clear that Kyle was simply taking a new route to the old goal of material success.

“Why don’t you just call him?” Madeleine was watching him, her knitting needles resting in her lap atop a half-finished orange scarf.

He stared at her, a little startled but not so utterly amazed as he once would have been at this uncanny sensitivity.

“It’s a certain look you get when you’re thinking about him,” she said, as if explaining something obvious. “Not a happy look.”

“I will. I’ll call.”

He began scanning the ViCAP form with a fresh urgency, like a man in a locked room searching for a hidden exit. Nothing emerged that seemed new or different from what he’d remembered. He shuffled through the other reports in the folder.

One of several analyses of the wedding-reception DVD material concluded with this summary: “Locations of all persons present on the Ashton property during the time frame of the homicide have been verified through time-coded video imagery.” Gurney had a pretty good idea what this meant, recalling what Hardwick had told him the evening they watched the video, but given its critical significance, he wanted to be sure.

He got his cell phone from the sideboard and called Hardwick’s number. He was shunted immediately into voice mail: “Hardwick. Leave a message.”

“It’s Gurney. I have a question about the video.”

Less than a minute after he left the message, his phone rang. He didn’t bother to check the caller ID. “Jack?”

“Dave?” It was a woman’s voice-familiar, but he couldn’t immediately place it.

“Sorry, I was expecting someone else. This is Dave.”

“It’s Peggy Meeker. I got your e-mail, and I just e-mailed you back. Then I thought I should call you in case you might need to know this right away.” Her voice was racing with excitement.

“What is it?”

“You wanted to know about Edward Vallory’s play, plot, characters, whether anything was known about it. Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I called the English department at Wesleyan, and guess who’s still there-Professor Barkless, who taught the course.”

“The course?”

“The English course I took. The Elizabethan-drama course. I left a message, and he got back to me. Isn’t that amazing?”

“What did he tell you?”

“Well, that’s the really, really amazing part. Are you ready for this?”

There was a call-waiting beep on Gurney’s phone, which he ignored. “Go ahead.”

“Well, to begin with, the name of the play was The Spanish Gardener.” She paused for a reaction.

“Go on.”

“The name of the central character was Hector Flores.”

“You’re serious?”

“There’s more. It gets better and better. The plot, which was partially described by a contemporary critic, is one of those complicated things where people wear disguises and people in their own families don’t recognize them and all that kind of nonsense, but the basic story line”-there was another call-waiting beep-“which is pretty wild, is that Hector Flores was sent away from home by his mother, who killed his father and seduced his brother. Years later Hector returns, disguised as a gardener, and to make a long story short, he tricks his brother-through more disguises and mistaken identities-into cutting off his mother’s head. It was all pretty much over the top, which is maybe why all the copies of the play were destroyed after the first performance. It’s not clear if the plot was based on some ancient variant of the Oedipus myth or if it was just a piece of grotesquerie cooked up by Vallory. Or maybe it was somehow influenced by Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, which is kind of emotionally over the top, too, so who knows? But those are the basic facts-straight from Professor Barkless.”

Gurney’s brain was racing faster than Peggy Meeker’s breathless voice.

After a moment she asked, “You want me to go through that again?”

Another beep.

“You said it was all in an e-mail you sent me?”

“Yes, all spelled out. And I put in my professor’s phone number, in case you want to call him directly. It’s so exciting, isn’t it? Does it give you, like, a whole new perspective on the case?”

“Maybe more like a reinforcement of one of the existing perspectives. We’ll see how it plays out.”

“Right. Okay. Let me know.”

Beep.

“Peggy, I seem to have a persistent caller here. Let me say good-bye for now. And thank you. This could be very helpful.”

“Sure, glad to do it. Great. Let me know what else I can do.”

“I will. Thank you again.”

He switched to the other call.

“Took you long enough to answer. Question mustn’t be too fucking urgent.”

“Ah, yes. Jack. Thanks for getting back.”

“And the question is…?”

Gurney smiled. Hardwick made a fetish of brusqueness, when he wasn’t too busy making a fetish of vulgarity. “How sure are you about the location of every individual at the reception during the time Jillian was in the cottage?”

“Sure enough.”

“How do you know?”

“The way the cameras were set up, there were no blind spots. Guests, catering staff, musicians-they were all on tape, all the time.”

“Except for Hector.”

“Except for Hector, who was in the cottage.”

“Who you think was in the cottage.”

“What’s your point?”

“Just trying to sort out what we know from what we think we know.”

“Who the fuck else would be in there?”

“I don’t know, Jack. And neither do you. By the way, thanks for the heads-up on that rehab jam-up.”

There was a long silence. “Fuck told you about that?”

“You sure as hell didn’t.”

“Fuck’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m a big fan of full disclosure, Jack.”

