The Viper

65

MAKING HIS DECISION AND SECURING A RELATIVELY SAFE destination had oddly taken some of the emotional urgency out of actually making the physical move. In fact, by the time he finally set out for the lodge three days later, a large part of his motivation was the anticipated comfort and security of the place, compared to the inconveniences and vulnerabilities of his hilltop campsite.

That, and the fact that being around Madeleine in these strange new circumstances was disorienting. She had, at least in his mind, become a different person—a stranger who only looked like the woman he once knew. This made the house itself seem strange—as though he were seeing it through glasses that subtly distorted the position of everything.

One of the last things he did before leaving was install the app that communicated with the security cameras on the property on Madeleine’s phone. When he explained how the system worked and how the pattern of beeps identified which camera had been activated, she listened with no more emotion than if he were a disembodied voice on an instruction video.

LATE IN THE afternoon of a frigid day, at the end of a three-hour drive, he turned into the pine-shrouded private road that led to Slade’s lodge. The temperature was dropping, a bone-chilling Adirondack wind was rising, and the hemlocks around the lodge were hissing and swaying.

Valdez came out to meet him, a woolen watch cap his only concession to the brutal weather, his smile muted by the sadness in his eyes. He looked years older than when Gurney last saw him. They shook hands, and Gurney offered his condolences for the death of Ziko Slade. Valdez nodded, then led the way onto the porch and into the front room of the house. A fire had just been started in the ceiling-high stone fireplace.

“I recall you like strong coffee,” said Valdez in that odd accent that seemed to come from several parts of the world at once. “My preference also. Please sit, be comfortable, while I get it ready.”

He had no desire at that moment for coffee, but since it was the man’s way of welcoming him, he said nothing. After Valdez left the room, Gurney stepped closer to the fireplace. Slade’s tennis trophies were still on the mantel, gleaming in the amber light. They appeared to have been recently polished. The rest of the big room was dustier, less cared-for than he remembered.

The antique pine paneling, wide-board floors, hand-hewn beams, and framed prints of pheasants and woodcocks—all contributed to the image of a rich man’s sanctuary and reminded him that Slade’s will had made Valdez very rich indeed.

“So,” said Valdez, returning with two mugs of black coffee, “what will you do?”

“Sorry?”

Valdez handed him one of the mugs, gesturing for him to take one of the leather armchairs next to the hearth. He settled into the chair across from it before continuing. “Emma believes there’s no longer any purpose to solving the Lerman murder. And even though she believes Ziko was murdered, she says it’s a waste of time to search for the murderer. She says that justice for the dead is nothing but the poison of revenge. Do you believe this?”

“I believe that she believes it.”

“But you are still pursuing the truth?”

“Yes.”

Valdez sipped his coffee, his melancholy gaze on the fire. “Maybe Emma is right. Maybe I am poisoned by this desire. If so, then so be it. If someone killed Ziko, they must also be killed. Is that revenge or justice? I don’t know. I don’t care what the word is. Ziko was my father. A son must respond to the murder of his father.”

Gurney said nothing.

Valdez was still staring into the fire. “Do you believe it is the same murderer for Lerman a year ago and Ziko now?”

“I believe the same person orchestrated both murders.”

There was a long silence before Valdez turned from the fire and looked at Gurney. “I have told you my heart. What is yours?”

“You mean, why am I still pursuing the Lerman case?”

“Yes.”

“Because the official version makes no sense. And because everyone is trying to stop me. The so-called good guys are trying to arrest me, and the bad guys may try to kill me.”

A smile crept into Valdez’s dour expression. “You don’t like people trying to stop you?”

“It makes me wonder what they’re hiding.”

“What have you discovered?”

“Nothing significant enough yet to vacate Ziko’s conviction. But I’m getting closer, and the opposition is starting to panic. Which means the time I have left to uncover the truth is shrinking.”

Valdez peered again into the fire. “This uncovering . . . this is your motive?”

“My goal.”

“There’s a difference?”

“My goal is what I want, which I’m always sure of. My motive is why I want it, which I can never be sure of.”

“Meaning that our minds can play tricks on us, yes?”

“Yes.”

Valdez sipped his coffee thoughtfully before putting his cup down on the arm of his chair and switching to a lighter tone. “Shall we bring your suitcases in from the car?”

FOR DINNER THAT evening Valdez prepared a stew of cubed pork, sausages, carrots, and white beans. He and Gurney ate in the lodge’s dining room, a smaller version of the front room, with its own fireplace.

After they finished, Valdez led Gurney upstairs to the bedroom where they’d brought his suitcases. He pointed out the nearest bathroom and mentioned there was an extra blanket in the closet.

As soon as Valdez went downstairs, Gurney unstrapped his shoulder-holstered Glock and laid it on the bedside table. He put his phone next to the Glock. He slipped off his shoes, loosened his belt, switched off the lamp, and stretched out on the bed—a heavy-timbered four-poster.

Exhaustion and a throbbing headache put him in a nightmarish state, neither asleep nor awake. Every other thought passing through his head was accompanied by the image of Charlene Vesco’s bleeding eyes. Since occupying himself with a practical task usually helped, he got up and took out his laptop. After connecting to the house wifi, he got the contact information for the Albany County ME, whose jurisdiction included Garville, and began drafting an email regarding Charlene’s death.

He kept it to five brief points: The cause of her death appeared to be a major overdose of an anticoagulant. It was likely administered by someone other than the victim. The intention was evidently homicidal. Heparin-containing snake venom may have been the anticoagulant employed. It was probably administered hypodermically or via the fangs of a live snake.

He assumed the first three facts would be obvious to any competent ME. He mentioned them to create a credible path into points four and five, which he hoped the ME would find intriguing enough to pursue. Snakes might not be the ultimate key to unraveling the mysteries of the case, but then again . . .

He reread what he’d written and tapped Send. With a clearer mind, he stripped down to his shorts and tee shirt, got into bed, and soon relaxed into a relatively normal sleep.

Shortly after dawn, he was awakened by a sharp cracking sound, accompanied by the whistling of a gusty wind. He emerged from under the bed’s warm quilt and went to the window. A large ice-covered branch was dangling from a nearby hemlock like a partially severed arm.

The screen on his phone indicated it was a minute past seven. After brushing his teeth and showering, he put on a pair of flannel-lined jeans and a heavy sweater to compensate for the morning chill in the house.

Instead of going directly downstairs, he decided to take a look at Slade’s bedroom, which he recalled from his earlier visit to the lodge was the last in the hallway. He opened the door and switched on the light. The room looked exactly as he remembered it. Like the trophies on the mantel, it had been kept in spotless condition. He turned off the light and headed downstairs, imagining that he’d find Valdez building a fire or making breakfast. Instead, he found a note on the dining room table.

There was no signature, no phone number, no indication of where he could be reached.

66

AFTER A BREAKFAST OF SCRAMBLED EGGS, TOAST, AND coffee, Gurney settled down in an armchair next to the hearth with a second coffee.

Although Valdez’s departure and the vague reason he’d given for it seemed odd, it was not unwelcome. It gave Gurney greater freedom to do whatever he wanted, if only to examine the puzzle without interruption in the place where it all began. And to ponder the mystery of Valdez himself.

Perhaps accepting Valdez’s surface appearance of being Slade’s adoring acolyte was a mistake. Was it conceivable that Slade had been victimized by Valdez?

Although unlikely, it was an intriguing possibility. It might explain one of the case’s perplexities—the contradiction between the descriptions in Lerman’s diary of the three phone calls and Slade’s insistence that he’d never received them. Suppose Valdez had answered those calls, passing himself off as Slade. And suppose, when Lerman showed up to collect his extortion money, it was Valdez who killed him and planted the evidence that incriminated Slade.

That scenario would eliminate a major contradiction, but at the cost of creating thorny new questions. Had Valdez known that he was a beneficiary of Slade’s will? If so, how would framing Slade for murder get him closer to his inheritance? Why would he have been answering Slade’s phone on those three occasions? And what would his motive have been for pretending to be Slade?

Gurney’s excitement at the idea began to fade. However, even if Valdez hadn’t killed Lerman, his potential involvement in Slade’s prison murder couldn’t be so easily dismissed.

It was hard to see Emma Martin as a duplicitous string-puller, coolly focused on Slade’s millions, but it was conceivable that Valdez was exactly that. He presented himself as a humble soul, treading a path to Slade-like sainthood. But who was he, really? Where had he come from? And how firm a grip did those roots still have on him?

If Emma was right about Slade’s “suicide” having been a concealed murder, and if Valdez had engineered that murder, he would have needed at least one inside accomplice—not just any criminal acquaintance, but a cold-blooded killer under his personal control. The probability of that depended on the unknown facts of Valdez’s life. One thing was certain. If the seemingly humble Valdez was behind Slade’s hanging, he’d rank as one of the most unnerving sociopaths Gurney had ever encountered.

Then there was the matter of the attack on Blackmore Mountain, the murder of Sonny Lerman, and the gruesome execution of Charlene Vesco. Was it conceivable that Ian Valdez masterminded all of that?

And if not Valdez, then who? Who was the spider who sat in the center of the web? Who was the ultimate controller—the one who had the power to tell the other players what to do—the one who knew why Lerman’s head and fingers had to be amputated, what Slade’s dark secret was, why Slade and Sonny and Charlene had to be killed?

Something at the beginning of that sequence of thoughts—the one who had the power to tell the other players what to do—reminded Gurney of something. At first, it was just a faint echo. Then he remembered where it came from.

He placed a call to Marcus Thorne.

The man answered immediately, sounding busy but curious.

