The Viper

EPILOGUE

AFTER A BRIEF DISCUSSION, VALDEZ AND GURNEY AGREED to return to the lodge. With Valdez driving the Range Rover, they arrived at dawn. Before heading to bed in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, his back and neck a mass of pain, Gurney asked the question that had been eating at him.

“How did you know there were blanks in the gun he gave you to shoot me with?”

“I knew he would never hand me a live weapon until he was absolutely sure how I would use it.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Valdez asked how the murder of Sonny Lerman fit into the overall scheme of things. Gurney suggested that his own investigation might have so enraged the young man with the thought of losing his insurance payout that he had gone to Valdez’s biological father with his own request for a favor—the elimination of the troublesome investigator.

“But,” said Gurney, “he probably considered Sonny at least as troublesome as me, so he tried to get rid of us both by framing me for Sonny’s murder, just like he framed Ziko for Lenny’s. I’m less sure about the murder of Charlene Vesco. My guess is that she was so shaken by the shooting of her cousin, Dominick, that he doubted her reliability and killed her to avoid further worry.”

AS THE DAY wore on, Gurney commented on the strange absence of anything in the news about the previous evening’s bloodbath. “With deadly snakes, dead bodies, and bullet casings all over the place, it has to be the most sensational upstate crime scene in years.”

Valdez shook his head. “It will not be in the news. Nothing will be known about it.”

“How is that possible? I mean, the gunshots alone . . .”

“The shots were not heard. My father had the house soundproofed many years ago. There were many sounds he wanted no one outside to hear.”

The images that came to mind caused Gurney to fall silent for a long moment.

“And the bodies, the bloody mess—all of that just stays there?”

Valdez shrugged. “When they can’t get in touch with him, the people who rely on my father’s services will realize something has happened. Cleaners will come. Professionals who deal with special situations. Everything troublesome will disappear. Someday the house will be sold. There will be no connection to him.”

“The woman in the black dress,” said Gurney. “Who was that?”

“Serena. His sister.” Valdez’s strained tone implied that there was something sick in the relationship.

Gurney saw no reason to pursue it.

“What do you know about that violet snake she threw at you?”

“That was her favorite. The rarest and most deadly of all. She used to let it crawl all over her body. It was not a comfortable thing to see.”

THAT NIGHT, GURNEY sat with his computer at the dining room table and put together a detailed narrative description of the case, omitting only the bloody finale, and emailed it to Cam Stryker. He felt that he owed her at least that much of the truth.

He believed that his relationship with her had reached an uneasy balance, based on the concept of mutually assured destruction. He might be able to win the battle of the Slade case, perhaps even end Stryker’s career, if he revealed the full story, including its violent ending. But his own participation in that bloodletting would drag him into a costly and perilous legal nightmare, and he wasn’t ready to sacrifice his own life just to destroy Stryker’s.

He also sent the case narrative to Kyra Barstow at her private email account, along with a cover note thanking her for her help.

He received no response from either woman, nor did he expect any.

VALDEZ OFFERED GURNEY the use of the lodge indefinitely.

“Stay as long as you wish—a week, a month, a year. Make it your home. I must return to Emma. I’m disappointed in myself. The killing was too easy for me. I found it too easy to be the person I once was.”

“You did what was necessary. You saved us both.”

“It is not what I did that bothers me. It’s how it made me feel. It gave me the excitement of revenge. Emma says to be excited by the blood of an enemy is a sickness.”

VALDEZ’S COMMENTS PRODDED Gurney to examine his own feelings about the way things turned out—feelings that were oddly mixed. He had, on the one hand, arrived at a full understanding of the case. He’d managed to fit all the pieces together. The mystery had been solved. As he’d done hundreds of times in his career, he’d figured it out.

But another kind of question remained.

Why had he put the final solution in Valdez’s lap?

If the faultless narrative was truly his goal, why hadn’t he gone public with it, exposed it to every relevant law-enforcement agency, as well as the media? Why had he taken it quietly to the one person who might be motivated to give him direct access to the man behind it all?

Sometimes confrontation could fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle, but that was not the case here. He’d already put the pieces together before revealing them to Valdez—knowing that Valdez was a route to the Viper. There could be only one motive for confrontation under those circumstances.

A desire for mortal combat.

