Shut Your Eyes Tight

by John Verdon

  “And her?”

  “Her?”

  “Val Perry. Will you be giving her your reactions, too?” Madeleine’s voice had taken on a light, airy quality that communicated rather than concealed her concern.

  Gurney stared down into the fruit bowl on the granite top of the sink island, resting his hands on the cold surface. Several fruit flies, disturbed by his presence, rose from a bunch of bananas, flew in asymmetric zigzags above the bowl, then settled again on the fruit, becoming invisible against the speckled skin.

  He tried to speak softly, but the effect was condescending. “I think you’re disturbed by the assumptions you’re making, not by what’s actually happening.”

  “You mean my assumption that you’ve already decided to jump on the roller coaster?”

  “Maddie, how many times do I have to say it? I haven’t made any commitment to anyone to do anything. I’ve made absolutely no decision to get involved in any way beyond reading the case file.”

  She gave him a look he couldn’t quite understand, a look that went into him—a look that was knowing and gentle and strangely sad.

  She began placing the tops back on the glass storage containers. He watched her without comment until she started putting the containers back into the refrigerator.

  “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” he asked.

  “I’m not that hungry right now. I think I’ll take a shower. If it wakes me up, then I’ll eat. If it makes me drowsy, I’ll go to bed early.” As she passed the table with its burden of paperwork, she said, “Before our guests arrive tomorrow, you’ll put all that away where we won’t have to look at it, right?” She left the room, and half a minute later he heard the bathroom door closing.

  Guests? Tomorrow? Christ!

  A dim recollection, something Madeleine had mentioned to him about someone coming for dinner—the shadow of a memory, stored in an inaccessible storage bin, a bin containing objects of little importance.

  What the hell is going on with you? Isn’t there any room left in your head for ordinary life? For a simple life, shared in good and simple ways, with ordinary people? Or maybe there was never any room for that. Maybe you always were the way you are right now. Maybe life here on a secluded mountaintop—cut loose from the demands of the job, deprived of convenient excuses for never being present in the lives of people you claim to love—is making the truth harder to hide. Could the simple truth be that you don’t really care about anybody?

  He walked around to the far side of the sink island and switched on the coffeemaker. Like Madeleine, he’d lost his appetite for dinner. But the idea of coffee was appealing. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 12

  Peculiar facts

  It made sense to begin at the beginning by examining the identikit portrait of Hector Flores.

  Gurney had mixed feelings about computer-generated facial composites. Constructed from the input of eyewitnesses, they mirrored the strengths and weaknesses of all eyewitness testimony.

  In the case of Hector Flores, however, there was good reason to trust the likeness. The descriptive details had been provided by a man with the observational skills of a psychiatrist and who was said to have been in daily contact with the subject for nearly three years. A computer rendering with input of that quality could rival a good photograph.

  The image was of a man, probably in his mid-thirties, good-looking in an unremarkable way. The facial bone structure was regular, with no feature predominating. The skin was relatively free of lines, the eyes dark and emotionless. The hair was black, fairly neat, casually parted. There was only one distinguishing mark Gurney could discern, oddly shocking in the midst of such an otherwise ordinary appearance: The man’s right earlobe was missing.

  Appended to the composite portrait was the inventory of physical statistics. (Again Gurney’s assumption was that these would have been provided primarily by Ashton and would therefore have a high likelihood of accuracy.) Hector Flores’s height was listed as five feet nine inches; weight 140–150; race/nationality Hispanic; eyes dark brown; hair black, straight; complexion tan, clear; teeth uneven, with one gold incisor, upper left. In the “Scars and Other Identifying Marks” section, there were two entries: the missing earlobe and severe scarring on the right knee.

  Gurney looked again at the picture, searched for some spark of madness, a glimpse of the mind of the ice man who beheaded a woman, used the head to deflect the body’s spurting blood away from himself, then placed her head on the table, facing the body from which it came. In the eyes of some killers—Charlie Manson, for instance—there was a demonic intensity, urgent and unconcealed, but most of the murderers Gurney had brought to justice during his career as a homicide detective were driven by a less obvious madness. Hector Flores’s bland, uncommunicative face—in which Gurney could see no hint of the hideous violence of the crime itself—put him in this category.