“Full disclosure? I’ll give you full fucking disclosure. Dickbrain Rodriguez took me off the Perry case because I told him that chasing down every fucking Mexican illegal in upstate New York was the biggest fucking waste of time I’d ever been assigned to. First of all, no one was going to admit working there illegally, evading taxes. And they sure as hell weren’t going to admit having any contact with someone wanted for murder. Two months later, on my day off, I get called into an emergency manhunt situation for a couple of idiots who shot a gas-station attendant on the thruway, and somebody at the scene tells Captain Marvel that I smelled of alcohol, so I get jammed up. The little fuck had been dreaming of ways to get me on the wrong foot. Now he’s got his opportunity. So what does he do? Little fuck sticks me in a fucking dump rehab full of crackhead scumbags. Twenty-eight miserable fucking days. With scumbags, Davey! Fucking nightmare! Scumbags! All I could think about for twenty-eight days was killing little Dickbrain Captain Fuckface, tearing his fucking head off! That enough full disclosure for you?”

“Plenty, Jack. Problem is, the investigation went off the rails, and it needs to start over from scratch. And it needs to have people assigned to it who are more interested in solving it than they are in messing each other up.”

“Is that a fucking fact? Well, good fucking luck, Mr. Voice of Fucking Reason.”

The connection was broken.

Gurney put the phone down on top of the case folder. He became aware of the clicking of Madeleine’s knitting needles and looked over at her.

She smiled without looking up. “Problems?”

He laughed humorlessly. “Only that the investigation needs to be completely reorganized and redirected, and I have no power to make that happen.”

“Think about it. You’ll find a way.”

He thought about it. “You mean through Kline?”

She shrugged. “You told me during the Mellery case that he had big ambitions.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he imagined himself president one day. Or at least governor.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There I go where?”

She concentrated for a minute on an alteration in her stitching technique. Then she looked up, seemingly bemused by his failure to grasp the obvious. “Help him see how this connects to his big ambitions.”

The more he pondered it, the more perceptive her comment seemed. As a political animal, Kline was super-sensitive to the media dimension of any investigation. It was the surest route to the center of his being.

Gurney picked up his phone and called the DA’s number. The recorded message offered three options: call again between 8:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. Monday through Friday, or leave a name and phone number to receive a return call during business hours, or call the emergency twenty-four-hour number for matters requiring immediate assistance.

Gurney entered the emergency number in his phone list, but before making the call he decided to devote a little more time to structuring what he was going to say-first to the screener, then to Kline if the call was passed through-because he realized it was crucial to lob exactly the right grenade over the wall.

The needles stopped clicking.

“Do you hear that?” Madeleine leaned her head slightly in the direction of the nearest window.

“What?”

“Listen.”

“What am I listening for?”

“Shhh…”

Just as he was about to insist that he could hear nothing, he heard it: the faint yipping of distant coyotes. Then, again, nothing. Only the lingering image in his mind of animals like small, lean wolves, running in a loosely spaced pack, running wild and heartless as the wind through a moonlit field beyond the north ridge.

The phone, still in his hand, rang. He checked the ID: REYNOLDS GALLERY. He glanced at Madeleine. Nothing in her expression suggested a clairvoyant insight into the identity of the caller.

“This is Dave.”

“I want to go to bed. Let’s talk.”

After an awkward silence, Gurney replied, “You first.”

She uttered a soft, intimate laugh-really more purring than laughing. “I mean I want to go to bed early, go to sleep, and in case you were going to call later to talk about tomorrow, it would be better to talk now.”

“Good idea.”

Again the velvety laugh. “So what I’m thinking is very simple. I can’t tell you what to say to Jykynstyl, because I don’t know what he’ll ask you. So you must be yourself. The wise homicide detective. The quiet man who has seen everything. The man on the side of the angels who wrestles with the devil and always wins.”

“Not always.”

“Well, you’re human, right? Being human is important. This makes you real, not some fake hero, you see? So all you need to do is be yourself. You are a more impressive man than you think, David Gurney.”

He hesitated. “Is that it?”

This time the laugh was more musical, more amused. “That’s it for you. Now for me. Did you ever read our contract, the one you signed for the show last year?”

“I suppose I did at the time. Not recently.”

“It says that the Reynolds Gallery is entitled to a forty percent commission on displayed works, thirty percent on cataloged works, and twenty percent on all future works created for customers introduced to the artist through the gallery. Does this sound familiar?”

“Vaguely.”

“Vaguely. Okay. But is it all right, or do you have any problem with it now, going forward?”

“It’s fine.”

“Good. Because we’ll have a very good time working together. I can feel it, can’t you?”

Madeleine, inscrutable, seemed fixated on the ornamental border of her slowly growing scarf. Stitch after stitch after stitch. Click. Click. Click.

Chapter 41

It was a glorious morning, a calendar picture of autumn. The sky was a thrilling blue without a hint of a cloud. Madeleine was already out on one of her bike rides through the winding river valley that extended for nearly twenty miles to both the east and west sides of Walnut Crossing.