“Surprised to hear from you again. Emma told me Slade’s death put an end to her exoneration quest.”

“Hers but not mine. There’s something from our meeting I wanted to ask you about.”

“Talk fast.”

“You told me a story about a gem courier who needed money to bail his son out of some difficulty, and he wanted to set up a heist.”

“Not just wanted to, he went ahead with it.”

“I remember you told me the story to make an interesting point about the importance of a jury’s emotional reaction to the defendant.”

“Exactly,” said Thorne, more warmly now.

The emotional basis of verdicts wasn’t the point Gurney cared about, but he knew Thorne did and that quoting him would make him more willing to talk.

“I was wondering,” said Gurney in the tone of an eager student, “could you tell me the story again?”

“I’m crushed for time, but . . . alright, short version. It was a major robbery-and-murder case. Prosecution had a seemingly airtight case. A precious gems courier is held up in a parking lot, gets robbed of an attaché case containing three million bucks’ worth of emeralds. He gets a punch in the face, and the lot attendant is shot dead. The heist team gets away with the emeralds. But then the courier ID’s the heist driver as a guy who’d been following him for a few days. He gives the cops a picture he says he took of the guy on the street. And he gives the cops a plate number for the getaway car. Plate number turns out to be for a car registered to a local scumbag involved in various nasty activities, the nicest of which was fencing high-end jewelry. The scumbag had no solid alibi, and the guy the courier ID’d as the driver turned out to be the scumbag’s right-hand man. The DA had a very persuasive case. At this point, I am the scumbag’s attorney. The DA offered us a reasonable plea deal, and—given the evidentiary lay of the land, the unsavoriness of my client, and the likelihood of a murder conviction for the dead parking lot attendant—I recommended that he accept it. He refused. He insisted he’d been set up by a business rival, guy by the name of Jimmy Peskin. He gave me a blank check to get to the truth. And I did.”

This was the part of the story that Thorne liked, and his pleasure in telling it enlivened his voice. “The real story began with the gem courier’s son. The kid had been hired by a top L.A. law firm. But—major but—he had problems with gambling, coke, and hookers. His gambling had gotten him into significant debt with a mob guy who was demanding immediate payment or pictures would appear on the internet that would end the kid’s career. The kid went to Dad. Dad, desperate to get his son out of trouble, approached a guy whose street rep suggested he might be open to . . . an arrangement. This guy was Jimmy Peskin, major business rival of my client. Dad proposed a jewel heist to Peskin with a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds—providing that Dad incriminate my client by giving the police a false ID of the driver, a false plate number and description of the getaway car, a bullshit story about the driver having followed him, et cetera. Bottom line? Our presentation at my guy’s trial incorporated enough of what we discovered about Peskin to create a textbook example of reasonable doubt. In fact, the court reporters found our case a hell of a lot more persuasive than the prosecutor’s. One reporter called it a steel-trap indictment of Jimmy Peskin. But, like I told you before, the jury found my guy guilty on all counts, including the murder of the attendant. Because the greatest defense in the world is worthless if the jury thinks your client is a scumbag.”

Gurney thought about it for a moment. “So, Peskin agreed to carry out the arranged heist and give the courier half the proceeds, on the condition that the courier tell the police a story that incriminated your client?”

“That’s how we explained the framing plot to the jury. But they didn’t buy it—for the simple reason that they found my client less appealing than Peskin. You win some, you lose some. Rarely for the right reasons. Fact of the criminal justice system. Fact of life, too. Have to go now, Gurney. Never keep a paying client waiting.”

Gurney sat back in the chair, gazing at the dead coals of yesterday’s fire. He was pondering what, for him, was the heart of the story—the deal Jimmy Peskin made with the desperate gem courier. Essentially, I’ll stage the robbery for you, if you give the police this phony account of what happened.

So, the courier got the money he wanted for his son—at the price of perjured testimony, an unjust murder conviction, and a dead parking lot attendant.

I’ll do what you want me to do, if you say what I want you to say.

He wondered if that basic quid pro quo could be the template underlying everything that had happened. Exactly what had been done and what had been said in return were yet to be determined, but the structure felt right.

The more he thought about it, the surer he became that there’d been some sort of deal at the root of the affair. A deal that led to six deaths: Lenny and Sonny Lerman, Ziko Slade, Bruno Lanka, Dominick Vesco, and Charlene Vesco. A tremor passed through him at the thought that Jack Hardwick might become the seventh.

The idea of losing Hardwick permanently led to another bleak issue weighing on his mind, his separation from Madeleine.

His departure felt less like a temper tantrum than the inevitable result of a fatal flaw in their marriage. But it was only a feeling. Rational thought on that subject was out of reach at that moment. He told himself there would be time enough to arrive at a clearer vision. If clarity was something he really wanted.

At the moment, he’d rather think about the beheading of Lenny Lerman or the bloody death of Charlene Vesco or just about anything other than the apparent collapse of his marriage.

67

AFTER GETTING A PAD FROM HIS SUITCASE UPSTAIRS AND a third cup of coffee from the kitchen, he took a seat at the dining room table and began making a list—partly of facts, partly of guesswork—to see if a new hypothesis might emerge.

It bothered him that he was turning again to the bogus satisfaction of list-making—a symptom of his isolation and a poor substitute for exposing his thoughts to an intelligent skeptic. But it was all he had. He put his notes in the present tense to make them feel more alive.

The list created more questions than answers.

Might the partner Lenny approached be the shadowy gangster at the edge of the Lerman family? What quid pro quo might that person have demanded in return for his help? Might it have involved Lenny claiming in his diary to have made certain threatening phone calls that he didn’t actually make? But if no extortion calls were made—or, to take it a step further, if no extortion plan existed at all—what did Lenny need a partner for?

The notion that the diary might be misleading struck Gurney as an intriguing premise for a new concept of the case. As a private record of Lerman’s thoughts and actions, including candid descriptions of his criminal intentions, its credibility had never been seriously challenged. Only the authenticity of his handwriting had been attested to. But if certain entries were lies—

Gurney’s train of thought was broken by a flash of light at the edge of his vision. He went to the dining room window, which faced a narrow cleared area next to the house and, beyond that, the forest. He watched for a long minute without seeing or hearing anything unusual.

As he was turning back to the table, he saw again, out of the corner of his eye, a split-second glint of light. Was it an unwelcome visitor with a flashlight? Or a post-concussion glitch in his optic nerve? This time he watched for a good ten minutes, but there were no more flashes.

The oddity of the experience put him on edge—and resurrected the memory of the first oddity he’d experienced at the lodge, the decapitated rabbit in his car. Both experiences occurred while Valdez was absent, supposedly away on some errand. He could feel the first inklings of paranoid speculation taking hold, and realized he needed to find a way to ground himself.

Although he could imagine the reassurances Emma Martin would give him about Valdez, he decided to call her anyway. It was yet another reminder of how sorely he was missing Hardwick’s combative responses to the excesses of his imagination.

“Hello, David. Right on time.”

“Sorry?”

“Marcus Thorne just told me about your conversation. He got the impression that you felt you were on to something. Which made me think I’d be hearing from you.”

“Did he tell you the gem courier story?”

“He did. But he has no idea how it applies to our case. And neither do I.”

“I’m not saying it provides a perfect template for what happened. However . . .” Gurney went on to recount his theory that Lerman might have sought someone’s help in a conspiracy against Slade, but the helper then took advantage of Lerman like Jimmy Peskin took advantage of the courier to incriminate a competitor.

“You’re saying this individual murdered Lenny, specifically to frame Ziko?”

“I’m saying it’s a scenario that fits what happened.”

“Are you implying that this individual was a competitor of Ziko’s?”

“Possibly.”

“A competitor in what sort of business?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. You may not be happy with the answer.”

“Don’t worry about my happiness.”

“One business comes to mind. A business with big money at stake, a business that attracts people willing to commit murder, a business in which Slade had a history of involvement.”

Emma’s soft voice hardened. “The drug business was part of Ziko’s past. It was a closed door.”

“Is it possible that you might be mistaken about that?”

“Is it possible that one of us is dreaming and that this conversation is not really happening? Many things are possible, but too absurd to consider.”

“Okay, let’s take drugs off the table and back up a little. If the goal of Lerman’s murder was the framing of Slade, which now seems more likely than not, something big must have been at stake to justify all the planning and effort involved. ‘Something big’ usually means money, power, revenge, or all three.”

“I understand, but if this hypothetical framer’s goal was to put Ziko in prison, why have him killed?”

“My first guess was to prevent his release in the event of his conviction being overturned. But it could also be that putting him in prison didn’t achieve its intended goal, and his ‘suicide’ was the backup plan.”

That comment produced a silence.

Gurney changed direction. “I’ve been thinking about Ian. Considering his closeness to Ziko, he might be in some danger.”

“He’s aware of that.”

“He doesn’t seem worried.”

“He’s not.”

“You don’t find his lack of concern . . . suspicious?”

“No.”

“You trust him with no reservations?”

“Apparently you don’t.”

“My experience tells me to follow the money. Ian’s multimillion-dollar windfall from Slade’s estate could be a significant motive.” He didn’t mention that the same motive applied to Emma.

She uttered a dismissive little laugh. “Do you really see Ian as an all-powerful crime lord who can reach into a high-security prison and execute someone?”

“A lot of money can buy a lot of influence. And speaking of Ian’s money, do you know what he plans to do with his inheritance?”

“He plans to give it away.”

“Sounds very generous.”

“He’s afraid of having more money than he needs. He considers wealth a kind of poison.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes.”

“Hell of a lot of faith you’re putting in a former drug addict.”

“He’s not the person he used to be.”

