by John Verdon
“If what you’re asking me is whether I was enjoying the pleasures of vicarious vengeance on the drunk driver who killed my son, the answer is no.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
Nardo eyed him skeptically, then shrugged. Gurney’s reply didn’t seem to convince him, but neither did he seem inclined to pursue the matter.
The explosive lieutenant had apparently been defused. The rest of the evening was occupied with the triage process of sorting through the immediate priorities and routine details of concluding a major murder investigation.
Gurney was taken to Wycherly General Hospital along with Felicity Spinks (née Dermott) and Gregory Dermott (né Spinks). While Dermott’s incoherent mother, with her ruby glass slippers still on her feet, was examined by a blandly upbeat PA, Dermott was rushed off, still unconscious, to radiology.
Meanwhile the gash in Gurney’s head was being cleaned, stitched, and bandaged by a nurse whose manner seemed unusually intimate—an impression fostered in part by the breathiness of her voice and by how close to him she stood as she worked gently on his wound. It was an impression of immediate availability that he found incongruously exciting under the circumstances. Although that was clearly a perilous path, not to mention insane, not to mention pathetic, he did decide to take advantage of her friendliness in another way. He gave her his cell number and asked her to call him directly if there was any significant change in Dermott’s condition. He didn’t want to be out of the loop, and he didn’t trust Nardo to keep him in it. She agreed with a smile—after which he was driven by a taciturn young Wycherly cop back to Dermott’s house.
En route he called Sheridan Kline’s emergency night line and got a recording. He left a compact message covering the essential points. Then he called home, got his own recording, and left a message for Madeleine, referring to the same events—minus the bullet, the bottle, the blood, and the stitches. He wondered if she was out somewhere or actually standing there, listening to him leaving the message, unwilling to speak to him. Lacking her uncanny insight into such matters, he had no feeling for the right answer.
By the time they arrived back at Dermott’s house, over an hour had passed and the street was full of Wycherly, county, and state police vehicles. Big Tommy and square-jawed Pat were standing sentry on the porch. Gurney was directed into the small room off the center hallway where he’d had his introductory conversation with Nardo. Nardo was there again, sitting at the same table. Two crime-scene specialists in white coveralls, booties, and latex gloves were just leaving the room on their way to the basement stairs.
Nardo pushed a yellow pad and a cheap pen across the table toward Gurney. If there was any dangerous emotion left in the man, it was well hidden under a thick layer of bureaucratic rigmarole.
“Have a seat. We need a statement. Start at your point of arrival at this site this afternoon, with the reason for your presence. Include all relevant actions by you and direct observations by you of the actions of others. Include a timeline, indicating at which points it is based on specific information and at which points it is estimated. You may conclude the statement at the time you were escorted to the hospital, unless during your treatment at the hospital additional relevant information came to light. Any questions?”
Gurney spent the next forty-five minutes following these directions, with Nardo mostly out of the room, filling four lined pages with small, precise handwriting. There was a copying machine on the table against the far wall of the room, and Gurney used it to make two copies of the signed and dated statement for himself before submitting the original to Nardo.
All the man said was, “We’ll be in touch.” His voice was professionally neutral. He didn’t offer a handshake.
Chapter 53
Ending, beginning
By the time Gurney had crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge and begun the long Route 17 leg of his journey, the snow was falling more heavily, effectively shrinking the visible world. Every few minutes he’d open his side window for a blast of cold air to keep his mind in the moment.
A few miles from Goshen, he nearly drove off the road. It was his tires vibrating loudly against the ribbed surface of the shoulder that kept him from heading over an embankment.
He tried to think of nothing but the car, the steering wheel, and the road, but it was impossible. He began instead to imagine the potential media coverage to come, beginning with a press conference at which Sheridan Kline would surely congratulate himself for the role of his investigatory staff in making America safer by ending the bloody career of a devilish criminal. The media, in general, got on Gurney’s nerves. Their moronic coverage of crime was a crime in itself. They made a game of it. Of course, in his own way, so did he. He generally viewed a homicide as a puzzle to be solved, a murderer as an opponent to be outmaneuvered. He studied the facts, figured the angles, tripped the snare, and delivered his quarry into the maw of the justice machine. Then on to the next death from unnatural causes that demanded a clever mind to sort out. But sometimes he saw things in quite a different way—when he was overcome by the weariness of the chase, when darkness made all the puzzle pieces look alike or not like puzzle pieces at all, when his harried brain wandered from its geometric grid and followed more primitive paths, giving him glimpses of the true horror of the subject matter in which he’d chosen to immerse himself.
On the one hand, there was the logic of the law, the science of criminology, the processes of adjudication. On the other, there was Jason Strunk, Peter Possum Piggert, Gregory Dermott, pain, murderous rage, death. And between these two worlds there was the sharp, unsettling question—what had one to do with the other?
He opened the side window again and let the hard-blown snow sting the side of his face.