“A perfect day,” she’d said before she left, managing to suggest by her tone that his decision to spend a day like this in the city talking about big money for ugly art made him as crazy as Jykynstyl. Or maybe he’d reached that conclusion himself and was blaming it on her.

He was sitting at the breakfast table by the French doors, gazing out over the pasture at the barn, a startling crimson in the limpid morning light. He took the first energizing sip of his coffee, then picked up his phone and called Sheridan Kline’s twenty-four-hour number.

It was answered by a dour, colorless voice-which brought to Gurney’s mind a vivid recollection of the man who owned it.

“Stimmel. District Attorney’s Office.”

“This is Dave Gurney.” He paused, knowing that Stimmel would remember him from the Mellery case and being not at all surprised when the man didn’t acknowledge it. Stimmel had the warmth and loquacity, as well as the thick physiognomy, of a frog.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk to Kline ASAP.”

“That so?”

“Matter of life or death.”

“Whose?”

“His.”

The dour tone hardened. “What does that mean?”

“You’re familiar with the Perry case?” Gurney took the ensuing silence for a yes. “It’s about to explode into a media circus, maybe the biggest mass-murder case in the history of the state. Thought Sheridan might want a heads-up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You asked me that already, and I told you.”

“Give me the facts, wiseass, and I’ll pass them along.”

“No time to go through it all twice. I need to talk to him right now, even if you have to drag his ass off the can. Tell him this one’s going to make the Mellery murder look like a misdemeanor.”

“This better not be bullshit.”

Gurney figured that was Stimmel’s way of saying, Good-bye, we’ll get back to you. He laid down his phone, picked up his coffee, and took another sip. Still nice and warm. He looked out at the asparagus ferns leaning away from a gentle westerly breeze. The fertilizer questions-if, when, how much-that had filled his mind less than a week ago now seemed infinitely postponable. He hoped he hadn’t overstated the situation to Stimmel.

Two minutes later Kline was on the phone, excited as a fly on fresh manure. “What is this? What media explosion?”

“Long story. You have time to talk?”

“How about you give me the one-sentence summary?”

“Imagine a news story that starts like this: ‘Police and DA clueless as serial murderer abducts Mapleshade girls.’ ”

“Didn’t we go through this yesterday?”

“New information.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Home, but I’m heading into the city in an hour.”

“This is real? Not some wild-ass theorizing?”

“Real enough.”

There was a pause. “How secure is your phone?”

“I have no idea.”

“You can take the thruway to the city, right?”

“I guess so.”

“So you could stop at my office en route?”

“I could.”

“Can you leave now?”

“Maybe in ten minutes.”

“Meet me at my office at nine-thirty. Gurney?”

“Yes?”

“This goddamn better be real.”

“Sheridan?”

“What?”

“If I were you, I’d pray for it not to be.”

Ten minutes later Gurney was on the road, heading east into the sun. His first stop was Abelard’s for a container of coffee to substitute for the nearly full cup he’d left on the kitchen table in his rush to get out.

He sat for a while in the gravelly little patch in front that passed for a parking area, reclined his seat about a third of the way, and tried to relax his mind by concentrating on nothing but the flavor of the coffee. It wasn’t a technique that worked particularly well for him, and he wondered why he kept trying it. It did have the effect of changing what was on his mind, but not necessarily to anything less worrisome. In this case it moved his focus from the dysfunctional mess of the investigation to the dysfunctional mess of his relationship with Kyle-and the growing pressure he felt to call him.

It was ludicrous, really. All he had to do was stop procrastinating and make the call. He knew very well that procrastination was nothing but a short-term escape that creates a long-term problem-that it just occupies more and more storage space in the brain, creating more and more discomfort. Intellectually, there was no argument. Intellectually, he knew that most of the misery in his life arose from the avoidance of discomfort.

He had Kyle’s new number on his speed dial. Christ! Just do it!

He took out his phone, called the number, got voice mail: “Hi, this is Kyle. I can’t pick up right now. Please leave a message.”

“Hi, Kyle, it’s Dad. Thought I’d call, get your impressions of Columbia. The apartment share working out okay?” He hesitated, almost asked about Kate, Kyle’s ex-wife, thought better of it. “Nothing urgent, just wondering how you’re doing. Give me a call whenever you can. Talk to you soon.” He pushed the “end call” button.

A curious experience. A bit tangled, like the rest of Gurney’s emotional life. He was relieved that he’d finally called. He was also relieved, to be honest about it, that he’d gotten his son’s voice mail instead of his son. But maybe now he could stop thinking about it, at least for a while. He took a couple more swallows of his coffee, checked the time-8:52 A.M.-and got back on the county road.

Except for a gleaming black Audi and a handful of not-so-gleaming Fords and Chevys with official plates, the parking lot of the County Office Building was empty, as it usually was on a Saturday morning. The looming dirty-brick edifice looked cold and deserted, every bit the wretched institution it had once been.

