by John Verdon
CHIEF LUNTZ: You might want to slow down a bit.
CAROL LUNTZ: I beg your pardon?
CHIEF LUNTZ: You heard me.
CAROL LUNTZ: Someone’s got to tell the truth.
CHIEF LUNTZ: What truth?
CAROL LUNTZ: The truth about Scott’s slimy Mexican.
CHIEF LUNTZ: The truth? Or is it just a rotten little rumor embellished by one of your idiot friends—total, slanderous, actionable bullcrap!
While the tempers of the Luntzes flared, Ashton and Jillian were visible in the left background of the scene, their distance from the fixed camera position putting their conversation out of audio range. It ended with Jillian turning and walking in the direction of the cottage, which was set with its rear against the bordering woodland on the opposite side of the lawn, and Ashton heading back toward the Luntzes with a troubled frown.
When Carol Luntz saw Ashton approaching, she downed her margarita in a couple of fast swallows. Her husband reacted to this with an inaudible word hissed through clenched teeth. (Gurney glanced down at the audio transcript, but it offered no interpretation.)
Switching expressions as Ashton rejoined them, the chief asked, “So, Scott, everything okay? Everything fine?”
“I hope so,” said Ashton. “I mean, I wish Jillian would just …” He shook his head, his voice trailing off.
“Oh, God,” exclaimed Carol Luntz, rather too hopefully, “there’s nothing wrong, is there?”
Ashton shook his head. “Jillian wants Hector to join us for the wedding toast. He told us earlier he doesn’t want to, and … well, that’s about it.” He smiled awkwardly, gazing down at the grass.
“What’s his problem, anyway?” asked Carol, leaning in toward Ashton.
Hardwick pushed “pause,” freezing Carol in a conspiratorial pose. He turned to Gurney with the fire of a man sharing a revelation. “This bitch is one of those bitches that gets off on trouble, wants to savor every detail, pretends she’s bursting with empathy. Cries for your pain and hopes you die so she can cry harder and show the world how much she cares.”
Gurney sensed truth in the diagnosis but found Hardwick’s excess hard to take. “What’s next?” he asked, turning impatiently toward the screen.
“Relax. It gets better.” Hardwick pushed “play,” reanimating the exchange between Carol Luntz and Scott Ashton.
Ashton was saying, “It’s all rather silly; I don’t want to bore you with it.”
“But what’s wrong with that man?” Carol persisted, turning wrong into a wail.
Ashton shrugged, looked too exhausted to keep the matter private any longer. “Hector has a negative attitude toward Jillian. Jillian, on the other hand, is determined to solve whatever undefined issue has come between them. For that reason she insisted that I invite him to our reception, which I attempted to do on two occasions—a week ago and again this morning. On both occasions he declined. Just a moment ago Jillian called me over to inform me that she intends to pry him out of his little cottage over there for the wedding toast. In my opinion it’s a waste of time, and I told her so.”
“Why would she want to bother with … with … him?” She stumbled at the end, as though grabbing for a nasty epithet and finding none within reach.
“Good question, Carol, but not one I can answer.”
His comment was followed by a cut to the view from another camera, a camera positioned to cover a quadrant of the property that included the cottage, the rose garden, and half of the main house. Jillian, the picture-book bride, was knocking on the cottage door.
Again Hardwick stopped the video, causing the three figures to break down into a mosaic pattern on the screen. “All right,” he said. “Here we are. Starting now. The critical fourteen minutes. The fourteen minutes during which Hector Flores kills Jillian Perry Ashton. The fourteen minutes during which he cuts her head off with a machete, slips out the back window, and escapes without a trace. Those fourteen minutes start when she steps inside and closes the door.”
Hardwick released the “pause” button, and the action resumed. Jillian opened the cottage door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her.
“That’s it,” said Hardwick, pointing at the screen, “the last sight of her alive.”
The camera remained on the cottage while Gurney imagined the murder about to occur behind the floral-curtained windows.
“You said Flores ‘slips out the back window and escapes without a trace’ after killing her. You mean that literally?”
“Well,” said Hardwick, pausing dramatically, “I’d have to say … yes and no.”
Gurney sighed and waited.
“The thing is,” said Hardwick, “Flores’s disappearance has a familiar echo about it.” Another pause, accented by a sly smile. “There was a trail from the back window of the cottage that went out into the woods.”
“What’s your point, Jack?”
“That trail out into the woods? It just stopped dead a hundred and fifty yards from the house.”
“What are you saying?”
“It doesn’t remind you of anything?”
Gurney stared at him incredulously. “You mean the Mellery case?”
“Don’t know of a whole lot of other murder cases with trails stopping in the middle of the woods with no obvious explanation.”
“So you’re saying … what?”
“Nothing definite. Just wondering if you might have missed a loose end when you wrapped up the Mellery lunacy.”
“What kind of loose end?”
“Possibility of an accomplice?”
“Accomplice? Are you nuts? You know as well as I do there was nothing about the Mellery case that suggested even the remote possibility of more than one perp.”