“You know, not all conversions are what they seem to be.”

She laughed. “Of course not. Most are nonsense. Oily righteousness. Bible-waving for ego and profit. The truth is, the deepest conversions are the quietest. They occur when something is seen that wasn’t seen before, a profound personal truth. The result is a new gentleness, a sense of the preciousness of life, the importance of service. It’s more about listening than proclaiming.”

“That’s what you see in Ian?”

“Yes.”

The certainty in her tone made further questioning pointless.

He thanked her and ended the call.

He wasn’t sure what he’d learned—perhaps only that Emma Martin was a lot more confident than he was about Ian Valdez’s sainthood.

68

AS HE WAS SITTING AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE, PONDERING his phone call with Emma, a wave of anxiety swept through him. He went to the window that provided a view of the forest area where he’d seen—or thought he’d seen—the flashes of light. He waited for several minutes and saw nothing peculiar, but his anxiety continued to grow.

He retrieved his holstered Glock from the upstairs bedroom, strapped it on, then loaded the spare magazine and slipped it into his pocket. In the face of an unknown enemy, it provided only a dubious sense of security, but something was better than nothing.

The downstairs windows had no blinds or curtains, creating a feeling of exposure that made him uncomfortable. He searched the closets for a solution, found some tablecloths, and hung them over the windows in the front room and the dining room, affixing them to the wall above each window with duct tape he found in a kitchen utility drawer.

Looking around at the covered windows brought back a childhood memory of creating an imaginary fort from a card table draped with a blanket and crawling into it and sitting there in the sheltered semidarkness, entering a world of adventure in which the fort became a cave or a teepee or a boat and he was far from home, free to embark on whatever adventure occurred to him. Under that table, under that blanket, in that fort or boat, there was no fear, no arguing parents, only freedom and the future.

A shrill whistle of wind in the chimney brought him back to the present. And the present brought with it a renewed awareness of the precariousness of his position, a sense of loneliness, and the thought of Hardwick on life support.

He got his phone and called the hospital.

No change. Condition critical. Vital signs unstable. The nurse’s tone was terse and suspicious. Understandably so, since the patient was responsible for two shooting deaths.

Gurney went from room to room, upstairs and downstairs, checking the window locks and door locks. He started a blaze in the fireplace and tried to relax. He went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. He wondered when Ian would return. More critically, he wondered how much faith he should be putting in Emma’s opinion of the enigmatic young man.

His thoughts were interrupted by his phone. The screen said it was A. Lerman.

“Hello, Adrienne, I was just—”

She cut him off, the words spilling out. “They’ve exhumed Dad’s body! For another autopsy! How can they do that without my permission? They didn’t even let me know—until now—and it’s already been done! What on earth is happening?”

“When you say that ‘they’ exhumed Lenny’s body, who do you mean?”

“The pathologist, the one at Slade’s trial. It was someone in his office who called me. As a courtesy, she said, as though I had no say in the matter, as though he wasn’t my father. And of course it was already done, all after the fact! They sent people out to the cemetery and dug up his grave and the pathologist did an autopsy. The woman who called me sounded pleasant, but it was that awful kind of pleasantness that doesn’t mean a thing. Do you know anything about this?”

“In criminal cases a county medical examiner has the right to issue a disinterment order and conduct an autopsy—or a second autopsy—without the consent of any third party. This can occur if new evidence arises, or if there’s a well-founded belief that the autopsy will lead to the discovery of evidence sufficient to alter the disposition of the case.”

“Does this mean they’ve discovered something new about Dad’s death?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Remember I told you I was studying the GPS logs of trips he made in the last weeks of his life? Well, it appears that some of those trips may have been to medical offices. In fact, I shared that information with Dr. Loeffler as a matter of course, but I feel blindsided by his proceeding without telling either of us. Did the person you spoke to at Loeffler’s office give you any information on the results of the autopsy?”

“No. Nothing. I asked, and she said that the information was being provided to the district attorney’s office, and I should check with them. But I have a feeling no one is going to tell me anything!”

“Dealing with these people can be infuriating. But I’ll find out whatever I can, Adrienne, and I’ll get back to you.”

Gurney had no illusions that having prodded Loeffler to perform the autopsy would make him privy to its results. So, some form of subterfuge would be necessary.

He hid his caller ID and placed a call to Loeffler’s office.

It was answered by a cool female voice. “Medical examiner’s office. May I help you?”

Gurney spoke like a man on an important mission. “This is Jim Holland at the North Country Star. We’re about to go to press with a story, and we’d like to get Dr. Loeffler’s comment on one of the key facts we’re including.”

She hesitated. “Your name again?”

“Jim Holland—like the Netherlands. I’m assistant managing editor here at the Star. I’ve been in touch with your office before.”

“Just a moment.”

A minute or so later, he heard the electronic click of the call being transferred. It rang again, once, and was picked up.

“Dr. Loeffler speaking. What’s this about?”

“Jim Holland here at the North Country Star. We’ve received some information regarding Lenny Lerman, the murder victim. According to our source, he suffered from an advanced form of brain cancer. Can you provide us with the basic medical details?”

“The autopsy results will be made public in due course.”

“I appreciate that, Doctor. In the meantime, perhaps you could simply confirm the details already in our possession.”

Loeffler said nothing, which Gurney took as an opening to proceed. “Our source told us that Mr. Lerman’s cancer was late-stage and terminal. Are we likely to run into trouble with that description?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“I just want to be sure we’re not making any embarrassing medical errors. Our source described the cancer as a particularly aggressive type of meningioma. Can we print that?”

“Not if you care anything about accuracy.”

“The North Country Star cares a great deal about accuracy, Doctor, and so do I. Which is why I was hoping you’d be willing to put us on the right path.”

Loeffler emitted the weary sigh of a professor dealing with a tiresome student.

“Inoperable final-stage glioblastoma,” he said and ended the call.

Gurney wasn’t surprised by Loeffler’s diagnosis. But having his guess confirmed gave his faith in his own hypothesizing a much-needed boost.

The location of Lerman’s cancer suggested a possible link to his decapitation. Did the murderer know about Lerman’s terminal condition and want to hide it from the police? If so, why? And what role could the finger amputations have played in that concealment?

As Gurney was about to put that last question aside, a possibility occurred to him. The finger amputations might have been designed to create the exact impression that they did—the intent to delay identification of the body. That impression had, in fact, eliminated speculation by Rexton PD and Cam Stryker about other possible reasons for the decapitation.

Gurney felt that his feet were on solid ground, and that gave him an appetite for more progress, along with a more dangerous appetite—for confrontation.

Theorizing about the nature of a crime was a necessary process, but there came a point in every investigation when progress depended on identifying a prime suspect. And there were occasional investigations in which the only way to identify that individual was to provoke him or her into making mistakes.

As he considered how he could apply that kind of pressure to his elusive target, he concluded that RAM-TV—specifically, Controversial Perspectives—offered the best opportunity. Their philosophy of provocative insinuation created the right environment for what he had in mind, and they certainly wouldn’t object to his presenting supposition as fact.

He found Sam Smollett’s cell number and made the call.

She sounded surprised to hear from him, but definitely interested.

He described the kind of interview he had in mind, emphasizing the sensational aspects of what he wanted to share with the RAM audience and its potential for bringing a murderer out of hiding—an event that RAM could take credit for.

“That’s fantastic, David! A great counterpoint to our recent interview with Cam Stryker. According to her, you’re a wanted man.” Smollett made that sort of man sound like the world’s most exciting commodity. “We’ll mention that you’re doing the interview from an undisclosed location. A nice touch of cloak-and-dagger. District attorney versus rogue detective. I love it!”

“Sounds good to me, Sam.”

“Okay! Let’s do it!”

“Now?”

“Absolutely! I’ll set up a Zoom call with you. I’ll handle the RAM side of the interview. I’ll record it all, then edit out my questions, and tonight Tarla and Jordan will ask the same questions, and your answers will come across as live.”

“Is that legitimate?”

“Legitimate?” She made it sound like a word from a long-forgotten language. “The lawyers can worry about that. More importantly, do you have a black shirt, black sweater, anything like that?”

“Maybe a black tee shirt. Why?”

“Black conveys a tough, no-nonsense attitude. Street-level gravitas. You have any neck or forearm tattoos?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Give me your email, and I’ll send you the Zoom link. Then go put that tee shirt on.”

Five minutes later, having shed his flannel shirt for a black tee, he was at the dining room table, sitting in front of his laptop screen, gazing at a sharply featured female face topped with an auburn brush cut. The smile on the face was animated more by hungry anticipation than by friendliness.

“You look great, David. You ready?”

“Yes.”

“Keep that stern edge on your voice. It’s perfect. Okay, this is it.”

She paused, then spoke in a dramatic newscaster’s voice. “Good evening! We open tonight’s edition of Controversial Perspectives with a bombshell interview with former NYPD detective, Dave Gurney. Gurney has declared war not only on the official version of the Slade murder case, but on DA Cam Stryker herself, who in our last interview described him as a ‘wanted’ man. So, let’s get right to it! Detective Gurney, welcome to Controversial Perspectives.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ve made it clear you have no faith in the DA’s investigation of Lenny Lerman’s murder, so you’ve been conducting your own. What have you discovered?”

“So far, four key facts. One, Lerman had inoperable brain cancer with less than a month to live, which opens the case to other interpretations. Two, his diary entries, accepted at face value by the DA, may have been intentionally deceptive. Three, the DA seems hell-bent on blaming the prison death of Ziko Slade on suicide, even though the people closest to him insist he was murdered. Four, the original Lerman investigation team screwed up repeatedly. They missed the significance of Lerman’s decapitation; they used his unreliable diary to give Slade a motive for murder; and they’ve closed their eyes to events that point to a cover-up—such as repeated attempts to stop my own investigation.”