Kline emerged from the Audi as Gurney pulled in to a nearby space. Another car, a Crown Victoria, entered the lot and parked on the far side of the Audi. Rodriguez got out from behind the wheel.

Gurney and Rodriguez approached Kline from opposite directions. They exchanged nods with the DA, but not with each other. Kline led the way in through a side door to which he had his own key, then up a flight of stairs. Not a word was spoken until they were seated in the leather chairs around the coffee table in his inner office. Rodriguez folded his arms tightly across his chest. His dark eyes were uncommunicative behind his steel-rimmed glasses.

“Okay,” said Kline, leaning forward. “Time to cut to the chase.” He was giving Gurney the kind of piercing look he might give a hostile witness on the stand. “We’re here because of your promised bombshell, my friend. Let’s have it.”

Gurney nodded. “Right. The bombshell. You may want to take notes.” A twitch under one of the captain’s eyes told Gurney he heard the suggestion as an insult.

“Just get to the point,” said Kline.

“The bombshell comes in parts. I’ll toss them on the table. You fit them together. First of all, it turns out that Hector Flores is the name of a character in an Elizabethan play-a character who pretends to be a Spanish gardener. Interesting coincidence, no?”

Kline gave Gurney a questioning frown. “What kind of play?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. The plot involves the violation of a major sexual taboo, incest-which happens to be a common element in the childhood formation of sex offenders.”

Kline’s frown deepened. “So you’re saying… what?”

“I’m saying that the man who was living in Ashton’s cottage almost certainly took the name Hector Flores from that play.”

The captain let out a little snort of disbelief.

“I think we need a bit more detail here,” said Kline.

“This play is about incest. The Hector Flores character in the play shows up disguised as a gardener. And…” Gurney couldn’t resist the dramatic pause. “It just so happens that he kills the guilty female character in the play by cutting off her head.”

Kline’s eyes widened. “What?”

Rodriguez gave Gurney a disbelieving stare. “Where the hell is this play?”

Rather than get bogged down in the argument sure to ensue if he revealed that the full text of the play no longer existed, Gurney gave the captain the name and affiliation of Peggy Meeker’s old college professor. “I’m sure he’d be happy to discuss it with you. And by the way, there’s no doubt at all that the play relates to Jillian Perry’s murder. The playwright’s name was Edward Vallory.”

It took a couple of seconds for this to register with Kline. “The text-message signature?”

“Right. So now we know for sure that the ‘Mexican laborer’ identity was a con from day one, a con that everyone fell for.”

The captain looked furious enough to burst into flames.

Gurney went on. “This guy came to Tambury with a long-term plan and a lot of patience. The obscurity of the literary reference means we’re dealing with a pretty sophisticated individual. And the content of the Vallory play makes it clear that Jillian Perry’s sexual history was almost certainly the motive for her murder.”

Kline looked like he was trying not to look stunned. “Okay, so we’ve got… we’ve got a new slant here.”

“Unfortunately, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Kline’s eyes widened. “What iceberg?”

“The missing graduates.”

The captain shook his head. “It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: There’s no proof that anyone’s missing.”

“Sorry,” said Gurney. “Didn’t mean to misuse a legal term. You’re right-nobody’s name has been entered yet in an official mis-pers database. So let’s call them… what? ‘Mapleshade graduates of currently unverifiable location’? That work better for you?”

Rodriguez came forward in his seat, his voice rasping. “I don’t have to take this wiseass crap from you!”

Kline raised his hand like a traffic cop. “Rod, Rod, take it easy. We’re all a little… you know… Just take it easy.” He waited until the man began to settle back in his chair before turning his attention to Gurney. “Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that one or more of these girls is actually missing, or unlocatable, or whatever the proper term would be. If that were the case, your conclusion is what?”

“If they’ve been abducted by the man calling himself Hector Flores, my conclusion is that either they’re dead or soon will be.”

Rodriguez lurched forward again in his chair. “There’s no evidence! If, if, if, if. It’s just one assumption on top of another.”

Kline took a slow breath. “That does seem like a hell of an end point to jump to, Dave. You want to give us a little help with the logic?”

“The content of the play, plus the Vallory text messages, suggest that Jillian Perry’s murder was an act of revenge for sexual abuse. A history of perpetrating sexual abuse happens to be a common factor among Mapleshade students, making them all potential targets. It would make Mapleshade the perfect place for a killer motivated by that issue to find his victims.”

“ ‘Potential targets’-did you hear that? ‘Potential,’ he just said. That’s my point.” Rodriguez shook his head. “All of this is-”

“Hold it, Rod, please,” Kline broke in. “I get your point. Believe me, I’m on your side. I’m a proof-oriented guy just like you are. But let’s hear him out. You know, no stone unturned. Let’s just hear him out. Okay?”

Rodriguez stopped talking, but he kept shaking his head like he hardly knew he was doing it. Kline gave Gurney a small nod to proceed.

