Peter Pan Must Die: A Novel

by John Verdon

  As this work was progressing, a small white car pulled into view and stopped behind the truck. Although he couldn’t be sure of the face, impossibly tiny in the video frame, Gurney had a feeling that the woman who got out of the car, bundled in a fur jacket and fur hat, gesturing as though she was giving instructions to the workmen, was Paulette Purley. After some more straightening of the chairs, the men got back in the truck and drove out of the frame.

  The woman stood by herself, looking around the plot as if giving everything a final once-over, then got back in her car, drove it past the open grassy area, and parked next to some cold-withered rhododendrons. The video continued for another minute or so before stopping. It restarted at a point twenty-eight minutes later in real time—at 9:54 a.m.—with the arrival of a hearse and a number of other cars.

  A man in a black overcoat came from the passenger side of the hearse, and the woman Gurney figured was Paulette Purley reemerged from her car. They met, shook hands, spoke briefly. The man walked back toward the hearse, gesturing as he went. Half a dozen dark-suited men got out of a limo, opened the rear door of the hearse, and slowly removed a casket, which they then carried with practiced smoothness to the open grave and placed on a supporting structure that held it at ground level.

  At some signal Gurney did not detect, the mourners began coming out of the other cars parked in a row along the lane behind the hearse. Wrapped in winter coats and hats, they made their way to the two rows of chairs alongside the grave, gradually filling all but two of the sixteen seats. The two left vacant were those on either side of Mary Spalter’s triplet cousins.

  The tallish man in the black overcoat, presumably the funeral director, moved to a position behind the seated mourners. The six pallbearers, having made some adjustments to the position of the casket, stood shoulder to shoulder beside him. Paulette Purley stood a few feet off to the side of the last pallbearer.

  Gurney’s attention was fixed on the man in the end seat of the first row. The unsuspecting victim-to-be. The clock at the bottom of the video window indicated that the time in Willow Rest was 10:19 a.m. Meaning that at that moment Carl Spalter had just one minute left. One more minute of life as he’d known it.

  Gurney’s gaze went back and forth between Carl and the clock, feeling the erosion of time and life with a painful acuteness.

  There was just half a minute left, before a .220 Swift bullet—the fastest, most accurate bullet in the world—would pierce the man’s left temple, fragment in his brain, and put an end to whatever future he might have imagined.

  In his long NYPD career, Gurney had witnessed countless crimes on security videos—including muggings, beatings, burglaries, homicides—at gas stations, liquor stores, convenience stores, Laundromats, ATMs.

  But this one was different.

  The human context, with its complex and strained family relationships, was deeper. The emotional context was more vivid. The sedate physical appearance of the scene—the seated participants, the suggestion of a formal group portrait—bore no resemblance to the content of typical security camera footage. And Gurney knew more about the man about to be shot—in just a few more seconds—than he’d known up front about any other on-tape victim.

  Then the moment came.

  Gurney leaned in toward his computer screen, literally on the edge of his chair.

  Carl Spalter rose and turned toward the podium that had been set up at the far end of the open grave. He took a step in that direction, passing in front of Alyssa. Then, just as he began to take another step, he lurched forward in a kind of stumbling collapse that carried him the length of the front row. He hit the ground face-first and lay motionless on the snow-whitened grass between his mother’s casket and his brother’s chair.

  Jonah and Alyssa were the first on their feet, followed by two Elder Force ladies from the the second row. The pallbearers came around from behind the chairs. Paulette rushed toward Carl, dropped to her knees, and bent over him. After that it was difficult to sort out what was happening, as more people crowded around the fallen man. During the ensuing minutes, at least three people appeared to have their phones out, making calls.

  Gurney noted that Carl was hit, as the incident report indicated, at exactly 10:20. The first responder arrived at 10:28—a local uniform in a Long Falls police cruiser. Within the next couple of minutes, two more arrived, followed shortly by a trooper cruiser. At 10:42, an EMT unit arrived in a large ambulance. Parking directly in front of the main activity at the scene, blocking the security camera’s field of view, it rendered the remainder of the video useless to Gurney. Even the first unmarked car—presumably bringing Klemper—was obscured when it stopped on the far side of the ambulance.

  After skimming through the rest of the video, sampling bits here and there and finding no important additional data, Gurney sat back in his desk chair to consider what he’d seen.

  In addition to the unfortunate position of the ambulance, there was another problem with the material. Despite the high resolution of the camera, its formidable zoom lens, and its auto-framing capabilities, the sheer camera-to-subject distance resulted in a visual product with definite limitations. Although he’d understood what he saw happening, he knew that some of that understanding had been supplied by what he’d been told. He’d long ago accepted a major counterintuitive cognitive principle: We don’t think what we think because we see what we see. We see what we see because we think what we think. Preconceptions can easily override optical data—even make us see things that aren’t there.