Profound and pointless questions, inner dialogues leading nowhere, were as familiar in his inner landscape as estimating the chances of a Red Sox win might be in another man’s. It was a bad habit, this sort of thinking, and it brought him nothing good. On the occasions when he’d insist on exposing it to Madeleine, it would be met with boredom or impatience.
“What’s really on your mind?” she’d sometimes ask, putting down her knitting and looking him in the eye.
“What do you mean?” he’d ask in reply, dishonestly, knowing exactly what she meant.
“You can’t possibly care about that nonsense. Figure out what’s actually bothering you.”
Figure out what’s actually bothering you.
Easier said than done.
What was bothering him? The vast inadequacies of reason in the face of feral passions? The fact that the justice system is a cage that can no more keep the devil contained than a weather vane can stop the wind? All he knew was that something was there, in the back of his mind, chewing at his other thoughts and feelings like a rat.
When he tried to identify the most corrosive problem amid the day’s chaos, he found himself lost in a sea of unmoored images.
When he tried to clear his mind—to relax and think of nothing—two images would not disappear.
One was the cruel delight in Dermott’s eyes when he recited his hideous rhyme about Danny’s death. The other was the echo of the accusatory fury with which he himself had slandered his own father in the fictional account of the attack on his mother. That was no mere acting. Rising up from somewhere beneath it, saturating it, was a terrible anger. Did its authenticity mean he actually hated his father? Was the rage that exploded in the telling of that ugly tale the suppressed rage of abandonment—the fierce resentment of a child toward a father who did nothing but work and sleep and drink, a father who was forever receding into the distance, forever unreachable? Gurney was startled at how much, and how little, he had in common with Dermott.
Or was it the reverse—a smoke screen covering the guilt he felt for abandoning that chilly, insular man in his old age, for having as little to do with him as possible?
Or was it a displaced self-hatred arising out of his own doub
le failure as a father—his fatal lack of attention toward one son and his active avoidance of the other?
Madeleine would probably say that the answer could be any of the above, all of the above, or none of the above; but whatever it was wasn’t important. What was important was to do what one believed in one’s heart to be the right thing to do, right here and now. And lest he find that concept daunting, she might suggest that he begin by returning Kyle’s phone call. Not that she was particularly fond of Kyle—in fact, she didn’t seem to like him at all, found his Porsche silly, his wife pretentious—but for Madeleine personal chemistry was always secondary to doing the right thing. Gurney marveled at how a person so spontaneous could also lead such a principled life. It was what made her who she was. It was what made her a beacon in the murkiness of his own existence.
The right thing, right now.
Inspired, he pulled over at the broad, scruffy entrance area of an old farm and took out his wallet to get Kyle’s number. (He’d never bothered to enter Kyle’s name in his phone’s voice-recognition system, an omission that gave his conscience a twinge.) Calling him at 3:00 A.M.—midnight in Seattle—seemed a little crazy, but the alternative was worse: He would put it off, and put it off again, and then rationalize not calling at all.
“Dad?”
“Did I wake you?”
“Actually, no. I was up. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I, uh … I just wanted to talk to you, return your call. I wasn’t being very good about that, seemed like you’d been trying to reach me for a long time.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“I know it’s an odd time to call, but don’t worry, I’m fine.”
“Good.”
“I did have a difficult day, but it turned out okay. The reason I didn’t return your calls sooner … I’ve been in the middle of a complicated mess. But that’s no excuse. Was there anything you needed?”
“What kind of mess?”
“What? Oh—usual kind, homicide investigation.”
“I thought you were retired.”
“I was. I mean, I am. But I got involved because I knew one of the victims. Long story. Next time I see you, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Wow. You did it again!”
“Did what?”
“You caught another mass murderer, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Victims. You said victims, plural. How many were there?”
“Five that we know of, plans for twenty more.”
“And you got him. Damn! Mass murderers don’t have a chance against you. You’re like Batman.”
Gurney laughed. He hadn’t done much of that lately. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so in a conversation with Kyle. Come to think of it, this was an unusual conversation in other ways as well—considering that they’d been talking for at least two minutes without Kyle’s mentioning something he’d just bought or was about to buy.
“In this case Batman had a lot of help,” said Gurney. “But that’s not why I called. I wanted to return your calls, find out what was happening with you. Anything new?”
“Not much,” said Kyle drily. “I lost my job. Kate and I broke up. I may change careers, go to law school. What do you think?”
After a second of shocked silence, Gurney laughed even louder. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “What the hell happened?”
“The financial industry collapsed—as you may have heard—along with my job and my marriage and my two condos and my three cars. Funny, though, how quickly you can adjust to unimaginable catastrophe. Anyway, what I’m really wondering about now is whether I should go to law school. That’s what I wanted to ask you. You think I have the right kind of mind for that?”
Gurney suggested that Kyle come up from the city that weekend, and they could talk about the whole situation in as much detail as he wanted for as long as he wanted. Kyle agreed—even seemed happy about it. When the call ended, Gurney sat for a good ten minutes, amazed.