“Regarding the missing girls, the similarity in the arguments leading to their departures is prima facie proof of a conspiracy. It’s inconceivable they would all have come up with the expensive-car demand by pure coincidence. A reasonable explanation is that it was a conspiracy created to facilitate their abductions.”

Kline looked like he had a case of Tabasco reflux. “Do you have any other facts that support the abduction hypothesis?”

“Hector Flores had asked Ashton for opportunities to work at Mapleshade, and the currently unlocatable girls were seen in conversations with him there.”

Rodriguez was still shaking his head. “That’s a pretty thin connection.”

“You’re right, Captain,” said Gurney wearily. “In fact, most of what we know is pretty thin. All the missing or abducted girls had previously appeared in sexually oriented ads for Karnala Fashion, as did Jillian Perry, but we know nothing about that company. How those modeling assignments were set up has not been determined, or even investigated. As of today the total number of girls who may be missing is still unknown. Whether the girls we can’t get in touch with are alive or dead is unknown. Whether abductions are occurring as we sit here is unknown. All I’m doing is telling you what I think. What I fear. Maybe I’m completely nuts, Captain. I hope to God I am, because the alternative is horrendous.”

Kline swallowed drily. “So you admit there’s a fair amount of supposition built into your… your view of this.”

“I’m a homicide cop, Sheridan. Without a few suppositions…” Gurney shrugged, his voice trailing off.

There was a long silence.

Rodriguez seemed deflated, smaller, as though half his anger were gone but hadn’t been replaced by anything else.

“Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument,” said Kline, “that you’re a hundred percent right.” He extended both hands, palms up, as though conveying open-mindedness to even the most outlandish theory. “What would you do?”

“The crucial task is to get up to speed on who’s missing. Get ahold of those Mapleshade class lists with the family contact information. Get them from Ashton this morning if possible. Interview every family, every graduate you can reach in Jillian’s class, then everyone from the year before and the year after. In any family where the daughter’s location is not verifiable, get all the descriptive and circumstantial detail you can to enter in the ViCAP, NamUs, NCIC databases-especially if the family’s last contact included the argument we’ve heard about.”

Kline glanced at Rodriguez. “Sounds like something we could be doing regardless.”

The captain nodded.

“Okay, go on.”

“In any case where the daughter can’t be reached, collect a DNA sample from a first-degree biological relative-mother, father, brother, sister. As soon as the BCI lab does the profile, run it against the profile of every unidentified female decedent of the right age within the time frame of the disappearance.”

“Geography?”

“National.”

“God! You realize what you’re asking? That stuff is all state by state, sometimes county by county. Some jurisdictions don’t save it. Some don’t even collect it.”

“You’re right-big pain in the ass. Costs money, takes time, coverage is incomplete. But it’ll be a bigger pain in the ass down the road if you have to explain why it wasn’t done.”

“Fine.” The word came out of Kline like an exclamation of disgust. “Next?”

“Next, track down Alessandro and Karnala Fashion. They both seem way too elusive for normal commercial enterprises. Next, interview all current Mapleshade students regarding anything they might know about Hector, Alessandro, Karnala, or any of the missing girls. Next, interview every current and recent Mapleshade employee.”

“You have any idea what kind of man-hours you’re talking about?”

“Sheridan, this is what I do for a living.” He paused at the significance of the slip. “I mean, did for a living. BCI needs to throw a dozen investigators against this ASAP, more if they can. Once this hits the media, you’ll be eaten alive for doing anything less.”

Kline’s eyes narrowed. “Way you’re talking about it, we’ll be eaten alive no matter what.”

“The media will take whatever route attracts the biggest audience,” said Gurney. “So-called news reporting is a cartoon business. Give them a big, hot, cartoony story line and they’ll run with it. Guaranteed.”

Kline regarded him warily. “Like what?”

“The story here needs to be that you’ve pulled out all the stops. Totally proactive. The instant you and the BCI team discovered the difficulty some of the parents were having getting in touch with their daughters, you and Rod launched the biggest five-alarm, all-hands-on-deck, all-vacations-canceled serial-murder investigation in history.”

Kline’s mental hard drive seemed to be racing through the possible outcomes. “Suppose they pounce on the cost?”

“Easy. ‘In a situation like this, being proactive costs money. Inaction costs lives.’ It’s a cartoon answer that’s hard to argue with. Give them the ‘Giant Mobilization’ story and maybe they’ll stay away from the ‘Screwed-Up Investigation’ story.”

Kline was opening and closing his fists, flexing his fingers, the uncertainty in his eyes shifting in the direction of excitement.

“Okay,” he said. “We better start thinking about the press conference.”

“First,” said Gurney, “you need to get the actual ball rolling. If the press discovers it’s all bullshit, the narrative instantly changes from you guys being the heroes of the hour to the jerks of the year. As of this moment, you need to treat this like the potentially huge case it probably is-or kiss your careers good-bye.”