Had he been fooling himself about who he was? Had he been telling himself that he was a descendant of Sherlock Holmes, applying logic to the messy world of passionate crime—a rational mind in pursuit of the truth—when in fact it wasn’t the truth that he was after, but victory? Victory, it would seem, at any cost. At the cost of other people’s lives. At the cost of his own marriage. Was there anything he wouldn’t sacrifice for victory?

Perhaps he wasn’t the Holmes of cerebral solutions, after all, but the Holmes who engaged archenemy Moriarty in a fight to the death at the Reichenbach Falls.

ONE MORNING WHILE Gurney was having breakfast, Kyle phoned to announce that he’d broken up with Kim Corazon, having finally seen the cold and manipulative heart under all that attractive energy. Suggesting in her RAM interview that Gurney was capable of murder provided the final ugly insight into her ambition.

“She’s scrambling to finish a book about the Slade case, full of insinuation and conjecture,” said Kyle, “and she’s using the horrible Thanksgiving event as its selling point to prospective publishers. She doesn’t care how that might affect you or Madeleine or anyone else. Her rotten little career is the only thing that matters to her.”

GURNEY CALLED THE hospital every evening to ask about Hardwick, but the answer was always the same.

On several occasions, he was tempted to drive down to Dillweed to tell Esti how sorry he was, but each time he decided not to, suspecting that his motive was selfish—to diminish her hostility toward him, rather than to share her burden of fear and sadness.

HIS POST-CONCUSSIVE SYMPTOMS kept coming and going with little rhyme or reason. He could lug heavy armfuls of wood in for the fireplace with no trouble, then be struck by a fit of dizziness or a stabbing headache while scrambling an egg.

TWICE HE HAD the Danny dream, always the same, always leaving him in tears.

On their way to the playground on a sunny day.

Danny walking in front of him.

Following a pigeon on the sidewalk.

He himself only partly present.

Pondering a twist in a murder case he was working on.

Distracted by a bright idea, a possible solution.

The pigeon stepping off the curb into the street.

Danny following the pigeon.

The sickening, heart-stopping thump.

Danny’s body tossed through the air, hitting the pavement, rolling.

Rolling.

The red BMW racing away.

Screeching around a corner.

Gone.

SOMETIMES HE HAD an overwhelming feeling that the structure of his life had collapsed, that all the points of reference had disappeared, that everything he’d imagined was permanent had evaporated. One morning, he was looking out the dining room window, watching a curled-up leaf being blown erratically this way and that on the icy surface. He mistook it at first for a small, crippled creature—like himself.

SEVERAL TIMES HE was tempted to go down to the Franciscan Sanctuary and volunteer to regain a sense of purpose, but he never did. And it wasn’t just the dog-walking idea that came and went. Whenever he thought of doing anything, he thought of a reason not to.

The only exception occurred after he’d been at the lodge for two weeks. He got the idea that he should drive down to Walnut Crossing, check on the house, talk to Madeleine. He wasn’t sure what he’d say to her. Maybe the right words would occur to him during the drive. In fact, nothing occurred to him. Every time he tried to think about it, his concentration dissolved. It was as though his mind had slipped away beyond his reach.

The closer he got to Walnut Crossing, the more pointless the trip seemed. He thought maybe he should just go directly to the campsite, take down the tent, take everything down to his car, drive back to the lodge. But instead of taking the turnoff that would bring him to the back of the campsite hill, he stayed on the county road that led to the town road that led up the hill to his property. He had the feeling that the watchers would be gone, and he was right.

He drove up through the low pasture and parked by the asparagus patch. It felt like everything around him had changed in some way he couldn’t identify. He got out of the car and breathed in the cold December air. Madeleine’s car wasn’t there, and the house showed no signs of life. The fencing around the coop and the alpaca shed had been completed, enclosing at least a half acre of the pasture.

As he walked toward the shed, he heard a low humming, almost a human sound. When he got closer, he realized it wasn’t coming from the shed, but from behind it. He followed the fence around the shed and came face-to-face with the creatures making the sound.

Twin alpacas were standing next to an open bale of hay, looking at him. He saw in their eyes an expression that looked like gentle curiosity—along with a sense of peace and contentment.

He wondered if that was what Madeleine was feeling now—a peace and contentment that she’d never felt with him.

A freezing gust of wind sent snow devils whirling across the pasture. He retreated to his car, drove down the town road, and headed north—back to the lodge—determined to figure out who he was, where he belonged, and why he felt so lost.