“Wow! That’s quite an indictment of law enforcement! But I have to ask—why would they hang on to a theory that’s as weak as you say it is?”

“Ineptitude. Ambition. Desperation.”

“Desperation?”

“A desperate fear of their mistakes being exposed. Mistakes make lousy rungs on the promotion ladder.”

“Okay, Detective Gurney, one final question. How close do you think you are to identifying the criminal mastermind behind it all?”

“Very close. But ‘criminal mastermind’ is not the right description.”

“Give me a better one.”

“A pathetic homicidal psycho who’s about to be taken down.”

GURNEY KEPT REASSURING himself that what he’d said was purely a tactical assault, designed to provoke the perp into a selfidentifying reaction. But he didn’t entirely believe it. There was too much adrenaline in the experience, too great an illusion of power.

Still, it was a defendable approach. Similar approaches in other investigations had paid off. The feelings that went along with it were arguably the natural accompaniments of any aggressive initiative. He resolved to stop thinking about it.

He went to the kitchen and made himself some coffee. Striving for a sense of normalcy, he brought his cup to the dining room table and took down the tablecloth drapes covering the windows. The late morning sun was high enough in the sky to brighten the room, eliminating the need for interior lights and the fishbowl feeling that came with them.

He was just about to take his first sip of coffee when his sense of normalcy was ended by a glimpse of movement in the woods beyond the clearing. He put down his cup and sat very still, peering out into the hemlocks. Again, a slight movement, little more than a shadow a bit darker than the shadows around it, appearing and disappearing.

He slowly pushed himself back from the table, went to the front room, and put on his jacket, but not his gloves. He could handle the Glock better without them. He knew from his previous visit that at the rear of the kitchen there was a short hallway that led to a pantry and a back door—which seemed a safer exit than the more exposed front door. He walked quickly into the woods behind the tool shed and made his way toward the general area where he had spotted the possible intruder.

The forest was cold and silent. The dark mass of evergreen branches blocked the sun that had brightened the clearing, and the ice underfoot made walking tricky. Stopping every few yards to listen, he realized he was getting close to the scene of Lenny Lerman’s murder.

Soon he caught sight of the giant pine that served as a forest landmark for Lerman’s temporary grave.

Holding the Glock in a ready-to-fire grip, he moved slowly forward.

As he got closer to the gravesite, he noticed some odd little protrusions on its icy surface.

Moving still closer, gooseflesh crept up his back at the dawning recognition of what he was looking at.

Ten fingers, sticking up out of the ground like frozen claws.

69

BACK IN THE LODGE, GURNEY RETREATED TO HIS BEDROOM with his Glock, phone, and laptop. Under normal circumstances, he’d call Rexton PD or the nearest state police barracks, report what he’d found, and lead the responders to the site, but these circumstances were far from normal. Announcing his location to law enforcement could result in his being detained immediately at the request of Cam Stryker. With police involvement off the table, his next option would have been to call Jack Hardwick, but just the thought of that now brought a rush of guilt and fear.

He thought about the interview Sam Smollett had recorded with him that morning and wondered if he should call her back with news of his grotesque discovery, but he decided to leave well enough alone. Thinking of the interview reminded him that he’d meant to call Madeleine and alert her to the elevated risk level his verbal attack on the perp might create.

He was afraid she wouldn’t pick up, but she did.

“It’s me,” he said, the affectionate familiarity of it striking an odd note. “I wanted to alert you to something—warn you, actually.” He paused.

She remained silent.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve come to the conclusion there’s only one way to end this case—and that’s to knock the enemy out of his comfort zone.”

“You’ve identified the enemy?”

“Not yet. Anonymity is part of the perp’s comfort zone—being able to pull the strings from the shadows, feel powerful, feel in control. So I decided to hit that comfort zone with a wrecking ball—to create rage and force errors.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I gave an interview to RAM that will air tonight. The interview is the wrecking ball, and the reaction may be explosive. I assume I’ll be the target of that reaction, but it might be a good idea for you to request police protection.”

She said nothing.

He added, “Poking a sharp stick into a bear’s den is not my favorite form of research, but sometimes it’s the only way to get a look at the bear.”

“You mean, it’s the only way you can think of—and since your thinking is so far superior to everyone else’s, it stands to reason that your way is the best way. You never question whether your goal makes any sense to begin with—or whether you have the right to expose other people to the fallout from your obsessions.”

He bit his lip to stifle the urge to defend himself. “I didn’t call to argue. I just wanted to let you know about a possibly dangerous situation and to suggest that you might want to ask the sheriff’s department for temporary protection.”

“I appreciate your concern.” Her flat tone made the words meaningless.

After a few seconds of silence, she ended the call.

He stood motionless in the middle of the bedroom, more baffled than ever by his once close relationship with this woman. Was that relationship actually with her, or was it with his idea of her? Where had that idea come from? Was it based on something real in her? Or was it an artifact of what he needed her to be? Had he, like his childhood self, been sitting in a make-believe boat with a make-believe companion?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an approaching vehicle. He hurried down the hall to Slade’s former bedroom, whose windows offered a view of the driveway, and saw Valdez’s white pickup approaching the lodge. A minute later, he heard the front door opening and closing and footsteps moving across the front room in the direction of the kitchen. He went downstairs and found Valdez unpacking a supermarket bag.

“I’m sorry to be away so long. Among many other things, an appointment with an attorney. Interesting profession. Everything in writing, because there is so much wrong with people. So much twisting and grabbing and lying. Attorneys, police, locks on doors—all necessary for the same reason.”

Gurney nodded vaguely, then waited until Valdez had finished putting away his groceries before speaking. “Something peculiar happened a little while ago.”

He went on to describe the event—from the movements he saw in the forest to his discovery under the giant hemlock.

“You have reported this?”

“Not yet. My relationship with law enforcement right now is . . . complicated.”

“You’re sure of what you saw?”

“Yes.”

“You were very close? It was clear? No chance it was something else?”

“No chance.”

“How could such a thing be?”

“It seems that the person who cut Lerman’s fingers off kept them.”

“Kept them for this? To stick them in the ground? Why?”

“One more eerie event to scare me off?”

“You’re sure this is aimed at you, not at me?”

“Fairly sure.”

“But if you didn’t happen to notice the movement, you wouldn’t have gone out to investigate. Then what?”

“I suspect further efforts would have been made to get my attention.”

“Hmm. So, this person who kept the fingers—he knows you’re here?”

“Apparently.”

“Perhaps he is still in the forest?”

“I have no idea.”

“I must see this for myself.”

“Whatever you wish.”

Glock in hand, again using the back door, Gurney led the way from the lodge into the woods. Proceeding cautiously over the slippery ground, peering silently in every direction, he eventually caught sight of the landmark pine, and they made their way toward the place where Lerman had been beheaded.

The closer they got, the more perplexed Gurney became. There was nothing unusual about the gravesite. There were no protrusions. Nothing sticking up out of the frozen earth. No claw-like fingers. Nothing.

He stared at the ice-covered ground in disbelief. He stepped closer, holding the Glock in his right hand and with his left using the flashlight app on his phone to examine the shadowed ground. Nothing. Not even any sign that the coating of ice had been disturbed.

Trying to make sense of the situation, he guessed that the fingers must have been set upright on the surface rather than implanted in the earth, allowing for their removal without a trace. Meaning that someone had been watching, making sure he saw them, then taking them away. At least, that was what his rational mind was telling him. But another voice inside him was telling him something else.

Maybe they were never there to begin with. Maybe too much stress and too little sleep too soon after a concussion are taking a toll.

It was an explanation he didn’t want to believe. Few things frightened him more than the possibility that he might be subject to hallucinations. Faulty eyewitness accounts of crimes proved time and again that people under stress often saw—and were able to describe in precise detail—things that didn’t exist. Add to that stress the disruption of a traumatic brain injury and God only knew how messed up one’s perceptions might be.

Valdez eyed the ground but showed no reaction—unless an absence of expression under such strange circumstances was itself a significant reaction.

Gurney pointed to the area where he was sure he’d seen the fingers.

“They were right there.”

He heard an insistence in his voice that sounded disturbingly fragile.

70

GURNEY SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY SEARCHING FOR EVIDENCE that would support what had happened. Treating the location around the hemlock as a crime scene, he followed a spiral search pattern, proceeding slowly around the central point in an expanding circle—and then repeating it, expanding it farther and farther into the surrounding forest.

When dusk arrived, all he had to show for his efforts were a sore ankle from twisting it on an exposed tree root and photographs he’d taken of several areas of disturbed pine needles, photographs he then had to admit were meaningless. He deleted them from his phone.

At dinner that evening, Valdez maintained a stolid silence, except for announcing that he needed to make another trip, this time to Emma’s recovery center, and would be away until the following day.

“Someone is arriving. I try to make new residents comfortable. It’s part of what I do, part of my job.”

“Are you a paid for your work?”

The question elicited a rare smile. “I am paid with peace of mind.”

After clearing the table, putting the dishes in the kitchen sink, and asking Gurney if he would be alright by himself, Valdez departed in his pickup truck.

Gurney remained at the table, half exhausted and half energized by anxiety. Eventually he got up and double-checked the locks on the doors and windows, upstairs and downstairs, then returned to the table and opened his laptop.