Maybe something in the set of Gurney’s jaw got through to Kline, or maybe a jagged sliver of the potential horror of the case finally pierced his self-absorption. For whatever reason, he blinked, rubbed his eyes, sat back in his chair, and gave Gurney a long, bleak look. “You really think we’ve got a major psycho on our hands, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

Rodriguez roused himself from whatever dark preoccupation he was mired in. “What makes you so sure? Some sick play written four hundred years ago?”

What makes me so sure? Gurney thought about it. A gut feeling? Although it was one of the oldest clichés in the business, there was truth in it. But there was something else, too.

“The head.”

Rodriguez stared at him.

Gurney took a steadying breath. “Something… about the head. Arranged on the table the way it was, facing the body.”

Kline’s mouth opened as if he were about to speak, but he didn’t. Rodriguez just stared.

Gurney went on. “I believe that whoever did that, in that particular way, was announcing that he’s on a mission.”

Kline frowned. “Meaning that he intends to do it again?”

“Or already has done it again. I believe he has an appetite for it.”

Chapter 42

The weather remained perfect for Gurney’s late-morning drive from the Catskills to New York City. As he sped down the thruway, the crisp air and clear sky energized his thoughts, made him optimistic about the impact he’d had on Kline and, to a lesser extent, on Rodriguez.

He wanted to follow up with Kline, find a way to ensure that he’d be kept in the loop. And he wanted to call Val, bring her up to date. But he also needed, right then and there, to give some thought to the meeting he was heading for. The meeting with the man from “the art world.” A man who wanted to give him a hundred thousand dollars for a graphically enhanced portrait of a lunatic. A man who might very well be a lunatic himself.

The address Sonya had given him turned out to be a brownstone residence in the middle of a hushed, tree-shaded block in Manhattan’s East Sixties. The neighborhood exuded the aroma of money, a genteel miasma that insulated the place from the bustle of the avenues around it.

He parked in a no-parking zone directly in front of the building-as she had instructed him, passing along Jykynstyl’s assurance that there would be no problem, that the car would be taken care of.

An oversize black-enameled front door led into an ornately tiled and mirrored vestibule, which led to a second door. Gurney was about to press the bell on the wall next to it when it was opened by a striking young woman. At second glance he realized that she was a rather ordinary-looking young woman whose overall appearance was elevated, or at least dominated, by extraordinary eyes-eyes that were now assessing him as one might assess the cut of a sport jacket or the freshness of a pie on a bakery shelf.

“Are you the artist?” He caught something volatile in her tone, something he couldn’t quite identify.

“I’m Dave Gurney.”

“Follow me.”

They entered a large foyer. There was a coatrack, an umbrella stand, several closed doors, and a broad mahogany staircase rising to the next floor. The dark luster of her hair matched the dark wood. She led him past the staircase to a door, which she opened to reveal a small elevator with its own separate sliding door.

“Come,” she said with a slight smile that he found oddly disconcerting.

They got in, the door slid shut without a sound, and the elevator rose with hardly any sensation of motion.

Gurney broke the silence. “Who are you?”

She turned toward him, her remarkable eyes amused by some private joke. “I’m his daughter.” The elevator had stopped so smoothly that Gurney hadn’t felt it. The door slid open. She stepped out. “Come.”

The room was furnished in the style of an opulent Victorian parlor. Large-leafed tropical plants stood in floor pots at each side of a large fireplace. Several others stood next to armchairs. Beyond a wide arch at one end was a formal dining room, with table, chairs, sideboard, and carved woodwork, all of deeply polished mahogany. Dark green damask curtains covered the tall windows in both rooms, obscuring the time of day, the time of year-creating the illusion of an elegant, unanchored world where cocktails were always about to be served.

“Welcome, David Gurney. So good of you to come so far so quickly.”

Gurney followed the oddly accented voice to its source: a colorless little man dwarfed by the enormous leather club chair in which he was seated next to a towering rain-forest plant. He held in his small hand a diminutive cordial glass filled with a pale green liqueur.

“Forgive me if I don’t rise to greet you. I have difficulty with my back. Perversely, it is worst in the best weather. A troublesome mystery, no? Please seat yourself.” He gestured toward a matching chair facing his across a small Oriental rug. He wore faded jeans and a burgundy sweatshirt. His hair was short, thin, gray, perfunctorily combed. His hooded eyes created a superficial impression of sleepy detachment.

“You would like a drink. One of the girls will bring you something.” His indefinite accent seemed to have multiple European origins. “Myself, I have made again the mistake of choosing absinthe.” He raised his greenish liqueur and regarded it as one might a disloyal friend. “I do not recommend it. Since it has become legal and perfectly safe, it has, in my opinion, lost its soul.” He put the glass to his lips and drained off about half the contents. “Why do I keep going back to it? An interesting question. Perhaps I am a sentimentalist. But you, obviously, are no such thing. You are a great detective, a man of clarity, unencumbered by foolish attachments. So no absinthe for you. But something else. Whatever you would like.”