  What he wanted was stronger optical data—to make sure his preconceptions weren’t leading him in the wrong direction. Ideally, he’d submit the digital file to a sophisticated computer lab for maximum enhancement, but part of the price of retirement was lack of free access to that kind of resource. It occurred to him that Esti might have a back door into the NYSP lab that would enable her to get the job done without an ID or tracking number that could come back to bite her, but he wasn’t comfortable with nudging her into that position. At least, not until less risky options had been exhausted.

  He picked up his phone and called Kyle—an avid storehouse of information on all things related to computers, the more complex the better. He was invited to leave a message, and he did. “Hi, son. I have a digital technology problem. Official support channels aren’t available to deal with it. Here’s the thing. I have a hi-def video file that might be more revealing if we could apply a digital zoom effect without diluting its sharpness. That’s kind of a contradiction, but I think there’s enhancement software with certain algorithms that have a way of addressing that issue … so maybe you could point me in the right direction? Thanks, son. I’m sure whatever you can tell me will be a lot more than I already know.”

  After ending the call, he decided to go back to the beginning of the video and view it again. But then he happened to notice the current time, displayed in the upper corner of his laptop screen. It was 5:48 p.m. Even if Madeleine had taken the longest of her usual trails through the woods—the one over the top of Carlson’s Ridge—she should have returned by now.

  It was dinnertime, and she never … Oh, Christ! Of course!

  He felt like an idiot. This was the day she was supposed to leave for her stay at the Winklers’. Too much was happening too damn fast. It was as though his brain couldn’t contain another speck of information, and every time something new got jammed in, it shoved something out the other side. It was kind of scary to think about. What else might he have forgotten?

  That’s when he remembered that on his way in he’d seen her car parked by the house.

  If she’s at the Winklers’, why the hell is her car still here?

  Baffled, with a fast-growing feeling of unease, he called her cell number.

  He was surprised a few seconds later to hear her phone ringing in the kitchen. Had she not gone to the Winklers’ after all? Was she somewhere around the house? He called out to her, but there was no answer. He went out from the den to t
he kitchen. Following the sound of the ring, he found her phone on the sideboard next to the stove. That was truly odd. As far as he knew, she never left the house without it. Perplexed, he gazed out the window, hoping that he might see her heading up through the pasture toward the house.

  There was no sign or her. Just her car. Which meant she had to be somewhere in the general vicinity—unless she’d gone somewhere with a friend who’d picked her up. Or unless, God forbid, she’d had an accident and was taken away in an ambulance.

  He strained to recall anything she might have said that would …

  Just then a breeze caught the asparagus ferns, stirring them briefly apart, and something bright flashed at the corner of his eye.

  Something pink, he thought.

  Then the ferns settled back together, and he wondered whether he’d seen anything at all.

  Curiosity drove him outside to check.

  As soon as he reached the far side of the asparagus bed his question was answered—with a larger one. Madeleine was sitting on the grass in one of her pink T-shirts. Next to her on the ground were a few pieces of bluestone placed over what appeared to be freshly loosened earth. On the far side of the stones, a shovel, recently used, lay on the grass. With her right hand, Madeleine was gently patting down the dark earth around the edges of the stones.

  At first she said nothing.

  “Maddie?”

  She looked up at him with her mouth in a tight, sad little line.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Horace.”

  “Horace?”

  “One of those terrible creatures killed him.”

  “Our rooster?”

  She nodded.

  “What sort of terrible creature?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess what Bruce said the other night when he was here. A weasel? A possum? I don’t know. He warned us. I should have listened.” She bit her lower lip.

  “When did it happen?”

  “This afternoon. When I got home, I let them out of the barn for some air. It was such a nice day. I had some cracked corn, which they love, so they followed me up to the house. They were right out here. Running around. Pecking in the grass. I went into the house for … something, I don’t even know what. I just …” She stopped for a moment, shaking her head. “He was only four months old. He was just learning to crow. He looked so proud. Poor little Horace. Bruce warned us … he warned us … about what could happen.”

  “You buried him?”

  “Yes.” She reached over and smoothed the soil by the stones. “I couldn’t let his little body just lie there.” She sniffled, cleared her throat. “He was probably trying to protect the hens from the weasel. Don’t you think?”

  Gurney had no idea what to think. “I guess so.”

  After patting down the soil a few more times, she got up from the grass and they went into the house. The sun had already started to slide down behind the western ridge. The slope of the opposite hill was bathed in that ruddy-gold light that only ever lasted a minute or two.

  It was a strange evening. After they had a brief, quiet dinner of leftovers, Madeleine settled into one of the armchairs by the big empty fireplace at the far end of the long room, abstractedly holding one of her perennial knitting projects in her lap.

  Gurney asked if she’d like him to turn on the floor lamp behind her chair. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. As he was about to ask if she had a revised timetable for going to the Winklers’ farm, she asked about his meeting that morning with Malcolm Claret.