He spent the next hour searching for information on stress-induced and injury-induced hallucinations. He learned a lot, none of it calming. In fact, the more he learned, the more adrift he felt. A flesh-and-blood antagonist could be found, confronted, and defeated. Physical assaults could be parried. Physical evidence could be collected and analyzed. But if the assaults, if the evidence, were only in one’s mind, what then?

He shut down his computer and brought it up to his bedroom. The windows had blinds, which he lowered before turning on the bedside lamp.

The sight of the bed reminded him how weary he felt. He lay down on the soft quilt, hoping to put aside, at least for a little while, the menace of the day. But his mind was still churning with possibilities. Suppose the disappearing fingers were real, after all. Were they intended to be a confidence destroyer? A paranoia inducer? Or a distracting jab, setting up a knockout punch? The questions had no answers. They became increasingly disjointed and led only to an uneasy sleep and distressing dreams.

The first of these was similar to the Blackmore Mountain one he had a few nights before. Sleet is pelting the windshield of the Outback. The red tow truck comes out of nowhere, crashing into him, ramming him off the road. The truck stops and Sonny Lerman emerges from it, laughing. Gurney sees himself firing a pistol at Lerman, Lerman being knocked back into the truck. He sees himself approaching the truck, looking inside. Jack Hardwick’s bleeding eyes look back at him. Hardwick says, “You’ll be the death of me, Sherlock.”

The dream kept repeating itself, until it was transformed into another dream entirely, a dream about Madeleine. When he awoke at dawn, it was from a dream so sad that his eyes were wet with tears—yet a moment later whatever caused his weeping had dissolved beyond recall. In its wake was a lingering and irresistible urge to visit his home.

IT WAS MIDMORNING when he arrived at his secluded parking spot. The sky was clear, the sun was strong, and ice-melt was dripping from the branches of the evergreens as he made his way up the steep slope, carrying only his laptop.

Everything at the campsite seemed in order. He opened the tent flap, got the propane heater going, then went over to the place in the trees that offered a view of the house and the surrounding property. He could see the watchers’ car down by the barn and Madeleine’s rented red Crosstrek by the asparagus bed. An old blue pickup truck was parked by the chicken coop, and a man in rough-looking farm clothes was setting a four-by-four wooden post in a hole not far from the coop. A dozen or so similar posts had already been set in the pasture below the coop. Additional post holes had been dug every eight feet or so in a loose curve around the far side of the coop. The sight of the work in progress gave Gurney a complicated feeling he had a hard time identifying. Loneliness and resentment were part of it.

He returned to the tent, went inside, and sat in the folding chair—half of him trying to understand his emotional reaction, half of him trying to ignore it. In support of the second half, he opened his laptop and began reviewing his lists and notes, trying to extract a coherent picture from that blizzard of facts and suppositions. But as before, the puzzle pieces refused to coalesce. In his frustration, a radical though occurred to him.

Suppose none of the “facts” were true.

Suppose Ziko Slade had no dark secret, no past encounter with someone called Sally Bones. Suppose Lenny Lerman was never told anything by someone called Jingo. Suppose the calls Lerman made to Slade had nothing to do with blackmail. Suppose they took the form of fake spam calls, calls that Slade would have quickly forgotten. That would finally explain the discrepancy between the phone company’s records and Slade’s insistence that he’d never received any blackmail calls. Suppose there’d never been any extortion plot at all. Suppose the diary was a pack of lies. Suppose the reason no coherent picture was emerging from the facts was that most of them weren’t “facts” at all.

It was a startling notion. But if it was true, what solid ground was left to stand on?

Well, thought Gurney, if one was faced with lies, perhaps the best approach would be to ask, what did the lies have in common? In other words, what underlying truth would they have been designed to conceal?

That notion took him back to Marcus Thorne’s story of the gem courier—his lies about recognizing one of the stickup men, about being followed by him, about having taken his picture, about the plate number of the getaway car. One thing they all had in common was that they been dictated to him by a confederate as the price of his cooperation in the phony heist—a confederate with his own agenda.

I’ll do what you want me to do, if you say what I want you to say.

If that arrangement were the skeleton of the Lerman case, then the confederate’s private agenda was the framing of Slade for a grisly murder by fabricating a motive: the elimination of a blackmailer in order to preserve his whitewashed image. The very motive that Stryker had used so effectively to win a conviction.

The result was not only Slade’s incarceration but the demolition of his image as a reformed sinner. Was it possible that both of those outcomes were equally intended? Or even that the latter was more important than the first?

If so, it put the mystery of Slade’s prison murder in an interesting new light and took Gurney back once again to Emma’s question: Why, after all the effort of framing Slade for murder, did the perp have him killed?

All he could think of at the time was the prevention of Slade’s release from prison or the possibility that the framing had failed to accomplish the framer’s goal. But suppose the goal had been the tarring of Slade’s shiny image?

Then the question would become, where exactly was the failure?

Certainly not in the media coverage of the affair, which put Slade in the ugliest light possible, nor in the general public’s perception. Media and public alike were more than ready to see Slade as a murdering hypocrite. So, if the goal of image destruction had in some way failed, it must have failed with a much narrower audience—but an audience of enormous importance to the framer.

It was clear that it had failed utterly with at least one person, Emma Martin—whose unshakable faith in Ziko Slade was responsible for Gurney’s own involvement. In that context, Slade’s prison murder could be seen as a final attempt to defame the man in her mind with a narrative of guilt-driven suicide.

This new way of understanding the case excited Gurney, but it raised a big question. Why would destroying the image of Slade in the mind of Emma Martin be that important? Why would a therapist’s opinion of her client matter to anyone else? Under what conceivable circumstances would changing that opinion be worth killing for?

Then, quite suddenly, he realized he’d gotten it all wrong, and the simple truth came to him like a flash of sunlight.

71

HOW COULD HE HAVE MISSED IT? IT HAD BEEN STARING him in the face from the beginning. Maybe that was the problem. It was too obvious.

On the drive from the campsite hill back to the lodge, he went over the details of the case once again—to be sure that his solution could explain everything, from Lenny’s beheading to Sonny’s shooting to the repeated assaults on his own sanity and security. By the time he turned into the lodge driveway, he was 90 percent sure all the pieces of the puzzle were in place. He realized, however, that understanding what had happened was different from being able to prove it. And it didn’t provide a roadmap for what to do next.

He parked next to Valdez’s pickup, checked the time—4:05 p.m.—and went into the lodge. There was a fire blazing in the front room fireplace and the scent of cherrywood smoke in the air. Hearing a vacuum upstairs, he went to the kitchen to make coffee. While it was brewing, he returned to the front room, settled down in one of the armchairs by the fire, and tried to figure out the best path forward.

The first decision facing him was with whom to share his new understanding of the case. As he weighed the options, he found himself once again sorely missing Hardwick’s aggressive input. It was easy to be seduced by one’s own ego-driven preferences when no one was there to point out their weaknesses.

At least he knew better than to visit Stryker and, without proof, present a narrative that undermined her greatest prosecutorial success. Same applied to the Rexton PD and the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, both of which had a stake in the status quo.

There were other interested parties who had a right to know the truth—Howard Manx at the insurance company, Kyra Barstow, Adrienne Lerman, Emma Martin, and Ian Valdez. They also had a right to see the proof. But there was a catch. To get the proof, he’d need to tell the story.

“Lost in your thoughts?”

He looked up and saw Valdez in the doorway. He hadn’t heard him coming downstairs, hadn’t even noticed when the vacuum had been turned off. Lost, indeed.

“Good way of putting it.”

“Something you want to talk about?”

He made a quick, if not altogether comfortable, decision.

“Something I need to talk about. And you need to hear.”

His expression as impassive as ever, Valdez sat in the armchair facing Gurney.

Beset with misgivings, Gurney nevertheless pressed forward. “I think I understand what this case has been about from the beginning.”

Valdez watched him intently. “From the murder of Lenny Lerman?”

“Starting at least a month before that. It all began when Lerman discovered he was about to die from brain cancer. He had no money, no life insurance, no relationship with a son whose respect he was desperate for, and no time left to gain that respect. He had reached the lowest point of a sad life. In the midst of his depression, something occurred to him—a way that he might still win that son’s respect, even perhaps his love. But he wouldn’t be able to do it alone. He’d need help—a special favor, the kind of favor a certain distant relative might be willing to provide. The relative was a much-feared man, but desperation emboldened Lenny, and he approached him. The relative agreed to do what Lenny asked, perhaps in part because Lenny was part of the family, however distant, but more importantly, because he saw a way to use the situation to destroy the reputation of someone he hated—Ziko Slade.”

Valdez’s unblinking gaze grew more intense.

Gurney went on. “The man agreed to help Lenny on the condition that Lenny would pretend he knew something terrible about Slade and was planning to extort a fortune from him. He told Lenny to start keeping a diary, and he told him what to write in it. He told him what to say to his boss and to his son and daughter. He told him how to handle three phone calls to Slade and how to describe them in his diary. He told him to come here to Slade’s property the day before Thanksgiving, a day he knew that Slade would be occupied in the kitchen, preparing the following day’s dinner. He had an associate meet Lenny here, knock him unconscious, drag him to a secluded spot, behead him, cut off his fingers, partially bury him, and plant all the pieces of evidence that later led to Slade’s conviction.”

Valdez was sitting rigidly upright in his chair. “This relative of Lenny’s, instead of doing whatever favor he’d promised, had him killed as part of his own plot against Ziko. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Not exactly. In fact, Lenny’s murder wasn’t really a murder at all.”

Confusion entered Valdez’s eyes. “Not a murder? What was it?”

“The one thing everyone was sure it couldn’t have been. Suicide.”

“You just told me that an associate of the relative killed Lenny by cutting off his head? How can that be suicide?”

