by John Verdon
“What are you suggesting should be done?” Kline asked.
“I’m having all the guests reinterviewed, and I’m having deeper background checks done. We’re going to turn over some rocks in the lives of these cokehead creeps. I’m telling you right now—one of them did it, and it’s only a matter of time until we find out which one.”
“What do you think, Dave?” Kline’s tone was almost too casual, as though he were trying to hide the pleasure he derived from provoking a battle.
“Reinterviews and background checks could be helpful,” said Gurney blandly.
“Helpful but not necessary?”
“We won’t know until they’re done. It could also be helpful to address the question of opportunity, or access to the victim, in a broader context—for example, inns or bed-and-breakfasts in the immediate vicinity that might be almost as convenient as the guest quarters of the institute.”
“I’ll lay odds it was a guest,” said Rodriguez. “When a swimmer disappears in shark-infested waters, it isn’t because he was kidnapped by a passing water-skier.” He glared at Gurney, whose smile he interpreted as a challenge. “Let’s get real about this!”
“Are we looking into the bed-and-breakfasts, Rod?” asked Kline.
“We’re looking into everything.”
“Good. Dave, is there anything else that would be on your priority list?”
“Nothing that’s not already in the pipeline. Lab work on the blood; foreign fibers on and around the victim; brand, availability, and any peculiarities of the boots; ballistics matches on the bullet; analysis of the audio recording of the perp’s call to Mellery, with enhancements of the background sounds, and originating transmission-tower ID if it was a cell call; landline and cell records of the current guests; handwriting analysis of the notes, with paper and ink IDs; psych profile based on communications and murder MO; cross-check of the FBI’s threatening-letters database. I think that would cover it. Am I forgetting anything, Captain?”
Before Rodriguez could answer, which he seemed in no rush to do, Kline’s assistant opened the door and stepped into the office. “Excuse me, sir,” she said with a deference that seemed designed for public consumption. “There is a Sergeant Wigg here to see the captain.”
Rodriguez frowned.
“Send her in,” said Kline, whose appetite for confrontation seemed boundless.
The genderless redhead from the BCI headquarters meeting entered, wearing the same plain blue suit and carrying the same laptop.
“What do you want, Wigg?” asked Rodriguez, more annoyed than curious.
“We discovered something, sir, that I thought was important enough to bring to your attention.”
“Well?”
“It’s about the boots, sir.”
“Boots?”
“The boots in the tree, sir.”
“What about them?”
“May I place this on the coffee table?” asked Wigg, indicating her laptop.
Rodriguez looked at Kline. Kline nodded.
Thirty seconds and a few keystrokes later, the three men were looking at a split-screen pair of photos of apparently identical boot prints.
“The ones on the left are actual prints from the scene. The ones on the right are prints we made in the same snow with the boots recovered from the tree.”
“So the boots that made the trail are the boots we found at the end of the trail. You didn’t need to come all the way to this meeting to tell us that.”
Gurney couldn’t resist interrupting. “I think Sergeant Wigg came to tell us just the opposite.”
“Are you saying the boots in the tree weren’t the boots the killer wore?” asked Kline.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Rodriguez
“Very little in this case does,” said Kline. “Sergeant?”
“The boots are the same brand, same style, same size. Both pairs are brand new. But they are definitely two separate pairs. Snow, especially snow within ten degrees of the freezing point, provides an excellent medium for registering detail. The relevant detail in this instance is this tiny deformity in this portion of the tread.” She pointed with a sharp pencil to an almost invisible raised speck on the heel of the boot on the right, the one from the tree. “That deformity, which probably occurred during the manufacturing process, shows up on every print we made with this boot, but not on any of the prints at the scene. The only plausible explanation is that they were made by different boots.”
“Surely there could be other explanations,” said Rodriguez.
“What did you have in mind, sir?”
“I’m just pointing out the likelihood that something is being overlooked.”
Kline cleared his throat. “For the sake of argument, let’s assume Sergeant Wigg is right and we’re dealing with two pairs—one worn by the perp and one left hanging in the tree at the end of the trail. What on earth does that mean? What does it tell us?”
Rodriguez eyed the computer screen resentfully. “Not a damn thing of any use in catching the killer.”
“How about you, Dave?”
“It tells me the same thing as the note left on the body. It’s just another kind of note. It says, ‘Catch me if you can, but you can’t, because I’m too smart for you.’”
“How the hell does a second pair of boots tell you that?” There was anger in Rodriguez’s voice.
Gurney replied with an almost sleepy calmness—his characteristic reaction to anger as long as he could remember. “Alone, they wouldn’t tell me anything. But add them to the other peculiar details and the whole picture looks more and more like an elaborate game.”
“If it’s a game, the goal is to distract us, and it’s succeeding,” sneered Rodriguez.
When Gurney did not respond, Kline prodded him. “You look like you might not agree with that.”
“I think the game is more than a distraction. I think it’s the whole point.”
Rodriguez rose from his chair in disgust. “Unless you need me for anything else, Sheridan, I have to get back to my office.”