“You a little touchy on that subject?”
“Touchy? I’m touchy about time-wasting suggestions based on nothing more than your demented sense of humor.”
“So it’s all a coincidence?” Hardwick was striking the precise supercilious note that went through Gurney like nails on a blackboard.
“All what, Jack?”
“The MO similarities.”
“You better tell me pretty damn quick what you’re talking about.”
Hardwick’s mouth stretched sideways—maybe a grin, maybe a grimace. “Watch the movie,” he said. “Only a few minutes to go.”
A few minutes passed. Nothing of significance was happening on the screen. Several guests wandered over to the flower beds that bordered the cottage, and one of the women in the group, the one Hardwick had earlier identified as the lieutenant governor’s wife, seemed to be conducting a kind of botanical tour, speaking energetically as she pointed at various blooms. Her group moved gradually out of the frame as though attached by invisible threads to its leader. The camera remained focused on the cottage. The curtained windows revealed nothing.
Just as Gurney was about to question the purpose of this segment of the video, the view switched back to one showing Scott Ashton and the Luntzes in the foreground and the cottage in the background.
“Time for the toast,” Ashton was saying. All three were looking toward the cottage. Ashton glanced at his watch, raised his hand in a summoning gesture, and called to a member of the serving staff. She hurried over with an accommodating smile.
“Yes, sir?”
He pointed toward the cottage. “Let my wife know it’s past four o’clock.”
“She’s in that cute little house over there by the trees?”
“Yes, please tell her it’s time for the wedding toast.”
As she headed off on her assignment, Ashton turned to the Luntzes. “Jillian tends to lose track of time, especially when she’s trying to get someone to do what she wants.”
The video showed the young woman crossing the lawn, arriving at the cottage door, and knocking. After a few seconds, she knocked again, then tried the knob with no success. She looked back across the lawn toward Ashton, turning her palms up in a gesture of bafflement. In reply he mimed a mo
re energetic knock. She frowned but made the repeat effort, anyway. (This time the sound was loud enough to register on the sound track of the camera, which Gurney reckoned must have been around fifty feet from the cottage.) When there was no reply to her final attempt, she turned up her palms again and shook her head.
Ashton muttered something, seemingly more to himself than to the Luntzes, and strode off toward the cottage. He went straight to the door, knocked loudly, then yanked and pushed roughly at the knob, at the same time calling, “Jilli! Jilli, the door is locked! Jillian!” He stood scowling at the door, his body language conveying frustration and confusion, then turned and walked briskly to the back door of the main house.
Perched on the arm of Gurney’s couch, Hardwick explained, “He went to get a key. Told us he always kept an extra in the pantry.”
A moment later the video showed Ashton emerging from the main house. He went back to the cottage door, knocked again, apparently got no response, inserted a key, opened the door inward. From the perspective of the camera recording all this, about forty-five degrees to the cottage, very little of the building’s interior was visible and only Ashton’s back, but there was an abrupt stiffening in his body. After a momentary hesitation, he stepped inside. Several seconds later there was an awful sound, a howl of shock and anguish—the word “HELP” screamed desperately once, twice, three times, and then, seconds later, Scott Ashton came staggering out the door, tripping over his own feet, falling sideways into a flower bed, screaming “HELP” so primally and repeatedly that it ceased being a word at all.
Chapter 9
The view from the doorway
The wedding videographer’s stationary cameras, positioned at their four key viewpoints on the lawn, continued to run for another twelve minutes after Ashton’s collapse, creating a comprehensive video record of the ensuing chaos—at which point they were switched off and impounded by Chief Luntz for their evidentiary value.
The full twelve minutes of hyperactivity were included on the edited DVD that Gurney was watching with Hardwick—twelve minutes of shouted orders and questions, horrified shrieks, guests running to Ashton, into the cottage, backing out, a woman falling, another tripping over her, falling on top of her, guests helping Ashton up from the flower bed, guiding him to the back door of the main house, Luntz blocking the door of the cottage and frantically working his cell phone, guests turning this way and that with crazed looks, the four musicians entering the scene, one violinist with his instrument still in his hand, another with just his bow, three uniformed Tambury cops running up to Luntz as he guarded the doorway, the president of the British Heritage Society vomiting on the grass.
At the end of the recording, after a final digital jitter, Gurney sat back slowly on his couch and looked over at Hardwick.
“Jesus.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think I’d like to know a little more.”
“For instance?”
“When did BCI arrive at the scene, and what did you find in the cottage?”
“Uniformed troopers arrived three minutes after Luntz shut down the cameras, which would be fifteen minutes after Ashton discovered the body. While Luntz was calling in his own uniforms, guests were calling 911—which got passed along to the trooper barracks and the sheriff’s department. As soon as the uniforms took a peek in the cottage, they called BCI, call got routed to me, and I got to the scene maybe twenty-five minutes later. So the customary clusterfuck was in high gear in no time at all.”
“And?”