“A small glass of water?”

“L’acqua minerale? Ein Mineralwasser? L’eau gazéifiée?”

“Tap water.”

“Of course.” His sudden grin was as bright as bleached bones. “I should have known.” He raised his voice only slightly, in the way of someone accustomed to having servants in his vicinity. “A glass of cold tap water for our guest.” The strangely smiling girl who called herself his daughter left the room.

Gurney sat calmly in the chair to which the little man had directed him. “Why should you have known that I’d want tap water?”

“Because of what Ms. Reynolds told me of your character. You frown at that. That also I should have predicted. You look at me with your detective eyes. You ask yourself, ‘How much does this Jykynstyl know about me? How much has the Reynolds woman told him?’ Am I right?”

“You’re way ahead of me. I was just wondering about the connection between tap water and my character.”

“She told me that you are so complicated inside that you like to keep things simple on the outside. You agree with this?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“That’s very good,” he said, like an expert savoring an interesting wine. “She also warned me that you are always thinking and you always know more than you say.”

Gurney shrugged. “Is that a problem?”

Music began playing in the background, so softly that its low notes were hardly audible. It was a sad, slow, pastoral melody on a cello. Its whispered presence in the room reminded Gurney of the English garden scents that subtly penetrated the interior of Scott Ashton’s house.

The wispy-haired little man smiled and sipped his absinthe. A young woman with a dramatic figure on display in low-cut jeans and an even lower-cut T-shirt entered the room through the arch at the far end and approached Gurney with a crystal glass of water on a silver tray. She had the eyes and mouth of a cynic twice her age. As Gurney took the glass, Jykynstyl was answering his question.

“It’s certainly not a problem for me. I love a man of substance, a man whose mind is larger than his mouth. This is the kind of man you are, no?” When Gurney didn’t answer, Jykynstyl laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound. “I see that you are also a man who likes to get to the point. You want to know exactly why we are here. Very well, David Gurney. Here is the point: I am perhaps your greatest fan. Why am I? For two reasons. First, I believe that you are a great portrait artist. Second, I intend to make a lot of money on your work. Please notice which of these reasons I put first. I can tell from the work you’ve done already that you have a rare talent for bringing the mind of a man into the lines of his face, for letting the soul show through the eyes. This is a talent that thrives on purity. It is not the talent of a man who is mad for money or attention, a man who strives to be agreeable, a man who talks too much. It is the talent of a man who values the truth in all his affairs-business, professional, artistic. I suspected you were such a man, but I wanted to be sure.” He held Gurney’s steady gaze for what seemed like a very long time before going on. “What would you like for lunch? There is cold sea bass rémoulade, a lime seviche of shellfish, quenelles de veau, a lovely Kobe steak tartare-whichever you prefer, or perhaps a bit of each?”

As he spoke, he began slowly extricating himself from his chair. He paused, searching for a place to deposit his little glass, shrugged, and placed it delicately into the overgrown plant pot next to him. Then, grasping the arms of his chair with both hands, he pushed himself with considerable effort to his feet and led the way through the arched doorway to the dining room.

The most arresting feature of the space was a life-size portrait in a gilded frame hanging in the center of the long wall facing the arch. Gurney’s limited knowledge of art history placed its source somewhere in the Dutch Renaissance.

“It is remarkable, no?” said Jykynstyl.

Gurney agreed.

“I’m glad you like it. I will tell you about it as we eat.”

Two places were set across from each other at the table. The entrées that Jykynstyl had named were arrayed between them on four china platters, along with bottles of Puligny-Montrachet and Château Latour, wines that even a non-oenophile like Gurney recognized as wildly expensive.

Gurney opted for the Montrachet and the bass, Jykynstyl for the Latour and the tartare.

“Are both of the girls your daughters?”

“That is correct, yes.”

“And you live here together?”

“From time to time. We are not a family of a fixed location. I come and go. It is the nature of my life. My daughters live here when they are not living with someone else.” He spoke of these arrangements in a tone that seemed to Gurney as deceptively casual as his sleepy gaze.

“Where do you spend most of your time?”

Jykynstyl laid his fork down on the edge of his plate as though ridding himself of an obstruction to clear expression. “I don’t think in that way, of being here for a length of time or there for another length of time. I am… in motion. Do you understand?”

“Your answer is more philosophical than my question. I’ll ask it another way. Do you have homes like this anywhere else?”

“Family members in other countries sometimes put me up, or they put up with me. In English you have these two phrases-close but not the same, correct? But maybe in my case they are both true.” He displayed his cold ivory smile. “So I am a homeless man with many homes.” The mongrelized accent, from nowhere and everywhere, seemed to grow stronger to reinforce his nomadic claim. “Like the wonderful Mr. Wordsworth, I wander lonely as a cloud. In search of golden daffodils. I have a good eye for these daffodils. But having a good eye is not enough. One must also look. This is my double secret, David Gurney: a good eye and I am always looking. This to me is far more important than living in a particular place. I do not live here or live there. I live in the activity, in the movement. I am not a resident. I am a searcher. This is maybe a little like your own life, your own profession. Am I right?”