“Because that was the favor Lenny had asked for.”

“To be killed?”

“In a way, he was already a dead man. His cancer would have killed him very soon. All he was giving up was another three or four weeks of life, most of which would have been pure misery. Rather than suffer, he chose a quick, painless death—and an opportunity to give his son and daughter a million dollars.”

“Through an insurance scam?”

“Because of the terminal cancer, he couldn’t get ordinary life insurance, but he was able to get a large accidental death policy. In most of those policies murder is considered an accidental death, but suicide isn’t. That’s the reason Lenny asked his head be removed—fear that if the terminal cancer were discovered the insurance company would suspect that the murder was actually an arranged suicide and refuse payment.”

Valdez nodded slowly. “So, Lenny had nothing to lose and a lot of money to gain.”

“Money he hoped would buy the respect of his son, the thing he’d always wanted more than anything else.”

Valdez’s nodding gave way to growing confusion in his eyes. “It is a strange but believable story of why Lerman was killed. But it tells me nothing of why the Lerman relative wanted Ziko blamed for the murder. What explains such hatred?”

“Fathers and sons,” said Gurney, looking into the fire. “Relationships between fathers and sons have been on my mind from the beginning. But I didn’t realize until today that a father-and-son relationship held the key to the entire case.”

“What does Lerman’s relative’s desire to frame Ziko have to do with fathers and sons?”

“He framed Ziko because he believed that Ziko had stolen his son.”

“What are you talking about? What son?”

“The son who turned his back on him. The son who stepped away from the family, away from the ties of blood. The son who called Ziko Slade his new father.”

72

FOR A LONG WHILE VALDEZ SAT PERFECTLY STILL. HE opened his mouth twice, as if to speak, then closed it. Finally, without looking at Gurney, he asked, “How do you know this to be true?”

“It’s the only explanation that accounts for everything.”

“You have found evidence that he had Ziko murdered?”

“Not yet. But I will.”

Valdez shook his head. “There will be no evidence.”

Gurney stared at him. There was a strange transformation occurring in him—a kind of hardening of his eyes and posture, a readying for battle. The impression was not of a man putting on armor, but of letting a softer outer layer melt away, revealing the steel beneath it.

“Why do you say that?”

“He is a powerful man with powerful protectors. There is never evidence of what he has done.”

“Powerful people can be arrested and prosecuted like anyone else.”

“How many international assassins have you arrested and prosecuted?”

Gurney said nothing.

Valdez continued. “There are people high in government and world finance whose reliance on his expertise put him beyond the reach of any ordinary justice system.”

“What if I were to go straight to the media and tell the story to the whole world?”

“Your first problem would be his name. He has none. Actually, he has so many, it is the same as none. Dimitri Filker, Gligor Leski, Jurgen Kleinst, Hamid Bokar, Piotar Malenkov, Ivan Kurilenko, Gerhard Bosch. A hundred more.”

“And Valdez? Is that one of them?”

“No. Valdez was my mother’s name. Everything he owns, he owns in someone else’s name.”

“What name is on his driver’s license? His social security card?”

“He doesn’t have either one. Officially, he doesn’t exist. But his anonymity would not be your only problem, if you took your story to the media. A direct attack on him could result in your disappearance, or your wife’s disappearance, or your son’s disappearance. Now, or a month from now, or a year from now. He forgets nothing. Everything must be repaid.”

“That doesn’t leave me with a lot of options.”

Something in Gurney’s tone caused Valdez to regard him more closely. “No, there are not many options.”

That led to a speculative silence, broken by Gurney.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Apart from his being an embodiment of everything evil?” Valdez’s gaze returned to the fire, his voice now oddly bland. “He’s a middle-aged man of average height, soft-spoken. He prefers dark places to bright ones, a genetic defect in his vision. Light is painful to his eyes. He goes outdoors only when his business requires it. He spends most of his time in the shadowy place where he keeps his pets.”

“His pets?”

“The lowest level of the house is full of snakes. He collects and breeds them. Constrictors and pit vipers. Many species, with two things in common. They are all deadly. And they can all digest animal bodies, even bones. When they eat their prey, all that is left are a few pellets of hair.”

“Sounds creepy.”

“More creepy is his excitement watching this happen.” Valdez paused, the tiniest tremor in his expression. “Apart from that, he appears normal, just an ordinary man, unremarkable in every way.” Valdez paused again. “Except when he eats. He gnaws on his food like a rat.”

It took Gurney a while to assimilate all this.

“Is he as wary of you as you are of him?”

“He is wary of everyone. No one can get near him who he has not invited. As for me, he regards me as a piece of his property that he is determined to regain control of. Everything you have said about his attacks on Ziko proves this. I believe you because I know this man. I can feel in my heart that he would frame Ziko for murder, then set up his faked suicide—all to destroy Ziko in my eyes, to destroy my belief that a new life is possible, to make me come back to him. It is the strongest desire in him—to be in control of everything and everyone.”

“It may also be his weak point,” said Gurney. “It could be our way in.”

“Getting in is difficult. Getting close to him is more difficult. Getting close with a weapon is impossible. There are guards. There are metal detectors. There are the snakes. So many snakes. It is not an ordinary house.”

“So, it would seem that we need to get an invitation.”

“Easy for me. Not so easy for you.”

Gurney got up from his armchair and began pacing around the room, in the hope that the movement might give rise to ideas that wouldn’t have occurred to him sitting in one spot.

After circling the room several times, Gurney stopped in a far corner, then turned to Valdez. “Suppose you wanted to kill me . . . and make my body disappear. Is that something he’d be willing to help you with?”

Valdez looked up from the fire.

“Possibly. But it’s hard to deceive him. Many people have died trying. He enjoys killing people who have lied to him.”

“It sounds like disabling his defenses will be like defusing a bomb.”

“A bomb with many triggers.”

“So,” said Gurney, beginning again his slow pacing around the room, “we have to construct a lie that he’d be eager to believe.”

AN HOUR LATER, they had agreed on the details of that lie, on a dark favor Valdez would ask for, and on a final risky stratagem that would neutralize the man toward whom Valdez appeared to bear an implacable hatred.

He stood in front of the fireplace, a few feet from Gurney, his phone in his hand.

“I must prepare you for something you may find disturbing. In this phone call, I will be the person I once was, the person he wants me to be again. You understand?”

“I think so.”

“You will naturally hear only my part of the conversation, but I will try to say enough so that it will make sense to you.” With a tiny tic at the corner of his eye—the only hint of anxiety Gurney could see—Valdez entered a number and waited.

“Yes,” he said a few seconds later. “It’s Ivan.”

Interesting, thought Gurney, wondering exactly when the young man had dropped the “v” and turned the Russian name into a British one.

“That’s right,” said Valdez into the phone. “I need to talk to him.”

He waited. At least two minutes passed before he spoke again.

“Yes, it’s me. I’ve got a situation here. An ex-cop, David Gurney, has been poking around the Slade-Lerman case. He’s come to see me a few times. His story at first was that he thought Slade was innocent and was trying to exonerate him. He asked me for some money for expenses. Okay, I thought, I’ll give him a couple of grand, see what he can find out. He comes back a week or two later, says he needs five grand. I’m thinking this is bullshit. But I’m curious where he’s going with this, so I give him the five, let him think I’m easy. Week later he comes to me again, says there may be a problem. Says he’s finding out things that could incriminate me for the murder of Lerman. He says that would also finger me for framing Slade, which is fucking insane. Makes me think my life would be simpler if I never met Ziko Slade. No matter. Water under the fucking bridge. Anyway, after Slade hangs himself, Gurney comes to me and says he found out I’ll be picking up nine mil from Slade’s estate, and that’s going to point the finger at me for sure, but he can make that go away, and all he needs is a hundred grand. But I can see in his fucking eyes that the hundred grand would just be the first bite.”

Valdez was silent for nearly a minute, the phone pressed to his ear, his dark eyes gleaming in the firelight.

When he spoke again, it was with a harsh dismissiveness. “No, no, no, it’s not all about the money. Listen to me. I don’t care about chasing money, I don’t care about spending money, I don’t care about how much money I have. But someone tries to pick my pocket, I’ll cut his fucking hand off. Fucker thinks he can sucker me out of a hundred grand with some shit about protecting me from a frame job? That’s one fucking serious mistake.”

He was silent for maybe half a minute, listening intently to the voice on the phone, before responding in a less excited but no less menacing tone.

“You ask what’s my bottom line? Simple. This fucking Gurney is not what he seems to be. He’s no boy-scout detective. He’s a goddamn leech, trying to take what’s mine. So, I figure his time is up.”

Ten seconds of listening.

“Yeah, of course I can handle it.”

Another ten seconds of listening.

“I got no problem taking care of it personally. In fact, I insist on it. My finger on the trigger. No other fucking way.”

Five seconds of listening.

“What I was hoping was maybe, as a favor, you could help with the disposal.”

The phone conversation went on for several more minutes. Gurney gathered from Valdez’s side of it that the “disposal” was not only agreed to but that the arrangement would proceed that very night. Valdez would ensure that Gurney would be present at the lodge. Two cars would be sent, one to transport Gurney as a prisoner and one for Valdez.

At the end of the call, Valdez expressed his gratitude for the favor in the tone a humble priest might use to address the pope.

“I HOPE YOU didn’t overdo it,” Gurney said later as they sat by the fireplace, reviewing the situation and preparing for what was to come.

“Overdoing it is not a problem. He regards such behavior as a sign of fear and respect—acknowledgments of his power. He is God. We are his subjects.”

“As his son, you must be a bit more than that.”