  Stapled to the physical-statistics form was a typed page with the heading “Supplementary Statement Provided by Dr. Scott Ashton on May 11, 2009.” It was signed by Ashton and witnessed by Hardwick, as chief investigating officer. The statement was brief, considering the time period and events it covered.

  My first meeting with Hector Flores was in late April of 2006, when he came to my home as a day laborer looking for employment. Starting then, I began giving him work around the yard—mowing, raking, mulching, fertilizing, etc. He spoke almost no English at first but learned quickly, impressing me with his energy and intelligence. In the following weeks, seeing that he was a skilled carpenter, I came to rely on him for a broad range of outdoor and indoor maintenance and repair projects. By mid-July he was working in and around the house seven days a week—adding routine housecleaning to his list of chores. He was becoming the perfect domestic employee, showing great initiative and common sense. In late August he asked if, in lieu of some of the money I was paying him, he might be allowed to occupy the small unfurnished cottage behind the house on the days he was here. With some misgivings I agreed, and shortly thereafter he began living in it, approximately four days a week. He got himself a small table and two chairs at a thrift store, and later an inexpensive computer. He said that was all he wanted. He slept in a sleeping bag, insisted that was the way he was most comfortable. As time passed, he began exploring various educational opportunities on the Internet. Meanwhile his appetite for work only seemed to grow, and he began evolving into a kind of personal assistant. By the end of the year, I was trusting him with reasonable amounts of cash, and he was handling occasional grocery shopping and other errands with great efficiency. His English had become grammatically flawless, although it was still heavily accented, and his manner was charming. He frequently answered my phone, took cogent messages, even provided me with subtle shadings of information about the tone or mood of certain callers. (In retrospect this seems bizarre—that I would be relying in this way on a man who had not long before been looking for a job spreading mulch—but the arrangement worked well, without a single problem I was aware of, for almost two years.) Things began to change in the fall of 2008, when Jillian Perry came into my life. Flores soon became moody and reclusive, always finding reasons to be away from the house when Jillian was present. The changes became more disturbing in early 2009, when we announced our wedding plans. He disappeared for several days. When he returned, he claimed to have discovered terrible things about Jillian and that I would be risking my life by marrying her, but he refused to provide details. He said that he couldn’t tell me anything more without revealing the source of his information, which he couldn’t do. He begged me to reconsider my decision to marry. When it became clear that I was not going to reconsider anything without knowing exactly what he was talking about, and that I would not tolerate unsupported accusations, he seemed to accept the situation, although he continued to avoid Jillian. In retrospect, of course, I should have fired him at these indications of his instability, but with the arrogance of my profession, I assumed that I would be abl
e to discover the nature of the problem and solve it. I saw myself conducting a grand experiment in education, never fully accepting the fact that I was dealing with a dangerously complex personality and that everything might spin out of control. I must also admit that he had made my life easier and more convenient in so many ways that I was reluctant to let him go. I cannot overemphasize the degree to which his intelligence, rapid self-education, and range of talents had impressed me—all of which now sounds delusional in the light of what has happened. My final encounter with Hector Flores occurred the morning of the wedding. Jillian, who was well aware that Hector despised her, was obsessed with getting him to accept the reality of our marriage, and she prevailed upon me to make one last effort to persuade him to attend the ceremony. I went to the cottage that morning, found him sitting like a block of stone at the table. I went through the motions of extending one more invitation, which he refused. He was dressed entirely in black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black belt, black shoes. Perhaps that should have meant something to me. That was the last I saw of him.

  At that point in the transcript, Hardwick had inserted a handwritten marginal notation: “Upon submission and review of the above written statement by Scott Ashton, it was supplemented by the following questions and answers.”