After giving Kline a grim handshake, he left, followed after a short pause by Wigg. Kline concealed whatever reaction he had to the departure.
“So tell me,” he said after a moment, leaning toward Gurney, “what should we be doing that we’re not doing? Clearly you don’t see the situation the way Rod does.”
Gurney shrugged. “There’s no harm in taking a closer look at the guests. It would need to be done at some point. But the captain has higher hopes than I do that it will lead to an arrest.”
“You’re saying it’s essentially a waste of time?”
“It’s a necessary process of elimination. I just don’t think the murderer is one of the guests. The captain keeps emphasizing the importance of opportunity—the supposed convenience of the killer’s being on the property. But I see it as an inconvenience—too great a chance of being seen leaving or returning to his room, too much stuff to be concealed. Where would he keep the lawn chair, boots, bottle, gun? The risks and complications would be unacceptable to this kind of individual.”
Kline raised a curious eyebrow, and Gurney went on.
“On a disorganized-to-organized personality axis, this guy is off the scale on the organized end. His attention to detail is extraordinary.”
“You mean like reweaving the webbing on the lawn chair to make it all white and reduce its visibility in the snow?”
“Yes. He’s also very cool under pressure. He didn’t run from the crime scene, he walked. The footprints from the patio to the woods are so unhurried you’d think he was out for a stroll.”
“That frenzy of stabbing the victim with a shattered whiskey bottle doesn’t sound cool to me.”
“If it happened in a bar, you’d be right. But remember that the bottle was carefully prepared beforehand, even washed and wiped clean of fingerprints. I’d say the appearance of frenzy was as planned as everything else.”
“Okay,” agreed Kline slowly. “C
ool, calm, organized. What else?”
“A perfectionist in the way he communicates. Well read—with a feeling for language and meter. Just between us, I’ll go way out on a limb and say that the poems have an odd formality that feels to me like the affected gentility you sometimes see in first-generation sophistication.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“The educated child of uneducated parents, desperate to set himself apart. But as I said, I’m out on a limb with that—way past any solid evidence.”
“Anything else?”
“Mild-mannered on the outside, full of hate on the inside.”
“And you don’t think he’s one of the guests?”
“No. From his point of view, the advantage of increased proximity would be trumped by the disadvantage of increased risk.”
“You’re a very logical man, Detective Gurney. Do you think the killer is that logical?”
“Oh, yes. As logical as he is pathological. Off the scale on both counts.”
Chapter 28
Back to the scene of the crime
Gurney’s route home from Kline’s office passed through Peony, so he decided to make a stop at the institute.
The temporary ID Kline’s assistant had provided him with got him past the cop at the gate, no questions asked. As Gurney breathed in the chilly air, he reflected that the day was eerily similar to the morning after the murder. The layer of snow, which in the intervening days had partly melted away, was now restored. Nighttime flurries, common in the higher elevations of the Catskills, had freshened and whitened the landscape.
Gurney decided to rewalk the killer’s route, thinking he might notice something about the surroundings he’d missed. He proceeded along the driveway, through the parking area, around to the back of the barn where the lawn chair was found. He looked about him, trying to understand why the killer chose that spot to sit. His concentration was broken by the sounds of a door opening and slamming and a harsh, familiar voice.
“Jesus Christ! We ought to call in an airstrike and level the fucking place.”
Thinking it best to make his presence known, Gurney stepped through the high hedge that separated the barn area from the rear patio of the house. Sergeant Hardwick and Investigator Tom Cruise Blatt greeted him with unwelcoming stares.
“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Hardwick.
“Temporary arrangement with the DA. Just wanted to take another look at the scene. Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you might want to know I was here.”
“In the bushes?”
“Behind the barn. I was standing where the killer was sitting.”
“What for?”
“Better question would be what was he there for?”
Hardwick shrugged. “Lurking in the shadows? Taking a smoke break in his fucking lawn chair? Waiting for the right moment?”
“What would make the moment right?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I’m not sure. But why wait here? And why arrive at the scene so early you have to bring a chair with you?”
“Maybe he wanted to wait until the Mellerys went to sleep. Maybe he wanted to watch until all the lights went out.”
“According to Caddy Mellery, they went to bed and turned out the lights hours earlier. And the phone call that woke them was almost certainly from the murderer—meaning that he wanted them awake, not asleep. And if he wanted to know whether the lights were out, why station himself in one of the few spots where he couldn’t see the upstairs windows? In fact, from the position of that chair, he could barely have seen the house at all.”
“What the hell is all that supposed to mean?” blustered Hardwick, his tone belied by an uneasy look in his eyes.
“It means either that a very smart, very careful perp went to great lengths to do something senseless or that our reconstruction of what happened here is wrong.”
Blatt, who’d been following the conversation as if it were a tennis game, stared at Hardwick.
Hardwick looked like he was tasting something unpleasant. “Any chance you could track down some coffee?”
Blatt pursed his lips by way of complaint but retreated into the house, presumably to do what he was told.