“True. My special role is to be an extension of him. I am supposed to be his hand. The hand of God, with no will of my own. The greatest sin is to forget that he is God and that I am just his hand. Or perhaps just the finger on the trigger.”

“Listening to what you said on the phone, I got the impression you were insisting on being the one with the right to kill me.”

“It sounds like a contradiction, but I know how he hears things. He would hear what I said not as a challenge to his power but as an acceptance of my responsibility to deal with someone who has become a threat. My willingness to do what he would wish me to do. You must trust my perception of this.”

Gurney’s uneasiness was steadily rising—not only because of the increasing role of “trust” in the anticipated events, but because of the impression created by Valdez’s persona in the conversation with his father. The possibility that this was the real Valdez was frightening.

“I’m thinking,” said Gurney, “that it would make sense to arrange for some law-enforcement backup around his house in the event that we have to hit the bailout button.”

“It’s not a good idea. He has many police contacts who would inform him the instant any such request was made. It would abort our only chance to get near him. It would also motivate him to deal with you himself, which would put you at much greater risk. We have only one path forward.”

That led to a long silence and the most difficult decision Gurney had ever wrestled with—to back out now and hope that a better plan would occur to him, or to take a leap in the dark and trust this man on the basis of little more than Emma’s assurance that he was trustworthy.

The decisive moment arrived a little after ten o’clock that night, as two vehicles were making their way up the long driveway to the lodge.

“Okay,” said Gurney, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”

73

AT 1:05 A.M., THE GARVILLE POLICE CAR—IN WHICH Gurney had been transported from the lodge with a hood over his head and his wrists in zip-tie restraints—slowed, made a turn into what he assumed was a driveway, and stopped. He heard the low rumble of a garage door opening. The car moved forward, then came to a stop again. He heard the garage door closing behind him.

The car door beside him opened. A rough voice said, “Last stop. Get out.”

The hood was yanked from his head, and he found himself in a dimly lit garage, not far from a glossy pearl-gray Range Rover. The man standing in front of him looked vaguely familiar. Back at the lodge, he hadn’t gotten a clear look at his face, but now he was sure he’d seen him somewhere before—the heavily muscled shoulders, the thick neck, the small eyes . . . and then he remembered. Gavin Horst. The shady cop who let him know he wasn’t welcome to park on the same street as Lanka’s Specialty Foods.

“Hello, Gavin. Any chance you could tell me what the hell this is all about?”

Horst appeared momentarily thrown by Gurney’s use of his name. “You asked that three times on the way here. You’ll find out soon enough.” He pointed to a door in the garage’s rear wall. “Walk!”

When they got to it, the door opened and a Horst look-alike holding an extended magazine Uzi stood aside to let them through.

“Straight ahead,” said Horst, prodding Gurney in the back with something that felt like the muzzle of a gun.

A concrete-walled corridor led to a recessed door with a keypad on the wall next to it. Horst entered a sequence of numbers and the door slid open, revealing a small elevator with bare metal walls. Horst shoved Gurney into it, stepped in after him, and tapped a button on the wall. With a small lurch, the elevator descended.

From Gurney’s sense of movement and the time it took, he concluded that they’d reached a sub-basement level. Horst pushed him out into a room with three concrete walls and one glass wall. Behind the glass wall there was darkness. Opposite the glass wall there was a large wooden desk and chair, and behind that, a closed metal door.

“Go over there,” said Horst, prodding him in the back and pointing to a spot in the middle of the floor where two metal rings were embedded in the concrete.

When he got there, the door behind the desk opened and a bony-faced white-haired woman emerged in a flowing black dress, conjuring up in Gurney’s mind a fairytale witch. She walked soundlessly toward him, regarding him with steel-cold eyes for a long moment before kneeling and securing his ankles to the metal rings with zip ties.

She stood up and gave Horst a curt wave of dismal. Without a word, he got back in the elevator, the door closed, and Gurney heard the soft whirring of the mechanism carrying him back up to the garage level.

The woman in black went to the door behind the desk and opened it. Three men entered—a linebacker type with an oily black crew cut, black polo shirt, black jeans, and a black Uzi; an unimposing middle-aged man with thinning gray hair, sallow skin, and tinted glasses; and Valdez, who eyed Gurney with an expression of distaste that looked very real. Gurney tried to reassure himself that things were going according to plan.

The man with the tinted glasses sat in the chair behind the desk. Valdez and the linebacker with the Uzi took up positions on each side of him. The man with the tinted glasses spoke first. His speech, like Valdez’s, was an amalgamation of accents, predominantly Slavic.

“You are very quiet, Mr. Gurney. Do you know why you’ve been brought here?”

Gurney took a short nervous breath. “Who am I speaking to?”

“To me, Mr. Gurney. To me.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Ivan’s father. Now, I ask you again. Do you know why you are here?”

“My assumption is that there’s been a huge misunderstanding.”

“What has been misunderstood?”

Gurney was trying to sound nervous. It wasn’t difficult. “The whole . . . the whole point of my investigation. What it is that I’m . . . that I’m trying to do.”

“And what is that?”

“I’m just trying to get at the truth. The case against Ziko Slade had gaping holes in it. I’ve been looking at the aspects that make no sense.”

The man shrugged again. “It made enough sense to convict him.”

“Yes, but now even the DA is beginning to have doubts. She believes your son was involved. She may want to pursue a case against him. Slade may be posthumously exonerated. If he is, Stryker is sure to find a new target. Your son could be in real legal jeopardy. But I can help reduce that danger. I’m an experienced investigator. I have important contacts. I can discover the weak points in any case she tries to make, before she makes it. We can be ready. Proactive.” Gurney was talking fast, duplicating as best he could the panicky voice of a salesman with nothing but bullshit to sell.

The man nodded. “This readiness—it would cost money?”

“Naturally, there’d be . . . expenses. Time, effort, inducements to key individuals to share information, perhaps an exploration of Stryker’s private life. She’s not well liked. I’m sure I could buy the cooperation of someone on her staff.”

The man kept nodding. “So, quite a lot of money.”

“But it would be well worth it. To avoid serious consequences. For peace of mind.”

The man smiled. “Peace of mind is important.”

“Absolutely!” cried Gurney. “Peace of mind is worth whatever it costs.”

“Perhaps you are aware that my son is receiving a large inheritance, so a great deal of money is available. You are aware of this?”

“I . . . yes . . . I heard something about that.”

“So, to make it simple, you are saying there is a great danger to my son, which you can protect him from, if we give you enough money. Is that correct?”

“I think . . . that’s . . . correct.”

“Protecting my son is important to me.”

“Of course!”

“A danger to him is a danger to me. The son is part of the father. Part of my body, like an arm or a leg. To lose a son is to lose a limb. This is what a son is. If he is not this, he is nothing. You understand?”

“I think so.”

“And you understand that a threat to him is a threat to me?”

“Yes . . . yes . . . I can see that, but . . . what I don’t know is why I’ve been brought here like this.”

“Soon you will know. Do you have a hobby, Mr. Gurney?”

“Sorry?”

“A hobby. Something you enjoy, other than what you are paid to do.”

“I enjoy what I’m paid to do.”

“To protect my son, no matter how much it might cost him?”

Gurney said nothing. He tried to look like a man who couldn’t think of a safe answer to a dangerous question.

“I have a hobby, Mr. Gurney. A passion. I want to share it with you.” He turned to the man beside him with the Uzi. “Victor, remove the restraints from his wrists and from one of his ankles, so he has more freedom to move.”

Striding over to Gurney, Victor pulled a tactical knife from a steel clip on his belt. He cut one of the ankle restraints, then the ones holding Gurney’s wrists behind his back. The sudden freeing of his arms sent shocks of pain through his shoulders. He was tempted for a fleeting moment to make a grab for the Uzi, even though that wasn’t part of the plan he and Valdez had agreed on, but the odds of success seemed vanishingly small and the knife remarkably sharp. Excruciating though it was, he slowly rotated his shoulders to loosen the muscles cramped from the long trip in the back of the Garville police car.

“Tell me, Mr. Gurney,” said the man seated behind the desk, “do you know what a herpetarium is?”

“Not exactly.”

“It’s a place where serpents live. A wonderful word, ‘serpent.’ From the Latin word, ‘serpere.’ It means ‘to creep.’”

Gurney could see, even through the man’s tinted glasses, a new excitement in his gaze.

Valdez spoke up for the first time—in a softly menacing voice. “The word ‘serpent’ means also a sly or treacherous person, a person who exploits a position of trust. I wonder, Mr. Gurney, are you a sly or treacherous person?”

“Absolutely not. I believe in putting my cards on the table. I have nothing to hide. I never lie.” He was trying his best to sound like a panicked liar.

“You never twist the truth to get what you want?”

“No. That would be lying. And I hate liars.”

“So do I, Mr. Gurney. I wonder, have you ever exploited a position of trust?”

“No, never! I’m not a . . . a sneak. I hate sneaks.”

“But I think you want to exploit my trust in you.”

“No, no, I would never—”

“Shut your fucking mouth! You interrupt me again, I’ll cut your fucking tongue out, you piece of shit!”

Gurney blinked in shock. He didn’t have to fake his frightened reaction. The explosion of animal fury in Valdez’s voice and eyes was all too believable.

When Valdez went on, it was in a voice as chillingly calm as his father’s. “I think you only want money from me, while you pretend to want only the truth. You say I am in legal danger, but this danger can be made to go away, if I give you enough money. I think this legal danger is bullshit, but your demand for money is real.”

Gurney stayed quiet, letting his expression alone convey fear.

Valdez responded to Gurney’s silence with a horrible smile. “It would be good for you to make your confession to me, while there is still time.”