“I can see your point.”

“You can see my point, but you don’t really agree with it.” He seemed more amused than offended. “And like all policemen, when it comes to questions you would rather ask them than answer them. A characteristic of your profession, is it not?”

“Yes, it is.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a cough. His eyes supplied no clue as to which. “Then let me give you answers rather than questions. I am thinking you want to know why this crazy little man with the funny name wants to pay you so much money for these portraits that you do maybe pretty quickly and easily.”

Gurney felt a spark of annoyance. “Not that quickly, not that easily.” And then a spark of chagrin at voicing the objection.

Jykynstyl blinked. “No, of course not. Forgive my English. I think I speak it better than I do, but I am inadequate at the nuance. Shall I try again, or do you understand what I am trying to say?”

“I think I do.”

“So then, the basic question: Why do I offer so much money for this art of yours?” He paused, flashed the chilly grin. “Because it is worth it. And because I want it, exclusively, without competition. So I make you what I believe is a preemptive offer, an offer you can accept without question, without quibble, without negotiation. You understand?”

“I think I do.”

“Good. You noticed, I think, the painting on the wall behind me. The Holbein.”

“That’s an actual Hans Holbein?”

“Actual? Yes, of course. I do not own reproductions. What do you think of it?”

“I don’t have the right words.”

“Say the first words that come to mind.”

“Startling. Astonishing. Alive. Unnerving.”

Jykynstyl studied him for a long minute before speaking again. “Let me tell you two things. First, these words that you claim are not the right words come closer to the truth than the bullshit of the professional art critics. Second, these are the same words that came to my mind when I saw your portrait of Piggert, the murderer. The very same words. I looked into the eyes of your Peter Piggert and I could feel him in the room with me. Startling. Astonishing. Alive. Unnerving. All these things that you say about the Holbein portrait. For the Holbein I paid a little over eight million dollars. The amount is a secret, but I tell you, anyway. Eight million, one hundred fifty thousand dollars-for one golden daffodil. One day, perhaps, I will sell it for three times that much. So now I pay one hundred thousand each for a few David Gurney daffodils, and one day, perhaps, I will sell them for ten times that. Who can say? You will toast this future with me, please? A toast-that we may both get from the transaction the satisfaction that we wish?”

Jykynstyl seemed to sense Gurney’s skepticism. “It only seems like a lot of money because you aren’t yet accustomed to it. It’s not because your work isn’t worth it. Remember that. You are being rewarded for your extraordinary insight and your ability to convey that insight-not unlike Hans Holbein. You are a detective not only of the criminal mind but of human nature. Why should you not be paid appropriately?”

Jykynstyl raised his glass of Latour. Gurney followed the gesture uncertainly with his Montrachet.

“To your insight and your work, to our business arrangement, and to you yourself, Detective David Gurney.”

“And to you, Mr. Jykynstyl.”

They drank. The experience surprised Gurney pleasantly. Although he was far from being a connoisseur, he thought the Montrachet was the best wine he’d ever tasted-and one of the few in his memory that ignited an instant desire for a second glass. As he finished the first, the young woman who had brought him up in the elevator appeared at his side with an odd glimmer in her eyes to provide the desired refill.

For the next few minutes, the two men ate in silence. The cold bass was wonderful, and the Montrachet only seemed to make it more so. When Sonya had broached the subject of Jykynstyl’s interest two days earlier, Gurney’s mind had wandered briefly into fantasies of what the money could buy, geographical fantasies that carried him to the northwest coast-to Seattle and Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands in the summer sun, blue sky and blue water, the Olympic Mountains on the horizon. Now that image returned, seemingly fueled by the firming up of the financial promise of the Mug Shot Art project-fueled also by the second, even more delightful, glass of Montrachet.

Jykynstyl was speaking again, lauding Gurney’s perception, his psychological subtlety, his eye for detail. But it was the rhythm of the words that captivated Gurney’s attention now, more than their meaning, the rhythm lifting him, rocking him gently. Now the young women were smiling serenely and clearing the table, and Jykynstyl was describing exotic desserts. Something creamy with rosemary and cardamom. Something silky with saffron, thyme, and cinnamon. It made Gurney smile to imagine the man’s strangely complex accent as though it were itself a dish made with seasonings not normally combined.

He felt a thrilling, and wholly uncharacteristic, rush of freedom, optimism, and pride in his accomplishments. It was the way he had always wanted to feel-full of clarity and strength. The feeling blended into the glorious blues of water and sky, a boat racing forward in full white sail on the wings of a breeze that would never die.

And then he felt nothing at all.