by John Verdon
“Getting back to the big picture,” said Rodriguez, “I was thinking about the issue of motive you mentioned earlier, Sheridan—”
Hardwick’s cell phone rang. He had it out of his pocket and at his ear before Rodriguez could object.
“Shit,” he said, after listening for about ten seconds. “You’re sure?” He looked around the table. “No bullet. They went over every inch of the rear wall of the house. Nothing.”
“Have them check inside the house,” said Gurney.
“But the shot was fired outside.”
“I know, but Mellery probably didn’t close the door behind him. An anxious person in a situation like that would want to leave it open. Tell the techs to consider the possible trajectories and check any interior wall that could have been in the line of fire.”
Hardwick relayed the instructions quickly and ended the call.
“Good idea,” said Kline.
“Very good,” said Wigg.
“About those numbers,” said Blatt, abruptly changing the subject. “It pretty much has to be some kind of hypnosis or ESP, right?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Gurney.
“But it’s got to be. What else could it be?”
Hardwick shared Gurney’s sentiments on this subject and responded first. “Christ, Blatt, when was the last time the state police investigated a crime involving mystical mind control?”
“But he knew what the guy was thinking!”
This time Gurney answered first, in his conciliatory way. “It does look like somebody knew exactly what Mellery was thinking, but my bet is we’re missing something, and it will turn out to be a lot simpler than mind-reading.”
“Let me ask you something, Detective Gurney.” Rodriguez was sitting back in his chair, his right fist cupped in the left palm in front of his chest. “There was rapidly accumulating evidence, through a series of threatening letters and phone calls, that Mark Mellery was the target of a homicidal stalker. Why didn’t you bring this evidence to the police prior to the murder?”
The fact that Gurney had anticipated the question and was prepared to answer it did not diminish its sting.
“I appreciate the ‘Detective’ title, Captain, but I retired that title with my shield and weapon two years ago. As for reporting the matter to the police as it was developing, nothing practical could be done without Mark Mellery’s cooperation, and he made it clear that he would provide no cooperation whatsoever.”
“Are you saying you couldn’t bring the situation to the attention of the police without his permission?” Rodriguez’s voice was rising, his attitude stiffening.
“He made it clear to me that he did not want the police involved, that he regarded the idea of police intrusion into the affair as more destructive than helpful, and that he would take whatever steps were necessary to prevent it. If I had reported the matter, he would have stonewalled you and refused any further communication with me.”
“His further communication with you didn’t do him much good, did it?”
“Unfortunately, Captain, you’re right about that.”
The softness, the absence of resistance, in Gurney’s reply left Rodriguez momentarily off balance. Sheridan Kline stepped into the empty space. “Why was he opposed to involving the police?”
“He considered the police too clumsy and incompetent to achieve a positive result. He believed they were unlikely to make him safer but very likely to create a public-relations mess for his institute.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Rodriguez, affronted.
“‘Bulls in a china shop’ is what he kept saying. He was determined there would be no cooperation with the police—no police allowed on his property, no police contact with his guests, no information from him personally. He seemed willing to take legal action at the slightest hint of police interference.”
“Fine, but what I’d like to know—” began Rodriguez, but he was again cut short by the familiar chime of Hardwick’s phone.
“Hardwick here …. Right …. Where?… Fantastic …. Okay, good. Thanks.” He pocketed the phone and announced to Gurney, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “They found the bullet. In an inside wall. In fact, in the center hall of the house, on a direct line from the back door, which was apparently open when the shot was fired.”
“Congratulations,” said Sergeant Wigg to Gurney, and then to Hardwick, “Any idea what caliber?”
“They think it’s a .357, but we’ll wait on ballistics for that.”
Kline looked preoccupied. He addressed a question to no one in particular. “Could Mellery have had other reasons for not wanting the police around?”
Blatt, his face screwed up in befuddlement, added his own question: “What the hell are ‘balls in a china shop’?”
Chapter 26
A blank check
By the time Gurney had driven the width of the Catskill Mountains and arrived at his farmstead outside Walnut Crossing, exhaustion had enveloped him—an emotional fog that muddled together hunger, thirst, frustration, sadness, and self-doubt. November’s progress toward winter was making days distressingly shorter—especially in the valleys, where the enclosing mountains made for early dusks. Madeleine’s car was gone from its place by the garden shed. The snow, partly melted by the midday sun and refrozen by the evening chill, crunched underfoot.
The house was deadly silent. Gurney switched on the hanging fixture over the butcher-block island. He remembered Madeleine saying something that morning about their planned dinner party’s being canceled because of some sort of meeting the women all wanted to attend, but the details eluded him. So there was no need for the goddamn pecans after all. He put a Darjeeling tea bag in a cup, filled it at the tap, and put it in the microwave. Moved by habit, he headed for his armchair on the far side of the country kitchen. He sank into it and propped his feet on a wooden stool. Two minutes later the beep of the microwave was absorbed into the texture of a shadowy dream.