  J.H.: Do I understand correctly that you knew little or nothing about this man’s background?

  S.A.: That’s correct.

  J.H.: He provided virtually no information about himself?

  S.A.: Correct.

  J.H.: Yet you came to trust him enough to let him live on your property, have access to your home, answer your phone?

  S.A.: I’m aware that it sounds idiotic, but I regarded his refusal to talk about his past as a form of honesty. I mean, if he’d wanted to conceal something, it would have been more persuasive to construct a fictitious past. But he didn’t do that. In an upside-down way, that impressed me. So yes, I trusted him even though he refused to discuss his past.

  Gurney read the entire statement a second time, more slowly, and then a third time. He found the narrative as extraordinary for what was left out as for what was put in. Among the missing elements was a singular lack of fury. And a striking absence of the visceral horror that on the day prior to making this statement had sent the man reeling out of the cottage seconds after he’d entered it, screaming and collapsing.

  Was the change simply the result of medication? A psychiatrist would have easy access to appropriate sedatives. Or was it something more than that? Impossible to tell from just words on paper. It would be interesting to meet the man, look into his eyes, hear his voice.

  At least the portion of the statement referring to the unfurnished state of the cottage and Flores’s insistence on keeping it that way answered part of the mystery of its bareness in the evidence report—part, but not all. It didn’t explain why there were no clothes or shoes or bathroom items. It didn’t explain what had happened to the computer. Or why, if he removed all his personal items, Flores had chosen to leave behind a pair of boots.

  Gurney’s gaze wandered over the piles of documents arrayed in front of him. He remembered earlier seeing two incident reports, not just the one he would have expected, covering the murder, and wondering why. He reached across the table, extracted the second from under the first.

  It had been generated by the Tambury Village PD in response to a call received at 4:15 P.M. on May 17, 2009—exactly one week after the murder. Complainant was listed as Dr. Scott Ashton of 42 Badger Lane, Tambury, New York. The report was filed by Sergeant Keith Garbelly. It was noted that a copy had been forwarded to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation at State Police Regional Headquarters, to the attention of Senior Investigator J. Hardwick. Gurney assumed that it was a copy of that copy he was now reading.

  Complainant was sitting at patio table on south side of residence, facing main lawn area, with cup of tea on table. His habit in good weather. Heard single gunshot, simultaneously witnessed teacup shatter. Ran into house through back (patio) door, called Tambury PD. When I arrived on scene (with backup following) complainant appeared tense, anxious. Initial interview conducted in living room. Complainant could not pinpoint source of gunshot, guessed “long range, from that general direction” (gestured out the rear window toward wooded hillside at least 300 yards away). Complainant had no additional understanding of the event, other than “possibly connected to the murder of my wife.” Claimed no actual knowledge of what the connection might be. Speculated that Hector Flores might want to kill him, too, but could provide no reason or motive.

  A copy of a BCI investigatory follow-up form was clipped to the initial incident report, indicating that a quick handoff of the matter had occurred, consistent with BCI’s primary responsibility for the case. The follow-up form had three short entries and one long one, all initialed “JH.”

  Search of Ashton property, woods, hills: negative. Area interviews: negative.

  Reconstruction of cup shows impact point at exact top-to-bottom, left-to-right center. Lends support to the hypothesis that cup, not Ashton, may have been shooter’s target.

  Bullet fragments recovered from patio area too small for conclusive ballistics. Best guess: small to med caliber high-powered rifle, equipped with sophisticated scope, in the hands of an experienced shooter.

  Weapon estimate and cup-as-target conclusion shared with Scott Ashton to ascertain whether he knew anyone with that kind of equipment and shooting skills. Subject appeared troubled. When pressed, he named two people with similar rifle and scope: himself and Jillian’s father, Dr. Withrow Perry. Perry, he said, liked to go on exotic hunting trips and was an expert marksman. Ashton claimed to have purchased his own rifle (high-end Weatherby .257) at Perry’s suggestion. When I asked to see it, he discovered that it was missing from the wooden case in which he kept it locked in his den closet. He could not date the last time he had seen the gun but said that it might have been two or three months earlier. Asked whether Hector Flores knew of its existence and location, he replied that Flores had accompanied him to Kingston the day he purchased it and that Flores had built the oak box in which it was stored.