Gurney stammered, “I . . . I have nothing . . . nothing to confess.”

Valdez shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

The man behind the desk said, “Perhaps he will change his mind. Victor, the herpetarium lights, please.”

The guard flipped a switch on the concrete wall, and the area behind the glass on the opposite side of the room was illuminated. Turning toward it, Gurney saw what appeared to be an enclosed jungle. His attention was drawn first to the drooping leaves of the tropical plants, glistening with droplets of water. Then he caught a glimpse of movement on the dark soil under one of the lush plants. A long acid-green snake with ebony eyes was gliding slowly toward a corner of the enclosure where a small tan rabbit was twitching in obvious terror.

“She will swallow it whole, very slowly,” said the man behind the desk. “Did you know that rabbits can scream?”

Gurney had a clear recollection of being given that disturbing piece of information by Valdez the evening the beheaded rabbit appeared in his Outback.

His attention was drawn to movements in other areas of the enclosure. He was only a few feet away from more snakes than he’d ever seen in any zoo—snakes of all sizes and colors, moving, coiling, uncoiling, raising their heads, testing the air with their flicking tongues.

“I can see you are impressed, Mr. Gurney. But the best is yet to come.” The man opened the center drawer of the desk, took out something the size of a garage door opener, and pointed it toward the herpetarium. The glass wall began rising through a slot in the ceiling until it disappeared. A flood of warm, humid air filled the room with a sweet-rotten smell of decay.

As Gurney watched with increasing alarm, an enormous yellow snake emerged from beneath the rank, dripping vegetation. The creature glided forward, first across the soil of the enclosure, then out onto the floor of the room itself, its massive body moving slowly toward him in a long, loose, S-shaped curve.

“The most beautiful animal on earth,” said the man behind the desk. His voice had a purring quality as disconcerting as the snake’s approach. “Not only beautiful, but sensitive. She wraps herself around you, and while she is doing that, she is listening. Listening to your heartbeat. She tightens herself around you, focused on the beating of your heart. She hugs you even tighter. So tight you can’t breathe. Tighter and tighter, crushing your veins, your arteries. Tighter and tighter until there is no more heartbeat. Until there is only silence. That is how she knows you are dead. The silence of your heart gives you away. Imagine that Mr. Gurney—a creature that listens for your heart to stop, so she will know you are dead. So she can devour you.”

As if responding on cue, the gigantic snake reached Gurney’s tethered ankle, its weight passing over his foot, as it began to coil itself around his leg. Its weight was as shocking as its scarlet eyes. Its girth was nearly that of a man’s thigh.

“What do you want from me?” cried Gurney, easily managing to sound petrified.

“Nothing, Mr. Gurney. Nothing at all.”

“This is crazy! I’ve done nothing to harm you. Nothing!”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

As the creature continued coiling itself around Gurney’s leg, rising higher, its weight began to affect his balance. As he staggered in a desperate effort to remain upright, he caught sight of a second snake, larger than the first, emerging from under the wet foliage. As it moved toward him, the one that already had him in its grip had risen above his leg and was wrapping itself around his hips. He twisted himself around to face Valdez, Valdez’s father, and the linebacker with the Uzi.

“You can have whatever you want! Just name it!”

Valdez’s father folded his hands on the desk and produced a glazed smile. “Peace of mind, Mr. Gurney. That’s all. Just peace of mind.”

Despite Gurney’s frantic efforts to stop it, the snake was wrapping itself around his midsection and moving higher. Valdez was looking at Gurney with a mixed expression of satisfaction and hatred. He leaned down toward his father and said something Gurney couldn’t hear. His father continued watching for another long minute before opening the center drawer of the desk and handing Valdez a 9mm Sig Sauer.

Thank God, thought Gurney, who’d begun to fear that the plan he and Valdez had devised would fail. But the key goal had finally been achieved. Valdez was armed and could deal with his unsuspecting father and the man with the Uzi.

But instead of doing so, he came out from behind the desk and, with a vicious smile, walked across the floor to a spot a few feet from Gurney. He slowly raised the pistol with a rock-steady hand until the barrel was on a direct line with Gurney’s heart.

Gurney could feel the blood draining from his face as his mind was filled with the horrible, despairing conclusion that the greatest—and last—mistake of his life had been to trust Emma Martin’s opinion of Valdez.

Valdez pulled the trigger.

The muzzle blast in the concrete room was deafening.

74

GURNEY STAGGERED IN SHOCK AT THE SOUND OF THE shot. But he remained standing—stunned and confused.

Valdez stared at him, appearing not to comprehend what had happened. He stared at the pistol, then turned to his father with a look of angry bafflement.

“What the fuck is going on?”

The man gestured to the pistol. “Bring it to me.”

Valdez walked to the desk and handed it over.

His father ejected the magazine, inserted a new one from the desk drawer, and handed the weapon back to Valdez.

“Try again.”

Valdez walked back to his position in front of Gurney and aimed again at his heart. This time, instead of a sadistic smile, he gave Gurney a small nod, then whirled around toward the desk and fired a rapid series of shots, smashing the guard with the Uzi against the wall and his father against his chair, upending it onto the floor.

He pivoted back to Gurney, put a point-blank shot in the head of the giant snake, blowing half of it away, and a shot in Gurney’s ankle restraint, severing it. He handed the Sig to Gurney. “Seventeen shot magazine, ten left, you’ll need them.”

He bounded around behind the desk and grabbed the Uzi from the guard’s body, as the door in the back wall was flung open and another Uzi-brandishing guard burst into the room.

Gurney hit him with two center-mass shots just as a third guard appeared in the now-exposed hallway beyond the open door. He fired two more shots, and the man went down hard.

The heavy coils of the partially headless snake were loosening around Gurney’s stomach and descending toward the floor, making it possible to step free of them. He backed away from the larger python-like snake that was moving steadily toward him and aimed the Sig at its head.

“Stop!” cried Valdez. “Leave that one alive!”

That made no sense to Gurney, but he had no time to ask why. A large man in combat gear appeared in the hall and was advancing toward the open doorway with an Uzi in each hand. Gurney dove to the floor. The two Uzis began blasting away simultaneously, the rounds ripping through the wooden desk, inches from Gurney’s body.

“Marko!” shouted Valdez. “It’s me in here, for Christ’s sake!”

The man stopped firing but kept the Uzis pointed at the open door. “Drop any gun you have, put your hands over your head, and step out where I can see you.”

“Okay, Marko, take it easy,” said Valdez in a calming voice. Then he reached around the frame of the door and fired repeatedly into the hallway.

A moment later, the man called Marko was lying on his back, blood pulsing from his throat, the Uzis in his spasming fingers firing into the ceiling.

“How many more guards are there?” asked Gurney, getting shakily to his feet.

“Three more. All upstairs. Trying to figure out what’s going on. Making calls for assistance. We’ve got maybe ten minutes. Watch the hallway, while I take care of something.”

Valdez laid his captured Uzi on the desk and dragged his father’s body out into the middle of the room. One of the tinted lenses in his glasses was shattered. Blood was oozing from the eye socket onto the concrete floor. His head was less than two feet from the slowly advancing python.

“Jesus,” muttered Gurney.

“This is what he has done to many people. It is what he would have done to you. This is justice. I am sorry only that he is not conscious to see what will happen to him. Now, come quickly. They will watch the stairway. We go up in the elevator.”

“You know the code for the keypad?”

“Not needed for going up, only coming down.”

They stepped into the elevator, Valdez tapped a button on the metal wall, and they started ascending.

“Be ready,” said Valdez, holding his Uzi in firing position, aimed at the elevator door.

Gurney checked the magazine in the Sig Sauer and adopted a similar stance.

When the elevator came to a stop and the door slid open, they found themselves pointing their weapons at an empty corridor. Valdez led the way to the garage. The door was open, the fluorescent lights were on, and the Garville police car was gone. Valdez entered first, Uzi aimed at the pearl gray Range Rover. Gurney took up a position to his right.

Valdez pointed to a small metal cabinet on the wall. “Open that and take out the electronic key.”

Gurney did so.

“Now, press the Unlock button.”

Gurney did so and heard an answering mechanical click from the Range Rover.

“Cover me,” said Valdez, “while I check the interior.”

He went to the front passenger door, yanked it open, stepped back, then proceeded do the same with the rear passenger door.

“Clear. Now the luggage compartment.”

Valdez moved around to the back of the vehicle, and Gurney adjusted his own position.

“There’s a liftgate button on the remote. Press it.”

Gurney did so.

The liftgate began to open.

A second later, Valdez staggered backward, dropping the Uzi, letting out a shriek.

A long, thin, violet snake had come flying out from under the rising liftgate and was wrapping itself around Valdez’s neck.

As Gurney rushed over, a black-clad, wild-eyed woman jumped from the back of the vehicle, hissing, teeth bared, grabbing for the fallen Uzi.

She got her hands on it and began pivoting toward him.

“Drop it!” shouted Gurney.

But the muzzle of the Uzi was rising. He fired three times in less than a second. The 9mm rounds slammed her against the concrete floor.

“Kill this fucking thing!” Valdez’s words came out in a rasping, choking rush, as he tried to pry the snake from his throat.

Gurney stepped closer, took careful aim, and blew the snake’s head off.

He looked down at the body on the floor—the body of the bony little woman who’d put the restraints on his ankles. Blood was slowly spreading out from her dress onto the garage floor.

He pictured the giant python making its inexorable, hungry way across that other concrete floor toward the head of the Viper.

It was over.

Exhaustion emptied his mind.

He was aware of nothing but the steady beating of his heart.