There were other calls he had to make. In the morning he’d call Mark Mellery’s widow and tell her that it was finally over—that Gregory Dermott Spinks was in custody and that the evidence of his guilt was clear, concrete, and overwhelming. She’d probably already have gotten a personal call from Sheridan Kline and maybe from Rodriguez as well. But he’d call her anyway because of his relationship with Mark.
Then there was Sonya Reynolds. According to their arrangement, he owed her at least one more of his special mug-shot portraits. It seemed so unimportant now, such a trivial waste of time. Still, he’d call her and at least talk about it and would end up doing whatever he’d originally agreed to do. But nothing else. Sonya’s attention was pleasing, ego-gratifying, maybe even a little thrilling, but it came with too high a price, too great a danger to things that mattered more.
The 160-mile trip from Wycherly to Walnut Crossing took five hours instead of three because of the snow. By the time Gurney turned off the county highway onto the lane that meandered up the mountain to his farmhouse, he’d fallen into a kind of autopilot numbness. The window, open a crack for the last hour, had kept enough of a chill on his face and oxygen in his lungs to make driving possible. As he reached the gently sloping pasture that separated the big barn from the house, he noted that the snowflakes that had earlier been racing horizontally across the roads were now floating straight down. He drove slowly up through the pasture, turning eastward at the house before stopping, so that the warmth of the sun, later in the day when the storm had passed, could keep the windshield free of ice. He sat back, almost unable to move.
He was so deeply exhausted that when his phone rang, it took him several seconds to recognize the sound.
“Yes?” His greeting could have been mistaken for a wheeze.
“Is David there?” The female voice sounded familiar.
“This is David.”
“Oh, you sounded … odd. This is Laura. From the hospital. You wanted me to call … if anything happened,” she added with enough of a pause to suggest a hope that his desire for the call might have deeper roots than the reason he’d given.
“That’s right. Thank you for remembering.”
“My pleasure.”
“Did something happen?”
“Mr. Dermott passed away.”
“Excuse me? Could you say that again?”
“Gregory Dermott, the man you wanted to know about—he died ten minutes ago.”
“Cause of death?”
“Nothing official yet, but the MRI they did on admission showed a skull fracture with a massive hemorrhage.”
“Right. I guess it’s not a surprise, with that kind of damage.” It seemed to him that he was feeling something, but the feeling was far away and had no label.
“No, not with that kind of damage.”
The feeling was faint but disturbing, like a small cry in a loud wind.
“No. Well, thank you, Laura. It was good of you to call.”
“Sure. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“You better get some sleep.”
“Yeah. Good night. And thanks again.”
First he switched off the phone, then he switched off the headlights of the car and sank back against the seat, too drained to move. In the sudden absence of the headlights, everything around him was impenetrably dark.
Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, the absolute blackness of the sky and the woods shifted to a deep gray and the snow-covered pasture to a softer gray. Out where he imagined he could just discern the eastern ridge, where the sun would rise in another hour, there seemed to be a faint aura. The snow had stopped falling. The house beside the car was massive, cold, and still.
He tried to see what had happened in the simplest terms. The child in the bedroom with his lonely mother and demented drunk of a father … the screams and the blood and the helplessness … the terrible lifelong physical and mental damage … the
homicidal delusions of revenge and redemption. So the little Spinks boy grew into the Dermott madman who murdered at least five men and was on the verge of murdering twenty more. Gregory Spinks whose father had cut his mother’s throat. Gregory Dermott who had his skull fatally smashed in the house where it all began.
Gurney gazed out at the barely visible outline of the hills, knowing there was a second story to consider, a story he needed to understand better—the story of his own life, the father who’d ignored him, the grown son he in turn had ignored, the obsessive career that had brought him so much praise and so little peace, the little boy who’d died when he wasn’t looking, and Madeleine who seemed to understand it all. Madeleine, the light he’d almost lost. The light he’d endangered.
He was too tired now to move even a finger, too far toward sleep to feel a thing, and into his mind came a merciful emptiness. For a while—he wasn’t sure how long—it was as though he didn’t exist, as though everything in him had been reduced to a dimensionless point of consciousness, a pinprick of awareness and nothing more.
He came to suddenly, opening his eyes just as the burning rim of the sun began to glare through the bare trees atop the ridge. He watched the radiant fingernail of light slowly swell into a great white arc. Then he became aware of another presence.
Madeleine, in her bright orange parka—the same one she’d worn the day he’d followed her to the overlook—was standing by the side window of the car looking at him. He wondered how long she’d been there. Tiny ice crystals glimmered on the fleecy edge of her hood. He lowered the window.
At first she said nothing, but in her face he saw—saw, sensed, felt, he didn’t know by what route her emotion reached him—an amalgam of acceptance and love. Acceptance, love, and a deep relief that once again he’d come home alive.
She asked with a touching matter-of-factness whether he’d like some breakfast.
