Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel

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Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, No. 2): A Novel Page 51

by John Verdon


  “Ashton?”

  “The very same. Guess he got to know Saul pretty well—decided he had enough potential to make an exception to the Skard family-only rule. When you think about it, the man was a damn good judge of character. Could spot a useful psychopathic scumbag a mile away.”

  “You find out who Saul’s ‘daughters’ were?”

  “Maybe new Mapleshade grads doing an internship? Who knows? They were gone when we got there, and I’d be damn surprised if they reappeared.”

  This sounded to Gurney like some form of reassurance, but even in his gentle Dilaudid haze it didn’t entirely reassure him. The feeling created an awkward silence. Finally Gurney asked, “You find anything of interest on the premises?”

  “Of interest? Oh, yeah, definitely. Lots of interesting videos. Young ladies describing their favorite activities in detail. Some sick shit. Very sick shit.”

  Gurney nodded. “Anything else?”

  Hardwick raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Might have been. Who knows? You do your best to keep track of everything. But sometimes stuff just disappears. Never gets inventoried. Gets accidentally destroyed. You know how it is.”

  Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.

  Hardwick looked thoughtful, then amused. “You know, Gurney, you’re a more fucked-up guy than most people realize.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Hell no! Take me, for example. I appear totally fucked up. But inside I’m a rock. A finely tuned, well-balanced machine.”

  “If you’re well balanced …” Normally Gurney could have ended the sentence with a smart rebuttal, but the Dilaudid was getting in the way, and his voice just trailed off.

  The two men held each other’s gaze for a moment longer, and then Hardwick took a step toward the door. “Well, I’ll be seeing you around, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He started to leave, then turned back for a moment. “Relax, Sherlock. Everything’s cool.”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  • • •

  Sometime after Hardwick left, Madeleine returned to the room, carrying a small container of coffee. Wrinkling her nose at it, she laid it on a metal table in the corner.

  Gurney smiled. “Not very good?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she came to the side of the bed and took both of his hands in hers and held them tightly.

  She stood there next to him, just like that, holding his hands, for a long while.

  It could have been a minute or an hour. He couldn’t tell.

  All he was truly aware of was her steady, perceptive, loving smile—the smile that was hers alone.

  It enveloped him, warmed him, delighted him like nothing else on earth.

  He was amazed that anyone who saw everything so clearly, who had all the light of the world in her eyes, saw in him something worthy of such a smile.

  It was a smile that could make a man believe that life was good.

  Acknowledgments

  When I finished my first novel, Think of a Number, I had the extraordinary good fortune to be represented by a remarkable agent, Molly Friedrich—along with her wonderful associates, Paul Cirone and Lucy Carson.

  My good fortune was confirmed when the book was acquired by Crown’s Rick Horgan, a marvelous editor.

  Today I continue to be blessed by the guidance and support of these honest, smart, and talented people. Their ideal combination of perceptive criticism and heartening enthusiasm made my new novel, Shut Your Eyes Tight, better in every way.

  Rick, Molly, Paul, Lucy—thank you!

  About the Author

  After a successful career in the advertising industry, John Verdon retired with his wife, Naomi, to the rural mountains of upstate New York—an ironically tranquil environment for creating the Dave Gurney series of thrillers.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Perfect Solution

  Part One: The Mexican Gardener

  Chapter 1: Life in the Country

  Chapter 2: The Butchered Bride

  Chapter 3: Elliptical Orbits

  Chapter 4: The Art of Deception

  Chapter 5: The Eureka Fallacy

  Chapter 6: Home

  Chapter 7: Val Perry

  Chapter 8: The Murder Movie

  Chapter 9: The View from the Doorway

  Chapter 10: The Only Way It Could Have Been Done

  Chapter 11: The Evidence on the Table

  Chapter 12: Peculiar Facts

  Chapter 13: Weirder and Twistier

  Chapter 14: The Lay of the Land

  Chapter 15: Black and White

  Chapter 16: A Sense of Order and Purpose

  Chapter 17: In the Shadow of the Bitch

  Chapter 18: Ashton’s Neighbors

  Chapter 19: Frankenstein

  Chapter 20: Ashton’s Manor

  Chapter 21: A Word to the Wise

  Chapter 22: Spider Man

  Chapter 23: Leverage

  Chapter 24: A Patient Spider

  Chapter 25: Enter Salome, Dancing

  Part Two: Salome’s Executioner

  Chapter 26: The Verisimilitude of Incongruity

  Chapter 27: A Lot to Think About

  Chapter 28: A Different Perspective

  Chapter 29: Among the Missing

  Chapter 30: Alessandro’s Models

  Chapter 31: Scottie Dogs

  Chapter 32: An Intractable Madness

  Chapter 33: A Simple Reversal

  Chapter 34: Ashton Uneasy

  Chapter 35: A Hell of a Lot More

  Chapter 36: Into the Heart of Darkness

  Chapter 37: The Deer

  Chapter 38: The Eyes of Peter Piggert

  Chapter 39: Real, Unreal, Crazy, Not Crazy

  Chapter 40: A Faint Yipping

  Chapter 41: The Big Day

  Chapter 42: The Magic Mr. Jykynstyl

  Part Three: Fatal Oversight

  Chapter 43: Waking Up

  Chapter 44: Déjà Vu

  Chapter 45: A Curious Dog

  Chapter 46: Nothing on Paper

  Chapter 47: An Impossible Situation

  Chapter 48: Perfect Memories

  Chapter 49: Little Boys

  Chapter 50: Loose Cannon

  Chapter 51: Total Confusion

  Chapter 52: The Flores Factor

  Chapter 53: Game Changer

  Chapter 54: Unpleasant Stories

  Chapter 55: Tirana Magdalena Skard

  Chapter 56: A Matter of Control

  Chapter 57: The Plan

  Chapter 58: Into Action

  Chapter 59: Undercover

  Chapter 60: Dancing with the Devil

  Chapter 61: Homeward Bound

  Chapter 62: Tremors

  Chapter 63: Just Like Ashton’s Cottage

  Chapter 64: A Very Strange Day

  Chapter 65: Message from the Monster

  Chapter 66: The Monstrous Truth, According to Ballston

  Chapter 67: A Mother’s Love

  Chapter 68: Buena Vista Trail

  Chapter 69: Blind Alleys

  Chapter 70: In Plain Sight

  Chapter 71: For All the Reasons I Have Written

  Chapter 72: One More Layer

  Chapter 73: Gate of Heaven

  Chapter 74: Beyond All Reason

  Chapter 75: Shut Your Eyes Tight

  Chapter 76: Another Layer

  Chapter 77: The Final Episode

  Chapter 78: All He Had Left

  Chapter 79: The Last Bullet

  Chapter 80: The Light of the World

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

 

 

  rchive.


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