Hardwick took his time lighting a cigarette. “There’s something else that doesn’t make sense. I was looking at a report on the footprint data. The spacing between the prints coming from the public road to the chair location behind the barn averages three inches greater than between the prints going from the body to the woods.”
“Meaning that the perp was walking faster when he arrived than when he left?”
“Meaning exactly that.”
“So he was in a bigger hurry to get to the barn and sit and wait than to get away from the scene after the murder?”
“That’s Wigg’s interpretation of the data, and I can’t come up with another one.”
Gurney shook his head. “I’m telling you, Jack, our lens is out of focus. And by the way, there’s another odd bit of data bothering me. Where exactly was that whiskey bottle found?”
“About a hundred feet from the body, alongside the departing prints.”
“Why there?”
“Because that’s where he dropped it. What’s the problem?”
“Why carry it there? Why not leave it by the body?”
“An oversight. In the heat of the moment, he didn’t realize he still had it in his hand. When he noticed it, he tossed it. I don’t see the problem.”
“Maybe there isn’t any. But the footprints are very regular, relaxed, unhurried—like everything was proceeding according to plan.”
“What the hell are you getting at?” Hardwick was showing the frustration of a man trying to hold his groceries inside a ripped bag.
“Everything about the case feels super cool, super planned—very cerebral. My gut tells me that everything is where it is for a reason.”
“You’re telling me he carried the weapon a hundred feet away and dropped it there for a premeditated reason?”
“That would be my guess.”
“What goddamn reason could he have?”
“What effect did it have on us?”
“What are you talking about?”
“This guy is as much focused on the police as he was on Mark Mellery. Has it occurred to you that the oddities of the crime scene might be part of a game he’s playing with us?”
“No, that did not occur to me. Frankly, it’s kind of far out.”
Gurney restrained an urge to argue the point and said instead, “I gather Captain Rod still thinks our man is one of the guests.”
“Yeah, ‘one of the lunatics in the asylum’ is how he puts it.”
“You agree?”
“That they’re lunatics? Absolutely. That one of them is the murderer? Maybe.”
“And maybe not?”
“I’m not sure. But don’t tell Rodriguez that.”
“Does he have any favorite candidates?”
“Any of the drug addicts would be okay with him. He was going on yesterday about the Mellery Institute for Spiritual Renewal being nothing but a pricey spa for rich scumbags.”
“I don’t get the connection.”
“Between what?”
“What exactly does drug addiction have to do with Mark Mellery’s murder?”
Hardwick took a final thoughtful drag from his cigarette, then flicked the butt into the damp earth beneath the holly hedge. Gurney reflected that this was not the sort of thing one was supposed to do at a crime scene, even after it had been fine-combed, but it was exactly the sort of thing he’d gotten used to during their former collaboration. Nor was he surprised when Hardwick walked over to the hedge to extinguish the smoldering butt with the toe of his shoe. That was the way the man gave himself time to think about what he was going to say, or not say, next. When the butt was thoroughly extinguished and buried a good three inches in the soil, Hardwick spoke.
“Probably not much to do
with the murder, but a lot to do with Rodriguez.”
“Anything you can talk about?”
“He has a daughter in Greystone.”
“The mental hospital down in New Jersey?”
“Yeah. She did some permanent damage. Club drugs, crystal meth, crack. Fried a few brain circuits, tried to kill her mother. The way Rodriguez sees it, every other drug addict in the world is responsible for what happened to her. It’s not a subject he’s rational about.”
“So he thinks an addict killed Mellery?”
“That’s the way he wants it to be, so that’s what he thinks.”
A damp, isolated gust of wind swept across the patio from the direction of the snow-covered lawn. Gurney shivered and stuck his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “I thought he just wanted to impress Kline.”
“That, too. For a dickhead he’s pretty complicated. Control freak. Nasty little bundle of ambition. Totally insecure. Obsessed with punishing addicts. Not too happy about you, by the way.”
“Any specific reason?”
“Doesn’t like deviations from standard procedure. Doesn’t like smart guys. Doesn’t like anyone closer to Kline than he is. Who the fuck knows what else?”
“Doesn’t sound like the ideal frame of mind for leading an investigation.”
“Yeah, well, what else is new in the wonderful world of criminal justice? But just because a guy is a fucked-up asshole doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.”
Gurney contemplated this bit of Hardwickian wisdom without comment, then changed the subject. “Does the focus on the guests mean other avenues are being ignored?”
“Like what?”
“Like talking to people in the area. Motels, inns, B&Bs …”
“Nothing is being ignored,” said Hardwick with sudden defensiveness. “The households in the vicinity—there aren’t that many, less than a dozen on the road from the village up to the institute—were contacted within the first twenty-four hours, an effort that produced zero information. Nobody heard anything, saw anything, remembered anything. No strangers, no noises, no vehicles at odd hours, nothing out of the ordinary. Couple of people thought they heard coyotes. Couple more thought they heard a screech owl.”