He awoke at the sound of Madeleine’s footsteps.
It was an oversensitive perception, perhaps, but something in the footsteps sounded angry. It seemed to him that their direction and proximity indicated that she must have seen him in the chair yet had chosen not to speak to him.
He opened his eyes in time to see her leaving the kitchen, heading for their bedroom. He stretched, pushed himself up from the depths of the chair, went to the sideboard for a tissue, and blew his nose. He heard a closet door close, a bit too affirmatively, and a minute later she returned to the kitchen. She had replaced her silk blouse with a shapeless sweatshirt.
“You’re awake,” she said.
He heard it as a criticism of the fact that he’d been asleep.
She switched on a row of track lights over the main countertop and opened the refrigerator. “Have you eaten?” It sounded like an accusation.
“No, I had a very tiring day, and when I got home, I just made a cup of—Oh, damn, I forgot about it.” He went to the microwave, removed a cup of dark, cold tea and emptied it, bag and all, into the sink.
Madeleine went to the sink, picked his tea bag out of it, and pointedly dropped it into the garbage container.
“I’m pretty tired myself.” She shook her head silently for a moment. “I don’t understand why these local morons believe that building a hideous prison, surrounded by razor wire, in the middle of the most beautiful county in the state is a good idea.”
Now he remembered. She’d told him that morning she planned to attend a town meeting at which the controversial proposal was slated to be discussed yet again. At issue was whether the town should compete to become the location of a facility its opponents referred to as a prison and its supporters called a treatment center. The nomenclature battle arose from the ambiguous bureaucratic language authorizing this pilot project for a new class of institution. It was to be known as a SCATE—State Correctional and Therapeutic Environment—and its dual purpose was the incarceration and rehabilitation of felony drug offender
s. In fact, the bureaucratic language was quite impenetrable and left a lot of room for interpretation and argument.
It was a touchy subject between them—not because he didn’t share her desire to keep the SCATE out of Walnut Crossing but because he wasn’t joining the battle as sharply as she thought he should. “There are probably half a dozen people who’ll make out like bandits,” she said grimly, “and everyone else in the valley—and everyone who has to drive through the valley—will be stuck with a wretched eyesore for the rest of their lives. And for what? For the so-called rehabilitation of a pack of drug-dealing creeps? Give me a break!”
“Other towns are competing for it. With any luck, one will win.”
She smiled bleakly. “Sure, if their town boards are even more corrupt than ours, that might happen.”
Feeling the heat of her indignation as a form of pressure on himself, he decided to try changing the subject.
“Shall I make us a couple of omelets?” He watched her hunger vying briefly with her residual anger. Her hunger won.
“No green peppers,” she warned. “I don’t like them.”
“Why do you buy them?”
“I don’t know. Certainly not for omelets.”
“You want any scallions?”
“No scallions.”
She set the table while he beat the eggs and heated the pans.
“You want anything to drink?” he asked.
She shook her head. He knew she never drank anything with her meals, but he asked anyway. Peculiar little quirk, he thought, to keep asking that question.
Neither of them spoke more than a few words until they’d finished eating and both had given their empty plates a ritual nudge toward the center of the table.
“Tell me about your day,” she said.
“My day? You mean my meeting with the ace homicide team?”
“You weren’t impressed?”
“Oh, I was impressed. If you wanted to write a book about dysfunctional team dynamics, run by the Captain from Hell, you could set up a tape recorder in that place and transcribe it word for word.”
“Worse than what you retired from?”
He was slow in answering, not because he was unsure of the answer but because of the fraught intonation he detected in the word retired. He decided to respond to the words instead of the tone.
“There were some difficult people in the city, but the Captain from Hell operates on a whole other level of arrogance and insecurity. He’s desperate to impress the DA, has no respect for his own people, no real feeling for the case. Every question, every comment, was either hostile or off the point, usually both.”
She eyed him speculatively. “I’m not surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged lightly. It looked like she was trying to compose her expression to convey as little as possible. “Just that I’m not surprised. I think if you came home and said you’d spent the day with the best homicide team you’d ever met, that would have surprised me. That’s all.”
He knew damn well that wasn’t all. But he was smart enough to know that Madeleine was smarter than he was and there was no way he was going to cajole her into talking about something she wasn’t inclined to talk about.
“Well,” he said, “the fact is, it was exhausting and unencouraging. Right now I intend to put it out of my mind and do something completely different.”
It was a statement made without forethought and followed by a mental blank. Moving on to something completely different was not as easy as it sounded. The difficulties of the day continued to swirl before him, along with Madeleine’s enigmatic reaction. At that moment the option which for the past week had been tugging at the edges of his resistance, the option he’d desperately kept out of sight but not entirely out of mind, again intruded. This time, unexpectedly, along with it came a surge of determination to take the action he’d been avoiding.