  Gurney turned the form over, looked for a backup sheet, riffled through the pile from which it came, but could find no follow-up entry on the interview that must have been conducted subsequently with Withrow Perry. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had fallen into the crack that sometimes swallowed critical issues during the transfer of a case from one CIO to another—in this case from the wild-swinging Hardwick to the clumsy Blatt. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that happening.

  It was time for a second cup of coffee.

  Chapter 13

  Weirder and twistier

  It could have been any number of things—the fresh rush of caffeine, a natural restlessness arising from sitting in the same chair too long, the oppressive prospect of navigating his solitary way in the middle of the night through that landscape of unprioritized documents, the seemingly unpursued questions concerning the whereabouts of Withrow Perry and his rifle on the afternoon of May 17. Perhaps it was all those forces together that drove him to pick up his cell phone and call Jack Hardwick. All those forces, plus an idea that had occurred to him about the shattered teacup.

  The phone was answered after five rings, just as Gurney was thinking about the message he’d leave.

  “Yeah?”

  “Lot of charm in that greeting, Jack.”

  “If I knew it was just you, I wouldn’t have tried so hard. What’s up?”

  “That’s a big file you gave me.”

  “You got a question?”

  “I’m looking at five hundred sheets of paper here. Just wondering if you wanted to point me in any particular direction.”

  Hardwick erupted in one of his harsh laughs that sounded more like a sandblasting tool than a human emotion. “Shit, Gurney, Holmes isn’t supposed to ask Watson to point him in the right direction.”

  “Let me put it another way,” said Gurney, rememberi
ng what a pain it always was to get a simple answer out of Hardwick. “Are there any documents in this mountain of crap that you think I’d find especially interesting?”

  “Like pictures of naked women?”

  These games with Hardwick could go on way too long. Gurney decided to change the rules, change the subject, catch him off balance.

  “Jillian Perry was beheaded at 4:13 P.M.,” he announced. “Give or take thirty seconds.”

  There was a brief silence. “How the fuck …?”

  Gurney pictured Hardwick’s mind caroming over the case terrain—around the cottage, the woods, the lawn—trying to pick up the clue he’d missed. After allowing what he imagined to be the man’s amazement and frustration to blossom fully, Gurney whispered, “The answer is in the tea leaves.” Then he broke the connection.

  Hardwick called back ten minutes later, faster than Gurney had expected. The surprising truth about Hardwick: Lurking at the center of that exasperating personality was a very sharp mind. How far might the man have gone, Gurney often wondered, and how much happier might he be were he not so encumbered by his own attitudes? Of course, that was a question that applied to a lot of people, himself not the least.

  Gurney didn’t bother saying hello. “You agree with me, Jack?”

  “It’s not a sure thing.”

  “Nothing is. But you understand the logic, right?”

  “Sure,” said Hardwick, managing to convey that he understood it without being impressed by it. “The time Tambury PD got the call from Ashton about the teacup was four-fifteen. And Ashton said he ran into the house as soon as he realized what had happened. Making some assumptions about the time it would take him to get from the patio table to the nearest phone inside the house, maybe looking out the window a few times to check for any sign of the shooter, dialing the actual local PD number rather than just 911, allowing for a couple of rings before it was answered—all that would put the actual gunshot back to about four-thirteen. But that’s just the gunshot. To connect it the way you’re connecting it to the exact time of the murder the week before, you gotta make three giant leaps. One, the teacup shooter is the same guy who killed the bride. Two, he knew the precise minute he killed her. Three, he wanted to send a message by blasting the teacup at the same minute of the same hour of the same day of the week. That’s what you’re saying?”