“And the prevailing wisdom was that the whole deal should get dumped ASAP into BCI’s lap—which meant Senior Investigator Jack Hardwick’s lap. Where it remained for approximately one week, until I had the urge to inform our beloved captain that his approach to the case—the approach he insisted I follow—had certain logical flaws.”
Gurney smiled. “You told him he was a fucking idiot?”
“Words to that effect.”
“And he reassigned the case to Arlo Blatt?”
“He did exactly that, and there it has remained stuck for nearly four months now in a dust storm of wheel spinning, without a centimeter of real progress. Hence the beautiful mother of the beautiful bride’s interest in exploring another avenue of resolution.”
An exploration likely to replace the dust storm of wheel spinning with a shit storm of territorial defense, thought Gurney.
Back away now, before it’s too late, the small voice of wisdom whispered.
Then another voice spoke with a carefree confidence. You should at least find out what they discovered in the cottage. More knowledge is always a good thing.
“So you arrived at the scene and someone directed you to the body?” asked Gurney.
A twitch in Hardwick’s mouth signaled the arrival of the memory. “Yes. I was directed to the body. I was conscious of how the fuckers were watching me as they brought me to the doorway. I remember thinking, ‘They’re expecting a major reaction, which means that there’s something awful in there.’ ” He paused. His lips drew back from his teeth for a second or two, and then he went on. “Well, I was right about that. One hundred percent right.” He seemed authentically disturbed.
“The body was visible from the doorway?” asked Gurney.
“Oh, yeah, it was visible all right.”
Chapter 10
The only way it could have been done
Hardwick heaved himself up from the couch, rubbed his face roughly with both hands like a man trying to get himself fully awake after a night of bad dreams.
“Any chance you might have a cold bottle of beer in the house?”
“Not at the moment,” said Gurney.
“Not at the moment? Fuck does that mean? Not at the moment, but maybe in a minute or two an icy Heineken might materialize in front of me?”
Gurney noted that whatever fleeting vulnerability the man had just experienced at his recollection of what he’d seen four months ago was now gone.
“So,” Gurney went on, ignoring the beer diversion, “the body was observable from the doorway?”
Hardwick walked over to the den window that looked out on the back pasture. The northern sky was dusky gray. As he spoke, he gazed out in the direction of the high ridge that led to the old bluestone quarry.
“The body was sitting in a chair at a small square table in the front room, six feet from the entry door.” He grimaced, as one might at the smell of a skunk. “As I said, the body was sitting at the table. But the head was not on the body. The head was on the table in a pool of blood. On the table, facing the body, still wearing the tiara you saw in the video.”
He paused, as if to ensure the accurate ordering of details. “The cottage had three rooms—the front room and, behind it, a small kitchen and a small bedroom—plus a tiny bathroom and a closet off the bedroom. Wood floors, no rugs, nothing on the walls. Apart from the substantial amount of blood on and around the body, there were a few drops of blood toward the back of the room near the bedroom doorway and a few more drops near the bedroom window, which was wide open.”
“Escape route?” asked Gurney.
“No doubt about that. Partial footprint in the soil outside the window.” Hardwick turned from the den window and gave Gurney one of his obnoxiously sly looks. “That’s where it gets interesting.”
“The facts, Jack, just the facts. Spare me the coy bullshit.”
“Luntz had called the sheriff’s department because they had the nearest K-9 team, and they got to Ashton’s estate about five minutes after I did. The dog picks up a scent from a pair of Flores’s boots and races straight out through the woods like the trail is red hot. But he stops all of a sudden a hundred and fifty yards from the cottage—sniffing, sniffing, sniffing around in a pretty tight circle, and he stops and barks right on top of the weapon, which turned out to be a razor-sharp machete. But here’s the thing—after he found the machete, he couldn’t pick up any scent leading away from it. Handler led him around in a small
circle, then a wider circle—kept at it for half an hour—but it was no good. The only trail the dog could find led from the back window of the cottage to the machete, nowhere else.”
“This machete was just lying out there on the ground?” asked Gurney.
“It had some leaves and loose dirt kicked over the blade, like a half-assed attempt had been made to conceal it.”
Gurney pondered this for a few seconds. “No doubt about it being the murder weapon?”
Hardwick looked surprised by the question. “Zero doubt. Victim’s blood still on it. Perfect DNA match. Also supported by the ME’s report.” Hardwick’s tone switched to one of rote repetition of something he’d said many times before. “Death caused by the severing of both carotid arteries and the spinal column between the cervical vertebrae C1 and C2 as the result of a chopping blow by a sharp, heavy blade, delivered with great force. Damage to neck tissues and vertebrae consistent with the machete discovered in the wooded area adjacent to the crime scene. So,” said Hardwick, switching back to his normal tone, “zero doubt. DNA is DNA.”
Gurney nodded slowly, absorbing this.
Hardwick continued, adding a familiar touch of provocation. “The only open question about that particular spot in the woods is why the trail stopped there, kind of like the trail at the Mellery crime scene that just—”
“Hold on a second, Jack. There’s a big difference between the visible boot prints we found at Mellery’s place and an invisible scent trail.”