“The box …” he said. His throat was constricted, his voice raspy, as he forced the subject into the open before his fear of it could recapture him, before he even knew how he would finish the sentence.
She looked up at him from her empty plate—calm, curious, attentive—waiting for him to go on.
“His drawings … What … I mean, why …?” He struggled to coax from the conflict and confusion in his heart a rational question.
The effort was unnecessary. Madeleine’s ability to see his thoughts in his eyes always exceeded his ability to articulate them.
“We need to say good-bye.” Her voice was gentle, relaxed.
He stared down at the table. Nothing in his mind was forming into words.
“It’s been a long time,” she said. “Danny is gone, and we never said good-bye to him.”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly. His sense of time was dissolving, his mind strangely empty.
When the phone rang, he felt as if he were being awakened, yanked back into the world—a world of familiar, measurable, describable problems. Madeleine was still at the table with him, but he wasn’t sure how long they’d been sitting there.
“Do you want me to answer it?” she asked.
“That’s all right. I’ll get it.” He hesitated, like a computer reloading information, then stood up, a little unsteadily, and went to the den.
“Gurney.” Answering the phone that way—the way he’d answered it for so many years in homicide—was a habit he’d found difficult to break.
The voice that greeted him was bright, aggressive, artificially warm. It brought to mind that old rule of salesmanship: Always smile when you’re speaking on the phone, because it makes you sound friendlier.
“Dave, I’m glad you’re there! This is Sheridan Kline. I hope I didn’t interrupt your dinner.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ll get right to the point. I believe you’re the kind of man I can be perfectly frank with. I know your reputation. This afternoon I had a glimpse of the reason for it. I was impressed. I hope I’m not embarrassing you.”
Gurney was wondering where this was leading. “You’re being very kind.”
“Not kind. Truthful. I’m calling because this case cries out for someone of your ability, and I’d love to find a way to take advantage of your talent.”
“You know I’m retired, right?”
“So I was told. And I’m sure that going back to the old routine is the last thing you’d want to do. I’m not suggesting anything like that. I have a feeling this case is going to be very big, and I’d love to have access to your thinking.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking me to do.”
“Ideally,” said Kline, “I’d like you to find out who killed Mark Mellery.”
“Isn’t that what the BCI Major Crimes Unit is for?”
“Sure. And with some luck they may eventually succeed.”
“But?”
“But I want to improve my odds. This case is too important to leave to the mercy of our usual procedures. I want an ace up my sleeve.”
“I don’t see how I’d fit in.”
“You don’t see yourself working for BCI? Don’t worry. I figured Rod wasn’t your kind of guy. No, you’d report to me personally. We could set you up as some kind of adjunct investigator or consultant to my office, whatever would work for you.”
“How much of my time are we talking about?”
“That’s up to you.” When Gurney did not respond, he went on, “Mark Mellery must have admired and trusted you. He asked you to help him deal with a predator. I’m asking you to help me deal with that same predator. Whatever you can give me I’d be grateful for.”
This guy is good, thought Gurney. He’s got the sincerity thing down pat. He said, “I’ll talk to my wife about it. I’ll get back to you in the morning. Give me a number where I can reach you.”
The smile in the voice was huge. “I’ll give you my home number. I have a feeling you’re an early riser like me. Call anytime after six A.M.”
When he returned to
the kitchen, Madeleine was at the table, but her mood had changed. She was reading the Times. He sat opposite her at a right angle so he was facing the old Franklin woodstove. He looked toward it without really seeing it and began massaging his forehead as if the decision confronting him were a muscle kink to be worked out.
“It’s not that difficult, is it?” said Madeleine without looking up from her paper.
“What?”
“What you’re thinking about.”
“The DA seems eager for my help.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“An outsider wouldn’t normally be brought into something like this.”
“But you’re not just any outsider, are you?”
“I guess my connection with Mellery makes a difference.”
She cocked her head, peering at him with her X-ray vision.
“He was very flattering,” said Gurney, trying not to sound flattered.
“Probably just describing your talents accurately.”
“Compared to Captain Rodriguez, anyone would look good.”
She smiled at his awkward humility. “What did he offer you?”
“A blank check, really. I’d operate through his office. Have to be very careful not to step on toes, though. I told him I’d decide by tomorrow morning.”
“Decide what?”
“Whether or not I want to do this.”
“Are you joking?”
“You think it’s that bad an idea?”
“I mean, are you joking about not having decided yet?”
“There’s a lot involved.”
“More than you may think, but it’s obvious you’re going to do it.”
She went back to reading her paper.
“What do you mean, more than I may think?” he asked after a long minute.
“Choices sometimes have consequences we don’t anticipate.”
“Like what?”
Her sad stare told him it was a stupid question.
After a pause he said, “I feel I owe something to Mark.”
A flicker of irony was added to the stare.
“Why the funny look?”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you call him by his first name.”