  That morning?

  So much had intervened, his trip to the Bronx felt like something that had happened a week ago. He was having a hard time focusing on it, fitting it into his grasp of the day. He began with the first aspect of it that came to mind.

  “When you made my appointment, did Malcolm tell you he was dying?”

  “Dying?”

  “Yes. He’s in the end stages of a fatal cancer.”

  “And he’s still … Oh, God.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t tell me, not directly, but … I remember he did say that your appointment needed to be very soon. I’d just assumed he had some major commitment coming up, and … Oh, God. How is he?”

  “Mostly the same. I mean, he looks very old, very thin. But he’s … very … very clear.”

  A silence passed between them.

  Madeleine was the first to speak. “Is that what you spoke about? His sickness?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. In fact, he didn’t even refer to it until the end. We spoke mainly about … me … and you.”

  “Was it useful?”

  “I think so.”

  “Are you still mad about my making the appointment for you?”

  “No. It turned out to be a good thing.” At least, he thought it was a good thing. He was still having trouble wrapping words around its effect on him.

  After a brief silence she smiled softly and said, “Good.”

  After a longer silence, he wondered if he should circle back to the Winkler situation and get it resolved. He was still determined to get Madeleine away from the house. But he figured there’d be time enough to take care of that in the morning.

  At eight o’clock, she went to bed.

  A little while later, he followed her.

  It wasn’t that he felt particularly sleepy. In fact, he was having a hard time putting any label at all on what he was feeling. The day had left him confused and overloaded. To begin with, there was the visceral impact of Claret’s message. And beyond that, the jarring immersion in the Bronx of his childhood, followed by the escalating horrors reported by Jack Hardwick from Cooperstown, and finally Madeleine’s pain at the rooster’s death—which he suspected had resonated unconsciously with another loss.

  He went into the bedroom, took off his clothes, and slipped into bed beside her. He let his arm rest gently against hers, finding himself unable to conceive of any more articulate or appropriate communication.

  Chapter 40

  The Morning After

  Gurney awoke with a heavy emotional hangover.

  Mired between thinking and dreaming, his sleep had been too shallow and fitful to perform its vital function of downloading the jumbled experiences of the day into the orderly cabinets of memory. Bits of yesterday’s turmoil were still in the forefront of his mind, obstructing his view of the present moment. It wasn’t until he’d showered, dressed, gotten his coffee, and joined Madeleine at the breakfast table that he finally noticed it was a bright, cloudless day.

  But even that positive factor failed to have its normal elevating effect on his outlook.

  A piece of music was playing on the NPR station, something orchestral. He hated music in the morning and in his present mood he found it especially grating.

  Madeleine eyed him over the top of the book she had propped up in front of her. “What is it?”

  “I feel a bit lost.”

  She lowered the book a couple of inches. “The Spalter case?”

  “Mainly that … I guess.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s not coming together. It just gets uglier and more chaotic.” He told her about Hardwick’s two calls from Cooperstown, leaving out the missing head, which he didn’t have the stomach to mention. He concluded, “I’m not sure what the hell is going on. And I don’t feel I have the resources to deal with it.”

  She closed the book. “Deal with it?”

  “Figure it out—what’s really happening, who’s behind it, why.”

  She stared at him. “Haven’t you already succeeded in what you were asked to do?”

  “Succeeded?”

  “I’d gotten the impression that you’d pretty much shredded the case against Kay Spalter.”

  “True.”

  “So her conviction will be reversed on appeal. That was the point, wasn’t it?”

  “It was, yes.”

  “Was?”

  “It seems that all
hell is breaking loose. These new arson-murders—”

  She interrupted. “Which is why we have police departments.”

  “They didn’t do such a great job the first time. And I don’t think they have a clue what they’re up against.”

  “And you do?”

  “Not really.”

  “So nobody knows what’s going on. Whose job is it to find out?”

  “Officially, it’s BCI’s job.”

  She cocked her head challengingly. “Officially, legally, logically, and every other way.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But?”

  After an uncomfortable pause, he said, “But there’s a crazy person loose out there.”

  “There are a lot of crazy people out there.”

  “This one’s been killing people since he was about eight years old. He likes killing people. The more the better. Someone turned him loose on Carl Spalter, and now he doesn’t seem to want to go back in his box.”

  Madeleine held his gaze. “So the danger is increasing. You said the other day there might be a one percent chance of his coming after you. Obviously, this horrible thing in Cooperstown changes all that.”

  “To some degree, but I still think—”

  “David,” she interrupted, “I have to say this—I know what your answer will be, but I have to say it anyway. You do have the option of backing away.”

  “If I back away from the investigation, he’ll still be out there. There’ll just be less chance of getting him.”

  “But if you’re not going after him, maybe he won’t go after you.”